What Else I'm Watching: 'Final Destination Bloodlines,' 'Poker Face,' & 'The Sandlot 3'
From the scariest horror franchise for people with ADHD to the best directing on television, plus a new guilty pleasure combining baseball and time travel.
It’s been a month since my last post here. My family went on vacation, my son has been playing a lot of baseball tournaments, and I’ve been trying to cover as many documentaries for Nonfics as I can between those personal commitments. So, I’ve only seen one new movie release and caught up with a few episodes of two comedy series while also enjoying some cruise ship entertainment and travel nonsense. Here’s what else I’ve been watching besides nonfiction films and shows:
Final Destination Bloodlines (2025)
I’ve been a fan of the Final Destination movies since the beginning because it’s the one horror franchise that taps into a realistic fear of mine: death by accident. I’ve been clumsy and distracted my whole life, and I also think of every which way to die in every situation. Fortunately, I now take medication for the anxiety, and I’ve tried to treat my late-in-life diagnosed attention issues. Yet I still regularly anticipate slipping and falling on a kitchen knife, crashing my car because I’ve dropped an object behind my brake pedal, or succumbing to any number of lawnmower mishaps.
I guess I’m like the protagonists of these movies, who have premonitions of mass tragedies and/or can foresee potentially lethal chain-reaction incidents. I’ve occasionally been one step away from the characters who shelter in remote cabins for safety. Is this a common trait for all of us with ADHD? Statistically speaking, people with ADHD are more at risk of premature death from accidents than those without this condition. I also think a lot of people with ADHD have an issue with making decisions because we constantly analyze all outcomes. Our brains essentially map out the multiverse. Final Destination represents these traits and their resulting phobias.
Final Destination Bloodlines (which I saw in the theater while my daughter and her friend went to see Lilo & Stitch, which I had no interest in — never liking the original) is the best of the franchise since the original in terms of that representation. I have a fondness for Final Destination 2 for all of its deaths, not just the awesome and fairly plausible traffic pileup sequence (immediately after seeing it the first time, I had to drive across Connecticut in a low-visibility rainstorm, which heightened the experience). But there’s been nothing like the first movie as far as realistic fears go. Final Destination Bloodlines has its cartoonish moments, but tonally and thematically, it’s more knowing of the ridiculousness as it relates to the truth of freak accidents. It helps that its special effects aren’t as sloppy as those of other sequels.
I also want to note that while I enjoyed much of Osgood Perkins’s The Monkey, it’s nothing like a true Final Destination movie for me, despite all its comparisons. The Monkey’s chain reaction sequences were often unclear in their direction and/or mechanics, and some of the kills, particularly the one at the motel pool, were stupid. They also were all just blood spatter in their spectacle, whereas each death in Final Destination Bloodlines has a uniqueness to its execution and visual presentation.
One more thought I had while watching Final Destination Bloodlines: given his early penchant for chain reaction sequences (or was that past collaborator Marc Caro’s part?), Jean-Pierre Jeunet could probably make a very fun Final Destination movie.
Final Destination Bloodlines is now in theaters.
Poker Face Season 2, Episodes 5-8
The last four episodes of Poker Face have been as enjoyable as any, but I wanted to highlight two for being particularly great. Episode 6 (“Sloppy Joseph”) and Episode 7 (“One Last Job”) were both directed by Adam Arkin, who shows his genre-loving range in a way that made me surprised they were helmed by the same person. They display very different styles that fit their narratives. “Sloppy Joseph” has a more evil-kid horror feel, complete with a black-comedic gerbil killing and a blood-spattered crowd of children, and “One Last Job” is a perfect homage to heist films.
Of course, each has the usual guest-casting genius that’s been making Season 2 such a must-watch for all TV fans. Episode 5 (“Home Town Hero”) and Episode 8 (“The Sleazy Georgian”) follow suit, and they’re good in their own ways as well. I love the minor-league baseball setting of the former (which was directed by John Dahl), and Simon Rex seemed to take his one-off role more seriously than others, making it less cartoonish despite the partly-animated drug trip sequence. I was disappointed in how little of Melanie Lynskey is in the latter, and its conman plot felt kind of thin and predictable. Also, I believe it could’ve been better with a Christmas setting.
Poker Face is streaming on Peacock.
