Midweek Movie Free Talk

Just watched Project Hail Mary with my family. Everyone really enjoyed it, as did the pretty full theater crowd. I loved the book, and quite enjoyed the movie, but it's a... very safe adaptation. It's packed tight at two and a half hours, and it's hard to see how you could change much, but there's a degree of levity that dampens some of the sense of scale and weight/desperation the book had.

It's a fine movie, maybe even excellent, but I can't help but feel that there's a version more along the lines of Europa Report that could've elevated it just that bit further.

Also, I need to vent about the advertising for a moment. Every trailer I saw had major spoilers for one of the huge reveals in the later part of the book. I tried to help my brother (who hasn't read the book yet) to avoid them, but then in our showing they had not one, but two pre-roll segments with spoilers!!

It goes back to this being a very safe big blockbuster movie that's taking no risks. They need everyone to know exactly what they're getting before they go see it. Sigh.

Anyway, it is good, but I recommend reading the book first.

Does anybody want to talk about:

Captain America Winter Soldier (2014): ★★☆

So continues my Marvel catch-up. I thought this was good, but not great. Despite my general lack of knowledge about the MCU, I did at least know that one character had to live for a later movie, so one of the important plot threads of this one was moot to me. It was also interesting to see Anthony Mackie in this movie while knowing that he gets his own movie later.

Hoppers (2026): ★★☆

Eh. This is a kids' movie, but I expected that and enjoyed it well enough. They do a good job of not explaining the magic/sci-fi too much and just letting you go with it. I am a little worried about emoji-spamming becoming a meme, but that thankfully doesn't seem to have taken off as much as the movie tried to turn it into a meme.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939): ★★☆

Not bad. The edu-tainment bits for things I already know slow the movie down, but it's still enjoyable on the whole. There are some things that are interesting just for being from 1939, like sending 9 cents in coins through the mail and World Series tickets being worth $15.

Does anyone happen to know who all the portraits are on Paine's wall? There are Woodrow Wilson and Herbert Hoover, and one that's probably Teddy Roosevelt. But I assume that viewers at the time would have recognized more of them, since the walls of his office are completely lined with portraits.

The Revenant (2015): ★★☆

This movie was showing in a theater an hour away from me. It said it was for its 10th anniversary, but that should have been last year, so ¯\(ツ)/¯

They made a movie of The Last of Red Dead Part II‽ Seriously though, this was close to three stars. If only there weren't quite so many flashback/daydream bits and Fitzgerald didn't mumble half of his lines...

I love Barry Lyndon... and one film that is often brought up in the same is The Duellists -- but I just don't like it.

'hey you, you're duelling too much! you're under arrest!'
'lets duel!'
'its on'

I watched Double Jeopardy from 1999 yesterday, and it was the right time to watch something like that, as in a different state of mind I would likely have scolded it for how ridiculous and cheesy it is. But after a long with complex database performance tuning, a simplistic 90s thriller with obvious twists and entertaining set pieces was just the right thing for me on a Friday night. The basic premise of that you can do a crime for free if you already have been wrongfully convicted of it, is of course bonkers, but it makes for a good excuse for Ashley Judd to kick ass and be clever, and Tommy Lee Jones bringing his a game even though the script doesn't.

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come

I love Radio Silence, Their run of movies from Ready or Not to Abigail is great. They have a technical bravado to them that few horror directors do, and I place them higher than "prestige" horror directors like Ari Aster and Robert Eggers.

That being said I think this is the worst script they've ever worked with (well since the first Ready or Not which I consider to be their first major work). The script for the first film is tight, the characters all feel unique and are captivating (I actually think character work is one of Radio Silence's strong points) and it all feels tense. The characters here are much weaker, the hunters are barely characters on their own. The main antagonist isn't even decided until like 2/3rds of the way through and isn't developed properly. The addition of the sister character could have been more interesting but all they do is bicker on surface level things, they make up, they (inexplicably) get mad at each other again, and then make up again. Kathryn Newton's comedy talents are mostly wasted, they would have been better off essentially writing her character from Abigail again.

It's still entertaining but it's not up to the standards of Abigail or the Scream films.

(3/5)

Project Hail Mary

Already talked about it. But I do feel a bit let down by it as well.

(3.5/5)

anybody watch those sad fucks in Louis Theroux: Inside The Manosphere?

what a wild and pathetic world. i’m surprised anybody sees these guys and doesn’t immediately spot the desperation and fiction of it all.