What was the last movie you've seen?

[prfsnl_gmr]

Polite Society (2023) is an outstanding British action-comedy film about a young woman trying to break up her sister’s wedding. Inspired equally by 1970s Bollywood action films and Shaw Bros. martial arts movies, it is one of the most fun movies I’ve seen in a while. Very silly, amazing soundtrack, and killer fight scenes. Highly recommended. (Streaming on Prime Video)

[stickem]

Scream 6 and Sound of freedom. Enjoyed both. Scream as a guilty pleasure, you've seen one you've seen them all. Sound of freedom, don't get the political outrage, seemed like a good law and order svu movie to me.

[REPO Man]

Last night before bed I threw on V/H/S85, which was a great entry into the series but I kind of liked the previous entry just a bit more. It's on Shudder, which is also part of AMC+.

[REPO Man]

Since I have this morning off and could sleep in later, I decided last night to watch:



Taking place after (what eventually turned out to be) the series finale, this direct-to-video movie follows on a manhunt for Hank Venture who ran away from home to find himself. Along the way, a figure from the past emerges with ties to the Venture family, the Guild of Calamitous Intent, and the former's nemesis The Monarch.

This was originally intended to be an eight season of the show that led The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Jon M. Gilbertson to say in an article:

If filmmakers Woody Allen and Sam Peckinpah had collaborated on "Jonny Quest," it would have come out a lot like this.

But apparently after getting renewed in 2018, the show got cancelled during the writing phase in 2020, leading to a fan-led campaign to get the show a final season on Max (then still known as HBO Max). But despite not getting the funding for a final season, they were able to get the money for a finale in the form of a DTV film. Though one can't help but wonder how this 84-minute film would have been different if it was stretched out into 8-10 episodes of roughly 22 minutes apiece. Perhaps it would have devoted more time towards world building or additional story arcs.

But I still like how we got a satisfying conclusion, especially since it doesn't effectively close the door on a continuation, either in an additional season(s) and/or more DTV film(s).

Though I would personally like to see how Rusty Venture and The Monarch's adversarial relationship would change and/or stay the same now that we know that:

...The Monarch isn't Rusty's half-brother but rather a clone of Rusty with a small amount of baboon DNA, which explains why The Monarch doesn't have Rusty's predisposition towards balding but does have increased aggression.

Plus I feel like there's more to Hank and Dean's conception and birth, even after finding out that...

...they were born to Rusty via an artificial womb, meaning that one COULD argue that Dean COULD be a clone of Rusty but since Hank has blond hair it's questionable who his genetics came from. It's possible that Rusty's former bodyguard or even either actress Bobbi St. Simone or her daughter Debbie could have served as who Hank was cloned from, albeit a gender-swapped clone.

[Raging Justice]

Scream 6 and Sound of freedom. Enjoyed both. Scream as a guilty pleasure, you've seen one you've seen them all. Sound of freedom, don't get the political outrage, seemed like a good law and order svu movie to me.

I haven't seen Sound of Freedom yet, but I plan to. My understanding is that the movie was created to highlight the very real problem of child trafficking. It's a fictional story about a real life problem. I don't understand why people have turned it into a political thing. I would like to think that keeping children safe would be something that everyone can get behind.

[REPO Man]

Watched Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse last night before bed. I really enjoyed it and can't wait for Beyond the Spider-Verse.

[Limewater]

I haven't seen Sound of Freedom yet, but I plan to. My understanding is that the movie was created to highlight the very real problem of child trafficking. It's a fictional story about a real life problem. I don't understand why people have turned it into a political thing. I would like to think that keeping children safe would be something that everyone can get behind.

It's political because people made it political, mostly independent of the film's content.

To be clear, the film is a highly fictionalized story based upon claims made by Tim Ballard, who is a fairly controversial figure himself, but we can set that aside.

The film had a lot of appeal to cultural groups that tend to have a certain political alignment. People with political agendas have been using the issue of child sex trafficking to get into Christian churches and get them to support certain political activities for years with really wild claims. Back in 2009, when New Orleans was hosting the Super Bowl, people were claiming that in an event with about 80,000 attendees there would be, like, 40,000 child rapes. I left a church in 2009 due to church-sponsored political activities related to this issue.

My point in the previous paragraph is just that American Evangelicals have been primed to support just about anything related to the issue for a long time.

Additionally, non-religious political actors in conservative media hyped the film heavily, and encouraged people to go out to see it, and associated its success with conveying the success and strength of their "movement."

This led to people who did not align with that political/cultural group to have a stronger negative reaction to the film.

They also did a "pay it forward" campaign for the film, which is highly unusual, but I've seen evangelical circles before. This is where you get the chance to buy tickets for the next person to "help others see the film." I put that in scare-quotes, because I think the end result is really just the chance to throw more money at something.

I have been trying to generally speak neutrally here and just describe facts, but I just finished writing this and realize that it is likely considered to violate C.3. It may get modded. Oh well.

[Limewater]

65 (2023):

Adam Driver is a space alien who crashes to earth 65 million years ago.

Overall, I enjoyed it. It wasn't amazing, but I was entertained.

You go into a science fiction film about surviving on a dinosaur planet expecting a tense survival thriller or an action film. This ended up being more of a drama than an action movie. There was plenty of action, but it wasn't that great. The drama aspects were more effective. I thought the final action sequence was actually pretty comical.

It's streaming on Netflix right now.

[marurun]

Yeah, thanks for the relatively neutral explanation. That said, this does wander into territory that is historically problematic on this forum, so let’s stop here on Sound of Freedom’s anything other than the movie-ness of it.

[REPO Man]

Rewatched V/H/S94 last night. Definitely the weakest entry in the franchise.