Song Sung Blue - My Take (Take 2)

 

I know I reviewed this one before but I have more to say. I saw this movie so many times using up my movies per week that I formed all kinds of opinions that didn't show up in the original watch.

The first thing is that this is Kate Hudson's movie. I have to wonder how it would have gone if the original Claire Sardina wasn't still alive. They really gave her the kid glove treatment in the script and I have to ask myself if that's because they had to make her look good. If not the publicity wouldn't have been nearly as sweet and wholesome.

Each time I watched this thing I tried to focus on something different. I kind of had to do that. One thing that I really liked each time was the set design. Yup. I looked at that. It was very much a 1980s lower middle class midwestern house. And oddly enough that was nearly enough for the studio to cancel it or at least try to demand changes.

The interior of the house is brown. It's so brown. There's brown paneling. There's brown furniture. There's brown wall accessories. There's brown carpeting. For those of us who grew up at that time it's comforting. It's home. There were granny square afghans on the couch and bed. There were brass decorations on the walls. The back of the stove held the can of Pam and some spices. The tables were cluttered with things that didn't fit into the cabinets. The cabinets were a mess. It was a lived in house.

I have to wonder how the stars felt about the set. It might have been claustrophobic. Hugh lived in Australia with a larger family and I don't think they had the same decorative style. Kate is from a famous family and you know they have big houses. The rooms are the correct proportions for the lives of the characters. If you didn't grow up in these kinds of spaces it can feel weird. It also means they had to keep the blocking to a minimum since there just wasn't room to move around much.

I'm still glad Hugh didn't try for a local accent and went with generic American. There's a few times when his pronunciation was just wrong and when they used vernacular in place of an accent so that stood out to a native. I doubt that outside of the region people noticed but here? People notice. Kate's accent was more northwestern than Milwaukee but it was light enough to work. We also don't know where she grew up so it could have been "her" natural accent anyway. Almost everyone else had American neutral accents.

Watching it a few times you can really see how they messed with how time passed. I think the original duo was active for seventeen years before it ended and here they compressed it into two and a half hours. I have a feeling a lot of that was because of the kids. Aging kids is difficult and it would have made them either irrelevant to the story or taken up more as they matured. Keeping them as-is was a wise decision, as was squeezing things down into an indetermined but shorter timeframe. Instead of pinning it to a timeline they pinned it to defining events. Same result, different methods.

Showing them as a duo act didn't really happen until the final show of the movie. They played together, they cuddled on stage, they shared the songs. But Kate/Claire didn't get out from behind the keyboard until the last show. That change was actually kind of jarring. Until then it was Hugh/Mike up front and her backing him or singing her parts from the back. Either they should have brought her forward more in the shows ongoing or left her in the back for the big show. Regardless it's something that's noticeable on repeated viewings.

Other things I noticed I only noticed because I read a version of the screenplay. I can see where parts were filmed but the rest of the plot was left behind. I agree with what they cut, don't get me wrong. I think it made for a better movie. It just leaves these odd little things that don't go anywhere and don't have any reference. Little things but the whole movie is made of little things.

I haven't watched it since it left the theaters. I could, but I haven't. I watched it too many times in close succession to watch it again for a while. I want some time where I can try to let it fade and I can rediscover things and/or not get annoyed at things. That's a problem with repeated watching - you see stuff that you'd miss on a single viewing.

I think Kate should have gotten the Golden Globe for her performance. As she said, when the hot rollers came out she became Claire. I do admit that I also liked that she gained weight to soften up for the role. I think she looks better that way than she does now. It's not just midwestern bias. It's that she just looks better with some fat under her skin. Thin is not always better.

I will probably be seeing this again in the near future. My movie snob friend has a big TV and twenty six speaker sound bar but not the streaming service to see the movie. I have the service so I'll probably be going over to watch it on his home theater. I have it on my media server, of course, but that's not an option for him for two reasons. One is that he's adamantly against how I populate my media server. The other is that the one on streaming will be of higher resolution and that matters for his setup. I will admit I've been curious to see what he's done.

