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The Thing

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  • Title: The Thing (1982)
  • IMDb: link

Flashback Friday takes us back to the icy tundra and a new battle for survival against an alien from another world. Director John Carpenter‘s adaptation of John W. Campbell Jr.‘s novella Who Goes There? stays closer to the source material than The Thing from Another World. Set in Antarctica, our evil invader from outer space had already been thawed by a group of Norwegian scientists, the last of whom are chasing an infected dog to the American outpost. Killing the out-of-control foreigners, our team of protagonists will have to piece together how the story began not realizing the cute sled dog they’ve just let into their camp could very well mean the death of them all.

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The Thing from Another World

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  • Title: The Thing from Another World
  • IMDb: link

Throwback Thursday takes us back t0 1951 and the North Pole where a group of soldiers and scientists will unearth an alien from another world from beneath the ice that almost destroys them. Making several changes to the novella which spawned it, the film is your basic fight for survival at the end of the world that even pits some of the humans against each other involving the scientists, oblivious to the dangers involved, who want to capture and keep the creature alive, and the soldiers who know it must be destroyed.

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The Astronaut

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  • Title: The Astronaut
  • IMDb: link

I’ll give Kate Mara credit for taking unusual projects. However, when they don’t work they really don’t work. The Astronaut starts out as a psychological thriller with Mara cast as our astronaut recently returned from space and suffering “common” side effects while kept in seclusion in a secure facility off the grid (which at least makes for an interesting setting as events devolve). Mentioning several times what our astronaut is experiencing is normal, the film continues to push and prod Mara’s character to question her reality and her sanity.

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Balls Up

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  • Title: Balls Up
  • IMDb: link

In a library of mediocre to awful Prime original movies, Balls Up asks them all to hold their beer. This aggressively unfunny comedy stars Mark Wahlberg and Paul Walter Hauser as employees for a company that invents a condom that also covers a man’s balls (hence the film’s title) who cause an incident at the World Cup making them the target of an entire country of insane soccer fans. We also get the likes of Benjamin Bratt, Sacha Baron Cohen, Eva De Dominici, Daniela Melchior, and Molly Shannon for equally unamusing moments.

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The Phantom

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  • Title: The Phantom
  • IMDb: link

Although 1996’s The Phantom wasn’t a big success with critics or audiences of the time, I had a grand old time seeing in theaters. The adaptation of Lee Falk‘s classic character unapologetically leans into making a comic book movie accepting the ridiculousness of the premise and championing it rather than forcing such bizarre concepts to appear more realistic. Set in 1938, with a focus on practical effects, if anything the nostalgic charm of the film has made it age even better with time. Revisiting it every few years, I always end up having a good time and appreciate it even more 30 years later.

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