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February '24 Movie Roundup · Pick Up and Deliver

• 0:00
  Welcome to Pick Up and Deliver the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder as I step
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  off the train and deliver an episode to you while I walk home.
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  I'm Brendan Riley.
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  [music]
• 0:13
  Well, good afternoon listeners.
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  It's a lovely day here in suburban Chicago.
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  I'm strolling home from work and happy to talk to you about board games.
• 0:29
  Ha! tricked you.
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  It's not actually going to be about board games today.
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  It's going to be about movies.
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  That's right, it's been 12 episodes or so since I did an episode talking about movies
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  and it's been another month since then.
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  So I'm going to talk about some movies I watched.
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  That's right, it's the film roundup episode.
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  Now as I often do, I will try to think about what would make a good game pairing thematically
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  if you want to do a game and movie night.
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  But in reality, this is the movie review episode.
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  So if that's not your bag, sorry about that.
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  Hopefully you'll enjoy it.
• 1:00
  Unless otherwise, see you next time.
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  So I thought I would today, I would talk about the six movies that I watched in February
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  and reflect a little bit on what I thought of them and give my opinion.
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  Alright, so to start with, this one is one a lot of people saw.
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  This was Oppenheimer.
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  From a technical perspective, Oppenheimer is of course an excellent movie.
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  I enjoyed watching it as is true for me of all Christopher Nolan films.
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  I've yet to have one that I didn't actually just enjoy.
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  I'm not sure, I know a lot of people thought, "Tenet was kind of inscrutable."
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  I did not find it to be that way.
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  I, whatever sort of weird, strange loops that Christopher Nolan puts into his narratives,
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  I generally find pretty comprehensible.
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  And so maybe it's middle-aged white dude to middle-aged white dude.
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  I can really sympathize with his view of weirdness in the world.
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  So from a technical perspective, I really appreciated the way it's made.
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  He does a nice job of building up these three parallel stories from three different time
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  points in Oppenheimer's life and sort of tracking them simultaneously.
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  It makes for an interesting narrative that is not linear.
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  Of course all the actors in the film do a really good job.
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  I particularly like to Matt Damon's performance.
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  I think he does a really good job of playing sort of somebody who's a bit annoyed and just
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  trying to do their best in the face of insanity.
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  And that felt like what's happening with the Matt Damon character.
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  I really liked that small part.
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  Of course, Cillian Murphy did an excellent job as many people have recognized.
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  I was irritated but not surprised by how little room was given for female actors to do much
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  work at all.
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  It's not uncommon for Christopher Nolan's stories to give relatively little space for women.
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  And this one is another of those.
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  I thought Emily Blunt did a pretty amazing job in the short time she had as his wife.
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  And the woman who played the girlfriend, oh I can't remember her name.
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  She was Black Widow's sister in the Black Widow movie.
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  She is a pretty big star right now and I'm kind of ashamed that I don't remember her name
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  but I thought she did a good job as well for what limited space they were given.
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  You know, there's a lot of commentary about this movie being amazing, right?
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  And it won all sorts of accolades.
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  I mean, I thought it was good but I don't really get why people thought it was so incredible.
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  Apart because I guess just for me like the subject matter feels really covered.
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  I don't know how people are having new views or new ideas about what the atomic bomb was at
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  this point.
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  So maybe I've just read or encountered more of it than your average filmgoer or maybe people
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  just hadn't thought about it in the same way.
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  I don't know.
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  I don't know.
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  But the broad remit of the film did not strike me as incredibly unusual.
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  And so like I said, nice job all the pieces but the story itself was I guess sort of what
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  I thought it would be.
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  And so it's hard to really see it as the amazing thing everybody seems to think it is when
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  it was what I expected it would be.
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  So that's Oppenheimer, three and a half stars.
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  The next film is a small indie film called The Vast of Night.
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  The loose premise is we follow a couple teenagers in a small town in America in the 1950s when
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  something weird is going on and there might be aliens.
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  The central points of the film are a radio station where one of the teenagers has
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  a job as a disc jockey, disc jockey and the phone switchboard where one of the other teenagers
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  has an evening job as a switchboard operator.
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  The premise is really it works really well.
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  It's sort of like the Orson Welles' War of the Worlds in that it's a series of sort of
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  sounds that they hear and incomplete reports and the chaos of not knowing what's going
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  on sort of shapes the experience.
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  The two young actors do a really good job sort of portraying this compelling state and
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  there's a lot of running around in confusion.
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  There's a really interesting drone shot that follows the characters into like a high school
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  gym where there's a high school basketball game playing.
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  All these people cheering and the drone kind of zooms in and zooms around and zooms back
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  out.
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  It's a really neat shot that you couldn't you just couldn't do before drones and cameras
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  got a lot smaller and cheaper.