I kinda wonder how Hugh felt about slipping into the role of a lower middle-class middle-aged Midwesterner or if it was just another part for him. He's normally cast in much larger than life roles so something this small may have been different for him.

What The Hell Kind of Blog Is This, Rastl?

 

So yeah. There's a whole lotta movie review and a whole not a lot of hobby stuff going on. I'm not exactly apologizing.

I've got the AMc A-List movie subscription, I'm retired, and I live literally two minutes from the theater. I get to see up to 4 movies per week and darnitall if I'm not going to get my money's worth. I don't see everything and there's going to be a slowdown for a while due to what's being released. But I like giving my reviews so I put them on my blog.

Here's where I get a bit real. I've been keeping personal stuff off of here but decided to start putting a curated part of my life back online. Why not? If people aren't interested, they can skip the post.

I didn't get to ease into retirement. One day I was working, the next I was retired. That happened ten years ahead of schedule. I'm not complaining, don't get me wrong. I highly recommend being retired if you can manage it. I can manage it from the practical side but I've had problems doing it from the mental side. When there's no pressure to do anything then things don't get done. It's simple, at least for me. That's why my hobby blog is missing hobby stuff.

I will also say that I'm at a point now where I will be talking to my doctor about adjusting my meds. I think I'm high on the anti-anxiety side since so many of the things that I was anxious about no longer exist and I have enough of a social network I feel less uncomfortable messing around with my medications. I'm thinking that the overbalance of anti-anxiety is pushing the depression. And depression means I want to do things but I don't.

So that's why there's not that much on the hobby side. It's not that I don't want to do them. It's that I'm not set up to do them. I haven't had my 3D printers running since I moved and I'm just getting that back. The house is so not unpacked. My painting area is in enough of a state I can use it but it's not nearly what I want it to be. I can't use the gaming table I got because there's stuff on it that I haven't dealt with. I've had some help but it hasn't been enough to finish anything. That's why I'm saying it's the depression.

I do want to finish painting the tanks, especially since the next pieces are coming out. That means really dealing with at least part of the office so I have a place to process resin prints. I have projects stacked up after those are done and I'm looking forward to them. But I'm also going to keep chipping away at the paint area so that it's finally in a usable state and can stay that way.

The next thing will be testing some skin tones for orks. Not my ork army, mind you. For a Combat Patrol box I was given and that doesn't fit into my ork army so I can paint it different. After that is assembling the box set. After that is painting the box set. I'm not sure what happens then but that's plenty to keep me busy going forward.

There will still be movie reviews. I like doing that. I need to push myself and do more hobby stuff. I think I'm just going to schedule it like I would any other thing so that I have to make the decision to do it or not rather than a nebulous idea of what to do. I'd say it would help if I painted at the game stores but I do not like to paint anywhere but my own area and that's that.

Anyway. Expect more tank pictures since they're getting closer to getting color on them. Then the post showing all the ork skin tone tests. There should be some interesting stuff in there. At least I hope so. Then the box set. And while I'm doing all that I get to think about the next project in line. I have enough of the freaking things.

GOAT - My Take (Spoilers)

 

I've wanted to see this since I saw the trailers. I like a good animated movie. I like simple entertainment. I did not ask my movie buddy if he wanted to join me. I know better.

I liked how they kept a lot of the animal traits for the characters without losing the anthropomorphic aspects. They were animals first and had the humanoid traits second. They also took the time to develop not only the primary but the secondary characters.

At heart this is yet another underdog sports movie. It just happens to involve animals instead of people. But those animals are so darn likeable (mostly) that you accept them for who they are.

My favorite is still Jett the cat. Having her sitting on the bench lapping out of a bowl of water instead of using a sports bottle was perfect. Using water spritzers to correct her behavior was also a chef's kiss.

