Tom Cruise
Demi Moore
Kevin Pollak

Excellent film by the late, great Rob Reiner.
Cruise eating his apple is a little master-stroke of passive-aggressive film artistry IMO.

It's such a deep dark shadowy black or red that I can barely see anything in several important scenes. When she's outside in the sun or on krypton, it looks normal, other movies look normal on my tv, but is this extremely dark shadowy absence of light what the rest of you are seeing?

It's honestly the worst part of the movie for me. and there's a shot where she ::: spoiler spoiler inhales in space. :::

I got tired of searching "where was this filmed" and landing on listicles, so I built the map instead. Search a title to see where it was shot, or search a place to see what was made there.

2,538 locations, 4,214 films and series. It is all built from Wikidata, one statement per pin, so every card links back to the source and you can check me.

It is honest about what it does not know, which no listicle is. 938 productions are recorded only at country level and the page says so. Gladiator is Malta and Morocco and nothing finer. Casablanca resolves to California. It also never claims which scene was shot where, because filming records do not carry that.

430 video games are on there too, placed by where they are set rather than shot, because a game is filmed nowhere.

:https://thefilmmap.com/

But more specifically, Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s poem pinpoints how pervasively violence against women is a part of civilization’s moral decay. And it’s Lupita Nyong’o’s dual performance as twin sisters Helen (of Troy) and Clytemnestra, queens of their city-states and victims of their husbands, that clarify the way women are bartered, owned, and abused. Nolan is not always the best at writing female characters, but here, he taps into an elemental anger that Nyong’o brings to exquisitely painful life.

Nolan’s The Odyssey doesn’t show how Helen, wife of Sparta’s King Menelaus (Jon Bernthal) and sister-in-law to Mycenae’s King Agamemnon (Benny Safdie), was taken from Sparta to Troy; that’s the Iliad’s problem. Was she abducted? Did she go willingly? We do know that whatever happened to Helen was then used by the men around her — not to defend her but to chase their own glory; not for Helen’s virtue but for better trading routes. The Odyssey doesn’t beat around the bush with this. Early in the film’s first act, Odysseus explains Agamemnon’s opportunism to his wife, Penelope (Anne Hathaway), remarking that the king wouldn’t “let it pass, ever” (it being the seeming insult to his brother, Menelaus). Even worse, Agamemnon sacrifices his own young daughter with his wife, Helen’s twin sister, Clytemnestra, to the gods for favorable winds to reach Troy.

I have not seen the original Open Water but I wanted to watch this film because it's based on a short story by Koji Suzuki I really liked. After watching it, I'm not sure how I feel about it. It's basically stupid people get in trouble out at see and try to survive their own stupidity. I think I'd rather set sail on the S.S. Minnow than with these people. I read the source material and they have almost nothing in common except for one small thing.

::: spoiler Spoilers for the film and the short story The seashell that what's his name picked up out of the water is cursed I believe. In the original story; a yacht is found adrift with no people on board and it's reveled that a cursed sea shell made these people kill themselves or something. :::

The film was okay I guess. It's really soul sucking and sad if that's your thing. Have you seen it? What did you think? Let's talk about it.

A shot of Dalton from behind in the scene, holding a sword and ready to pounce at the giants, is used in one of the posters for the movie.

Article Summary

• Misha Collins and Nathan Fillion have joined The Guild: Ren Faire’d, adding more star power to Felicia Day’s reunion film.
• The Guild: Ren Faire’d has already raised $3.5 million on Kickstarter, smashing goals with more unlocks open until August 21.
• Felicia Day celebrated fan support as The Guild movie passed 22,000 backers and secured its feature-length return for 2027.
• The Guild reunion movie brings back the Knights of Good for a new Ren Faire adventure ahead of the series’ 20th anniversary.

About The Guild

Created, written by, and starring Felicia Day, The Guild is an award-winning comedy web series that follows the Knights of Good, a mismatched group of online gamers whose virtual adventures frequently collide with their real lives. Premiering in 2007, the series ran for six seasons and 70 episodes, plus three music videos, and generated more than 300 million lifetime views across platforms. Originally supported directly by fans before crowdfunding became commonplace, The Guild helped prove that creator-owned digital entertainment could build a passionate global audience outside the traditional Hollywood system. Ahead of its 20th anniversary in 2027, the original cast is reuniting for a fan-funded feature-length movie.

It started as a simple guide — safety tutorials for stuff like blocking ads/popups while streaming, and how to actually check downloads for malware before running them (Windows Defender, VirusTotal, sandboxing, that kind of workflow).

