Welcome to Pick Up and Deliver, the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder as
I stop out the door and deliver an episode to you while I walk the dog.
I'm Brendan Riley.
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Welcome, morning listeners.
It's a lovely day here in suburban Chicago.
The sun is out and it's Father's Day.
My birthday was recently and I'm now 47 years old so if I sound crusty and old and
wizened it's because I've now passed from 46 into 47.
So take that for what it's worth.
We had a nice birthday.
We went, looked at some birds, played a lot, a nice fun game of Ark Nova with my wife
and son, had a good nap.
It was a lovely birthday.
I also got the Honey Buzz expansion which I backed on Kickstarter a very long time ago and
was happy to see that show up so that's fun.
I didn't know it was coming either so what a delight.
Okay, well if I might have my count wrong because I may have, I may be one episode behind
but I think that I've caught up to my backlog and that means this episode is going out soon
and I believe it's episode 629.
It turns out about once a month I'm doing one of these episodes or not whatever.
So for this episode I'm going to be talking about movies I saw recently.
That's right, it's time for our next movie roundup.
If you're not interested in any of my movie commentary content, this would be an episode
to skip but I hope you stick around.
What I like to do in the movie roundup episodes is that I will talk about movies I've seen
recently.
Talk a little bit about what I thought of them and then generally try to connect a game
with the movie so that if you're feeling like doing a movie and game experience you
can do so.
So that's kind of the approach that I like to take and what we'll be doing here.
So this is my April and May roundup and I haven't marked which movies were April and which
movies are are May on my little sheet that I'm using while I'm walking here but I have,
I will have marked that on the show notes page by the time this episode goes live.
So if you're curious about when I watch each episode you can go over to the show notes
page which by the way if you haven't visited our page at rattleboxgames.com you will find
that we have a delightful archive of pages for every episode of this podcast and on those
pages I have links to the games, the game pages on board game geek that I've talked about.
So if I ever say the name of a game and you miss it you can always go to the show page
and look it up.
On episodes like this or the reading roundup I will also put links to my reviews
of those things on either letterboxed for movies or good reads for books.
I don't write long reviews in most of those places but generally that's the approach that
I take.
So if you want to look up anything related to the episode remember you can always head over
to board game geek or two.
You know I head over to rattleboxgames and look up the page of the show notes.
So for April and May was those were two very busy months in my life and so I did not have
a ton of time to watch movies.
In fact I got only to watch, I only recorded six movies that I watched.
I guess it's possible that I watched a seventh or even an eighth movie
and forgot to record them but I'm generally pretty, pretty, pretty dutiful about recording
these movies.
So I think six is probably correct for how many movies I watched in April and May.
So I'll just go through them and we'll talk a little bit about each one and what I thought
of them.
So the first movie I watched is called Damsel in this movie.
We have a fantasy land in which a kingdom that is without many resources and going through
a drought is sends an envoy to a wealthy country where they propose to have a marriage between
their daughter and the prince and that marriage will result in a huge dowry for the kingdom
which will save the kingdom but she will end up living with these people.
And something goes terribly wrong.
I don't really want to reveal too much of the plot because the plot is, the movie is
good but the plot is a key part.
Something goes terribly wrong.
It turns out there is a sinister motive for the group that's marrying a thing and then
it becomes an adventure in which the princess has to save herself from various and destructive
encounters.
The film has a number of really interesting choices.
It turns out this is not something that she's the first one that's this happened to and
so the kind of record of other people who have gone through this is really interesting.
It makes for good storytelling and gives us something to look at while the character is basically
by herself.
We also have a number of other choices that the other characters make that I think are
interesting and effective.
There are big parts of the movie that are just really dumb.
I like the overall idea of the story but there's a lot of things in it that don't make sense
or they didn't work for me or just kind of the way things happen don't really make sense
or take a big leap of faith or blind itologic.
So from the sort of narrative construction piece I did not find this movie as satisfying
as I would hope but it was an interesting story and I enjoyed having watched it.