There's the standard crew of characters you would expect - the low esteem coach, the greedy owner, the anxious player, the low self-esteem player, the insecure player, the weird player. And as you would expect the intent is to forge them into a team using the publicity stunt character of the goat.

I will say, thankfully, they did not overuse the goat "bahhh" and well they could have. It was done correctly and with restraint. Everything seemed to be fine-tuned to use to maximum advantage and stay just on this side of the line for not making it annoying.

All the sports tropes are here plus the whole big vs little thing. There's the down to earth goat who dreamed of playing but the game was never meant for anyone but the big animals. He still practices and finds what he can do well. He also finds out what the weaknesses are of playing against the big animals. It takes some help from the team for him to figure out the way to use what he does best.

Jett is the aging superstar who desperately wants to win the trophy. She's been the one taking charge, leaving the coach out in the cold. She, along with the rest, figure out how to be a team.

There's a single protagonist and that helps keep everyone focused on the goal. There's plenty of other animals on other teams but this one is the only one that has a personal beef with the team so it keeps the story tightly focused on that. He's a star player, of course, so it's important for them to beat him.

Like so many of these movies the main character - the goat - lost his family. Father was never in the picture, mother died when he was younger. I kind of dislike how often that card gets played. He's got a found family in the diner where he did delivery but still, it feels cheap to do that. They bring it up at appropriate times how she wanted him to play and dream big. It's his inspiration and he writes it on his shoes.

The various themed arenas are interesting and the games are fun to watch. The team owner is quite literally a pig so calling her that when she sells off the team just when they're going to the finals isn't out of line. That one has a "Major League" feel to the story aspect. It makes sense from a financial perspective to take a losing team that's doing well and sell it tho. The piggy part is that she sold the franchise and none of the players are going with. She tells this to Jett (captain) and Goat hears it. They disagree on whether or not to tell the team repeatedly. She says no, he says yes.

The final game involves the player they all hate. He plays dirty and injures Jett. At that point they tell the team what's happening and they decide to go all out to win anyway. Jett has a knee injury and is out of the game but shows up to play more as a distraction. The other team puts more players on her, letting the rest of the underdog team play to their best advantage. It goes down to the wire and of course, the underdog team wins.

They're still being sold so their press conference isn't really happy. Until the weird player shows he bought the team, well, actually won it from the other owner playing some odd card game with cards from all kinds of different games. So everyone is happy. Redemption happens where it needs to happen and where it doesn't they stay the way they are.

It's got enough going where kids will be entertained by the animals and parents can enjoy the rather good story. I recommend it.

How To Make A Killing - My Take (Spoilers)

 

This was a Screen Unseen and it was one I wanted to see based on the trailers. It looked interesting. It also took me looking up the actor after I saw the movie to realize that the main character was the main character in "The Running Man". That doesn't matter unless you have opinions about him.

This starts with him in a prison cell, sentenced to death in a few hours, talking to a priest and laying out what happened.

The premise is simple. He's the heir to a fortune but his mother was disavowed, but not disinherited. Not really. She made a life for herself and when she got sick none of the family did anything for her, which set the path for her son's plan to make it right. She told him to have the life he deserved and it was a theme as he grew up. She didn't get buried in the family tomb either.

When he was a kid he had a crush on a girl and after his mother died and he went into the foster system they didn't see each other again. It was more of a fade away but that was the end result. He went on to get a job he liked doing deliveries for a custom tailor shop.

When he was told he was being moved to a warehouse job so the owner's son could have his job he got to thinking about what his life should have been, and what was in the way.

The bulk of the movie is him finding each relative and offing them in some way that looks accidental. Then showing up at the funeral to see the coffin being put into the tomb. He never gloats or lets them know who he is. The FBI check on him after the second relative is gone, more as a procedure than an investigation. He says he doesn't know that he's an heir, which is quite the lie.

At this point the old crush shows up again and she's getting married. She dangles herself in front of him and keeps him on the hook.

