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Oct / Nov '23 Movie Roundup · Pick Up and Deliver

• 0:05
  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 evening, listeners. It's a blustery,
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  chilly night here in suburban Chicago. It's probably not that cold, given
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  it it's mid December, but when I left this morning, it was a
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  little warmer, and so the jacket I wore is probably one notch too light
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  for the weather. I should be wearing my full parka. I don't have
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  a park I have like a coat. I should be wearing my coat instead
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  of wearing a jacket. So if I sound a little cold, that's why.
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  But here's my plan. I am going to try to avoid feeling cold
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  by talking about stuff with you, my friends listen to my podcast. I
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  was looking back at the episodes I've done recently, and in November I did
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  a horror movie round up, but I have not done a regular movie round
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  up since September or since October. In October I did a round up of
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  the September movies, so I thought tonight I would do a roundup of all
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  the movies I watched in October and November that weren't horror movies. Like I
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  said in November, I did the horror movie round up. Most of the
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  movies I watch in October are horror movies, but since then I've been watching
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  mostly other stuff, cleansing the palette as it were. In the next couple
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  weeks, I'm gonna watch a bunch of zombie stuff to get ready for my
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  zombie class that I see in January. But for the most part, that's
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  where we are. So I'm gonna talk. What I'm gonna do is just
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  talk about movies I watched in October and November. Actually only have one from
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  October that wasn't a horror movie, and then I'm gonna talk with each one.
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  I'll talk a little bit about, like if you were going to do
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  a game in movie night, what game might go well with that movie?
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  If I remember or sometimes I forget to do that. I just talk about
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  movies. So if you're only in it for the full on board game content,
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  this might be the episode to skip. Just kidding, you should stay,
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  but you know, okay. I'll start with in October. The one
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  movie I did watch, I watched Dune again, I think I saw the
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  trailer for the new one came out and I just remembered how good I thought
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  the first one was. I really liked the first one. And of course
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  I'm talking here about the Danny Villeneuve Dune from like twenty twenty or twenty twenty
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  one, not the David Lynch movie. Although I actually think the David Lynch
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  movie has some redeeming qualities to it, it moves too fast. I think
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  the Denny Villeneuve one feels more like the actual pace of the book, so
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  I appreciate that. It's also just so beautiful. I think that there are
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  a few directors who work in such painterly style as Villaaneuve does, and I
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  love the people he works with who do the visual design. If you haven't
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  seen the movie, it follows the Frank Herbert novel. I'm going to assume
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  that everybody at least kind of knows the general idea. So I'm just going
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  to hit a couple of things I really liked about the movie this watch through.
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  I love the way that the spaceships look and move. I think it
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  fits Herbert's descriptions of them very well. And that's also, like I said,
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  just beautiful. I find the Hearkenin's in particular are depicted so malevolently.
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  It is really effective. And I feel like this movie because Villeneuve has this
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  sort of sweeping, mystical visual style. I think the movie fits the kind
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  of religious or mystical nature of its story pretty well as well. So really
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  impressed with that. That is Dune, And of course, if you're going
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  to play a game to go with Dune, you should probably play Dune.
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  I have played the shorter version of Dune. I can't remember what it's called.
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  It's like Dune's Strategies or something. And then there is Dune Imperium and
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  Dune Imperium Uprising, which are three different games that all kind of play on
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  the Dune story. But I think probably the winner for me is still the
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  original Dune game. You could play the one that was republished by Gaiel Force
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  nine. That one looks pretty great. I've played it mostly as Rex actually,
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  which is the Fantasy Flight version that they did when the game was out
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  of print. But that game is amazing, so I'd push for that if
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  you're going to play, And it probably takes about as long to play the
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  game as it does to watch the movie. Now the movie shorter. I
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  think the movie is shorter. Anyway, that's Dune, the only non horror
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  movie I watched in October. I did watch two horror movies in November.
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  I'll just mention them quickly here. I watched Jigsaw and Spiral from the World
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  of Jigsaw or from the World of Saw or from the Book of Saw.
