The Last Movie You Watched

[Gawdzilla Sama]

"Endgame" again. Good fight at the end. Still sorting out the time travel shit.

Tomorrow night: Godzilla, King of Monsters.

[Rev. Rye]

Back to Last Ounce of Courage:

• So, to compensate for the supposed ban on religion, the Christmas pageant is about aliens visiting Earth for the birth of a king and to get a pot of gold. Do the authors seriously have that little knowledge of the outside world that they think the only plays possible about Christmas are focused on the activity and the only way to write around a supposed ban on Christmas is to turn it into a ham-fisted play about aliens? No Christmas Carols or Night Before Christmases? You know what, I'll just leave this here. There are FIFTEEN plays based around Dickens' A Christmas Carol in this aggregate alone.
  
• At least they have some sort of lip service that Muslims and Jews and even Atheists should be allowed to do what they want to do, whether it's Hanukkah or whatever Muslim holiday is taking place around that time (I'm leaving this intentionally vague since the Muslim calendar only has 354 days per year, and thus, it's liable to change.)
  
• Operation Christmas. Seriously? What's the point of having a codename if it's not going to hide what's going to happen?
  
• Is it just me or does Madison look exactly like Laura Dern? Not as a kid, as a 40-year old. I just watched The Tale and I can't unsee it.
  
• A nativity scene on a private citizen's front lawn and a Christmas scene and a Christmas Tree on a courthouse lawn are entirely uncontroversial.
  
• No stations playing Christmas music... Here's something about Chicago: Starting in November, earlier than later, 93.9 WLIT goes from being a popular Adult Contemporary station to an All-Christmas-All-The-Fucking-Time station. It quickly becomes the #1 station in the Chicagoland area and it stays on top until the Christmas music stops on December 26. And bear in mind, Chicago is a pretty fucking blue city. Not only haven't we had a Republican mayor since 1931, the City Council has had exactly one Republican alderman since I was born. You can chalk that up to machine politics if you want, but even if that's true, that only furthers my point that this claim is fucking asinine.
  
• Goddamit, that trucker rapping over "We Three Kings" is giving me serious Saving Christmas flashbacks.
  
• Why is Columbus Day the go-to example of a non-controversial holiday? A holiday named after an Italian explorer who committed genocide against the natives of Hispaniola, and despite being credited as the discoverer of America, not only didn't discover it (Leif Erickson beat him to it half a millennium prior),  but didn't even set foot on the North American continent (though in his fourth voyage, he did spend some time covering the east coast of Central America looking for a passage to the Indian Ocean and briefly spent time on Panama's mainland), and insisted to his dying day that he didn't discover a new world (even after other explorers figured out this wasn't actually India).
  
• The cinematography reminds me of some of the shakier camera movements in a Lars von Trier movie, at least until it doesn't.
  
• Bob gets fired as mayor by the city council. This isn't possible. They can only be impeached or removed by a recall election (barring losing an election or resigning). They can't be removed this quickly.
  
• And that space play is a "historical look at our glorious beginnings?" I feel like I'm high right now. 
  
• So... at the end of the pageant, they show the soldier's last dispatch from Iraq/Afghanistan, a Christmas message to his wife and babies... which ends with him and his troop getting blown the fuck up. And this is viewed as a heartwarming reminder of how valuable freedom is and not just "what the fuck? Did these kids hijack this play about space aliens to show us a snuff film?" WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE. Scratch that, WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH AN AMERICA THAT THINKS THIS IS A GOOD THING?
  
• And, of course, somehow he heard it on the radio, despite it not being broadcast on the radio. God or mental illness? In these movies, is there even much of a difference?
  

[veoli]

The Green Mile 8/10

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

The Green Mile 8/10

That's one of the few Stephen King films that doesn't make me get up and find something else to do.

Boru

[Athene]

Half-watching Avengers: Endgame right now.

So far...so bad.

[EgoDeath]

Groundhog Day

Just watched it for the first time.

Eh, it was okay. People hype up mediocre 80s and 90smovies way too much.

[onlinebiker]

Groundhog Day

Just watched it for the first time.

Eh, it was okay. People hype up mediocre 80s and 90smovies way too much.

You have to watch it again tomorrow to get the full effect....

Lather, rinse, repeat.

[EgoDeath]

Groundhog Day

Just watched it for the first time.

Eh, it was okay. People hype up mediocre 80s and 90smovies way too much.

You have to watch it again tomorrow to get the full effect....

Lather, rinse, repeat.

So funny I forgot to laugh.

[Brian37]

A couple days ago I watched "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn" on TMC.

Of course the religious overtones bothered me. But it did reflect the struggle between being pragmatic and still accepting humans are flawed.

[Rev. Rye]

This week in the Deep Hurting Project: the only movie based on a Stephen King book to become part of the Project: Cell.

• And the credits are just a black box covering a large portion of an airport scene that may or may not be important. 
  
• John Cusack's appearance in this film is legitimately heartbreaking. He's a damn good actor reduced to Nicolas Cage levels of slumming it, and even though he's still making appearances in decent films (seriously, how the fuck did Love and Mercy not get a SINGLE fucking Oscar nomination?), most of the time, it looks like he's been relegated to Direct to Video shit. And he's not even acting crazy enough to justify the performances and doesn't seem to be in the sort of financial crisis that Cage has been in for the past decade plus to justify why he keeps doing shit like this. 
  
• And then the phone shit starts, and honestly, it's really hard to tell what's going on. All we know is one minute people are using their phones, the next minute, something happens. Something that causes convulsions and extreme violence. And a security guard starts eating his dog. And an Asian girl starts making noises like Frank Welker's rejected Abu noises while smashing her face against the side of a door. At least have some consistency in what's supposed to be happening. Honestly, I love a good zombie movie, but this ain't it.
  
• And seeing Samuel L. Jackson with John Cusack, I'm reminded of 1408. Apart from these actors and the source material coming from the same writer, they're honestly nothing alike. That film created a well-crafted little tale of horror bilked out of a room and just one actor, slowly building up the terror out of a fucking Carpenters tune. This film starts with some crazy shit that's so chaotic it fails to be compelling in its scariness.
  
• Walking on train tracks... on an electrified subway track. This can't be good.
  
• Somehow, they make the sight of a zombie horde walking the streets of Boston boring as all Hell. And even as Cusack, Jackson, and some girl are just chilling in their apartment with the zombies at the front stoop, it's honestly dull. They don't even snipe at the zombies, like that Cracked article I read like a decade ago suggested So, of course, they decide to move. 
  
• Good fucking God, those zombie's calls are like Ear rape. And why do we have at least two scenes of them just shambling around 30 minutes in?
  
• Okay, it turns out that the Trololo song does have a purpose: music somehow keeps the zombies asleep. And why that fucking song? And why are they transmitting the signals playing it?
  
  
  
• Well, at least Samuel L. Jackson's quoting Psalm 40:13-15 (NIV specifically), he limits his additions to “For here lies the dead, the dust of the earth.” At least there's no interpolation from a Sonny Chiba movie. And I had to hunt to find where that line came from. Good on ya, Stephen King.
  
  
  
• "It's too early to know the rules," even though they've spent a lot of time trying to figure out those rules, and may have found some headway. 
  

You know what, fuck it, I'm going to stop here for now. See you tomorrow.