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Kevin Klemme
March 09, 2020
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KK
Kevin Klemme
January 27, 2020
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Kevin Klemme
August 12, 2019
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oliverkinne
December 19, 2023
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oliverkinne
December 14, 2023
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Mycelia Board Game Review

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oliverkinne
December 12, 2023
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oliverkinne
December 07, 2023
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River Wild Board Game Review

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oliverkinne
December 05, 2023
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oliverkinne
November 30, 2023
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Jackwraith
November 29, 2023
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oliverkinne
November 28, 2023
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Spitfireixa
October 24, 2023
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oliverkinne
October 17, 2023
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October 10, 2023
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Outback Crossing Review

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What MOVIE(s) have you been....seeing? watching?

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23 Jan 2022 11:45 #329987 by hotseatgames
Watched the film Nobody now that it's on HBO. An attempt at turning Bob Odenkirk into John Wick, it's fairly ludicrous but has a couple of fun moments. There are worse ways to spend your time but it's not terribly notable, even within the "John Wick-like" genre.

Two minor plot points caused me a bit of annoyance that I'll chalk up to sloppy writing:
Warning: Spoiler!
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23 Jan 2022 12:42 #329989 by Jackwraith
I was equally underwhelmed. A couple funny moments (especially when RZA finally shows up) but otherwise the equivalent of stretching a 5-minute skit into a 90-minute film. Neither believable nor terribly interesting.
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23 Jan 2022 13:22 #329991 by jason10mm
I liked the idea that he belonged to an assassination team so top secret and unknow that some random Vietnam vet recognized him from a HUGE OBVIOUS TATTOO ON HIS WRIST.

Still, I like revenge flicks in general.
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24 Jan 2022 06:12 #330020 by Ancient_of_MuMu
Nobody was terrible. The plot was just awful and he completely lacked any sympathy from me.

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28 Jan 2022 14:11 #330213 by jpat
Quick roundup in the horror vein:

Anything for Jackson (2020) is pretty excellent. It's genuinely disturbing and sometimes scary, primarily because of being grounded by well-developed characters whose motivations you can empathize with if not agree with. A genre standout.

The Empty Man (2020) was the last Fox-produced film before Disney bought Fox out, and Disney pretty much washed their hands of it. Even the director says the released film is, at best, a rough edit. He's right, because at over two hours long, the film is in substantial need of trimming and perhaps some clarification. That said, it's definitely worth a look for fans of the genre, and it's got so much going on that it's as likely as not that viewers will like some parts and not others.

The Neon Demon (2016) is positioned as something of a supernatural horror movie, but in reality it just uses some of those tropes to create an extended metaphor about the viciousness and corruption of the fashion industry and modeling specifically and of physical beauty more generally. It's well shot, with some striking imagery, and reasonably acted, but it's not as deep or revelatory as it seems to think it is.
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28 Jan 2022 15:49 #330219 by jason10mm

jpat wrote: The Neon Demon (2016) is positioned as something of a supernatural horror movie, but in reality it just uses some of those tropes to create an extended metaphor about the viciousness and corruption of the fashion industry and modeling specifically and of physical beauty more generally. It's well shot, with some striking imagery, and reasonably acted, but it's not as deep or revelatory as it seems to think it is.


Man, that's Nichols Windign Refn in a nutshell for me. I hear he is doing a Maniac Cop show now, that's gonna be something....who the hell has the jawline of Robert Z'Dar?

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28 Jan 2022 16:00 #330220 by jason10mm
I watched Anon off Netflix. It's a couple of years old with Clive Owen and Amanda Segfried(?). I was halfway through it, thinking "WOW, this is derivative as hell!" when I got to the lesbian murder scene and realized I had seen this thing in the before days. Anyway, after a season or 2 of Ghost in the Shell with liberal amount of visual cybernetic eye hacking, Black Mirror with the visual rewind, and a half dozen other sci-fi shows with similar ideas, this doesn't hold up well. Not that the premise isn't valid, a hacker can digitally erase or alter your recorded visual history, the same visual history EVERYONE has and the cops can liberally and without consent access, meaning a crime is virtually impossible to pull off (folks still seem to try though, interestingly enough).

The failure of this film is just the lifeless, apathetic acting by virtually everyone. I get that CLive Owen is the stock standard jaded burn out still reeling from past trauma but just so damn good at his job he can sleepwalk through it but most everyone else takes cues from him, so there are lots of pauses and stares with little action from a film with like 6 murders. It doesn't help that the "cyberhacking" involves little more than blankly staring into space so there are numerous scenes of rooms of people all just staring at walls. Not exactly the stuff of cinematic thrills.

Still, as a prescient morality tale of omnipresent CC cameras, social media presence, and police over-reach in the name of perpetual greater good (...for the greater good...) it has some merit if you want a slow night.
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28 Jan 2022 16:14 #330221 by ChristopherMD
The director is very hit or miss with mostly misses including Anon. I'd say he's a one-hit-wonder with Gattaca but Lord Of War wasn't bad and I like the corny In Time.

