We review FREE GUY and THE SUICIDE SQUAD in a Friday freebie
Plus a sneak peek at an upcoming '80s newsletter entry
It’s Friday, August 13, and here’s where we are…
I was going to go out to the New Beverly tonight for a double-feature of The Man with Two Brains and Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid. I was excited to see both of them with an audience. I’ve had my tickets for weeks now, but watching the way things are going with COVID and with the general behavior of crowds the last few times I’ve been out, I’m not sure how I feel about attending. In fact, I’m not sure how I feel about attending any screenings at all until we see a decrease in those numbers.
It’s starting to feel to me like the new normal is going to be wave after wave of variants, with the possibility of entirely unrelated diseases also reaching pandemic status because clearly, there is nothing that’s going to change the behavior of a percentage of our population at this point, and if they won’t change their behavior, nothing else is going to change. Watching studios start to nervously shuffle release dates around again, it’s clear that they’re afraid everything’s going to start to close again, but no one wants to run for the hills. Not quite yet.
I would not be surprised to see Warner Bros push both Dune and The Matrix Resurrections to 2022 for several reasons. First, if things really do start to shut down, those are expensive films to sacrifice completely. Second, if they managed to move them out of the “every movie’s coming out on HBO Max the same day as the theater” window, they might repair some of the damage they did to their relationships with those filmmakers. They might have to delay them well into 2022 if they really want to see theaters back at full capacity…
… or they might just have to accept that they greenlit those films in one world, and now we live in a different one. Maybe everyone should start getting their head around that. Or we can all just keep acting like everything’s going to snap back like magic because that’s really going well for us so far.
It’s been a little while since I’ve offered up a free issue of Formerly Dangerous. Today’s going to have a little bit of everything in it as a way of showing non-subscribers what they’re missing. For those of you who are already subscribers, thank you. I really can’t tell you how important it is or how much I appreciate it. You’re making the choice to support the kind of writing you want to read and I am grateful that you’ve done so. There are so many options right now for your money and, more importantly, your time and attention, and it means a lot to me that you make the choice to include me in that.
Hopefully one of the things you’ll choose to include in your upcoming media diet is my appearance on Screen Drafts that I’m recording on Tuesday night. I love guesting on this show. It’s always fun to chat with Ryan Marker and Clay Keller, the show’s hosts and commissioners, and I love that every draft I’ve been on has been with someone different as a co-drafter, except for my double-header with Alan Sepinwall, which was a totally different kind of fun. Every draft is so different, and every time, I walk in with a strategy that goes out the window as soon as other people are involved. This time, it should be particularly crazy because it’s a mega-draft, which means we’re picking 20 titles, and the subject is “Planet Hollywood,” meaning we’re going to be trying to pick the 20 best films from the full filmographies of Schwarzenegger, Stallone, and Willis.
That is, simply put, crazy. I put together my list of 20, and I feel pretty good about the representation for each of them, but I won’t have 20 picks on the list. At best, I’ll get 6 picks, but one of the drafters on the show will only get 4 picks. It’s determined by a trivia round, and each person has slightly different advantages and disadvantages. Whatever happens, I only get to choose a percentage of the list, and I’ve got plenty of personal favorites from all three of those actors’ filmographies that I hope to see on the list. The problem is, as I’ve learned on earlier drafts, sometimes you get your personal favorites on the list at the expense of completely obvious classics, and there’s a strong chance we’re going to end up with a list that doesn’t feature Die Hard or Predator or Pulp Fiction or some other title that will make people scream at us. That’s the fun of the show, though. It’s a competitive/collaborative draft, and those warring instincts are fascinating.
Aside from Screen Drafts, I also just made an appearance on a Ted Lasso podcast, and I’m talking to several other podcasts about making appearances between now and December. There’s a reason for this, aside from just enjoying the conversations. I am desperate to get the word out about both of my newsletters, and I need to keep growing these audiences. Any time I can get that word out to an audience that isn’t my daily audience, it helps. If you are reading this and you have a podcast I have not appeared on, I’d be happy to do so, and I really can use the boost.
