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July/August 2024 Movie Roundup · Pick Up and Deliver

0:04
Speaker 1: Welcome to pick up and deliver the podcast where I
0:06
Speaker 1: pick up my audio recorder as I step out for
0:08
Speaker 1: a walk and deliver an episode to you while I
0:10
Speaker 1: stroll around. I'm Brendan Riley. Well, good afternoon, listeners. It's
0:22
Speaker 1: a lovely day here in suburban Chicago. The sun is out.
0:25
Speaker 1: I'm walking at the height of the heat, meaning it's
0:28
Speaker 1: like twelve thirty in the afternoon, and it is very nice,
0:32
Speaker 1: seventy five degrees, light breeze. The sun is out, the
0:36
Speaker 1: sky is blue with just like dappled hints of cottony clouds.
0:40
Speaker 1: It's lovely, so uh, perfect time to go for a
0:43
Speaker 1: short walk and talk about board games with you, though
0:46
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna be talking about board games that that
0:48
Speaker 1: much because this is the July and August twenty twenty
0:52
Speaker 1: four movie roundup. I don't know. Is that the sound
0:57
Speaker 1: of a projector running. It's not anymore because nobody is
1:00
Speaker 1: as film projectors anymore. They're all using digital projectors, which
1:03
Speaker 1: means that they don't make that sound anymore. I remember
1:06
Speaker 1: that sound anyway, souse. I used to work at a
1:08
Speaker 1: movie theater, and I for a while I was working
1:10
Speaker 1: as a projectionist at the movie Theater and boy that
1:13
Speaker 1: was a hoot. All right. So today I have a
1:17
Speaker 1: number of movies to talk about with you. I want
1:21
Speaker 1: in August and in July and August, I watched one, three, four, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven.
1:28
Speaker 1: I watched twelve movies in July and August. Ten of
1:31
Speaker 1: those were in July and only two were in August.
1:32
Speaker 1: Two was not a very movie movie full month. However,
1:37
Speaker 1: five of those twelve movies were movies I'd seen before
1:40
Speaker 1: they were rewatches. So I'm planning to talk about seven
1:42
Speaker 1: movies today while we chat, and I think that will
1:45
Speaker 1: be a nice way too, a nice amount for the episode.
1:48
Speaker 1: We'll see how I go, but if I run out
1:50
Speaker 1: of time, I will speed up as I go along.
1:53
Speaker 1: For those of you new to the podcast, in the
1:55
Speaker 1: movie round Up episodes, I just talk about movies I've
1:57
Speaker 1: seen lately, what I thought of them, and then sometimes
1:59
Speaker 1: I'll connect them to a gameplay experience. If you want
2:01
Speaker 1: to make a movie night out of it, that's what
2:04
Speaker 1: I do. So first of this Split, now, Split was
2:08
Speaker 1: a split is a movie from m Night Shamalan. This
2:11
Speaker 1: movie and the movie Glass I watched back to back
2:15
Speaker 1: and they're both by m Night Shamalan. I guess if
2:19
Speaker 1: you don't want to hear about them, you should skip ahead.
2:22
Speaker 1: I will say right now, how far to skip ahead?
2:26
Speaker 1: Skip ahead to the seven minute mark. So Split is
2:30
Speaker 1: a serial killer movie starring James McAvoy, and it uses
2:36
Speaker 1: dissociative identity disorder is what I believe they call it
2:41
Speaker 1: now what we used to call split personalities, the idea
2:43
Speaker 1: that somebody's got multiple personas inside them. But part of
2:47
Speaker 1: the idea of this is that there's sort of two
2:50
Speaker 1: warring factions of personalities within this person, and one of
2:54
Speaker 1: the factions is trying to cultivate a monster or sort
2:59
Speaker 1: of supernatural personality, like a werewolf type thing. And so
3:05
Speaker 1: the big mystery of the movie is what's going on
3:07
Speaker 1: with this guy? Is there any truth to this supernatural part?
3:11
Speaker 1: And then the narrative is that he kills young women
3:14
Speaker 1: as part of the ritual of bringing forth this monster.
