r/screen_stack

Blue Steel (1990)

Rating: 7.5/10

Watched: August 14, 2026

I have super-vague memories of seeing this one on late night cable, probably Cinemax, from way back in the day.

First off, it's got two of my favorite male actors, Ron Silver and Clancy Brown. Clancy Brown's barely in it but damn do I love the man and here, he seems like he's barely 25 years old.

That out of the way, I want to talk about Ron Silver for a minute. He's been a favorite of mine ever since I saw The Entity and that's because there's just somethin' about him. I knew he played the antagonist in this movie, but at no point did I recall how absolutely batshit crazy insane he goes.

I can't (won't) tell you all the nitty gritty details of Eugene's descent into complete and total madness, but I stand by my 'absolutely batshit crazy insane' statement. From the moment he sees Megan (Jamie Lee Curtis) shoot Tom Sizemore dead in a supermarket, he's on a downhill slope.

And what a slope it is. Silver gets the chance to chew on some scenery every now and again, which is just great, but it's those moments where he's pretending to be a totally normal guy that's more chilling, especially as the movie continues.

And as for Jamie Lee Curtis? Well. It's just really nice to see her in something other than a horror movie. As far as cop thrillers go, JLC plays Megan very well, showing a young female cop fresh out of the academy who's already dealing with a boatload of grief from her parents and pretty much anyone who finds out that she's a cop.

Having Eugene tossed into the mix like a live spree killer hand grenade is just the icing on the cake.

Blue Steel's pretty gritty and it's got a lot of neo-noir heart to it, but I DO have to admit that it falls into the realm of the slightly unbelievable in the last half hour, but that doesn't wreck it. Just makes it a bit over-the-top.

Gotta say, Blue Steel's a movie I don't see talked about a lot, and while every single person on the Internet uses the term 'underrated' to mean everything from 'this movie is terrible' to 'I just saw this extremely popular movie from 2000 and no one's talking about it 26 years later so it must not have been popular at all', I really do think it's an underrated movie.

You should check it out. I was pleasantly surprised and maybe you will be too.

They Live (1988)

Rating: 10/10 (PERSONAL FAVORITE)

Watched: August 12, 2026

Like most every teen in North America in the 80s, I was AN ENORMOUS fan of WWF (now WWE). Rowdy Roddy Piper was an instant favorite of mine because of his boisterous, give no shits, say WTF-ever attitude and just the sheer amount of fun that he seemed to be having all the damn time.

Well, I fell out of love with wrestling when Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat miraculously healed from a crushed throat. No joke. I remember being legitimately worried about Ricky, and when he was fine the next week, I was done with wrestling, but my love of Roddy Piper never, ever waned.

At the time, They Live was your standard(ish) John Carpenter thinkpiece about government and corporate overreach, control of the masses, and all the ways they kept us, the people, down. Tossing Roddy and Keith David into the mix was sheer brilliance.

They both worked so well together and they equally managed to give off the vibe that these two very different men had been struggling in the damaged world they inhabited. As ya gotta, I absolutely loved the fight between Nada and Frank, with Nada trying to slap them sunglasses on Frank at every turn.

How could you not? It's one of the most realistic fights out there. There's no fancy moves. There's no tricks. Just two guys whalin' away on each other non-stop, one because he wants the other to wear a pair of sunglasses and the other doesn't want shit to do with shinola.

I won't bore you with the big, overarching picture because if you've seen it, you know what's going on. If you haven't, you have to trust me:

They Live's message is stronger now than ever before. Corporations control the world and it's all bread and circuses out there, man. If you want to see a movie that shows you the straight truth, this one's it.

Now on to something cool that I ONLY noticed because I'm watching a LOT of John Carpenter's movies this month.

In the very beginning of the movie, an old man in the homeless camp says the following line: "Shooting people, robbing banks. A whole lot of people going crazy over some nutty dream they just had. The truth is, this kind of shit happens at the end of every century. It's just people afraid to face the future."

If you catch the reference, awesome. If not, let me fill you in.

That's in reference to Carpenter's movie the year before, Prince of Darkness.

Yes. That's right. They Live exists in the same universe as Prince of Darkness, so even though things shake out the way they do in They Live, everyone on that planet is living on borrowed time ANYWAYS.

