While the three films took place in a pocket universe — yes, I have thought way too much about these movies — between 2 Fast 2 Furious and The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, Furious 7 was the first movie to make a step toward the future. However, it would have to do so without series star Paul Walker, whose death on November 30, 2013 would make this his last film.

After the tragedy, shooting was delayed for script rewrites. Walker’s brothers Caleb and Cody were used as stand-ins to complete his remaining scenes and this film served as the end of the story for Walker’s character, who retired from the family.

This movie also saw Justin Lin leaving and James Wan — who created the Insidious and Saw franchises — coming on board.

It also introduced new nemesis Deckard Shaw, brother of the last film’s final boss. He’s played by Jason Statham and he was so popular — and worked so well with Dwayne Johnson’s Hobbs character — that he’d eventually turn good. I don’t know how, seeing as how it looked like he killed Han. This movie also introduces Kurt Russell as Mr. Nobody, a government agent who gives a mission to the team that brings them into conflict with Shaw, as well as Tony Jaa’s first English-speaking movie and an early role for Ronda Rousey, who made this at the same time as The Expendables 3.

The film ends with Dom and Brian going their separate ways, along with a series of clips of Walker’s character across the past several films. Yeah — it’s pretty emotional.

This film more than doubled the carnage — car-wise, that is — with 230 destroyed to make this.

Last year, I saw a flyer for Thor, playing a really small bar in Monroeville, not far from my Pittsburgh home. I didn’t go, but after this, I kind of wish that I had.

Jon Mikl Thor was a Mr. USA and Mr. Canada that became a heavy metal vocalist and an actor who appeared in Recruits, Zombie Nightmare and Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare, a film that begins with a van driving scene that may still be playing somewhere.

The thing I have learned about this movie is that no one cares about or believes in Thor more than Thor himself.

That said, you have to believe in yourself, even when the rest of the world doesn’t. Thor reminds me of several of the old pro wrestlers I’ve been around, assured that they didn’t make it in the big time because no one understood them or they were just too good and no one wanted the competition.

Ryan Wise and Alan Higbee spent fifteen years making this film, getting some truly astounding footage. It feels like they were embedded with the singer, getting footage that anyone other than him would feel was incredibly negative.

That said, I never felt horrible for Thor. He’s doing what he loves and it doesn’t matter if there are ten or a thousand people in the crowd. He’s always going to go full thundergod.

You can learn more at the official site and watch the movie on Tubi.

For four decades, the masked and mysterious sound and video collective known as The Residents have not just made music. Or art. But some form of commerce that creates art that feeds commerce with music. It’s complicated. So who is under the giant eyeball masks? What inspires those songs? And what makes fans get so obsessed that they end up creating their own bands inspired by the masked ones?

Luckily for viewers, The Residents’ management company, The Cryptic Corporation, gave the filmmakers unprecedented access, not only to the band’s video and audio archives, but to the musicians who have played with them before as well as a front-row seat on their 40th anniversary tour.

Members of Devo, Primus, Ween, Talking Heads and Pinback also appear, discussing how their bands and The Residents cross over with one another. The Residents — like the above bands and other sonic collectives like Negativland — have never existed to make music for everyone. But for those that are ready for their message, they have become auditory messiahs, inspiring not just fandom but further creation.

The Residents have always existed under N. Senada’s “Theory of Obscurity,” which states that “an artist can only produce pure art when the expectations and influences of the outside world are not taken into consideration.” His Theory of Phonetic Organization further states, “the musician should put the sounds first, building the music up from [them] rather than developing the music, then working down to the sounds that make it up.”

Some say N. Senada was a Bavarian composer. But then you realize: his name means “in himself nothing.” So while he may have been inspired by someone — perhaps Harry Partch or even Captain Beefheart, who inspired the masked ones in the way they did the same for so many — it seems that the man whose laws govern them was probably created by them too.

Like I said, it’s complicated. And I like it that way.