I know I present myself as a hype-hating grinch most of the time on here, but I’m just as susceptible to both nostalgia and hype as anyone else. I read the brief comments that Michael Keaton made about shooting his first scenes as Batman again for Andy Muschietti’s The Flash, and I am happy to admit that it made me a little giddy as a fan. This week, DC published the first issue of Batman ’89, a limited-run comic series written by Sam Hamm, screenwriter of Tim Burton’s first Batman, and it feels like they’re ramping up for a lot of nostalgia for that particular take on the character. Fine. At this point, the only consistent thing about Batman is that there’s always some new interpretation on the way, and whatever you like, chances are you’ll get something that fits your take at some point.
And since we’re speaking about DC Films…
JUST PLAIN RUDE
Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn is one of the things I like most about the modern superhero movie cycle. Like Robert Downey Jr. and Iron Man, it feels like the perfect pairing of movie star charisma and a very specific character. Her first appearance, in David Ayer’s Suicide Squad, was a highlight in a very muddled movie, and her second appearance in the charmingly bent Birds of Prey was so quirky, so personal, that it felt like it had very little interest in even playing the superhero movie game at all. In both cases, it’s clear that she has a ferocious grip on the character and that she loves Harley Quinn in all of her eccentric glory.
Ayers understood the appeal of the whole idea of the Suicide Squad, but from the screenplay through to the final execution, his film felt like an almost. For every choice he got right, there were at least five he got wrong. I would argue that James Gunn’s not-quite-sequel is just as messy, but the ratio is inverted. There are things I don’t love about his movie, but he makes so many of the right moves that it doesn’t matter to me. This feels like a movie that came from a very raw and personal place, but it’s also a big loud studio summer movie, and that’s a strange combination. After all, Gunn made this film as a reaction to being fired from Marvel and the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise over some Tweets that got weaponized by some bad-faith actors online. Those films were about building unconventional families and then dealing with the fallout from those choices. They are big and colorful and hilariously funny but also oddly heartbreaking. Before the first one came out, the skepticism was running high, and I had plenty of arguments about it with my own EIC at HitFix at the time. Gunn took these characters no one in the mainstream knew and made them feel like they were essential parts of the Marvel universe, leaning into the absurdity of the characters rather than running from it.
The Guardians were all marginal characters, criminals and crazy people and genetically-modified lab experiments, and he used those sharp edges as ways to make them endearing and understandable. He made us love the Guardians in all of their weird, damaged glory, and he had already written the third film in the series when all the weird Disney drama landed on him, and he suddenly found himself looking at the very real possibility that someone else was going to make his movie. When DC offered him The Suicide Squad, it must have felt like the funhouse mirror version of what he had just left behind, and his script feels like something he wrote in a white heat. It’s rowdy and intentionally contrarian and blunt-force angry, and instead of trying to convince us that this family of oddballs is just like us, he lets the Suicide Squad remain decidedly awful. He still clearly loves these characters, but he loves them precisely because they are so dented and damaged.
I love the way the film opens. There’s a beat that comes just after the film has ramped up into total carnage, when you realize what game he’s been playing with you as a viewer, that is hilarious, and Gunn does it again later in a scene that directly thumbs its nose at the kind of hyperviolent “good guy” rampages we’ve seen in action movies for decades now. The film constantly wants to play with your expectations, and it’s well aware of how many other films you’ve seen and how many riffs there are on this particular “scumbags on a mission” subgenre. There’s a sequence with Harley Quinn in the middle of the film that feels like a fairly lengthy digression, but the payoff feels like something that’s been building the entire time Robbie’s been playing the part. She’s still got those tattoos on her, marking her as the Joker’s property, but Harley is clearly done being anyone’s girl, and Robbie’s managing to give her a consistent internal life, marked by real growth, even though every one of the films she’s been in has been so different. It’s clear that Gunn is wildly fond of her take on the character, and Robbie’s the kind of actor who will always give you more than put on the page, so when you start with strong writing, the results are electric.
