Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / Apr/May 2023 Movie Roundup

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Apr/May 2023 Movie Roundup · Pick Up and Deliver

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Welcome to pick Up and Deliver the podcast, where I pick up my audio
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recorder as it out for a walk and deliver an episode to you while I
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head to the gym. I'm Brendan Riley. Well, good morning, listeners.
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It's a kind of slightly cloudy day here in suburban Chicago. The temperature
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is pretty nice. It's just under sixty degrees, so very comfortable weather for
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walking outside. I am on my way to the gym, and if I
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walk a short way, it's about a ten minute walk. If I walk
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the long way, I think it's like twenty twenty five minutes, which occurred
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to me is perfect for, like you know, I don't know a pick
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up and delivery episode, so that's what I'm gonna do. So I'm gonna
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try this. If it works out, this might be, at least this
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summer, part of my regular process for getting knees recorded, as I'll record
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them on the way to the gym. Maybe we'll see. I guess that's
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an inadvertent revealing to you how studious I am about getting to the gym.
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It also, I guess, since the walk to the gym is short,
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if I go the other way, maybe on the days I don't record or
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don't say I'm on the way, Jim, it's just because i'm walking the
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short way. Yeah, I think about that all right. Well, I
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was looking over the episodes that I've done recently, and I realized it's been
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a little while since I've done an episode about film. Now, the reason
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for that walking by they're doing some construction at the residential elderly home next door,
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So that's what that is. It's a Bobcat. Actually, it might
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be some other brand of digging digging machine. It looks like a Bobcat,
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but you know, Bobcat is like Kleenex. I think it's a brand name.
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Anyhow, I was looking over the podcast episodes and I realized it's been
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like fifteen episodes since I talked about film. And that's because I didn't watch
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very many movies in April, and I watched a few more in May,
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but not a ton. So in April I in May I decided not to
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do a film episode because I just hadn't watch that many movies. And so
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now between April and May, I've got a good lineup of films to talk
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about. So today is going to be the April and May twenty twenty three
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Movie Roundup for those of you new to the podcast. In a movie Roundup
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episode, I talk about films that I watched in the last couple of months,
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and I talk about them a little bit, what I thought about them
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if I've seen them before, and then often I'll connect them to some sort
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of board game or role playing game experience, because that's why you come here
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for the gameplay, not for the film analysis. Nonetheless, I enjoy spending
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a little bit of time talking about other kinds of media. Nopefully you do
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too. If not. Podcast is only, you know, twenty minutes or
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so, so you could just listen. It'll be over soon, or you
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could skip ahead. I hope you stay though. Also i'd love to hear
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what kinds of things you've been watching. You can share those ideas or those
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you can share that over on board game geek and Kill three two six nine,
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where I would love to hear from you about those things. Okay,
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so start off. In April, we watched Dungeon Than Dragons, Honor among
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Thieves. This was the first movie I went to in the theater in quite
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a while, and I haven't gone back since we used to go to the
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theater about once a month. We haven't really done that since the pandemic ended,
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and I don't really miss it. I mean, the theater experience is
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great if everybody's on their best behavior, but it's so common that somebody will
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get their phone out during the screening, or be talking during the screening,
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or just being rude and annoyingly loud. And I don't really want to pay
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to go and see a movie with a bunch of distractions from people I don't
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know. So yeah, I think my experience of the cinema itself has reduced
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dramatically, in part because I'm just tired of people at the movies. That
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said, we had a really nice time at Dungeons and Dragons on Our among
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Thieves. If you haven't seen it, I do recommend it. It is
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a Dungeons and Dragons kind of story set in the Forgotten Realms setting, which
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is one of the canonical Dungeons and Dragons settings. It's the one where the
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city of water Deep is and so on. I don't know that it's even
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worth mentioning the story to you, because it's not really about that. It's
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amusing and well written and fun and not too long. And kind of everything
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you would want a Dungeons Dragons movie to be. There's lots of fans service,
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lots of monsters you want to see, lots of nods to other people
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or places or things that are part of D and D lore, including I
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believe the Dungeons Dragons party from the original Dungeon Dragons cartoon. That's pretty funny.
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So generally, yeah, pretty great. There are a couple parts that
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feel very much like elements you would encounter in a D and D campaign.
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There's a sequence early on where the main characters have come up with a sort
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of hilarious or preposterous solution to a problem, and even though a more reasonable
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solution presents itself, they ignore it in favor of the plan they'd made to
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begin with, which is sort of something that players tend to do. I
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also really like the implementation of the Bard as a figure, sort of seeing
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what kinds of things they do and are good at. So yeah, overall,
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pretty great, very enjoyable. Dungeons and Dragons on our Monk Thieves.
