Discuss and Rate the Last Film You Watched

[OblongYellow]

The last film I watched was Ender's Game. The first time I saw it I was in high school and I loved it, so happy that I got to watch it again last night. I'm now considering if I should buy the book, according to my friends they said the book is more depictive of Ender's sad life as compared to the movie. I already felt bad for him in the movie But I'd still recommend this movie to anyone who isn't a fan of sci-fi

 

[happyninja42]

The last film I watched was Ender's Game. The first time I saw it I was in high school and I loved it, so happy that I got to watch it again last night. I'm now considering if I should buy the book, according to my friends they said the book is more depictive of Ender's sad life as compared to the movie. I already felt bad for him in the movie But I'd still recommend this movie to anyone who isn't a fan of sci-fi

Yeah the book, having the luxury of letting your hear his internal thought process, illustrates how strange his life is. It's also got a side plot of his sister, engaging in a social media campaign to....I think she became president or something? The details are fuzzy but I recall she was equally as gifted as Ender, just differently geared for that gift. And so she went into politics. Another thing that the book had going for it, that I've heard people who read the book, and saw the film complain about is that

Spoiler

The book doesn't describe the final battle as anything different than any other test in the simulation they had up to that point. It's a ridiculous, no-win scenario yes, but it's just more blips on a screen. The film, had the problem of showing everything in such rendered detail, that a lot of people just assumed it was really happening, due to the level of detail in the CGI. So the twist reveal of "It wasn't a simulation, it was a real war, and those were real casualties" was lost on them. Whereas in the book, it had a much harder impact because the writing geared it that way. A classic "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" kind of thing. And while I never saw the film, I do recall seeing the very trailer you linked, and thinking "Wow that's framed entirely as if this is a real combat situation. There is no difference in the "real" clips we see, and the "simulated" clips of Ender at the control platform. That's probably not going to surprise as many people as they think it will, due to the CGI actually being TOO good. "

 

[OblongYellow]

Yeah the book, having the luxury of letting your hear his internal thought process, illustrates how strange his life is. It's also got a side plot of his sister, engaging in a social media campaign to....I think she became president or something? The details are fuzzy but I recall she was equally as gifted as Ender, just differently geared for that gift. And so she went into politics. Another thing that the book had going for it, that I've heard people who read the book, and saw the film complain about is that

Spoiler

The book doesn't describe the final battle as anything different than any other test in the simulation they had up to that point. It's a ridiculous, no-win scenario yes, but it's just more blips on a screen. The film, had the problem of showing everything in such rendered detail, that a lot of people just assumed it was really happening, due to the level of detail in the CGI. So the twist reveal of "It wasn't a simulation, it was a real war, and those were real casualties" was lost on them. Whereas in the book, it had a much harder impact because the writing geared it that way. A classic "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" kind of thing. And while I never saw the film, I do recall seeing the very trailer you linked, and thinking "Wow that's framed entirely as if this is a real combat situation. There is no difference in the "real" clips we see, and the "simulated" clips of Ender at the control platform. That's probably not going to surprise as many people as they think it will, due to the CGI actually being TOO good. "

Oh yeah, I forgot about how the students were selected.

Spoiler

Ender's sister and his brother were both not qualified to join the students in outer space. Ender's superiors didn't disclose to him that he and his crew were fighting against the "enemy" in real life for every "simulation" in real time.

 

[Piscian]

The last film I watched was Ender's Game. The first time I saw it I was in high school and I loved it, so happy that I got to watch it again last night. I'm now considering if I should buy the book, according to my friends they said the book is more depictive of Ender's sad life as compared to the movie. I already felt bad for him in the movie But I'd still recommend this movie to anyone who isn't a fan of sci-fi

I kinda imagine hell is just people being forced to watch Enders game and Mac&me over and over. I highly recommend the book though.

 

[OblongYellow]

I kinda imagine hell is just people being forced to watch Enders game and Mac&me over and over. I highly recommend the book though.

Will definitely try to get my hands on a copy of the book! Want to see the details I missed in the movie.

 

[McElroy]

Black Widow
A movie that just kinda sucks. There's an element of what you could call "feminine touch" in there that's cute an' all but to bring it out they still need to have not one but two overweight dad figures for contrast. Florence Pugh as the other "widow" Yelena gets to do a lot of stuff on top of having a sort of a character though she comes off as another snarky MCU-type. What she definitely can't pull off is being a trained killer, she is so small and soft. The rest are very simple heroic or villainous characters. I'll write a spoiler-review later. 5/10

 

[SilentPony]

Just got back from Black Widow, first movie theater movie I've seen since December 2019.
It was...okay. Mid tier Marvel movie, about Dr. Strange or Antman. Definitely not Black Widow's Winter Soldier.

