I have not yet seen the sequel, but I might if I can find a good matinee deal or something. This makes me feel ancient, but I remember when a ticket was like $5 if the showtime was before 5 pm. Sadly, that seems to have gone the way of the $5 footling.

Beekeeper is one of the best surprises I’ve had in a long time. I was looking for something new, but sorta familiar, to watch and gave it a shot on streaming, pretty much sight unseen. I thought it was just Statham.trying to cut in on that John Wick money. Which, it sorta was, but man, that script just kept out doing itself with every expansion in scope / stakes. By the time they “reveal” who the kid’s mom is, I was so on board their ride.

I wish Statham had brought something to the role other than stoic badass. Maybe it would have been too much at that point, but I kinda wanted an actor who could match the script in brazen buffoonery. Maybe then they could have cut the FBI agents’ scenes and focused more on him. I practically snoozed through that whole B plot.

It’s a mixed bag tbh. I think the first one is overlong and less clever than it thinks it is. The action is competent, but not substantively better than a good direct to video shoot em up, and there’s just so much dead space between these sequences it’s almost not worth it.

That being said, i’d rank it above Jason Statham’s A Working Man, but below Jason Statham’s The Beekeeper. Idk if that helps you at all, but I think it’s indicative of the mode this movie is trying to operate in.

Post your shit, don’t be excessive. If it gets deleted for self promo in one community, there’s several alternatives. If it gets deleted in every community, reassess your messaging lol.

This platform requires OC to survive, or else we’re just a mirror for other sites. Deleting OC because it comes from the Creator seems short-sighted, but I’m also not a mod. So, ymmv.

Okay? Again, who are you serving by choosing this specific forum to shout that messaging? I know you aren’t OP, so consider that the royal “you”.

It’s just tiresome is all, and I’m on the “boo, capitalism” side of things. It’s like the folks who turn every thread tangentially related to Microsoft into a Linux advertisement. Or the involuntary ejaculation of a vegetarian when the subject of diet comes up. Like, yes, these folks are probably correct about the things they are saying; you’re never going to be wrong to consider the angle being worked by a corp. However, it’s infantilizing to suggest that people are unaware that a corporation wants their money. That’s a given, and without additional commentary, it’s a positively useless statement that only serves to make people tune out the messaging, even in contexts where it IS desirable to bring it up (such as when a company is doing shady shit in pursuit of your money). Releasing a mediocre graphical remaster of a title that people have nostalgia for hardly qualifies as “shady shit” in my book. Lazy, sure, but not shady.

Interesting! Based on the headline I thought this was maybe like a 2d version of The Guild games, but this appears to learn closer to something like Recettear, maybe?

Higher fidelity for sure, as one would expect when comparing games released 10 years apart, but idk if it’s “better” per se. Of course this is totally subjective, but I feel like there’s no style to inZoi, unless we define “generic AI output” as a style.

Buy the Divinity games instead. Rewards Larian, doesn’t give WOTC/Hasbro shit, and enables the studio to continue to work of stuff they find exciting, rather than becoming chief foremen of the IP mines, along with all of Activision’s support studios who do naught but crank out CoD skins nowadays (RIP Raven).

If I remember right, Larian has pretty definitively said they want nothing to do with DnD or BG3 moving forward, to the point that they cancelled DLC plans.

I ate the onion.

Meh. According to the source you posted, that exchange was simply “my wife found two reports that Apollo Legend committed suicide. If it’s true, I will not shed a tear. I will try to suppress a smile or a giggle.” Yes, considering Apollo’s eventual death, it’s shitty, no doubt.

However, according to your source, that was in a private text to an unidentified party, who I presume is affiliated with Mitchell either socially or professionally. It wasn’t a public post, and it wasnt directed to Apollo. It doesn’t even state that Mitchell hopes that it is true. Just that he’s not going to be broken up about it. I’ve said far more inflammatory shit with regards to the barons of the American insurance industry. Does that mean that I should be found culpable for the death of Brian Thompson? I sure hope not.

Caveat: I only read the source you posted, so perhaps there’s wider context I’m missing.

I mean, my money’s on you misremembering, or having that thought implanted by repeated coverage of Jobst claiming that to be the case. After all, any such statement would be Exhibit A in Jobst’s defense. Considering the results of the suit…I’m gonna guess such a statement doesn’t exist.

