Friday, May 27, 2022

Stranger Things: Episode 32



32. The Massacre at Hawkins Lab
Joyce and Murray get into the prison and manage to fool the head warden, making it just in time for Hopper and Dmitri’s gladiator battle with the Upside Down monster. Steve, Nancy, Robin, and Eddie fend for themselves in the Upside Down and find a way to communicate with Dustin, Lucas, Max, and Erica. They figure out that a portal opens at each Vecna murder site. They all head to Eddie’s trailer on either side and use the portal there, but Nancy slips into a trance when it’s her turn to jump. She is welcomed by Vecna in his abode and is given a glimpse of his history growing up as Victor Creel’s murderous telekinetic son Henry who kills his mom and sister before ending up with Brenner who experiments on him to replicate his psychic abilities. Becoming 001 (Jamie Campbell Bower), he tricks 011 into freeing him. He then massacres everyone in the lab and asks her to join him. She refuses and they have a duel, her powers besting his and opening a portal banishing him in the Upside Down where he becomes Vecna.

Stranger Things: Episode 31


31. The Dive
Hopper and Dmitri are given their last meal as they are to be used as fodder for the Demagorgon housed at the Russian gulag. Joyce and Murray coerce Yuri to “deliver” them to the prison, after dropping by to pick up his stash of weapons, to mount an impossible rescue mission. Mike, Will, Jonathan, and Argyle arrive in Salt Lake City and convince Suzie to help them crack the code. Jason is convinced that Eddie is being used as a vessel by the devil and uses his charisma to mobilize the townsfolk to hunt the Hellfire Club, branding them as a satanist cult responsible for the murders. Eleven continues her training by retrieving core memories via Brenner’s VHS footage of their time at Hawkins Lab. She slowly recalls her early years as a lab experiment and how her peers, led by Two, bullied her. The Hawkins gang find Eddie and a malfunctioning compass leads the way to another gate to the Upside Down at the bottom of the lake. Steve is yanked to the other side and attacked by creatures there as Nancy, Robin, and Eddie dive after him.

Stranger Things: Episode 30



30. The Nina Project
Hopper is reunited with Dmitri in the gulag. Murray puts his karate black belt to good use and knocks Yuri out, getting lucky with Joyce in crash landing the plane without dying. Owens’ injured henchman succumbs to his gunshot wounds but not without giving Mike a pen that isn’t working. After burying the body, he finds a note inside the pen with a phone number on it. Calling the number, they hear a war games signal on loop. He tells Will, Jonathan, and Argyle that there’s only one person who might be able to crack it: Dustin’s girlfriend Suzie who lives in Utah. Max draws what she saw in Vecna’s lair. Upon seeing it, Nancy figures out that it is a house. Victor Creel’s house. The gang heads over and they are guided by the flashing lights, confirming that Vecna is indeed nesting in the house, but on the other side. El is taken by Owens to a repurposed ICBM silo in Nevada housing the NINA project. There she is surprised by Brenner who very much alive. She tries to escape but quickly realizes that she needs to train more to regain her powers.

Stranger Things: Episode 29



29. Dear Billy
Hopper escapes and camps at the church where Dmitri’s smuggler friend will airlift him back to America. Joyce and Murray meet Yuri (Nikola Djuricko) in Alaska and give him the money. He swindles them, drugging the duo and causing Hopper and Dmitri to be captured by the Russians. Owen’s team puts Jonathan, Will, and Mike on house arrest for their protection. Jonathan enlists the help of his weed junkie pizza delivery friend Argyle (Eduardo Franco) to plot their escape. He arrives just as the two security personnel are gunned down by the military. Lucas betrays his jock group led by Chrissy’s boyfriend Jason (Mason Dye), who wants to find Eddie. He meets Dustin, Steve, and Max at school. Nancy and Robin find a way to meet serial killer Victor Creel (Robert Englund), the sole survivor among Vecna’s victims, at the asylum. They discover that music helps in defeating the curse, an info they relay to Dustin just in time as Max slips into a trance and almost gets killed by Vecna. She musters all her strength to break free.