Spoiler

The thing that bothered me the most was how many people knew Natasha was an Avenger. Like you and I, average dudes just doing dude stuff would know. But the movie goes out of its way to show that Nat's fake dad figure has been in a Siberian abandoned mine prison since like '95, and the Avengers aren't a thing until 2012. But they break him out of prison and he's all "So where are the Avengers?" and its like dude, how the fuck do you know any of that? Same with the new sister Widow lady, its show she's basically been under brain washed mind control for 20 years and just got out during the movie, and she's all "Where's Thor?" and its like *****, have you just been binge reading new articles for the last 48 hours?
Also the dad figure, the Red Guardian, has this big thing in prison where he brags about having beat Captain America in the 80s, stealing his shield, yadda yadda. And one prisoner says Cap was still frozen then, and the Red Guardian breaks his arm and everyone is really wary of him because someone called bullshit. Sure, whatever. But then later on after he's rescued, the first thing he asks is if Captain America ever talks about him and their fight and its like wait, does he actually think he fought Captain America thirty years ago?
Also Im confused as to which evil organization was running everything, Hydra or the Red Room. They say they stole info from Shield in the 90s, knowing it was secretly Hydra and part of the Winter Soldier project. But then in Winter Solider Hydra talks about how they've been infiltrating Governments and secret organizations since the 40s, and controlled like the entire Cold War, part of which was the creation of the Red Room. So like did the Taskmaster ever fight the Winter Soldier?
Also Taskmaster was a waste. She's in like 3 scenes total.
Also also I guess Black Widow is a super soldier now? There's a scene where an evil widow falls from like a 3 story room and breaks her body on the ground. Natasha falls from that exact same weight at the same time and is perfectly fine. Later at the end she falls from the evil Sky Fortress directly into the ground, and she's perfectly fine again. Like she purposefully breaks her nose and gets stabbed, two weeks later perfectly fine, no bruises or anything.
Also also also Natasha's like arms dealer steals a Quinjet? I thought they said Tony was secretly helping Steve and Nat the entire time, keeping Ross off their backs. So did Tony sell the Quinjet to the arms dealer, who I swear I don't remember them ever naming.

For what it was, it was okay. But for a major blockbuster it felt...budget. It felt a lot like the TV shows in that they clearly can't afford a lot of big name actors, so they get one or two and then have to work around that for a few hours.

 

[gorfias]

Black Widow
A movie that just kinda sucks. There's an element of what you could call "feminine touch" in there that's cute an' all but to bring it out they still need to have not one but two overweight dad figures for contrast. Florence Pugh as the other "widow" Yelena gets to do a lot of stuff on top of having a sort of a character though she comes off as another snarky MCU-type. What she definitely can't pull off is being a trained killer, she is so small and soft. The rest are very simple heroic or villainous characters. I'll write a spoiler-review later. 5/10

Oy. Already got me tickets for me and my boys. We see it Sunday. From the trailer, I'm hoping we have some fun.

ITMT: Holy moly. Netflix has "Ice Road"
That came out of no where! Ton of fun. I kinda wish there was no "Die Hard" element to it. What the good guys are trying to do is tension enough. Even so, did not see this fun movie coming. Hope y'all get to see it.

 

[McElroy]

Spoiler: Spoilers for Black Widow

Also also I guess Black Widow is a super soldier now? There's a scene where an evil widow falls from like a 3 story room and breaks her body on the ground. Natasha falls from that exact same weight at the same time and is perfectly fine. Later at the end she falls from the evil Sky Fortress directly into the ground, and she's perfectly fine again. Like she purposefully breaks her nose and gets stabbed, two weeks later perfectly fine, no bruises or anything.

