Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / Movie Roundup, June/July 2023

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Movie Roundup, June/July 2023 · Pick Up and Deliver

• 0:04
  Welcome to pick up and deliver the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder
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  as I leave the game store and deliver an episode to you while I walk
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  around. I'm Brendan Riley. Well, good afternoon, listeners. It's a
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  lovely day here in suburban Chicago. The clouds are out and it looks like
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  it might rain. But it's not going to rain, I don't think,
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  at least not while I'm walking home. I dropped my son off to play
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  Dungeons and Dragons over at the game store, and I'm now walking home to
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  relax and have a nice Saturday afternoon. In that regard, I thought while
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  I was walking home, I would record a podcast for you. And as
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  I'm catching up on my regular features and updating you on things I've done,
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  it feels like time to do another list episode, and this would be movies.
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  Now. In the podcast, I usually either month or every other month
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  I will do an episode exploring what films I've watched since last time I told
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  you about watching films. In this case, July had a fair number of
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  movies with June was almost movie free. In fact, I only recorded one
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  movie in June. So rather than doing an episode where I talk about one
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  movie for fifteen minutes, I'm gonna do two. I'm gonna do one episode
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  talking about June and July, and you'll get a little bit of each of
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  those. So there we go. So what I'll do if you're not familiar
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  with this episode us what it is to talk about the movie a little bit,
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  what I thought of it, and then what game themes or game ideas
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  can come out of it that you can use to talk about the game or
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  games. All right, So along those lines in June, towards the end
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  of June, in fact, I did watch one movie. I watched Renfield.
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  Renfield, of course, is the name of Dracula's thrall sort of madman
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  who is psychically linked to Dracula and made to do the bidding of the Dark
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  Prints, the Dark Vampire prints. In the general book, he's sort of
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  famously one of the doctor's patients in the insane asylum, and he eats bugs
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  to get their life, sort of emulation of Dracula. But also interestingly,
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  this is a real life phenomenon that happens. There are people who are afflicted
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  with this condition where they will eat bugs to try to get the bugs life
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  from them, and apparently they start to remember hearing this. Psychologists call this
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  Renfield syndrome, named after the character in the book. Well, this novel
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  or this film takes the idea of Renfield and advances it forward. In the
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  story, Renfield was originally Draculus Thrall, and it turns out that he when
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  he enthralls you, he gives you some of his powers, in this case,
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  his immortality. And so Renfield has been serving Dracula, helping him find
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  victims, and then when things get too public, he rescues Dracula and takes
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  him away and takes him to another place where no one's looking for them,
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  and they start rebuilding. In the story, Renfield is now in modern day
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  Los Angeles and he's helping Dracula once again, and the story goes from there.
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  Basically, it is an It is a horror comedy movie. In particular,
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  Renfield, played by Nicholas Holt, is a sort of lovable dufus,
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  and he teams up with the police officer played by Aquafina brilliantly as she always
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  does, and part of the premise that they give is that one of the
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  other powers he has given to Renfield is the power to fight or move preternaturally.
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  He has extra strength and he's very fast, but he only gets that
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  by eating bugs. So then we get back to the idea of Renfield eating
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  bugs, only in this case, Renfield is seeing bugs in order to fight
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  on Dracula's behalf. It's a very silly movie, really amusing action sequences,
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  but extremely gory and extremely silly. Nick Nicholas Cage just cast as Dracula in
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  the some of the best scenery chewing scenes I've ever seen. He really just
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  way overdoes it in an excellent way and makes the movie very enjoyable. That's
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  Renfield. Now, if you wanted to play a game sort of themed around
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  this, the two I can think of. One would be Horrified Dracula is
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  one of the universal monster Universal monsters, and he is lurking around the town
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  and you have to defeat him. Alternately, you could play Fury of Dracula,
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  in which do you play Hunters of Dracula. In neither case can you
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  be Dracula's helper or have the superpowers indicated therein So that part is harder to
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  think about how you'd play it out in a board game, But I think
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  either Fury of Dracula if you had a longer evening or Horrified if you had
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  a shorter one would be a fine coupling to go with Renfield. And that
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  was the entirety of my June viewing. Boom done. I watched six movies
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  in July, so I will talk about those a little bit here until I
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  get home. The first of one I want to talk about is Jurassic World
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  Dominion. This is the third of the Jurassic World trilogy, which is,
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  of course the second trilogy in the Jurassic Park universe. In Jurassic World Dominion,
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  it follows along after the second one, Jurassic World, Two worlds on
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  excitement. I don't remember what the second world, what the second Jurassic World
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  is called. In that one, you have an extra silent partner who helped
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  found Jurassic Park, played by James Cromwell. Of course, there's then the
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  movie the dinosaurs are freed, They're running around in the world, and so
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  Jurassic World Dominion picks up months or years after that. It's not entirely clear
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  how long it's been, but it's been long enough that most of the characters
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  are established doing something else, and the dinosaur population has gotten big enough that
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  they are all over the place in terms of being all over the world and
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  integrating with biology. It feels like the point of this movie was to have
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  dinosaurs be all over the place, or at least the world with dinosaurs in
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  it had expanded. That said, it felt like they had two different story
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  ideas about what stories they might tell. On one hand, you have a
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  kind of industrial espionage, evil science story, which frankly is what all of
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  Jurassic Park has been. They brought back Dodgston, which I thought was great.
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  He was the secret agent who tried to get Dennis Nederie to steal the
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  Jurassic Park embryos, and they bring him back as his company has already always
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  been there competing for dinosaur stuff, and then they pick up the pieces after
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  Jurassic World, so he's the main villain, and the two stories are.
