The son of "What the hell are YOU staring at?"

[D.A. Ridgely]

Basically, the movie would have been great if it had just been the following:

Poe prank calls the First Order and then we walk away from that story.
Luke and Rey go spearfishing while Chewie plays with birds.
Kylo Ren kills Darth Hefner, then gets rejected by Rey.
Last Ride of Admiral Holdo.
Astral projection Luke vs. Kylo Ren.

What, you don't want to get twenty minutes of 5MPH gravity bombers in space?

Also they needed to figure out how to re-cut the damned thing with it being Leia who last rides, not Holdo, because A - i mean she's gonna have to die in the first few seconds of EPIX and B - pink-haired Space Laura Dern is right in the sweet spot for male-gazing from saw-Star-Wars-as-kids-in-the-theater-first-run types who are all in their mid-40s to early-50s and who also got her as Ellie the Hawt Paleontologist in the original Dinosaurs Eating People while in the 18-25 demographic.

Plus, Pink-Haired Space Admiral who maintains composure in the face of a mansplaining Poe Dameron is exactly the Space Admiral that woke millennial Last Jedi fans needed, and they'd love Episode IX even more if she were in it.

So, yeah, kill the Boomer and make the Gen X lady the leader. Because I may not be Woke but I do enjoy some Soylent Boomer.

Not to mention from a serious standpoint that a sacrifice down-with-the-ship act from Leia, a character we've known since the first 10 minutes of the first film in 1977, would have had huge emotional impact, while a sacrifice down-with-the-ship act from Holdo, a character who was introduced in this movie and got maybe 10 minutes of screen time beginning maybe 110 minutes before her death just doesn't. It was a huge story-telling missed opportunity.

If only they knew she was going to die in real life, I'm sure they'd have gone for it.

[thoreau]

In light of the things that the Star Wars franchise has done to edit dead actors into movies, and imprint a young Leia onto another actress, I'm sure they could have managed some way of having her bid farewell to Holdo and then edit her into the control room of the ship before it rams the star destroyer. They had nearly a year from when she died to when Last Jedi was in theaters.

In fact, it would have given Leia's use of the Force earlier in the movie more meaning: She couldn't die then, because she had more to do. She needed to wait until her death could save everyone else.

[lunchstealer]

Basically, the movie would have been great if it had just been the following:

Poe prank calls the First Order and then we walk away from that story.
Luke and Rey go spearfishing while Chewie plays with birds.
Kylo Ren kills Darth Hefner, then gets rejected by Rey.
Last Ride of Admiral Holdo.
Astral projection Luke vs. Kylo Ren.

What, you don't want to get twenty minutes of 5MPH gravity bombers in space?

Also they needed to figure out how to re-cut the damned thing with it being Leia who last rides, not Holdo, because A - i mean she's gonna have to die in the first few seconds of EPIX and B - pink-haired Space Laura Dern is right in the sweet spot for male-gazing from saw-Star-Wars-as-kids-in-the-theater-first-run types who are all in their mid-40s to early-50s and who also got her as Ellie the Hawt Paleontologist in the original Dinosaurs Eating People while in the 18-25 demographic.

Plus, Pink-Haired Space Admiral who maintains composure in the face of a mansplaining Poe Dameron is exactly the Space Admiral that woke millennial Last Jedi fans needed, and they'd love Episode IX even more if she were in it.

So, yeah, kill the Boomer and make the Gen X lady the leader. Because I may not be Woke but I do enjoy some Soylent Boomer.

Not to mention from a serious standpoint that a sacrifice down-with-the-ship act from Leia, a character we've known since the first 10 minutes of the first film in 1977, would have had huge emotional impact, while a sacrifice down-with-the-ship act from Holdo, a character who was introduced in this movie and got maybe 10 minutes of screen time beginning maybe 110 minutes before her death just doesn't. It was a huge story-telling missed opportunity.

If only they knew she was going to die in real life, I'm sure they'd have gone for it.

I think they might've had time to do a re-shoot/re-edit afterwards, since it was almost a full year before the release date, but maybe they tried and couldn't make it work with the footage they had available.

Or what T said.

[Hugh Akston]

There's probably a good movie to be made about the fundamentally broken nature of the American criminal law system, but Roman J. Israel, Esq. is not that movie.

[Mo]

Nixon's Got My Back: The Roger Stone Story will have you covered.

[lunchstealer]

Nixon's Got My Back: The Roger Stone Story will have you covered.

Can't tell if that'd make Lifetime Original Movies more woke or less woke.

[dbcooper]

The Front Runner is not something I can watch more than 20 minutes of.

I think the audience is supposed to feel like they're part of a team fighting for good or something?

[dbcooper]

Can you ever forgive me?

