Category: Achievement

The Strangers: Chapter 1 Recap

Jamie

What an interesting choice. I’ve become much more of a horror watcher as the years go on. I think part of it is that most of them are just about 90 minutes long. Really hits the sweet spot. So I do have a sense of the horror landscape. So if you were to tell me that a franchise (two films is still a franchise to Franchise Man) was looking to produce a trilogy to put their franchise-ness into hyperspeed and asked me who was the director of such a trilogy, I would immediately presume it was some up-and-comer. Some director who maybe had a low level hit on Shudder that had people wondering what their next project would be. If you said that I was wrong and that the director was in fact Renny Harlin of Cutthroat Island fame, I would say you were a lying liar who lies to me. As I said, what an interesting choice.

To recap, Maya and Ryan are two lovers just loving being lovers. But oh no! Maya is moving across the country and Ryan is a saddo! They stop in a small town to have lunch where some of the locals look at them creepy. But could it be more than that? Maybe, because suddenly their car is having engine trouble and a couple of the creepsters say it’s gonna be a while. The waitress recommends an Airbnb in the woods and soon they are loving being lovers in a lovely cabin in the woods. Ryan takes a motorcycle into town to get his inhaler and while away Maya is stalked by Dollface, Pin-up Girl and Masky or whatever. Ryan returns and says it was all a hallucination caused by smoking the reefer (tight) but soon they are both being attacked. Stranger! They evade and elude their tormentors and get a gun (he’s got a gun!) which they promptly use to kill the owner of the cabin by mistake. Oops! (Oh, and Stranger!) They try to take the dead guy’s truck but Masky smashes it up and Maya escapes into the woods and calls the police. Eventually they are both tracked down and brought back to the cabin where they are tortured. Ryan is killed and Maya is stabbed just for being there, but then the Strangers have to flee as the police are approaching. Ultimately, Maya survives. THE END (or is it? (You kidding?))

Ha! Now we’re talking. This movie sucks. I can’t believe they filmed a new trilogy concurrently. The second will definitely come out. That’s for sure. The third… I’m sensing the possibility of a straight-to-Shudder backroom deal. That’s if the trend continues. The trend of these movies totally sucking. It’s just a cheap version of the original with less interesting and more annoying main characters. They also jettisoned the drama aspect. Now The Strangers are like… part of a community that feeds people to The Strangers by luring them to a cabin? That’s terrible. At the very least when you have a franchise like this you have to double down on what people like. Like I see the structure as: a family or couple are having some drama, as a result they end up somewhere they usually wouldn’t be, The Strangers strike for no reason other than to kill! This breaks that. Kind of like that dumb Friday the 13th movie where some rando was the killer. Dumb.

Hot Take Clam Bake! What if… what if it isn’t just because Maya and Ryan were there. Yeah. What if Masky is Maya’s brother. He’s insane and mad because the family abandoned him in an asylum. Oh, and Dollface’s mask resembles Maya because she was a woman in the asylum with Masky and he forced her to play as her sister. Yeah, yeah! And she’s angry because she’s in love with Masky so she has to kill Maya to be with him. Yeah, hell yeah! And Pin-up Girl is Dollface’s sister who pretends to also hate Maya, but really is trying from the inside to save her sister from the Cult of Masky. She knows if she can kill Maya then maybe the spell will be broken. Lore! Lore, baby! Hot Take Temperature: Lore.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *Gif of me in a totally spooky mask and creeping around the woods and … wait, is this a prequel or a remake of my other gif?* Let’s go!

The Good? Hmmmmmmmm … nothing? It is weird to say it, but it feels like they took the first two movies, jammed them together, declared it as “not a remake”, and then were flabbergasted that people didn’t accept this.

The Bad? This movie is like the first but worse because the main characters are somehow even more unappealing. And the movie is like the second but worse because the setting seems like it should be cool, but pales in comparison to the trailer park from the second. The fact that they trot out “The Man in the Mask” / “Scarecrow” and the two ladies in all three films as if I care about those characters specifically is nuts. The film is almost certainly better if they started to mix that up a bit. Am I going crazy or is it undoubtedly better if there are a bunch of masks and it is made clear this is some strange multi-state conspiracy to get away with mass murders or something? Why are these same characters in Oregon now? They were in Ohio before, and prior to that I assume somewhere else. Why are they wandering around? Again, the biggest condemnation of the franchise is that while I ask these questions I genuinely do not give a shit about the answer.

The BMT? Hell naw. We’ll see how the rest of the trilogy works out (the films do make money, I would be surprised if they don’t get all three out eventually), but like what I expect with The Purge series these are made for a particular type of fan and tend to be focused on kills and rarely end up being fun in a real capacity.

Heyooooo. The saga of the image batch processing with Google AI Studio is complete. Well, there is at least something that seems to work and is worth checking out on a larger scale. Ultimately, by placing the stub (e.g. tt0085750 for Jaws 3-D) at the top it avoids issues with the model trying to figure out the indexing:

There were no issues of throwing errors or missing out or shifting stubs or anything. So really, this should set up for a good test on something like the top 100 posters from a year. I guess stay tuned.

I’m going to give Crap Boyfriend (Who?) to this goober in the film, he could not possibly be a bigger sourpuss the entire time. A Setting as a Character (Where?) for Oregon. I do like the MacGuffin (Why?) as to the inhaler specifically which goes from vital to worthless several times during the film for no good reason. And Worst Twist (How?) for the reveal that the main girl lived to the end, but is now going to be haunted by baghead or whatever. This film is Bad, it isn’t scary and in general, like the rest of the series, is dumb.

Read all about bags and junk I assume in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

The Strangers: Prey at Night Recap

Jamie

For some reason in my head the second Strangers movie was very well received, while the first one was kind of a squandered opportunity. So I had no idea I would actually be recapping and reviewing this film. Wasn’t this a well received film? No. In fact it is perfectly at our threshold for qualification. So perhaps one day we’ll look back on this film and chuckle about what a waste of time it was to recap the film as it so clearly does not qualify having achieved 50 good reviews out of 125… that’s just one more good review, BTW. And, spoiler alert, if I had it my way and BMT was a nationally recognized contributor to RottenTomatoes, then, indeed, this would not qualify any longer.

