Welcome to Pick Up and Deliver the Podcast where I pick up my audio recorder as I step
off the train and deliver an episode to you while I walk home.
I'm Brendan Riley.
Well, good afternoon listener.
It's a lovely day here in suburban Chicago.
It is cicada season so I'm having to step around
a lot of cicadas -- dead cicadas -- on the sidewalk and if you listen you can hear
them buzzing in the trees.
We'll see if they pick up on the microphone or not.
Well I was looking and it's been a while since I've done a movie roundup.
In fact the last time I did one it was the February movie roundup and it's now May so
it seems like it's time to do a new movie roundup.
That's right:
we're going to do the March 2024 movie roundup.
So those of you new to a movie roundup episode or podcast in this episode I talk about
the movies that I watched in the previous month or sometimes two months if I didn't watch
a ton of movies and I sometimes I talk about them in the context of what would be a good
game to pair with them.
Sometimes I just talk about the movies.
This is less a board game episode than other ones so if you want to skip it I guess
you can.
I hope you won't, but there it is.
So March 2024 movies.
The first movie I watched in March 2024 was Saw X, the 10th movie in the franchise
about the puzzle based serial killer.
Oh what's his name?
I can't remember his name.
Saw man.
Jigsaw.
Like some of the previous ones this one takes place...
It's the narratives of these movies... if you lay them on a chronological time path.
they overlap in weird ways and Saw X overlaps with some of the others in pretty interesting
ways but it takes place back when Jigsaw was alive.
Like it's not a follow on movie like some of the other ones, and in this one he is trying
to find a cure for cancer.
So here's the wild part about this one.
In Saw X Jigsaw is kind of the good guy.
I mean not really he's still like murdering people but the people he's murdering are so
odious in this movie that you don't really mind that he's murdering them.
I mean part of what made the previous movies interesting or compelling maybe other than
the wild traps is that Jigsaw was murdering people who didn't necessarily deserve to be
murdered, right?
He thought that they were not making the most of their lives but often the way that they
were not making their most of the lives didn't necessarily reasonably translate into a capital
crime.
In this one there might be some argument that it should.
I don't know.
I don't want to give away too much but it's a weird move to have the villain of the series
be the most likeable character in the movie and somebody you're kind of cheering for which
is kind of what happens.
Yeah what a weird one.
The traps were moderately interesting as usual.
One of the things I don't like--this is true in a number of the traps, usually the sort of
second or third trap we see in the movie, one that we just know the character is not going
to survive--
often they require the character to do something horrific to their own body (that's usually
the trick in the Saw movie they have to do something horrible to themselves in order to
survive)
but often there is a delay between them doing the thing and like the trap stopping that seems
a little unfair. The second one and this one which involves a lady song off her
own leg seemed particularly nasty to me in terms of its how much delay there was between
her accomplishing the horrific self-mutilation and the trap triggering her survival.
So anyway if you like, if you've liked, the last couple of Saw movies if you like Spiral
A tale from the Saw Universe, you... wow! listen to those cicadas... you will probably like
Saw 10. If not this is not the one to start with, I don't think. There's a lot of assumptions
that you know what's going on in the movies before you watch them.
So that's Saw 10.
I don't remember what I recommended last time we watched a movie like this maybe an
escape room. Unlock I think is probably what I recommended before and that goes again with
it.
Next we've got The Wedding Singer. This is a movie I just really enjoy my wife and I were
having very tired, what's something we could watch is just fun to watch? Adam Sandler's The Wedding
Singer is peak peak Adam Sandler for me in that he's most likeable. it's a cute movie Drew
Barrymore is very likeable in this one. top marks all around I love that movie.
I don't know what I guess you could play Fog of Love which is the romantic comedy movie game
but I don't I don't actually found that move that game kind of stressful rather than funny
maybe something like Marrying Mr. Darcy would fit that one, something cute and light about
romantic comedies.
Next up I watched Dune again sort of thinking toward the new Dune movie but I never got
around to going to see Dune in the theater Dune 2: the Dunening. but I rewatched the first
one it's good is always very enjoyable I don't know that I have a lot more to say about
that I think in a previous episode I talked about it so I'll let you go listen to that if
you want obviously the game to play with that one is Dune or perhaps Dune Imperium depending
which of those flavors of game you like.
The next movie I really enjoyed was The Cheap Detective. The Cheap Detective is a Neil
Simon I believe it's a Neil Simon comedy and the main character is basically Humphrey
Bogart playing a mix of his characters. it's basically Peter Falk playing as Humphrey
Bogart's characters in Casablanca and the Maltese Falcon.