The Bridge On The River Kwai (1957)
This David Lean classic was on TCM recently, and I got sucked in despite having seen it a few times before. The Bridge on the River Kwai is still an incredible and stunning film, of course, but I found myself more confused about the ending than before. Not that I should question Lean’s directing, but I think the actions, aim, and final statement of Major Warden could have been a little clearer.
The Bridge on the River Kwai is available to rent or purchase digitally everywhere.
A Brief Dolphin Show In The Wild
Last week, I took a trip on the Royal Caribbean ship Utopia of the Seas and had a much better time than on their Mariner of the Seas last year. It felt less like just a mall on water, our one excursion (to the Coco Cay water park) was more satisfying, and I didn’t throw up once. I also had the benefit of staying in a room with a balcony this time, and at one point, I looked out upon the Atlantic and spotted dolphins leaping and flipping out of the water. I’d never seen dolphins in the wild before and didn’t realize they do such tricks without being forced to in aquarium shows. It was a very brief moment, but witnessing that made my whole trip, and I’ll remember it forever.
All In!
The production show on Utopia of the Seas was also much bigger and better than anything I saw on Mariner of the Seas, though I’ll admit I didn’t quite get the through-line of the concept of All In!, which I watched on the first night of sailing. It’s kind of like a jukebox musical with the performers singing hit songs through the ages. At first, it seems to be going through different decades of the 20th century, but then there’s a Renaissance-themed number followed by a post-apocalyptic steampunk Mad Max sort of bit. The songs are sometimes anachronistic, but at least sound like they’d have fit 1980s Miami or a 1970s disco. Also, some of the singing was weak, but not terribly so.
While watching this production. I couldn’t help looking around the auditorium at the crowd in attendance. So much of the cruise’s clientele appeared to be the wrong audience for this sort of show, and I saw that in many of the faces, especially men’s. But I could say that about many shows on Broadway, where tourists sometimes go in blindly as well. Hopefully, some of them were more entertained than their expressions would have me believe.
The Sandlot: Heading Home (2007)
I’ve never seen the first sequel to The Sandlot, but that didn’t take away from my appreciation of the very low-budget third installment, The Sandlot: Heading Home, which I got hooked into during the cruise while the family was getting ready for dinner one night. Two things I love: baseball and time travel movies. This one uses the Peggy Sue Got Married and 13 Going on 30 mode of time travel where the character’s mind is from the original time but their body is age-appropriate to the destination.
The late Luke Perry plays a baseball player in the present who mentally goes back to his teenage years in the 1970s. For the most part, the movie is then just a period piece children’s baseball movie, but once in a while the protagonist reminds us that he knows what’s going to happen. Eventually, he does something different and changes his future, which is especially sad because now in the present he has children he never had before, meaning he missed their births and many years of their lives. Anyway, there is a character named Officer Pork Chop, so I was obligated to enjoy it.
The Sandlot: Heading Home is streaming on Disney+
Hacks Season 4, Episodes 3 - 5
I’m still struggling to get through this season of Hacks. I watched three more episodes this week, and I don’t think I laughed once. I might have had a slight smile for the riff-killer guy in the writer’s room, but that’s it. I’m not caring about whether Deborah is successful with her talk show or not, and I’m more and more tired of the bickering between her and Ava. There is no interesting place I can see this show going in the second half of Season 4 let alone its recently announced Season 5.
Crocodile Dundee II (1988)
Another bad movie I was drawn into, Crocodile Dundee II was playing in the hotel lobby on mute with captioning, and I couldn’t stop watching. I can’t recall if I actually enjoyed this when it came out, but there was a poster of the movie hanging in our high school (Linda Kozlowski was an alumn) and I always thought about revisiting it. The problematic original had earned Paul Hogan an Oscar nomination, a Golden Globe win, and a gig co-hosting the 1987 Academy Awards (the very year he was up for Best Original Screenplay).
Hogan, who is now 85 years old (and who divorced Kozlowski in 2014, unbeknownst to me), is still very charming in his titular role, but that’s about all I can say for the sequel. It’s very poorly directed by John Cornell, who made his debut in that position after producing the first installment. He only ever directed one other film, the similarly disappointing Hogan-led Almost an Angel. It is full of awful stereotypes and cultural sensitivities, as is the original, but there's nothing memorable let alone iconic about any of the dialogue or situations in this cash-grab follow-up.
Crocodile Dundee II is streaming on Paramount+