kiddo82

Not sure how unpopular this is but I think Ben Affleck is underrated as an actor. He's fine as a leading man but his wheelhouse seems to be "supporting character who you're not supposed to take too seriously" like in The Last Duel and Air.

Just finished this and it was such a cool movie. Thanks for the recommendation.

My favorite Sheldon moment is when he talks about gift giving and reciprocity and how "You haven't given me a gift, you've given me an obligation." I feel him on that and the anxiety that comes with it.

That's an interesting take because I have no history with the IP for D&D while I do have a solid history with Super Mario Bros. I had a lot of fun with the former film and did not enjoy the latter. It's probably nothing more than a matter of taste but for my money D&D had a much stronger script and story that can stand on its own while the only thing Mario Bros had going for it was the nostalgia.

Anthony Stewart Head is even foxier now than he was in 1999. Yowzers. And I kind of like him playing a smarmy ass on Ted Lasso.

I think it's just the time we're in. Things based off of existing intellectual property are easier to get made than things that aren't due to studios being so chicken shit risk averse. Plus, it's less work to try to sell to the masses. I have a complicated view of fan service (it can run anywhere from great to insulting which is a whole other post) but I hate retro fitting something that no one ever asked about in the first place. It just seems like a cheap and lazy gimmick to get people excited. I'll never forget reading a review for Solo: A Star Wars story where they criticized how the movie just had to show us how Han got his blaster. "Somebody handed it to him." I'm not that bright and even I saw through that. I have no opinion for or against Rise of the Pink Ladies but if they play it more as its own concept than as a vessel that's only purpose is to drop Easter eggs to that thing it already knows we like then it could be a fun high school dramedy. The problem is that usually these types of shows try to make a meal out of nostalgia when it should really only be the nutmeg.

She plays a character named Poppy in a series on Apple TV called Mythic Quest. It's about a the staff and creators surrounding a massively popular online role playing game. Think the Office but even more irreverent. I think her and the show are massively underrated.

I don't even necessarily need the bad guy to be punished. Something like the Usual Suspects has one of the best endings ever but that's in part because the movie doesn't try to pull the wool over our eyes. It doesn't try to convince us that Soze getting away is any kind of win for humanity.

I like Archer a lot but I think the reason it worked is because the show knew all of them were terrible people. It was never afraid to call that out and it was up to the audience to decide if they were okay with it or not. What I don't like is when a character is clearly terrible but the show keeps letting that character get away with things because either the writers fell in love with him (99.9% of the time it's a him) or worse, the fans fell in love with him and now the producers are course correcting.

Yeah. That's probably not as much fun.

I, on the other hand, love a good sneeze. In fact, one of life's little every day disappointments is when you're trying to conjure a sneeze and you lose it.

I had fun with this as well. It doesn't necessarily break new ground and some of the jokes were telegraphed but I was a happy patron overall. I've never played D&D but I thought they did a great job of leaning into the humor without punching down. It felt like laughing with, not at. Nice casting from top to bottom. Hugh Grant is having a bit of his own Rennaissance lately and between this and Ruse de gueree he totally gets the assignment.

We were having a conversation today at work and I was able to organically work in the sentence "Well, condoms are only 97% effective"* and no one interrupted me to say "THEY SHOULD PUT THAT ON THE BOX!" and I swear these people don't deserve me. *Friends 08:03

Charlotte Nicado deserves an Emmy nomination if not an outright win. Edited due to autocorrect.

That's exactly how I felt. I didn't particularly love it but I wasn't mad about it either.

Scream V spoilers out in the open. Very mild Scream VI spoiler tagged. Scream VI deals with some toxic internet culture and our recent obsessions with true crime. We learn early on in the movie that the internet knows all about the "true crime" events of Scream 5 and has turned against Samantha, who didn't murder anyone, in favor of her now dead boyfriend Richie, who definitely murdered a bunch of people in the prior film. In the current movie there is an internet theory that Sam was the real killer and she murdered the innocent Richie to frame him. I'm not sure if this subtext was intentional or I'm just projecting but there is something that--excuse me--cuts deep about the internet turning on a woman in favor of her puppy dog faced "nice guy" boyfriend even though he was literally a serial killer who tried to murder her and her family. It feels very true to real life form. Add in the fact that although the character's race/ethnicity is never specified Melissa Barrera who plays Sam is Mexican and Jack Quaid who played Richie is not, possibly adding another layer. Sam spends part of the movie being pissed off and hurt about being hated by total strangers and rightfully so. She was the one who was attacked while that asshole gets canonized.