If this movie is any indication, Isaac Ezban is a writer and director to watch. He was inspired by The Twilight Zone episode “It’s a Good Life” and the color palette of 2009’s The Box, as this has a muted look that is unlike anything I’ve seen recently. It’s a movie that takes a somewhat silly conceit — every person in a bus station starts to look alike — and makes it amazingly taunt and shocking.

Ulises is stranded in a bus station during a rainstorm and the Tlatelolco riots of 1968. His wife is in Mexico City, ready to give birth and he must get there to see her. However, it seems like the storm is a worldwide phenomenon.

After speaking with Irene, the twosome decides to grab a taxi together. Ulises asks an old woman if she’d like to join them, but she angrily replies in a foreign language. At the same time, a cleaning lady demands that Rosa not leave before succumbing to an epileptic fit.

Meanwhile, as more people arrive, the man who runs the station screams that everything is Ulises’s fault before trying to kill him. And oh yeah — there’s a mysterious child named Igancio who must continually be shot up with sedatives.

At this point, the film reveals its crucial conceit: everyone begins to turn into Ulises, even the women, the magazines, the statues, everything has started to transform into him. Ignacio shows him a comic book about aliens who steal humanity’s individuality without them ever knowing. Somehow, the child has caused this comic book fiction to become fact.

I really don’t want to reveal much more, but suffice to say that this movie really stuck with me. I can’t wait to see what Ezban does next.

I’ve been getting videotapes from Japan since the 1980’s. Before the internet, it wasn’t always so easy. You had to have a connection or you’d spend tons of money. And you’d never be sure what you’d get.

One of my friends used to rent tapes from the Japanese grocery store and you had to try and learn the kanji to know what tapes were what. Often, they’d just be six-hour compilations of whatever wrestling-related things were on TV, including game shows, made before the days of Tokyo’s 24 hour a day Samurai TV.

Between that and the old Death Valley Driver message board, we discovered a group called Doglegs, which features physically challenged performers wrestling. In Japan, there are school fan clubs that go so far to run their own shows in the same arenas as professional groups, which would be like your American Legion team playing Yankee Stadium. Doglegs ran several of their own shows and became somewhat legendary for a time amongst the nascent internet hardcore wrestling fans.

Much like the Kids of Widney High, there are two groups of people interested in their story: those that want to gawk and those that realize that these are people overcoming what some see as limitations and battling to create meaning and art. I’m a member of the latter group and was shocked to find that this documentary was now playing for free.

This film presents the stories of several of the fighters of Doglegs, like Shintaro. He’s a Tokyo janitor who has fought for twenty years but finally wants to retire. To do so, he has to finally defeat the group’s able-bodied organizer, who has been his nemesis the entire time. Known as the Antithesis, Kitakima works as a heel and proclaims that he has defeated the disabled for twenty years. He pushes Shintaro hard in all aspects of his life, which some in the West would see as cruel.

L’Amant, who suffers from cerebral palsy and near-total paralysis, is another fighter. Other than wrestling, he only cares about cross-dressing and drinking sake. Now, he wants to die in the ring battling either his able-bodied wife or son.

Kitajima said, “Let’s show people this pro wrestling of ours. We’ll shock the unthinking able-bodied out of their complacency and give them some real food for thought. Then, maybe we can shake up their rigid thinking about disabled people and the volunteer community.” He has also said that “fighting the disabled without kid gloves is a sign of respect.”

I’ve heard some criticism of this film because it doesn’t present a point of view. To me, the fact that the director Heath Cozens was able to get this level of access and present such a strange subculture of a subculture and make it accessible to all is the true win. It’s simple to look at these men and women with pity. It’s harder to realize that they are discovering the meaning of what life can be through violent art.

You can watch this on Tubi and learn more at the official site.

In this Sam Mendes-directed Bond film, our hero finally goes up against Blofeld for the first time since 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever, with the global criminal organization Spectre returning and Christoph Waltz taking over the villainous role.

