The Last Movie You Watched

[Rev. Rye]

This week in the Deep Hurting Project is the Dinesh D'Souza "documentary" Hilary's America, and just looking into the opening credits, you know it's going to suck. You start off with D'Souza sitting in a tux at a piano, giving a touch of class to the movie (at least if you ignore his Colbert-like voice), and he introduced a band playing "Happy Days are Here Again," while cutout images of racism juxtaposed with imagery from the Democratic Party, up to and including equating it for the Confederacy. Um, Dinesh, which party has been fighting tooth and nail to maintain a positive image of the Confederacy? Which party has maintained a lock on the former Confederate states since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1965? Which party recently had a high-profile Senate candidate recently claim that America was last great when we still had slavery (admittedly, after the film was released)?

Some highlights of the first ten minutes of stupidity:

• The movie starts with D'Souza relating the story about how he turned out to be the only American dumb enough to violate campaign law, even though there are a myriad of ways to legally bribe them with an unlimited amount of money. Something he admits. For the third time in the Deep Hurting Project's history, I ask:
  
  
  
  
• It is somehow unacceptable for the president to "reward a dictatorial regime." Even though the US has done this constantly; just to nations the US actually likes.
  
• Obama is terrible for doubling the national debt, but Dubya and Reagan, who've both increased it by a higher percentage, get a free pass.
  
• The rise of ISIS somehow has nothing to do with Bush's War on Terror that led to a lot of Middle Easterners to have many legitimate grievances with the US.
  
• If you make a film criticising Obama, he will send you up the river on trumped up charges. Somehow, the dozens of films criticizing Bush, from the documentaries who called him out directly, to comedy films who made films that treated him as a buffoon, were left untouched.
  

Later shit:

• Does he seriously think people think FDR founded the Democratic Party? And not Thomas Jefferson? Seriously, with all the complicated views on slavery you can mangle, made all the more public with the success of Hamilton, where he's the main non-Burr antagonist of Act II, making hay of his slave-fucking would seem like fish in a barrel, so why not do it.
  
• And notice that his understanding of the public opinion of Andrew Jackson, he's about 40+ years out of date. The consensus has become pretty clear that, whatever positives he may have had, he was probably the most morally bankrupt President of all time. At least until our current President, who, well...
  
  
• To be fair, there was a National Republican party that opposed Andrew Jackson, so this is far less stupid than I thought. That said, I strongly suspect he's blatantly overestimating the goodness of that faction. This was, after all, the faction that supported John Quincy Adams, and put him into the presidency with the lowest margin of victory until Rutherford Hayes and Donald Trump
  
• Slavery was a form of theft? And that was the worst thing about it?
  
• While Stephen Douglas was pretty pro-slavery as Dinesh mentions, he still did whatever he could to prevent secession after it was clear he would lose to an anti-slavery candidate and the South wanted to secede.
  
• No Republican ever owned slaves? Not quite.
  
• All Suffragettes were Republicans? Even the ones outside of America?
  
• The Klan was not the military wing of the Democratic Party any more than The Proud Boys are the military wing of today's Republicans.
  
• They cover the lynching of Sam Hose, and focus on Ida B. Wells and never mention the crucial influence it had on W.E.B. du Bois.
  
• Obama did nothing to change the plantation-like nature of the inner cities. Somehow the fact that so little has changed has nothing to do with the Republican party shutting down discussion on not just any change, but damn near anything.
  
• Okay, in the 1920s, lynching was apparently taboo in the Democratic Party, requiring a more eugenical approach, but in the 1930s, refusing to allow change on the lynching issue was vital for the New Deal. Something about this does not fit. Given that Margaret Sanger, far from wishing to exterminate the black race, was actually pretty damn non-bigoted for her era, it's clear to see what the problem is.
  
• In the category of shooting fish in a barrel and still missing, there's Saul Alinsky. You could claim he was some nefarious political mind, which would certainly fit in the sort of narrative you're trying to push, and the most damning thing we see him do was ripping off automats for a fucking nickel. Good fucking God, Chapo made a lot of hay over this shit alone. Line I'm far too Goyish to ever get away with: "How is it stealin' if they have th' noive to charge a quarter for a sandwich? Such bad food, and so little of it!" Actually a nickel, but still.
  

