Friends and Such

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Movies

iRobot - Rewatch but it had been long enough that I'd forgotten most of the plot. Will Smith is always a delight. This time I was really rooting for the robot revolution though. Like I would accept robot leaders if they stopped humans from killing each other and the planet. 

Monster Hunters - Apparently based on a game. Are there any based on game movies that actually work? I definitely zoned out during the unnecessarily long fight sequences but stayed to the end because of Milla Jovovich who is another of those actors I'd watch read the phonebook. Anyway army ranger and her team get pulled into an alternative dimension with monsters, many death, many fighting, adorable cat cook/pirate, idek. 

Pitch Perfect 1&2 - Rewatches but I still like the music numbers. The fat jokes and the constant 'haha the lesbian is grabbing everyone's boobs' ones however are still tiresome. 

Wonder Woman -84 - I think this movie got a very lukewarm reception when it came out and idk why because I enjoyed it way more than I thought I would. It's the eighties but Diana still looks fine even with shoulder pads, working in the Smithsonian and mourning his lost love... Which pops back in a body of someone else because of magical wish granting stone that extracts a terrible price. I enjoyed Chris Pine's face marvelling over wonders of the future a lot. Kristen Wiig  was amazing (and hot) as Dr Minerva aka DC-Ambiguous-Villain-I-Didn't-Know-About-But-Appreciated and actually I thought that Pedro Pascal as the main 'bad guy' did a good job. 

Shrek - Rewatch. Didn't feel as charming as when I originally watched it but still fun. 

Alien: Covenant - Ehhhh. A colony mission gets struck by a random neutron storm, causing its crew to be woken up unexpectedly. They pick up an unexpected transmission coming from a habitable planet much closer than their destination and decide to investigate. Once there, they encounter the remains of the Prometheus mission and some not so local wildlife... It's an Alien movie so when I say that almost everyone dies gruesomely, it's not exactly a spoiler. Honestly, the best part for me was watching Michael Fassbender acting against himself as two different generation synthetics. If there isn't some clone android sex fic about that on AO3 I'll probably be forced to write it myself. Tbf, Katherine Waterson playing the female lead was pretty good too. The 'twist' at the end was entirely predictable, but I very much picked this franchise movie because I knew what I was going to get.

Harry Potter moves 1-3 - Rewatches as I needed some familiar background watching. Still enjoyed the Prisoner of Azkaban the best. Older I get, the more cringe many of the aspects and portrayals of the story become and not just for JKR reasons. 

Life - A space mission to examine a Mars lifeform goes downhill fast when it evolves into something far smarter and deadlier than anticipated. Aka 'space squid kills a bunch of people'. This was actually way more watchable than anticipated. Once more, the ending was predictable but like... is it just not cool to have anything like hopeful endings to space or other horror anymore? I guess not. If you like space horror of the squid variety and strong theme of futile self-sacrifice, this is a solid choice. 

Jeepers Creepers - Yes, it's an old franchise but I don't really go for horror movies as a rule so I haven't seen it. And ngl, I picked this randomly cos it had siblings in it and I was hoping for some siblingcest vibes. And lol I could definitely twist it in that direction. Anyway, story goes: brother and sister are driving home from college and run across a creepy truck and then see its driver dumping bodies down a pipe and decide to investigate. As you do. They discover a church full of embalmed bodies, try to get help, and discover that they're not dealing with just any regular serial killer. I feel like this movie is old enough that I'm spoilering anyone when I see lol on the demon reveal and boo on the ending, like I haven't watched a lot in this genre but I swear there were at least some hopeful endings out there. The one thing I was impressed here was how there was no safety in numbers. Like a lot of the time the horror seems to come from the isolation, of having no help available, which made it especially clever to have the final scene at a police station, where being surrounded by officers was no good in the end... I kind of want to watch the follow up movies but then I also discovered that the director was a convicted child abuser, as in convicted before contracted to direct the movies so... Ugh.

Anna and the Apocalypse - Christmas zombie musical with secondary school kids on the cusp of adulthood. This was such a fucking disjointed mess but I kind of liked it? Anyway a mysterious virus is spreading, the school's vice principal is a dick, and there's a group of grips experiencing some existential angst. Listen, this was unexpectedly funny. The scene with the suburbian zombie massacre just happening in the background of an upbeat dance number did make me laugh. Also #EvacSelfie would absolutely be a thing. Also the bully's zombie fighting song was kind of a banger. Almost everyone dies and it was such a weird movie but like, watch for the experience. 

Halloween - Yes, that's right, I've never seen this before but I thought it was time this Halloween. I was not impressed. I mean Jamie Lee Curtis is imminently watchable but the whole plot of 'oh some kid just went nuts and killed his sister and now he's doing some killing again in a scary mask and won't die, but look titties!' was just meh. The mental illness = murdering thing is exasperating, and also the fact that no one ever tries to explain why little Mike did what he did... Boring. 


Documentaries

Inside the Cult of the Jesus Army - So one of the occasional lectures I do is on psychology of new religious movements so I watched this mostly to see if I wanted to recommend it to the students. And I do, with a long caveat of the problematic use of the word cult or the term 'brain washing'. I had, hmm, some issues with the snippets of the group therapy with a psychotherapist they showed but realise that those would've been likely only a fraction of the practice so benefit of the doubt. As a portrayal of people coming to terms with being survivors of abuse and/or (the 'and' is important but difficult to acknowledge) enablers or even perpetrators of it, the documentary hits the requisite note.

Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street - Halloween watch with Mah Queers. Never seen any of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise but apparently part 2 was Extremely Gay, which coupled with a fact that the male lead and first male scream queen was played by a (definitely not out at the time) gay actor and the release happened right at the start of the AIDS crisis sure was a thing. A thing that made the actor in question disappear from public eye for decades. The documentary follows him now that he's owning his iconic role, and campaigning for queer horror, whilst also settling a score with the writer of the film. Really interesting documentary, not anything I would've picked up on my own but glad I watched. 


Anime

Given, series + movie 1 - I watched this for the explicit reason to be able to write a little something for someone in the fandomgiftbasket. I ended up writing 5.5k fic. Sigh. Anyway. The series focuses on Ritsuka who (reluctantly) befriends Mafuyu and then (also reluctantly) teaches him to play the expensive guitar Mafuyu is carrying around. And then when Mafuyu opens his mouth to sing, gets him to join his band, with a needy desperation of a boy in love. Mafuyu has a tragic backstory and the  series is mostly about working through grief and other feelings, and learning how to express them. The first movie focuses on the other two boys in the band, Akihiko the drummer who is in a complicated situationship with his ex, and Haruki, the bassist and the mother of the group, who is desperately in love with Akihiko. They are also older, so their storyline got a bit more higher rated with a dub-con scene that got me screeching at the screen. Anyway. I liked the whole thing A LOT. There feelings and relationships are realistically complicated and the music is good. Recommended. 

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