The Last Movie You Watched

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

'Project Power'.

A shadowy organization produces a pill that gives you super powers for five minutes.  Trouble is, there's no telling what that super power could be and - in a few cases - the drug simply kills you. Jamie Foxx as an ex-US Ranger trying to put a stop to the drug (and find his daughter, kidnapped by the drug people) teams up with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, a local cop who uses the drug to help him catch bad guys who are also using it.

A good idea not very well executed, but still a bit of mindless fun.

5/10

Boru

[Rev. Rye]

And now, the first film in the Deep Hurting Project to appear in my new Blu-Ray player: Bigger Fatter Liar, the sequel remake of the 2002 kids' film Big Fat Liar, and it's another of those sequels that went ahead despite having almost nobody from the original except two of the producers involved. And, unlike Daddy Day Camp, it doesn't even try to have continuity with the original film. I'm not really a fan of the original, but I was intrigued by the fact that this sequel remake I never knew existed suddenly appeared on the TVTropes So Bad It's Horrible/Film page. And it turned out the DVD was available at the library.

• Jesus God, this kid has a system of levers and pulleys just to get his pants on.
  
• Why would this kid's grade be threatened by a phone to his father? Why not just go for the plagiarism checker?
  
• Is he hand-writing computer code? Why? The rules said "no internet." Not "no computer." And there's no word processor that requires the internet.
  
• If he's forbidden from using his car, and is being punished, why doesn't one of his parents just drive him? And why settle for just putting a sign saying "remember, no car" and not just, I dunno, taking the damn keys from him?
  
• For the record, the corrupt executive who stole the kid after he invited him into a limo to steal his homework is played by Barry "Asshole" Bostwick.
  
• So, where did this crowd of people watching him faking his injury come from?
  
• So, I guess this is the worst homage to Sergio Leone I've ever seen in a film, with a lawyer-friendly version of the theme from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, accompanied with a Vertigo zoom, though the sepia tinting is an admittedly nice touch.
  
• So, this summer computer class is limited to a text-based OS, and he's somehow able to use it to text his friend (I'm not sure if this is possible), and he still somehow gets a pop-up ad for this new video game app.
  
• ... aaw, Jodelle Ferland's in a Yoga class and we don't even get to see her feet. And unlike Amanda Bynes in the original film, she's actually of age.
  
• You know, you could have just done this to get into Barry "Asshole" Bostwick's office:
  
  
  
• And somehow, Barry "Asshole" Bostwick gives his character some legit depth instead of an admittedly hammy man on a power trip, by making him a bitter executive who wanted to be a CEO and not the head of an division he dislikes and a window overlooking a red brick wall.
  
• And honestly, given that he's the head of the electronics division, which he hates, why would Barry "Asshole" Bostwick make this the hill to die on, and claim he worked on it? And the fact that he doesn't do this
  
  
  and limits the damage to just saying "you can't prove that" just makes the decision to escalate this into a war a bit less credible.
• And the kid decides to rack up money on Wolfe's credit cards, and he tells his friend about this in front of these manicurists. And frankly, the fact that Jodelle repeatedly points out that he's doing wrong makes it all the more glaring that he's far less likable than Frankie Muniz.
  
• If he's talking about My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, the Christmas special wouldn't happen until the year after this was released. Yes, it is a good show. Admittedly, I didn't bother with the fourth season on for reasons largely related to Hasbro really tightening the screws on YouTube, but what I saw was still good.
  
• Leaving the smoothie machine on? How is that a good idea that'll help evade detection?
  
• And the decision to dye Barry "Asshole" Bostwick's skin is definitely yet another change for the worse. In the original movie, Paul Giamatti's skin is turned blue and his hair orange. It's a unique look that helps make the movie memorable and in the slightly less than two decades since I watched the original for the first time, this was the only part I remembered.
  
  
  In this case, they just dyed his face white and the front part of his hair green (not even the whole thing, just the front part, because the rest is burgundy for some reason), which just makes him look like he's a tenth of the way into working on a Cesar Romero Joker cosplay (or Grandpa Munster, maybe) Looking at the DVD cover, I was set to expect a bit more, like his entire hair had been dyed green and his entire skin white, but somehow, watching the movie, it's even lazier. Also, the original version was scored to "Hungry Like the Wolf," and the new version is bookended by lawyer-friendly T. Rex (which, if the credits are accurate, is the actual band) and generic-sounding death metal. And apparently, he's also been given a clearly fake tonsure. And for a lot of Barry "Asshole" Bostwick's bad day, the two protagonists aren't even involved. And no new ultimatum happens until he gets kicked out of the sailor bar, and even then, it's not much.
• A hair metal band called Barnacle Bill and the Clams?
  
• A plea for tolerance that insinuates that his audience is fucking squids. And the fucking is used as a participle and not an intensifier.
  
• Promoting a game that doesn't exist? Must... not... make... Bandersnatch... joke...
  
• So, Barry "Asshole" Bostwick's tea gets spiked with a ghost pepper and when he drinks it, he demands water and drinks every possible liquid EXCEPT  water on the craft services table. And for whatever reason, they show him at the craft services on live TV. And the music is the worst fake Elvis I've heard since The Identical.
  
• And, surprisingly, by about two-thirds of the movie, he's (apparently) a broken man, finally willing to accept the bargain, something Paul Giamatti refuses to do until the climax of the film.  To be fair, he does refuse to hold up his side of the bargain, so once the game's properly coded, he reneges on his deal and the film can continue.
  
• Something I forgot to mention is that the Big Fat Liar game is repeatedly shown to be filled with bugs. So, why did he decide to steal the original code if it was that buggy? And why can't the programmers he has in his employ fix it? And how is this going to work if they're buggier and less functional than the average Digital Homicide game?
  
