Who Killed Santa? A Murderville Murder Mystery (2022)

Just Funny

I genuinely hope this gets picked up for additional episodes.

The joy derived from this show is at it's heart not about the story; it's not about how good the improv is. It's about the experience, and it's just funny.

Everyone involved is outwardly having a good time. Unless you're sporting a cold dead heart that's been stabbed by a well-licked candy cane, you should be too.

I've enjoyed the spectrum of all the guests and the different ways they've handled being thrown into the fire every single time.

Specifically though, this Christmas special delivered. Phenomenal chemistry all around. If you like Maya Rudolph and Jason Bateman, you're getting full blown Maya and Jason.

Talking specifics would cheapen the jokes, so I'll just say my biggest laugh of the entire run of this show happened in this episode.

9/10.

Universal Soldier: Regeneration (2009)

Underrated Gem

A friend of mine recommended this movie to me a few months ago. I was skeptical to say the least. Just look at the facts. This is the direct-to-DVD release 4th sequel of an essentially dead franchise starring the 50+ year old original actors and a recently retired MMA fighter with virtually no acting experience. On paper, this does not sound like a winning combination for a movie unless you're looking for a Mystery Science Theater type experience. In that case it would sound fantastic.

What I did not expect was to have my mind fellated by some of the most heart pumping action I've seen in a long time. This movie was a straight up exercise in badassery. I will break this down with as few spoilers as possible later.

What convinced me to watch a movie I was wary to explore? The movie itself. A few friends of mine were chilling out trying to decide what movie we were going to watch. We were in the mood for something awesome, which is a mood we are always in. My good friend (who made the recommendation initially) and Facebook "movie soulmate" (not gay, I checked) said, "I'm putting this in, and if you don't love it after 5 minutes, we can stop" (still, not gay). Needless to say, we did not stop this movie. It jumps into the action immediately, and it is fantastic.

The opening scene is a brutal shootout/car chase scene which begins about 20 seconds in. Some distributors release a few minutes of footage to give the potential audience a taste of what they were in for. If that scene had been released to the public by the production company, Foresight Unlimited, there would have been a clamoring for a theatrical release. I cite the massive response to the Mortal Kombat short release as evidence, and that's not even a movie yet. I'm awarding Foresight Unlimited "Most Ironically Named" company in existence.

When the movie was over all I could do was wonder how in the hell this didn't get a bigger release. Where was the marketing? What went wrong? I love movies, and I never in a million years would have thought to check this one out on my own. Over the last few years, the concept of the Red Band Trailer has become pretty popular. If there was ever a movie that would have been well served by doing this, it's Universal Soldier: Regeneration.

I attempted to find a Red Band Trailer that did the movie justice and found no such trailer exists. What I did find however was a poorly constructed trailer that makes the film look just like the kind of movie I would try and avoid. I can understand people getting upset at trailers that show all the good parts of a movie only to be ultimately disappointed. I'm one of those people. But that's no excuse for putting together a trailer that completely misses the tone of the film, and shows NONE of the great action I instantly loved.

It seems I've gone off on a tangent about how everything went wrong from a distribution standpoint, and left the pure awesome of the movie by the wayside. So let's get down to brass tax. Do you like the idea of BAMFs walking around with visible compound fractures and not giving a damn? Does the concept of bad guys and good guys getting literally punched to death sound brutal? (It does, and it is). What if I told you you'll get one of the most epic "good guy on a rampage" climaxes of all time with a body count somewhere around the number of words in this paragraph, capped off by what could be one of the greatest finishing moves of all time? Yeah, you'd watch it.

The best part about all of it is that none of it is cheesy. You'd expect that from a lower budget movie of this variety, but you don't get it. The best comparison I can think of is what we saw with District 9. Low budget getting great production value. They put their dollars in the right place. Do yourself a favor and find this movie. Put it in, and if you don't like it after 5 minutes, you can stop. SPOILER ALERT: You won't.

(Addendum) From a film standpoint this is probably a 7, but I gave it a 9 because anyone who would watch this movie isn't in it for the screenplay, just for the awesome. It would be a 9 to those people.

• The Movie Sponge