To recap, Cindy and Mike are struggling with their daughter Kinsey. She’s a girl on the wrong track and they are sending her to boarding school. Or are they? Not so fast, because once they arrive in Cindy’s uncle’s semi-abandoned trailer park they are in The Strangers’ world. Dollface, Pin-up Girl and Masky or whatever are going to kill them… and that’s basically what happens. Kinsey and her brother Luke go off on a walk and discover the aunt and uncle murdered. They’re totally grossed out and get their dad. Luke and Mike go off to figure out what’s going on and Cindy and Kinsey are attacked. Cindy helps Kinsey get out of there and is murdered. Strangers! Luke and Mike escape Masky and find Cindy dead. While searching for Kinsey they are attacked and Luke gets away while Mike is murdered. Strangers! Luke and Kinsey are now on their own and run to the general store where they try to call 911. Luke is badly injured, but the kids are starting to kill some of the Strangers too. Strangers! The police arrive but are killed. Strangers! Kinsey kills one of them. Strangers! Masky is basically Michael Myers and won’t be killed. Not yet Strangers! But then he’s killed. Strangers! Kinsey and Luke live and the stranger die (or do they? (don’t ask me)). THE END

I thought this was a fun movie. The climactic pool scene in particular I found to be very visually engaging (you taking notes, Night Swim?). What a whirlwind it was watching these two movies. I didn’t even really like the first (and best reviewed, it turns out) The Strangers film. I can see why actors found it interesting. It starts like a drama and then dives into the horror and you’re thinking “oh wow, does this have to do with that drama?” The answer is obviously “no” dummy. The movie is called The STRANGERS. The point ends up being that they are doing it for funsies. But I guess that’s where I kind of throw my hands up. So the drama is meaningless and the kills are also meaningless. So it’s all just a trumped up regular slasher film? Anyway, I didn’t much care for it, although I got some chills from it. The sequel, though, as I said, was much more polished. I thought it looked great and I do think it smoothed a bit more of the theme of the films. People with drama aren’t thinking clearly and get themselves into weird situations. These situations are where The Strangers strike because all it takes is for you to be alone. No other reason. I liked it.

Hot Take Clam Bake! Splurge for a Holiday Inn, dummies. I know you want to see your uncle in his creepy abandoned trailer park, but also… continental breakfast? Ever heard of it? In fact, why doesn’t your uncle make a day of it? Date night at the Holiday Inn. Money’s tight, I get it. You have the unexpected cost of sending your problem child to boarding school. You know what’s financially prudent? A Holiday Inn. Do you know what’s not? Getting killed in an abandoned trailer park. Hot Take Temperature: Full Body Burn.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *Gif of me in a totally spooky mask and creeping around the woods.* Let’s go!

Fun fact: We didn’t realize this qualified until after we watched it. So now I’m begrudgingly writing about a movie I didn’t really plan on having to remember stuff about.

The Good? Out of the three movies I think this one had the most interesting stuff in it. The first had issues where I just thought they acted dumb and in general they were kind of unpleasant. This one had a few good set pieces (like the swimming pool) and in general I think the final girl ended up being much better. I don’t particularly like horror in general, but this was on the okay side.

The Bad? Franchises like this I think are just lame. They have three bad guys from the first one and then don’t really add anything? In a way they dare the viewer to wonder if any of them will be killed (they are). But still, unlike Freddy, they really don’t have a personality. In fact, the series draws some of its eeriness from the explicit face that they _don’t_ have personality despite intriguing masks. It doesn’t really work beyond the first movie, they should have had totally different bad guys in my opinion.

The BMT? I don’t think any of the franchise really transcends what it is, which is a mostly brainless series of jumpscares.

I had two additional idea on how to pull out images from a batch process accurately. The first was last time (just a number, seemed to work). My second idea was a hash. Well that also worked:

The issue is that it couldn’t quite translate the hashes properly (in that it would mix up the letters). I have a feeling it would also be a problem with using imdb stubs (the next test) or large indices, but that would need to be for a larger test.

Dumb Bad Guy Names (Who?) goes to Pin-up Girl and Doll Face, just terrible horror film villain names. According to Wikipedia this is a Setting as a Character (Where?) for somewhere in Ohio. And a Worst Twist (How?) for the final scene which (much like the third film) teases that she is going to be attacked again in the hospital, but that doesn’t seem like it is going to be resolved. The film is Bad I think, but a lot of that is just that I don’t like horror films, so it has to be very BMT or very Good to get my vote for that.

I guess we’ll probably learn about dumb masks or something in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

The Strangers: Chapter 1 Quiz

Chapter 1? Personally, I’m partial to an overly long author introduction where you’re like “should I read all this? Are they going to spoil things?” You know? Let’s go!

Pop Quiz Hot Shot!

1) We’re Not Gonna Take It by Twisted Sister is on the Soundtrack. That and I Wanna Rock both feature Mark Metcalf in the music video, which is probably most notable for playing Doug Neidermeyer in what classic college comedy?

2) The film is directed by Renny Harlin. He also directed BMT classic The Legend of Hercules. Who is the BMT classic star of that film?

3) You know, filming a bunch of films all at once isn’t at all uncommon. To give another example, a series in which the third and fourth entries were filmed back-to-back have the subtitles Offspring and Trail of Blood respectively. What is that series? Want another hint? The second one has the subtitle The Hunt for the Blood Orchid.

4) Froy Gutierrez plays the garbage boyfriend in this flick. His prior film was Hocus Pocus 2. Name the three actresses who play the witches in the Hocus Pocus films.

5) My god, the film is produced by Courtney Solomon. You should know him from BMT work he’s done on what IP which he bought when he was 19 years old?

Bonus NYTimes Listing Question: On December 16, 1993, When a Stranger Calls Back played on Showtime primetime up against:

What is this film?

Answers

The Strangers: Prey at Night Quiz

When do Strangers Prey? At Night, duh! Let’s go!

Pop Quiz Hot Shot!

1) Prey? Good question. How many Predator films have there been? And yes, this would count any film in which the Predator appears as a primary character.

2) On the soundtrack we have the song Total Eclipse of the Heart which was written by Jim Steinman, but who was the Welsh singer who sang it?

3) The brother in the film is played by Lewis Pullman. You guessed it, he’s the son of Bill Pullman. That is fun. One of his first ever roles was in Spaceballs where he played a Han Solo parody. What was his character’s name?

