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March '24 Movie Roundup · Pick Up and Deliver

• 0:00
  Welcome to Pick Up and Deliver the Podcast where I pick up my audio recorder as I step
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  off the train and deliver an episode to you while I walk home.
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  I'm Brendan Riley.
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  Well, good afternoon listener.
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  It's a lovely day here in suburban Chicago.
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  It is cicada season so I'm having to step around
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  a lot of cicadas -- dead cicadas -- on the sidewalk and if you listen you can hear
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  them buzzing in the trees.
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  We'll see if they pick up on the microphone or not.
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  Well I was looking and it's been a while since I've done a movie roundup.
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  In fact the last time I did one it was the February movie roundup and it's now May so
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  it seems like it's time to do a new movie roundup.
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  That's right:
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  we're going to do the March 2024 movie roundup.
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  So those of you new to a movie roundup episode or podcast in this episode I talk about
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  the movies that I watched in the previous month or sometimes two months if I didn't watch
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  a ton of movies and I sometimes I talk about them in the context of what would be a good
• 1:08
  game to pair with them.
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  Sometimes I just talk about the movies.
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  This is less a board game episode than other ones so if you want to skip it I guess
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  you can.
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  I hope you won't, but there it is.
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  So March 2024 movies.
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  The first movie I watched in March 2024 was Saw X, the 10th movie in the franchise
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  about the puzzle based serial killer.
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  Oh what's his name?
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  I can't remember his name.
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  Saw man.
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  Jigsaw.
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  Like some of the previous ones this one takes place...
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  It's the narratives of these movies... if you lay them on a chronological time path.
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  they overlap in weird ways and Saw X overlaps with some of the others in pretty interesting
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  ways but it takes place back when Jigsaw was alive.
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  Like it's not a follow on movie like some of the other ones, and in this one he is trying
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  to find a cure for cancer.
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  So here's the wild part about this one.
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  In Saw X Jigsaw is kind of the good guy.
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  I mean not really he's still like murdering people but the people he's murdering are so
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  odious in this movie that you don't really mind that he's murdering them.
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  I mean part of what made the previous movies interesting or compelling maybe other than
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  the wild traps is that Jigsaw was murdering people who didn't necessarily deserve to be
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  murdered, right?
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  He thought that they were not making the most of their lives but often the way that they
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  were not making their most of the lives didn't necessarily reasonably translate into a capital
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  crime.
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  In this one there might be some argument that it should.
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  I don't know.
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  I don't want to give away too much but it's a weird move to have the villain of the series
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  be the most likeable character in the movie and somebody you're kind of cheering for which
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  is kind of what happens.
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  Yeah what a weird one.
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  The traps were moderately interesting as usual.
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  One of the things I don't like--this is true in a number of the traps, usually the sort of
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  second or third trap we see in the movie, one that we just know the character is not going
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  to survive--
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  often they require the character to do something horrific to their own body (that's usually
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  the trick in the Saw movie they have to do something horrible to themselves in order to
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  survive)
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  but often there is a delay between them doing the thing and like the trap stopping that seems
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  a little unfair. The second one and this one which involves a lady song off her
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  own leg seemed particularly nasty to me in terms of its how much delay there was between
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  her accomplishing the horrific self-mutilation and the trap triggering her survival.
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  So anyway if you like, if you've liked, the last couple of Saw movies if you like Spiral
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  A tale from the Saw Universe, you... wow! listen to those cicadas... you will probably like
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  Saw 10. If not this is not the one to start with, I don't think. There's a lot of assumptions
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  that you know what's going on in the movies before you watch them.
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  So that's Saw 10.
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  I don't remember what I recommended last time we watched a movie like this maybe an
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  escape room. Unlock I think is probably what I recommended before and that goes again with
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  it.
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  Next we've got The Wedding Singer. This is a movie I just really enjoy my wife and I were
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  having very tired, what's something we could watch is just fun to watch? Adam Sandler's The Wedding
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  Singer is peak peak Adam Sandler for me in that he's most likeable. it's a cute movie Drew
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  Barrymore is very likeable in this one. top marks all around I love that movie.
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  I don't know what I guess you could play Fog of Love which is the romantic comedy movie game
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  but I don't I don't actually found that move that game kind of stressful rather than funny
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  maybe something like Marrying Mr. Darcy would fit that one, something cute and light about
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  romantic comedies.
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  Next up I watched Dune again sort of thinking toward the new Dune movie but I never got
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  around to going to see Dune in the theater Dune 2: the Dunening. but I rewatched the first
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  one it's good is always very enjoyable I don't know that I have a lot more to say about
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  that I think in a previous episode I talked about it so I'll let you go listen to that if
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  you want obviously the game to play with that one is Dune or perhaps Dune Imperium depending
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  which of those flavors of game you like.
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  The next movie I really enjoyed was The Cheap Detective. The Cheap Detective is a Neil
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  Simon I believe it's a Neil Simon comedy and the main character is basically Humphrey
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  Bogart playing a mix of his characters. it's basically Peter Falk playing as Humphrey
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  Bogart's characters in Casablanca and the Maltese Falcon.
