Pizza Film Club October 2019

Minutes from the Moviejawn Pizza Film Club meeting, October 2019
By Hunter Bush

  

Welcome once again pizza punks and movie goons, to another installment of MOVIEJAWN'S The Last Slice, where I will be relaying the minutes from the previous month's meeting of the Pizza 🍕 Film 📼 Club ♣ which - if you're not savvy - is our monthly meeting where we watch fun flicks, eat pizza and other goodies and generally socialize together as a group! We publish this newsletter to lead by example: we hope you'll see that we watched a movie or made a snack that perks your ears up and you'll want to get your own bunch of buddies together and host a Pizza 🍕 Film 📼 Club ♣  of your own!

In October, we celebrated another birthday coinciding with our meet-up, this time of P 🍕 F 📼 C ♣ co-founder, Moviejawn matron and host of the Cinematic Crypt podcast, Rosalie Kicks! She and husband Ben hosted (wait til you see the decorations) the group of us for a double feature viewing of The Devil Bat and The 'Burbs!

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN 13

Everything Old is New Again, Vol. 13 - January and February 2020

by Hunter Bush

Happy (nearly) New Year, readers! As we bid a fine farewell to 2019, if you're someone who enjoys a little bit of the bubbly maybe raise your glass to EOINA. Exact date aside, I've been writing this column for Moviejawn for three years! Huzzah and cheers!

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Or wait. No. You can actually go read any of the old EIONA columns here or on Moviejawn. I don't know what I was thinking. (RIP Rutger Hauer).

This year I got to review my first Nic Cage movie (a lifetime high point for sure) and at one point my phone autocorrected part of some rant or another to include the phrase "skunk of a bitch", so I'm just gonna make that mine now. I'm owning it. One thing I'm disappointed in about the past year is that I didn't watch nearly as many new movies as the year before. In 2018 I logged 68 so I spent some of 2019's final days trying to close that gap and ended up around 60. How about you? Any highlights you're especially proud of, let's hear 'em!

Now, looking ahead: This latest Everything Old Is New Again installment will be covering all the Remakes, Adaptations & Long Gap or Legacy Sequels or Requels (there are a lot of terms flying around out there y'all; watch your heads) for January & February of 2020. In this column's crop of flicks, there are a handful of movies that still have not dropped trailers despite their looming release dates, which is always a bummer (I was waiting for Polaroid to drop for about 3 years before it sneaked onto VOD late last year; still haven't watched it).

On the plus size, I noticed a higher-than-average instance of what I think of as Girls To the Front films. Movies with female leads would be considered rare in, I would imagine, almost any subdivision you choose as your data pool, but in the nook I've carved out here they're even more scarce. Yet within these two months, I spotted three instances of ladies leading what would traditionally be male-lead films. I shouldn't have to say this but I'll say it anyway: that's a good thing! Everyone should get the chance to see themselves represented onscreen because movies are for everyone! That's what's so great about them!

With that in mind, let's see what's to be seen.

"STAR WARS - EPISODE IX: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER" (2019)

Directed by J.J. Abrams Written by Chris Terrio, J.J. Abrams, Derek Connolly, Colin Trevorrow Starring Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, with hundreds of other actors, extras, and CG critters Running Time: 2 hours and 21 minutes MPAA Rating: PG-13 for gratuitous space violence and action Hunter Bush and Allison Yakulis 

There may be spoilers, read at your own peril. It’s hard to talk about Star Wars anymore; many movies actually. Franchises have become such sacred cows that people feel personally attacked by any criticisms. Please know that is not our intent. While there are a lot of things in Rise of Skywalker (2019) that are genuinely good or fun or well-handled, it suffers from an overindulgence of fanservice and a general “more is more” sensibility that weakens its impact for even casual viewers. There is just so much stuff crammed into the film that nothing - good, bad or in between - is given enough time to land.