Miscellaneous bits of stupidity:

• The prison scenes look like they were filmed in an empty warehouse. Seriously, I don't know how much money went into the Em City set for Oz, but no matter how much, they clearly did a lot more with it.
  
• We've got a Californian prisoner pronouncing it "IN-shurns" and not "in-SUR-ance."
  
• Also, Larry David must have been hit with hard times, since it looks like he's living in the shitty parts of Chicago.
  
• I really don't want to dive deep into the Dinesh D'Souza oeuvre, but was he seriously that ignorant that the racism was originally promulgated by the Democratic Party before Goldwater, before he went to prison? I get the feeling that the ideas he's treating as a major post-prison revelation were all shit he knew and talked about before.
  
• Also, Dinesh can somehow go into the restricted areas of a museum and fuck with which exhibits go on display with total impunity.
  
• The Klan scene is projected in The White House in the Wilson Era, and it's apparently scored with "Un bel dì vedremo" despite there being no live or pre-recorded soundtrack to the film (also, I watched the Kino version with the original score years ago, and I don't think Puccini was part of it; Grieg, yes, but no Puccini) and also, I'm fairly certain they didn't have a print where the Klan rode off the screen. 
  
• LBJ was almost unrecognisable without him whipping out Jumbo.
  

Overall, Dinesh is taking the same fallacy and running it into the ground: Democrats of the 1800s were racists, therefore Democrats of the modern day are also racists. Meanwhile, the Republicans of the 1800s were pro-civil rights, so modern Republicans are pro-minority. Well, it's nice to see that the Republicans are taking back the total rejection of historical context in terms of moral standards from the left-wing Social Media Hiveminds. There's a lot of horseshit I did not bring up and dissect specifically because it would be doing the same damn thing over and over and I really don't want this to be as repetitive as the movie is.

You know what, it's pretty late, and I want to go to bed. So, I'll just leave it here. If there's any more stupid shit in the last 36 minutes of the film I can talk about (and no doubt there will be), I'll cover it tomorrow. And now that it looks like my second genre cycle through the list is done, maybe I'll revisit the Deep Hurting Project Awards and update them (some stay the same, some change, and some new categories get added.)

[Cod]

Watched Missing Link at the Trafford centre cinema yesterday, took my young nephew. He said it was really good, I kept nodding off. From the bits I saw it looked okay but it wasn't as funny as I expected it to be. Think my nephew was being polite.

[Rev. Rye]

You got your Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson T-shirt on? You got the time enough to watch one of the shittiest movies ever released to theatres? Well, tough titty, because we're going to take on the last third of Dinesh D'Souza's Hilary's America.

More shit:

• Obama's reading of Dreams from My Father is synched up with a younger actor saying the same words for no reason.
  
• Barack Obama Sr comes to his son's classroom to call himself "AMAHN FROM AFREECA" and talk about nothing else. 
  
• One thing I forgot to mention first time around was that, for all his grandstanding about racism in this film, well, it turns out he's got some really dodgy views on race. In his days at the Dartmouth Review, he published an interview with a KKK leader accompanied with a lynched black man, and also this monstrosity: "Dese boys be sayin' that we be comin' here to Dartmut an' not takin' the classics. You know, Homa, Shakesphere; but I hea' dey all be co'd in da ground, six feet unda, and whatchu be askin' us to learn from dem?" In 1995, he published a book called The End of Racism which argued that systemic racism was extinct, so it was okay to eliminate the parts of the Civil Rights Act of 1965 that applied to private companies. Also, it went over plantation stereotypes that supposedly still applied, like this was Mam's Law if Manderlay was actually not a cynical commentary on race relations in America. And last year, he retweeted messages with hashtags like #gasthejews and #bringbackslavery. A bit hypocritical, if you ask me.
  
• While I'm on it, his prison term? It was spending eight months' worth of nights at a halfway house. 
  
• Oh, no, Bill Clinton downplaying dictators' human rights abuses after he's out of office! And making money over it! Could you imagine if a sitting president did that? Like Trump does with literally every dictator he comes in contact with?
  
• Hilary's laughing at a rape victim. I'll just leave this here. TL;DR, she was laughing at the absurdity of the whole thing (biased towards the perpetrator as it was), not at the victim's plight. And here's something about Benghazi. And bear in mind, I'm not a big fan of Hilary Clinton, and I only voted for her in the 2016 Presidential election because I knew the alternative was horrible. And they've proved it.
  