It's a mashup of those two movies with a comedy twist there are elements of it that are
very funny if you like those genres if you've seen those movies if you like Peter Falk
it is a winner, it's very funny I really enjoyed it we had a lot of fun watching it and
it's called The Cheap Detective because he never
tips and that's pretty funny. Overall it's a great movie lots of good dialogue and tons of
people in it when you're watching it you're like oh that person oh that person if you know
movies from like the 70s there's no shortage of people to watch in that film.
That said, it is also a movie made in the 70s and it has some real problems. As with a lot of comedy
in the 70s there's stuff that doesn't age well in particular for The Cheap Detective. The
movie has a lot of casual misogyny-- I mean a lot-- there's not much for female characters to
do except be sexy and then the movie has at least it's sort of making fun of the main
character for his promiscuity even if it's also making fun of the women for their promiscuity
it's at least satirizing it a little bit. But the movie also seems to have a lot of fun making
fun of names with Asian origins. It doesn't seem to be ironic, it seems to be saying 'isn't it
funny that some Asian names sound like English words that are funny?' That's the joke and that's
not cool. yeah the sort of casual sexism and racism of the 1970s is part of that movie and
be aware of it if you are gonna watch it I would still say it's the it's my second, it's my
third favorite comedy detective movie from the last half of the 70s or the first half of
the 80s. surprisingly I have five movies to compare it to oh actually six there's Clue which
is my favorite Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid which would be my second favorite.The Cheap Detective
is my third favorite then I'll also put into that category murder by death and
there's a Clint Eastwood one red heat maybe is doing something like that which is also comedy.
I feel like there was one more comedy from that era detective hardboiled this type of comedy
movie anyhow it's worth watching if that seems like your thing. I would say the the game to
connect to it would probably be Awkward Guests -- that game has a lot of humor built into the way
the characters look, even though it is pretty serious as a murder game that that would be a nice
pairing with the cheap detective. The next one is the Mystery of the 13th Guest. This is a movie
that I watched just because I was looking for something to watch and this was available. It is a classic
noir thriller with a weird outcome--I really can't recall what grabbed us to watch it except it said
it was available to watch and we thought oh that'll be amusing I think maybe I watched it
late at night while I was waiting for my daughter to get home from an activity out it's from 1943
it was it was amusing it might be more of a Mysterium type deal if you're looking for a game that would go well with it
it is a movie that had a bit of a haunted feel to it --the cicadas are very loud around here right now
so if you're gonna pick them up you would right now and it's that buzzing sound in the background
that kind of goes in and out. Next up we watch The Holdovers. this is the more recent film from Alexander
Payne I believe is the director and Paul Giamatti is your is the main actor from it. we last saw them
when they made the movie about wine, sideways, which was very good as well. In The Holdovers Paul Giamatti
plays a very cranky English teacher at a very reserved boys literature or boys school in the 60s he
seems to revel in punishing the boys for not studying hard and he assigns a lot of work in his very,
cantincarous is the right word, they're unnerdly well sort of scofflaw boy gets gets end up being left
at the school over christmas break as does one housekeeper slash cook who is alone at christmas because
her son died in Vietnam so it must be early 70s then now that I think about it. it's a really compelling
movie--the main characters are interesting. it isn't it wasn't for me as good as all of the reviews
seem to make it sound like it was going to be but the longer I sit with the movie the longer I wait
the more I enjoyed it which is always a crucial thing like as I think about the movie I recall it
fondly and interestingly versus sometimes over time my interest in the movie drops rather than
grows so there's a lot going on there and it was really well made, an interesting character study,
particularly if you like Paul Giamatti. I've no idea what kind of game would fit there perhaps you
could play Miskatonic School for Girls, which is at least about a private school, or there's also
Argent the Consortium which is sort of like a hogwarts type deal but still about a private school
uh Miskatonic School for Girls. the advantage doing that is they have the expansion called winter break
which has ads christmas themed stuff to the game and the winter break expansion would fit nicely
if you're playing the holdovers. the finally final movie I want to talk about is Dumb Money
dumb money is a sort of uh docu drama about the vlogger Keith Gill who was sort of the head of
the conversation in wall street bets around the game stop short squeeze if you don't know what that is
go look up game stop short squeeze I'm not going to try to explain it here on the podcast.
uh but it is an amusing depiction of the weird stuff that happens with regard to money
and an enjoyable way to spend an evening watching a movie about that it was well made and funny
and definitely worth checking out if you get a chance. Now the short squeeze was not a scam
necessarily but I think it is useful to think about how it might have been portrayed that way
so maybe as a game to go along with watching dumb money you should play Ponzi Scheme which is
about Charles Ponzi and his famous eponymous scheme. if you do let me know how it is. I have that on
my shelf but I haven't played it yet. well thanks for joining me on my walk today, I hope your next
walk is as pleasant as mine was. bye bye
[music]
[outtake beep] and that goes again with it -- AUGH! -- excuse me
a cicada just landed on my hand good okay um [outtake beep]