I haven’t seen a movie in yonks! I don’t know what happened. So I thought I’d re-start my movie watching by watching the creme de la creme.

KIDDING

Man, this just looks so bad… I mean, all TV looks like this these days: They put the actor up against greenscreen, and film them without barely any lights — just everything evenly shot, desaturated, so that they can CGI in the backgrounds without them seeming out of place.

It’s super duper crappy, and I don’t know why there aren’t riots in the streets protesting this slop.

The title sequence was “fun”, if by “fun” you mean “Deadpool killing lots of innocent people”, but it looked so bad, too! They had CGI blood splatter everywhere that would have made CGI people in the 90s being ashamed of themselves.

Oh fuuuck! It’s about the Time Variance Authority! The thing everybody hated in the Loki series! I think this movie was commercially successful, though?

Yes indeed — 1.3 billion dollars.

I just hope the movie is going to start soon, because the first uhm 20 minutes have been brutally tedious. (And looks like dogshit.)

This is amusing… I mean, it’s pretty funny. But it’s like the timing is off? This could almost be extremely funny with just some pacing fixes and slightly better repartee. It leans into kinda gross bodily damage humour instead… but you can’t argue with $1.3 billion dolares.

What I’m saying is that I’m amused but bored at the same time.

Eh. I kinda admired the gross jokes more than I enjoyed them, if that makes sense? I can totally see why people liked this movie, but I was just mildly bored most of the time.

It’s not awful! It’s almost good? Like all big budget movies the last few years, it looks like dogshit, and that really cuts down on the enjoyment. But it’s otherwise OK?

Deadpool & Wolverine. Shawn Levy. 2024. ⚂

Well, that’s no way to govern an empire. They do Hunger Games to choose an emperor?

“You have 24 hours to complete the mission.” Common.

This looks so cheap. Everything is greenscreen, of course, but the CGId environments look like they’ve been outsourced to Fiverr. To their credit, they try to hide the decrepit environments by only showing them for half a second at a time, and zooming in on faces almost the entire time, but…

First of all, this is a lot of fun. Sorry, I’m lying: I’m flabbergasted at how tedious this is. My jaw is down to here. How is it possible to be this bad?

I totally see what they’re going for — a kind of zany Guardians of the Galaxy thing. But there’s zero chemistry, there’s zero charm, and there are zero gags that actually work.

I don’t think anybody’s given the inside story on this, but it was originally supposed to be a “dark, edgy” TV series, but then Michelle Yeoh got more famous and refused. So they retooled to do a single movie with her, and went “zany” instead… but the writers and producers involved (just go ahead and watch Star Trek: Discovery) have no sense of humour at all.

I had hoped that it was just the usual Nazi brigading:

But this is astonishingly bad. I mean, I’m not speechless, but it’s so bad that most people in my situation would lie and say “I’m speechless”.

OK, we’re 40 minutes into the movie — is it finally going to start?

x

It’s the God’s End!

“I am a science officer, and science is controlled chaos.”

There’s been a lot of really bad Star Trek stuff. Remember Picard s1? No? Well, good for you. But this is off the scale. It’s amazing that they had the chutzpah to 1) film this and then 2) show it to people. I feel bad for Michelle Yeoh that they made her do this, and I feel bad for myself that I watched this. But I didn’t have to!

I won’t say it’s the worst movie I’ve ever seen, because I’ve seen a lot of stuff, but it’s the worst movie I’ve seen in quite a while.

Star Trek: Section 31. Olatunde Osunsanmi. 2025. ⚀

Oh, that’s some cast…

Anyway, I got this movie because I watched Harold & Maude the other month, and this is another movie by Hal Ashby. And I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen this before.

But! I read the Mad Magazine parody of this many times as a child. I don’t really remember the parody either at this point, though, so I basically know nothing.

Sure, phones have a light in the handset…

Goldie!

Is Beatty wearing a wig? That’s a lot of hair.

Is Christie wearing a wig, too? That’s a lot of hair!

This is extremely Robert Altmanesque. But I guess that entire thing was a more general 70s movie thing — lots of people talking across each other; people constantly being interrupted; people changing their minds…

They put her in a new wig!

Oh, he’s wearing a wig, too; right.

They hid Carrie Fisher’s wig under a scarf…

Oh my god! Christie’s wig keeps on growing! Is this a comment on er something?

It’s very political.

Is Beatty’s character supposed to be like 25? His acting is all over the place… I don’t quite get what this movie is, like, about? I mean, I’m kinda enjoying it on a scene by scene basis, but it seems so unfocused. Perhaps that’s the point.

I guess the election in 1968 was when the US went off the rails.

Well, at least they didn’t spend half the budget on these wigs, because they look cheap.

THEY GAVE HER AN EVEN BIGGER WIG

It’s like Big Helmet big.

Hey, I found that Mad Magazine parody!

Oh! That explains so much.

I’m a bit torn on this one… on the one hand, I like the general feel of the movie. On the other hand, I found the third to be deathly dull.

Shampoo. Hal Ashby. 1975. ⚂