3:16
Speaker 1: So there are three young women that are kidnapped at
3:19
Speaker 1: being of the movie, and then it goes from there.
3:22
Speaker 1: It's a really intense, scary or somewhat scary thriller movie,
3:27
Speaker 1: mostly focused on a very strong performance by James McAvoy.
3:31
Speaker 1: Within the guise of like, okay, he's playing a person
3:34
Speaker 1: with this particular kind of weird affliction that has gotten
3:37
Speaker 1: a lot of strange stories told about it in cinema,
3:40
Speaker 1: and so there's always some caution there. I think it's
3:44
Speaker 1: a pretty good movie. It was pretty entertaining. I like
3:46
Speaker 1: how it ended. The big reveal, which is sort of
3:50
Speaker 1: I knew going in, so it wasn't a big reveal
3:52
Speaker 1: to me, which is why I said skip ahead. But
3:54
Speaker 1: you could still skip ahead now if you wanted. So
3:57
Speaker 1: the big reveal at the end is that it turns
3:59
Speaker 1: out Split takes place in the same narrative world as Unbreakable,
4:04
Speaker 1: and the character that Bruce Willis plays and Unbreakable is
4:08
Speaker 1: still around, is still sort of performing vigilante superheroic acts
4:13
Speaker 1: in the story, and that's where the but you don't
4:16
Speaker 1: actually see him intervene. It's just that's where the story ends.
4:18
Speaker 1: It begins in the next one with Bruce Willis's character
4:23
Speaker 1: hunting the James McAvoy character, and then they get captured
4:27
Speaker 1: and they get put in the same place that the
4:30
Speaker 1: Samuel L. Jackson character from Glass is. So that's what
4:33
Speaker 1: Glass is about, is all three of these together and
4:35
Speaker 1: now it's sort of part three of this modern superhero trilogy.
4:39
Speaker 1: I really liked it. I thought it was a great
4:41
Speaker 1: a Glass is excellent. It's a great evolution of this story.
4:45
Speaker 1: And even if you know that Split is part of
4:47
Speaker 1: this narrative, I don't think it ruins anything to know
4:50
Speaker 1: that going in it maybe takes away just a tiny
4:53
Speaker 1: bit of the thrill at the end to discover that
4:55
Speaker 1: it is. But the build up and the setup for
4:58
Speaker 1: Glass is excellent always. M Night Shyamalan is a filmmaker
5:02
Speaker 1: with a really strong eye for how he wants to
5:05
Speaker 1: depict characters and depict scenes in movies. You know, he's
5:09
Speaker 1: got sort of a hit or miss thing with the
5:12
Speaker 1: movies that get made. It'd be he's never really achieved
5:16
Speaker 1: the success of the first couple ones. Again, but you know,
5:20
Speaker 1: I tend to enjoy most of the movies of his
5:22
Speaker 1: that I've seen, even if I can recognize them as
5:26
Speaker 1: less high quality than say Unbreakable was or the sixth Sense. Nonetheless,
5:33
Speaker 1: definitely worth checking out if you'd like. If you like Unbreakable,
5:37
Speaker 1: I would say if you thought Unbreakable was good, Split
5:40
Speaker 1: and Glass are both excellent follow ups to that story.