He meets his uncle and the guy has genuine remorse for what happened and how his mother was treated. He gives him the job his recently deceased nephew had and suddenly he's on track to have a nice life. He knows he's a nepo hire but so was the nephew. At this point he also meets someone and starts having a nice life with her. Well. She was the girlfriend of the second one he killed but she wasn't right for him and was going to leave him anyway. But it works.

He takes out another one while he's working his way at his real job and the old crush shows up again, keeping him on the hook.

The uncle passes away naturally and this one is the only time he's upset. It also means that there's only one person left to deal with and that's the patriarch who kicked out his pregnant mother. But at this point he doesn't seem that interested. The FBI show up again and he now knows he's in the much shorter line of heirs but there's nothing to pin on him.

The crush now puts his nuts in a vice. She got a hunch that he was behind all the killings and had him followed. She had pictures. Her price was money since her husband didn't have as much as she wanted. If he didn't get it to her, she'd give the pictures to the police.

This is the same day as his engagement party. He also gets an invitation to dinner with the patriarch. So much going on! The soon-to-be fiancé expects him at the party. The crush wants the money. He wants his chance to talk to the man who didn't help his mother.

He embezzles the money to pay the crush and brings it to her husband's office. He says he doesn't care about the money because she's just going to use it to divorce him. There's a bit of a scuffle because our guy is upset about the whole evening.

He goes to the patriarch in the huge mansion and what happens is that they guy knows what he's been doing and plans on killing him first. So there's some indoor hunting going on and using the archery his mother taught him he takes out the patriarch in self-defense.

He's got the money. He's got his girlfriend. At his big party the FBI arrest him for the murder of the crush's husband, which he actually didn't do. But his fingerprints were on the letter opener that he'd shoved out of the way. Funny how life works.

The crush shows up while he's in jail and says she's got a suicide note but she's got a price and that's everything he has. He signs it over and has to hope she'll come through. She does at pretty close to the last minute and he's cleared.

His fiancé is waiting for him in the parking lot. She's there to give him the locket with the lock of his mother's hair, which she gives to him with a decent amount of velocity before she drives away. The crush is there in a very nice car now suiting her station to pick him up. He gets in the car. It ends with them driving through the gates of his family's estate and her smiling at him. He got the life he deserved.

This was a comedy with a healthy dose of nihilism. It needed both to work. It started with comedy then gradually introduced the nihilism until that's where it ended. There's a ton of moral lessons in there that weren't put out in the forefront so it was a more subtle movie than it could have been and I applaud the restraint. If you like that kind of mix then you'll enjoy this.

Cold Storage - My Take (Spoilers)

 

I went into this one expecting to be entertained. It's not a genre that lends itself to high art.

I was entertained. It's a good mix of horror and comedy. That's a difficult balance and they achieved it. I think a big part was that the main characters all acted intelligently in the situations. That let them continue the story and add humor without it being at their expense.

It starts with a part of Skylab being left in the Australian outback after it broke up. Turns out someone found it, put it in front of their store, and charged admission to look at it. Sounds about right. But then there's a phone call made to an army call center that there's a problem. That sets up the situation.

The army calls in specialists who take a look. Time and cleaning have scratched up the damaged tank enough to create microfissures. The tank contained something nasty they wanted to study in space and it brought it back. The stuff got through the microfissures, infected everyone in the town, and they all exploded as it tried to spread.

Everything goes to heck when some of the goo gets into the boot tread of the scientist who got a sample and then into her system. They're in the proper protective gear otherwise. She gets infected and does what she knows she needs to do, with a 9mm. They blow up the tank and get the heck out of there.

The sample is put into a government storage facility with all the necessary safeguards - underground, pressurized, temperature controlled, etc. and then forgotten. The facility is abandoned then sold to become a storage unit facility. Cut to present day.

I might get out of sequence here but it all works either way.

The manager is, of course, a jerk. He's into fencing stolen goods and being obnoxious to the employees. He tells the overnight guy coming on shift that there's some noise to look into and that there's a new girl starting and he's got her on walk and lock check duty. Of course he makes sexist remarks about her.