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  I think is the subtitle. Nominally if you go back and look now,
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  those are Jigsaw is Saw eight and Spiral is and so now they have come
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  out with Saw ten. I haven't seen it, but that would be the
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  next one to watch, or I might have it wrong. It might be
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  Jigsaw as Saw seven and spiralis Saw eight. And then there's a Saw nine
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  that I haven't seen one of those two. I'm trying to remember if Saw
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  nine, if I have seen Saw nine now, dang it, I can't
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  remember. I didn't see it in my list of movies I've watched. I'm
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  gonna have to go look anyway, that was Those are the two horror movies
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  I watched in November. I'm not gonna talk about those. You can look
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  them up or ask me about them if you want no more and then it
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  was a month of sort of rewatching old favorites. I know, sometimes you
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  just want to watch a movie that you remember being good and haven't seen in
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  a long time. So I started with Pelican Brief. This one has Julia
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  Roberts and Denzel Washington, and there's a bunch of other actors in it that
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  you certainly would recognize. I can't recall off the top of my head any
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  of the other ones, but yeah. Basically, the idea is that the
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  a Supreme Court justice or two Supreme Court justices die within a day of each
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  other, and it's a national tragedy, of course. And then there is
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  a law student who develops a theory about the murder of these two justices.
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  So I think one of them is murdered and the other one seems to die
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  of an accident, but she develops a theory that perhaps both of them were
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  murdered and it had to do with a case that was coming before the Supreme
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  Court, and then it was about money. And the idea is that she
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  writes a brief about it, and that brief gets sent to the FBI,
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  and then her boyfriend is killed. She has to go on the run and
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  is constantly about to be killed as well, and it's about you know,
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  she works with a reporter and they work to expose this plot. You know.
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  It is based on a John Grisham thriller, and it hits all of
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  those beats that you would hope a John Grisham thriller would hit. It's got
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  a relatively young Julie Roberts, and she's always enjoyable in every movie in but
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  she does a decent job in this one. There's some stuff in the movie
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  that's really dumb. Takes her a long time to leave New Orleans, and
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  she keeps using her credit card to buy hotel rooms, which feels like even
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  in the late nineties, people knew the credit cards were tracked, could be
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  tracked by computer, and then people can find out where you are, Like,
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  you shouldn't use your credit card if you're being hunted by the government or
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  shady government types. So that was kind of what's going on in the Pelican
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  Brief. I really liked it. It's a good one as to what would
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  be a good game to play with. I mean, it's got to be
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  an exit game, right. A thriller is a really hard board game to
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  follow up and This is like a mystery board game, and the characters are
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  constantly faced with sort of puzzles to solve about how to advance their own things
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  and avoid getting killed. So it feels like an exit game or an unlocked
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  game would fit this really well. Now, as far as I know,
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  there aren't any exit games or unlocked games that have this particular theme, but
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  you could certainly find one of the murder ones, or you could go for
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  something like hunter Killer, which is specifically about murder. So that's what I
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  would play if you were going to play something along with the Pelican Brief.
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  So, continuing in my sort of nostalgic watching of movies, I caught Deep
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  Blue Sea, which is a movie I remember being pretty dumb, but I
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  seeing people talk about it being awesome, and so I watched it with the
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  hope of finding it. It was better than I remembered, and it's not.