Stranger Things: Episode 28



28. The Monster and the Superhero
Now retired Dr. Owens (Paul Reiser) gets a visit from the military quizzing him about Eleven’s whereabouts. Apparently, they believe that whatever is happening in Hawkins is El’s fault. Joyce and Murray fly to Alaska with the money. The guy they talked to was Dmitri (Tom Wlaschiha), Hopper’s prison guard who made a deal with him for his freedom. Nancy meets up with Team Dustin and is prepped about Vecna. She teams up with Robin to pursue a lead about a 50’s serial killer who killed his family in the same fashion. They find a tabloid write-up about him claiming he was not the murderer and that a demon killed his family. Max meets up with the school guidance counselor to fish for info about Chrissy and Fred, but she refuses to give out any intel. She steals her office keys and sneaks in along with Steve and Dustin. El is detained by the police but is intercepted by Dr. Owens and his team en route to the juvenile detention center. He proposes a program for her to get her powers back. She agrees.

Stranger Things: Episode 27


27. Vecna's Curse
In a flashback, Hopper survives the explosion and is immediately captured by the Russians. He is tortured and sent to a labor camp in Kamchatka. Murray flies to California to help Joyce contact the Russian number on the note. The guy who answers demands they travel to Alaska and give him $40,000 to help “unstuck” Hopper. After her exorcism episode, Chrissy’s dead body is found at Eddie’s trailer, which is right next to Max’s house. She sees the two arrive the night before, and then him rushing out and driving away afterwards. She tells Dustin and they set up a command center at the video rental shop where Steve and Robin work. They end up tracking Eddie and he narrates what happened. Nancy puts her journalist cap on and pursues the Chrissy murder story, but her assistant Fred (Logan Riley Bruner) goes through the same Chrissy situation and is claimed by the demon, who Dustin and Eddie ID as Vecna from D and D. Mike visits Eleven and Will and witnesses Eleven being bullied firsthand. Literally powerless, she strikes her bully with a rollerblade on the face.

Stranger Things: Episode 26


26. The Hellfire Club
1979. Dr. Brenner trains 010, a telepath, at Hawkins National Laboratories when a massacre ensues. The perpetrator is revealed to be a young Eleven. 1986. The Byers have relocated to California where Joyce now works from home selling encyclopedias via phone. Eleven believes she is adjusting well at Lenora Hills High School despite being bullied non-stop, with only Will coming to her rescue. Joyce receives a package from Russia with a porcelain doll that contains a message saying, “Hop is alive”. Back in Hawkins, Lucas joins the basketball team while Mike and Dustin hang out with the Hellfire Club, a club of nerds dedicating their time to D and D. Their leader Eddie (Joseph Quinn) peddles weed and drugs on the side, one of his new customers being cheerleader Chrissy (Grace Van Dien), who keeps seeing visions of her family as well as flashes of the Upside Down. As she accompanies him back to his trailer to pick up her drugs, she slips into a trance and is visited by an otherworldly creature who tells her it’s time for her suffering to end.

Wednesday, May 25, 2022

Top Gun: Maverick

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In his more than three decades of serving in the navy, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) remains a test pilot, intentionally avoiding any kind of career progression. After destroying an expensive aircraft in a test flight which sees him exceeding a G-force of 10, he finds an unexpected exit point as he is called back to become an instructor at Top Gun. The mission involves the nearly impossible task of a preemptive strike of an enemy state’s nuclear production facility guarded by surface to air missile machinery and fighter jets that can rival their own. The crew comprises a new batch of elite Top Gun alums which include cocky Jake “Hangman” Seresin (Glen Powell), WSO Robert “Bob” Floyd (Lewis Pullman), trainee Natasha “Phoenix” Trace (Monica Barbaro), and Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw (Miles Teller), the son of his late best friend and RIO Goose.