A customer comes in and heads to her storage unit. She's an old lady and once she's in her unit she pulls the door shut and gets out a gun. She's talking to a picture of what turns out to be her husband and it's their anniversary. She puts up the gun and then decides to take a nap before doing more. Remember her.

The guy hears the noise but doesn't pay much attention since it's an intermittent ping. She and he get to talking, they hear it, they locate it behind drywall, and decide to check it out. She's more eager for it than he is but he goes along with it.

The noise is an alert that there's a problem with one of the government storage units, of course the one with the ick. That alerts the army call center who then contacts the guy who found it the last time. He's retired now but has been keeping an eye on things and writing up reports and contingencies that no one bothers with. The girl who takes the call decides to help out more than the officer on duty wants to do (there's a beef between him and the guy who found the stuff) and reads his last report. She's willing to get him what he needs to fix it. All they talk about is item numbers on the list, not what they correspond to. Item Seven is noted a few times.

Back at the storage facility they break through the wall to find the control display and the alarm that's going off. It's in a sublevel they didn't know existed and the way there is down a two story ladder down a tunnel. After more coaxing they decide to head down. They find the unit without a problem, read the label with the army department acronym that they have no idea what it is, and go inside. There's ick growing on the walls and they find a bunch of rats in a pile infected with the ick. They intelligently get out and close the door again, taking note of the acronym.

Now for the not so smart secondary character. Her ex and the father of her daughter shows up and is sitting in his car, upset. The reason for his upset is in the trunk and he's waving a gun around. There's a thump from the trunk and we find it to be a dead cat. Except that it's not dead even with half its head gone (not a pretty thing if you like animals) and it runs up the building to impale itself on the top of a light post, and explode. It got the ick while the car was in the parking lot we find out later. He's infected as are some nearby deer.

The two of them go back upstairs and call the department. They get patched through to the same person who has been helping the original guy. Now it's all tied together. They know not to touch the stuff, like they needed to be told, and that someone would be coming out to deal with it. A nice change of pace from how these normally go.

The infected deer walks into the facility, wanders around, then explodes in the lobby. No one gets infected. The baby daddy is wandering around looking for the girl. The ick has gotten smarter about how to infect humans and he's trying direct contact. The two of them hide in a storage unit while he zombie walks around looking for them.

The official guy finds out he's the only one who's going to fix this and his partner gets him what he needs but doesn't go with. The army is sending him more as a placate thing than taking it seriously. But he gets what he asked for and is on the ground to help. A problem is that it spreads faster in water and a storm is approaching so now there's a time element. Not a bad thing.

Wow. I'm doing the whole screenplay here. I'll try to shorten things up.

The manager comes back with his friends to take a bunch of TVs out of a unit to fence. They get infected by baby daddy and the overnight guy is smart enough to slide the lock so they're trapped in the storage unit. The manager lets them out and now it's two of them and three infected. Well. And one who saw what was going on and wisely decided to bug out. The manager moves the infected ones out at gunpoint and the other uninfected one ends up slipping into the exploded deer.

The army guy is there now and getting the two of them to help him out. They get protective gear and they also get the job of planting the small nuclear weapon to deal with the problem. The reason for that is the guy got a back injury in the original situation and can't do it himself. He'll keep everyone inside while they do their thing and get out. He makes a very good point about the need to kill people in cold blood just on the suspicion that they might be infected. They choose to plant the bomb instead.

There's another time element in that the bomb has a timer, of course. And it's on the fritz so it isn't exact. But they have enough time to plant it and get out. At least that's what their led to believe. The army guy takes out the tires on all the vehicles in the parking lot except his own and waits to do the same with anyone but those two coming out of the facility.

One of the infected people breaks away and the old lady has come out of her storage unit after hearing noise. She wisely shoots the infected one when she sees the ick. Then she gets out of there, giving the gun to the guy. The manager and all the rest end up dead. The army guy hurt his back so he's on the ground. The two of them get the bomb placed and find out the army guy started the timer back when he gave it to them so now they're moving fast to get out.