Yeah, even though they point it out a couple of times that she's only human, she gets dealt an inhuman amount of damage and injury. But the movie has bigger problems. Mainly that it's a Disney movie that tries to act tough and serious but has to adhere to a dramatically dead formula. Natasha is such a goody-goody character it's unreal. She doesn't even kill anyone in the movie! And all bad guys except the main man Dreykov are mind controlled! So they get to save them! Taskmaster gets this wooby backstory which again absolves Natasha of her past sins and she gets to save her too. This sort of shit absolutely breaks the movie. Then of course there are "regular" ridiculous things like in most big action movies. The heroes can drive and survive in whatever shitcan (or a cool $$$ BMW $$$) that gets shot and blown up while the villain's roflcopter explodes in a fireball after Yelena puts a stick in the vent. Similarly the Sky Fortress is destroyed with one grenade (by all means such a delicate thing couldn't take on storms, but more importantly they would never allow explosives on board). Another stranger thing (wink) is the screenplay's urge to make everything a call-back. I get a couple of self-references but a dozen is too much.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Princess Mononoke was kind of a strange movie, we're thrown into a world where spirits and humans are at war with eachother. The protagonist is kind of strange because he is desperately straddling the line between the two groups, and keeps on trying to save the leader of the iron foundry as she goes on to worse and worse crimes. It's kind of strange that neither of the two people responsible for killing the deer god really get any sort of comeuppance. I guess the one loses her arm, but the other guy gets off scott free. Kind of strange, I'm not really sure what the message was supposed to be.

Eboshi was initially supposed to die, but then mid-production Miyazaki decided against it. I can appreciate the ending not being an entirely clean 'all's well that ends well', but it still feels a tad off. Especially since the movie still tries to frame it as a feel-good ending. Miyazaki doesn't write scripts and likes to fly by the seat of his pants, and when it comes to his more plot focused movies, like Mononoke, this can kind of work against him.

To me the emotional climax was Moro saving San. It's very touching to see this pretty merciless wolf god refer to this human girl as her daughter and use her last strength to save her, and thereby foregoing her oppertunity to kill Eboshi which would've saved the Forrest Spirit.

 

[SilentPony]

Spoiler: Spoilers for Black Widow

Yeah, even though they point it out a couple of times that she's only human, she gets dealt an inhuman amount of damage and injury. But the movie has bigger problems. Mainly that it's a Disney movie that tries to act tough and serious but has to adhere to a dramatically dead formula. Natasha is such a goody-goody character it's unreal. She doesn't even kill anyone in the movie! And all bad guys except the main man Dreykov are mind controlled! So they get to save them! Taskmaster gets this wooby backstory which again absolves Natasha of her past sins and she gets to save her too. This sort of shit absolutely breaks the movie. Then of course there are "regular" ridiculous things like in most big action movies. The heroes can drive and survive in whatever shitcan (or a cool $$$ BMW $$$) that gets shot and blown up while the villain's roflcopter explodes in a fireball after Yelena puts a stick in the vent. Similarly the Sky Fortress is destroyed with one grenade (by all means such a delicate thing couldn't take on storms, but more importantly they would never allow explosives on board). Another stranger thing (wink) is the screenplay's urge to make everything a call-back. I get a couple of self-references but a dozen is too much.

Spoiler

They never explained how Dreykov and his daughter survived either. Like they show Natasha put bombs in the girl's backpack and she's in the very next room to her dad in an explosion that levels a 3 story building. And then later its all "Yeah, we're alive, and my daughter has trademark cool villain burns, nothing disfiguring or crippling like real burn scars" Also never explained why the dad figure was in prison, or why the mom figure suddenly turned against the Red Room or how she had exact wigs of her fake daughter's 21 years later haircut, style, color and length.
Also its fucking stupid that new Widow sister is working for Lady Hydra now, because it means she needs another fucking redemption arc before she can join the Avengers. She went from drug controlled brain washed assassin for the Red Room, to now for-hire amoral mercenary assassin for Neo-Hydra with orders to kill an Avenger. Like that's just a parallel step to the side, not character progression.
And Widow's superhuman resistance is absurd. She gets in like 4 fist fights including neck and back injuries, 2 car wrecks, a 3 story fall and her sister has serious cuts on her arm where she's dripping blood and is dizzy. And then they stop to get some aspirin, but wait they joke Thor probably wouldn't need some, so...its okay? When my brother broke his nose in a rugby game, the swelling alone didn't go down for weeks before doctors could go in, splint and do a little surgery to fix it. He was bruised for months. Nat is bruise free after 2 weeks?
Like I remember in Winter Soldier Nat gets shot and they're concerned she's bleeding out, there's an explosion or two that knock her on her ass and she's dazed, breathless, shocked and Steve carries her away. Like...real people shit, because she was just a well trained person in a fight between super soldiers.
Also I wasn't clear on this, was Taskmaster a super soldier too? She could mimic people's fighting styles and abilities, which in a normal fight its a pretty clear edge, but she went up against an actual super soldier that can flip cars with one hand. Was she able to copy his strength too, because a single punch should have shattered her bones and creamed her organs.
And Black Widow not killing anyone I honestly didn't notice, and I'm of two minds. One she's a master assassin who is only good at killing, but two she's clearly trying to change, clearly is emotionally invested in saving the Widows, and even in Infinity War she tells the aliens they don't want to kill them. Maybe that's part of her character change, despite being cold and ruthless, she doesn't kill unless absolutely necessary?
And just so Im clear on the timeline, this movie takes place between the scene in Infinity War where Tony tells Nat Ross is coming for her, and the end scene right before the credits where Steve breaks Sam and Wanda out of jail, right? Like this isn't even a side movie, its a side scene that as far as I can tell is taking place while Steve and Tony are still fighting in another part of Siberia.