5:45
Speaker 1: I know, some people are kind of disappointed in Unbreakable,
5:48
Speaker 1: in which case you're probably not an m Night Shamalan
5:50
Speaker 1: fan anyway, And I don't know, but I enjoyed both
5:54
Speaker 1: Split and Glass Quick a bit, So check them out
5:57
Speaker 1: if you get a chance. Now, if you're going to
5:59
Speaker 1: play a game to go with those movies, on the
6:03
Speaker 1: one hand, you could play Marvel Champions, but it feels
6:07
Speaker 1: like that's more something to go with if you're gonna
6:08
Speaker 1: do a Marvel movie night. So I suppose Heroes Wanted
6:13
Speaker 1: is kind of my go to suggestion for if you're
6:15
Speaker 1: gonna play a superhero game. That's not something you're gonna
6:18
Speaker 1: find on the commercial market, but you might be able
6:20
Speaker 1: to find a second hind copy. Heroes Wanted is a
6:22
Speaker 1: superhero game where you play a goofy superhero who is
6:27
Speaker 1: striving to fight for glory. It's sort of like if
6:31
Speaker 1: Mystery Men were a board game, but in this case
6:35
Speaker 1: it'd be Glass. Now. The downside of that, you know,
6:38
Speaker 1: maybe Sentinels of the Multiverse is a better one because
6:41
Speaker 1: Sentinels of the Multiverse plays on the idea of comic
6:44
Speaker 1: book superheroes, but it also doesn't use superheroes. We all
6:49
Speaker 1: know already, So yeah, revising my suggestion, let's say you
6:52
Speaker 1: play Sentinels of the Multiverse if you wanted to play
6:55
Speaker 1: a superhero game to go with Split and Glass. Next up,
7:00
Speaker 1: my wife and I watched a small dark comedy movie
7:04
Speaker 1: that was built around a true story that happened in
7:08
Speaker 1: Britain called Wicked Little Letters. In Wicked Little Letters, there's
7:12
Speaker 1: this town and people in the town start getting these letters,
7:17
Speaker 1: these sort of really insulting letters in the mail and
7:21
Speaker 1: for some reason, the I guess because it's older times
7:25
Speaker 1: and people are more sensitive, because the letters don't purport
7:29
Speaker 1: to threaten anything the way that like, if you heard
7:33
Speaker 1: about somebody getting letters now and you heard they were
7:34
Speaker 1: really upset and they've got law enforcement involved, it's probably
7:38
Speaker 1: because the letters are stalking them, or the letters are
7:42
Speaker 1: saying something about them their personal life, they're threatening them. Instead.
7:46
Speaker 1: In this show, in these Letters, which you know, this
7:50
Speaker 1: is like the turn of the century, so probably before
7:52
Speaker 1: World War One in England, instead, it is just really insulting.
7:56
Speaker 1: The letters are really rude, and the people were say
8:00
Speaker 1: they are very upset forgetting them, and so there is
8:03
Speaker 1: a complaint made about a particular person who is sort
8:07
Speaker 1: of living a more bohemian lifestyle, and so the cops
8:10
Speaker 1: decide she's the one sending the letters, even though there's
8:13
Speaker 1: literally zero evidence that she did it except for one
8:16
Speaker 1: person who says I saw her mailing some letters, and
8:19
Speaker 1: on that bit of advice or that bit of testimony,
8:23
Speaker 1: they arrest her and they try her for writing these
8:25
Speaker 1: terrible letters. It's an interesting star. Of course, she didn't
8:29
Speaker 1: do it, and the film kind of reveals who does
8:31
Speaker 1: as it goes along. It's an interesting bit of historical,
8:35
Speaker 1: amusing story tied up with the kind of differences in
8:39
Speaker 1: culture and really strong acting. Olivia Coleman is in it,
8:44
Speaker 1: the woman who played Dawn in the Office is in it,
8:48
Speaker 1: along with several other actors you'd recognize sort of who
8:51
Speaker 1: are regulars in the British cinema universe. So if you
8:55
Speaker 1: get a chance to check it out and you like
8:57
Speaker 1: sort of light black comedy, pretty Little Letters or wicked
9:02
Speaker 1: Little Letters, it's definitely worth watching. Now, thinking of a
9:05
Speaker 1: game that's sort of a game that would go with it,
9:07
Speaker 1: I'm reminded a little bit of the old the game
9:11
Speaker 1: Marrying mister Darcy. Now Marrying mister Darcy wasn't really a
9:15
Speaker 1: game that I really liked a lot. I thought was okay,
9:18
Speaker 1: but eventually I sold it because the big thing that
9:20
Speaker 1: it had is there's sort of this dice rolling to
9:22
Speaker 1: decide if you win. It's just sort of a very
9:25
Speaker 1: light sych collection game with a little bit of take that.
9:28
Speaker 1: But if you think about it in terms of manner gentility,
9:31
Speaker 1: it fits the theme really well. Of it's not the
9:36
Speaker 1: same era, of course, but it fits the theme really
9:39
Speaker 1: well of the Wicked Little Letters. The idea of maintaining
9:42
Speaker 1: upper class morality and maybe trading insults with each other.