I don’t think every character works as well, and in particular, I’m not crazy about this film’s take on Amanda Waller. I like seeing Viola Davis get to play a straight-up sociopathic asshole, don’t get me wrong. She’s good at everything she’s asked to do here… but there’s a manic loss of control at a certain point that strikes me as a weird choice for Waller. I also don’t buy that anyone knocks her out and not only stays employed but alive afterward. I like the way they flesh out the support team around her, but I wish that part of the film was stronger. When James Gunn does the Peacemaker series for HBO Max, I’d like to see more about these people who work for Waller and the way Waller manages this devil’s bargain she offers people.
Clearly, though, I’ll be watching the Peacemaker show. I thought John Cena did a great job navigating some very gray moral territory, and I’m curious to see what they do with him in a series. It doesn’t sound like the show is either a straight prequel or a direct follow-up, and it should give Gunn room to explore a lot of ground. I hope we eventually get to see more of Daniela Melchior as Ratcatcher 2. She’s the human heart of the film, and there are so many things about her performance I love. The main one? I love how sleepy she is, and how she’s constantly grabbing naps no matter how insane the circumstances. It’s one of those choices you never see in this type of film, and it makes her seem so human. I liked King Shark, even if I felt like he was mainly used as a punchline when Gunn needed a way out of a scene.
The film has the most outrageous visual style of any of Gunn’s films so far, and there’s a real confidence to the way he approaches things like transitions or title cards. There’s a scene where Harley Quinn goes on a violent rampage that is all flowers and rainbows, and it’s an audacious, emotional choice. The soundtrack, like both of the Guardians films, is absolutely jam-packed with great needle drops, with “People Who Died” getting a hearty belly laugh out of me in particular. The most surprising thing about the film is just how pointed its criticism is of the way America outsources so much misery around the world. It’s not often you see something this obvious-but-controversial dropped in as the punchline for a movie about a bunch of supervillains battling an outer space starfish. Most of these films avoid any hint of real-world politics unless it’s heavily filtered through metaphor, but this one practically snarls at you.
While I think Robocop is a masterpiece on a level that few movies can reach, The Suicide Squad plays in the same wiseass satirical blood-soaked end of the pool, and it suggests that Gunn hasn’t lost any of the lunatic edge his early work showed. He’s just gotten better at finding a way to make it palatable for the normies.
NOT GOOD OR GREAT
I’m really torn on this one. I don’t want to be savage or glib about my dislike for it, and I suspect some audiences will be far easier on this film than I was. I went in hoping for something fun and clever, and I’ve been a fan of a few of Shawn Levy’s earlier films. In particular, I really like Real Steel, and that’s a film where he took a potentially goofy premise and found the heart in it, making something that worked far better than it looked like it should.
Free Guy, his new film, feels like a big lurching Frankenstein’s monster, stitched together from pieces of The Truman Show, Wreck-It Ralph, Groundhog Day, and a thousand other odds and ends from pop culture, all wrapped in the same glib detachment that made Deadpool work. Ryan Reynolds plays Guy, a video game NPC who is part of a game called Free City. One day, he decides not to do the thing he does every time the bank where he works is robbed, and then he just keeps not doing the things he’s supposed to do. At the same time, a game designer named Millie (Jodie Comer) tries to get her former business partner Keys (Joe Keery) to help her prove that their game’s code was used to help build Free City in the first place and that Antwan (Taika Waititi) stole it from them. Those two storylines are related, of course, but it takes some truly tortured plotting to make it all shuffle together, and more than anything else, Free Guy struck me as profoundly, incessantly, outrageously loud.
There are a lot of event films right now that feel like their overriding aesthetic is “loud,” and I certainly feel like that’s not an inappropriate choice for a movie that is largely set inside a video game. But there’s a point where I just felt bludgeoned by the constant assault, and worn out by it rather than entertained. There’s one thing that felt emblematic, and if you’ve seen the trailers for the film, you already have some sense of this. In the last trailer, which you can watch here…
… they manage to use the same not-terribly-clever line of dialogue twice. They have Guy say, “So I’m not gonna be the good guy. I’m going to be the great guy.” And then they actually use the on-screen tag line, “They needed a good guy. They got a great guy.” So… if you are highly entertained by that particular turn of phrase, I have fantastic news. They repeat it about 30,000 times over the two hours of the film in different forms. And pretty much every idea this film has, it has repeatedly and insistently. They don’t just do the “Truman figures out he’s on TV” thing once, they wipe Guy’s memory at a certain point, and then they have to actually do it all again. It’s exhausting.