 

[McElroy]

Spoiler

And Black Widow not killing anyone I honestly didn't notice, and I'm of two minds. One she's a master assassin who is only good at killing, but two she's clearly trying to change, clearly is emotionally invested in saving the Widows, and even in Infinity War she tells the aliens they don't want to kill them. Maybe that's part of her character change, despite being cold and ruthless, she doesn't kill unless absolutely necessary?

She gets to keep her hands clean due to convenience. Some of the prison guards pretty much had to die even without the avalanche, but she gets to punch and kick them a bit. Taskmaster and the widows were mind-controlled that could be easily broken. The Red Room and Dreykov are destroyed and killed by others. And of course Dreykov's daughter is a biiiiig one.

Also I wasn't clear on this, was Taskmaster a super soldier too? She could mimic people's fighting styles and abilities, which in a normal fight its a pretty clear edge, but she went up against an actual super soldier that can flip cars with one hand. Was she able to copy his strength too, because a single punch should have shattered her bones and creamed her organs.

This power inconsistency is pretty consistent. But yeah, I expected Taskmaster to be some sort of cyborg or something. This Red Guardian would've been handily beaten by Rogers anyway, so it goes roughly in line with what MCU considers """peak human""" like kicks that send people flying such as in the pointless safehouse struggle between Natasha and Yelena.

why the mom figure suddenly turned against the Red Room or how she had exact wigs of her fake daughter's 21 years later haircut, style, color and length.

It was annoying in my opinion. They only show us Melina saying "I've alerted the widows of your presence", but in order for the rest of the movie to happen they actually spend quite awhile on the plan (including tuning the wigs or whatever) while Alexei is telling his ice-fishing story and singing American Pie. I can't really imagine what went down for that "sold you out anyway" -line to even happen.

 

[BrawlMan]

I just came back from the theater and saw the Forever Purge.....(big spoilers)

Holy shit, this movie is amazing! The franchise just keeps getting better and better! It does suck a little that this movie overrides the ending from Election Year, but at least it makes sense. Basically, the Purge is back in action, but there is one unique catch: there is an organization called the Forever Purge that don't want 12 hours. They want 24/7. They want to kill all non-whites and immigrants, and even they don't care for the NFFA and rather over throw them. Which they do. The NFFA and the new villains just gave what Senator Armstrong wanted. Anyway it's up to a group of survivors to make it to Mexico within 6 hours, so they'll be in the safe zones.

What I love about the Purge movies is that they are not afraid and open about their politics. They are not afraid to show the problems with America, and ugly racism that is still in our country. But with that said, it shows there are good people out their fighting the good fight, and not trying to make it a total free for all anarchy. Unlike pussy-biatches such as Ubisoft, EA, Activision and many others in the Western AAA industry.

I do recommend this movie in the high category. Universal and James DeMarco claimed this is going to be the final movie, but with Forever Purge already preforming exceedingly well, I highly doubt that. Especially with the open ended bittersweet ending. The movie practically turned in to Mad Max crossed with Invasion USA. Escape from New York, but nation wide! Except it's not a foreign enemy invading, it's racist locals wrecking shit and destroying the government. I still debating which movie in the franchise is the best, but I do know this movie is better than Purge 4 and Anarchy. Forever Purge does have the best action in the franchise to date.

 

[Breakdown]

I watched the Hobbit trilogy again. The movies are reasonably entertaining when you can skip through the ridiculous action scenes.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Saw something called Gamer, from the hacks that made the Crank movies.