Then came: CheapShotTV, a curated movie library that streams through legal YouTube embeds — no login, no tracking, no ads. If you don't know what to watch, there's a spinning wheel that picks something for you. You can jump straight there on: cheapshot.vercel.app/streaming

Content varies on your country. ATM GER and US have the most movies. The idea behind the whole thing: entertainment without the price tag.

East Side Sushi – 7/10

I happened to catch this movie on TV one day, and it immediately drew me in. Once I started watching, I couldn't stop. It's an uplifting story about perseverance, resilience, and how success often comes through failure and hard work.

The film follows a single mother who, along with her aging father, struggles to make ends meet by running a fruit cart. An opportunity arises when she takes a job at a local sushi restaurant, where she discovers a passion for the craft and dreams of becoming a sushi chef. Despite repeated setbacks and the challenges of mastering a new skill, she refuses to give up. Even after proving her talent, she must overcome prejudice from the restaurant's Japanese owner, who is reluctant to have a Mexican woman preparing sushi in front of customers.

Overall, East Side Sushi is a heartwarming, feel-good film about determination, breaking stereotypes, and pursuing your dreams. Definitely worth watching.

I know I'm a bit late, but does anybody feel like the entire internet has ignored a really weird aspect of Toy Story 5? I get that they wanted the characters to be more involved in the human's lives, but good lord, if my kid (I don't have kids) lost her toys and some stranger starts messaging them about meeting up to give them back (especially right after she got an internet connected device) I'd be insanely freaked out!

Same goes for the other girls parents. New toys show up, and a girl and her "mom" (yeah they look alike, but predators arent always stupid) claim to have been messaged by your daughter (despite your kid having NO WAY to have known how to get in contact with them) and the girl shows almost ptsd-like symptoms upon seeing these toys and denies wanting anything to do with them? Nope, nope, get off my property, lady!

I find it odd that every conversation about this film I've seen only talks about the tech addiction aspect, when every parent in the audience should be getting some spidey-sense tingles.

Apologies if this isn't quite the right spot for this, it's the closest thing I could find atm.

Last night, I went to watch Nolan's adaptation of Odyssey. Homer's Odyssey has existed for over 3000 years, but I suppose it's still worth pointing out that there's lots of spoilers here.

First and most important, no I don't give a single shit about the "controversial" casting choices. That was a manufactured racist and transphobic outrage. Helen was in like 3 short scenes. She was never depicted in Troy (her only depiction in the story) and was ultimately a tragic character.

I'll refer to Homer's tale as "the story", and Nolan's version as "the film".

Let's start the actual review with my biggest disappointment in the film and the first part of the story: the Cyclops scene. In the film, as in the story, they realize too late that the cave is occupied. The reason it was impactful in Homer's tale is that Odysseus violated Zeus' Law inadvertently by killing the Cyclops' favorite sheep before it returns/awakens (interpretations vary here). The tension in the story comes from Odysseus and the Cyclops negotiating, and Odysseus outsmarting the Cyclops by slipping Lotus fruit (more on that later) into some wine before giving it to the Cyclops. The lotus fruit is the reason the Cyclops fell asleep before it could kill them all in the story.

None of this preamble exists in the film, the Cyclops just shows up and starts killing them. Additionally, in the story when they stab the Cyclops in the eye, they learn that it's too dangerous to kill the Cyclops because it's siblings lived deeper in the cave and investigated the screaming. In the film, the Cyclops is alone. The high point of this scene in the film is when they escaped the cave, which follows closely to the story.

The next part of the story is meeting the god Aeolus. This part is very abstracted from the story, but I thought it was an extremely interesting interpretation. In the story, Aeolus' island is floating in the sky and he gives Odysseus a bag of winds to escape Poseidon's storm. The bag gets opened, the fleet gets pushed by the winds towards the land of the giants, and then Poseidon drowns most of his men and destroys all the other ships in Odysseus' fleet.

In the film, they approach an island surrounded by a dense, low fog. When they meet Aeolus, he gives a bloodcurdling scream which summons forth an army of giants that kill most the men and destroy the other ships. This is a truly creative way to depict this scene, and excellently portrays destruction of his men without explicitly explaining what's occurring in relationship to the story.

