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Movie Time 2.0: TT mini reviews

Büge said:
I'm surprised to hear that, considering one of the cross-promotion commercials for the film was for Google AI.
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Yeah, there's "AI art" in the movie that was actually produced by a person.

Anyway, saw The Sheep Detectives with my niece and nephew. They liked it. Mostly, it's a fairly light little family friendly murder mystery, though the mythos around sheep gets into some slightly heavier and sadder stuff (whenever sheep encounter something upsetting, they can force themselves to forget).

I love seeing movies with my niece because she will yell at the screen "I BELIEVE HER" when someone is pleading with the authorities that they are innocent (she gets REALLY affected when a character is wrongfully accused). I pretty much had the killer guessed from early on but it's still a fun ride.
 
Büge said:
I'm surprised to hear that, considering one of the cross-promotion commercials for the film was for Google AI.
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That's... weird. I paid zero attention to the marketing for this film so can't say what that's about.
Johnny Unusual said:
Anyway, saw The Sheep Detectives with my niece and nephew. They liked it. Mostly, it's a fairly light little family friendly murder mystery, though the mythos around sheep gets into some slightly heavier and sadder stuff (whenever sheep encounter something upsetting, they can force themselves to forget).

I love seeing movies with my niece because she will yell at the screen "I BELIEVE HER" when someone is pleading with the authorities that they are innocent (she gets REALLY affected when a character is wrongfully accused). I pretty much had the killer guessed from early on but it's still a fun ride.
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I am so excited for this. Reading the book first and then hoping to check it out.

Edit: Okay, went to check where it's playing in my town and apparently it is only being played through this Wednesday?! Maybe I'm not finishing the book before seeing this, I wanted to wait until the theater was pretty empty to feel safer. Probably doesn't really need the big screen. Weird though.
 
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Anyone looking for an off-beat and more obscure thriller, I recommend the cringe comedy meets suspense film Crumb Catcher. Basically its what would happen if your home invasion movie starred Gil from the Simpsons. Some great dark comedy but wisely I think while the film paints the villains as absolutely ridiculous, it plays the two victims as relatively real. Worth it if you can deal with comedy/thriller of discomfort. The main antagonist does a fantastic job, feeling like what would happen if Richard Kind was given the role of a monster who thought he was a nice guy who just deserves a shot.
 
Vice Academy (1989)
Where Nice Girls become Vice Girls

A vice academy trains girls (and one guy) to become police officers. The academy requires students to catch 10 criminals before graduation. Three students needing to up their arrest quota stumble onto a prostitution ring at a laundry mat with a criminal that has evaded the police.

Sometimes you can judge a movie by its poster: Vice Academy is Police Academy with boobs.

This movie is directed by Rick Sloane. I had previously seen Blood Theatre and the Visitants from Sloane, which is why I decided to watch this movie.

I really like Rick Sloane movies. His films are low budget but care is put into them. He uses colored lights effectively and I think his scripts are better than most low budget movies.

I enjoyed Vice Academy for what it was.

Rating (Out of 5): 🚨🚨🚨

***
Most of the obscure titles I watch are from Vinegar Syndrome movie label. This one was from Vin Syn. If you are interested they have a sale running through Monday.

I promise I'm not employed by Vin Syn, just passing on information for physical media genre fans (horror, sci-fi, action, low budget).

Synapse and Severin are other excellent genre movie labels.
 
Sheep Detectives returned to my local theater and I had a fun time. I also didn't realize until the credits that Tyson Heese was lead animator. It's a joy to watch and as soon as I saw his name it made so much sense.

It's wild how different it was from the book. I felt the book went on a little too long and was a bit hard to follow so I dunno if I'd recommend reading it, but it's pretty funny that in the book (massive spoilers for the book but none of this is in the movie) George is making his money from drug trafficking by hiding drugs in the sheep and his death is actually a suicide but then the body is tampered with to look like a murder. When a bunch of kids were filing into the theater I was certainly curious to see how that was changed, lol. Also book related, but more of a spoiler for the movie if you've read the book I didn't guess the killer since that character isn't in the book. For some reason I assumed they wouldn't add a character and make that new character the killer.
 
Violentvixen said:
Also book related, but more of a spoiler for the movie if you've read the book I didn't guess the killer since that character isn't in the book. For some reason I assumed they wouldn't add a character and make that new character the killer.
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I guessed the killer early on. Often I'm not great at this but it was pretty conspicuous to have a phone call from an unseen character just as he left the room and that also story structure wise he seemed rather redundant when paired with the wacky, hapless police officer
 
Two older ones this weekend.

Top Secret is the lesser of the Abrams/Zucker spoofs of the 80s, but that’s due almost entirely to L’il Baby Val Kilmer just… bringing absolutely nothing to the table for his performance. Luckily, the movie was absolutely jam packed with really good visual gags.

Conversely, I also decided to watch The First Jean Claude Van Damme I Could Find, which wound up being the JCVD/Dennis Rodman team up movie Double Impact (Dennis is in it, for, like, half the last half hour). It felt like they filmed a bunch of scenes and then had a dozen people write a script based on them, which they chose from at random. The best part is the finale where JCVD has to fight Mickey Rourkes pet tiger, in the Roman Colleseum, which has been filled with land mines.
 
Watched Masters of the Universe this afternoon. It was a fun movie that toed the line between earnest performances and obviously campy cartoony nonsense. That's not to say it was good- I think it was...okay. I imagine people of a certain age - and I'm 46 so perfect age - are going to have fun spotting all the cartoon and toy references. I'm not sure what it offers for a younger audience, although my 16-yo liked it well enough just because of the spectacle of it. And while the Leto taint can't be avoided entirely, the voice, prosthetics, and CGI hide the Leto-ness, so at least you don't have to see his stupid face. So there's that.

I still feel like it's a property that likely didn't need this kind of reboot or needed a very different version of what we get here. Again, old fucks like myself will find something to enjoy here but I can't see anyone else really giving a shit. "Amazon MGM" funded this movie and I feels like it probably should have gone directly to Prime.

Maybe this will be the deathknell for 80s properties they want rebooted. Now we can move firmly into 90s cartoon nostalgia. I look forward to seeing live-action Gargoyles or The Pirates of Dark Water in 3 or 4 years.
 
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