I think it was the third Matrix.

Girl, Interrupted. Hadn't seen it in many years.

This week in the Deep Hurting Project:  Sunday School Musical, the Asylum's attempt at appeasing both idiots who liked the High School Musical franchise and idiots who liked the burgeoning trend of crappy Christian movies.

• The opening of this movie is strange: it's a test pattern and an ear-piercing sine wave for a minute exactly. Then, there's a card that states some of the technical info, and then the movie proper starts a minute and 30 seconds in.
  
• Why does this seem like the most generic contest information I've ever heard in a movie?
  
• I've heard that one of the most notable flaws in the movie is that the only choirs that sound decent are the ones with black people. And they make it clear that this is going to be the case 10 minutes in. The diverse choir has a semi-energetic take on "This Little Light of Mine," but the white choir does a round that's just barely listenable and they get into the competition despite them looking like they barely even give a shit.
  
• And those kids barely seem to give a shit about their single mom losing her job. Zachary only seems to give a shit when it means he might have to move to another part of town.
  
• And why do they have two clearly separate scenes on the rooftop right next to each other? And, for whatever reason, I thought that, instead of randomly dancing, he'd re-enact this scene from Fearless
  
  
  
• Wait, they're suddenly making this into a proper musical 16 minutes in? And is that girl blaming him for the fact that he has to move, even though his mother has no job? What a bitch!
  
• And about that shortening, here's an easier way: keep it in the fridge, make  a note of the markings, and cut it with a knife. Also, this is where I referencing a better movie would have helped. They're bickering about the proper way to crack an egg when the movie Sabrina settled that debate 50 years prior:
  
  
  
• Huh. Now he goes to school at the same motel MLK was shot at.
  
• ... If Zack could take a bus to his old apartment building just so he could mope on the rooftop, why couldn't he just take the bus to participate in his old school choir?
  
• You're doing Bio homework? In an Evangelical Christian school? It doesn't matter, you're fucked anyway. 
  
• You know what'd be a better symbolic way of getting rid of your troubles? Make a meat pie, pretend the meat is your adversaries, watch them bake, and assume power over them when you eat them. It worked when I first read Joe vs. Elan School.
  
• Okay, now I wish I'd watched a documentary on Leonardo's "Last Supper."
  
• Oh, my fucking God, there's zero discipline with this choir, many of them are off pitch, all are off time, and the ones that aren't are just lip-syncing very poorly. It's like that fucking cover of "Imagine" if everybody was singing at the same time.
  
• And a new random non-conflict in this movie, apparently Zack is developing astigmatism. 
  
• I know from personal experinece that those railings above the men's room stalls might not be capable of holding a kid's weight.
  
• The lip-sync in this film is so shit that I can barely tell whether the characters are supposed to be singing them or if it's just in their heads like in Quadrophenia.
  
• Also, is it just me (he who likes the Langley School Music Project and "Gassenhauer") that this musical number barely makes any use of the Orff xylophone that's in the music room?
  
• Is Miles deluded or is he literally tone-deaf? If the latter, why the fuck is he in the choir. 
  
• Well, technically, it was probably the washer that shrunk her shirt.
  
• God will only put as much on your plate as you can handle? A doctrine ripped off from the Stoics and slapped onto a belief system that repudiates the main reason it worked.
  
• Love and Unity. What do they mean? Are they a foreshadowing of the idea that both of the choirs from the beginning are going to merge so they can compete?
  
• Also, I can't help but notice that their sermon on Colossians 3 misses "Meekness" when they listed the virtues Christians should clothe themselves in.
  
• At least their performance of "Christ Be My Leader" has some discipline now. 
  
• Why would you join the rival choir? Because your old church can no longer afford to send you to the State competition and this is the only way you can follow your dream?
  
• She's too shy to sing. Why the fuck is she part of the choir?
  
• Somehow,  I'm only just now noticing that Zack's speaking voice clearly doesn't match his singing voice.
  
• How is that other choir "three-time winner" material? Is it that their pianist can somehow make a Hammond Organ sound like a Fender Rhodes piano?
  
• So, in all their attempts at justifying merging the two choirs, is there a reason they can't just explain that Hawthorne Choir is no more?
  
• Why is there a guy in military garb there? Is that Zack's dad that got mentioned an hour ago and never since then?
  
• And, alas, those girls who did kicks high enough to have their skirts twirl up were wearing underwear.
  
• Wow. They're supposed to be the sort of choir that rubs their three-year winning streak in everybody's faces, but the one time they're supposed to do anything, they decide they need to give their award to the combined choir.
  

Given that it's close to the end of the month, it's a bit early to decide what next week's movie, but it will be Sci-Fi. In more immediate terms, though, I'm going to give you a hint as to the next movie I'm going to watch: "I'm Harley Quinn, I'm impetuous, I give people footjobs at random!"

Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla.

This week in the Deep Hurting Project: 2025: A World Enslaved By a Virus. I can remember taking on Songbird when I got the first vaccine and hoped this would mean the plague would soon be over. But, because there's a huge minority of people who don't give a shit, it looks like the plague is here to stay. And so are movies fearmongering about it.

• And we're off to a bad start with an infodump that's not only blatantly unrealistic (a world Communistic state that's banned Christianity forming in the span of four years?), it's told in shitty grammar.
  
• This introductory car chase is strange. It reminds me of The Matrix, but the director has none of the visual flair.
  
• Yeah, I miss when we could still go outside without a mask or a lanyard that tells the world I'm triple-vaccinated, but the fact remains that this isn't my call; it's the virus' call.
  
• "Peace, love, and ice cream."
  
• Yes, they sold us a deadly virus. One that's killed a bit shy of 6 million people in the last two years. And, in the US, it has a seven-day average of 2,571 deaths per day, more than any other cause of death.
  