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  So this movie is clearly made on a reasonably small budget but really compelling and just
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  an interesting film.
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  So like actually give it four stars.
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  Oppenheimer is this big thing that did what I thought it would do.
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  The Vast of Night just felt it came out the story a little different.
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  I really liked it.
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  The Vast of Night.
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  That's a 2019 film.
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  Next up this is a film I watched after I watched The Vast of Night.
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  I found I just had an evening to myself and I watched The Vast of Night on Amazon Prime
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  and I had some more time and I was you know how after you watch a movie there's like a
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  list of movies you might like down below.
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  So I started watching that or going through that.
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  And you know a lot of the movies were ones and two stars maybe a three star occasionally.
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  Then I came across this movie called Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes.
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  It was like five stars and I said to myself well or maybe four stars four and a half
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  but way higher than the other movies around it in this list.
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  And then upon examining it more closely I see it's a Japanese movie it's in Japanese.
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  You have to watch it with subtitles and I'm like oh American unwillingness to watch
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  subtitles that's where that's why it's down among these movies people don't want to watch
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  even though it's very well rated.
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  So I gave it a try and of all the movies I'm talking about this month this is the one you
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  should watch if you're only going to watch one.
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  Beyond The Infinite Two Minutes is a really interesting film about time travel kind of
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  the premise and I'm not giving away anything that's not clear in the first two minutes or
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  five minutes of the film.
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  The premise is that there's a TV in this diner and this TV in this guy's apartment which
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  is upstairs from the diner and those TVs are connected to one another.
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  There's a two minute delay between the TV and the diner and a TV in the house and the
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  big thing is that it's not just like the signal takes two minutes to get from one to the
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  other.
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  I guess that is kind of what is going on the signal takes two minutes to get from one
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  other but that you can see through them.
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  You can see from one to the other.
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  So the if you are where the if you are where the past TV is you can see two minutes into
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  the future is the best way I can explain it.
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  So it's not a two minute delay it's actually two minutes in the future.
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  It's an instantaneous two minute gap and the whole movie is sort of about what would happen
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  if you had access to this and what how would you what would you do with it and it's a nice
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  little bottle episode of a movie.
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  It seems to have been shot probably on a handheld camera and if not in one take it was it's
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  cheated into looking like one take.
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  There's a lot of going up and down the stairs in the camera following them and stuff happening
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  in really interesting ways.
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  It's a very thoughtfully produced movie really fun and something you should definitely check
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  out if you can.
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  It's called Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes.
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  That's my only five star of the month.
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  That's from 2020 and I watched it on Amazon Prime.
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  Well we're at our commercial break or we're at three minutes there are three movies that's
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  halfway in and I realize I have yet to suggest any games to go with these movies but I will
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  suggest them now.
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  So Oppenheimer it feels like the game to suggest to that would be Manhattan Project.
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  I don't have that one.
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  If you were coming to my house and said Brendan I want to play whatever you have that's
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  closest, that's Manhattan Project Energy Empire which is a related game but not in the direct
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  project.
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  Manhattan Project would be the one to play.
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  That game is probably very difficult to find now.
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  It was originally published by minion games and of course minion games folded when James
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  Mathe sadly passed away.
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  Some of the games have been picked up for printing but for the most part that concern went when
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  he passed away.
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  So that's sad.
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  So I haven't played Manhattan Project.
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  I can't say whether it's any good.
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  I know that Manhattan Project Energy Empire is very good and I enjoyed a lot.
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  So that's for Oppenheimer.
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  The Vast of Night.
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  I'm going to say the visitor at Blackwood Grove.
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  This is a small social deduction game where one player plays an alien and the other player
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  plays a child trying to communicate with the alien and there's humans trying to communicate
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  or the government is trying to intercept it and there's basically the goal is the child
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  or the children is to communicate with the alien before the government intercepts those
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  communications.
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  It's a sort of deduction game, a competitive deduction game that's weird and interesting
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  and I enjoyed it the one time I played it but there's not really room in my collection
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  for it so it did go away.
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  But if you get a chance, this is a return back.
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  And Blackwood Grove would fit the Vast of Night.
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  For beyond the infinite two minutes, I think that time you killed me has to be the game
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  that I would play in connection because that game is so specifically about anticipating
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  what happens when you move on one place in another place and thinking two or three moves
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  ahead but also two or three boards ahead.
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  I've had a number of games of that where I won or lost based on somebody not seeing that
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  if you jumped from one board to another you could take their piece out and if you're already
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  missing from one of the boards then that's it.
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  Really interesting game, well worth playing if you get a chance that's that time you killed
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  me.
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  Alright three more movies, I'll talk about a game after each one because I don't know
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  if I'll get to all three.