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  It's a mashup of those two movies with a comedy twist there are elements of it that are
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  very funny if you like those genres if you've seen those movies if you like Peter Falk
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  it is a winner, it's very funny I really enjoyed it we had a lot of fun watching it and
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  it's called The Cheap Detective because he never
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  tips and that's pretty funny. Overall it's a great movie lots of good dialogue and tons of
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  people in it when you're watching it you're like oh that person oh that person if you know
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  movies from like the 70s there's no shortage of people to watch in that film.
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  That said, it is also a movie made in the 70s and it has some real problems. As with a lot of comedy
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  in the 70s there's stuff that doesn't age well in particular for The Cheap Detective. The
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  movie has a lot of casual misogyny-- I mean a lot-- there's not much for female characters to
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  do except be sexy and then the movie has at least it's sort of making fun of the main
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  character for his promiscuity even if it's also making fun of the women for their promiscuity
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  it's at least satirizing it a little bit. But the movie also seems to have a lot of fun making
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  fun of names with Asian origins. It doesn't seem to be ironic, it seems to be saying 'isn't it
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  funny that some Asian names sound like English words that are funny?' That's the joke and that's
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  not cool. yeah the sort of casual sexism and racism of the 1970s is part of that movie and
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  be aware of it if you are gonna watch it I would still say it's the it's my second, it's my
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  third favorite comedy detective movie from the last half of the 70s or the first half of
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  the 80s. surprisingly I have five movies to compare it to oh actually six there's Clue which
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  is my favorite Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid which would be my second favorite.The Cheap Detective
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  is my third favorite then I'll also put into that category murder by death and
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  there's a Clint Eastwood one red heat maybe is doing something like that which is also comedy.
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  I feel like there was one more comedy from that era detective hardboiled this type of comedy
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  movie anyhow it's worth watching if that seems like your thing. I would say the the game to
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  connect to it would probably be Awkward Guests -- that game has a lot of humor built into the way
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  the characters look, even though it is pretty serious as a murder game that that would be a nice
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  pairing with the cheap detective. The next one is the Mystery of the 13th Guest. This is a movie
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  that I watched just because I was looking for something to watch and this was available. It is a classic
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  noir thriller with a weird outcome--I really can't recall what grabbed us to watch it except it said
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  it was available to watch and we thought oh that'll be amusing I think maybe I watched it
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  late at night while I was waiting for my daughter to get home from an activity out it's from 1943
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  it was it was amusing it might be more of a Mysterium type deal if you're looking for a game that would go well with it
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  it is a movie that had a bit of a haunted feel to it --the cicadas are very loud around here right now
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  so if you're gonna pick them up you would right now and it's that buzzing sound in the background
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  that kind of goes in and out. Next up we watch The Holdovers. this is the more recent film from Alexander
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  Payne I believe is the director and Paul Giamatti is your is the main actor from it. we last saw them
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  when they made the movie about wine, sideways, which was very good as well. In The Holdovers Paul Giamatti
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  plays a very cranky English teacher at a very reserved boys literature or boys school in the 60s he
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  seems to revel in punishing the boys for not studying hard and he assigns a lot of work in his very,
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  cantincarous is the right word, they're unnerdly well sort of scofflaw boy gets gets end up being left
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  at the school over christmas break as does one housekeeper slash cook who is alone at christmas because
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  her son died in Vietnam so it must be early 70s then now that I think about it. it's a really compelling
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  movie--the main characters are interesting. it isn't it wasn't for me as good as all of the reviews
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  seem to make it sound like it was going to be but the longer I sit with the movie the longer I wait
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  the more I enjoyed it which is always a crucial thing like as I think about the movie I recall it
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  fondly and interestingly versus sometimes over time my interest in the movie drops rather than
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  grows so there's a lot going on there and it was really well made, an interesting character study,
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  particularly if you like Paul Giamatti. I've no idea what kind of game would fit there perhaps you
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  could play Miskatonic School for Girls, which is at least about a private school, or there's also
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  Argent the Consortium which is sort of like a hogwarts type deal but still about a private school
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  uh Miskatonic School for Girls. the advantage doing that is they have the expansion called winter break
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  which has ads christmas themed stuff to the game and the winter break expansion would fit nicely
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  if you're playing the holdovers. the finally final movie I want to talk about is Dumb Money
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  dumb money is a sort of uh docu drama about the vlogger Keith Gill who was sort of the head of
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  the conversation in wall street bets around the game stop short squeeze if you don't know what that is
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  go look up game stop short squeeze I'm not going to try to explain it here on the podcast.
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  uh but it is an amusing depiction of the weird stuff that happens with regard to money
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  and an enjoyable way to spend an evening watching a movie about that it was well made and funny
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  and definitely worth checking out if you get a chance. Now the short squeeze was not a scam
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  necessarily but I think it is useful to think about how it might have been portrayed that way
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  so maybe as a game to go along with watching dumb money you should play Ponzi Scheme which is
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  about Charles Ponzi and his famous eponymous scheme. if you do let me know how it is. I have that on
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  my shelf but I haven't played it yet. well thanks for joining me on my walk today, I hope your next
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  walk is as pleasant as mine was. bye bye
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  [music]
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  [outtake beep] and that goes again with it -- AUGH! -- excuse me
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  a cicada just landed on my hand good okay um [outtake beep]