I have fond thoughts of it now rather than unpleasant thoughts of it but I would say
if this is a genre that you're interested in and you haven't checked out the Joey King
movie I can't remember what that one's called.
It might just be The Princess.
There's a Joey King movie where she plays a princess whose castle gets taken over and
she basically goes around like it's an action movie and she kicks butt.
The action scenes in that movie I thought are much better created and the overall effect
I think works better in that one.
So if you're going to look for a movie like this and I would recommend the Joey King movie
rather than this one.
Although Damsel was an enjoyable time and I don't think you would suffer for having watched
it.
That was my take on Damsel.
Now if you're going to watch a movie with that or you're going to play a game with that
and you want to think about what would you play I don't know.
Legacy of Dragonholt perhaps.
Legacy of Dragonholt is a tabletop sort of RPG light game that you play with a group
of people and it's got a narrative campaign and you resolve things.
There's not really much dice rolling you choose to use stats that you have available and
if you run out of those stats and then good things good and bad happen it's kind of a
choose your own adventure style narrative in that there's a book full of different choices
and as things happen in the story you're going to read different entries and you keep track
of things on paper.
It's a really good game and very well made and has a feminist and queer friendly ethos
that I think fits the ethos of this movie Damsel.
All right.
Next we showed my daughter dead poet society which is a movie I haven't watched for a long
time.
Boy this movie doesn't even come close to passing the Bechtel test and there's some stuff
in it that is really bad by today's standards.
There's a young Josh Charles plays a guy who's fallen head over heels for this cheerleader
at the local public school.
There's about a bunch of kids at a private school who are sort of learning to explore their
passions in a buttoned down serious world.
There are some elements in it that still ring really good but the overall environment
of the story I think is feels so dated now.
It already did when it came out but feels so dated now that it loses some of its punch
in being just set in such an archaic time.
The overall narrative arc is good but I always think also of my film teacher who really
didn't like the movie because she thought that the main character had done a moral disservice
to one of the there's a central drama in the movie where the teacher gives some advice
to the student in a way that is not that does not succeed.
And results in some pretty disastrous outcomes and my mentor in college blamed him.
She thought he really made a mistake in how he talked to this kid about what was going
on and that it was a significantly his fault what happens.
And I don't entirely disagree.
That said it's got some inspiring stuff in it.
It reminds us that poetry can be lovely and some of the elements in the film really work
well.
I mean if you've never seen Dead Poets Society I think it's worth checking out. It's got some
sort of lyrical and poetic fun ideas but it probably feels pretty dated by today's standards.
On the other hand you've got Robin Williams playing a very delightful serious role which
sometimes he doesn't play those as well as I would like.
So that is Dead Poets Society.
Hard to say what game I would play if I were going to watch Dead Poets Society.
I mean if you wanted to play a game about private school perhaps Miskatonic School for Girls
you can solve the problem of the school for boys thing by having the school for girls or
I do have the game I still haven't played yet which is Miskatonic School for Boys.
In both those cases you have a private school as the center story.
It doesn't overlap much in terms of the love of poetry.
I guess you could do poetry for Neanderthals as well if you wanted a game focus more on the
poetics part of it.
That's Dead Poets Society.
Next up I watched the movie Wrath of Man.
Wrath of Man is a sort of Jason Statham vehicle directed by Guy Ritchie.
This came in when I never heard of it until I came across it on whatever streaming service
I watched it on.
I was sort of in the mood for a dumb Jason Statham movie and I mean it's not entirely dumb
but it was a reasonably good Jason Statham movie about a security guard for an armored truck
company and some people who were causing heists of different groups including the armored truck
company.
So the film has a lot of sort of twisty turning storytelling elements and it backs up
and moves forward and I don't want to say a lot about those elements.
I will say I thought Jason Statham did a pretty good job.
I like Guy Ritchie's directing style and this sort of feels like a good mid-tier example
of the kinds of stories he likes to tell.
Lots of colorful criminal characters and the world where criminals just kind of run around
and do whatever they want and law enforcement is either entirely absent or is sort of incompetent
is part of the nature of this kind of story.