4) Bailee Madison plays the sister. She played Snow White in Once Upon a Time. The Snow White you’ll know was the original animated film released by Disney during their Golden Age. There are four other films in the Golden Age. Name them.

5) The original film referenced one main crime which was the Manson Family Tate murders. The actual inspiration was the book which detailed the killings. Written by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry, what is the name of the book?

Bonus NYTimes Listing Question: Speaking of home invasions, Patriot Games played primetime on May 15, 1993 on HBO, up against:

What is this film?

Answers

The Strangers: Chapter 1 Preview

“The what?!” Jamie and Patrick say in shock. “The American Society of Movie Nerds,” the man says, rubbing some dirt from the placard as he passes through the door, “Why? What did you think it said?” Patrick and Jamie look at each other. “So, what is this place?” Jamie says after an unnecessarily long pause. They appear to be in a tunnel system of some sort. “Oh, just a place where movie nerds can get together and crunch the numbers on movies,” says the man, who they will come to know as Jacques. But neither of them are listening. For they have just entered a room full of the most wondrous sights. With a trembling hand Jamie reaches for a nearby shelf and gently grabs a VHS copy of Crackerjack. A tear rolls down his face. Jacques dabs his cheeks with a handkerchief. “Careful there,” he says soothingly, “you don’t want to damage the box with your tears.” Have they found their soul mate? They can feel the memory of Kyle fading like a photo of Marty McFly. After Jacques shows them a couple rare VHS copies of lesser known Canadian T&A comedies, Jamie, for the first time, sees a light at the end of his tunnel of grief. He turns to Jacques to ask if he might volunteer here, but Jacques is distracted. Jamie and Patrick huddle with him and see that he’s looking at a couple of fellow nerds. But there is something… off about these nerds. “Huh, that’s funny…” Patrick muses, “why are they so focused on the Star Wars and Star Trek stuff and not…” “the rare stuff,” they all say in unison. “Those aren’t nerds at all!” Jacques says in a panic before pulling an alarm and yelling, “There are strangers among us!” That’s right! There are Strangers among us. The Strangers: Prey at Night and The Strangers: Chapter 1, the two sequels to The Strangers. I’ve never seen any of them so I better buckle up. Let’s go!

The Strangers: Chapter 1 (2024) – BMeTric: 67.8; Notability: 22

StreetCreditReport.com – BMeTric: top 2.0%; Notability: top 9.6%; Rotten Tomatoes: top 7.2%; Higher BMeT: Madame Web, Borderlands, The American Society of Magical Negroes, The Crow, Uglies; Higher Notability: Joker: Folie à Deux, Unfrosted, Reagan, Kraven the Hunter, Borderlands, The Garfield Movie, Madame Web, Here, Back to Black, Argylle, Red One, Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver, Atlas, Lift, Jackpot!, The Union, The Crow, Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Two, Uglies, Dear Santa, and 4 more; Lower RT: Megamind vs. The Doom Syndicate, Borderlands, Madame Web, Mother of the Bride, Breathe, Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Two, Kraven the Hunter, Uglies, Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver, Tarot, Reagan, Killer Heat, Canary Black, Mea Culpa, Atlas, Night Swim, Trigger Warning; Notes: Madame Web. Hell yeah. It is entirely possible I’ve said exactly that in another preview. Don’t care. The BMeT on this thing is still absurd. So it the one for American Society. That film was fine.

Variety –  [I]t’s still somewhat refreshing, in this age of lore-heavy expanded universes, that even here the filmmakers (including Bertino, who has a story credit) refuse to tell us anything about the Strangers. The nihilistic randomness of the violence is what makes the film connect on a visceral level; to give them a backstory, or even real names, would be to go against the premise’s central appeal. “Chapter 1” can’t help feeling like an ersatz imitation at times, but it seems the franchise’s well hasn’t run dry just yet. But while it might change in the next two installments, to date nothing in the series has been more chilling than the original intruders’ response when asked why they were doing this: “Because you were home.”

(I actually 100% agree with it. The issue is partially that even the first one wasn’t that good? The premise was interesting, but the acting was kind of insane and everything took way way too long to develop. The later installments don’t really solve the second problem. Unfortunately the solution (more people, more kills) also takes the franchise further from its isolated roots.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pZUQmZdOi4/

(Is this the same movie as the first? The kids are there … it is kind of a weird trick. Like, making a new trilogy as a reboot? Smart. Acting like this isn’t just a reboot of the first one … weird.)

Directors – Renny Harlin – ( Known For: Die Hard 2; Deep Blue Sea; Cliffhanger; The Long Kiss Goodnight; A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master; Cleaner; Devil’s Pass; Skiptrace; The Misfits; 5 Days of War; The Bricklayer; Prison; Born American; Bodies at Rest; Class Reunion 3; Legend of the Ancient Sword; Future BMT: Exorcist: The Beginning; 12 Rounds; BMT: Mindhunters; The Legend of Hercules; The Covenant; Driven; Cutthroat Island; The Strangers: Chapter 1; The Adventures of Ford Fairlane; Notes: It is very weird that they got him for this. He has two more installments, one of which is already completed, so I guess we’ll see where it goes.)

Writers – Alan Freedland and Alan R. Cohen – ( Future BMT: Due Date; BMT: The Strangers: Chapter 1; Notes: They wrote a few different animated things, and specifically ended up being being nominated for three Emmys for King of the Hill, winning one. They seem to have specialized in Bobby-centric episodes.)

Bryan Bertino – ( Known For: The Strangers; The Dark and the Wicked; The Monster; Mockingbird; BMT: The Strangers: Prey at Night; The Strangers: Chapter 1; Notes: He wrote and directed the original. He is a horror director through and through.)

Actors – Madelaine Petsch – ( Known For: Polaroid; About Fate; Sightless; F*&% the Prom; The Curse of Sleeping Beauty; The Hive; Hotel for the Holidays; Jane; BMT: The Strangers: Chapter 1; Notes: She’s in the second and third film I guess. It did show that she survived at the end. She was in 131 episodes of Riverdale.)

Ryan Bown – ( Known For: Palm Beach; Notes: BTW his character suuuuuucks. He is also involved in some shark movie Harlin is directing called Deep Water?)