The film’s usage of the Spectre organization and its characters was the end of long-standing litigation between Eon Productions and producer Kevin McClory, who sued James Bond creator Ian Fleming in 1961 due to the author taking parts of his work for the book and film Thunderball.

McClory died in 2006, and in November 2013 MGM and the McClory estate formally settled the issues, giving the filmmakers full copyright film rights to the concept of Spectre and all of the characters associated with the evil organization.

With the 00 group disbanded and M murdered from the last film, Bond is nearly a man without a country as he investigates the octopus-like Spectre. What a rough job Bond has, having to seduce Monica Belluci (who was the oldest Bond girl to date, doing the movie at the age of fifty. That said, Belucci is ageless).

He learns why all this horror has been happening. After being orphaned, the younger Bond was adopted by Hannes Oberhauser. His son Franz believed that Bond had supplanted him as his father’s son, so he killed the man, took the name Ernesto Stavro Blofeld and created Spectre with the sole goal of ruining Bond’s existence.

This film also gave pro wrestler Dave Bautista the chance to shine as bodyguard Mr. Hix. He’s the fourth Bond villain to come from the sport, along with Harold Sakata, Peter Maivia and Pat Roach.

While this film didn’t win over fans, it certainly sets up Craig for one more run as Bond.

Beyond the fact that this movie only made back $26 million on a $52 million dollar budget, Aloha was hit with the issue of whitewashing, as Emma Stone’s character is supposed to be one-quarter Chinese and one-quarter Hawaiian, yet is — you know — played by Emma Stone.

Oh Cameron Crowe. You started with Fast Times at Ridgemont High and then, well…

I know, I know. There are plenty of people who adore Jerry Maguire. Some people enjoy Almost Famous. But even less are down with Vanilla Sky. And then, still less like Elizabethtown. Dwindling returns.

This is a big ensemble movie about Hawaii and the air force and it’s kind of, sort of the future and all manner of Hollywood celebrities are in it and it commits a bigger sin than this giant run-on sentence. That sin is that it’s incredibly boring.

Military contractor Brian Gilcrest (Bradley Cooper) is the nexus that this revolves around and most of the movie is about how he’s the wrong guy for every woman, from his ex-girlfriend Tracy (Rachel McAdams) and the space-loving Captain Allison Ng (Stone). Bill Murray shows up as a billionaire who is trying to get into space. Everyone loves space in this movie, which I would too, because it presents Hawaii as perhaps the most ennui-inducing land that has ever been.

John Krasinski, Danny McBride and Alec Baldwin all got roped into this as well. Becca made it approximately twenty minutes into the ride while I stayed buckled in and made it to the close of the film, which is meant to draw deep emotion and motivated me to eject the DVD and try to not snap it in half before I brought it back to the Redbox machine, where this virus of monotony will infect another unknowing subject.

That said — I’ve seen stacks of this movie at Dollar Tree, so if you need some insulation or would like to ruin someone’s life, it makes for a fine and inexpensive gift.

Fifteen years ago, Francesca disappeared, leaving her father, the well-known storyteller, poet and dramatist Vittorio Visconti behind. Ever since, the community has been haunted by a killer who wants to clean the city of the impure and the damned. The police are baffled and now, it seems like Francesca has finally returned.

The Onetti Brothers have made a career of emulating the field of giallo. With films like Deep Sleep, What the Waters Left Behind and Abrakadabra, they’ve copied the look and feel of early 70’s Italian detective horror, yet transplanted to Argentina in 2015. Hell — they even got the gloves and bottles of J&B right. Luciano Onetti co-wrote the script, directed the film, handled the cinematography and even wrote the sctore, while Nicolas wrote the script and produced.

Any movie that starts with a small girl killing a bird with a long needle and then jamming it into her infant brother’s eye is one that’s going to cause you to sit up and take notice (or, if you’re a normal person, turn off such lunacy).

This movie feels like a relic unearthed from 1972, a giallo that may not be at the level of Argento or Martino, but still can stand on its own.

You can watch this on Tubi.