9:47
Speaker 1: It works pretty well. It's funny. So that's Wicked Little Letters.
9:51
Speaker 1: Next TEP, my wife and I watched two movies that
9:55
Speaker 1: were part of a two movie set and then they
9:58
Speaker 1: are a three movie set, and then they made a
9:59
Speaker 1: series ease. The two movies that we watched were called
10:03
Speaker 1: Murder on the Blackpool Express and Death on the Tyne.
10:07
Speaker 1: Now that's t y n E. Both of these are
10:10
Speaker 1: made for TV movies on the BBC. They're sort of
10:14
Speaker 1: comedy movies about a local tourism company where they arrange
10:19
Speaker 1: tours of different places. The Blackpool Express one is the
10:22
Speaker 1: example there. In it, the main characters are Johnny Vegas.
10:30
Speaker 1: The actor Johnny Vegas is somebody we've seen in a
10:32
Speaker 1: lot of stuff, and I don't recognize the actress. But
10:35
Speaker 1: they both run this touring company and they're doing a
10:39
Speaker 1: tour of the site of a series of novels written
10:43
Speaker 1: by a kind of mildly popular murder novelist in Britain,
10:48
Speaker 1: and so people are sign up for this tour to
10:50
Speaker 1: go see all the spots that happen in the murders,
10:54
Speaker 1: murders that happened in the books, and of course the
10:57
Speaker 1: as they're going on, there are actually murders on tour,
11:01
Speaker 1: and through a series of sort of nonsensical starting points,
11:05
Speaker 1: the characters continue the tour even though someone several people
11:09
Speaker 1: are murdered. It's a very silly show with surprisingly raunchy jokes,
11:14
Speaker 1: particularly the second movie, Death on the Tyne, which continues.
11:17
Speaker 1: It's the same tour service, but now they've arranged a
11:20
Speaker 1: tour on a river cruise, on a like a cruise ship,
11:24
Speaker 1: a small cruise ship on a river cruise. I think
11:27
Speaker 1: they're going to They're going on the Tyne River. I
11:30
Speaker 1: don't know exactly where that is, but that's what that's
11:32
Speaker 1: what the tour is, and of course more murders on there.
11:35
Speaker 1: Or maybe the boat is the Tyne. I don't remember
11:38
Speaker 1: exactly because I think they're in the ocean, But anyway,
11:41
Speaker 1: there's a series of murders again, and our main characters,
11:44
Speaker 1: who are the sort of hapless comedy duo, have to
11:47
Speaker 1: solve the murders. You know, if they're good. They're very strange,
11:52
Speaker 1: like the humor in them is unexpected and pretty weird,
11:56
Speaker 1: but it's not outlandish, it's just weird. So we enjoyed
12:00
Speaker 1: them both quite a bit. Johnny Vegas is a particularly
12:03
Speaker 1: amusing character. He reminds me kind of of like Larry
12:07
Speaker 1: the Cable Guy, sort of. I mean, he's not overtly conservative,
12:10
Speaker 1: but he is sort of homey or simple, kind of
12:15
Speaker 1: a Fred Flintstone type. I guess. It's also a heavier guy,
12:18
Speaker 1: and that's part of the shtick, I think, but he's
12:21
Speaker 1: also insecure. I don't know's they're both movies are very funny.
12:25
Speaker 1: We have since watched the third one. I'm going to
12:27
Speaker 1: need to put that that'll be in the September roundup.
12:31
Speaker 1: But in all, well worth a few minutes of your time.
