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The Count came so close to nailing his protection plan for his ultimate weapon of doom with the two levels of defense. Level 1 is some sort of psychic space monster that can destroy the minds of every person aboard any approaching ship and are so effective that even robots succumb to their attack. Only someone like Akton who has whatever power or ability is convenient to the plot at that moment can make it through their defense. Level 2 is some cave men. So an A for the concept but a C- on the execution of the idea.

We actually did have an office that was kept open for traveling executives to use when they were in town but it wasn't luxurious. But if Donald Sutherland stands to personally make 100 million dollars from the corporate merger (which is how I took what he said in the movie, not that the company was worth 100 million) then he might be the kind of guy that would demand a luxurious office waiting for him at every branch.

In the corporate world there can essentially be an unlimited number of VPs within the company. At my old job the head of our office was a VP but the only people under him in the corporate structure were in our office. The VPs have control of their own little kingdoms but not necessarily company-wide authority. It was odd that they chose the Seattle office for the merger and not wherever the corporate headquarters were but I guess you could say it makes since if Corridor was their crown jewel and they wanted to show that off as part of the merger. As for the future of Michael Douglas at DigiCom after he survived the ouster attempt and got passed over for the promotion again he can go into a mode known as "resting and vesting". He has his stock options which presumably will be very valuable from the merger. He just has to hang on at the company long enough for those options to mature then he cashes in and he is out the door.

My job has a ton of overlap with DigiCom so there were certain details about this movie I found very funny. The biggest one being that the entire premise of the movie would have never happened. As soon as they found out there was a critical manufacturing problem with Arcamax Michael Douglas would have had his ass on a plane to Malaysia so he wouldn't be around to get sexually harassed. It was also funny that the Kato Kaelin guy was apparently one of the lead developers of the VR system but also the one who is doing failure analysis on CD-ROM drives. Hopefully the Conley company did their due diligence and know if they lose Kato DigiCom is worthless. But Conley should have killed the deal even after the Arcamax problem was solved. No way they should purchase a company where it is possible to make major manufacturing changes and the head of manufacturing is completely in the dark. DigiCom's Product Lifecycle Mangement (PLM) system gets an F. I'm just putting all of this out there because I hope to get hired as a consultant for the Disclosure remake.

I think one of the best examples of why this is a good HDTGM movie is that a crucial plot point is a factory that we essentially never visit has changed from a Level 7 to Level 5 air handler. This movie could have been truly great if it been tweaked so that the sexual harassment was a contrived plot where everyone was a conspirator (including his wife and kids) to give Michael Douglas the crucial motivation to solve the Arcamax problem.

The villain of this movie is without question Lizzie's father. He thinks Marsha Mason is being a terrible mother so his response is to walk out of Lizzie's life forever? Dude is trash.

Which love triangle had the most explosive energy? Joe, Diane, and Eddie? Or Joe, Donut Shop Girl, and Pizza Guy (Nick Vallelonga). The thing I want to focus on is how little money Diane was given at the end of the movie. Her part in the con was the most insane in that Mike Donan thought a quick glimpse of a woman that looked Joe's mother would make Joe take specific predictable actions leading to the successful con. But Diane had to move to another town for who knows how long before Joe got there and establish a relationship with the most insane character ever captured on film. And then manipulate Eddie to the point that she could drive him to attack Lou at just the right moment. In addition to having to seduce Joe as well. Diane was basically doing all of the heavy lifting for a ridiculous plan and then at the end she got what looked like 2% of the take. Peter Fonda walked off with the same amount for doing almost nothing. Unequal pay is a serious societal problem and nowhere worse than in Deadfall.

One thing that was very clear from this movie is that Dr. Morgan absolutely picked the right career path to be a marine biologist. She had a HUGE joyous reaction to finding out that both dolphins had survived. That was about a minute after seeing her coworker Control Room Fred eaten alive in front of her not to mention seeing the body of FitzRoyce in the shark's mouth. I'd say her reaction to the baby shark dying was also a lot stronger than towards any human tragedy that happened. I definitely thought LGJ was the owner of the park not just the administrator. I am pretty sure one of the reporters at the start of the movie called him an eccentric entrepreneur. My absolute favorite part of the movie was when they added what sounded like a lion's roar for the shark.

