Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / Sept ’25 – Feb ’26 Movie Roundup
Transcript
- Pick Up & Deliver 807: Sept '25 - Feb '26 Movie Roundup Welcome to Pick Up and Deliver, the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder as I leave the library and deliver an episode to you while I walk home. I'm Brendan Riley. [intro music plays] Greetings, listeners! It's a lovely day here in suburban Chicago with a slate gray sky and cloud overcast. Pretty nice. I'm wearing a hat and jacket, but if that sounds the same walk when I record the last episode, it was the board game espresso. I am on the way home from the place I was walking to while recording it. I was looking back: having had the unintended pause of only five episodes in February, I'm a little behind on my regular segments. So rather than being creative and coming up with unique and innovative for you to hear, I figured I'd do one of my regular segments that I'm behind on. This is the Cinema roundup! Really into this for board games? Low board game content in this episode, but I am going to be talking about films that I've watched. As I look back over my diary on letterbox. There's a link to that. And I've watched I and looked over the recent episodes. The last time I did anything about movies was two part episode about all the spooky movies I watched in September and October. So I looked back and I have a robust selection of movies to talk about. Maybe thirty movies altogether twenty five, but many of them are holiday movies, movies from mid-November through the end of December that you might call Christmas movies or holiday movies. And so I didn't want to talk about those mixed in with the other movies. So what I did is I went back to the last time I did just a regular movie roundup. I talked about July and August. So what I did is I looked at every movie I watched September and the end of February, and I just wrote down all of the ones that were not Christmas movies or horror horror movies. And that's what this list is. It's a list of twelve movies that I'm going to talk about with you, as I often do in the movie roundup. After I talk about each movie, I'm going to talk about a game that would go nicely as a pairing for it. If you wanted to watch a movie and play a game on the same evening, a kind of thematic approach. So let's jump into it. I'm going to do these in roughly chronological order, although I may skip around a little bit as I if I come across a movie that I don't have a lot to say about. So the first one I want to talk about is Mickey 17. This is a sci fi movie starring Hayden Christensen. Yes, Hayden Christensen as a clone, and Mark Ruffalo is in it. A couple other really sharp. The premise of the movie is it's a space expedition, and there are some jobs that are that they have to do that are super, super dangerous. You can't easily make robots that can do it, or robots are too expensive. They do is they have somebody who signs on to the disposable clone, and they have their whole brain is. And every day they get their brain scanned the latest version, and they are constantly getting their brains while they are experiencing. And then that person is given all the really dangerous jobs to they're killed. They just print out a new one. This is based on a novel that I read, so if you go back through podcasts, I'll put a link to it there. You can find the episode where I talked about the novel. In the novel it's Mickey 7. So in the movie, they're a bit more cavalier with the lives of the Mickey and team. But the premise is there's a Mickey. He's the seventeenth one. They think he's dead, so they print an eighteenth one, but then it turns out he's not dead. The seventeenth is still alive. There's a very strong taboo slash law about not having multiple alive at the same time. Survival. I thought this was a fine adaptation. It's dark and funny. I thought it was well made. It addresses a lot of the concerns. I thought the book was fine, and so I thought the movie was fine. Also, I wasn't particularly excited about the adaptation particularly well made. The satire was a little heavy handed, is fine with me, but it's not subtle. Mark Ruffalo does a great job of playing a blowhard politician with a. It feels like he it doesn't feel subtle in that Mickey seventeen was fine. If you're gonna play a game that sort of connects to that, I would say what you should do is have a one shot of paranoia. Paranoia is a classic role playing game in which you play clones living in a dangerous world and whenever you die. A new clone of yours is printed up and your mind is loaded into it. So you remember everything that happened up until you died. The whole thing is that you are in service to a computer that's running the whole society, and that computer is a maniac. Secret societies are illegal in