12:34
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed them. They're made Like I said, they're
12:36
Speaker 1: made for the BBC. We watch them either on Amazon
12:40
Speaker 1: Prime or on BritBox. I think on BritBox, which we
12:42
Speaker 1: have right now. That's Murder on the Blackpool Express and
12:46
Speaker 1: Death on the Tyne. Now, there aren't a lot of
12:49
Speaker 1: clear analogs there. We've talked about murder games before. You
12:52
Speaker 1: could always play the board game based on PBS Mystery,
12:56
Speaker 1: or you could do Clue or something like that, but
12:58
Speaker 1: that doesn't really fit vibe here. So I'll suggest a
13:02
Speaker 1: little known game called Riverside, which is designed by Christian
13:09
Speaker 1: I'm and Aspy and his design partner whose name I
13:13
Speaker 1: can't remember right now. It is a roll and right
13:15
Speaker 1: game and you're it's a combo tastic checkboxes kind of
13:19
Speaker 1: game where you're going up and down the river on
13:21
Speaker 1: a cruise ship and you're checking off things on boxes
13:24
Speaker 1: as you go. It's a fun little combo builders it's
13:28
Speaker 1: nothing too intense. You're certainly going to remember it, but
13:31
Speaker 1: it's not going to You're not going to go crazy
13:34
Speaker 1: looking not going to go crazy with it. It's a
13:37
Speaker 1: good end of the night filler kind of game. But
13:39
Speaker 1: it also be a really nice accompaniment to Murder on
13:42
Speaker 1: the Blackpool Express or Death on the Time. All Right,
13:44
Speaker 1: The last movie I have to talk about is Slain Shot.
13:47
Speaker 1: This was a new release in cinemas in the end
13:51
Speaker 1: of August. I got to see it. It's sort of
13:54
Speaker 1: a fun story about how I got to see it.
13:56
Speaker 1: My daughter and I. I took her out to Washington
14:00
Speaker 1: State where she's going to college, which is, you know,
14:03
Speaker 1: I live in the Chicago area. So it was a
14:05
Speaker 1: three day drive out there because we didn't go all
14:07
Speaker 1: the way through and we didn't want to kill ourselves
14:08
Speaker 1: driving overnight and stuff, so we did, you know, three
14:11
Speaker 1: eight hour days kind of roughly to get out there.
14:14
Speaker 1: And we spent one night in Spokane and they had
14:19
Speaker 1: an AMC movie theater there and they had this thing
14:21
Speaker 1: they called screen Unseen, and what it was is you
14:27
Speaker 1: get to know the rating of a movie and the
14:29
Speaker 1: run length, and then you just pay six bucks and
14:32
Speaker 1: you go see the movie, but you don't know what
14:34
Speaker 1: movie you're seeing. Apparently, the we learned from one of
14:37
Speaker 1: the other people who was there who regularly went that
14:39
Speaker 1: they never put horror movies in as the unknown movie.
14:43
Speaker 1: If they're doing that, they call it a scream unseen
14:47
Speaker 1: to let you know it's a horror movie, but the
14:49
Speaker 1: whole idea is it's a movie that's coming up soon.
14:51
Speaker 1: It's like a sneak preview. You aren't seeing you're not
14:53
Speaker 1: seeing a movie that's out already. You're seeing a movie
14:55
Speaker 1: that's going to come out soon. So we decide, what
14:57
Speaker 1: the heck, let's do that. I thought it'll be fun,
15:00
Speaker 1: and what we saw was Slingshot. Slingshot is a sci
15:03
Speaker 1: fi movie starring Casey Affleck and Lawrence fishburn and a
15:11
Speaker 1: couple other people, but it's mostly Casey Affleck, Lawrence Fishburne,
15:14
Speaker 1: and this one other guy as the crew members of
15:17
Speaker 1: a ship being sent to Saturn's moon Titan, where apparently
15:25
Speaker 1: there's a lot of water, I guess. And the idea
15:28
Speaker 1: is that it's a very long journey and they have
15:31
Speaker 1: to slingshot around Jupiter to get there, or they use
15:36
Speaker 1: the gravity of Jupiter as a slingshot to get there.