Matus Lajcak – ( Notes: Scarecrow. He is actually mostly a stunt performer (the usual for horror films). Nothing major though, like, Game of Thrones for one episode.)

Budget/Gross – $8.5 million / Domestic: $35,202,562 (Worldwide: $48,166,448)

(Huge. Will obviously continue to make them, and hopefully the later ones do something a bit more interesting with the concept. Please don’t be another Purge.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 21% (22/106): Lacking the chilling suspense of the original The Strangers and proving to be just unpleasant, this Chapter 1 closes the book on itself.

(Unpleasant is correct. Specifically, for whatever reason, the two main characters appear to be people who don’t particularly like each other but are in a relationship and I really don’t understand that.)

Reviewer Highlight: Once we’re able to see Harlin’s new trilogy as a whole, “Chapter 1” might feel more essential to the 4.5-hour experience. Right now, it just feels overly familiar. – Brian Tallerico, RogerEbert.com

Poster – The Sklogs: Now We’re Dumbos

(This legit looks like trash. It has crossed from mildly annoying to hurting my eyes. The positive is that the eye hurting is in pursuit of something artistic. I’m a little crossed up here. C.)

Tagline(s) – They don’t need a reason. (D)

(This is just kind of the idea of the first film and it’s not clever or interesting. But it’s short. Bless their hearts.)

Keyword(s) – 2024-2024

Top 10: Dune: Part Two (2024), Deadpool & Wolverine (2024), Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024), The Substance (2024), Alien: Romulus (2024), Civil War (2024), The Fall Guy (2024), Gladiator II (2024), Inside Out 2 (2024), Longlegs (2024)

Future BMT: 72.3 Singham Again (2024), 64.5 The Exorcism (2024), 62.6 Imaginary (2024), 62.1 Joker: Folie à Deux (2024), 50.9 Kraven the Hunter (2024), 47.5 Afraid (2024), 30.3 Slingshot (2024), 29.3 Harold and the Purple Crayon (2024), 28.3 Devara Part 1 (2024), 26.0 Fighter (2024), 24.5 Red One (2024), 24.2 Summer Camp (2024), 21.7 The Fabulous Four (2024), 20.0 Reagan (2024), 19.9 Here (2024)

BMT: Madame Web (2024), Borderlands (2024), The American Society of Magical Negroes (2024), The Crow (2024), The Strangers: Chapter 1 (2024), Night Swim (2024), Tarot (2024), Argylle (2024), The Watchers (2024), The Garfield Movie (2024), Back to Black (2024)

Best Options (franchise): 50.9 Kraven the Hunter (2024)

(As said, this does actually qualify as a franchise and beats Kraven (somehow), but due to a quirk in the email generation it thinks we already watched it … because we did, months ago. A little peak behind the curtain of BMTHQ here.)

Welcome to Earf (HoE Number 25) – The shortest path through The Movie Database cast lists using only BMT films is: Richard Brake is No. 5 billed in The Strangers: Chapter 1 and No. 7 billed in Doom, which also stars Karl Urban (No. 1 billed) who is in Priest (No. 2 billed) which also stars Paul Bettany (No. 1 billed) who is in Firewall (No. 2 billed) which also stars Harrison Ford (No. 1 billed) who is in Hollywood Homicide (No. 1 billed) which also stars Josh Hartnett (No. 2 billed) who is in Here on Earth (No. 3 billed) => (5 + 7) + (1 + 2) + (1 + 2) + (1 + 1) + (2 + 3) = 25. There is no shorter path at the moment.

Notes – Renny Harlin simultaneously filmed all three films of this trilogy. The producer explained that the lead star would film scenes for the first film in the morning and scenes for the second in the afternoon, commuting to many different locations for filming several times a day.

According to Froy Gutierrez, filming of all three films took place in Fall of 2022 over a 52-day shoot.

The film’s script was originally 280 pages long based off of notes and ideas which director Renny Harlin and producer Courtney Solomon juggled between each other. They then separated the screenplay into three parts which is now planned to be a trilogy of interlocked stories.

The third film of a series and the first film of a new trilogy. All films of the trilogy are directed by Renny Harlin.

The title suggests that it might be a prequel to the 2008 original, but it isn’t. “The Strangers: Chapter 1” is actually the start of a new trilogy, with two subsequent chapters on the way. It is a new trilogy, only inspired by Bertino’s original.

The Strangers: Prey at Night Preview

“The what?!” Jamie and Patrick say in shock. “The American Society of Movie Nerds,” the man says, rubbing some dirt from the placard as he passes through the door, “Why? What did you think it said?” Patrick and Jamie look at each other. “So, what is this place?” Jamie says after an unnecessarily long pause. They appear to be in a tunnel system of some sort. “Oh, just a place where movie nerds can get together and crunch the numbers on movies,” says the man, who they will come to know as Jacques. But neither of them are listening. For they have just entered a room full of the most wondrous sights. With a trembling hand Jamie reaches for a nearby shelf and gently grabs a VHS copy of Crackerjack. A tear rolls down his face. Jacques dabs his cheeks with a handkerchief. “Careful there,” he says soothingly, “you don’t want to damage the box with your tears.” Have they found their soul mate? They can feel the memory of Kyle fading like a photo of Marty McFly. After Jacques shows them a couple rare VHS copies of lesser known Canadian T&A comedies, Jamie, for the first time, sees a light at the end of his tunnel of grief. He turns to Jacques to ask if he might volunteer here, but Jacques is distracted. Jamie and Patrick huddle with him and see that he’s looking at a couple of fellow nerds. But there is something… off about these nerds. “Huh, that’s funny…” Patrick muses, “why are they so focused on the Star Wars and Star Trek stuff and not…” “the rare stuff,” they all say in unison. “Those aren’t nerds at all!” Jacques says in a panic before pulling an alarm and yelling, “There are strangers among us!” That’s right! There are Strangers among us. The Strangers: Prey at Night and The Strangers: Chapter 1, the two sequels to The Strangers. I’ve never seen any of them so I better buckle up. Let’s go!

