The Curator of Schlock #100 by Jeff Shuster

Summer Movie Mania

I thought to celebrate my 100^th blog entry, I would opine on the various summer blockbusters I had the good fortune (or misfortune) to see this summer. Let’s get busy!

Avengers: Age of Ultron

No.

I’m sorry, but no.

This is where I lose faith in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the whole idea of cinematic universes. I thought this movie was going to be about a bunch of superheroes fighting an army of evil robots.

Yeah, okay, we get that in this movie, but we know Ultron isn’t a real threat because the movie spends half its bloated runningtime preparing us for Thor 3 and Avengers 3 and 4. Disney, you don’t have sell me on future Marvel sequels while I’m in the middle of watching a Marvel movie. And you don’t have to remind me of the Infinity Stones for hundredth time!

All I want to see is killer robots.

That’s what I paid to see!

Mad Max Fury Road

I don’t think I ever really understood the character of Mad Max in the old Mel Gibson movies anymore than I understand the new Tom Hardy version, but we like Tom Hardy over here at the Museum of Schlock mainly for his portrayal of the Batman villain Bane which is the third best Bane performance next to Henry Silva on Batman the Animated Series and that scrawny dude from Batman and Robin.

What I did see in Mad Max Fury Road was Tom Hardy eating live lizards, Charlize Theron with a mechanical robot arm, some disgusting dude with a skull jaw-bone er gasmask attached to his face. I think the bad guy was chasing Max because he stole a tanker full of breast milk.

The whole movie is a blur.

I saw that one in 3D and wearing those 3D glasses always makes me want to pass out. I saw Man of Steel in 3D and the only thing I remember about that movie is that Superman failed to save the Smallville IHOP from getting destroyed. Some superhero he turned out to be.

Pitch Perfect 2

If you liked Pitch Perfect, you’ll like the sequel. We get an evil German A Capella group who really aren’t that evil, they’re just really good at A Capella and they show up our heroines from the first movie. Elizabeth Banks makes her directorial debut with this movie. John Michael Higgins shows up again which is also a plus. Did you know he guest starred on Numb3rs?

San Andreas

 Oh boy. It’s Dwayne Johnson versus a 9.1 earthquake and…well…the earthquake still wins, but Dwayne Johnson still manages to rescue his daughter and his estranged wife played by Carla Gugino.

Don’t worry! They get back together at the end of the movie!

I remember some British tourists and Paul Giamatti and the evil jerk of a boyfriend of Carla Gugino who gets what’s coming to him! Still, after 2012, disaster movies leave me a bit flat. After you see the world get destroyed, seeing San Francisco fall apart just doesn’t compare.

 Jurassic World

Best movie of the summer, hands down! Jurassic World feels like a send up to 70s disaster movies if 70s disaster movies had dinosaurs in them! Vincent D’Onofrio steals the show has a military industrialist with a raptor complex. “Imagine if we’d had these at Tora Bora,” he says. All I imagine the raptors doing is eating everyone.

Inside Out

 I didn’t go see Inside Out because I don’t watch movies for babies!

Terminator: Genisys

 Again, I go to see a movie about people fighting evil robots and I get stupidity.

This time Skynet wants to use tablets to cause Judgement Day. It would have been funny if the heroes hadn’t managed to stop Skynet only to see Skynet fail due to tablets not being powerful enough to pull off Judgement Day.

Skynet was played Matt Smith.

Ahhhnold plays an old man Terminator.

They’re planning two sequels.

I can’t wait.

Mission Impossible-Rogue Nation

I like these movies. Whoever came up with the idea of teaming Tom Cruise with Simon Pegg is a genius. I don’t know who played the bad guy, but he was really evil and he reminded me of a turtle for some reason. There are car chases and bad guys shooting at good guys while they’re driving and then the cars crash into things. That’s how I like my summer movies!

And then Simon Pegg says something witty. That’s all I need.

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Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, and episode 131) is an MFA candidate at the University of Central Florida.