Tuesday, May 24, 2022

Top Gun (1986)

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1969. The US Navy establishes an academy for the crème de la crème of its hierarchy of pilots, training them in aerial combat. Only the top 1% gets in and upon graduation, they are then considered as the best fighter pilots worldwide. While the Navy officially calls it the Fighter Weapons School, its students refer to the program as Top Gun. Naval Aviator lieutenant Pete “Maverick” Mitchell along with his best friend Nick “Goose” Bradshaw, a Radar Intercept Officer, make it to the new batch of trainees after their stint aboard the USS Enterprise. Highly skilled but coming across as a bit arrogant, Maverick immediately courts rivalry from the rest of his class, among them lieutenant Tom “Iceman” Kazansky (Val Kilmer), who is not at all impressed by his demeanor while up in the air. As they battle it out for the top spot, Maverick has to juggle his budding love affair with Top Gun instructor Charlotte “Charlie” Blackwood (Kelly McGillis) with his high expectation of himself dealing with the ghost of his father’s past.

Friday, May 13, 2022

Senior Year

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Teenage Australian immigrant Stephanie Conway (Angourie Rice) has always struggled to fit in and makes a vow to be the most popular girl in high school. Her role model is ex-prom queen Deanna Russo who married the high school jock and lived her dream life at her dream house in the same suburb. Conway achieves her goals, becomes cheer captain, and clinches the hot guy as her boyfriend. However, the journey to her dreams is abruptly cut short after she falls in a coma following a cheerleading stunt gone wrong. She wakes up 20 years later and quickly realizes that life is no longer how she left it. Her best friends Martha (Mary Holland) and Seth (Sam Richardson) are now the high school principal and librarian, respectively. Her boyfriend Blaine (Justin Hartley) is married to her high school rival Tiffany (Zoë Chao). But perhaps the rudest awakening is finding out, after deciding to go back to finishing her senior year, how the dynamics of high school have changed after two decades.

Thursday, May 5, 2022

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

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Every night, Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) wakes up from the same nightmare, that of a teenager being chased by various supernatural creatures. On the day of Christine Palmer’s (Rachel McAdams) wedding, the city is ambushed by a tentacled monster and much to Stephen’s surprise, the girl from his dreams materializes in front of him. She introduces herself as America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez) who has the ability to travel between universes by punching star-shaped holes through them, a superpower she has yet to learn how to control. With Wong (Benedict Wong) noticing how the creatures in pursuit are not demonic in nature but rather summoned via witchcraft, Doctor Strange seeks the help of one of the most powerful magic wielders he knows. Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) is now living a quiet life and claims to have put magic behind her. Unbeknownst to the ex-Sorcerer Supreme, the Scarlet Witch has an entirely different plan in mind.

Wednesday, May 4, 2022

Moon Knight: Episode 6


6. Gods and Monsters
Harrow retrieves Ammit’s ushabti from Marc’s corpse and frees the goddess. Layla pursues them on her own and gets an offer from Taweret to become her avatar. She sneaks into the pyramid and frees Khonshu while Ammit (Saba Mubarak), with Harrow as her new avatar, strikes the Ennead one by one. Despite a stark warning from Taweret, Marc abandons the Field of Reeds and comes back for Steven. The two are freed by an enchanted glow and cross the gates of Osiris back to their body just in time to rendezvous with Layla, now Taweret’s superpowered avatar, and team up against Harrow/Ammit. After almost losing, the duo imprison Ammit in Harrow’s body. Marc/Steven refuse to kill him/her and demand liberty from Khonshu, which he seemingly grants them. As the two live in the illusion of harmonious co-existence, they black out. Harrow is dragged out of the asylum and shoved into a limousine where Khonshu awaits. The god then introduces him to his friend Jake Lockley (Oscar Isaac), who immediately guns him down.

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