Reynolds is as winning as he can be in the role. He has fun with all of the extremes of the character, as does Taika Waititi, who seems to be determined to make Jim Carrey in Batman Forever look nearly comatose. There’s nothing that Levy won’t try for a laugh here, and that’s fine. I didn’t think the movie was particularly funny, but I recognize that it’s at least trying to be a comedy. There’s a one-two punch of Disney-related product placement near the end of the film, right in the middle of a climactic fight, that was my personal breaking point, but I get very tired of “Hey, I recognize that!” taking the place of actual jokes that have something to say or that offer up some clever spin on something. If you’re fine with just recognizing things and people, Free Guy is a veritable cornucopia of things and people for you to recognize. What a delight.
I like Lil Rel Howery in the film. Every single time he turns up, it feels like he totally gets what is being asked of him, and he’s very good as this movie’s version of Noah Emmerich from Truman Show. The stuff inside the game is not bad, but I also wouldn’t say it’s any good. It feels completely obvious, exactly what you think it’s going to be, and more than anything, it underlines just how boring it is to watch someone else play a game. The stuff outside the game, though? Deadly. None of it really works for me, and once the film turns into “Guy has to chase the glowing doodad to help the real-world heroes win,” it feels like another movie made by algorithm. Maybe you’ll be more charmed by it than I was. Even so, it hardly seems like this would be worth exposing your family to any potential risk this weekend. This feels like exactly the kind of film where lowering your expectations as far as possible can only be a good thing, and at least if you get quietly disappointed at home, you can be comfortable and safe.
AND FINALLY…
I find myself writing about ‘80s movies all day every day right now. I had no idea quite how much work I’d be putting into each issue of the newsletter, but I want to make it something special, something eventually worth collecting. As a result, each month is turning out to be a longer document than I expected. February was almost 15,000 words, and March is going to be longer than that. Some entries are shorter, but there are films that I feel deserve a spotlight because of their cultural significance or, in some cases, because they were overlooked and deserve better.
I thought I’d run an entry that’s part of the May 1980 issue, and I am pretty sure you’ll be able to figure out why I’m running it today.
Friday the 13th
Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Jeannine Taylor, Robbi Morgan, Kevin Bacon, Harry Crosby, Laurie Bartram, Mark Nelson, Peter Brouwer, Rex Everhart, Ronn Carroll, Ron Millkie, Walt Gorney, Willie Adams, Debra S. Hayes, Dorothy Kobs, Sally Anne Golden, Mary Rocco, Ken L. Parker, Ari Lehman, Noel Cunningham, Irwin Keyes, Tom Savini
cinematography by Barry Abrams
music by Harry Manfredini
screenplay by Victor Miller
produced by Sean S. Cunningham
directed by Sean S. Cunningham
Rated R
1 hr 35 mins
A summer camp, marked by tragedy years before, is hit by a wave of murders just as they’re about to re-open for the season.
It’s hard to remember a time when this franchise wasn’t an omnipresent part of the horror movie landscape. It’s even harder to consider this film as a film removed from the context of the larger series, but when this came out in the summer of 1980, it made major ripples in pop culture with nary a hockey mask in sight.
Halloween’s success may have been the initial reason that Sean Cunningham decided to make a horror film, but he ended up making a film for just under $600,000 that absolutely changed the landscape for the genre for decades, not just because of the endless sequels and imitations that tried to cash in but also because of the way he financed the film before selling the distribution rights to Paramount. He was advertising the film in the trades before he even had a screenplay, and working with Victor Miller, he came up with a murder-mystery that leaned into graphic violence in a way that was unseen in mainstream filmmaking at that point. Halloween, like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre before it, was largely devoid of graphic on-screen violence. Most of the most disturbing material in those films was suggested, with the viewer doing most of the heavy lifting. Thanks to Tom Savini, Friday the 13th went the other direction. This first film feels fairly mild-mannered compared to much of the excesses of the slasher genre, but it was genuinely startling when it was released.
