{"id":2383,"date":"2025-06-16T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-16T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/?p=2383"},"modified":"2025-06-15T22:23:52","modified_gmt":"2025-06-15T22:23:52","slug":"movies-with-the-doomsayer-january-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/16\/movies-with-the-doomsayer-january-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Movies with the Doomsayer – January 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

MY LOYAL FOLLOWERS!!!\u00a0 I would urge you all to gather at my feet to hear the tales of all the glorious and wonderful movies I had seen to start 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n

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A Complete Unknown (2024)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, as many movie buffs know, January has poultry offerings in terms of movies.\u00a0 Leaving me to engage with some of 2024\u2019s leftovers.\u00a0 With slim pickings on offer, I gave the Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown,<\/em> a try.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I must confess, my followers, I walked out completely mixed on the film.\u00a0 The first half of the film operates on the same tired biopic formula you have seen a dozen times.\u00a0 Dylan slowly makes a name for himself by playing in dive bars and getting people to stare at him like he is lisan al gaib or something.\u00a0 Record deals are offered, fame ensues, and your movie loving doomsayer contemplates if he should have stayed home and played video games instead of watching this film go through the same tired motions.\u00a0 The film only gets interesting in the second half, when Dylan, bored with his folk blue career, begins experimenting in rock n roll.\u00a0 Questions begin to arise on whether an artist is allowed to grow, or they should grovel to the fans who only like the old stuff.\u00a0 If I go see Metallica in concert, do I have a right to be annoyed if they don\u2019t play Master of Puppets<\/em> or Enter Sandman<\/em>?\u00a0 Songs that I expect the band is tired of playing.\u00a0 This artist conundrum highlighted a thought-provoking moment in Dylan’s life, and I quite frankly wanted more of this than the stock, standard biopic affair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you do watch this film, skip to the halfway point.\u00a0 I am sure those of you who don\u2019t heed my advice will soon understand what I am saying.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The Damned<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Screenwriters, directors, producers, I plead to you, NAY I BEG OF YOU, PLEASE STOP GIVING YOUR MOVIE SUCH GENERIC NAMES.\u00a0 I heard brief rumblings within the movie circles of a movie called The Damned.\u00a0 The Damned.\u00a0 <\/em>YOU FOOLS!!! \u00a0<\/em>How do you expect word to spread of your movie, when there are two films named The Damned<\/em> coming out this year?\u00a0 One of them is a historical drama and the second is a historical horror film.\u00a0 You can imagine this film was really hard to research outside of horror film circles.\u00a0 Good news is, I don\u2019t think the word of mouth would have helped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The film centers around an Icelandic fishing community witnessing a ship crash off their shore.\u00a0 They go to scavenge what they can and discover some people are still alive.\u00a0 They unfortunately can’t support the survivors and end up accidentally killing one of them.\u00a0 Soon they believe they are being haunted by a draugr, a vengeful spirit, slowly picking them off one by one.\u00a0 The film is a bit of a slow burn, which I don\u2019t mind as long as the pay-off is worth it.\u00a0 Now, I generally try to avoid spoilers, but I am starting to see this style of ending more and more, and I must put my foot down.\u00a0 BE WARNED, MY LOYAL FOLLOWERS, WE VENTURE INTO SPOILER TERRITORY FROM HERE.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The draugr is not an evil spirit, but is revealed to be one of the survivors in such a weak and petty way.\u00a0 In a final standoff with the draugr, our heroine is able to trap them in their house and burn it down.\u00a0 She meets up with the other two survivors, and they ask what happens.\u00a0 The event replays in her mind, but the twisted, distorted face of the draugr is revealed to be one of the survivors of the other ship.\u00a0 Between this film and Out of the Darkness<\/em>, I am growing so infuriated with these films that seem to want to depict the innocent outsider as something that seems monstrous.\u00a0 IT IS SO PAINFULLY GENERIC AND DULL.\u00a0 I understand that we live in a world where neighbors report each other to ICE, but this metaphor is so surface level and void of any subtlety.\u00a0 Don\u2019t bother with The Damned<\/em> if you can find it; it\u2019s not even worth giving much additional thought to it\u2019s milk-toast analogy.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Se7en (1995)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even as I am standing here in the blistering sun, I can feel the rain falling around me as if I was in that nameless city.\u00a0 Se7en<\/em> is peak noir, to the point I feel the need to trade in my soapbox and rags for a trench coat, fedora and glass of whiskey.\u00a0 Every crime scene Somerset and Mills visits is a constant reminder that there is evil in the world, constantly consuming us.\u00a0 Yes, art should comfort the disturbed, but it should also disturb the comfortable.\u00a0 John Doe\u2019s murders shine a clear spotlight that the seven deadly sins are alive and thriving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I do have some nitpicks with the film.\u00a0 Some of the later murders don\u2019t quite hit as hard as some of the initial ones.\u00a0 Lust feels a little toothless since they never show the body, like the murders with gluttony, greed and sloth.\u00a0 Pride is completely rushed through as well.\u00a0 Finally, in an era of Saw, <\/em>I can\u2019t help but wish we got to physically see what is inside the box.\u00a0 I know Fincher had to fight tooth and nail to be allowed to have this dark ending, so I can picture a cowardly 1995 studio executive refusing to allow a more gruesome scene to take place.\u00a0 Ultimately, my criticism stems from obvious executive hands trying to rain in the raw and gritty nature of this film.\u00a0 To that, I will say, Se7en <\/em>is great in spite of the corporate meddling trying to make this film into a more box office friendly film.\u00a0 Fincher, Freeman and Pitt will be remembered for this film; the New Line Cinema executives will not.<\/p>\n\n\n

