this guy is a lot

the opposite of City of Angels Cage

oh, this changed direction

just giving the whole thing away less'n halfway through

never trust a man who passionately defends the need for a fancy rocket system

it's hard to tell which parts of these that are silly are Movie Nonsense and which parts are Just What The 90s Were Like

that ending as it exists doesn't really connect the tropical storm story to the murder story, huh

but apparently there's an alternate ending that got cut, let's see if that works any better

oh, yeah, totally understand why you'd cut that, it's too big

In this one he /starts/ with the sad present day seniors at the graveyard.

I've definitely seen this before in some school context, but I'll be fucked if I can remember why or when.

Brutal stuff, not a lot to talk about.

Tom Hanks works here, but like with Spielberg I find him frustrating at his most Patriotic.

because, to be clear, American patriotism is poison

oh, it's Faraday from LOST

...and Vin Diesel???

of course in the UK he's known as Vincent Petrol

you know, from the opening Normandy Beach sequence I was expecting something at least a little bit critical and much less blindly patriotic, not this The Good War bullshit

me: it can't ALL be propaganda

movie: hold my flag

me: only if I can go get some matches

movie: do not hold my flag

I've been vague, cuz this is a bit out of my lane and all, but I'm in 1998 with the list, so 9/11 is a shadow on the horizon, and it's hard not to think, what does a movie like this -- relatively uncritical, worshipping the hell of war as something Good and Glorious, WW2 as America's self-decided new genesis -- contribute to how America feels about the idea of war in late 2001? Nothing good.

It's midnight, it's very possible I'm talkin' out the ass here.

now i'm overthinking things and i'd hate to have a tongue down there

#259, or #518, kicking off M Night Shyamalan's wild 1999 with one he goes uncredited on but did contribute significantly to the script of, it's "She's All That."

I fucking hate this premise, but I think people like this movie? Cool cast, too.

oh this outdoor high school location is the outdoor location for Sunnydale High

No point going on about the premise, we all know it's nonsense, but then what else do I even talk about.

"Sooner or later... it has to drop."

lmao

"So, you wanna go to the beach?"

maybe in 2021 when we're Old-er

There's good jokes in this, actually.

Don't understand why everyone's always such a piece of shit in 90s American high school stories. Was there just something in the water? Is it MTV's fault?

That was exactly charming enough to get away with being awful on paper.

If I recall correctly I described the first one as "a truly unhinged depiction of the human baby," it's #260, or #519, 2021's "The Boss Baby: Family Business."

A 40-year timeskip is pretty wild for a movie about babies.

The first one wasn't set in the 80s, so technology in the world of the Boss Baby is completely stagnant.

... If anything, it's gone backwards, Tim has a flip phone.

Honestly some really funny animation in this.

A lot more Shawshank Redemption jokes than I was expecting.

somehow, an even more unhinged depiction of the human baby

People whose taste generally aligns with mine seem to like this one, so why not, it's #261, or #520, 2021's "Vacation Friends."

This is a hoot, and also, I would spontaneously develop the power to generate a portal to another universe to jump into before I'd spend thirty seconds in the same room as this John Cena character.

That was okay. The main joke of it gets kinda old, but it never outstays its welcome.

Leaving now to go see #262, or #521, 2021's second Marvel Studios picture, "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings."

> that's pretty early in the day

I love a pre-lunch screening, I bring a sandwich, nobody's ever loud or annoying, it's great.

hey

that kicked ass

bus fight worth the price of admission alone

not to the bus, mind, if I were on that bus I'd want my money back

@Alexis Countryside of Demons?

@kurt Stadium of Dickheads, I think.

@Alexis It's just a bunch of retired demons tending to their fields, planting carrots.

@Alexis damn. When I was in school I saw finding nemo

@The_T It probably would-a been in history class, mind, but this does seem awful brutal for when I reckon it would-a been, early high school.

@Alexis yeah, i can't think of anything like that from my high school...

ah wait no, in middle school an English teacher tried to show that one film version of Romeo and Juliet and tried to fast forward through the nudity but did a piss poor job of it.

@The_T World War 2 /is/ one part of history where Europe generally doesn't fuck around in teaching it, if I'm misremembering and we didn't watch this, we definitely had all this really brutal stuff described in detail, also.

@Alexis yeah, World War-related history was... always treated really lightly over here. How important America was to winning, bullshit like that.

@The_T Like I couldn't name more than one Minister-President from before I was born, but they made sure we knew war was hell.

@Alexis is this the one that's a retelling of a shakespeare play without ever acknowledging that

@monorail I think it's based on George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion" and "My Fair Lady," but probably.

@Alexis Was it all that, though?

@kurt Nah, not really, but it was more That than the remake "He's All That" looks like it is.

@Alexis Neither compare to my pitch for a movie called They're All That.

In which two high schoolers make a bet with their friends that they can make the other one popular with, one's bet, the resident Jocks™ and, the other's bet, the resident Nerds®.

Neither are aware of the other's bet.

@kurt See, that's an actual twist on the premise, I'd watch that.

@Alexis I haven't seen the sequel, but I thought the first one was deliberately vaguely 70s-80s-ish? Based mostly on the toys. Teddy Ruxpin was the big hit ~1985, and pretty much everything else was around in my childhood (before that). Also the styling of the cars.