It may actually be generous to call this a “murder mystery,” because there’s absolutely no way you’re going to connect the dots before the film does. It doesn’t play fair or even remotely try to build up the identity of the killer as a problem to be solved. Betsy Palmer gives a charmingly unhinged performance as Mrs. Voorhees once she finally arrives, but for the majority of the film’s running time, it’s that score by Henry Manfredini that effectively plays the killer, with the “ki-ki-ki-ma-ma-ma” sound landing on a generation like a ton of bricks. The rest of the cast is entirely fine, with Adrienne King doing solid work in a role that became archetypical. Kevin Bacon, aside from being the most famous face in the cast, has one of the most visually arresting deaths in the film.
One of the reasons this film was so widely imitated, aside from its success, was because of the sheer stripped-down simplicity of the premise. In the ‘50s, a group of camp counselors allows a boy to drown because they are too busy having sex to pay attention to him. They are murdered, and the camp closes for twenty years. On the weekend a group of new young counselors tries to ready the camp to reopen, someone begins to pick them off in graphic and startling ways. The film’s only 95 minutes, but it pretty much keeps the pedal down the entire time. There’s just enough time spent establishing characters for it to matter when they start to die, and everything’s handled with a nimble efficiency. While it must have been shocking to see this kind of violence in 1980 (it damn near drove Gene Siskel crazy), there’s still a light touch to the film overall. It doesn’t feel like a wallow, and it certainly isn’t a non-stop wall-to-wall bloodbath.
Speaking of Siskel, I still think his reaction to his movie is one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen a film critic do. He was so offended by the violence that he printed Betsy Palmer’s home address in his review, encouraging his readers to write letters telling her how upset they were by the film. This is 1980, so Sneak Previews is on PBS by this point. This is a guy with a national platform, and he’s mobilizing an army to harass an actor because he’s upset over Tom Savini’s make-up effects. If that was today, that critic would never work again, but this was just one small skirmish in Siskel’s overall war on graphic horror violence, one of the things I find most fascinating about his legacy.
Honestly, without that final shock at the end of the film, I don’t think we’d still be talking about this movie or this series the way we are. There’s no sequel without at least a hint of Jason out there somewhere, and the thing that made the strongest impression on everyone who saw it in the summer of 1980 was the way theaters would melt down when Jason popped out of the lake. It may have been a late addition to the overall film, a suggestion that wasn’t included in the shooting script, but it’s a defining decision that gave them everything that came afterward. Many of the character types and story tropes that play out over and over throughout the decade begin here, and it’s easy to lump in the worst of the genre with this film when you think about them now. This first film, though, has a charm and an energy that still resonates when you look at it on its own, and while it’s nowhere near as technically accomplished as Halloween or Texas Chain Saw, it’s easy to see why it became the third pillar in the nascent slasher genre as soon as it came out.
If you dug that, then pleeeeeeeeease… jump over to The Last ‘80s Newsletter (You’ll Ever Need) and subscribe now! It’s just $5 a month, and you’ll get anywhere between 10 and 30 new reviews as I cover every single film released in the 1980s, and we get a different perspective on a decade that has been reduced to its most obvious signifiers at this point. I’ve got to go get the first part of March ready for publication on Sunday, so there’s still time for you to get this full month in your inbox. And of course, every subscriber has access to the full archive as well.
I’m going to finally run my media diary today, which I’ve missed for the last three Fridays here on the site. This is 21 days of books, games, comics, podcasts, and movies, and at a certain point, I think I lost track of things a bit.
As always, anything I particularly enjoyed is in bold.
