Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / Dec '23 / Jan '24 Movie Roundup

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Dec '23 / Jan '24 Movie Roundup · Pick Up and Deliver

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  Welcome to pick up and deliver the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder
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  as I step off the train and deliver an episode to you while I walk
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  home. I'm Brendan Riley. All good afternoon, listeners. It's a lovely
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  day here in suburban Chicago. It's chilly but not cold, so it's brisk.
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  Brisk is probably the right word to describe the temperature today. I'm happy
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  to be chatting with you. As I walk home today, and I was
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  looking I realized it had been about twelve episodes since I last checked in about
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  movies I watched. And the last time I checked in about movies I watched
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  it was December and I was talking about November and October. So we've got
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  a movie round up to do, and it's time, as I sometimes do
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  if I think of it. I've also mentioned some games that would go well
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  with the movie that I'm talking about, so let's just jump right in.
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  To start with, I've been on a bit of a kick the last few
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  months, and a lot of these came up in December and January of movies
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  about like crusading reporters or whistleblowers, people trying to draw attention to some sort
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  of problem. Now, often these movies are based on or inspired by true
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  events, and that is the case with the movies that I'm talking about today.
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  I think all of them actually that way. I guess there's one one
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  that isn't anyway. So the first one I want to talk about is Spotlight.
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  This is probably the most well known crusading reporter movie since All the President's
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  Men. I guess Spotlight is the story of the reporters from the Boston Globe.
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  I think, oh boy, I should really know which play some time
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  on I'm pretty sure the Boston Globe who revealed or wrote about the immense scandal
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  involving the Catholic church covering up serial child abusers by moving them from parish to
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  parish, and that story then sort of broke a huge floodgate of similar conversations
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  all over the place. The movie's very well made. It's a good journalistic
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  thriller. You've got your Michael Keaton, You've got your Mark Ruffalo. Those
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  are sort of the two main folks. There are a number of other interesting
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  and significant characters in the film as well. The head editor for the paper
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  I'm trying to remember. I think it's lee of Schreiber who comes in and
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  faces some prejudice because he's Jewish, so they're seen as an attack on the
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  Catholic church by a Jewish man. As part of the discussion, there's some
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  really fun dramatic paperwork moments where Mark Ruffalo is running to get a copy of
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  a report, and overall it's pretty good. It is a horrified story that
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  it's telling, but in the context of the hero journalist movies, it's pretty
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  great. I've not really followed up to see how true it was in terms
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  of the things depicted as the things actually happened, but pretty great. In
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  terms of board games. There is a board game that came out recently which
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  I've not played, called Fit to Print, which is about rushing to get
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  stories into the newspaper, but as far as I know, it doesn't have
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  any of the investigative reporting parts. In fact, I'm unaware of any investigative
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  reporting games, with the exception of the mystery game from whiz Kids Deadline,
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  which obviously is about a sort of crusading reporter trying to selve murders. I
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  think it's called Deadline anyway. That that one, I was excited. I'm
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  excited. I enjoy and I think is the only reporter game I can think
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  of, So the rest of these I'm not going to offer another one.
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  The next one is she said, this is another crusading reporter story, This
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  one about the two who broke the story about Harvey Weinstein, in particular got
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  Alyssa Milano to go on record about her experience, or not a listen one
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  unless she did later. I'm thinking of I'm thinking of Ashley Judd and her
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  experiences with Weinstein. The ramifications, of course of that story being the rise
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  of the Me Too movement and the eventual downfall, arrest and imprisonment of Harvey
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  Weinstein. Thank goodness. I think the movie did a good job, like
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  Spotlight, of highlighting the ways that the system around these powerful people protected them.
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  I would say, you know, equally as good as Spotlight, I
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  thought, in terms of being a dramatic reporter or tale, if anything,
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  this one had a little bit more trying to connect with witnesses and getting them
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  to discuss things, although there was plenty of that in Spotlight too. The
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  next one I watched is called The Report. The Report was about a Adam
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  Driver plays an analyst at the Sea or and actually an analyst. He played
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  somebody who works with the House of Representatives who was tasked with studying what happened
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  the abuse that happened in interrogation programs during the Afghan the Iraq war in the
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  Afghan War. It was a fascinating look at something I think a lot of
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  people don't know about, which is that this person spent two years reading literally
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  millions of documents, millions of pages of documents, and compiling a massive list
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  of things that were done in the name of so called freedom but didn't fit
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  any of the protocols of what we allow legally, but also had no proof
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  that they actually worked, and in fact didn't work, they provided us bad
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  intelligence, and in the aftermath of that almost none of it came out.