But if you like you know there's some good gun fights and a little bit of fisticuffs and
entertaining criminals saying entertaining things.
So that's I don't have a lot more to say about Wrath of Man except that I enjoyed it.
And if you were going to make a movie sort of inspired by this I might say to or if you're
going to play a game sort of inspired by this I might suggest playing getaway plan.
Just the Vital Lacerda medium heavy Euro game in which you play a group of people who have
committed a heist and are now laying low before you get out of town.
And you want to take as much money as you can with you but you don't want to be the last
one out of town because last one out of town is stock.
Although I think everybody is possible for everyone to make it out of town and then it's
based on how much money you get but you also could might not make it out of town and then
you're definitely not going to win.
I liked Getaway Plan when we played it but I don't remember it in super detail.
You can check it out on an earlier episode of Pick Up and Deliver if you want to hear
what I had to say about that.
That was Wrath of Man.
Next up is Ghost Watch.
So I came across Ghost Watch.
I was not familiar with this film but I was talking with a buddy of mine about the movie
Midnight with the Devil which I think looks really interesting and I'm keen to see.
It faced a bit of an online backlash because they apparently used AI generated art in
a couple shots in the movie and some people boycotted the movie because of that.
I feel like we've got some complicated space that we're moving into.
I'm not sure I'm willing to boycott the movie because of that but I haven't seen it yet
either so we'll see what happens.
Then the last that movie is sort of about a TV studio where they have some sort of say
on or something and it goes terribly wrong and bad stuff happens but it's a found footage
film so it's shot in situ and as though it's real.
And I was telling this to a friend he's like well so I sort of like Ghost Watch.
I'm like I don't know what that is.
He goes you haven't seen Ghost Watch.
You got to see Ghost Watch.
So he loaned me Ghost Watch.
This is a British made for TV made for BBC British movie.
It was sort of like an evening feature.
Like ABC did the Tuesday night movie or whatever.
Sort of in that vein.
And the idea is that there is a house where there's a young girl who's sort of possessed and
the BBC is sending a film crew to the house to see what's happening at the house.
The idea is they're going to spend all night and see what happens in this haunted house
and explore the, explore what happens and you know they'll cut back to the studio where
they'll talk to people about ghost sightings and that sort of thing and then they'll be
conversations with the family and if anything happens they have cameras all over the house
and so on.
And it sort of, if you can kind of imagine what would happen in a story like that that
is based as a simulated found footage story that's what happens.
Now apparently what made this show particularly compelling is that it's formatted very much
like a real BBC special would be and the people in it are real BBC news presenters.
So like the guy, the main actor in the show is a guy who's an actual, was an actual BBC
news presenter.
So it would have been like if Anderson Cooper was in a fictional movie that appeared to
be a show on CNN.
Now it was presented I guess as part of a clearly fictional like night of TV but if you turn
down part way through it looked pretty real and it had, so it sort of had a war of the
world's kind of effect in terms of people calling and thinking this was real and wild stuff
was happening.
So and from that perspective it's, it's pretty cool.
It's very well made.
It's a little scary.
I mean I wouldn't call it super scary but BBC TV production values in the 80s were such
that you have to, whatever it is what it is.
But I really did enjoy the movie and I'm glad to have checked it out.
This does beg your question though, what game would you play to go with this kind of story?
And there are two depending on if you're in the mood for something creepy or something pleasant.
If you're in the mood for something pleasant I would say Mysterium.
Mysterium is a game about psychics trying to solve a murder by communicating with a ghost
and that ghost is sending messages to the psychics.
It fits very well with the theme of Ghost Watch especially if you're not looking for a game
that has sort of scaryness or tension.
If you're looking for something scaryness or tension there is a game called I think
Hana Oko.
I'll put a link in the show notes.
I don't remember if that's actually the name but I'll look at it and find it.
And it is a game about a sort of ring style haunting or the grudge style haunting.