Good little movie with very good performances. Slight but well executed. You won't remember much, but you won't be bored or find anything jarring.

[Hugh Akston]

The Front Runner is not something I can watch more than 20 minutes of.

I think the audience is supposed to feel like they're part of a team fighting for good or something?

Ever since Up In the Air I have felt obligated to watch Jason Reitman movies, even though they have all been treacly melodramatic turds since then.

[Andrew]

Another terrible movie Saturday with my friend:

1. Evasive Action (1998). It's Con Air on a train. Literally. They even drop a reference to Con Air on why they're using a train instead of a plane. It has Roy Scheider in the John Malkovich role, Clint Howard in the Buscemi role, and a surprising number of "hey, it's that guy!" actors. Plus Don Swayze. Terrible continuity errors, dropped plotlines, cheap stunts (where they show the before and after of whatever is happening but not the action itself), released in 1998 and appears to have been filmed in 1985, etc. All sorts of fun.

2. After thoroughly enjoying the Lorenzo Lamas spectacle Snake Eater last time, we were hoping to watch Snake Eater 2. Just look at this movie poster. You can tell it would be amazing: he teams up with a streetwise hustler from the ghetto! Sadly, it's not available anywhere, and the version on youtube is Spanish. So we watched Snake Eater 3 (1992).

It's essentially Cobra meets Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man. Lorenzo and his cowboy sidekick are hired to hunt down a biker gang who used a woman as a sexual slave. Not a single bit of the intentional comedy works, but the unintentional comedy is never-ending. In between the original and this one, Lorenzo put in lots of time building his biceps, so they get shown off a lot. Plenty of gratuitous nudity (obligatory strip club investigation scene), lots of violence, weird tonal shifts, and everything else a bad movie should be. And it turns out that murdering all the rapist bikers instantly cures a rape victim's trauma, which is pretty sweet.

3. The Sweeper (1996). As good as Snake Eater 3 was, this was the winner of the evening. Released in 1996 but I'm not sure there's ever a car newer than 1982 shown. The "star" is C Thomas Howell. They clearly had a decent budget and used it on all gunfights and explosions. The plot makes no sense but who cares because the violence and nudity (another strip club scene) is dialed up to 11. It's essentially a fight scene every 8 minutes with the bare minimum between to try to make a movie. There's a fight on a biplane, which is a refreshing change from all the helicopters. This was way more fun and entertaining than any Marvel superhero movie I've seen.

[Painboy]

Another terrible movie Saturday with my friend:

1. Evasive Action (1998). It's Con Air on a train. Literally. They even drop a reference to Con Air on why they're using a train instead of a plane. It has Roy Scheider in the John Malkovich role, Clint Howard in the Buscemi role, and a surprising number of "hey, it's that guy!" actors. Plus Don Swayze. Terrible continuity errors, dropped plotlines, cheap stunts (where they show the before and after of whatever is happening but not the action itself), released in 1998 and appears to have been filmed in 1985, etc. All sorts of fun.

2. After thoroughly enjoying the Lorenzo Lamas spectacle Snake Eater last time, we were hoping to watch Snake Eater 2. Just look at this movie poster. You can tell it would be amazing: he teams up with a streetwise hustler from the ghetto! Sadly, it's not available anywhere, and the version on youtube is Spanish. So we watched Snake Eater 3 (1992).

It's essentially Cobra meets Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man. Lorenzo and his cowboy sidekick are hired to hunt down a biker gang who used a woman as a sexual slave. Not a single bit of the intentional comedy works, but the unintentional comedy is never-ending. In between the original and this one, Lorenzo put in lots of time building his biceps, so they get shown off a lot. Plenty of gratuitous nudity (obligatory strip club investigation scene), lots of violence, weird tonal shifts, and everything else a bad movie should be. And it turns out that murdering all the rapist bikers instantly cures a rape victim's trauma, which is pretty sweet.

3. The Sweeper (1996). As good as Snake Eater 3 was, this was the winner of the evening. Released in 1996 but I'm not sure there's ever a car newer than 1982 shown. The "star" is C Thomas Howell. They clearly had a decent budget and used it on all gunfights and explosions. The plot makes no sense but who cares because the violence and nudity (another strip club scene) is dialed up to 11. It's essentially a fight scene every 8 minutes with the bare minimum between to try to make a movie. There's a fight on a biplane, which is a refreshing change from all the helicopters. This was way more fun and entertaining than any Marvel superhero movie I've seen.

Is that Howell in the beard and hair combo? If so I know what I'm watching soon.

[Andrew]

Is that Howell in the beard and hair combo? If so I know what I'm watching soon.

Indeed it is. Also, neither of those cars on the cover appear in the movie, so you know it's good.

[JasonL]

Tag line is really tight.