THIS WEEK’S BOOKS: The Final Girls Support Group by Grady Hendrix; Gwendy’s Button Box by Richard Chizmar and Stephen King; Cop Hater by Ed McBain; The Mugger by Ed McBain; Ayoade On Top by Richard Ayoade; Stuntman! My Car-Crashing Plane-Jumping Bone Breaking Death Defying Hollywood Life by Hal Needham; Secrets of the Force: The Complete Uncensored Unauthorized Oral History of Star Wars by Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman; The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold; Will Not Attend by Adam Resnick; Ripley Underground by Patricia Highsmith; Billy Summers by Stephen King; The Total FilmMaker by Jerry Lewis; A Kind of Magic: Making the Original Highlander by Jonathan Melville
THIS WEEK’S COMICS: Alien #5; Star Wars: The High Republic #6 - #8; Star Wars: War of the Bounty Hunters - Jabba the Hutt #1; Doctor Aphra #12; Bounty Hunters #14, #15; Darth Vader #14; Epic Collection: X-Men - Second Genesis; Epic Collection: X-Men - Proteus; Epic Collection: X-Men - Fate of the Phoenix; Marvel Masterworks: The Uncanny X-Men Vol. 6; Marvel Masterworks: The Uncanny X-Men Vol. 7; Marvel Masterworks: The Uncanny X-Men Vol. 8; Marvel Masterworks: The Uncanny X-Men Vol. 9; Marvel Masterworks: The Uncanny X-Men Vol. 10; Scales & Scoundrels: Book One; Eternals #6; Star Trek Year Five #23; Star Wars #15; The Immortal Hulk #49; Star Wars: War of the Bounty Hunters - 4-Lom & Zuckass #1; The Trials of Ultraman #5; Savage Avengers #22, #23; The Good Asian #4; Batman ’89 #1; 6 Sidekicks of Trigger Keaton #3; Star Wars: The High Republic - The Monster of Temple Peak #1
THIS WEEK’S PODCASTS: Pure Cinema Podcast - “Summer Discoveries,” “New Beverly Calendar - August 2021,” “Public Domain Movies with Quentin Tarantino,” “Teenage Wasteland (Live from the New Beverly)”; One Heat Minute - “Zodiac: Chronicle - Gemini Pt. 2,” “Zodiac: Chronicle - Cancer Pt. 1,” “Zodiac: Chronicle - Cancer Pt. 2,” “Zodiac Chronicle - Leo Pt. 1,” “Zodiac Chronicle - Leo Pt. 2,” “Miami Nice - Opening the Third Eye w/ Anna Swanson,” “A Serious Disc Agreement: Imprint Films - The Brotherhood of Satan”; Screen Drafts - “Video Game Adaptations w/Thomas Grabinski & Kevin Costello,” “2007 w/Bryan Cogman, Drea Clark & Mark Rozeman,” “Bob Dylan w/Marya E. Gates & Ryan Marker,” “Twilight Franchise mini Super Draft,” “Wes Craven w/ Clarke Wolfe & Dylan Guerra”; Boogie Monster - “Home Sweet Home,” “Freshen Up,” “Already Hard”; Just The Discs - “Disaster Movies with Daisuke Beppu”; High & Mighty with Jon Gabrus - “Martial Arts w/Vic Michaelis”; The Dana Gould Hour - “A Hot Summer Plight”; With Gourley & Rust - “Motel Hell,” “Jaws,” “Jaws 2,” “Jaws 3-D”; Blank Check with Griffin & David - “Space Jam: A New Legacy with James Newman,” “Clifford 2: Hyper-Clifford w/Tom Scharpling,” “Old with Marie Bardie,” “Dark Star w/Emily Yoshida”; Doughboys - “Coca-Cola Freestyle w/Chris Gethard,” “Wahlburgers w/ Eliza Hooper”; Did You Get My Text? - “Diner Muses,” “The Great Wisconsin Murder-Off,” “Toomgis Wants To Give You A Hand”; The Kingcast - “Creepshow 2 w/Joe Lynch,” “Silver Bullet w/Don Coscarelli,” “Carrie w/Flula Borg,” “The Shawshank Redemption w/ Steve Agee,” “Graveyard Shift w/David Dastmalchian,” “Revival w/David Lowery”; MBMBaM - “Planet of Valjeans,” “CryptoToast of the Town,” “Sky Captain and the World of Giamatti”; How Did This Get Made? - “The 6th Day,” “Minisode 270.5,” “F9 w/Adam Scott”; The Plot Thickens - “Wire Without A Net,” “Hollywood Heat,” “The Best Movie We Ever Made”; Lasso Cast - “Ted Lasso the Individualist w/ Drew McWeeny,” “Led Tasso w/ Heidi Rogers”