Here's to you, JC, for making another badass movie, and leaving Easter Eggs for me to find nearly 40 years later.

Near Dark (1987)

Rating: 7/10 (SOLID WATCH)

Watched: August 9, 2026

Near Dark is an odd movie.

It's odd because right from the start it fully subverts your expectations. Are vampires real? Sure are, and that's not a spoiler. You wouldn't be looking at a movie like Near Dark unless you already knew it was a vampire movie, but here's the thing.

These aren't your ordinary vampires. And here, by ordinary, I mean with the long pointy teeth, the alabaster skin, the inhuman strength or hell, even a life of wealth and indulgence.

Everything about the vampires in Near Dark is gritty, callous and coarse. They have none of the things you'd expect in a movie about people who feed on the blood of others and it is great. They're bottom feeders moving through the backside of America in stolen cars, feeding on bottom feeders, with barely two coins to rub together most of the time.

They're also not terrifically smart, which is something almost all vampires we see in other movies ARE. They're brilliant. They're witty and they're charismatic and they'll woo you with their honeyed words before drinking your blood.

Not Bigelow's vampires. Hell, they don't even use the word once throughout the entire movie. The vamps pick fights, particularly Severen (the amazing Bill Paxton), and kill everyone involved. It's gruesome and it's great.

The movie itself qualifies as a slice of life moment for these greasy hillbilly vampires because everything that happens to them is because a local yokel named Caleb wanted to get in a girl's pants. No overarching plot. No twists or turns.

Just a dude lookin' to get lucky, a girl who wanted a friend, and an awful lot of dead folk.

A fun scifi/body horror movie that I really enjoyed a lot. What it does, it does really well, and it's not without its charms. I especially liked Kyle McLachlan, but then again, I've been a fan of his forever, so I'm more than a little biased.

Prince of Darkness (1987)

Rating: 9.5/10 (EXCELLENT)

Watched: August 9, 2026

Next to The Thing and In The Mouth of Madness, Prince of Darkness is my all-time, A#1 John Carpenter horror movie.

For me, there is nothing better than the high concepts posited in this fantastic flick. I can't think of another movie, anywhere, that really asked the question, "What if Satan was an alien, and faith was the weapon ancient man and OTHER aliens used to bottle him up?"

The philosophical questions being asked, the unsettling over-corroded copper canister full of mysterious swirling green goo, the strange events unraveling both inside the dilapidated church and outside... it's all masterful.

The dread is in this one from the very beginning, starting with the pervasive, quiet score, and that's because what's happening in the movie has already BEEN happening for some time. By the time the group arrives at The Brotherhood of Sleep's cathedral to dig into the meaning of the sacred text, it's already too late.

The Devil's already won. No one knows it yet, and Carpenter doles out the chills and thrills at a slow-but-increasing trickle. Tensions fray, people are weird, things start happening, demonic spew starts spewing and the dreams start coming.

I remember the very first time I saw this movie. 15-year-old me geeked out and geeked out HARD over the extra twisty twist that comes as the end, which was already nigh, becomes nigh-er.

If you'll notice, I haven't really talked about what happens in the movie, and that's on purpose. This one needs to be seen to be believed. Knowing anything more than the briefest of movie blurbs does this underrated gem an absolute disservice.

Watching this one is always a treat for me. It's a weird comfort movie and that's a fact.

Smallville | S08E01 "Odyssey"

Rating: 8.5/10

By and large and believe it or not, I found this episode to be much more enjoyable than the season 7 finale, though it's also not without its problems.

First, and one that's really glaring to me, is they resolved the issues plaguing Clark far too quickly. I really do understand the necessity of getting the main guy back up to speed, but they gave us a literal 'this is not the droid you're looking for' handwaving fixit, which really bugs me.

Even though the majority of the Veritas storyline wound up being more than a little wonky and all over the place, it was a seasonal arc and just vanishing the whole situation is cheap. Sure, it cost someone something, but that someone has had maybe four appearances across the entire show, so it's not like it really hurts the show itself.

My other big complaint is more of a nitpick and only because I'm an enormous fan of Arrow, and that's Ollie using hand crossbows. Sure they're rad-looking and all that, but I really feel like it's a bad break from the brand. Say THAT three times fast.