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One of Them Days<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite my loathing for the barren wasteland known as the film industry in the months of January, it provided me an opportunity to watch films I would have reflexively passed on.\u00a0 One of Them Days<\/em> is a prime example.\u00a0 The film is a buddy comedy starring Keke Palmer and SZA as two roommates who have until the end of the day to come up with the rent money after one of their boyfriends wastes it on a failed entrepreneurial scheme.\u00a0 I felt there was nothing wrong with the film; just my horror and action obsessed mind wasn’t the target audience.\u00a0 Yet, much like A Complete Unknown<\/em>, I gave the film a chance and walked out enjoying the time with it, unlike the Bob Dylan biopic.\u00a0 The two leads have distinct yet fun characters that play off each other really well.\u00a0 Despite the inevitable second act falling out, I was still heartbroken when these characters walked away from each other.\u00a0 The icing on the cake is Katt Williams, playing a doomsayer-like character, perched outside a predatory lender, urging everyone to not sign a loan.\u00a0 If you are feeling the buddy comedy itch, One of Them Days<\/em> will certainly be the cure that ails you.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

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Presence<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the year of 2025 peers over the horizon, I have a vow of a new resolution for my movie going experience: I will no longer be watching movie trailers.\u00a0 My sympathy for the marketing department has reached its limits.\u00a0 Too many trailers show you the whole movie.\u00a0 I have seen too many twists given away in a throwaway twenty-second trailer.\u00a0 The marketing teams have done many a film dirty by making the movie appear to be a specific genre or style, only for the rug to be pulled out and reveal the movie is completely different.\u00a0 No other film represents this disservice more than Presence.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those who bore witness to the films\u2019 trailer most -likely assumed the movie would be a supernatural thriller, leaning into ghost stories like The Haunting of Hill House.<\/em>\u00a0 While I will concede that the film revolves around a \u201cpresence,\u201d the film is more a family drama from the perspective of a ghost living in their home.\u00a0 The camera floats from room to room as if Casper the friendly ghost was the cinematographer.\u00a0 Thankfully, with the help of some YouTube reviewers, my expectations were realigned going into the film and I came out enjoying Presence<\/em>.\u00a0 The characters have some real depth, and I was invested in their struggles.\u00a0 However, I could understand if you were someone who didn’t read reviews and only watched the trailers, how you could have felt burned by this movie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet I say to you, my Loyal Followers, do not cast your ire at the humble filmmakers.\u00a0 Cast it at the bloated marketing teams, who dare not share in the artist\u2019s vision, but are simply there to make the studio’s money.\u00a0 NAY, I SAY TO THEM.\u00a0 Arrive at the theater twenty minutes late.\u00a0 Watch Presence<\/em> if you are in the mood for a family drama.\u00a0 FINALLY, DON\u2019T LAY YOUR EYES ON A SINGLE TRAILER, ANYMORE!!!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MY LOYAL FOLLOWERS!!!\u00a0 I would urge you all to gather at my feet to hear the tales of all the glorious and wonderful movies I had seen to start 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2384,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-opinion","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2383"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2392,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2383\/revisions\/2392"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}