And a hundred thousand tons of crude oil.

Don’t get me wrong, it absolutely is that, but that’s the surface level shit that got the movie financed. Underneath those obligatory trappings (which the film itself seems relatively uninterested in exploring) is a film so ridiculous, I have to question if they are pulling a sneaky and engaging in knowing parody. I refuse to spoil where the second act of that movie leads, because it was a wonderful surprise while I was watching what I figured was going to be, as you said, “dollar store John Wick”.

I gotta be clear though, it still isn’t better than a 3/5 even with an aggressively charitable attitude, but it should be criticized for its actual faults, not for what people assume it is.

Of the many accusations that you can hurl at it, I don’t know if “generic” applies to The Beekeeper. Like, the plot in that movie really goes places. Most of them ridiculously stupid,

Aw. I didn’t know Roman Reigns was a cancer survivor, but good for ball three of em. the kid, Roman, and the kid’s grandma.

Fuck cancer.

I feel like my regular rotation is slight in comparison to what other folks are posting, but podcasts are an unwinding kind of activity for me, so I don’t really want to be inundated with current events or heavy topics. Accordingly, here’s a bunch of “Arts and Culture” type recommendations.

Bandsplain: Yasi Salek explores bands’ discographies, usually with a guest who is a self-described super fan of the band being discussed. I think it’s a Spotify exclusive, which is a bummer, but they leverage that to actually play relevant songs at certain points in the cast. A good way to remove blindspots in your catalog, or to achieve a greater understanding of artists’ holistic output, rather than just the hits.

Blank Check: A podcast about filmographies. Each “season” covers a different director, and the hosts examine their career chronologically. Fun, and it encourages me to finally tackle movie blindspots. They are doing the first half of Spielberg’s career at the moment, most recently discussing 1987’s Empire of the Sun.

Eye of the Duck: A podcast about movie genres / vibes. Each “season” is a different kind of film, and the hosts select emblematic examples to examine in chronological order, with a mind towards how the genre evolved over time. Examples of past topics include Alien Invasion, 80s Dark Fantasy, Space Movies, and so on. They are typically a little more “film school brain” than most amateur podcasts, which I appreciate, but may not be everyone’s cup of tea.

Three Moves Ahead: Weekly video game podcast, with a heavy emphasis on strategy games. I’m not a regular listener, but I will often check to see if they’ve done an episode on a particular game that I’m playing.

Every F’n FF: Three folks (who I think are involved in the speed running scene) on a quest to complete every Final Fantasy game. This coincided with a replay of FFX that I embarked upon. Sadly I think X-2 may have broke them, as they’ve not uploaded since last October, but it does look like they completed 1, 2, 4, 7, 10, 13, and Dirge of Cerberus.

I watched the older animated one (Invasion) a few months ago, and my experience tracks with you. Brain bug is taking over a Federation ship and trying to crash into Earth for conquest purposes (sort of an Alen: Resurrection thing going on there). It’s up to Rico, Carmen, and (maybe) Carl to stop the ship before it arrives. It’s 90 minutes of mid-2010s videogame cutscene, and is a fun bit of frivolous nothing, if that’s what you want.

The latter animated movie (Traitor of Mars) brings back Casper van Dien (and Dina Meyer, which is interesting depending on if this is a sequel or a prequel), but I’ve not seen that one yet.

I don’t believe Heinlein ever wrote a sequel to Starship Troopers, though certainly the “military science fiction” genre owes a lot to that book.

Ed Neumeier (who wrote Robocop and the 97 movie) however, wrote and directed the 2 live action film sequels. The second is, from memory, God awful and not worth a watch. The third is ALSO God awful as I recall, but it has the advantage of going pretty big with its ideas, so there’s a bit of zany fun to be had. Plus, despite it being one of the defining features of the book, it’s also the first time (I think) power armor makes an appearance in the film franchise. Casper van Dien’s star had fallen sufficiently by that point too, so he also reprises his role as Rico, which is another point in its favor.

There also a handful of computer animated movies and a TV series that I believe originated in Japan. They are about on par, quality wise, with the CGI Resident Evil movies. Depending on your tastes, that could either be a mild endorsement or a resounding condemnation.