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Obviously, the thing to play alongside Dungeons and Dragons on our Monk Thieves is
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Dungeons and Dragons. I know, that it did rekindle my son's enthusiasm to
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try the system. In fact, he's going to be playing in the local
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game stores Dungeons and Dragons sessions that they run. He's going to be playing
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in those, so that's pretty fun. Hopefully that will go well and he'll
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enjoy it. Next up is the movie Centurion. I watched this, you
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know, I encountered it in a daily movie quiz I do called framed,
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where you get a still from movie and then you guess what movie it's from,
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and then you get another still from the movie, and you guess,
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and you keep going till you've guessed wrong six times or you get it correct.
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The twist or the clever part, is that the stills are often pretty
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obscure or hard to see exactly like the early ones. It's more just sort
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of about mood. Every now and again, I'll get one from the first
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still, but it's very rare, sometimes from the second. Usually it's the
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third still or later. It's usually around still four that they show you a
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recognizable actor, somebody who you might have heard of before. And then still
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five is some more recognizable people, but you don't usually get like the main
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character in the film until still six there was one for a movie I'd never
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heard of called Centurion, and it starred Oh, I can't remember his name,
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one of those chisel jawed beefcake guys who's a pretty good actor also.
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I mean he's not like Arnold Schwarzenegger beefy, but you know, certainly a
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leading man type, and a number of recognizable other figures, including the guy
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who played the Onion Knight in the Lord of the Rings or the Game of
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Thrones TV show. And the movie is about a bunch of Roman soldiers who
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are in who are garrison in northern England, and they have been ordered to
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and they've been ordered to take down a notorious band of Picts. They fail
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at that task and most of them are killed, and one of the ones
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who's left ends up going on the run, both from the Picts and from
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the remaining Romans who don't want to admit that they lost a battle, and
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so they are trying to kill all the witnesses to it. It's a weird
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movie. I mean, it's entertaining enough, you know. It is a
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sort of medieval warrior story. I found myself really struggling with it a little
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bit I found myself struggling with it a little bit because the main character is
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part of an occupying force and the people who killed him are locals who don't
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want to be occupied and have a strong neat desire for vengeance against the Romans
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who have killed a bunch of their family members and stuff. So the movie
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does not make me sympathetic towards the Roman, and you know, in that
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regard, that's what I thought of it. It was fine. This movie
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doesn't make me want to play Blood of the Northman again. This is the
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Carl Chuddick tiling game that involves tribes of northern warriors and they're mostly like Scandinavian,
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but it still has that same feel to it in which you're charging around
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taking land, fighting each other. It's pretty great and this film reminded me
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of that a little bit. So that's The Centurion. Next up, we
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have a movie I got from the Lucky Day shelf at the library. I
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don't know if your library has a Lucky Day shelf, but the way ours
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works, they have a number of recent and popular books and movies that they
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have on a special shelf they call the Lucky Day Shelf, and they call
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it that because these movies have been sequestered from the normal reservation system, you're
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not able to reserve or put on hold these movies and books in part because
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I guess they're super popular and so they want people to be able to find
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them sort of randomly. But also they like having this thing you can come
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and browse at the library and might maybe find something cool. Like I said,
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they call it the Lucky Day shelf because if you find one, it's
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your lucky day. The big thing is that they have a more limited checkout
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thing. I think for books it's two weeks and for movies it's a week
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and you can't renew them. So but anyway, on the Lucky Day shelf,
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I found a copy of Confess Fletch, which is the new Fletch movie
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based on the original property starring John Hamm, and boy it was good.
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If you haven't had a chance to see it, it is an excellent sort
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of grown up comedy in the light of the old Fletch movie. Really,
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although it's nice because you know, Chevy Chase has his reputation is so bad
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and as far as I know, John Hamms is not, and so watching
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John Hamm play this role worked really well. He had a really nice way
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demeanor for playing the character, and it was just it was very enjoyable.
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So I really recommend if you get a chance to check out Confess Fletch.
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Now, this is a game that I don't know how you play it in
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board game form. It feels like something that could definitely become a good role
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playing situation. Maybe it's a fiasco type game, although fiasco generally involves the
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characters making poor choices. And the whole point is Fletch is really smart and
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a smart Alec, but the smart Alec part fits fiasco, or it seems
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ute to me. So yeah, I would definitely check it out if you
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get a chance, and maybe play around a fiasco for Confess Fletch. And
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then finally, I watched a movie I've been meaning to rewatch for a while.
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It's come up a couple of times in my social media and stuff.
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And this is The Adventures of BUCKA Rubanzai in the eighth mentioned and I think
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I watched this once in like high school. I'd heard about it, but
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none of it sticks stuck in my head. It all it was all gone.