The army guy's partner shows up and helps him into the vehicle just as the two of them run out of the storage facility. They don't get shot. The four of them drive off and drive just ahead of the nuclear explosion that's taking out the underground stuff. They're not too worried about using a nuke because it's deep enough underground that it will be mostly contained on the surface with the bad stuff being underground. Sure.

The army girl who's been helping shows up in the army guy's hospital room to introduce herself and they have a little chat about what happened and why she went against orders. The commanding officer who didn't take it seriously is on the news trying to explain why there was a nuclear explosion in the middle of nowhere and it wasn't going well. The guy and girl are sitting in the park playing with her daughter.

Everyone was smart and got their happy ending. Then they show some deer grazing and you remember that several deer were in the explosion radius but only one was in the facility. They went a little gratuitous by having the deer throw up at the camera but hey, they had to have their fun too. There could be a sequel if this does well enough. The only expensive talent is Liam Nielson so they could make it happen.

It was fun. Having everyone be smart was a refreshing change so that it made me more invested in seeing who got through to the end. The obnoxious manager was an obvious "not gonna make it" and it was more a matter of how and when, which is fine. Mixing up the ick with the comedy parts was well done and I actually liked all the characters, even the old lady you see so briefly.

I want to say this is a movie you can point to and show that just because it's a horror type movie it can be more than people getting infected and things blowing up. There can be tension, humor, and strong characters. A pleasant surprise indeed.

Crime 101 - My Take (Spoilers)

 

I saw this one in IMAX and I'm glad I did. My movie buddy has been going to more of them with me and we have different tastes, which makes for fun after movie conversation.

This is your basic car chase jewelry heist movie. There's not much more to say about it. There's times when it drags through angst, scenery shots, too long situation setups, etc. but it's still a car chase jewelry heist movie.

I have to say that of the characters/actors there was uneven character development and uneven usage of actors. Let me explain.

Halle Barry's character is the most developed. She works at a high end insurance company and finds out that she's never getting the promised partner spot because she's too old. They use pretty young women to get contracts. She finds this out after admittedly screwing up while trying to get a billionaire to sign on for insuring his stuff and his wedding. It shows her spiraling down into making a bad decision because she's upset and rightly so.

Mark Ruffalo's character is the police detective who's gotten the robbery pattern and no one believes him. His boss is trying to get him to go along with the department line, both on that and on covering up dirty cops. He figures out he's at a decision point in his life.

Chris Helmsworth does as well as he can as a socially awkward thief with a conscience. He does his research, he avoids violence, he only takes what's insured. The awkwardness is really overdone and tied back to his time in the foster system. This comes out when he finds a girlfriend, literally by accident. She forces him to open up.

Barry Keoghan gets the short end of the character development stick. He doesn't have much to work with and while he tries, there's just nothing there.

Nick Nolte is all but unrecognizable and unintelligible. Luckily he's barely in the mix.

Chris does the research to steal jewelry, does the crime, and Nick fences the goods. He's nominally in charge so when Chris gets to the point of wanting to be done with it he's the one who brings in Barry to do a job that Chris won't. Somehow all the research he did is available to the other guy. Dunno.

The whole thing goes through Mark's detective working diligently to find Chris and gets a hit from a tiny bit of blood that was left - the first thing ever left at one of the scenes. They do show how careful Chris is not to leave evidence by having him exfoliating skin and rubbing out stray hair plus wearing colored contacts since his eyes are all that's visible in the ski mask he wears, but then he's not wearing gloves when he's touching things so there's that.

Barry is shown as far less controlled and willing to use violence when he does the job that Chris wouldn't do. It sets him up for being kinda not the kind of person you want working on high risk jobs that require control and precision. But there you go.