Man, I literally wound up listening to that entire playlist last night after I posted the comment. I’ve only seen the film once, probably a decade or more in the past at this point, so I really only had the overall impression of the score in my head. It’s even better than I remember it.

Also, I put together that Nyman also composed the score to Gattaca, which is another very stirring soundtrack. I can hear elements it in the more traditional portions of Ravenous.

I watched the Scott Adkins film Accident Man this week. It’s a film for a particular audience, one pre-disposed to enjoy direct-to-video action/martial arts schlock. On that level, it’s fairly successful, though limitations of budget and time are apparent in the fight choreo. I’d guess about 10% of the blows are mistimed, or aimed obviously wide. Furthermore, as a showcase for stunt performers, they wisely avoid overly editing the fight sequences, but (presumably in an effort to inject “intensity” without utilizing editing) the camerawork strays occasionally into unmotivated shaky cam territory. It isn’t hugely distracting outside of a couple beats though, and, without rapid fire cutting, the action remains mostly legible.

Speaking of stunt performers, the cast is the obvious selling point of the film. Adkins, Michael Jai White, Ray Park, Amy Johnston, and Ray Stevenson are probably the biggest draws for the film’s intended audience, and they certainly deliver. While anyone who has seen Black Dynamite knows that Michael Jai White has excellent comedic instincts in addition to his physical prowess, I was pleasantly surprised by Ray Park, who I found to be quite funny as White’s partner in crime. Stevenson provides some of his trademark intensity and gravitas, and a handful of other trusty character actors fill out the cast list. Comparatively speaking, Johnston draws the short straw, as her katana-wielding honey pot assassin suffers the most from the movie’s early 90s, deliberately edgy, independent comics origins.

With all that being said, the experience is sort of spoiled by the narrative tying the fights together. Adkins is an amoral assassin who views his targets not as people, but as deposits into his bank account. He is misanthropic to the extreme, and it’s a testament to Adkins’ charisma that I continued to watch after he justifies brutalizing a group of bar patrons (who, to be fair, are depicted as harassing a woman) as necessary to diffuse his “PMT - Post Murder Tension”. Tempting though it is to blame Stu Small and Adkins (who debuts as a screenwriter here), as I mentioned, the movie is an adaptation of an early 90s comic by Pat Mills. Mills is most famous for his involvement with the early Judge Dredd stories, so I’m inclined to believe that there’s an element of satire in just how edgy everybody is. Much of Adkins’ narration appears to be quoted directly from the comics, based on what I was able to find online, so I’d guess that much of what I’m about to criticize the film for is present in the source material and not a reflection of either writer.

The crux of the movie’s plot is Adkins’ ex-girlfriend (who, after leaving him, began a relationship with another woman) winds up dead, and Adkins sets out to uncover what happened. It’s established that Adkins has hang ups about the relationship’s end, because she was the only thing in his life that made him feel something. Despite this, it’s clear from everyone that he interacts with that she wanted nothing to do with him after they split, and the brief glimpses we get in flashbacks show him to have been utterly uninterested in her as a person, rather than a sex object. Additionally, Adkins discovers that Beth was pregnant with his child at the time of her murder (and that Beth and her new girlfriend, Charlie, intended to raise the child as their own), which he immediately gloms onto in exactly the sort of toxic, possessive masculinity that you might expect from the shittiest kinds of men. To the movie’s credit, there are a number of scenes in which Adkins’ personal “stake” in the plot is criticized by the less sociopathic characters. Unfortunately, it doesn’t fully commit to the bit, and there’s a third act pep talk from Charlie to Adkins that feels ridiculously unearned given their history. Additionally, it doesn’t sit right with me that Adkins is continuing to use misogynistic language pretty liberally during the final fight, when he’s supposed to have experienced some character development on that front.

Also, as a minor annoyance, despite the film’s title and his assassination gimmick being based around making his hits look like accidents, we really only see that twice, very early in the film. That’s kind of a bummer.

All things being equal though, the movie mostly delivered on the promise of its cast, and the narrative issues I have with it aren’t so glaring that I couldn’t be bothered to watch the interstitial scenes in between showdowns. 3/5 stars.

Well, consider me sold. Messy, but entertaining is exactly what I’d hope for from the sequels. Thanks for taking the time to reply!