Robot Claw – Page 166 – “Life In The So-Called Space Age”

A Review of Every Movie We Saw This Year At The Drive In!

October 29, 2022

Another season at our local drive in has ended, and I thought it would be fun to review every single film we saw this year. To keep things short, the reviews are five words only, and most were written immediately after the films ended and therefore were first impressions. Lastly we saw several films twice, and in each case we reviewed them both times. Here’s a seasons worth of film reviews, in order…

Sonic The Hedgehog 2 – Jim Carey steals the show.

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore – Left early due to boredom.

Dr Strange in The Multiverse of Madness – Bonkers in the best way.

Everything Everywhere All At Once – Starts well but ends weak.

Dr Strange in The Multiverse of Madness – Better than the first time.

Top Gun Maverick– An entertaining military recruitment film.

Jurassic World Dominion – Dirt on an old boot.

Thor: Love And Thunder – Fun overall despite excessive comedy.

Lightyear – Charmless and a bit boring.

League of Super Pets – The best DC universe film?

Nope – Best film of the year.

Nope – Even better on second viewing.

Black Phone – Didn’t tread any new ground.

Bullet Train – We left after 20 minutes.

Dragon Ball Super: Super Heroes – Most entertaining film of 2022.

Bullet Train – Stupid but also slightly entertaining.

Minions: Rise of Gru – A very predictable kids film.

Beast – Written and directed by fools.

The Invitation – Should have been called ‘Crapula’.

Tremors – Six degrees of monster worms!

Brain Dead – Seventeen percent on rotten tomatoes.

Dawn of The Dead – Grim and chilling zombie archetype.

Phenomenon – Jennifer Connelly is a star!

The Woman King – Spoiler: the king is male.

Pearl – Equal parts disturbing and funny.

Jurassic World Dominion – Time to flush this franchise.

Spider Man: No Way Home – One of the MCU’s best.

Lyle Lyle Crocodile – Many smiles for this crocodile.

Black Adam – Objectibly terrible; I enjoyed it!

Black Adam – The Rock meets CGI cutscene.

Halloween Ends – It never should have started.

That’s a lot of films, and we absolutely got our moneys worth from our season pass. While some of the films were objectively awful, even a bad film can be watchable at a drive-in, and it’s always fun to go. You can bet we’ll be getting the pass again for 2023 and doing this all again next year 🙂

Incidentally while Nope was probably the ‘best’ film of the year, Dragon Ball Super: Super Heroes was unquestionably my most entertaining. The fight scenes in particular were the work of genius, and I had a big smile on my face throughout the entirety of the film. Watch it!

20 Minutes Into The Future

October 23, 2022

I recently bought these:

It’s a full set of Max Headroom stickers from 1986. Although not labeled as such, these were a Topps product and are mostly based on the TV film that introduced the character, although some images clearly come from The Max Headroom Show.

I was surprised to learn these existed since I’d never heard of them, and while wax packs do exist, I can’t find an image of a box anywhere. I have read claims that the set was released in very limited quantities in the USA only, and another online article claims it was sold as sets only (which can’t be true since there exist wax packs on eBay). It’s a mystery!

The first two-thirds of the stickers resemble fairly standard Topps-style trading cards from the mid 1980s, only they would be mostly meaningless to non-fans since the images seem to be in random order and the backs contain no text; instead being dedicated to two large ‘puzzles’ of Max:

The remaining quarter are foil stickers, which are reflective, slightly embossed and very impressive for a 1986 set. However five of them are extremely unusual, especially if you’re familiar with the character:

These look like poses the actor that played Max (Matt Frewer) did to test the prosthetic or perhaps to be digitized for marketing purposes. I’ve never seen these images on any other Max Headroom product and they seem out of place here!

The backs of the foil stickers contain the origin of Max taken from the film:

This is curious for a few reasons. Firstly I don’t think the film ever screened in the USA (and in fact Max himself didn’t catch on here until about a year after the rest of the world) and secondly it doesn’t say much at all about Max himself! Once again this would have been a confusing product for non-fans.

These didn’t cost me much (<$20) and the stickers are in perfect condition so it’s a fun curio for my collection. I’d love to test and see if a sticker still worked, but I don’t have any doubles so I’ll never know. Likewise I doubt I’ll ever know the true history of this weird product. Do any of you remember these from 1986?

The Big City

October 16, 2022

We spent the last few days in the city, and lots of fun was had. Here’s a few random snaps.

As with last year we booked a room with a balcony. The weather was (mostly) beautiful and we ate most of our meals out on this balcony.

A random shot of action figures in a comic shop. I didn’t buy any, but lots of other stuff was purchased!

You can’t visit NYC without buying some hot roasted nuts. We always get cashews and they’re delicious.

Only the day we arrived was there any rain, but I probably just held this umbrella just to enable a funny photo 🙂

Random stickers seen on the streets, mostly on scaffolding or electrical boxes.

Don’t know what this was about, but there were signs warning people not to carry weapons onto Times Square. We saw lots of heavily armed police as well. Maybe this was in preparation for a protest?

Corn from the Saturday street fair. It was great 🙂