Mark's closing in, Chris's girlfriend is getting pushy, Halle decides to take Chris up on his offer to split the heist from her company then gets cold feet and brings in Mark. Barry is also going to go for the same stuff so that's the big showdown.

The ending isn't exactly what I expected. Mark takes the place of the courier with the diamonds that will be paid for in cash, by the billionaire as wedding favors. He uses fake diamonds from a previous case that he gets illicitly because he's suspended from duty for a previous thing that wasn't anything he did. Chris takes the place of the driver so the two of them talk, with Mark knowing who Chris is but Chris not knowing who and what Mark is. Barry sets himself up to get into the room to take the jewels and money.

The guns come out. Barry shoots the billionaire when he's making a fuss then aims at Mark who has a gun now. Chris also has a gun and is pointing it at Mark. Chris ends up shooting Barry because he was going to shoot Mark, the detective. Chris is very upset about this since it's violence.

Mark cleans everything up. He takes the diamonds, tells everyone that he shot Barry, Chris wasn't there, and that nothing happened when the police get there. The billionaire is fussy but his fiancé is surprisingly practical about following instructions and putting him in his place. 

Chris drives out of town but goes back for his girlfriend. Mark gives diamonds to Halle, who had quit in a most satisfying manner. Chris left his classic car for Mark who had said he'd wanted one like it during their conversation. I think Chris also gives the detective the information to bust Nick so there's that end tied off. So everyone gets their happy ending, so to speak.

Of course they don't say anything about how Halle is going to fence these huge diamonds to get money. They don't say how the suspended detective gets through with a fatal shooting. I'm guessing he also kept some diamonds and is now going to retire since he's disillusioned with the police force. The ending is kind of sloppy for those reasons.

I will say that Mark Ruffalo has some of the most incredible bedhead I've seen in a long time.

Watching Chris Helmsworth not be swaggeringly arrogant and confident was interesting. It got a little old because his physical traits were fidgeting and not making eye contact. They were overdone to make sure everyone noticed them.

Halle got punched in the face by Barry as part of her giving up information and honestly that was the absolute worst black eye makeup I've seen in a movie. It started out with some dark coloring and within a couple of days it was barely there. No swelling, nothing. Just some smeary smokey eye makeup so that she could take off her sunglasses to show she had a "black eye". Terrible.

Then again this isn't the kind of movie you go to for deep meaning. There's some beautiful shots of the 101 highway snaking through the city with the cars. There's the classic staggered traffic for when there's car chases and motorcycle stuff. There's not a lot else to do but sit back and watch the pretty people in the pretty city doing .. stuff.

Good Luck Have Fun Don't Die - My Take (Spoilers)

 

This was a Screen Unseen I didn't get to see because weather came through and closed everything for a couple of days. But I did want to see it so off I went when I could.

This is one of the types of time loop movies where someone is trying to achieve a goal and keeps going back in time to try new things until it happens. It can be an entertaining premise.

He goes into a diner to pick his people. He's done this well over a hundred times so he knows everyone with their strengths and weaknesses. It becomes amusing when he says he won't take one guy and he keeps trying to volunteer. This time the combination includes someone new and he's pragmatic about trying it again.

The intent is to prevent an AI system from going rogue by installing control programming before it takes over. That's his goal and that's what he's going to do, gosh darn it.

One of the people who goes with has had a very odd experience with a school shooting. As she's waiting three women show up like they're going to brunch and their kids have also been involved. They're completely uncaring and do the "First time?" to her. They give her a card where she can get a copy of her son and meets people who are just as unconcerned and on multiple copies of their kids. It's rather head tiltingly odd. She gets her copy and she realizes just how much he's not like her son at all. She's fraught enough to try another thing that's more of an audio copy of her son that she can interact with.

He's got the whole thing mapped out with the hazards from previous attempts. There's a pair of men who are trying to stop them and he doesn't know who they are or why. With this group, what's left of it, he gets further than ever before.

