TheLeon

The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009). It’s interesting to watch this not long after the original. It plays out a lot like I expected a Tony Scott version of this story to go, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I think the more laid back attitude of the 70’s version suits the material better. Denzel, as always, is one of the most reliable actors we have. I don’t like the manic energy John Travolta is bringing. Overall, this is a perfectly OK movie, but if you want a Tony Scott/Denzel Washington movie, just watch Unstoppable, which completely rules.

When I was working at Target, I got a "coaching" from a boss because I wasn't greeting every single guest that walked by. While she was explaining this to me, we were in the middle of the store, and what should have been a 30 second conversation took five minutes, because she kept interrupting herself to illustrate what I should be doing. She was desperately reaching out to everyone walking by, sometimes barely finishing saying "Can I help you find something?" to one person before turning away to say it to someone walking the opposite direction. It looked insane, and was so obviously an impractical way to spend your work day. I honestly felt like I was in someone else's comedy sketch.

It’s for people who never need to look at price tags.

Even though it’s launching on HBO Max this weekend as well, I think we’re going to make it to the theater to see this one.

Oh yeah, last year’s Invisible Man is really good. I think they generally made the right decision to break up IT the way that they did, but for me it kinda made Chapter 2 inherently less interesting/scary. All the spooky funhouse, scary clown shit that’s so good in the first one is a lot less effective when it’s Bill fucking Hader running away from the waking nightmare. You also don’t get all of the classic kid bonding/coming of age stuff that works so well in the first part.

The one about turning 30 really hit me, because it made me realize Bo is only like 3 weeks older than me.

Now that you've mentioned it, I've always wanted to pop off headshots while riding a galloping Ponyta, or use Jigglypuff as a shield in the middle of a shoot-out. And then after conquering my foes, putting some Miltank to work on my farm.

#NotMyDaniRojas

Are we keeping this thread going just on the hopes that Wade will keep giving away games? Because I want the Mass Effect trilogy but can’t really justify buying it right now.

The latest prestige HBO drama ended last week, and I haven’t seen anyone mention it on here. When I initially watched the first episode, I gave up on it after like 20 minutes. I was like “sad small town, everyone is miserable, Kate Winslet doing an accent and looking like a normal person, yadda yadda yadda, I get it.” But it kept getting good buzz, so this weekend I gave it another shot, and quickly devoured all 7 episodes. It’s good! My single favorite creative decision this show makes is oddly a spoiler.

It’s brutal (in a good way). Another piece of quarantine-based media that makes me so glad that I had a regular job to go to every day. Have you seen his film Eighth Grade? I thought it was excellent, and shows he has a ton of promise as a writer/director, if he decides to stay away from traditional performing. I’ve always enjoyed him as a performer, but these last couple projects show that he can do so much more.

Is this part of your Doctor Who set tour?

Gotta offset all the threads that devolve into fast food talk.

I avoided Master and Commander for a long time, because it always seemed like a classic “dad” movie, like some real boring History Channel shit. But when I finally watched a year or two ago, I was entranced. The ships! The sea! The men!

...but, like, good.

Just as long as her weapons don't break every two minutes.

I’m not talking about spin-offs. When people talk about Pokémon being the same game over and over, I assume they’re talking about the main games, not Mystery Dungeon and Pinball.

Operation Neptune never gets brought up when people talk about “educational” games, but that’s the one we had in my school.

Another thing to consider with the Dragon Quest comparison is that we are, what, 8-9 generations into Pokémon? In that time, there have only been 4 main, numbered DQ games, and one of them was an MMO. When DQ XI came out, it felt kinda fresh despite being a really standard JRPG, since the last directly comparable entry in the series (VIII) had come out over a decade earlier.

I’ve worn glasses/contacts for nearly 20 years. Can’t say I’ve run into any issues like that. I have no idea what the numbers mean.

“mostly releasing in 2021” is what excites me.

A Quiet Place Part 2 - weird movie. I never felt like the first one really needed a sequel, but I liked it enough that I excited to watch this. There really isn’t anything new here. You know the score by now - be quiet or the big bug aliens will get you. A lot of the set pieces are well executed, but don’t really do much that we haven’t seen already. The second half feels pretty nonsensical, but was entertaining enough while it was happening. As a side note, I’ve been to the theater several times since lockdown started. Now that restrictions are being lifted, I actually had a much worse time than I have in the past year. There was a pack of teens in the back of the theater that wouldn’t shut up. It wasn’t even loud reactions to the movie, just sustained conversation. After about 10 minutes, I got up at like the exact same time as another patron and we both went to complain, something I’ve never done. A couple of employees came and escorted the kids out, and I presume they were ceremonially sacrificed to alien bug monsters.

The ending of Episode 2 was too good. They couldn’t follow it.

Blue whale in a desert. Or does the fight take place in the animal’s natural habitat?

Knockout City - Not the kind of game I could play for hours at a time, but I can see myself popping in and playing a few matches here and there. Good shit.