15:38
Speaker 1: So that's the premise, And of course part of the
15:42
Speaker 1: idea is that they go into hyper sleep for month
15:47
Speaker 1: three months at a time, and it turns out that
15:50
Speaker 1: screws with your head. So it's a psychological, claustrophobic thriller
15:55
Speaker 1: starring these three good actors. It's pretty fun. It's a
15:58
Speaker 1: good sci fi movie. I liked it, but I would
16:01
Speaker 1: have liked the ending just a little bit different than
16:03
Speaker 1: they did it. I'm not going to share that here,
16:05
Speaker 1: but you're welcome to message me about it if you
16:08
Speaker 1: want to talk to details. But it was an excellent
16:10
Speaker 1: choice for this random movie thing. I don't know that
16:14
Speaker 1: it's a movie I would have gone to see, but
16:16
Speaker 1: I'm happy at full price, you know, fifteen bucks or
16:18
Speaker 1: whatever they were charging. But I was really happy to
16:21
Speaker 1: have seen it for six and it's a fun night
16:24
Speaker 1: out to see a mystery movie. I actually didn't know
16:27
Speaker 1: that much about it, but it was a nice treat.
16:30
Speaker 1: So that's sling Shot. Now. As for a movie that
16:34
Speaker 1: would go whistling Shot, I had two in mind. One
16:38
Speaker 1: would be a game I would want to play to
16:40
Speaker 1: get it off of my shelf of opportunity, and that's
16:44
Speaker 1: Panic Station, which is a twenty fourteen game that was
16:47
Speaker 1: one of the first games trying to be the thing,
16:49
Speaker 1: the board game. It's widely regarded as not great, although
16:53
Speaker 1: I know they released some updated rules. So if I
16:56
Speaker 1: ever play it, which I would like to at some point,
16:58
Speaker 1: I would like to use the updated rules so that
17:00
Speaker 1: I get the best experience I can. Overall, it looks
17:03
Speaker 1: pretty good and I would like to try it at
17:06
Speaker 1: some point. Alternately, another game that has that might have
17:10
Speaker 1: a similar effect would be you Know you could do
17:13
Speaker 1: Win Lose Banana or Who's the Banana Win Lose? Banana
17:18
Speaker 1: is a game where you have three cards. You shuffle
17:21
Speaker 1: them up and deal them out, and one person has
17:24
Speaker 1: a card that says win, one person that has a
17:26
Speaker 1: card says lose, and one person has a card that
17:28
Speaker 1: says banana. When the game starts, the person who has
17:32
Speaker 1: the banana card reveals it, and then they have the
17:36
Speaker 1: other two people try to convince the person with the
17:38
Speaker 1: banana card to choose them because they have the win card,
17:42
Speaker 1: and the banana player wins if they pick the win card,
17:47
Speaker 1: as does the winner, as does the player with the
17:49
Speaker 1: win The player who has the lose card wins if
17:53
Speaker 1: the banana player picks the lose card. It's very silly,
17:57
Speaker 1: but a fun little game that might be a that
18:00
Speaker 1: might be a fun game to play if you were
18:01
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what to do with to go
18:06
Speaker 1: with Slingshot. Well, I did mention that those are the
18:09
Speaker 1: seven movies I saw that were new to me. I
18:11
Speaker 1: did mention I rewatched a number of movies. I rewatched Twister, Jumanji,
18:15
Speaker 1: Pitch Perfect, Adventures and Babysitting and Back to the Future,
18:20
Speaker 1: all enjoyable bangers. So happy to have watched those again.
18:25
Speaker 1: That does lead me to ask the question, what movies
18:27
Speaker 1: do you watch? In August, July and August of twenty
18:31
Speaker 1: twenty four, I would love to hear head over to
18:34
Speaker 1: board game Geek Guild three two sixty nine and share
18:36
Speaker 1: your thoughts there. You could also comment on the movies
18:39
Speaker 1: that I saw. Do you like the movies I mentioned?
18:41
Speaker 1: Do you think they're bad? Why? Tell us what you
18:44
Speaker 1: think of these movies. I would love to know. You
18:47
Speaker 1: could also send me an email Brendan at rattobox Games,
18:49
Speaker 1: although frankly Wombat nine two nine at Board Game Geek
18:53
Speaker 1: is more reliable I check that more often. I'm not
18:56
Speaker 1: as attentive to the rattobox Games email address as I
18:58
Speaker 1: should be, so thanks for joining me on my walk today.
19:01
Speaker 1: I hope your next walk is a posent as mine was.
19:03
Speaker 1: By Bye, Brought to you by rattle Box