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  Almost none of what happened came out. Another fascinating one, really strong performance
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  by Adam Driver as somebody who's like slowly going more and more angry. Maybe
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  he did. Five years was a long time just working in this one top
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  secret room on this document that's the report. In a similar vein, I
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  watched a British movie called Official Secrets about an analyst for the British Intelligence Services
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  who felt angry and upset about the fact that the British British intelligence services were
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  being asked to find material that they could use to pressure UN partners to vote
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  for the first Afghan or the first Iraq invasion, particularly because there was no
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  evidence that Iraq was involved and the evidence of WMD's was either fictitious or erroneous
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  or both. Kira Knightley plays the whistleblower in this case. Again there's a
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  lot of handwringing and trying to decide. She puts herself at dramatic personal risk,
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  as does the Adam Driver in the report, because they are bound by
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  laws regarding classified information and in revealing it they are breaking those laws. I
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  thought that Official Secrets was a little more satisfying, perhaps than the report,
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  just because Official Secrets actually she was able to leak the secrets in a way
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  that they got out and had an effect. Next up in this line of
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  things, in fact, the last one in this line of things is Shattered
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  Glass. This is sort of the opposite of a crusading reporter. This is
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  about the rise and fall of reporter. I think his name is Stephen Glass,
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  who was a reporter for the Atlantic and wrote lots of really compelling stories
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  that turn out to be made up that he fictionally, He just made up
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  a bunch of stories and wrote sensationally and faked enough about the fact checking that
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  he was able to skate by their fact checkers and get his articles published.
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  Really compelling story. Hayden Christensen does a great job of playing this damaged young
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  man who bit off more than he coults you and then got himself in trouble.
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  Really compelling film about a downfall of somebody and the reporters who figured out
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  he was lying. Next up, we have margin call this one, as
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  far as I can tell, is not based on a true story, but
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  based on a true like true situation, just like made up company. And
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  this is the basically. This is a fictionalized version of a bank that found
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  themselves embroiled in the two thousand and eight financial collapse and figured it out just
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  before the collapse that in fact, their bank portfolio was full of this garbage
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  stock that was part of the giant pool of money that was the heart of
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  the banking collapse in two thousand and eight. The film does a great job
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  of sort of exploring the different nuances of high pressure corporate world while really criticizing
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  the people in those positions. Movies a little hard to watch because Kevin Spacey
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  is one of the main characters and he's since undergone a pretty significant drop in
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  profile because of his personal life. But lots of other characters in the film
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  who are really great. The guy who played vision I can't remember his name
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  is in it, along with a bunch of other people you've seen before.
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  Quite enjoyable. So I liked margin Call put me in a similar mind of
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  something like The Big Short, although I like The Big Short much better.
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  All right, Next up, this is a movie my wife and I watch.
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  I don't know why I'm watching so many bank and financial movies. This
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  is the Bank of Dave. The Bank of Dave is a lighthearted sort of
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  comedic film about a man in Liverpool, I think, or one of the
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  sort of smaller industrial towns in northern England who is frustrated because they can't get
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  good finance in their town. And he has been sort of operating loans,
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  but he wants to be able to give real loans and good loans, and
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  so he applies to the British banking firm to get a banking license and they
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  deny him, and he basically demands an appeal because he wants them to say
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  in public that he's getting denied basically just because he's not a fancy boy.
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  It's a really interesting film, very well made. It's a sort of lighthearted,
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  heartwarming film that the British are generally pretty good at making. And it's
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  cute. It's worth a watch. That's the Bank of Dave Right. The
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  one other new movie that I watched in December and January that I hadn't seen
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  before, I watched for my zombie class, and this is Blood Quantum.
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  Blood Quantum is a zombie movie featuring Indigenous people, made by Canadian indigenous people,
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  about a zombie outbreak where it turns out that the Native American people,
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  particularly of this one tribe, are in mute to the zombie bites, so
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  while there are lots of zombies running around elsewhere, Native American people are able
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  to survive for a while. It's a dark movie. It's about survival,
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  it's about racism. It's really good. There are some very crude parts as
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  well as violent and rude parts, of course, but overall pretty enjoyable and
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  well worth a watch if you like zombie movies. That's Blood Quantum. I
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  did watch a bunch of other zombie movies in January. I'm not listing those
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  here, it's the same ones I usually watch. And then I had four
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  movies. I oh. One more new movie is Genie. This is the
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  Melissa McCarthy comedy about a genie and how she helps out a man who's in
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  need of help. It's pretty silly and a little fun, and it's like
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  a nice Tuesday evening movie kind of deal. It's also takes place at Christmas
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  time, so you could see it as a Christmas movie. That's Genie with
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  Melissa McCarthy. Finally, I did watch three movies again that I had seen
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  before, Read Nobody and The Hunter for of October, all of which were
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  delightful. Hunt for October in particular, I couldn't help but notice that it
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  was directed by John McTiernan, who directed die Hard and In Hunt for October
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  there's a part where the main character is crawling along a isolated metal space and
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  he's mumbling to himself how he should have just stayed home. It reminded me
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  a lot of John McLean and die Hard saying crawling along the in the filtration
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  system or the air vents and saying you'll have a good time. Same same
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  thing with Boba Alex Baldwin on a submarine. So what movies did you watch
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  in December and January? I'd love to hear head over to board Getting Kilby
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  two sixth night. I'm sure your thoughts there. I can't wait to know
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  what you've been watching. Thanks for joining me on my walk today. I
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  hope your next walk is closance. His mind was goobye. Brought to you
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  by rattle Box