The best thing about this episode was the very second Clark and Lois run into each other, it becomes banter banter banter. Non-stop. They pick up right where they left off over a month ago and they dovetail so nicely together.

Sure it's in the script, but Tom and Erica have some of the best onscreen chemistry I've ever seen. Without that kind of connection, it just doesn't work the same way.

Anyways. That's my two cents. I know from reading here and there that this season is widely considered the worst of all, but I won't let that affect my judgment. At the same time, I won't pull punches either.

See you next time!

Reacher | S01E03 "Spoonful"

Rating: 8.5/10

This is a super-fun episode in a lot of ways.

First, we get a really good intro to just how feisty Roscoe really is. Now, we knew from the moment she met Reacher at the cop shop just how tough she was, but a little home invasion brings out the absolute best in the lady cop and it's just great. It's not too hard to see why our resident murder hobo takes a shine to her.

Second, we get to see another side of Finlay. I love Finlay. He's so damn uptight (and I quote Ferris Bueller), you could shove a lump of coal up his ass and in two weeks you'd have a diamond. But he's a great detective and there's a lot of fight in that dog. He isn't about to let institutional racism or an asshat billionaire tell him what to do one way or the other. It winds up causing him some problems, but hey ... those problems were already in town.

Lastly, we get Reacher and the beginnings of his 'that's a lot of animal feed' stuff. I personally think it's a pretty cool thing that just shows how his analytical mind works. He has absolutely no reason to really and truly wonder at the amount of feed at Kliner's Evil Office, and yet there's something about it that tweaks his investigative brain and he pursues it down through the episodes.

We also get to see a few instances of his pragmatism. One, when he test fires the gun. Personally I like to think the 'never trust a gun you haven't fired' was just some off the cuff shit he spun to Roscoe because he just really wanted to fire his new toy off. Second, when he loots the bodies and pockets the cash.

It's only sensible. Money's hard to come by, and he worked for it, right?

Anyways. Really lovin' this third watch. So much fun.

While this episode wasn't as explosive as the last one, First Dance does something a lot of the better TV shows do: it drops just enough breadcrumbs to lead us forward into the next episode, and possibly even deeper into the episodes themselves.

It's hard to do well, but Reacher does it right. We get a mysterious midnight attack from strangers from Down South, we get a Mayor electing himself Sheriff and doing shady shit, we get ... well. If you've seen the show, you know what we get and it's great.

They ALSO show us that Reacher's ... quite the lady's man. I gather that's a thing in all the books, and while I haven't read them, I do appreciate that they explore that facet of a hobo who looks like Reacher as he moves from town to town, a hulking, muscular Littlest Hobo.

The only thing Reacher's NOT doing is wearing a red neckerchief around his neck.

All jokes aside, Reacher continues to be one of those shows that no matter how many times I watch it, it never gets stale or boring. I might tune out here and there, but it's good storytelling with ample opportunities for mayhem, cheek to cheek dancing and some damn fine dry humor.

Reacher | S01E01 "Welcome to Margrave"

Rating: 9.5/10

I remember the very first time I saw this episode. And then all of the other episodes, in the very same day.

This show appealed to me because of course it did. I hate to say it like that, but it's the honest truth. It promised violence, intelligent application of it, a mystery, and a whole lot of fun. I knew in the first few minutes that I was going to wind up bingeing the entire series, and for obvious reasons.

I remember how I felt the first time I saw the shower fight scene as clear as yesterday. I knew we were going to be in for some kind of a spectacle, but I had absolutely no idea that it was going to go as hard as it did. The eye gouge scene in particular had me hooting in laughter the very second it happened because damn.

I'm sure everyone here's seen the show, and I'm rewatching all three seasons in order in the desperate hope that I can stretch it out long enough to sit down and do the same thing for season 4 once it's done airing.

Sit my ass down and clear my day's schedule.

Beyond the obvious fight scenes, the violence and Reacher being Reacher, one of my absolute favorite things about the show overall is what I call "The Reacher Stare". We see it here in the first episode when the guy and his girl come out of the diner.

It's a very unique stare, and the angry man's response is absolutely the wisest decision he made that day and possibly for the rest of his life. Anyone who looks at you like they've already seen your whole life, from birth to very imminent death and isn't bothered by being the arbiter of it is someone with whom you should not fuck.