The Strangers: Prey at Night (2018) – BMeTric: 53.7; Notability: 13

StreetCreditReport.com – BMeTric: top 6.4%; Notability: top 24.0%; Rotten Tomatoes: top 24.6%; Higher BMeT: Slender Man, The Open House, Holmes & Watson, Escape Plan 2: Hades, Fifty Shades Freed, Siberia, The Titan, How It Ends, Gotti, Truth or Dare, Fahrenheit 451, The Predator, Robin Hood, The Nun, The Possession of Hannah Grace, The Week Of; Higher Notability: Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, Venom, The Predator, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, The Happytime Murders, Hunter Killer, Holmes & Watson, Mortal Engines, Death Wish, The Cloverfield Paradox, Fifty Shades Freed, Game Over, Man!, 7 Days in Entebbe, Johnny English Strikes Again, Overboard, The Girl in the Spider’s Web, The 15:17 to Paris, Gringo, Welcome to Marwen, The Darkest Minds, and 40 more; Lower RT: Gotti, The Open House, Billionaire Boys Club, Escape Plan 2: Hades, Slender Man, Replicas, Holmes & Watson, The Professor, Fifty Shades Freed, Winchester, Siberia, Little Italy, Peppermint, Life Itself, The Outsider, Robin Hood, The Darkest Minds, Truth or Dare, Look Away, The Kissing Booth, and 41 more; Notes: Slender Man, oh, the promise of the Bye Bye Man vibes, but just never really got there. Amazing it appears to have the highest BMeT of any film from 2018. That’s wild. Someday Gotti. Someday.

RogerEbert.com – 3.5 stars – Ten years is a long gap between a movie and its sequel, especially for a horror movie. That gap, though, seems as if it was enough time for the filmmakers of “The Strangers: Prey at Night” to get it right.

(Oh snap. The odd thing about Prey at Night is just that. I thought it was like … well received. Then it turned out it wasn’t? Kind of wild. Have we ever done a four star RogerEbert.com film? I venture to say no, although it is more possible since his passing and specifically a Horror film I would think.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNQrKls7k-Q/

(So … the same movie as before? I guess that is the allure of franchises like this. The same thing but more extreme and weirder over and over and over again. Like Saw.)

Directors – Johannes Roberts – ( Known For: 47 Meters Down; 47 Meters Down: Uncaged; The Other Side of the Door; V/H/S/99; Storage 24; F; Forest of the Damned; Hellbreeder; BMT: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City; The Strangers: Prey at Night; Notes: Man, Racoon City, remember that one? Oh snap, she has an upcoming film called Primate which is effectively just Cujo with a chimp.)

Writers – Bryan Bertino – ( Known For: The Strangers; The Dark and the Wicked; The Monster; Mockingbird; BMT: The Strangers: Prey at Night; The Strangers: Chapter 1; Notes: Writer for the original. He has a film coming out this year (it claims) called Vicious with Dakota Fanning.)

Ben Ketai – ( Known For: Malevolent; River Wild; Johnny Frank Garrett’s Last Word; BMT: The Forest; The Strangers: Prey at Night; Notes: He has some Crackle show called StartUp with Ron Perlman he created and wrote 30 episodes for. Television is wild man.)

Actors – Christina Hendricks – ( Known For: Drive; Toy Story 4; The Neon Demon; Detachment; Dark Places; Scoob!; Crooked House; Lost River; Struck by Lightning; God’s Pocket; Ginger & Rosa; American Woman; Candy Jar; Pottersville; The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry; The Family Tree; Company; Egg; Leonie; South of Pico; Future BMT: Life as We Know It; Bad Santa 2; BMT: Zoolander 2; Fist Fight; The Strangers: Prey at Night; I Don’t Know How She Does It; Notes: Remember Man Men? She is still doing a ton of television (lots of voice work), and has some mini-series upcoming. She was nominated for six Emmys. Never won. Which seems crazy. I think she ran into a buzzsaw of Justified, The Good Wife, and Downton Abbey. Still … at the very least the second season right?)

Martin Henderson – ( Known For: The Ring; Everest; X; Miracles from Heaven; Bride & Prejudice; Battle in Seattle; Little Fish; Skagerrak; Cedar Boys; The Moment; Kick; Future BMT: Smokin’ Aces; Windtalkers; Flyboys; BMT: The Strangers: Prey at Night; Torque; Devil’s Knot; Notes: Is very much in some television series called Virgin River. And then has something called Alphas in post-production.)

Bailee Madison – ( Known For: Bridge to Terabithia; Brothers; Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark; Conviction; Lonely Hearts; Phoebe in Wonderland; A Week Away; Play Dead; An Invisible Sign; Look; Cowgirls ‘n Angels; Saving Sarah Cain; A Cinderella Story: Starstruck; A Cowgirl’s Story; Watercolor Postcards; 25 Hill; Future BMT: Parental Guidance; Letters to God; BMT: Just Go with It; The Strangers: Prey at Night; Notes: Was in 57 episodes of some series called Good Witch. And she’s in the Pretty Little Liars … spin off? I have no idea what Original Sin is.)

Budget/Gross – $5 million / Domestic: $24,586,708 (Worldwide: $31,039,126)

(That’s great. I don’t really understand why it took so long to make a sequel and why it took so long to just go for the trilogy … then again, the new one is apparently terrible.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 40% (49/124): The Strangers: Prey at Night may appeal to fans of the original who’ve been jonesing for a sequel, but its thin story and ironic embrace of genre tropes add up to a bloody step back.

(Juuuuuuuust barely qualifies. Pretty silly. For years it didn’t, but then I think they got rid of one of the reviews or something? The lack of clarity on Rotten Tomatoes is quite frustrating. It really should operate a lot more like wikipedia than … whatever it is.)

Reviewer Highlight: Two films in, The Strangers has already become a horribly familiar franchise. – Clack Collis, EW

Poster – The Sklogs: Rich and Poe

(This is treating The Strangers like it’s Texas Chainsaw. Otherwise it’s… still kind of bad. Bad font. Looks kind of cheap. I don’t like it much at all. But it doesn’t hurt my eyes. C-.)

Tagline(s) – Let us prey. (B-)

(I mean, yes. I will ding it for being too generic.)

