The Last Movie You Watched

[arewethereyet]

I am not a big movie watcher but last night I needed a diversion.  I want my time and money back that I wasted on 'Barbie'.  It's not like I thought it was going to solve life's mysteries for me or anything but I didn't really find it entertaining...other than seeing Barbies from my childhood.  Yeah, that's a one and done for me.  Back to how-tos on the True Crime channels for me.

[Modern Atheism]

I watched Kingdom of the planet of the apes and was kind of dissapointed. I could get into specifics but it could spoil the movie for some.

[Silver]

Nice Girls

Léo's brother Ludo is killed in Hamburg. Despite orders, she partners with German cop Mélanie to investigate. Unbeknownst to them, Nice faces a threat and they share an unknown connection.

[Rev. Rye]

This week, the latest fit of the Deep Hurting Project ends with Pressure Point, a film that manages to make James Bond-style espionage look boring as fuck.

• Huh. This Chilean diplomat likes Wisconsin supper clubs. Why not?
  
• Frankly, if this guy's supposed to be Chilean, then I'm Gustavo Fring.
  
• Dude is a  Chilean diplomat and he can't even pronounce his own country's name?
  
• Frankly, I have to admit: putting a bomb in a birthday cake sounds like a bit of an inefficient way of assassinating a public figure. You want a better way to kill a diplomat with a cake? Just watch Gloomy Sunday. It's also on Tubi, and even if it is about both Nazism in Hungary AND a song that's basically the Anti-Life Equation, it's probably going to still be more fun than this movie.
  
• They made a snowmobile work instantly after it had been buried in snow for fuck knows how long?
  
• So, why not just pardon the guy if you need him so fucking bad?
  
• Why is this prison break so underwhelming? Just cut some wires, tap one guard on the head, and he's out, and lying in a garbage truck.
  
• Hey, do you mind turning it down, man? Wallace Shawn and a bunch of other actors are making Vanya on 42nd Street on the other side of this theater!
  
• Vermont rednecks?   And they're dumb enough to not notice when he went behind a door? 
  
• Why is this explosives guy a cross between Jerry Lewis and a taller version of Billy Barty?
  
• And they didn't even follow through on the diplomatic handwave that makes people not care about Della being missing?
  
• We're almost two-thirds of the way into this film and we're  only just now being let in on the whole "right-wing cabal" thing? 
  
• These right-wingers actually care about things like an antiquated education system, decaying infrastructure, violence, and wealth inequality? Well, someone clearly picked the wrong horse.
  
• Okay, here's a better 1990s action movie about a man trying to stop a right-wing militia group: Arlington Road. It's not streaming at the moment, but you should be able to find it on DVD. 
  
• So, they're going to blow up the Congressional Office Building? Which one?  Because there's six of them.
  
• And the boss betrayed him? They bailed him out just to make him another patsy in a case, even though he's already been in a supposedly maximum-security prison? 
  
• Fucking Hell, he just had to remove the cluster of wires from the bomb? 
  

The Deep Hurting Project Will Return... either when suitably horrible films have been added to my streaming services or when TVTropes' So Bad It's Horrible page updates with new works that are already on streaming.

[Nanny]

American Hustle (2013) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Hustle - Filmed, in part, in Worcester, MA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worcester,_Massachusetts where I grew up) my main interest was seeing familiar places like the Worcester Art Museum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worcester_Art_Museum ), Union Station (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Stat...achusetts)), Front Street, the Hanover Theater (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanover_Th...rming_Arts), Telegram and Gazette building (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegram_%26_Gazette) , Worcester police department HQ, etc.. The places are represented well by this quirky dark comedy. Big ups to Wormtowne!

The opening scroll says that some of this actually happened. A fat Christian Bale with a terrible comb-over plays a hustler with his partner Amy Adams. They run a bait and switch investment scam, get caught by an FBI agent played by Bradley Cooper, and get pressured to assist with corruption investigations into local, and then national politicians.

The film avoids the tropes of the undercover, wire-wearing snoop motif by diving into 1970's vibes. Loud prints, velvet jackets, big long American cars, period music, hair curlers, all give the sense of time and place. The humor comes at Bale's character's expense, who never manages to keep his head above the chaos around him. His overbearing wife (Jennifer Lawrence) is the foil, constantly mucking up the works leaving the Bale character looking ridiculous even though he is the mastermind of the sting. Cooper over acts. Jeremy Renner wears a funny wig. Louis CK gets abused (I admit it felt nice to see his character being bullied!). Absurdity abounds in this odd entertaining film that makes Worcester, MA shine.

[Mister Agenda]

I caught Alien: Romulus over the weekend. The music was scary on its own. Featured a conflicted synthetic. Lots of face-huggers. Industrial atmosphere. Gave me ideas for an rpg scenairio. Implications of self-injecting bug juice not explored. I hesitate to try a more nuanced critique because my tastes are low-brow, it thought it was scary, derivative fun, a formula that can be relied on to deliver.

[MR. Macabre 666]

Hell House II - The Abbadon Hotel. There's a total of 4 movies in this series, and they're some of the best "found footage" horror films out there, especially the first one , Hell House LLC. The fourth one goes into the origin and history of the Abbadon Hotel, where the first 3 take place over a period of several years. Number 4 takes place at Carmichael Manor, a home where the entire family had been murdered or had completely disappeared.

I'd recommend all but the third movie, it has its moments, but the last 5-10 minutes are ridiculously bad, with some of the worst CGI I've ever seen.

[Nanny]

I caught Alien: Romulus over the weekend. The music was scary on its own. Featured a conflicted synthetic. Lots of face-huggers. Industrial atmosphere. Gave me ideas for an rpg scenairio. Implications of self-injecting bug juice not explored. I hesitate to try a more nuanced critique because my tastes are low-brow, it thought it was scary, derivative fun, a formula that can be relied on to deliver.

This one is on my list and a possible theater visit. I loved the first two Alien films and this one looks to be in the same vibe. Thanks for no spoilers!

[Silver]

Incoming

Four freshmen navigate the terrors of adolescence at their first-ever high school party.

[Gwaithmir]

A lesbian love story with a very sad ending.