It's like Ready Player One if the Oasis wasn't virtual and people controlled other people instead of digital avatars. 'Players' are uniformly characterized as either overweight sex fiends who get off on pimping and humiliating the people they're controlling (think of the public sex scene in Crank) or teenagers playing multiplayer shooters with death row cons. The result is a depiction of sleazebag internet dehumanization that seems vastly more true to life than Ready Player One's squeaky clean utopia, where apparently nobody ever even thought of going the other way around in a race.

What I don't buy for a second is how any of this works out on a technical (or social) aspect. Where do the Jabba creeps who're online 24/7 get their money to fund their lifestyle? And why whore yourself to them if you're gonna be under their thumb 24/7? The do's and the don't's don't add up. How disposable are these 'avatars'? They get treated like ragdoll punching bags and apparently you can murder them scott free (outside arenas I mean). Did they waver their basic human rights when they signed on?
And crucially, the movie can't decide on what is it that gives the lead hero his edge - whether he's better off being controlled by a hardcore wunderkind, or being given free rein to do as he thinks best. It's all very case by case, which cheapens any point that the movie's trying to make about free will.

The movie also looks ugly as sin and has that coked-up music video energy that makes me sick after a while.

 

[Piscian]

I watched "Till Death" with Megan Fox today. Solid recommendation if you like those kinda fighting invaders movies like panic room, hush, etc

Its impossible to spoil the premise, but I'll keep it to Megan wakes up in a remote cabin chained to a dead body and shit goes south from there quick. It's strictly a thriller, but the dead body adds a horror element.

The first 5-10 minutes Megan does not emote. She's like a robot and I got real annoyed wondering if she forgot how to act, but it all makes sense as to why she's being that way pretty quick and once the movie gets going it's a rollercoaster. I'm surprised at how much I liked it. The ending jumps the shark in a very limited fashion, but I got over it and I'm pretty unforgiving.

I'm not gonna post the trailer as it's better to go in blind for this one.

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

Godzilla: King of the Monsters:

Holy crap, just holy crap. I'd heard this one was a good fun ride and it very much was just watching the fights play out and the cliche military incompetence as they make a super weapon that doesn't do what they'd hoped. It's a massive CGI fest but the imagery and framing and stuff it's really well done. Probably has some throwbacks to the first Godzilla Reboot film that I missed or links to that one / plot points brought up from that one but it very much feels like it holds up on it's own too without having to have seen the first in the new Godzilla reboot series.

Quantum of Solace:

What the Fuck was this pile of shit? This felt like one of the most bland hollow Bond movies ever that thought it was deeper than it was while really delivering nothing. This felt like half a movie. If this had come out after the Pandemic I'd have gone "Ok maybe they had to cut filming short due to the pandemic and this is the best they could manage" but no this was from 2008 and felt like half a movie. Bond tells M that the villain had talked and told them about the Quantum of Solace and then.......... nothing really we don't find out what the thing in the movies title even is the getting that information and helping the Bond girl whose a secret agent herself get revenge then escape a fire as the main big climax stuff and it just felt hollow. It felt like it lacked substance really because "oh no Bond lost the woman he loved in Casino Royale and he's sad but this agent lady is also sad because the evil general raped and murdered her mother and sister so he will somehow heal by helping her take revenge so he can feel like he's got some revenge by proxy" This film felt like a filler, a stop gap that wasn't planned out well beyond a board that said Sad Bond scene, Action Scene one after the one running the entire length of the board and that's what the film used as it's structure and script guideline. About the only good points really in the film was the idea of the one villain being some environmental activist who was actually causing problems and pretending to preserve places while instead profiting by selling places off to companies destroying the environment but even that's mostly brushed over other than revealing he's behind the draughts in the area by damning natural water sources.

Also the film is terribly shot. It's all Bourne shaky camera shots and super rapid cut fight and chase scenes that are quite disorientating because you don't get a nice long cut of the action say 30 second clear shot it's cuts almost every 5 seconds.

This felt like a James Bond film on a Budget where they only had enough money to finish 1/2 of one and still had to stretch the budget by doing lots of cuts rather than more takes but longer running shots.

 

[thebobmaster]

Godzilla: King of the Monsters:

Holy crap, just holy crap. I'd heard this one was a good fun ride and it very much was just watching the fights play out and the cliche military incompetence as they make a super weapon that doesn't do what they'd hoped. It's a massive CGI fest but the imagery and framing and stuff it's really well done. Probably has some throwbacks to the first Godzilla Reboot film that I missed or links to that one / plot points brought up from that one but it very much feels like it holds up on it's own too without having to have seen the first in the new Godzilla reboot series.