I doubt I can say anything that hasn't been said before about this or any of the other episodes, but I thought I'd share them, and my favorite clip, from each for you all to enjoy and maybe talk about.

Night of the Creeps (1986)

Rating: 6.5/10 (ENJOYED IT)

Watched: August 8, 2026

For me, Horror + Comedy is one of the hardest things to pull off, mostly because I really LOVE horror and find straight comedies extremely difficult to get into. Unless we're talking stuff from the 70s to the mid-90s, but anyways.

James Gunn claims he never saw Night of The Creeps, and James Gunn is an absolute liar. I can't imagine a world where Slither isn't an homage to Night of The Creeps because the very central plot, alien slugs turning people into weird shit, is about as close as you can imagine. One has zombies, one has whatever the hell Grant Grant turned into.

On the horror side of things, Creeps is remarkably tame until the last half hour or so when it turns into a slug roast, which is fine by me because Tom Atkins as Detective Ray "Thrill Me" Cameron does a boatload of heavy lifting for the laughs.

He's jaded, he's bitter, he's an alcoholic, there isn't a trashy pulp detective magazine he hasn't read and he's got a quip and a nickname for every damn person he meets. Not only that, he's got some backstory with what's going on, so there's that.

Beyond that, we've got a cop named Raimi, a sorority girl named Cynthia Cronenberg, and two nerds, one of whom is Jason Lively from National Lampoon's European Vacation and is so desperate to "get with" Cynthia, he'll do anything up to and including corpse theft to make it happen. The other nerd is JC, played by Steve Marshall, who I haven't seen in anything else, ever.

Most of the flick is pretty cheesy, lots of college trope-y stuff which isn't too too bad. Nowhere near Revenge of the Nerds levels which, depending on your view, is either good or bad, but I'm not here to discuss film ethics.

The special effects aren't very special, though the heads cracking open only to have slugs come barfing out is a lot of fun. VERY low budget, but they make it work.

The beginning and end sequences are the weirdest parts, and if you don't believe me, the clip in the review card is the opening sequence. Yes, that's right. Random chubby naked hairless alien steals a thing with a slug in it, and they're being shot at by two other RCNHAs.

I imagine a lot of the budget went into those two scenes, and if they hadn't spent all that coin there, we might've had even better zombie effects.

Ah well. Night of the Creeps is solid fun, but it doesn't re-invent anything or set the bar anywhere other than it already is. If you like horror comedies and haven't seen this zombie flick, it'll do you some good to laugh.

Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

Rating: 10/10 (PERSONAL FAVORITE)

Watched: March 23, 2026

Big Trouble (as anyone who is a fan of this gem calls it) is a spectacular movie.

It fully embraces the spirit of many different paths within the martial arts genre. Do the fight scenes compare to any other martial arts movie? No. Not really. Not at all in fact, but I don't care if it looks like the actors are trying very hard to remember where their fists and feets go. I don't.

That's part of its damn charm.

It leans HEAVY into Wuxia with The Storm Brothers, and the first time I saw them appear on screen oh so many years ago, I was ENRAPTURED.

With their various weapons and abilities, they are Westernized Wuxia Badasses and we should all be there for that. I've seen a lot of movies that showcase these kinds of villains, but nothing quite compares to The Storm Brothers.

Big Trouble?

A Kung Fu Comedy with a sweet subversive trope where our hero, Jack Burton, isn't actually the hero. He's the sidekick.

Wang is the hero and he'll do whatever it takes, including storming the Gates of Heaven and Earth to save Miao Yin.

My absolute favorite thing of this movie is how comfortable Kurt Russell is as Jack Burton. His delivery is effortless. If you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't, shame on you. And Wang Chi (Dennis Dun) is fearless in his love and unstoppable in his Kung Fu.

Endlessly quotable, endlessly enjoyable, there's genuinely something special and charming about Carpenter's homage to kung fu movies.

It works on all levels, from Victor Wong as Egg Shen being an ancient mystic all the way to James Hong as David Lo Pan being an eternally cursed sorcerer.

The Terminator (1984)

Rating: 10/10 (PERSONAL FAVORITE)

Watched: August 8, 2026

"Come With Me If You Want To Live"

How lucky were those of us who grew up in this era? Being treated to movies like The Terminator?

