What Movie Did You Just Watch

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I really liked it as well, though I did read the book beforehand. The quips were pretty much their way if showing that Grace was using his sense of humor to cope with the seeming inevitability of essentially being on a suicide mission, but they couldn't exactly showcase his inner thoughts and thus opted to have him speak out loud and deliver jokes that required less context. Sure, in a post-MCU era it feels overplayed, but it never really took away from any of the emotional beats of Gosling's performance or the movie as a whole, IMO.

I also watched Prime Time recently, and overall I liked it, but I have to admit that Pattinson's performance, while mostly good, does skirt the line and occasionally flip-flops between being a dead on Chris Hansen portrayal to feeling like a parody of it.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Wasn't able to see You Can See Everything ironically, but I did see the Street Fighter movie, and it's bad in annoying ways where they occasionally tease you with a good film via the animated scenes, but then it throws you right back to Dan Hibiki making unfunny jokes. It's the film equivalent of edging and then never actually finishing. I was particularly annoyed at the movie abruptly ending with no real resolution, and then I looked it up and found there isn't even a sequel in production like with Dune so they really just forgot to end their fucking film. Like I guess Chun-Li was fun, and it was at least more entertaining than the recent Mortal Kombat movies, but I'm kinda shaking my head at everything else. I usually like Dastmalchian, but he is woefully miscast as Bison. He just looked more like an angry bellhop/valet driver in that outfit instead of an imposing villain. And then they have the nerve to reference the 90s movie, because as cheesy as that movie was, it least it had an identity. This film's identity is just "Remember the 90s!?" and it got annoying.

Also saw Primetime last week, and I've had a lot of thoughts about it. Especially when finding out the director's introduction to Chris Hansen was the South Park episode that also depicts Hansen as a self-obsessed glory hound more interested in getting a show on than preserving lives. Since Hansen's been a very interesting guy to me, given he's basically just like those other sleazy reality TV hosts like Dr. Phil or Maury who turn people into sideshow attractions, but where as those two subjected that humiliation tactic to mentally ill kids or single moms looking for their child's biological father, Hansen did it to child predators. And consensus is there's far more catharsis watching a pedophile get humiliated on TV than either of those groups. Because personally, it eventually got weird watching Maury as a kid and seeing him regularly subject random people to his jeering audience while he pretended to be the mediator and not the freakshow ringmaster he really is, and I more or less always saw through Dr. Phil's bullshit, but with Hansen, there is a guilty pleasure since the majority of his targets are obviously not good people by any normal definition. I watched episodes of his recent show, and he turns a child predator into a crying wreck in just a few seconds. And Primetime delves hard into the moral issues there, since it certainly does not try to give a sympathetic POV to any of the predators, they're all portrayed as pathetic individuals and it's deserved, but it also explores just what kind of person someone would have to be to make a big TV show out of this. And whether or not Hansen's actually doing the right thing or if he found that niche in the industry where he can emotionally torture others while looking like the hero since he's torturing one of the most undesirable groups in society. Going back to South Park, I remember Trey and Matt discussed their thoughts on Hansen, and how while they love TCAP, they love the Constitution more and found his actions appalling, especially when it came to the infamous suicide depicted in the film. And they're right, entertainment and real-life law enforcement mixing usually lead to bad results, and any moral intentions will one way or another erode to a hunt for views above all else.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I really liked Primetime. To me it was nuanced enough to not just go the "Chris Hansen" is a self-obsessed maniac route even if it does effectively turn him into a caricature of himself (which is essentially what he is in TCAP). It works within the somewhat surreal tone of the movie, IMO.

I also just saw Clayface. I saw a review refer to it as DC's take on the Sony Spider-verse villain solo films, except done passably well, and that's pretty much where I sit on it. It's a decent little body horror spin on "Feat of Clay" that helps flesh out Gunn's DCU a bit more while setting up a character that can have interesting interactions with other characters in this Universe (he would absolutely fit in a Suicide Squad movie). I just probably won't ever be interested enough to watch it again, though. It's one of those one and done movies for me.