THIS WEEK’S TV: Never Have I Ever… S2 E2 - S10; Barney Miller S1 E13; Central Park S2 E6 - E8; Kevin Can F**k Himself S1 E5 - E8; Evil S1 E5, E6; The White Lotus S1 E2 - E5; Ted Lasso S2 E1 - E8; Big Brother S23 E5 - E16; History of the Sitcom S1 E1 - E6; Dickinson S2 E5 - E7; Married at First Sight S13 E1 - E4; Miracle Workers S1 E4 - E7; Black Monday S1 E9, E10; I Think You Should Leave S2 E5, E6; Dark Side of the Ring S1 E1 - E5; Dave S2 E6 - E10; Last Week Tonight With John Oliver S8 E18 - E20; American Horror Stories S1 E3; FBoy Island S1 E1 - E4; Superman & Lois S1 E13; Why Women Kill S1 E3; Moonlighting S2 E1 - E3; What If… S1 E1, E2; Reservation Dogs S1 E1, E2; Star Trek: Lower Decks S2 E1; The Pursuit of Love S1 E1, E2; Fantasy Island (2021) S1 E1; Brooklyn Nine-Nine S8 E1, E2
THIS WEEK’S GAMING: Batman: Arkham Knight; Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla; F/X Pinball 3; Microsoft Flight Simulator
THIS WEEK’S MOVIES: Fear Street: 1666; Space Jam: A New Legacy; The Forever Purge; Tilt; Serial; The Thing; Better; Forbidden Zone; Blazing Saddles; Little Miss Marker; Little Darlings; Tusk (1980); Where The Buffalo Roam; Zola; Don’t Go In The House; Defiance; Jolt; Annette; The Baltimore Bullet; Lady & The Tramp; Galaxina; Jungle Cruise; Tom Horn; The Changeling; The Private Eyes; When Time Ran Out…, The Return; Humanoids From The Deep; Gorp; A Small Circle of Friends; The Boy Behind the Door; The Green Knight; The Game; Roadrunner: A Film about Anthony Bourdain; Val; The Suicide Squad; Cloud Atlas; After The Thin Man; The Bonfire of the Vanities; Cop Land; Looper; Rocky Balboa; The Last Action Hero; Nighthawks; Nothing Personal; Demonic; Terminator: Dark Fate; Hudson Hawk; The Running Man
I have to credit your presence for luring me to Screen Drafts (thanks to the notorious Carpenter Draft)... My partner and I are obsessed with the show now -- so much so, we play 2-person 7-film drafts amongst ourselves on a weekly basis (no no, really: https://letterboxd.com/cinemaviscera/tag/p-p-screen-drafts/lists/) and have even held a couple of Mega Drafts with friends (on the films of 1999 and 1994) and an MCU Super Draft (we roped in your old AICN pal Lee Zachariah for that one, and he's well and truly in the boat for any we do in future). It's just a super fun way to spend a night with friends with wine and snacks, lavishing love (and the occasional upsetting Veto) on films.
Maybe Clay is right: maybe he *did* invent a perfect game...
Drew, great edition as always. And if any of you are reading this and haven't subscribed to Drew's 80s project, do yourself a favor and do it. Since he's breaking it up into parts, you're getting multiple parts each month. Highly recommend.
I watched Free Guy late Thursday night with my 17-year-old daughter in a nearly empty theater (pre-requisite for us to go, honestly). I respect your review, but don't agree - we enjoyed the heck out of it. It might be because I came in expecting the loudness with a vapid story, but I got something a lot sweeter than I expected about self-determinism, what's important in life, and quite a run of beating up on capitalism (a favorite past-time). I figure the pop culture fan service is mere table stakes in films like this. The kid loved the gaming deep-dives and the YouTube cameos (none of which I could name).
Looking forward to the rest of 1980!