Did it ever say in the movie that Patrick was 12? If so I missed it. If the movie was set in 2017 when it was shot and Patrick's real dad died in Iraq in 2006 and there is a memory of fishing with him when he was 3 then Patrick is at least 14 right? That isn't the most important detail in the movie but it does play a part in my bigger question. What has Patrick's media diet been that Plymouth is the world he created in his game/mind? Obviously he has had a very rough life but for a middle schooler to come up with that scummy noir world I think he's got to be almost completely filling it from movies and books and maybe other games. So maybe if the step dad had taken an interest and steered him to some more age appropriate material he'd still be around.

I legitimately loved this movie when I was a kid. It was somewhat shocking to see it with adult eyes and find out the production values were like a step and a half above Miami Connection. I don't know if special effects models have ever looked more their actual size than they did in this movie. Did they make extra small models to try and save money? I'll use this movie with my son in place of walking uphill in the snow to and from school "back in my day" stories. I had Hercules and he gets The Avengers. Where does the Hera and Minos team rank in the pantheon of dumb villains? Hercules appeared to be 100% content to plow fields for the rest of his life and was no threat to interfere with their plans or stop the spread of evil in any way. All they had to do was not kill his mom with a giant robot bug and they'd have been fine.

Was anyone else bothered by the name China Doll? I feel like China is the one place where that name definitely doesn't work. Nobody was calling Mei Gan China Hands. If I understand the plot of this movie (15% chance of that, and only after reading a plot synopsis) Belloq hired Sean Penn for this mission solely because he looked like China Doll's ex-lover. Belloq wanted the jewels in addition to the opium that he had all along and thought the way to get them was through China Doll's heart. So what led him to that conclusion? During their pillow talk after the 11 major and 9 minor positions China Doll said something like "You're alright but my ex-lover was really something and if I ever found anyone that even looked like him I'd do anything. Here let me show you a picture of him."???

I have a question about the end of the movie that they didn't bring up on the podcast. Was the reveal that Sam was writing in her mother's handwriting supposed to read only as a sweet tribute to her mother? Or was it supposed to raise doubt about which persona was actually controlling Sam's body? I would say tonally at that point it didn't feel sinister. But it also felt like the only reason to bring up the handwriting earlier in the movie was to go out on an ambiguous ending that leaves the audience guessing. But maybe I am the only one guessing.

There is one other connection to Wolverine in this movie that they didn't mention. Kate Beckinsale's character was obviously some kind of early Weapon X prototype with an adamantium skeleton. I lost count of how many high speed impacts she suffered that would have killed or at least crippled any normal person. For her they maybe caused a wince and then she was right back in action.

I know that he was portrayed as a villain and an extremely unsympathetic character but I think there is one thing we all have to admit; Uncle Jonas' teaching methods work. Mathias seemed nearly omniscient compared to the cops chasing him AND he was a successful doctor to boot. Education starts at home......with coffee beans.

There is a twitter joke format that goes "I made a bot watch 1,000 hours of BLANK and then write its own BLANK and this is the result...." and the punchline is a page of a screenplay that is a nonsense version of the source material. Watching this movie felt like a real life version of that joke format. I tried to laugh off the feeling but then I dug a little deeper. If you take the last names of the two "screenwriters" (Virmani and Gallucio) and rearrange the letters you get "A.I. vim our calling." Vim being a popular Linux text editor that is a clear statement that this movie was actually written by a crude artificial intelligence and I would say it is essentially Skynet's first act of aggression against us humans.

I had to search out the script to find out if the nipples scene was actually something that someone sat down and wrote. Thankfully it appears no one did because that isn't in the script http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/cellular.pdf . But then that means that is something they found on the day? That really isn't any better. Although Noah Emmerich was a dick to William H. Macy about his day spa I thought he was being sincere about trying to get him to join his squad. Did Noah think the one missing piece from his corrupt vice squad was a clean cop who'd never seen any action and was on the verge of retirement?

This episode was a Christmas miracle. I don't think this can be made into a shirt but June's "and I hate women too" is an all time HDTGM line. Jason is spot on that every action Mario Lopez is taking in the diner is insane but from the movie's point of view it is necessary. MJH has to think that Mario Lopez is alone otherwise she is a true monster when she kidnaps him. I think this movie needed a little more backstory on Mario. I would have thrown in that he spent 7 years in Tibet and while he was there a lot of people thought he was the reincarnation of Buddha because of the otherworldly patience he showed in all aspects of life. How else can you explain how easily he settles into this situation?