I heard on a podcast that the year after Dangerous Liaisons came out there was another version adapted by Milos Forman called Valmont. It starred Annette Benning as Merteuil, Meg Tilly as Tourvel, and Colin Firth as Valmont. Frankly, I don't have much desire to watch another version of this story but I definitely can get behind Firth in this role as well.

This is from a while back...I think my main issue was how miscast John Malkovich was. I bought him as scheming and manipulative but in no way did I see Pfeiffer's character ever falling for him. And it's entirely possible that I'm brining in my 2023 prejudices. I love Malkovich as an actor but it's almost impossibe for me not to see him as (and I mean this as a compliment) creepy, weirdo character actor guy. I'm too young to know what people thought about him as a leading man in 1988 so maybe it was a get at the time. I'll always have a soft spot for Cruel Intentions, so again, I might just be showing my biases but Phillippe and Witherspoon had chemistry for daaaaaaays. (and the Joey Tribbianni theory where heat onscreen does not equal heat offscreen was apparently disproven here.) And I think he's just better suited to play both sides. I buy him both as smarmy, manipulative, entitled asshole AND someone who Annette would ultimately let her guard down around.

Scream 3 is easily the weakest in the series for me but the climax is still pretty fun. The line "Oh why don't you stop your whining and get on with it? I've heard this shit before! You know why you kill people, Roman, do you? Because you choose to, there is no one else to blame! Why don't you take some fucking responsibility!?" makes up for a lot of sins. I just feels so good to hear and it's aged better than it was probably ever intended to.

I might just be projecting but I think we're beyond what Walt Disney used to call "the plausible impossible" and audiences are finding it alienating. And I've said this before and I'll say it again, I think the multiverse in general just makes me not care about the outcome of any given conflict. Why should I care if this version of Kang is defeated in Ant-Man and another version is defeated on Loki because there is literally an infinite number of them, any one of which could emerge at any time?

Yes about The Americans! I said the same thing when I saw Matthew Rhys, Kerri Russell, and Margot Martindale. And to your point about Ray Liotta's character: "I'm tired of watching my kid's kid!" For a Saturday matinee, my theater was pretty full too. And it looked like a decent cross section of ages as well. This makes me happy. I had so much fun with this movie. It's such a great example of everyone knowing what type of movie they were making and excelling at it. So far, this is this year's Bullet Train for me. I'm happy for Elizabeth Banks after the financial disaster that was the most recent Charlie's Angels. I'm also glad they went hard R here with the violence and language because then I don't think it would have been as fun. (Although, that much cocaine depiction probably put them there regardless.) My theater also seemed to like the ambulance scene the best with the standoff at the gazebo coming in second. But the line of the movie was probably "You got a dusty beaver here." "I know, I'm working on it." Margot Martindale is a national treasure. (My second favorite line from her was "I'm wearing boots.") I understand this movie won't be for everyone, but if the trailer looks like your thing it's a recommend.

I went back reawtched the scene and you're right. Even so, the conclusion still feels very muddled to me and some of it misplaced. In a vacuum that moment in the parking lot is aces though.

For me it should have been Infinity War but I couldn't complain about a Winter Soldier nomination either.

I watched this again last night for the first time since seeing it in the theater. I still really enjoyed it and I think what you get from the cast is worth the price of admission alone. (I feel like in a different year, Stephanie Hsu would be a run away best supporting actress winner) That said, its biggest flaw for me is still that the last 45 minutes or so suffers a bit under its own weight. Instead of condensing its many morals, which by my count there were at least half a dozen, into 2 or 3, the final act feels very fractured and simply too long. And just when you feel like we've gotten to the lesson and should be wrapping things up something else comes along. I'd still root for this for best picture though. I think the good parts of it plus how audacious it is checks a lot of boxes for me personally. I just want it to be tighter and more focused. ETA: I also think the speech that Evelyn gives to Joy about all the infinite universes and the one Evelyn chooses to be in is the one with Joy would have been more powerful had she delivered it to Waymond. Throughout the movie, we never see Evelyn resent Joy and Joy is the one thing that Evelyn continually tries to protect. So other than telling Joy something that maybe she needed to hear, it feels like the wrong closure to that arc. Evelyn had some things to learn about her relationship with her daughter, but life without her wasn't one of them. On the other hand, it's Waymond, their marriage, and their business that Evelyn takes for granted. And it's Waymond and his kind hearted nature that Evelyn has to learn to appreciate. So it seems more fitting that that speech should be reserved for him.