• The legal code of Germany is small enough to fit in a small booklet? Okay, for the record, let's just get this out of the way. This movie was made in Germany, and they shot it in English, and it looks  like they got actors who could barely act in their native tongue and had them talking in a language that isn't their own.
  
• You know, I wonder what these people think about the BLM movement if they're this concerned about when the government is going to lock up Christians.
  
• No, this can't be true that you're the only Christians. Or that they became silent. In fact, they ended up taking their platforms and deciding, "You know what, why should I try and alleviate the suffering of others?" At least, that's what happened in America.
  
• And their means of finding other Christians is to graffiti tag buildings with Fish symbols.
  
• That's an unusually high ratio of milk to cereal, Bruce.
  
• I just noticed that the former Marine has a Fashy haircut. Kind of concerning, especially given that this film was made in Germany.
  
• And he balks at the prospect of swearing to a new constitution because they don't swear to anyone but God? Is he a Jehovah's Witness?
  
• And insert a remark about how they're complaining about how the government's monitoring them while gladly buying iPhones, and Microsoft laptops that have the technology to record you when you don't want to be recorded, and sell your private data to everybody under the sun. Or going on Google, which has almost certainly collected an amount of info on you that's stupefying.
  
• What did Corona do to Jesus? Nothing. To be fair, he died a bit less than 2 millennia before the plague started.
  
• Spray-painting the leaf-covered sidewalk? What the fuck's even the point of that?
  
• What's German for "Can you spare some cutter, me brothers?"
  
• This could just be me, the former Christian with an encyclopedic knowledge of random shit, but do they need to research what the Christian Fish symbols mean?
  
• This not-Lis Salander hacker girl sounds like an even worse actor and English speaker than the rest of the cast so far.
  
• Some filmmakers can pull off filming at night, letting you know what's going on even when it's supposed to be pitch-black outside and the lights are off. Michael Mann is a good example. The Wesele brothers are not among them.
  
• You know, the protagonist has a good point about how we haven't learned from our past. Germany has had two notorious dictatorships within living memory, and somehow, they don't borrow from either the Nazis or the DDR. Hell, the police interrogation scene from the beginning would have been a good place to mimic the Stasi, or at least The Lives of Others.
  
• Why are there these random shots of him on a Cherry Picker even though he's speaking from an empty amphitheatre?
  
• They reached their goal because they're  in heaven? So, they're admitting they're a death cult?
  
• Bible verses encouraging other bible verses?
  
• You know, I don't know if the COVID pandemic is supposed to still be raging in this movie, but if it's still out killing people like it is now, this army guy has a damn good point in wanting to curb their growth.
  
• So, remember when I took on If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? and they had a scene where Christians (despite being illegal under whatever Commu-Nazi regime that's supposed to rule in that movie) decide to hold worship services where they loudly sing in the middle of a fucking meadow? I think this movie manages to one-up that one, because they do so under a campfire under a regime where not only Christianity is illegal, but meetings in general are also illegal.
  
• It's fucking strange how much the countryside of Germany looks like the moors of Scotland. And that reference to Braveheart in the speech has kind of solidified this connection in me. Or maybe just the moors of Yorkshire.
  
• Have these idiots not known about leaderless resistance?
  
• So, they have to swear to the new constitution every day? I still can't remember the film this reminds me of; I remember some movie about the Hollywood Blacklist and HUAC where they mention that the guy's refused to take a loyalty oath, and he says "do you think that if I were a Communist, I would hesitate for a second to say that oath?" I've been wanting to identify that movie for years, but I'm still no closer to the answer than I was when the world ended. I thought it was in Advise and Consent and the guy was Henry Fonda, but I watched it a while back and that scene wasn't there.
  
• You have to swear to the Constitution every morning? Well, that's going to be hard for me, since I'm barely functional in the mornings.
  
• You know, as much as I love physical media (like, I got six DVDs and Blu-Rays at Half-Price Books yesterday), maybe having such an emphasis on sending out hard copies of your materials is hobbling the growth of your movement. Maybe you should try streaming or peer-to-peer filesharing.
  
• You don't have values anymore, given how much the Evangelical right has given up pretty much every virtue that Christ would have stood for in life because they decided they like Trump better, that's another legit point.
  
• That song about a wedding is a bit of an overbearing choice for a scene where the main male and female leads decide that they might actually love each other.
  
• You know, I haven't watched After Last Season yet, but what little I've seen suggests this movie took some cues from that movie's set design.
  
• And their livestreamed mass covers the Last Supper. Heavy-handed symbolism that the main characters are going to get killed in the remaining 15 minutes or a sign this takes place during a particularly dreary March or April? You make the calll.
  
• Has the supply chain shit the bed that bad that they have to use their own piss instead of wine?
  
• And the main character is basically Jesus, but they at least had the sense to not have his arms stretched out like he was being crucified, if only because they cut to black before they fired the last shot.
  

And going on Wheel of Names to check and see which Comedy I should do next week, it looks like we can look to Joe Piscopo: A Night at Club Piscopo.

(January 23, 2022 at 8:48 pm)Lobster Lover Wrote: I think it was the third Matrix.

There is no third Matrix movie.

Also, there is no second Matrix movie.

Furthermore, this new Matrix movie coming out... does not exist.

[That's how I have come to see things anyway. Matrix is an excellent movie, but a failed franchise. The Animatrix was good. But that's about it.]

Okay, after looking over the list of films eligible for the Project, I realised I spun the wheel for the wrong genre. So, next week's going to be a youth film, and it's going to be Bible Town, not that Joe Piscopo special.

I saw Moonfall yesterday. Aside from the occasional scientific innacurracy and plot hole, it was an enteraining watch with lots of action and a grand premise.