Keyword(s) – 2024-2024

Top 10: Dune: Part Two (2024), Deadpool & Wolverine (2024), Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024), The Substance (2024), Alien: Romulus (2024), Civil War (2024), The Fall Guy (2024), Gladiator II (2024), Inside Out 2 (2024), Longlegs (2024)

Future BMT: 72.3 Singham Again (2024), 64.5 The Exorcism (2024), 62.6 Imaginary (2024), 62.1 Joker: Folie à Deux (2024), 50.9 Kraven the Hunter (2024), 47.5 Afraid (2024), 30.3 Slingshot (2024), 29.3 Harold and the Purple Crayon (2024), 28.3 Devara Part 1 (2024), 26.0 Fighter (2024), 24.5 Red One (2024), 24.2 Summer Camp (2024), 21.7 The Fabulous Four (2024), 20.0 Reagan (2024), 19.9 Here (2024)

BMT: Madame Web (2024), Borderlands (2024), The American Society of Magical Negroes (2024), The Crow (2024), The Strangers: Chapter 1 (2024), Night Swim (2024), Tarot (2024), Argylle (2024), The Watchers (2024), The Garfield Movie (2024), Back to Black (2024)

Best Options (franchise): 50.9 Kraven the Hunter (2024)

(Since this is a bonus it won’t show up. And also because of how I generated the email it also thinks we haven’t seen The Strangers: Chapter 1. But it is one of two good options, and Kraven was a bonus Live we did right at the last minute, so this was the best option.)

Welcome to Earf (HoE Number 16) – The shortest path through The Movie Database cast lists using only BMT films is: Bailee Madison is No. 1 billed in The Strangers: Prey at Night and No. 6 billed in Just Go with It, which also stars Adam Sandler (No. 1 billed) who is in Jack and Jill (No. 1 billed) which also stars Al Pacino (No. 2 billed) who is in 88 Minutes (No. 1 billed) which also stars Leelee Sobieski (No. 3 billed) who is in Here on Earth (No. 1 billed) => (1 + 6) + (1 + 1) + (2 + 1) + (3 + 1) = 16. There is no shorter path at the moment.

Notes – Before the script was re-written, Kristen McKay (Liv Tyler) from the first film was going to return for only for the opening scene, where she would be killed.

This film was announced back in 2009.

There’s a scene in the movie where Luke puts down a pistol on top of a book. The title of the book was “A Stranger is Watching.”

The Man In The Mask is the only killer in the film to not have any lines of dialogue.

The director admittedly doesn’t like slasher movies or home invasion movies.

Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo Recap

Jamie

Alright, in the Breakin’ portion of the post, I let you know who Brion James was (oh, and Shabba Doo as well). Let’s get into Boogaloo Shrimp himself. Interestingly, his wikipedia page is under his birth name: Michael Chambers. Maybe Boogaloo Shrimp is too silly for a wikipedia page. We actually don’t have any more BMT films to target for him, even as a Friend. He was in a couple of non-qualifying films and then ended up playing a dancer in Dudley Do-Right. We’ve obviously seen Dudley Do-Right starring Academy Award Winner Brendan Fraser. In fact, it had a proper place in BMT Lore (BMTL). Back when we first started doing cycles one of the categories was Kids Films. This made sense. Most of those films are horrible. Unfortunately that was also its downfall. Dudley Do-Right was the straw that broke the camel’s back and we removed that category. Who knew we got some boogaloo there as well.

To recap, Special K is back, Jack! She has been killing it on the dance scene. But she’s so tired of just being one of the chorus line. She takes a break to reflect. During that break her richie rich father (who knew!) insists she finally go to Princeton. But she won’t. Dance is her life. Remembering her days with Ozone and Turbo she returns to find that they are also killing it. They are dancing up a storm at the local community center and the whole neighborhood sings and dances wherever they go. Dope. Meanwhile an eeeeevil land developer is eyeing the community center for a mall or whatever and starts to work the back channels to get it condemned. Kelly and the gang put up a fight and are given thirty days to come up with a boatload of cash. Cash that Kelly’s dad would give her if she went to Princeton. But dancing is her life! They try all kinds of things like car washes and stuff all while Turbo falls in love, Kelly gets an audition for a big show in Paris, and Ozone deals with a jealous ex-GF. This culminates in Turbo getting seriously injured falling down some stairs. Only through the power of dance is he healed and able to join the gang in stopping the bulldozers from knocking down the building. Using the media against the eeeevil land developer, he agrees to let them keep the center if they raise the money for renovations. They put on a big show and in the end Kelly’s father, finally understanding his daughter’s life, makes the final donation to save the say. THE END.

The first film was sweet and actually kind of good despite its faults. This is just pure distilled BMT silliness. The music scenes are nonsense, most notably the hospital scene, which I think is kinda famous for how ridiculous it is. The plot is so derivative that you could mistake it for being ironic. Kelly’s father and the eeevil land developer are caricatures to the point that they might as well have been cartoons or had a monocle or a cigar in their mouths. It is not at all surprising that this is a very notable bad movie and the first one is not. It is kind of everything we want to witness when we choose a BMT film, but few filmmakers are brave enough to deliver it too us. As for Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure, hoooo weeee, this brought back some memories. In my mind the boy in it is like Luke Skywalker’s age. From my perspective, as a five year old watching it, he was a big kid. He’s like 9 and the single most annoying character in film history. Literally even the teddy bear Ewoks are shaking their heads being like “get a load of this asshole” when he sticks his hand in a log and almost gets eaten and then complains when they save him. All that being said the effects were pretty great and the big monster alien scary and impressive. I liked it, but boy that kid was annoying.

Hot Take Clam Bake! Kelly takes that job in Paris… obviously. She just won the approval of her father for her dance career. No more annoying “you should go to Princeton” lectures. And let’s be real, Ozone has had two movies to make a real move on Kelly and she hasn’t really been super into it so far. She’s probably dreaming of that French dancer she’s about to meet who she’ll bring back to LA and he’ll be like “Haw haw. What is theees, how do you say, break-king? Baguette. Fromage. Grand Paris. Haw haw. I am French.” Ozone and Turbo will be like can he even dance? And she’ll be like he’s the best ballet dancer in the world. And then they’ll pop lock in front of him and he’ll stick up his nose at them and huffily storm off and then Kelly will be like “you guys embarrassed me!” and that’ll be the end of that. Hot Take Temperature: A hot day on the Seine.

Patrick?   

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *Gif of me pop lockings, but then I pop lock up the wall and onto the ceiling and I’m dressed like Michael Jackson (again!)* Let’s go!