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  On one hand, you have these super predator grasshot or locusts that are new
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  versions of the of the prehistoric locusts that would have been around in dinosaur times,
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  and they're of course killing everything. And then on the other side of
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  that coin, you have the Little Girl and you have Blue and apparently those
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  two are genetically special in some way, and so they've been kidnapped so that
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  we can figure out so the evil company could figure out why they're special.
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  And those two stories going together make up the block the main plot of the
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  movie. But it's really just nonsense and not great in many ways. The
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  dinosaurs running around are fun, the action sequences are good, but ultimately the
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  story just doesn't hold up. It's really not what you'd hope it would be.
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  Of course, if you're going to play a board game while talking about
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  a dinosaur park, you have a couple options. Dinosaur Island and Dinosaur World,
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  which are two different dinosaur theme park games. There's also Dino Genesis,
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  which I know the people on the Secret Cabal prefer I have not played that
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  one. I have played Dinosaur Island, and then I also have Welcome to
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  Dino World, which is a rolling right that I am pretty fond of.
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  Actually, I think it's a lot of fun and fits well in the theme.
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  So a variety of different options for dinosaur stuff if you wanted to play
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  a game that has dinosaurs in it to go with Jurassic World Dominion, I'm
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  going to mention a couple very quickly. A couple of movies that I watched
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  that are a little shorter to talk about. One, My wife and I
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  watched the documentary about Wham, just called Wham. It was all about the
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  early days of George Michael and the other guy from Wham who started this band
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  when they were in high school and wrote it to a significantly high level of
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  fame before George Michael went off and did his own thing. Andrew Ridgeley,
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  I think, is the name of the other member of Wham, And part
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  of the cool thing about it is it looked like it looks like Andrew Ridgeley
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  firmly understands and firmly asserts that he was a significant part of Wham. He
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  and George Michael together made the band what it was. But he also recognized
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  the George Michael was an ascendant talent and his place in music was really in
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  partnership with George Michael, and so when it came time, he sort of
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  gracefully agreed to end Wham. And it sounds like he always was very enthusiastic
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  about George Michael, of course, and originally is here to tell that story.
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  George Michael is not so. And the movie seems to be pretty pro
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  pro wham, But nonetheless it was pretty interesting. I also watched Pinball The
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  Man who Saved the Game, which was about the fact that up until relatively
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  recently the seventies at least, pinball was seen as a gambling game and a
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  lot of big, big cities had outlawed pinball. And it's about a person
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  who was very good at pinball. Pinball was a sort of key part of
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  his life, and he wrote the definitive book about pinball, and then he
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  went before the New York Committee of Gaming or whatever and demonst that pinball is
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  a game of skill, not a game of chance, and thus falls outside
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  of the boundaries of the kinds of legislation they were using to keep it illegal.
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  It's a very light movie with a very low dramatic arc, meaning that
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  while there are moments that are upsetting are sad for the characters, none of
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  them is outrage as. None of them is going to get you too stressed.
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  It's a nice movie. I really like it, and it's well worth
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  checking out if you get a chance. Highly recommend, because I really enjoyed
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  it. That's Pinball, The Man who Saved the Game. I guess if
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  you wanted to play a game that goes with pinball, you should probably play
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  Super Skill Pinball, of course, which is a game that really feels like
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  you're playing pinball. A lot more chance in that than apparently there is in
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  real pinball. But nonetheless, all right, sort of a couple more movies
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  to talk about here, in case I don't get a chance. We watched
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  The Barbie Movie, which I thought was really good. If you haven't seen
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  it, definitely take a chance. It is really funny. It's a great
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  discussion of gender roles in our society today, in particular a skewering of the
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  way that patriarchy hearts both men and women, and I thought it was excellent.
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  I'm not sure what game you would play with that. I mean,
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  if you wanted to play a game that had a particularly feminist bent, you
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  could play something like her story that would fit otherwise Votes for women would be
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  another one, if you wanted to play a game that kind of fit that
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  narrative overall, though not really a game that lends itself to a movie that
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  lends itself to a game. We watched The Outlaws, which was a movie
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  about a guy who is dating this woman and it turns out that her parents
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  are international bank robbers and he ends up getting tangled up in their mess when
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  they come to visit. It's pretty funny, has a lot of heart,
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  and has Adam Devine, who's an actor I usually enjoy, but I hadn't
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  seen him in a leading role yet. I thought he did pretty well.
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  I guess you could play Burgo Bros. Or Burgo Brothers as your heist game.
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  Or there's always the Vital aserta game getaway plan, which is also about
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  having conducted a heist, and that fits the narrative much better actually than Burgo
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  Bros. For the Outlaws, so I recommend the Outlaws. It's funny.
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  Pierce Brosnan and Ellen Barkin are both very funny as the in laws. And
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  then finally Happiness for beginners. This is a very This is an enjoyable little
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  rom com about a woman who has had a life set back and so she
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  goes on a hike and discovers life and romance while on the hike. The
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  woman has played by Ellie Kemper, who is an actor I really enjoy and
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  I'm looking forward to seeing more stuff with her in it. I guess we
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  want to play a romantic comedy. Fog of Love would be your game of
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  choice. It's a fun one that helps you explore the notion of telling a
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  story, and I like it that it is sort of a romantic comedy movie
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  story generator. So if you have a chance to play that, that might
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  be a nice coupling for something like happiness for beginners. So those are the
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  movies that I watched in June and July. What films did you watch?
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  Head over to board Game each guild at three two six nine and share your
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  movie watching experience. Otherwise, thanks for tuning in and I was forward to
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  talk to you next time. I hope your next walk this is pleasant mine
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  one good bye. Brought to you by rattle Bogs.