On Jon’s suggestion, and later vote, I was finally sat down to watch Jacob’s Ladder, the movie that, among other boasts, inspired the aesthetic and experience of the Silent Hill series. And what did we think?
Continue reading “GBU Season 2, Episode 12: Jacob’s Ladder”
For better or worse, Downton Abbey is… Downton Abbey. But for its feature-length runtime, this film is no more and no less than precisely what you think when you hear “Downton Abbey“.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but for me, it was at least a little disappointing. When I think of a television show getting a feature-length film, I expect it to be a little more. Animated programs like Pokémon and The Simpsons come to mind: there is an immediate, obvious difference in production value between the television shows and their full-length movies. Not only that, but when a 22-minute (or whatever length) TV show gets a long-form movie, the self-contained plots of these usually involve higher stakes.
And sure, on paper the stakes of Downton Abbey are high. At least, by the standards of a show where fancy dining making or breaking reputations can be considered high stakes.
Actually, there is something else that happens, or almost happens, rather, but it is dealt with so swiftly, and so early in the film’s runtime that it’s rather a laugh to even look back on it as an important moment in the film because the film itself doesn’t even bother to think that much of it.
I don’t want to poo-poo the movie. I love Downton Abbey too much to do that. But I still expected at least a little more.
I’ve been trying to finish writing this for like two weeks. I wish I had more to say about it. But it’s just a long episode of the TV show. It’s warm and fuzzy and pleasant and ultimately trivial.
So. Uh. 2.5/5. Good. Enough.
Hey, a new episode! And unlike what was promised, it has nothing to do with Halloween! But you should be grateful for the scraps you get. I know I am. This time we looked at James Gray’s Ad Astra.
Continue reading “GBU Season 2, Episode 11: Ad Astra”
This movie sucked. It’s a sequel to another bad movie we covered two years ago.
Jon, Mike and I saw It: Chapter 2 this weekend, and did some podcasting about it. I’m afraid something funny is going on between our headphones and the headphone amplifier I use. I don’t know if it’s the amp or the 3.5mm to 1/4″ adapters I’m using, but things are very finnicky.
I want to address something I said on the show and am still debating with myself about going back and removing if I can. I don’t feel good about the way I described the character Beverly’s abuse at the hand of her father. Content warning about that sort of thing before I continue.
Continue reading “GBU Season 2, Episode 10: It: Chapter Two”
Well, it’s been a while since we’ve recorded a new episode! I wrongly said on the show that the most recent one had been with Sleepy Hollow with Cea, when in fact it had been The Rocketeer with Jon and Kayleigh. I think I just blocked that one from my memory because it was such a bad time. I mean really, you can hear it on the recording, it was just a bad time.
You know what else is a bad time? The first several days after you watch Gaspar Noé’s 2018 film Climax.
Continue reading “GBU Season 2, Episode 9 – Climax”I forgot to write about seeing Rocketman. I saw Rocketman.
I did myself and this film a favor, I think, by not revisiting the original Aladdin first. I know that if I’d watched the 1992 classic before seeing the 2019 remake, or if I’d even watched it before writing this review, the new movie would seem worse to me. My memories of the original aren’t enough to color my opinion here, because as was the case with Dumbo, I haven’t seen the original on which this new remake is based since the 1990s.
Continue reading “Aladdin (2019)”