the game, but everybody is in. That's kind of the gimmick. I haven't played it in a long time, but it is an fun game where you can die and they just get decanted again. I think you have five clones, so there is a limit to how many can die. That's a that's a good system. That would be a nice. Next up we have The Woman in Cabin 10. This is a classic thriller where somebody thinks they see something and then no one believes them. They saw it. Miss Marple, where she thinks she's. Someone throws something off a train. There are classic stories like Rear Window. Jimmy Stewart thinks he sees some someone murder his wife. In this one, it's a woman on a ship who's been invited there as a reporter to document charity crews being held by a billionaire for his billionaire friends. She believes it's a fine. It's fine. It's a thriller. Stars Keira Knightley and lots of beautiful people on a beautiful. It's fine. I thought the mystery was okay. I like the environment. It's well shot. It's very much like it was fine. If you're gonna play a game sort of focused on this, I think you could play the Rear Window board game. That one's pretty good. It's a cooperative game or semi-cooperative game where one player is the sort of clue master trying to guide the other players in figuring out who lives in which apartment, and you have to figure out if one of them was a murderer and is, in fact, hiding the murderer. You figure that out by by spotting inconsistencies in clue giver's story. That's a fun one. We played it a few times, had a good time with it. For the most part, it's a little sort of squishy in terms of feeling like you really understand what's going on. But such is the case with I think I saw it mysteries as well. It fits. That is the woman in cabin ten from. Next up we have the amazing documentary John Candy: I Like Me. This documentary is a straightforward biopic about or straightforward documentary about the life and times of comedian John Candy. The line I lines from and automobiles, and ones where he professes that he likes himself. I've been yelled at. This is a very moving, really compelling documentary. There's a lot of deep footage and interviews with people who really make it a special. It's directed by Colin Hanks. You should watch it. And if you have if you have any delight in John Candy as a artist, this is definitely something you should check out. I urge you to watch it. I don't really have a game that would go with it. I was thinking about do I own any that are based on properties that John Candy was in? I can't think of any, so I don't really have a game to go with this, but suffice to say John Candy. Next up we have Margin Call. I've seen this movie before, but I got a bug in my, uh, a hair in my brain to watch it again sometime. I was margin Call is a 2011 movie, sort of dramatizing the idea of being of people as part of trading firms, discovering the collapsing market in two thousand and eight to think about, like, what it was like at the boardroom of Bear Stearns before it collapsed in the in the movie, it's a bunch of people arguing with one another about what they regarding all of the stuff that have survived. It's a it's an interesting dark mood. It has Kevin Spacey in it, which he's gross. And so wanting to watch it, he's in it. Um, it's got Paul Bettany doing a really good job. Uh, Levi. Heroes. Also. Spock. Star Trek I think it's a really interesting, tense movie about finance. The world there. It's sort of like Glengarry Glen Ross a la desperate. Somewhat margin call. It's a movie worth watching if you want. I guess Ponzi Scheme would be the closest I could think of for if you had a game you wanted to play. Ponzi scheme is about sort of keeping your business going as long as you can, while trying to stay ahead of the other people, as are also about to fail. Uh, next up we have Spotlight. This is another one I rewatched. I was really in the mood for a heroic reporter movie and do it as well as spotlight does, and it helps that it is based on real events. The revelation of the Catholic Church pedophilia cover up scandal at the Washington Post. Washington Post I think no, it's the Boston Globe, it's the Boston Globe, really compelling movie, excellent acting. The sequences where Mark Ruffalo figured out that these records are available if he can get himself to find them. So that is spotlight really worth checking out. I don't know that I can think of. Maybe the closest you could get into a movie would be Watergate is about hero reporters, politicians trying to dueling it out with. So yeah, let's say Watergate. Next up, we have The Life of Chuck. This is a movie with Tom Hiddleston, who played Loki in the Marvel shows. Based on a Stephen King novella or novel, and it's sort of working backwards snapshots of a man's life, helping you understand who he