EXTREMELY lucky. The Terminator added a genre to sci-fi, built a foundation of movies (some good, some bad) that'd span decades, all featuring the same thing.

Relentless machines seeking to repress humanity. Fearless humans, doing whatever it takes to save their futures.

And it all started with an Austrian bodybuilder and a lot of guerrilla filming.

I love this movie for its simplicity, its grit, its execution of "Sarah Connor Must Die."

I suppose I could talk about how Cameron had to engage in some guerrilla-style filming to get some of the shots done, or the infamous "I'll be back" line or how Cameron came up with the idea of a chrome-dipped skeleton rising up out of the flames while sick in Italy.

I could even talk about how by today's standards damn near every Terminator effect (especially the eye surgery scene) looks terrible, but there's no point.

The Terminator is a fantastic movie because of all those things. There was barely the technology to get something like this movie off the ground in terms of the technical demands, but Cameron made it work, using Stan Winston and a whole lot of ingenuity to make the model T-101 a terrifying presence.

Cameron's vision of an apocalyptic future, an AI overlord, time travel and one woman being the key to the future of Humanity struck a chord then and, with the growth-rate of AI in these modern times, possibly more than ever.

Christine (1983)

Rating: 8.5/10 (HIGHLY ENJOYABLE)

Watched: August 6, 2026

Speaking of movies that I saw way too young, not only did I see this movie when I was 11 years old, I also read the book pretty much as soon as it hit the shelves. Mom didn't care what I read, so long as I was reading and it wasn't "smut." Lucky for her, I was more into horror and sci-fi than the smutty smut ... for a few more years.

Anyways. On to the movie, which introduced me to a few things, one of the best of which is George Thorogood and The Destroyers.

Christine is one of Carpenter's best horror movies, and it's hard to beat. What beats Christine? Prince of Darkness, but we're talking cars and the shitters of the world, so buckle up.

In the beginning of this movie, Arnie is the quintessential super-nerd. Keith Gordon plays him so well it's actually, physically uncomfortable to watch him navigate through the world, but as soon as he lays eyes on the rusted hulk that is Christine, he's doomed.

And that's also played out so, so well. Arnie's descent starts slow, with a few curse words, a stand-offish attitude, and a kind of reckless machismo that manages to land the hot new girl, Leigh. And why not? He's got a sexy car and he's finally coming into himself.

What I really noticed during this watch is how restrictive and unkind Arnie's parents are, his mother explicitly so. The scene where they're all sitting around the dining room table after Repperton and his stooges wrecked Christine just shows how little control Arnie had over his life.

Little wonder the devil car got her grips into Arnie so goddamn quick.

When I was younger (and still today, if I'm being real), Christine's regeneration is one of the coolest goddamn things I've ever seen. Sure, I could probably reason out how Carpenter did it, or if I felt like it, I could Google it and have it spoiled. It's like the scenes from The Entity (IYKYK). I'd rather leave some things a mystery.

Arnie's descent into madness becomes full-blown, and ANOTHER THING I didn't notice until this time is the musical sting that plays when Christine regenerates for Arnie. It's goddamn striptease music, and that's spot on. Our girl is showing her man her true colors, and it's absolutely pitch-perfect.

The last and coolest thing (amongst so many) is that final twitch of chrome in the junkyard. Any more than that one little creak and it would've been too much. We're left knowing for certain that Christine's not dead.

She just needs a little bodywork.

The Road Warrior (1981)

Rating: 8/10 (HIGHLY ENJOYABLE)

Watched: August 5, 2026

The Road Warrior is a surprisingly hard movie to write a review for, which I wasn't expecting.

Anyone who loves this movie knows precisely why it's beloved. It's Mad Max. Lord Humungus. The Feral Kid. Wez. Wez's boyfriend. The Gyro Captain. It's about life in the wasteland, and the battle for guzzoline and one small outpost of men and women doing everything they can to survive.

It's about Max, genuinely just trying to do his thing, which is all he's ever really tried doing since the results of the first movie. What's great about Max is that he's not even really the main character. He barely speaks. I think he has around 16 lines in the whole movie, and he just shows up in someone else's story. He either makes things better or worse for them and him, and then the movie ends.

