Sounds like a money laundering scheme imo. I wonder what black market activity they are trying to cover?
Sounds pretty similar to the sort of thing that causes widely unread political books to dominate the bestseller lists.
The whole explanation is right here, and they are making up the actual number anyway.
The highest-grossing film in the US is actually a video I just took of my butthole, for which I have received $175M in advance ticket sales.
6 Likes
Its exactly this. Billionaires in on the scam buy a couple million tickets, no sweat off their sack, and look, we have one of the highest grossing movies of the year. Invest in right wing cinema! Youll make tons of money!
It seems this shit is on like a 15-20 year cycle. Satanic panis in the late 80s, Passion of the Christ amidst gay marriage backlash mid 2000s, this bullshit now with trans panic early 2020s
I am a bit surprised that it has as good of a Rotten Tomatoes score as it has (72%). While Iâm the first to champion IMDb as the more worthwhile measure of most movies, its model is more susceptible to review-bombing than RT should be, since the primary score RT puts out there is the criticsâ reaction. I wouldnât think that the group of critics reviewing it would have the same sampling bias as the general audience score would (thatâs at 99% on RT and 7.9 on IMDb).
For those of you who like Sean Fennessey and/or Amanda Dobbins, the most recent Big Picture podcast (âThe Movie Star Liquor Taste Testâ) is a wild one - they just sample a bunch of movie starsâ liquors and get semi-drunk over two hours without really talking movies. If you like to listen to podcasts about movies, you can skip it. But if you develop para-social relationships with your favorite podcast hosts (like I do), this episode is great.
1 Like
From what Ive read, outside of the heavyhandedness of its message, its a passably well made if somewhat boring light action thriller. I could envision a world where a majority of critics give it a 2.5/4 or 3/5 or better. I havent heard anything about it that makes it offensively bad as a movie outside of the fact that it highly exagerates its âbased on a true storyâ narrative (which has nothing to do with the filmâs quality) and a cringey ass money âpay it forwardâ scheme during the credits.
So, those scores dont surprise me all that much.
1 Like
Para sociality is a really interesting phenomenon. I like to think Im above it, but listening to Dan and Jordan on Knowledge Fight or watching Dark Viperâs thoughts on react channel bullshit, I do get the positive interaction feelings in my brain that I do when talking to people here, even though there is no back and forth with the first two mediums.
Its a bit disconcerting.
Co-signed. Iâm only halfway through it since I swapped out to the new Rewatchables as soon as I saw it in the feed, but itâs been an entertaining listen. I do get attached to all of the Ringer hosts I listen to, outside of Bill Simmons, who I have more of a grudging âthis guy is kind of an idiot and I hate myself for listening to him, but damn if he isnât a talented podcast hostâ relationship with.
To be fair, I think RT is fairly accurate for these sorts of movies, but you have to be evaluating the quality of the experience without evaluating the morality of the story.
As a movie, does it work? Then the review was probably scored as positive. And again, I think these are good as far as âis this a good movieâ instead of questions like âis this a movie that should be made/experiencedâ and âwhat does it say about you if you enjoy thisâ lol
I enjoy a lot of strange Christian and other religious novels and movies, eg every iteration of the Left Behind series (including the one with Nic Cage!!).
I even recapped an incredibly old Christian anime called Superbook in which kids from today are able to talk to the Superbook (aka the Bible), which transports them in each episode to different biblical eras.
Which recaps this episode.
This show was bold as fuck and explored things like what if the kids screw up important moments to the history of the Bible or, as later explored, if you lose your sibling to a time vortex and now are no longer exploring history for fun, youâre willing to do anything and go to any time to find and save them.
All told from a pro -faith POV, but like I said, if you judge it independently of whether you roll your eyes at the intentions of the story aloneâŚ
I had totally forgotten about SuperBook. My grandfather was a Lutheran minister and Iâm pretty sure he had all of them presumably for sunday school or something. Itâs interesting you donât say they suck because that would have been my assumption just based on Christian media over the decades.
1 Like
Yeah thatâs fair. While I think the morality of a movie is fair play when assessing its overall quality, I do think that a critic should do their best to simply assess what the movie contains from the opening credits to the closing credits, and should generally separate that from whatever knowledge they have about the motives of the filmmakers, etc. (except when those motives are very obviously embedded in the content of the picture, and a viewer could suss them out with zero outside knowledge).
1 Like
Same same. I love that they make videos of just chill SNES music clipped out of the games. Excellent to put on while working. I also love that they released a compilation video of a bunch of reviews so I can just put on that video and let it play for a while.
Superbook rules!!! You should also check out The Flying House.
Keep in mind I was raised in a cult and was not allowed to watch almost any television besides this kind of stuff, so there could be some brainwashing going on for why I enjoy them lol
1 Like
Some movies must be judged independently of their quality, like a Michael Bay film or the weather.
In âI should have known this was too good to be trueâ news, I seem to have missed the fine print where Iâm tied to a three-month minimum for this subscription (I tried to cancel and they were going to charge me a fee that paid for two more months). And if you do cancel then you canât sign up for another six months. So unfortunately itâs not workable to simply airdrop in during significant movie months and mine for value.
Basically, their trap worked like a charm and now Iâm going to keep hitting the theater more often than I ever intended to since Iâm on the hook for the cost anyway. TMNT Dolby Cinema showing tomorrow night and Oppenheimer IMAX this weekend.
Caveat emptor for those who consider signing up for this subscription.
5 Likes
Hey hey, free showing of Equalizer 3 and Saw X!
Why yes, I do see the glass Half full
1 Like
I think the last time I had a theater subscription the cost + coffee discount meant it was a good deal if I saw ~1.5 movies in the theater per month, which is about what I was doing so it was a good deal.
Yeah, itâs honestly not a bad value since I was going to drop $40 on Barbie and Oppenheimer tickets anyway, and I got two free months of Paramount Plus out of it. If youâre a really frequent theater-goer then itâs an excellent value. As is, it feels like itâs going to be break-even or maybe marginally +EV for my preferred theater frequency, with me now upping my frequency in a way that I otherwise wouldnât.
I hoped it was highway robbery based on theater desperation to get people to come back through the doors. Instead, it just turns out that Iâm a lawyer who doesnât bother to read fine print, which seemsâŚsuboptimal. Ah well.