Sunday, April 08, 2018

Movies

I posted last December when I first got the moviepass. Below is the list of movies I've seen since then. Without a doubt, I've seen waaaaaaay more movies in theaters than I normally would. I mean, I really like seeing movies in theaters, but really hate the cost. But when you live in a little teeny town (pop 1,100), there is often nothing much better to do than go to the "big city" next door (pop. 3,900) and see a movie, so the moviepass was a great idea for me.

* Some favorites: The Princess Bride, Lady Bird, The Disaster Artist, and Love, Simon. 

All pretty much excellent. I honestly had no idea what to expect going 

* Least favorites: The Greatest Showman, Justice League, The 15:17 to Paris, Red Sparrow

Okay, look: I really don't like superhero movies as a genre, I hate musicals, the 15:17 to Paris was rah rah fuck yeah 'murika bullshit, and Red Sparrow was full of toxic femininity and a ridiculous plotline to boot. And I have a hard time with movies set in foreign countries, with mostly supposedly foreign characters, speaking mostly fluent English, with bad accents

* Seriously meh even though many people raved about them: Black Panther, The Post, Call Me By Your Name.

The Post was kinda boring and overwrought. Call Me By Your Name tried hard and meant well but was really overdone and regularly silly (let's not even talk about the masturbating into a peach scene.) And Black Panther, while an important social phenomenon, was just a shitty movie, full of bombastic overdone silliness, and brimming with hyper toxic masculinity. 

* Movies there is no way I would have seen if not for Moviepass and living in a little teeny town where there is often little better to do than drive to the slightly less teeny town nearby: at least 7/8 of them.

* Approximate amount I've cost Moviepass in the just over four months I've had it: at least $300 (a number of the below movies were in Boston and DC and the ticket price was as much as $16.) Their financial model is a mystery to me, so I'm getting as much out of it as I can before it collapses. 

Note that my theater options (when I'm not traveling) are limited by the fact that I have one first-run theater within easy driving distance (and that's still a half hour each way.) And it kinda sucks. Right now it's playing two bible thumpers (and it plays EVERY bible thumper that comes through), it was playing Jumanji until last week, it had Peter Rabbit on two screens (out of fucking eight screens!) until last week. The upside is that at least five or six times I've literally had the entire theater to myself, and there are rarely more than five or ten other people in stadium style theaters that seat over 100 easily. 

An aside: why do almost all of the movies about queer people have to be about very very privileged, very very white, queer people? I know: Love, Simon ended up having a person of color be one of the heroes in the end, but he notably wasn't featured in any of the pre-movie publicity, and in fact no queer POC characters were in the promotional materials (and fuck you if you say "well, it woulda been a spoiler...") 

Anyway, here is the whole list as of now: 

Chappaquiddick
A Quiet Place
Foxtrot
Annihilation
The Forgiven
Love Simon
Hurricane Heist
Red Sparrow
Death Wish (2018)
The 15:17 to Paris
Game Night
Black Panther
Winchester
Call Me By Your Name
I, Tonya
Proud Mary
Insidious
Darkest Hour
The Post
The Princess Bride
The Greatest Showman
Downsizing
The Shape of Water
Lady Bird
Star Wars Episode VIII
The Disaster Artist
Coco
Wonder
Justice League

Summary: I'm getting plenty of use out of moviepass, and will continue to do so while it lasts. But I'm not super optimistic. 

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