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I just remembered. It was really weird. So watching it with a
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bit more perspective, a bit more knowledge of actors, it was really fun
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to watch and see all of these actors who became famous later or were famous
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at the time and continued to be famous making this sort of gonzo, bizarre
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comedy that clearly they were just swinging for the bleachers. And while some people
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get it and love it and think it's great, it did not click with
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so many people. One of the things that I think comedy writers will do
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sometimes that I think is hilarious is developed this notion of like the publicly the
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public celebrity genius. This seems like a thing that I've seen in other texts,
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although I can't really think of another one. I mean, Sherlock Holmes,
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I guess would be the other one. But this idea like Bucker Rubanza
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is a world famous figure for being in a band and being a scientist.
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I don't it's weird. It is a weird movie, but yeah, it's
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definitely worth checking out if you if you can, if for no other reason.
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Then there's a character called big Booty, and it's funny to watch all
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of these sort of semi serious actors keep saying big Booty that's Adventures of Bucker
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Rubon's. I haven't eve explained what it's about. I don't know what it's
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about. It's a story about like a genius scientist who discovers something remarkable and
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accidentally opens up a doorway to another dimension where a bunch of evil interdimensional scientists
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live. Perhaps it's strange, definitely worth watching if you get a chance.
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Stars Peter Weller, Christopher Lloyd, John Lithgow and Ellen ellen Barston and a
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bunch of other Dan Hadaiah's in it, a bunch of other people that you've
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seen before. The guy one of the guys from Alias. I can't remember
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his name either, anyhow, Silent and totally bizarre movie. Now, what
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game would I suggest you player with this? I think the game that I
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would put here is a Study at the Emerald, in part because the Studying
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the Emerald feels like it has the same kind of manic hodgepodge of chaos and
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craziness and wild choices, Like when Martin Wallace is making a Studying Emerald,
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He's like, yeah, we'll throw in everything I can think of, and
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that's what happened there, and it's great. I love it, so Yeah,
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if you get a chance to play a study in Emerald, particularly I
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studied in the Emerald first edition, although second edition is okay, I would
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recommend it, and then watch Adventures of Bucker Rubon's Eye across the eighth Dimension.
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Now do have Those are all movies that I watched for the first time,
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or so nearly the first time that I might as well call it the
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first time within the case of Bucker Ruband's Eye, But we did. I
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did revisit for movies, so I'm gonna mention those quickly. First off,
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we watched Game Night. We showed that to my daughter. That was that
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movie really holds up. It's quite a delight. Do you get a chance
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to watch Game Night? Well worth it, as my daughter says, gives
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vibes of Date Night. The movie seem very connected and equally so not dissimilar
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from something like After Hours, where people sort of representing the every day or
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the regular perspective of the world end up trapped in this sort of chaotic,
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funny, slightly dangerous cycle of interactions with weird people. Like I said,
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After Hours feels like the origin of that formula. You could even look at
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something like What's Up Tiger Lily as an earlier version of that, which is
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also excellent. As for a game that would do that, I don't know.
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I don't know a game that would fit game Night, although you could
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kind of play anything right and call it game night. My daughter and I
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did revisit Alien. She'd never seen it before, and I figured, yeah,
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it's time Alien holds up. It's pretty good. It's not as scary
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as it probably was in nineteen seventy nine. My daughter said she did not
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find it scary at all, but it was so fun. I always like
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seeing Jonesy the cat running around and enjoyed it quite a bit. It does
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make me want to break out. I have not had a chance yet Alien
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Fadom Nostromo, which is of course based on that film. On the last
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two movies, I rewatched Empire Records, which is one of my favorite teen
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movies from when I was younger. It's a delightful story about teens trying to
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figure out their way in the world, and you should check it out if
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you haven't. In time for Rex Manning Day, I would say. And
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finally we rewatched The Big Year because my mom hadn't seen it and she was
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Visiting. The Big Year is based on creative nonfiction book of the same title
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about people who spend a year trying to see every bird in North America that
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they can, and often do so, spending hundreds or thousands or tens of
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thousands of dollars driving or flying or whatever around the country in order to do
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that. It's a pretty great movie adaptation of a decent book. I thought
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the book was fine. The movie does a nice job of kind of distilling
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the amusing parts of it, and it's charming. I would say charming is
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a good word. It is a no pressure movie. You can enjoy it,
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and when you're done, you can put it away and forget about it
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until five years later you're like, oh, that was a fun movie.
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You should watch that again. That's The Big Year. Recommend Jack Black,
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Steve Martin, Owen Wilson, and with a small supporting part from the woman
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who played Karen on the Office and who played the nurse friend on Parks and
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Rack. You can't remember that actress's name, Jones, I can't remember what
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it was anyhow. Thanks for joining me on my walk today to your next
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walk, as a posed as his mind was. Bye bye, John from
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third Rock from the Sun. Um Oh, what's his name? Huh?
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