The group includes a pair of teachers, one of which is concerned about what the kids are watching on their phones, the woman who lost her son, a couple of other people, and someone new he calls Princess because she's in a puffy dress.

The teacher who's got the concerns was seeing how much the kids are glued to their phones, how everything they're watching is the same, and is compelled to touch the screen of one. It changes to a rotating pyramid and all the kids are then focused on getting him like in a zombie movie. That's his introduction to the impending AI.

There's some chase stuff. They lose a party member or two. They get to the house and find out he doesn't really know what to do because he's never made it that far.

As he's detailing everything that's come between him and the house before he's rattling off all kinds of oddities like zombies and other stuff. The group asks why it can't be nice things and rattle some of them off like kittens or centaurs. He doesn't know and they go to make the crossing, just as the school full of kids finds them and makes it difficult.

They get to the house, a huge centaur made of kittens shows up (very odd indeed), he figures out the people who live there are actors, in the basement is the real situation. There's a kid on a pile of cables typing away, building the AI.

The time traveler guy has a countdown watch on his wrist that we get to see at various points. They're down to under five minutes or so and it's him and Princess. Let me talk about her quick.

She's got a developed backstory, which is a big clue. She's allergic to wifi and worked as a kid's party princess because it was safe for her, until more kids got phones. Her boyfriend was of the same mind of keeping technology to a minimum until he gives in to try the virtual reality glasses and breaks up with her to go into the virtual reality for real forever. That's why she's at the diner that night.

The time travel guy has a bit of backstory where he's living with his mom away from all the virtual reality stuff. He finds one of the goggles, puts it on briefly, it's enough to trigger a hunter drone that sends a missile into the bunker where his mom was. So he's got motivation to make it not happen.

M'kay. They're in the basement. The kid is glued to the very large screen. He's a copy of someone because he's got the barcode on the back of his neck that they all get. When they take the keyboard away he seems to start to die so they give it back. He knows what they're trying to do and uses cables to pin them to the wall.

They figure out that there's no way they can plug the USB into whatever the kid is sitting on. There's toys coming to life to do bad things to them. They figure out they can plug the drive into the woman's kid's drive that she's been carrying then plug that into any of the multiple wall receptacles. Princess is the one to do it since she's not as affected by the situation as the rest of them.

There's some flashback stuff that shows she's currently pregnant with who will be the time travel guy. Big shocker since he'd been protecting her all along the trip. She does plug it in and everything stops.

They leave the house, everyone is joyous. The kids are all right. The woman's son is back without the barcode. Success! Time travel guy got stabbed in the basement so he's sitting against the house as Princess comes to terms with the fact he's her son.

Then he looks at her and says maybe she'll fix reality, just not this one and he blinks away. The computer kid gives a victorious air guitar riff with one of those wide mouth-tongue out expressions. The kitten centaur comes back to munch on a few people.

Then it starts over in the diner. He shows up again but this time he brings a rat with him and sits down with Princess. Instead of trying to install the control protocols his idea is to infect everyone with the thing she has that makes her avoid technology. Um. OK.

It was an interesting ride. I didn't realize that everything he was talking about that prevented him from getting to the house were AI prompts until the centaur made of kittens showed up. And I think the timer went to zero well before Princess got anything connected. I'd have to see it again to confirm and I don't care enough.

They did seem to set it up for a sequel but I don't think it will happen. There's just not enough story to make a second movie. The change in plan also doesn't make sense because she's not sick, it seems genetic. But hey, it's a movie.

Overall it was enjoyable and not a movie where you're expecting a lot of depth. The guy's complete lack of concern for people getting killed was amusing. Him knowing how everyone would react to situations made for a good setup for who he decided to take. The whole "AI is bad" is timely.

The copies of kids killed in school shootings and the parents treating it like a minor inconvenience after a while was either a pointed reference to something or just odd. They got back AI versions of their kids either with the physical copy or the audio one so it was more a case of which one they preferred. There's no explanation of how these companies got the information to make the AI copies but again, movie that's against AI so there you go.