Quantum of Solace:

What the Fuck was this pile of shit? This felt like one of the most bland hollow Bond movies ever that thought it was deeper than it was while really delivering nothing. This felt like half a movie. If this had come out after the Pandemic I'd have gone "Ok maybe they had to cut filming short due to the pandemic and this is the best they could manage" but no this was from 2008 and felt like half a movie. Bond tells M that the villain had talked and told them about the Quantum of Solace and then.......... nothing really we don't find out what the thing in the movies title even is the getting that information and helping the Bond girl whose a secret agent herself get revenge then escape a fire as the main big climax stuff and it just felt hollow. It felt like it lacked substance really because "oh no Bond lost the woman he loved in Casino Royale and he's sad but this agent lady is also sad because the evil general raped and murdered her mother and sister so he will somehow heal by helping her take revenge so he can feel like he's got some revenge by proxy" This film felt like a filler, a stop gap that wasn't planned out well beyond a board that said Sad Bond scene, Action Scene one after the one running the entire length of the board and that's what the film used as it's structure and script guideline. About the only good points really in the film was the idea of the one villain being some environmental activist who was actually causing problems and pretending to preserve places while instead profiting by selling places off to companies destroying the environment but even that's mostly brushed over other than revealing he's behind the draughts in the area by damning natural water sources.

Also the film is terribly shot. It's all Bourne shaky camera shots and super rapid cut fight and chase scenes that are quite disorientating because you don't get a nice long cut of the action say 30 second clear shot it's cuts almost every 5 seconds.

This felt like a James Bond film on a Budget where they only had enough money to finish 1/2 of one and still had to stretch the budget by doing lots of cuts rather than more takes but longer running shots.

A lot of the problems with Quantum of Solace (not all, but a lot), is tied to a single thing: it was made in 2008, during the Writer's Guild strike. No joke, there were times where they'd be filming one scene and the director was writing the script for another scene off-camera. To say production was messy is an understatement.

I'm not defending Quantum of Solace, which is easily one of my bottom 5 Bond movies, just giving some context as to why the script structure seems so loose and unfocused.

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

Mogul Mowgli (BFI player)
Riz Ahmed, the beautiful soft-eyed human that he is, plays a Brit-Pakistani political rapper starting to hit a level of fame when he gets hit by a debilitating autoimmune degenerative disorder that pulls him away from his dreams. There's a lot to unpack with the topics it covers that I don't want to waffle on for ages with an uncomfortable word count. Ultimately it's good, it's great, though picture quality does show its budget limitations. Worth a gander if low-key drama is anyone's thing.

Le trailer:

County Lines (BFI player, why hello again!)
Ok, the succulent high-percentage wine is kicking in now, time to tackle this sobering fella. About a 14 year old poverty-stricken boy (Conrad Khan) in England being groomed into drug-smuggling to coastal and isolated villages elsewhere in the country, hence the term "County Lines." Every character is so well acted and portrayed it's incredibly convincing, not for one second did I think of them as jobbers just reading lines. But the subject matter is very real and gritty, which may not be for everyone, but is an important tale for our ages, most particularly in this sodding country.

Le trailer:

 

[Bartholen]

Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2010), 5/10

I totally get why people love this movie. It's really well made for a genre where not giving a shit is the standard. All the acting is really great, the dialogue is snappy, it's funny for both kids and adults without feeling pandering to either, the tone is exaggerated and cartoonish, yet just grounded enough so that it never feels removed from reality.

But I just couldn't get into it. The movie simply relies on too many US-specific cultural assumptions and tropes for me to be really able to relate to it. Never having read any of the books either, my experience was that of a total cultural outsider. And that's why I probably focused on elements that bothered me. The worldbuilding in this movie is frankly pretty worrying: the protagonist's brother seems abusive to the point where an intervention would probably be warranted, apparently some high-school age bullies have a) nothing better to do than drive around town and b) no moral compunctions whatsoever with threatening to beat up two kids literally half their size. And that's before we even get to the main character who by the end I was actively wanting to get bullied. He acts like a total narcissistic sociopath toward his friend, yet never apologizes, gets his comeuppance, or even learns anything it seems. To a person from outside the culture the entire concept of the yearbook as it's depicted in this film seems like a really cruel and manipulative way to get kids to act like total shits.