is and why he is the way he is. It was billed as being really compelling. I thought it was an interesting movie, I enjoyed it. Compelling, fantastical stuff was weird enough that, I don't know, it was fine. Uh, the closest I would get in terms of a game would be the Holding on The Life and Death of Billy Kerr, which is a game about being a hospice nurse and trying to help somebody work through the important moments in their life before they pass away. That's a really good that's an interesting game. Really weird, but interesting and worth checking. Seems like a good pair of the life of Chuck. Uh, let's see, I have two more movies that I watch that we're going to talk about those. And I did rewatch Notting Hill and Sleepless in Seattle. Uh, and then I watched labyrinth, which I had seen a long time ago, but not not often. So I tend to watch that. And that was anything watch. I like gyms and stuff a lot, and that's delightful and delightful. I watched it, walked a knife edge with David Bowie, sort of in slightly romantic attitude toward this fourteen year old girl, but she is sort of exploring what be a woman, and he is a character in her mind, perhaps, or a magical character flirting with an adult. And her fantasy. It fits the I didn't didn't feel creepy, but. And a little dangerous maybe. What happened? I also watched Notting Hill and Sleepless in Seattle. These are two romantic comedies that I Notting Hill holds up. I really like it, even though at the core of the story we have a who is a cruel and he is sort of dumb at a couple, but really is about her inability. But it's a lovely, if you're somebody in screenwriting looking at how the sidecar would not be. Similarly, I watched for the first time in I Don't Know How Long, Sleepless in Seattle and boy, that one was not nearly as I remembered it being pretty funny. It was just a little fun. There are a few funny moments in it, but mostly it is a boring romance. And I say boring. Not like I can't enjoy a romantic story, just like the romance in the story. You could put that one to bed. I don't think I'll probably watch it. Or if I do, it'll be more than a decade from now. Forgotten that I thought it was. All right, so two more new movies that I watched. Uh, one of these is Rental Family. This is a Brendan Fraser movie. He plays an out of work, a struggling actor in Japan who gets work as a gaijin for people who are paying for rental family to provide sort of fantastical intervention and what? And I have no idea how close a real thing that happens. I don't know, maybe that maybe this is a real thing, maybe not. The movie doesn't tell us, but it is a really interesting about people connecting people about loneliness, ethics, about helping about what it's to lie. And it's a great acting work by Brendan Fraser. He is somebody I've always enjoyed. I liked him when he was young. Of course The Mummy is excellent, but I also enjoyed Encino Man and various other films. He was younger and so I'm really glad to see him back. A tough, exciting, enjoy his work. So that is Fraser, a really interesting I don't know what would be an inch would be a reasonable game. All right. Uh, the oh you know what? I'll look up the name and you can find it, but Sen-Foong Lim, has a role playing that they release that is a role playing game about superhero, but also having to deal with your family. So there's it's a role playing game that's sort of about I'll find a link to it, whatever it is. So check the show notes for that. And then finally I watched the documentary The Hobby Tales from the tabletop. This was a documentary about several people in the tabletop. We're doing various things going to the board game, uh, World Series, working on a Kickstarter for a board game, exploring their own board game stories. There are a number of people I've seen before, uh, interviewed. Really interesting. Look at the hobby. Not much new there. Not much new there for, but interesting to see it. Good light. There are a couple of people I saw reviewed it and thought that it was overly exploitative of some of the people in the documentary. Silly or bad? I don't think that it intended to. I think that there is an aspect in which, if you're ashamed of the way people are, they're kind of nerdy, then it feels like this is exploiting that. But I think depicting people how they are is exploitative. And I don't think the film tries to go like, hey, look at these weirdos. I thought the hobby was pretty interesting. I saw it on. Well, that brings me to the end of my episode. Hopefully you've enjoyed this movie roundup in a couple days. I'll do a roundup in a couple episodes from now. I'll do all the holiday movies last November. I'll be all caught up on my walk to the next walk, as pleasant as mine was. Bye bye. [exit music plays] Brought to you by Rattlebox Games.