The Movie Thread Reloaded

[Thornhammer]

Day Shift looks pretty damn entertaining. Can I hope for vampire killing fun and not A Very Special Message?

Snoop Dogg with a minigun, I can't say no to that.

[Thornhammer]

Resident Evil: first episode was mainly focused on teen high school girl drama. A few zombies. A really effing big caterpillar monster. One zombie dog.

No direct explanation about Wesker yet, this version has two daughters and New Racoon City is located in South Africa. Show flips between "three months before zombpocalypse" and sometime in the 2030s (well after the world went to shit - in 2022 mind you - but somehow cell phones still work). It is laying out the foundations for the zombie apocalypse, starting in the happiest place on Earth (Tijuana!)

They used Ghost in the soundtrack, which is a plus. I'm an old fuck and I like Ghost.

[Omega]

Have you see the more recent Detective Dee movies? I found them to be big, mindless spectacles. Entertaining, but forgettable.

I have not. But I have heard from others that it lost its spark from the early seasons.

[Lurkndog]

Finally got around to watching the 2019 Hellboy with David Harbour.

It's pretty damn skippable, IMHO. David Harbour makes a decent Hellboy, but the script is just a louder, gorier, inferior rehashing of the Del Toro films. The only thing it adds are some different cameos from the comic books.

"Kickstart My Heart?" Really?

[Reckall]

I saw "The Black Phone" and, while it is not the masterpiece I expected (considering the acclaim surrounding it) it is a very well done movie, with great acting by everyone involved and a nice story that develops logically (a rarity these times). There is a lot of padding, as it is the main story of kid vs. serial killer that is interesting but it covers one hour of run time. The parallel storylines are not boring but clearly arbitrary (I won't spoil, but you can see how they had to reach the 90 minutes mark). Also, there are strong "Stranger Things" vibes - not because the movie is mostly about kids but because of the way the story is shot and told. These events could be happening elsewhere in the world of ST.

The premise is good for a RPG session with one player and one GM. It is the classic "Escape Room" scenario. We are in the late 1970s. A kid is kidnapped by a serial killer called "The Grabber" and imprisoned in a cellar. He knows that he will be killed in a few days, so time is precious. In this cellar there is a disconnected black phone, but this kid starts getting calls from ghostly entities - the previous victims of The Grabber. Each one of them gives him some suggestion about how to escape: they failed, but if the kid acts better and faster maybe he can save himself...

The movie is basically this RPG scenario played out on the screen. The kid can't just rely on the suggestions by the ghosts because they are incomplete and didn't work anyway. It is up to him (or her: gender is not important) to put everything together, add his own findings in the cellar, think a bit out of the loop and find his way out. The movie lays out a lot of peripheral info too, about "The Grabber", his character and his surroundings, which can be useful to a GM if the player tries different routes. Time is crucial but also how the kid behaves is important, as it is clear how "The Grabber" will give him more time or kill him on the spot according to precise whims. In a game, reaching desperation but delaying death can be an interesting dynamic.

Definitely suggested, especially to GMs, but also because of its own merits.

[Thornhammer]

Dave Made a Maze was surprisingly entertaining.

Dude makes a cardboard maze in his living room while the girlfriend is away. It is bigger on the inside than the outside, girlfriend and companions go into the maze to help rescue Dave and become trapped.

Tone is fairly light and goofy, the cardboard maze/labyrinth (they argue the semantics during the film) is really fucking cool, and if you like The Venture Brothers it has James Urbaniak.

[Lurkndog]

Finally got around to watching Wrath of Man with Jason Statham. It's up on Amazon Prime Video at the moment.

It's a solid and worthwhile revenge flick, helmed by Guy Ritchie. Top dollar production values, and an excellent supporting cast including Josh Harnett and Scott Eastwood.

Statham plays his usual Jason Statham character. In this one, he's working undercover as an armored car security guard, but he's clearly a much higher-level operative than that. The movie takes its time unwrapping the layers of what's going on, and the final reel pays off with some excellent tension and visuals.

This is one I'll watch more than once.

[Omega]

I really liked the old Japanese/American sci-fi movie Latitude Zero, especially because it has Cesar Romero in it as the villain.

But what discovered today was that the movie was based on an old Radio serial from the 40s called... Latitude Zero! Some of the oddities of the movie make more sense when viewed as a serial adaption.

I also liked in the movie that contrary to the usual. MacKinzie's sub the Alpha is not the strongest and their only recourse when faced by Malak's Black Shark sub is to run away because they are out-gunned. And it can not be coincidence that Malak's moreau-esque minions are... Bat Men... 

[Thornhammer]

Resident Evil: first episode was mainly focused on teen high school girl drama. A few zombies. A really effing big caterpillar monster. One zombie dog.

And BOOM! Canceled after one season. Gosh, who would have thought Resident Evil fans didn't want to watch teen high school girl drama?

[Ghostmaker]

Resident Evil: first episode was mainly focused on teen high school girl drama. A few zombies. A really effing big caterpillar monster. One zombie dog.

And BOOM! Canceled after one season. Gosh, who would have thought Resident Evil fans didn't want to watch teen high school girl drama?

The Japanese fanbase in particular was -brutal-. They were not impressed at all.

[hedgehobbit]

I really liked the old Japanese/American sci-fi movie Latitude Zero, especially because it has Cesar Romero in it as the villain.

I managed to find this movie at archive.org (decent print but English only). A weird movie that I probably would have loved as a kid.

As I'm a huge fan of movies like Atragon and games like Subculture and Subnautica, it makes me want to run some sort of underwater type RPG. I'm thinking almost as a regular space science fiction game but with subs instead of space ship, underwater bases instead of space stations. The framework of the game would be almost identical as you could do exploration, action, horror, or stick to some sort of trading system and base building.

I just need to figure out a way to explain why they the surface world is too dangerous to live on.

[mightybrain]

Thirteen Lives is a great dramatization of an impossible rescue. Complete with map. Very good source material for those wanting to bring a bit of gritty realism into their fantasy adventures.

[Omega]

I really liked the old Japanese/American sci-fi movie Latitude Zero, especially because it has Cesar Romero in it as the villain.

I managed to find this movie at archive.org (decent print but English only). A weird movie that I probably would have loved as a kid.

As I'm a huge fan of movies like Atragon and games like Subculture and Subnautica, it makes me want to run some sort of underwater type RPG. I'm thinking almost as a regular space science fiction game but with subs instead of space ship, underwater bases instead of space stations. The framework of the game would be almost identical as you could do exploration, action, horror, or stick to some sort of trading system and base building.

I just need to figure out a way to explain why they the surface world is too dangerous to live on.

The interesting thing is that Latitude Zero was originally a Radio Serial and the movie is a joint project with the creator.

As for post-apoc undersea RPG campaigns. Way back I talked with Gygax about doing the never produced Rapture of the Deep GW module. Years later the Gamma World group came up with a fan version. Though personally I found it way inferior to what we had been planning. Still. Theres stuff like that and Blue Planet, and especially the French RPG Polaris, and a few others that go this route.

[Shrieking Banshee]

Watched Greyman. Good timea and the sort of movie hollywood pretends is not the best thing It knows how to make.

While in theory it is supposed to be like James Bond, in practice its more Commando.

[Thornhammer]

Trailer for the new Hellraiser movie on Hulu is out. Show starts next month.

The look is right, the feel is right.

The new Pinhead looks weird and sounds weird and I liked what I saw enough to give her a chance.

I thought it was a series, guess it is just a movie. That makes a little more sense.