12 thoughts on “Movie Podcast Weekly Ep. 273: Darkest Hour (2017) and Molly’s Game (2018) and Insidious: The Last Key (2018)”

1. Okay, I have nothing to say about the movies or the reviews… but then you guys started to talk about moviepass and I knew I needed to get the message out.

   Okay, here is how Moviepass makes their money- and it’s not from the subscription service. They are data-mining. This is a huge industry at this point in time, especially with a flailing business like the box office (Struggling to get people to theaters for anything other than a blockbuster is extremely difficult, art house and independent theaters are going bankrupt at alarming rates.) So moviepass is offering a double service… one, to customers that really only pays for certain costs involved in maintaining the service. And second, for datamining. they are collecting information regarding viewer trends, advertising, et al. and they are selling that information to the same marketing companies that production companies, theater companies, and other business models aim to target.

   That leaves you with Pros and Cons:

   PRO:
   If you are a regular attendee at random movies, you are paying $10 a month to see as many movies as you wish within that month.

   CONS:
   Your information is not private.
   You will be contacted, via email, to answer questionnaires.
   You must purchase your ticket within 30 minutes of showtime

   As a person on a fixed income, I am saving a LOT of money by purchasing the moviepass. The full ticket price is still paid to the theater company (And this moviepass thing is actually SAVING a local art house theater in my community), I have leftover money for concessions, and I’m able to see movies that I was otherwise on the fence about because it won’t cost me the extra cash that I may not have. We only recently had theaters start to engage in “assigned seating” (Barbarism, seriously?) so most of our theaters are first come first serve. I don’t mind so much with the art house as I show up early enough that I get the seat I want for the most part, but kind of have to guess where in the theater that seat is.

   Luckily, most other “early seaters” seem to enjoy the back row where they can feel like they’re watching the show at home as the screen is about the size of a television. Seriously… why bother?

   I don’t mind sharing info, mostly. I take part in polls all the time… gallup, Nielsen, etc etc. I like trending things a bit weird by representing my bizarre demographic.

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   • Red, do you know if movie pass can be combined with rewards programs?

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     • I just googled it and apparently it is possible. Hmm maybe I’ll get on this movie pass business after all.

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       • I love it.

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         • Agreed!! It is the greatest!!!
           I have had it since October, and during the holidays I was offered a limited time offer for an annual membership. So now I am currently only paying $7.50/month!!! So worth any of the “cons”, even if I end up seeing awful movies like “Insidious: The Last Key”. It’s the best thing that has happened to me in a long long time.

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           • oops….I used ‘offer’ twice in the same sentence 🙂

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2. Jay, I don’t know if anyone has brought this up, but the notifications by email don’t work anymore. They haven’t worked for a long time now. Maybe you decided to do away with them, but I miss them. It’s a great way to keep up with the boards.

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   • They’ve worked fine for me for a long time, including the last episode. So I realize that doesn’t help you, but it’s not a universal thing.

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   • Thanks, Juan. I’ll look into it. I need to try to figure out what happened. Thanks again.
     -J

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3. Saw Paddington 2 over the weekend with the kids. I just wanted to say that I would give it an 8/10 and kids 4-13 would enjoy it. I thought it was very creative with the animation and the humor is just enough to keep you into the movie as an adult.

   Thanks for the top 10 of the year! Not much time left for my personal entertainment and this helps me focus on the ones I shouldn’t miss.

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4. I went to see “Den of Thieves” this weekend and was shocked at how much I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. It certainly has a few problems, but considering I was expecting a mess due to its January release, I was pleasantly surprised at how much ‘fun’ it was. Generally I am not the biggest fan of the testosterone-filled action flick, but this one must have just hit me at the right time. I’d give it a least a 7.5 out of 10.

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5. Jay, I have to agree that this Insidious was some what disappointing. I really liked the real life horror that was instigated by the supernatural influence, but there wasn’t enough of the supernatural in this movie. The best scenes, as usual, were in the trailer. I knew when we saw the face of the monster in the trailer this movie was already in trouble. The creepy key fingers turning off your voice was enough.
   Not sure why they thought they needed to try and make an almost silent movie, with not much pay off as far as scare scenes. Again,where was the damn monster. I think they relied too much on the backstory to build the tension and not enough with what made this franchise great, which was some creepy ass demons, even the darth maul lipstick demon. I would like to see a spinoff with the 2 assistants, which we kind of saw at the end of the 2nd movie. Sad to see such a great franchise end on such lackluster note. I think I gave it a 6.5 on twitter. Which is quite a bit lower than what I would rate the other 3. They are all in the 9-9.5 range to me.

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