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  Boy, it's a really dumb movie. I'm not sure why people say
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  it's awesome. I mean, there are some funny scenes. I mean maybe
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  it's maybe people say it's awesome because it's so dumb. It's awesome. There
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  is an element of that, and you have a lot of people who are
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  sort of really serious folks, people who went on to be a big movie
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  stars in it doing really dumb stuff. So maybe that's why people think it's
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  great. I thought it was really dumb and not at all scary. I
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  mean, I enjoyed LL cool j don't we all, but overall not worth
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  pursuing. I don't think that's Deep Blue Sy. I guess you're gonna watch
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  a movie with or play a game with it. Maybe you want a dumb
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  movie and a game that wasn't really great. You could do Shark Island,
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  which is the Richard Launius take on Jaws. It's Jaws with the numbers filed
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  off, and it's also not great. So there you go, Deep Blue
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  Sy and Shark Island. Next time, I watched Astroohods City. I have
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  been a Wes Anderson fan for a long time, but there was a long
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  period where I haven't didn't watch any of the movies, and partly because my
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  wife finds them a little too tweet. She doesn't really enjoy them. So
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  I think after The Life Aquatic with Steve zi Zoo, I kind of fell
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  away from Wes Anderson movies for a long time, and I have slowly been
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  working my way through the back catalog, watching one here and there Grand Budapest
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  Hotel a while back, and now I watched Asteroid City. It is everything
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  you would expect from this kind of from this filmmaker. It is incredibly precisely
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  made, very carefully sculpted in terms of its visuals. The characters talk like
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  they're in a stilted play. There are lots of eccentric elements and weirdos in
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  the movie. It is absurdist and delightful and I had a great time with
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  it. It is really strange though. The premise has to do with a
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  bunch of people gathered in this like nothing town in the middle of Nevada for
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  a science contest and then aliens showed up, and so then they're dealing with
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  the fact that they all saw aliens, and the government sequesters them and tries
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  to get them to tell people not to tell people there were aliens. And
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  of course all the characters are Wes Anderson characters, so they all act real
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  weird. So of course they act real weird. If you were going to
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  play a game with this movie, I think the game I might suggest would
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  be Munga in Vain from Outer Space. This is a Martin Wallace game that
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  I've never successfully played. The rules are a little convoluted, but the idea
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  is that you have these mad scientists and they're creating monsters and bringing them in
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  and having them attack cities and stuff. It's super weird comes with these miniatures.
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  It was part of Martin Wallace's tree Frog line and generally thought to not
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  be that great as a game, but it's so dang weird and idiosyncratic.
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  When Martin Wallace makes the game, he kind of hits for the stars,
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  and those stars are strange. So I'm really happy to have that game,
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  and someday I'm gonna play it and then I'll be able to reflect on why
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  it's weird that I'm happy because it's so weird but mad scientists and Munga Invaders
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  and whatever. I don't know the title Munga Invaders. Go to the show
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  page for the game for this episode and look it up. I'll have a
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  link to the game. So that is Asteroid City. Next up, I
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  watched The Holiday, which is a movie I've never gotten around to watching.
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  The premise is that you you have Cameron Diaz and you have Kate Winslet,
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  and they both are looking for a change, and so they do this weird
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  thing where they house swap. It's sort of like Airbnb in the early days,
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  where they go to each other's house for a week and basically fall in
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  love with people while they're there. It's a light romantic comedy. It's mostly
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  silly, but kind of nice. I like the characters in it. Jack
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  Black plays a very straight character, which is kind of weird given how crazy
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  he is now. Cameron Diaz is pleasant but a little goofy. There's also
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  a really improbable scene where she just lets a stranger into the house that she's
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  staying out to sleep and gets with him, which is super weird but otherwise
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  a delightful movie and one I'm glad to have watched. That's the holiday.
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  I don't know what the board game would be. Fog of Love. Perhaps
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  is the romantic comedy game. Maybe that's the one you'd play. I don't
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  have a better answer for that particular question. Finally, the last movie I
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  want to talk about is The Killer. This is the new Zack Snyder or
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  a new David Fincher movie they made for Netflix. It is about an assassin
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  who is bad at being an assassin really, And I saw a review talking
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  about it as a comedy or a satire. I can see that, but
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  it didn't work that way for me. Like I did not really like The
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  Killer very much. I guess it wasn't weird enough to be funny for me
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  that way. It was just it was just fine. It was fine,
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  definitely worth watching if you're a David Fincher fan. I mean, the characters
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  in it were compelling, but I didn't really enjoy the movie very much and
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  certainly won't be watching it again. There's a game that came out this year
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  called Sniper Elite, which I haven't played, but that seems like the game
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  you should play if you're going to be playing a game about an assassin.
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  So check out Sniper Elite to go with The Killer. Well that's about it
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  for what I have to talk about today, and I'm home, so I'm
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  going to call that a day. What films have you been watching? Head
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  over to board game Geet Killed three two sixty nine and share your recent movie
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  you watching there? Also, did I was there a better game to recommend?
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  With one of these games? Do you tell me? You can reach
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  out to me on board game game my username is Wombat nineteen nine, or
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  we could play a game asynchronously on board game Arena. My username is Wombat
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  ninety nine there as well. Thanks for joining me. I'm a walk today.
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  I hope your next walk is as posant as mine was. By bye,
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  Brought to you by Rattle Box Game