Hello everyone, it’s me The Blog Complainer and I am back with round 2 of the Random Movie Roulette because I’m find it quite addictive.

I recommend checking out the first post if you need an in depth explanation of what this is about, but basically I used this link that has a random number generator to help me choose which of the movies on this link I should watch.  Below are my results.

6410: The Initiation of Sarah (2006)

I thought I’d get the funny movie out of the way first, not because it’s a hidden gem like Re-Animator, but because it’s a hidden turd.

The Initiation of Sarah is a cheap TV movie that you would expect to find on free to air at 3am. I guess that’s fine as it is throwaway television, but I watched this on YouTube and it was like I was right there living through Hell Week with our main characters.

Because of how cheap this movie is there are zero stakes so all of the attempts to scare you are very comical. I’m guessing this movie was inspired by Mean Girls because the main source of entertainment is the constant bitch fights. It’s quite fun to watch, mainly because of how brain dead stupid the girls are.

Tessa Thompson is in this and she was great at playing the evil bad person alongside two other super obvious evil people. Also Jennifer Tilly is in this and I can’t complain about that.

For the most part it was pretty hard to watch, but it was worth it to see the Smallville scale final fight between two blondes.

2252: Trading Places (1983)

Next is a movie that’s actually trying to be funny and I think it somewhat succeeds.

I think most of you have heard of this movie but if you haven’t the concept is we have two rich old guys planning for hobo Eddie Murphy to trade places with snobby Dan Aykroyd in a one dollar bet. This will ultimately prove if a black man can work alongside boring straight white men.

This is not a movie I would take seriously as most of it is very cartoonish and the festive Christmas setting kind of helps solidify that. I must admit I’m not really a comedy person so for the first half I wasn’t that into it. Luckily it got better towards the latter half where Jamie Lee Curtis comes onto the scene and Dan Aykroyd dresses up as a homeless Santa Claus.

What really carries this movie is the performances from the actors and some of the absurdity towards the end, which I must admit is my preferred type of comedy.  I liked it and if you’re a hah hah funny kind of person then you’ll probably like this.  It’s on Amazon Prime.

4907: Hardcore (1979)

How funny, another movie set at Christmas time. I think this may be the most random coincidence I have ever stumbled onto.

But that doesn’t last long as Hardcore takes place over many months where late veteran actor George C Scott is on the hunt for his missing daughter who disappeared in the shady scandalous world of the late 1970’s porn industry. It’s unfamiliar territory for our main character who is a devout Christian and the first time he visits the late night Los Angeles streets it’s oddly fascinating.

That’s about where my praise for this movie ends other than for the terrific performance from George C Scott. When he first witnesses his daughter in an unnamed porn movie it’s completely earth shattering. Other than that I was mostly bored and didn’t really care what was going on. Mainly because it’s painfully slow for an over 100 minute movie. Also because I didn’t really know anything about the dad until he met this young girl who brought the humanity out of him and a bit of a moral dilemma, but this doesn’t happen until the last 40 minutes of the movie.

It’s pretty good and I might rewatch it someday and if you’re a big movie buff and aren’t offended by the constant sight of naked women, then you might get a kick out of it.

31: Drive (2011)

Of all the movies I was given, Drive was the one I had been most eagerly looking forward to watching and now that I have seen it I think I would rather watch Murphy’s Law over this.

In all seriousness I still enjoyed Drive, it’s definitely the most indie out of all the movies in this roulette, so it’s no wonder why critics loved it. It’s a character study of our nameless protagonist, excellently played by Ryan Gosling. A quiet calculated stunt driver by day, getaway driver by night, wrapped around a layer of mystique. It gets better when he starts to care for his neighbour and her son and it opens him up. While watching this he reminded me of K from Blade Runner 2049 who is also played by Ryan Gosling but he’s an actual robot in that film.

I could gush for ages about this. The fact that he has no name and another thing that Bryan Cranston’s character says when he jokes about exploiting The Driver’s services just adds to the intrigue. Speaking of the supporting cast I also thought they were great. The cinematography and the techno score add up to a transcendent-like experience.

That being said, the romance between The Driver and his neighbour was not good. Also, whilst I respect how unpredictable this movie is and especially how violent it got, after that it kind of started to bore me, feeling like a typical action thriller, just waiting for key moments to happen. The first half never gave me that impression, so it kind of sucks.

It was great until it wasn’t. It’s an 8 out of 10 movie.

Random Movie Roulette Ranking

That’s the end of that hoped this didn’t disappoint. I just added a ranking list of the RMR on Letterboxd, if you want to know where I would place everything. Also if you want to try this out for yourself then be my guest. More movie related stuff will coming at some point and until then I have been The Blog Complainer, signing out.

Random Movie Roulette

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