Re: What Did You Watch? 2024-12-13 (Friday)

On 12/14/2024 9:07 AM, Ian J. Ball wrote:

On 12/14/24 1:30 AM, Ubiquitous wrote:
 

What did you watch?

 Finally full workday of the year. So when I got home, I was tired. All I had in me was a soap, and a Tubi flick:
 soaps: DOOL - Thur's ep. OK, so they don't actually kill Clyde off - but they put him in an "indefinite coma", so the character is on ice until if/when they decide to bring him back. This also puts the Abby storyline on ice - she can stay "dead" forever, or later on they can reveal that she really is still alive. Meanwhile, Cat's mom gets hauled off to Canadian! jail for shooting Clyde! Nothing else important happened - it was just lovey-dovey stuff with Steve and Kayla [blech!], and with NuTate and the now-brunette Holly the Brat.
 If I Go Missing (Tubi) - A 2024 Tubi Original flick!!
    I actually quite liked this... until the ending.
    This seems to be a recurring issue with Tubi films - whether good or bad, the endings almost always seem to disappoint. It definitely seems like they're trying too hard - like they want their endings to have a "mega-twist!" or to have a real (if undeserved) "impact".
    Well, in the case of this film, the incredibly downbeat ending seemed tonally completely disconnected from the tone of the rest of the film, which really put me off.
    But up to that point, this was good, and in some places actually fun/amusing:
    The flick stars Emma Elle Paterson, an actress I've apparently never seen before (it seems like she might be based out of Montreal), though she did appear in Tubi's previous "Terror Train" series that I've never gotten around to watching.
    Anyway, Paterson stars as Sloane, the cutest, perkiest, most determined, and most damaged "true crime" Tik-Tok-type you've ever seen! Since her best friend was brutally murdered 2 years prior, she's thrown herself into her "If I Go Missing" media stream, which is premised around everyone needing to create a "If I Go Missing" scrapbook/logbook to help the police find you if you go missing. (Of course, at that point, it's too late!...)
    Sloane's obvious PTSD and inability to properly process her grief and guilt over her friend's murder drive her live-in cousin (Hannah Vandenbygaart) and aunt (Krista Bridges) nuts, and frustrate her mom (Christy Bruce) but the mom just kind tries to roll with it.
    In general, Sloane is a mess - suspicious of all men around her (anyone could be a serial killer!!), and bossing around her poor hapless, scattered barista co-worker (Kelly J Seo) after having dropped out of college.
    Sloane immediately becomes suspicious of her slick new neighbor (Robert Bazzocchi), despite the fact that the neighbor lad (Damon McLean) she keeps defending from everybody is creepy and awkward.
    But Sloane starts going batty when her cousin (Vandenbygaart) begins showing romantic interested in the slick neighbor dude.
    Can Sloane save her cousin from serial killer doom?! Or is Sloane just nuts?!
    This movie appears to have some fun with this premise, esp. with Sloane's obsessions. And it does a good job at throwing two legitimate red herrings our way.
    But then the ending takes an incredibly dark turn that I don't think the rest of the movie justified, and I felt this ruined the whole thing.
    Which is too bad, as I actually quite liked the first 80-85% of this flick, and found it to be among the best Tubi Originals. But the ending kind of torpedoed the good feelings built up before that.  :(
  What did you watch?
 

I watched:
The Voice - finally finished making my way through the finale.
Survivor - Finally finished making my way through the penultimate episode.
The End (theatrical) New movie, in what I'm assuming is a new genre, "apocalyptic musical."  The movie stars Tilda Swinton as "Mother" and Michael Shannon as "Father" who along with their son, "son" (George MacKay) and a few other people live in a massive underground shelter following some unspecific global apocalypse.  One day their world is shattered when a young woman, "Girl" (Moses Ingram) makes her way into their shelter, and then selfishly doesn't want to be thrown out to die. Instead she insists she be allowed to stay in their shelter which has an abundance of food and resources.  Mother just can't have this sort of nonsense, but Son realizing Girl may be the only other female left on Earth, or at least that he will ever have access too, wants her to stay.
This movie takes a page out of another Tilda Swinton apocalyptic movie, "Snowpiercer" and serves as an allegory for the class system.  Mother and Husband are portrayed as wealthy and out of touch with reality. They are clinging on to a way of life that is long gone, and are trying to maintain a class system with the other people in the shelter treated more like employees than fellow survivors.  And for whatever reason everyone just accepts this way of life.  Also the movie focuses on how Father and mother are both desperate to literally rewrite history in the eyes of Son.
That being said, I don't want to make this movie sound better than it actually is.  "Snowpiercer" is a great movie.  "The End," not so much. There is no reason for it to be a musical, and the songs, while OK, are not memorable. I don't recall a single song from this movie, I watched it last night!  The overall movie just screams pretentious arthouse film.  Which *is* what it is.  It's worth watching maybe once, perhaps paired with Snowpiercer, but beyond that I don't see much replay value in it.
If I ever did watch it again, it would *have* to be paired with Snowpiercer, so I could at least see Swinton essentially playing the same character in two different apocalyptic movies.