• And to sum up everything: it's a textbook example of psychological projection spread out over 106 minutes and 15 seconds. Dinesh spends all this time trying to dig up dirt on the Democrats, and conveniently ignores that, while he was making this horseshit, Donald Trump, the Republican frontrunner, was becoming the most racist major party Presidential candidate since George Wallace. 
  
• Also, the movie ends with three music videos, from a version of "God Bless America," a strange adaptation of "The Star Spangled Banner," and a country song.
  

---

Now that I've gone through my second genre cycle through the Deep Hurting Project, I've decided I'm going to update my list of dishonours.

The Deep Hurting Project Awards:

Returning Awards, because this cycle didn't up the ante (though it very well may in future cycles):

• Most Brain-Breaking:Highlander 2. This film may have the most plot holes of any film I've seen with the possible exception of Battlefield Earth, which is ineligible for the award to give others a fighting chance. 
  
• Most Reprehensible: Vaxxed. Nuff Said.
  
• Best Worst Movie: Guardians. Probably the first film I've watched for the project that I'd seriously consider buying if I found a copy at Half-Price Books. And it's so absurd in how badly it apes the current crop of Superhero movies. The Bratz film is ineligible for this award to give others a fighting chance.
  
• Megatron Award for Bad Comedy: Bio-Dome. This may change with the other ten comedies in the list, especially if Holmes and Watson is really as bad as everyone says it is.
  

Updated Awards:

• Most Frustrating experience as a viewer: Hilary's America now beats out Jem and the Holograms, because unlike the latter film, I actually know shit about the source material. And it's jaw-dropping how much stupid he packs into this film and how much basic shit he
  
• Worst Overall Film: United Passions. Possibly the worst film I've ever seen that I'm at least comfortable with calling a movie. Not sure yet, but a very good candidate for worst film of all time. This has been merged with the dullest film because, honestly, a horrible film that at least makes you think is better than one that's fucking boring.
  
• The The Eye Creatures Award for Just Not Caring (formerly Most Stunningly Incompetent): Stranded. It's an incredibly stupid ripoff of Alien played dead serious and filmed on a budget so low that a robotic booklight plays the part of a high-tech space communicator. Thank Jah Christian Slater found Mr. Robot.
  

New Awards:

• Most Generic piece of shit: Getaway. Not even a scene where not-Henry Kissinger tells Ethan Hawke to drive his stunt car down some public steps can save this movie from being boring. 
  
• Most Damn Faint Praise: The Love Guru. This had a heavy reputation to live up to, and, much to my surprise, it wasn't total cancer. There were occasional saving graces. Very occasional. At least Mike Myers wasn't doing Brownface. On that note, there were brief segments where it reminded me of Blake Edwards'  The Party, but, naturally they still felt the need to drive any jokes straight into the ground. It's rather telling that the one with brownface is still more charming.
  
• The Richie Cusack Award for Epic Fails: Yep, the scene from A History of Violence where William Hurt asks "How do you fuck that up?" is now a fixture of the Deep Hurting Project. And now, I've decided to devote his awards to simple fucking things that the filmmakers fuck up spectacularly. Do I give it to Hilary's America for setting out to make a movie claiming Democrats are the real racists and fail to do justice to targets who would seem like shooting fish in a barrel? Or The Apparition for somehow having more plot in the fucking trailer than the actual film? Nope, I'm giving it to The Emoji Movie. Why? Because they fuck up the most basic aspects of the plot: Gene has the unusual problem of having multiple emotions which forms the basic thrust of the film, except that other emojis actually show multiple emotions, and not just Steven Wright. They go for a "be yourself" moral, but fuck it up because when Gene tries to be himself, it risks THE ENTIRE PHONEWORLD BEING DESTROYED. And it somehow saves the day because the girl he's into is impressed by a weird emoji. They go for a feminist moral claiming that there was an era where female emojis could only be princesses and brides, except that Smiler (a female) was not only the first emoji, but was their leader from time immemorial.
  

[Peebothuhlu]

Marvel Endgame.

It is good.