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  Now the first one is The Lost King.
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  This falls in the category of the British know how to make heartwarming, pleasant stories
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  with a low dramatic arc movies.
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  Reminds me of the Bank of Dave a little bit.
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  In The Lost King, we have the story of a amateur archaeologist and fan of King Richard
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  the third who led the campaign to try and find the place where King Richard was probably
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  buried and in fact did find the place where King Richard was buried.
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  This is a true story.
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  Of course the academic bureaucracy got in the way and it sort of frustrating to watch her
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  chafe against these systems of expertise so that prevent outsiders from participating.
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  As an academic though, I also reflected a little bit on the fact that people with
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  outformal training or without enough training will sort of stick their oar in whether or
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  not they really know what they're talking about and so there's an interesting back and
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  forth about that in this movie.
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  It's clearly on the side of the amateur though and frankly so am I if nothing else because
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  the movie makes the bureaucrats look like jerks.
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  That's The Lost King from 2022.
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  I don't know what game would go with this I guess.
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  Tobago maybe I think is a game where you are trying to find a lost treasure that is buried
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  and you're running around trying to find clues to find where to dig for it that probably
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  works.
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  I think it's Tobago.
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  It might be Kahuna.
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  I can't remember.
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  If you know what I'm talking about let me know it's a game where each person draws a
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  clue and those clues then reduce the number of places that the treasure could be until
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  somebody manages to figure out where the treasure is and get their truck there first.
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  So it's definitely a game that's been around a while I can't remember what it's called.
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  It's something like Kahuna.
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  It's not Kahuna.
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  I feel like Tobago maybe but that doesn't seem right either.
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  I guess we were on a kick for missing things because then we rewatched the Sandra Bullock, Channing Tatem
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  romantic comedy, The Lost City.
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  This movie was basically just Romancing the Stone again.
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  I like that movie a lot and I like this one as well.
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  In that one, Romancing the Stone, Michael Douglas plays a rather sexist adventurer type
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  and in The Lost City, Sandra Bullock is the judgmental type who looks at the sort of
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  ditsy body builder character Channing Tatem with judgmental eyes.
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  So this is a duel.
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  This is sort of reversal of that trope.
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  You got Daniel Radcliffe chewing the scenery.
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  He has a goofy villain.
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  He's got all that dissimilar from the character he played in Now You See Me 2.
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  Both of them sort of hilariously evil.
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  And I like Daniel Radcliffe taking just kind of whatever part he feels like.
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  He's got a lot of range and he shows it.
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  The Lost City also has a fantastic cameo from Brad Pitt.
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  Well, not cameo but small part from Brad Pitt and really funny chase sequences.
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  So if you haven't seen The Lost City, I recommend it.
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  It's very funny.
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  As a game to go with it I would say the Explorers is perhaps the Temple of Chac which is the
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  one that has the rolling boulder in the pits of lava.
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  It fits this game really well.
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  That would be a nice pairing.
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  Like Romance of the Stone that game has a fair amount of misogyny or at least sexism built
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  into the art design.
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  I guess you could excuse the game a little bit because it's French but mostly it's just
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  like the female characters are all drawn pretty buxom.
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  Nonetheless the Temple of Chac is a pretty fun game if you can get a hold of it.
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  It's long out of print unfortunately so not a game you're going to find most places.
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  If you come to visit me we could play it.
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  So that would go with The Lost City.
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  And then finally just a quick word for Jay Barruchel in Blackberry which
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  is a relatively simple tech bros trying to solve a problem becoming famous.
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  Rise and fall of a tech company story.
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  Starting Jay Barruchel as the tech genius behind the Research In Motion and the company
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  the Blackberry.
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  That was a pretty entertaining story.
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  I enjoyed watching that.
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  It is kind of what you expected.
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  There's a great scene where the skeptical businessman says you know that's a problem you
• 15:07
  can't solve and they say well we solved it ha ha and that's always fun.
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  Lots of good information there.
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  So not a whole lot to say about that movie.
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  It is kind of what you'd expect it to be.
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  Tech bros solving problems getting rich then the downfall of those same tech bros
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  works really well.
• 15:25
  I guess if I was going to recommend the game not having played it obviously Smartphone Inc
• 15:28
  seems like the game you would play to go along with watching the movie Blackberry
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  because they're both about you know Blackberries and related products.
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  Well I became to hear what movies you've been watching in the last couple months.
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  Those are the movies I watched in February 2024.
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  In order to share that information with me you can head over to boardgamegeek guild 3269
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  and I'd love to learn what movies you've been watching.
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  Until next time.
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  Thanks for joining me.
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  I hope your next walk was as pleasant as mine was.
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  Bye bye.
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  Brought to you by Rattlebox Games
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  [MUSIC]