• Also, why was he in a residential neighbourhood in Columbus in the first place? It's not like he needed to scout locations like in the original.
  
• And the big revenge plan, which involves driving him (recklessly) to a secluded area in a way that looks like it could be a mob hit (made all the worse by the fact that the driver reminds me just enough of what I know of Russian Mafia and the fact that his final destination is on the path of an oncoming train), just looks like you're kicking an old man when he's down. And the twist that it was all a simulation in a stationary limo is probably the biggest Ass Pull I've seen in a film since Shut In. And it reminds me too much of the dumber parts of Kingsman for comfort.
  
• Oh, so the simulation led to a theater stage where Barry "Asshole" Bostwick is being humiliated in front of a bunch of people. So, it's more a kid's version of White Bear.
  
• Also, the original film is in the adults section, despite the main characters being middle schoolers, but the sequel with the protagonists in their later teens is in the youth section. Dafuq? 
  
• And why pad out the intro video with some of the stupider things we've seen him do when you could just cut to the chase and show the confession? To be fair, at least they somehow edited out the parts that revealed he thought he was going to be run over by a train.
  
• Um... Barry "Asshole" Bostwick, you're talking nonstop, and that kinda defeats the entire purpose of mime. And why is there a crowd gathered around him if he sucks so bad?
  
• On one last note, there's apparently a song called "Alien Smegma" on the soundtrack. Of this kid's movie.
  

[Sal]

An American Pickle (2020) - 6/10

Slightly bland comedy film, with touching notions of the importance of family.

[GrandizerII]

Watched Unhinged with my fiancee yesterday. A psycho-thriller movie starring Russell Crowe. It was intense the whole way through, and not one moment was boring. A lot of cliches though.

[Rev. Rye]

Probably going to watch this week's entry in the Deep Hurting Project tomorrow, but before I do, I also managed to get a Blu-ray of this anime in the mail today:



I can't put my finger on why, but it just seems like the perfect love story for me...

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I'm not sure what the last movie I watched will be. I'll have Boss Lady update you.

[Gwaithmir]

[Rev. Rye]

This week in the Deep Hurting Project: Fishtales. If you have a copy of the DVD, you'll notice one thing if you look at the back cover, with what appear to be the doodles Pixar animators created in the days after someone pitched Finding Nemo that never changed peacefully coexisting with fish that looks like live action. SO, basically, it's a ripoff of Finding Nemo that promises "Fun! Adventure! and Fish Facts!"

• Well, the animation looks like it's screensaver quality at best. Lip-sync is only slightly better than something like Trolland. One character, Olly the Octopus, looks at first glance like she's (yes, apparently she's a "she") hand-drawn, but it turns out it's just CGI.
  
• One of the strangest issues with this film is how shit the sound mixing is. The opening has a narrator and it's mostly drowned out by the music. There's a good chance that the music and sound effects might obscure parts of the dialogue. Not very good when the bulk of the movie is basically just one character narrating facts about sea creatures. 
  
• So, is that an anglerfish... swimming close to the ocean surface? I'd have used the Richie Cusack clip, but at least it turns out it's 
  
• Freshwater streams as part of the ocean?
  
• Yes, I'm currently 24 minutes in and it turns out that this is the plot: once Cleo the Anglerfish tries to inform a trusted adult Manta Ray named Crash that Olly the Octopus has apparently swim in the general direction of a shark, they decide to go on a journey (accompanied with a pufferfish who seems to speak in the sort of noises you hear on the other end of a phone in movies) and it almost entirely consists of them going to random stock footage of tropical fish with Cleo narrating facts about each species as it goes along, with Crash acting bizarrely oblivious to the point that she has to inform him that fish (like them) breathe through their gills and have scales. And every so often, they have to interact with one of these creatures, because they might know where Olly went. These characters they interact with are mostly CGI, except for the bizarrely long scene with the moray eel which consists of just a lot of stock footage that clearly keeps repeating. You know what? Fuck it, because I lived in the golden age of educational videos about nature, here's the Doring Kindersley Eyewitness video about fish.
  
  
  I'd have included an episode of Henry's Amazing Animals about fish, but it turns out that there was never an episode of that about fish.
• These jellyfish sting. Implying that there are jellyfish that don't? That's alarmingly irresponsible for something that's supposed to be educational. Granted, there are many whose sting is too mild to do anything to humans, but still.
  
• Fucking Hell, this is giving me so little to work with.
  
• How the fuck are we even getting these above-water images of the river?
  
• Why did Crash need to have "amphibian" explained to him when they encountered frogs and not when they found the sea snake half an hour earlier?
  
• And why are none of the three  protagonists dying in the fresh water?
  
• And why is Crash repeating the information Cleo just gave about koi?
  
• And why do these seagull look worse than the birds in Birdemic? Why couldn't they just use stock footage like the rest of the movie?
  
• Why does the footage of the ocean's surface look so much like it was shot above water?
  
• One of the tales the ocean holds? That was barely a tale! It's just a collection of trivia about sea creatures!
  

[chimp3]

Currently watching the biopic of Marie Curie "Radioactive" (She coined the term). Amazon. A Great history of the struggle of scientists, women in science. Poignant juxtapositions of the effects of her efforts - Cures for cancer, Hiroshima, Chernobyl. Presents her as a very strong minded person not shackled by her times.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Hangman (2017) Al Pacino, Karl Urban

Nothing to recommend it. Even good actors can’t save this boring, mindless, poorly plotted, childishly written piece of junk. Just awful from start to finish.

0/10

Boru