The 3rd conflict in the story is meeting Circe. This scene in the film easily outdoes the story in my opinion. In the story, Odysseus decides on his own to stay back while a landing party goes to the island. Eurylochus returns shortly after leaving, and tries to convince Odysseus to leave the men behind and flee the island. He refuses, which inspires Hermes to give Odysseus the Moley flower to counter Circe's magic. Odysseus and Circe stalemate, and she decides to help him instead of continuing the standoff. Circe reveals that a group of previous travelers raped and killed several of the dryads she was protecting, which is why she transformed his men.

In the film, Odysseus is forced to remain behind because the crew no longer trusts him to act in their best interest. All of his men get turned to pigs, so he has to figure out Circe's tricks on his own and without the aid of a god. I love this change, I've always felt like the Moley flower macguffin was too similar to the lotus fruit against the Cyclops. I know that it's a product of ancient Greek bardic tradition, but it just doesn't work for modern stories. The magic was also extremely visceral, and displayed the cruelty in her actions. Overall, an incredible scene.

Next up is sailing the river Styx to meet the dead prophet. I'm also going to combine this part with meeting the sirens, Charybdis and Scylla, and landing on the island of the Apollo. All 4 scenes are very close to the story, so there's not much to compare. I don't recall Odysseus talking to anyone other than the prophet in the story, but he was absolutely haunted by his dead crewmen while searching for the prophet. Being chased back to the ship by the summoned dead in the film was cool though. The siren scene was cool. Staying true to the story for the sirens would have been a mistake, as Odysseus talks to the sirens by reading their lips to learn how to get to Ithaca. Making it a silent scene was perfect.

Charybdis and Scylla was flawless in the film, Scylla was perfectly mysterious despite seeing it clearly in daylight. I kinda wish the mutiny after this point was more clear, but otherwise this scene was so good. Absolutely no notes about the murder of Apollo's cow.

In the film, we first meet Odysseus on Calypso's Island. I was kinda bothered that her island was mostly barren. In the story, she lived on a magical floating island that grants immortality to humans, and was described as a lush forest. I also didn't particularly like that the film depicted Odysseus as being a lotus eater, but it fit with the tone of the movie. Honestly there's not much to say about these changes, it just bugged me because it's related to the cyclops scene. This is the part where we talk about the lotus fruit.

In the story, Odysseus first lands on an island which only has lotus fruit for food and a group of lotus eaters, which is how he both learns of the cyclopes cave and gets the lotus to lace the wine. It annoyed me that Odysseus was a lotus eater, because in the story we're told explicitly that lotus is so addictive that you will never break the addiction and it completely consumes your mind. We get some of that in the film, but Nolan breaks this important rule in the story. It doesn't bother me too much though, because the film went to great lengths to give the appearance of magic while maintaining a plausible semblance of the mundane. Calypso controls Odysseus with magic in the story, so I understand why Nolan used the lotus as the method of her control. The truly interesting thing about the lotus though is how it was depicted.

The truth is that it's a complete mystery what the lotus actually was supposed to be in the story. It's unknown if it was a different name for a fruit we know, a fruit that went extinct, or a completely fictional fruit. Instead of the lotus being a fruit in the film, it's a fictional depiction of a lotus flower. The reason this is interesting is because the symbol of the lotus flower represents rebirth and enlightenment. I think what this is representing in the film is Odysseus realizing he cannot protect everyone, and that fighting against the Fates is ultimately impossible.

Last but not least in the story is Odysseus' homecoming. There was a lot of hand waving by Homer about reaching his palace from Calypso's Island, but one detail was Odysseus and Poseidon settling the feud caused by blinding the Cyclops. I love how this was depicted as Odysseus accepting fate and giving his trust to the gods, which is rewarded by the water washing over him, but not drowning him or harming him when he reaches Ithaca.

A detail that I always get miffed about when it's excluded is the discus throw during the trial of suitors, mostly because it's truly hilarious how much he outclasses the suitors in the challenge. Despite being outclassed in this manner, they still find it ridiculous that Odysseus could string the bow. I kinda wish the fight was more spread out through the palace like in the story, but that final fight was awesome.

Overall, I'd consider this film to be very faithful to the story. It's an excellent retelling, and I would recommend it.

The Imitation Game (2014) — 9/10 This was a film that completely flew under my radar until I discovered it on Reddit, and I’m glad I gave it a chance. It delivers incredible highs and devastating lows, with some of the best acting I’ve seen in a while. Benedict Cumberbatch absolutely nailed the role, portraying a brilliant but arrogant character whose flaws slowly grow on you. I found similarities to the protagonist from the Chernobyl miniseries, especially the idea that “no good deed goes unpunished.” With excellent pacing and many emotional moments, this is a must-watch for anyone who hasn’t seen it.