Cross The Streams: Cabin In The Woods, Falling Skies, And John Dies At The End Are Now Streaming
If you haven't seen The Cabin in the Woods yet, make it so.
This article is more than 2 years old
After taking a hiatus last week while the Internet decided to hold off on releasing anything worth a damn, I am now drowning in top-notch recent releases from all your favorite streaming sites. Let’s dive in!
The Cabin in the Woods (Netflix and Amazon Prime)
Do I even need to talk about this movie? Chances are, you either got sick of hearing about it a few months ago, or you still have no idea what lurks inside of Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard’s titular cabin. And the less you know about it, the better. Just know that familiar horror tropes are turned on their heads, and there is a moment in this film that might turn your actual head around. We love The Cabin in the Woods around these parts. Join us, won’t you?
Falling Skies (Amazon Prime)
While this TNT sci-fi hit will be starting up its third season before too much longer, you can check out last season’s good-but-spotty drama, which begins with Tom’s sudden return from his alien capture and manages to work even more aliens into it by the season’s end.
Westworld (Amazon Prime)
Every child who would love to be stuck inside a theme park after dark will get his or her dreams crushed by Westworld, and his or her nightmares awoken. This futuristic-for-its-time Western sci-fi thriller was written and directed by the late, mostly great Michael Crichton, and was reportedly the first film to feature CGI in it. But it wasn’t to make James Brolin more attractive. The next time you find yourself in a duel with a robot gunslinger, you’ll wish you’d watched this movie first.
John Dies at the End (Netflix)
John Dies at the End, a novel written by Cracked’s Jason Pargin –- under the pseudonym David Wong –- has one of the most interesting backstories, going from a serialized online publication, to an indie publishing company, to Bubba Ho-Tep director Don Coscarelli. The cinematic adaptation doesn’t go anywhere near as many strange places as the book does, but it dutifully and gleefully tells its tale of slackers caught up in the mix of a dimension-spanning new drug that could unleash a world of evil upon our…world. And a doorknob turns into a penis at one point.
MythBusters: Season 9 (Amazon Prime)
What needs to be said at this point in the MythBusters game? It’s one of the best and most informative shows on TV, so long as you don’t mind some of the most obviously script-read lines you’ve ever heard. Seth Rogen (seen in the picture above) drops by for Green Hornet myths, and this is also the season when Obama tasked them with revisiting the Ancient Death Ray. And arrow machine guns. Maybe. Maybe it’s just a myth. Go check it out.
Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome (Redbox Instant)
This prequel to the cult Syfy series premiered as a 10-episode webseries, soon coming together as a single feature. The story follows a youthful William Adama in his first mission, which initially seems to be a milk-run transport with the impatient Coker, but ends up being something else entirely. As a prequel, it does what it needs to do, but doesn’t really offer anything new to further the story along for fans, and the video game graphics don’t exactly scream legitimacy. That said, BSG fans have already watched it anyway, so I’m probably talking to no one right now.
Fetching Cody (Netflix)
Finally, this surprisingly solid indie flick from 2005 was writer/director David Ray’s first and only feature before he went on to write a shitload of awful Syfy Originals like Mega Cyclone. In any case, Jay Baruchel plays an addict dealer who finds his girlfriend dead of a heroin overdose. Time travel is his method of trying to stop her death from happening, and one of the film’s strengths is in avoiding a heavy explanation for the time shifts. It presents a strangely human story that Baruchel sells convincingly, which makes up for a few of the obvious shortcomings.
You guys should be busy for a while now, assuming you haven’t already seen everything on the list. And if you have, congratulations. Come on over and do some of my laundry while I start on next week’s column. Thanks for reading, and see you next week!