The Good? I mean, this movie takes the previous movie and cranks it up to 11. If you liked the last movie, this is just more of that but crazier with a rich v. poor story which is working overtime to make anything make sense. And often the pop locking has never looked better. And of course you cannot forget that the subtitle is the top subtitle ever in the history of film: Electric Boogaloo. It is now, effectively, a joke in itself concerning absurd sequel subtitles.

The Bad? Several moments in the film take the pop locking and bring it to the streetz. By which I mean, random people like mailmen and shit start to break dance in the street as our heroes pass by. Or Turbo commits a crime and then almost dies in a stair mishap and is later cured through the power of dance inside a hospital (where also the power of dance brings someone back to life). Moments like this make you wonder: is this some delusional fever dream we are watching? It is decidedly unreal and in that way, much like Icarus, strays too close to the sun and its delicate pop locking wings are melted.

The BMT? Hell yeah. This is one of the quintessential bad movie cult classics. The first film is arguably a good film. This film though goes too far and becomes bad, but also is supremely weird and entertaining. That is a BMT formula to a T.

I did continue my adventure in New York Times advertising. This time I gave it a slightly larger image and refined the prompt such that it was to look for large full page ads only. Even then it was a little discouraging to realize just how random it was. It was limiting itself to films it seemed after a bit, but whether a bunch of ads would count as “majority” or one large one was different run to run and it took long enough that majority rule rerunning would have been a little too annoying.

Supposedly it gets better it you do structured data, so plausibly an option would be for it to return json as {“timestamp”: timestamp, “percent_advert”: float} to try and force it to only report high probability timestamps … but I’m a little skeptical. The better path would probably be to give it an even bigger set of images, and then hope that that would give it enough clarity to fix the issue. Either that or try to restrict it to pages where 100% of the area is a single film advertisement and thus leave nothing up to chance. Regardless, this is one of the results I got:

There is a Breakin’ 2 advertisement on the page before the The River advertisement, and often the second page would be omitted on repeat runs.

Oh shit, you best belieb we watched The Great Ewok Adventure: The Caravan of Courage. The official title of this television movie depends on where you are looking. The Great Ewok Adventure seems like the most common. First, the son in this film is hilariously bad. So bad that it kind of almost ruins the movie. Second, the daughter character is literally a baby. She was around four years old when they filmed and you can tell, she seems to have trouble even getting through scenes sometimes. But, third, I love them little Ewoks! This movie does its job. By which I mean it sells toys to children and reminds everyone that Star Wars is a children’s property at its core. B, I liked watching this, it was a blast from the past. I will also say I watched Battle for Endor (in which the entire family is unceremoniously massacred), and that one was genuinely better, but that makes sense when you realize they traded up from the most annoying child actor in history to Wilford Brimley. That was just a little extra though, so I won’t give it a grade … but I guess a B+.

Once again, the film is a Setting as a Character (Where?) for Greater Los Angeles. A great MacGuffin (Why?) for the famous community center that needs to be saved. If ever you hear the phrase “to save a community center” used as a punchline as a joke, it is likely a play off of the storyline of Electric Boogaloo. And naturally Worst Twist (How?) for the eeeeevil industrialist and general rich person at the end of the film who has a Heart of Gold and now realizes just what a good community center means for a community. This movie is BMT and also kind of good to boot, but hey, I like pop locking more than most I imagine.

Read all about pop locking maybe in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Breakin’ Recap

Jamie

I don’t have much of a relationship to the Breakin’ franchise, so let’s get into it with Shabba Doo. Most interesting fact? His wikipedia page is under Shabba Doo and not his actual name Adolfo Quinones. I guess it’s because it was his professional stage name as a dancer, but it was a bit unexpected. After that I’m just more interested in where I can get me some more Shabba Doo. It appears that we only have one more BMT left with Lambada and even that is a bit questionable. Seems to have a wide enough release, but a sparse official review count. After that his only “major” release was Steel Frontier starring Joe Lara and Brion James. Which reminds me, I was listening to a podcast the other day and one of the hosts said he always liked Brion James… I’ve never heard anyone say that. Brion James. Huh.

To recap, Kelly is a dancer trying to make it in LA. She’s working with the best (the best!), a choreographer named Franco, who very much wants to sleep with her. This is really upsetting to Kelly. While thinking over how to rebuff Franco, but not burn that bridge, her friend takes her to Venice Beach where she witnesses the future: break dancing. She’s invited to a club by the two best dancers, Ozone and Turbo. Once there she witnesses a dance-off, where Ozone and Turbo get torched by a rival dance team after they unveil their secret weapon: a girl. Gasp! But wait, Kelly’s a girl, isn’t she? And she dances too!. But can she learn to let it all go and feel the rhythm of breakin’? Let’s just say the answer is an emphatic YES and Special K is born. Kelly’s agent is a bit skeptical, but also really believes in Kelly. He likes her too, but keeps it strictly professional, unlike Franco. Kelly wants them to enroll in a competition where Franco will be the choreographer for the winners in a big showcase. Kelly’s agent agrees, but when they show up at the competition Franco is infuriated that his former student is there with this street trash and trash dancing and demands that they be kicked out. The group won’t have that! They just start dancing… hard. They dance so hard that the judges can’t stop from tapping their feet and soon are telling Franco to shove it. We end with the big showcase which obviously is the most amazing thing anyone has ever seen and changes dance forever. THE END (or is it? (Ha! No!))

There is something very wholesome and sweet about this film that can’t help but endear you to it. For one, it is shockingly not at all problematic, which was a pleasant surprise. Kelly doesn’t want to sleep with her teacher. The idea that he might not care about her dancing, but rather just about her body is upsetting. Franco is powerful in the world she wants to be in. She makes the hard choice to leave that world rather than compromise and in turn finds a friend, a potential love interest (although they take it slow), and an agent who respects her boundaries. The scene where the agent is like “it’s cool. I get the picture, but I believe in you” almost brought me to tears. Very sweet. For two, the dancing actually is a load of fun. So how much do I want to make fun of a couple amateur actors and the end dance scene being silly? Not too much. It’s a fun movie. Check it out.