If Max had just kept driving, the people would've figured out some other way to achieve their goals or they would've died trying, as is the way of the wasteland.

The action is very well paced and the practical stunt work is genuinely insane for 1981. They were out there doing real-deal, bone-breaking vehicle crashes. Vehicle safety and all of that wasn't really that big of an issue back in the day, though it really should've been. What you see on screen actually happened. No green screen. Nothing fancy, just good old-fashioned practical effects. Just Australian lunatics in homemade armor jousting at each other at high speed in cars with no seat belts.

Of course the scale pales in comparison to Fury Road and Furiosa, but there's 40 years of road and a million liters of guzzoline between there and here.

I genuinely wish I could say more about The Road Warrior because it's an absolute gem of a classic Mel Gibson movie, but you've either seen it and know what I'm talking about or you don't. The Road Warrior (and indeed all of them) are survival stories, with a man trying to stay alive while everything else around him is madness.

It's desert wastelanders in cars, hungry for more guzzoline, eating dog food and doing their absolute god-damnedest to get one over on you before you get one over on them. If anything, the sparsity of what I have to say about the movie matches Max's own dialogue.

I've said just enough to get my message across.

Escape from New York (1981)

Rating: 9/10 (EXCELLENT)

Watched: August 4, 2026

I've seen this movie many times, but this is the first time I actually WATCHED this movie, if you know what I mean.

This was the first time sitting through Escape from New York that I felt compelled to look stuff up about the production costs, where things were filmed, HOW things were filmed. Now some things, like the flyover grid sequence that Snake sees when he's flying into New York, I already knew about.

Using miniatures and neon green paint was some goddamn genius-level film hackery right there. The first time I heard that, I was more than a little doubtful because it seemed as real as anything. But hey, that's what a power combo like John Carpenter and a young James Cameron can do when they set their minds to it.

On to other cool stuff. This was Kurt's very first action movie, which is something I suppose I knew without knowing. His last movie before this one was Used Cars, which is funnier than hell, and before that? I knew him first as The Computer Who Wore Tennis Shoes, for cryin' out loud.

We can all thank John Carpenter for helping Kurt Russell break that clean-cut Disney mold. Otherwise we wouldn't have gotten cool shit like Tango & Cash or (probably) Tombstone.

One of the biggest things that had me curious was where in the hell did they film this masterpiece of post-apocalyptic violence and mayhem? I couldn't believe that it was all on set, and I sure didn't think it was actually NYC because that'd be impossible. But they DID film most of it in actual streets that actually looked that way. St. Louis had a massive fire in '76, leaving damn near everything looking pretty much like what we see in the movie.

I know the movie so well that I had time to look for clues and interesting things that you might miss the first time around. I'm sure you can understand a film geek taking the time to geek out properly.

Escape from New York stands tall as a Carpenter action movie. It suffers a little bit in the pacing area (he sure does love awkward silences once everyone's done talking and is just kind of standing around), but it's got such a stacked cast, such a wild backdrop, and is such fun that it hardly even matters.

Plus we got Snake Plissken out of the deal, and a chubby Donald Pleasence firing a machine gun from the top of a wall shouting "YOU'RE ... A ... NUMBER ... ONE!", so we all got that going for us, which is good.

It was great to revisit this one again with fresh eyes and patience, lemme tell ya.

Smallville | S07E16 "Descent"

Rating: 9.5/10

What a monster of an episode, and in more ways than one. If you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about and if you haven't, there's not really anything I can say that won't spoil the absolute hell out of it.

Personally, I feel like even saying THAT much is TOO much! To say that lines are crossed and drawn is such an understatement, but I'll try and cover what I can without ruining of the best episodes ever made.

Lex is battling his own demons for sure, and his demons in this case are young Alexander, the specter of the child he used to be, kicked up into life a few episodes ago. Lex isn't dealing well with the ghost of Childhood Lost, and it's apparent even when he's not dealing with the chatty little guy; our man looks tired and is growing increasingly irrational.

And that's really all I can say, except to gush about how amazing this episode was overall. So much was revealed, so much happened, so much has been left unresolved that I am, for the first time in a long time, I wish I could fall back to my old 'watch more than one episode a day' ways.

But down that road lay madness and getting bored of a show, so now I've got to wait until tomorrow!