Sort of Japanese creepy ghost living in a house and haunting the people who live there
kind of game.
And it's supposed to be pretty dang creepy.
I haven't played it.
I've only seen it once or twice but it is always a game that I've sort of been on lookout
for as a used game.
I don't know if I'd want to pay new prices for it but I certainly would enjoy trying it
at some point.
And it looks delightfully creepy.
So that's Hana Oko or Oko Hana.
I don't know.
Look on the show page for the details and check out Ghost Watch if you think that's
interesting.
I guess I was on a horror kick because the next movie I watched was The Blackening.
Now The Blackening is an interesting film.
It is a movie about a group of friends, African-American friends who go, they rent a house
in the country and they go there and they find a sort of slasher style serial killer ready
to murder them.
But it's also a sort of play a game for to survive your life kind of murder situation.
And the game is all about sort of Black history but framed through really horrific racist
stereotypes.
So but the movie is also very funny but funny from the perspective of the Black characters
is made by writers and directors from that community.
So it I guess it has its bona fides.
It doesn't feel to this middle-aged white man that it is being offensive or that it is
treading ground it shouldn't -- it feels like a story told for a community by that community
and in that context it's very funny.
That said, I don't know how much I get to say about this movie, right?
It's not for me in the same way that I'm not going to watch a romance movie that's aimed
at people who like romance movies.
It's about a lot of time talking about what I do or don't like about it because it really
isn't for me.
I hope to the filmmakers don't mind me watching it and enjoying it.
I did.
And I think it's great and you should watch it if you get a chance.
It's really pretty good but it doesn't fit the stereotype or it doesn't it doesn't aim
for me as a but it doesn't aim for me as an audience and so I don't think I don't really
feel comfortable commenting on it beyond saying I think it's pretty good and should be
worth checking out if you get a chance.
Now if you're in the mood for a serial killer game, I think Last Friday is probably that's
the only one I've played where there is a marauding serial killer going around killing the characters
and I think that one would fit very well.
I guess you could also play Final Girl if you're in for a solo game.
I did not really, I was not super into Final Girl but I only played it one time at a con
so I don't know if I didn't give it enough of a chance or whatever because I do like
Hostage Negotiator so you would think I would like Final Girl but there it is.
I haven't had a chance to give that a go again.
Nonetheless I think The Blackening is great if you get a chance to watch it
definitely do so.
Finally the last movie I want to talk about is ISS.
I got this from the library off the Lucky Day shelf.
ISS is a science thriller in which you have United States and Soviet astronauts on the
International Space Station and they're there to conduct scientific research and a nuclear
war breaks out down on earth and the two groups suddenly find themselves at odds or at odds based
on earth based politics.
It's a tense thriller with pretty good acting, not entirely unpredictable plot beats but
reasonably well done.
Some of the special effects are not great but they're probably as good as you can expect
for what they are.
And man there was one huge plot hole that I just found so infuriating and in terms of one
of the characters who is out doing a spacewalk out on the outside of the station and the
way that he acts in terms of his own safety is so infuriating that I almost couldn't finish
the movie I was so mad.
Other than that I thought it was pretty great and pretty good, not great.
It was good.
Intertaining if you like a sort of techno thriller particularly if you want one where you don't
have to use a ton of brain cells on it and you can kind of do something else while you're
watching.
ISS is right up there for you.
It's enjoyable and tense at parts and while the plot beats are relatively predictable they're
not entirely so and so you can enjoy the narrative surprises at the heart of the movie.
And I think you should.
In terms of what to watch or what to play while playing ISS.
I suppose one game you could play would be actually it seems like the game you should
play would be oh no it's the game I bought I haven't played it yet but it's about a station
fall which is about a space station falling back to earth.
So like in ISS and Stationfall different players have different motivations and different
goals in terms of resolving, escaping the station or saving it or whatever and I think it
would probably be a good matchup.
Well thanks for joining me on my walk today.
I hope your next walk is as pleasant as mine one.
Bye bye.
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Brought to you by Rattlebox Games
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