Hot Take Temperature! They simply would not win. You think those judges would go against Franco (the Franco) just cause their toes were tapping a little bit? The rules were very clear: they had to do traditional dance. They would be choreographed by Franco. It ain’t happening. Once they dabbed the sweat off their foreheads and composed themselves, having let loose for a moment under the spell of breakin’, they would realize that it was just that. A spell. That these kids tricked them with some kind of voodoo dancing magic and would need to be taken care of. And taken care of they would be. Hot Take Temperature: Scorching hot dance moves.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *Gif of me pop locking in fools’ faces while Ice-T reads out a spoken word album in the background* Let’s go!

The Good? Everything? Well, not really, but the movie is highly entertaining, and a small scale demo of pop locking mastery. Now, I’m not really that into dancing, let alone break dancing. But there is something decent here where it seems like a genuine love letter to a new form of expression. Add in Christopher McDonald, Ice-T, and a very brief glimpse of Jean Claude Van Damme, and you have a real cult classic on your hands.

The Bad? The acting is dire. Like really dire. But what do you expect? You are taking two very good break dancers and asking them to act … the thing is that as much as the main character holds her own, you could maybe have gotten a slightly better actor in there. But beggars can’t be choosers.

The BMT? Hmmmmmmm, well, no, on a technicality. You see, the movie is good. Calm down everyone, this isn’t the end of the world … because we got a second one.

Now this is what I call uh … AI scraping? In reality only a tiny bit of this is using AI, but it is still pretty good. Naturally, it is in line with some of my prior ideas on the subject: it is decent at extracting structured data from unstructured data (e.g. descriptions / keywords from an image), and it seems like it can be borderline SOTA object recognition, OCR, or generalized PCA type stuff. For this I decided on a fun project that is in line with the second part of that.

A while ago I scraped all of the New York Times listing pages. To do that there was a somewhat annoying (although practically not very difficult) step of getting listing page numbers from the New York Times. I set up a whole system using PCA and my own eyeballs and a UI to do this and it worked well, outside of dev time (which I’m fine with, this is how I learn) it probably took me like 10 hours to get the listing pages, mostly watching Seinfeld in the background.

But with AI it is kind of possible to do this much more quickly. Step one: scrape all of the small pages from an issue, non-trivial, but I had done it before. Step two: chop these small pages into single pages and reassemble them with ffmpeg into a movie, one page per frame, one frame per second. Step three: using Gemini I uploaded the video and asked for timestamps for any full page advertisement. Step four: I parsed the output and then scraped the larger size (which is actually a pattern of blocks … this ain’t my first rodeo, remember?) pages. And then I reassembled it. Et voila. For May 4th, 1984, all of the “full page” advertisements from the New York Times:

I mean, pretty good. For Breakin’ 2 I think I’ll just look to refine the query a bit, and probably scrape slightly larger initial pages just to make it more possible the program can figure out which are movie advertisements maybe. Regardless, I’m pretty happy with that one.

I’m going to invent a category here, which is the Bizarro World Twins (Who?) for the three other break dancers who are also two men and a woman who the crew battle throughout the film. Setting as a Character (Where?) up the wazoo since they very obviously head right to Venice Beach for one of the break dancing demos. The excellent MacGuffin (Why?) of the big dance audition against the other antagonist, the eeeeeevil dance instructor / pervert. And Worst Twist (How?) for the obvious end that the judges are moving to the groovin’ for this new dance phenomenon. And as I said, this film is Good.

Read all about break dancing maybe in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo Quiz

Rich people scoffing? Poor people popping? Talk to me, people! Let’s go!

Pop Quiz Hot Shot!

1) Electric Boogaloo as a subtitle has entered the popular lexicon as a generic silly name for a sequel. Some might call it “a clichéd phrase in which one or more words can be substituted to express a similar idea in a different context, often to humorous or sarcastic effect” … that is the definition of what (non-weather related) word?

2) When the film came out Ebert gave the film three out of four stars. There was also at least one other critic of New York Press who gave it a good review. As a matter of fact he often gives good films bad reviews (The Wild Robot) and bad films good reviews (Rebel Moon Part 1). Who is this famously contrarian critic?

3) Sam Firstenberg directed Lucinda Dickey in both Breakin’ 2 and Ninja III: The Domination. As a matter of fact he also directed the second in the Ninja series (Revenge of the Ninja) and the first two films in what martial arts series starring Michael Dudikoff?

4) Both films would be produced by Golan-Globus Cannon. The last film produced under that banner was a Jean-Claude Van Damme which would be followed by two sequels, the third film with the subtitle The Recycler. What is this sci-fi production?

5) The electric boogaloo is an actual dance. It is related to popping which Shabba Doo specialized in. It is best known for the dance move you might remember from a Volkswagen commercial featuring Tony Hale. What is that dance?

Bonus NYTimes Listing Question: On February 6, 1990, Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo played on Cinemax at 6PM. A very very famous musical played after, and then after that:

What is this “dreadful” film?

Answers

Breakin’ Quiz

Boogaloo Shrimp? Shabba Doo? Talk to me, people. Let’s go!

Pop Quiz Hot Shot!

1) During an episode of At the Movies Breakin’ is reviewed alongside Hardbodies, Sugar Can Alley, and a 1984 Stephen King adaptation starring David Keith, Martin Sheen, and George C. Scott … fine there is an actual star of the film, but I’m not giving you her name. What is the film?

2) Ice-T is in the film. Looking at his discography outside of the rap charts he really never charted on the Top 100 outside of two songs. One is called New Jack Hustler which was for the soundtrack of New Jack City naturally. The other is a song for the soundtrack of what film directed by Dennis Hopper, and starring Sean Penn and Robert Duvall as police officers?

3) The director, Joel Silberg, wasn’t done with dance films after this. He also made a film about a dance style from Brazil that is often called the Forbidden Dance. What is the name of the film and dance style.

4) This is considered one of the last financially profitable films ever produced by Cannon, partially due to the dissolution of a deal Cannon had with MGM for release. The dissolution came about due to the refusal of MGM to release what X-rated John Derek film starring Bo Derek?

5) Breakdancing consists of four main types of movies. Toprock (general standing footwork, often akin to dancing), downrock (footwork with hands and feet, e.g. the 6-step), power moves (acrobatic or athletic movements using speed and momentum), and what?

Bonus NYTimes Listing Question: On March 13, 1998, Breakin’ played for the first time on VH1. Meanwhile on Cinemax:

This is a major Sci Fi trivia, you better know this film.

Answers