The Action Boyz podcast just did this movie. I'd never heard of it until then. It is absolutely perfect for HDTGM as well. It is streaming on Amazon Prime as of now.

Maybe her reactions to the heroin and the fact that she was able to kick the habit in 6 hours had to do with them not seeming to bother finding a vein the times we see her get injected. She is like the sketch of someone acting drunk while only having non-alcoholic beer.

Congrats and thanks for 200 episodes! HDTGM is a true source of joy. My question is what was Coach's original assassination plan for the president of the AWA? When he is having lunch with him to set up the party and the assassination he has no idea that Action Jackson will be involved and he'll have him as the fall guy. So Coach thought the best place to murder someone is at his house with tons of witnesses and no one to frame? In regards to the pickpocket taking Jackson's wallet the best I can come up with is that Jackson needed to be without his wallet for the weird pool hall scene because those guys would have searched him and found out he was a cop and then the "he's my touched in the head brother" rescue wouldn't have worked. That is me doing a lot of work for the movie though. They should have added an ADR line from a pool hall goon saying "we didn't find evidence to contradict your story" to Vanity. I had to go back and re-listen to the Action Boyz episode about Action Jackson to make sure I wasn't accidentally repeating their points. For anyone who doesn't know about Action Boyz I think it would appeal to a lot of HDTGM fans. It is three guys (Jon Gabrus, Ryan Stanger, Ben Rodgers) breaking down classic action movies. They do it in a more beat by beat way than HDTGM but with plenty of hilarious detours along the way. It is a Patreon podcast so it isn't free but there are some free episodes in the High and Mighty podcast feed to check out. I think it is great but fair warning Jason would not be the Jason of this group if you catch my meaning so it won't be for everyone.

I noticed that too but it doesn't match up with the rest of the movie because I thought he was offering her punch with alcohol at the art party (maybe it was non-alcoholic) but then later for sure they are both having white wine with their Bojangles fried chicken. So if LAW being a hidden drinker was ever part of the story I think they dropped it and forgot to clean it up in the editing.

This movie had so many characters that took one step on a story arc and then just stopped right there. The one I am most interested in though is Josephine who is an Artificial Intelligence???? At the very beginning of the movie when Whitney is finishing up his his night shift (why does a rocket designer need to work the night shift?) his little terminal screen pops up the question "Prior to 08:00 shut down, would you like access to Computer Games?". That reads like an automated script not something a person would say. But rather than just hitting the 'N' key Whitney replies by typing "Not tonight, Josephine". So is Josephine a human who speaks like a robot? Or did this movie give us a tiny glimpse at NASA's secret AI program which has been running since the early 80s? On a sincere note the recumbent bike ride past the Saturn V rocket makes me want to recommend the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL for anyone that has a chance to visit. They have built a museum around the Saturn V rocket there and I think it has to be one of the most impressive displays in the country. Unfortunately Huntsville is not a place you randomly pass through but if you happen to get a chance to see it take it.

I know I am in the wrong on this one. And nothing can ruin Real Genius.

I'll jump in as the philistine on this one. I had somehow managed to go my whole life without seeing Psycho until this week. But of course because it is so much a part of the culture I knew all of the major beats. And for me personally this movie didn't hold up to the classic trope of "it's even better watching it once you know the twist". It might be unfair for me to judge it that way since I didn't experience the shock firsthand and then rewatch it. It was like my first watch was the rewatch. With the tension mostly removed I just wasn't very engaged. To avoid having more pitiable creatures like me created I think we'll have to have watching this movie added to the national elementary school curriculum.

This movie set a really terrible example when during the climax they run into the burning apartment building and they see Mikey coming out of the elevator with Julie and he is praised for saving his sister. If the power had gone out that elevator would have become their tomb. Take the stairs, Mikey. I was moderately shocked to see that this movie had credited writers and even more shocked to see that one of them wrote Real Genius! CameronH, I am sorry if you are learning that from me. I want to know who is responsible for Rona's lines during the gun in her face meet cute with the psycho brother. Rona first says "Mollie never said she had a brother." followed seconds later with her saying "Mollie said some wonderful things about you." I also thought it was a little weird that they didn't try and mine the unplanned pregnancy aspect for some comedy or some tension. It never gets a single mention through the whole movie.