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28 Jan 2022 16:22 #330223 by hotseatgames
Gattaca is in my top 10. Just fantastic.
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30 Jan 2022 20:50 #330285 by DarthJoJo
First, and most importantly, my boys got very interested in Godzilla after we watched part of a video essay with clips from all eras on YouTube. I've only seen the American productions, so I would really appreciate any Godzilla recommendations appropriate for six- and four-year-olds.

Rurouni Kenshin: The Final

I enjoyed the prequel which could have almost worked as a period piece outside of a few dumb haircuts and run slides. This one went full anime. There were many very unwieldy haircuts, bad guys playing variations on an evil Captain Jack Sparrow, enemies walking past each other on a bridge just to whisper something after their faces are on opposite ends of the screen. I'm sure every character with a speaking role had a minimum twenty-episode arc in the anime that I couldn't fully appreciate, but fight scenes need no deep series knowledge. It was fun. Also appreciated that it was set after the opening of Japan, so you see people in Western suits walking down the street alongside those still in kimonos.

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31 Jan 2022 09:35 #330290 by jason10mm

DarthJoJo wrote: First, and most importantly, my boys got very interested in Godzilla after we watched part of a video essay with clips from all eras on YouTube. I've only seen the American productions, so I would really appreciate any Godzilla recommendations appropriate for six- and four-year-olds.


Were they watching those videos set to various iterations of Lady Gaga's song (Party Monster? not sure what the song title actually it)? My kid LOVES those videos as they show lots of stuff as they evolved over time from the usually silly/campy 70-90's versions to the inevitably more gritty modern incarnations.

I think you would be ok with any of the old Toho godzilla movies. Maybe the original Raymond Burr one is tonally off for kids, but the others are pretty much city smashing, monster slapping, laser tank stomping goodness. They all have dull talky talky parts though, gotta have the bad with the good.

As for the more recent stuff, I'd avoid the Shin Godzilla film as again, tonally off for little kids. The 3 part anime one on Netflix (I think) is also in that boat. The big budget Gareth Edwards godzilla is fantastic but can be intense and scary, the sequels including King Kong versus Godzilla are a little less so. Definitely don't put on Kong:Skull Island, great film but can be quite scary for little kids.

As silly as it was, the Matthew Broderick 90's one is probably a good watch with kids. I hate that godzilla design but it had it's moments.
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09 Feb 2022 10:49 #330612 by DarthJoJo
Kids have been home sick, so we've been making time for some classics to fill the day. Disney's animated Tarzan was better than I remember. It has the ignominy of ending the Disney Renaissance, and the Phil Collins soundtrack was a mistake, but there is so much good in it. The animation and backgrounds, the sketch lines on the gorilla faces are all gorgeous. Rosie O'Donnell's Terk is one of the better comedy sidekicks in the line of Genie. Brian Blessed and Minnie Driver give top flight vocal performances.

Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster is streaming free on Shout! Factory, so that was the boys' first Godzilla movie. Only available in Japanese and subbed in English, but they didn't seem to mind. I only caught the beginning and end since I was doing chores, but I think that was enough, mostly because it contained the entirety of the final throwdown. Ghidorah looked amazing. The heads in constant motion, the wings, everything. Loved him. Rodan is a slightly more articulated Gamera on the ground but is great in the sky. I do not remember suit Godzilla being that spastic. Whereas the latest CG incarnations have moved slower to emphasize his mass, Godzilla in the 60's is in constant motion. Knock him down, and his feet kick faster than a toddler's. I loved everything about that fight. Godzilla just chucking rocks at Ghidorah. Larva Mothra climbing up on Rodan's back to web Ghidorah's heads. It was very silly but made me smile all the way.

Quick note on the beginning of the film. It opens with the UFO Club at their telescopes and complaining that there haven't been any aliens because this reporter in attendance doesn't believe in them. The aliens can sense her negative thoughts. At first I thought, get off her case. Believing really hard in aliens doesn't make them real. Then I thought, this is a world where Godzilla, Rodan and Mothra are known to exist. Why not aliens? Get with the program, lady.
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09 Feb 2022 13:54 #330622 by jason10mm
Did your kids read the subtitles? I think that perhaps just going off the emotion of the language and filling in story beats with your own interpretation might be the superior way to watch these flicks :P
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09 Feb 2022 14:33 #330626 by DarthJoJo
They are no where near reading subtitles yet, so they were pretty impressed I knew what everyone was saying. Didn’t seem to faze them. They liked it and want to watch more Godzilla this weekend.
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12 Feb 2022 15:28 #330719 by Jackwraith
Watched Kimi, the latest by Steven Soderbergh last night, because I'm a Soderbergh fan.

Wow. That was way, way below what I was expecting. I can't think of another of his films that was this uneven, almost to the point where you'd wonder if this was the final version that he wanted. It felt almost incomplete. There were a number of early nice storytelling moments and it was clearly embedded in current circumstances (mask-wearing for the pandemic, etc.) but it seemed like it was a story about too much of the modern era, in that there wasn't really a story there at all before it was finally wrapped up in an action sequence that seemed pasted on to the collage underneath it. Just weird.
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