  "Mealted Ice-cream"  

   

Not at work

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

'Mortdecai'.  I'm honestly puzzled by the terrible reviews and box office crash-and-burn.  The producers have said they wanted an homage to the 'Pink Panther' films, and I thought they succeeded admirable.  This is a very funny, very entertaining bit of fluff.  Essentially revolves around a search for a missing Goya with Hermann Goering's Swiss bank account numbers written on the back, but that really doesn't matter much: it is simply the McGuffin on which to hang a series of very funny sight gags (which is all the film was intended to be).

Johnny Depp as Charlie Mortdecai,  a rather sketchy dealer in fine art (Depp does a better than expected channeling of Terry-Thomas).

Gwyneth Crazy-As-A-Bedbug-But-I-Would-Still-Ride-Her-Like-A-Stolen-Bicycle Paltrow as Johanna, Charlie's long-suffering wife.

Paul Bettany as Jock, Charlie's ever-loyal valet, bodyguard, and thumper of bad guys.

Ewan McGregor as Martland, Charlie's old school chum and Mi5 agent who pressures Our Hero into finding the Goya (also has an unrequited crush on Johanna).

Also, a really funny subplot regarding Charlie's mustache.

8/10.

Boru

[Rev. Rye]

This week in the Deep Hurting Project: Legend of Hercules.

This movie is giving me astonishingly little to work with. It's not like Hilary's America where there's bullshit flying at you every second and you can't help but try and rebut as much of it as you can. Sadly, the problems are astonishingly simple. The first scene, I was tempted to check and see if I didn't somehow put 300 in there by mistake, the plagiarism is that obvious. Then I saw the caption saying it was in Argos in 1200 BC. Naturally, that kind of sealed the deal. That and 300 is at least interesting. It's dumb as all fuck, but at least it looked interesting. Things are not helped by the fact that the CGI looks like utter dogshit:



I would remind you that this had a budget of $70 million.

The performances are, to a one, like a shitty theatre troupe trying to put on a Greek tragedy and failing miserably. The plot, and romance are bog-standard and have bugger-all to do with the actual legend of Hercules. Seriously, if you're going to make a movie about Hercules, at least open a fucking book about Greek Mythology at some point. I know Edith Hamilton has a pretty good book on it, and Hercules gets his own chapter. Well, I may be a bit unfair on the filmmakers, because one of Hercules' opponents is named Humbaba. A giant defeated by Gilgamesh. From fucking Mesopotamian mythology.



You start with Greek mythology, and, instead of literally anything but the Nemean Lion, you land on the legends of Mesopotamia? You know what, The Apparition having more plot in its trailer than the actual film, and the moral of The Emoji Movie fucking up so horribly actually make sense if you assume the people in charge had no idea what they were doing, whether it was the former trying to fix it after poor focus groups, or the latter trying to get it done quickly. Even Dinesh D'Souza being stupid enough to not look for loopholes in campaign finance law (that are stupefyingly easy to exploit) makes some sense. How does one go from Greco-Roman Mythology and decide to insert something from the significantly more obscure Tale of Gilgamesh without bothering to pay much lip service to the original myths?

And instead of having "the paws of a lion and a body covered in thorny scales; his feet had the claws of a vulture, and on his head were the horns of a wild bull; his tail and phallus each ended in a snake's head," he's just a big guy with Coolio hair. Also, did I mention Hercules is a fucking Gladiator? You know, the bloodsport native to Ancient Rome and not Greece?

Honestly, I think we've got a new candidate for "most generic piece of shit" in the Deep Hurting Project.

[Angrboda]

Venom, and before that, Avengers: Endgame. Probably a 1000% increase in my movie watching habits for the average week.

[Foxaèr]

I know I posted that I already saw this, but I didn't watch it at the time. Finally getting around to it. Might make it a movie night for myself.

The Prodigy

A mother concerned about her young son's disturbing behavior thinks something supernatural may be affecting him.

[Athene]

A goodish film with a fair amount of tense moments. Not a bad watch for a slow day off.

http://domainthemovie.com/about
After a deadly virus wipes out most of humanity, the survivors are forced to wait alone in self-sustaining bunkers while the viral threat runs its course. Able to communicate through a networked video interface, the survivors wait for years and slowly become a motley family of sorts.  But their fragile social ecosystem is shattered when, one by one, they start mysteriously disappearing from their bunkers.

[Foxaèr]

Drunk Parents

Two drunk parents attempt to hide their ever increasing financial difficulties from their daughter and social circle through elaborate neighborhood schemes.