On Facebook a couple months ago I posted:
I saw commercials on Pluto TV and Xumo for this app called The Movie House TV https://themoviehouse.tv/ and it promises "thousands of new releases" for free. My first thought is that has to be bullshit. I tried it out and it was not a "scam" but definitely misleading. Basically you have to watch movies from their "standard" collection which predictably are smaller than small movies that probably not even the people who "star" in them have heard of. For each "standard" movie you watch, you get like 25% towards a "premium" movie, aka movies you might have heard of.
Except you can't watch "premium" movies through them. What happens is if you get to 100% you get a gift card code for $5 at Vudu or Amazon and then you watch something through there.
But a lot of what they advertise as "premium" movies like Spider-Man or James Bond would cost you a lot more than $5 to watch so you either need to collect 2-4 gift cards or pay out-of-pocket.
BTW, since no one says you have to physically sit there and watch these movies to earn your credit (there's no test or anything), I just put them on before I went to bed or went to work. So I got $5 without really doing much.
I did watch a few of the movies on there and they range in quality from really cheap, amateur jobs (like the original, un-riffed version of Feeders) to professional (though small-time) movies:
Like Sunday, Like Rain: This was a really great light drama about a young woman named Eleanor who has lost her boyfriend, home, and job all in the same day. She gets a job as an au pair to a 12-year-old boy named Reggie who is super-smart and really talented cello player. His bitchy mom (Debra Messing) leaves for a couple of months, so they're basically alone for the next few weeks and start to bond. Reggie gets a crush on Eleanor, who struggles with some family issues. The end was really realistic and yet still a bit hopeful. And the composition by Reggie is really beautiful; it makes me wish I could get a copy of the soundtrack. (5/5) (Fun Fact: This 2014 movie was written and directed by Frank Whaley, who in the early 90s starred in movies like Career Opportunities with Jennifer Connelly and Swimming With Sharks with Kevin Spacey but has since mostly played supporting roles.)
Ordinary Day: This 2018 Canadian drama was actually really good and a professional quality film, though I only recognized one cop from Due South in the 90s. A young woman goes missing and it shifts perspective from her mother to a detective working the case and then the girl herself, where it turns into a 127 Hours thing. You have to carefully watch the last couple minutes to really understand the ending. I actually had to rewind it because I missed a critical piece of information. (4/5)
8 Slices: I thought this would be a workplace comedy like Waiting but it's more of a light drama about a North Carolina pizza place that's going under in large part because the owner's policies are not very capitalist. He makes employees read a list of books and for each one they read, he gives them a raise. He also keeps like 8 people working when most pizza places might have half that at most. A YouTube "journalist" infiltrates the place to make fun of it, but learns a valuable lesson. It was actually a decent indie movie. The only criticism I have is that about 90% through one of the workers starts breaking the 4th wall and doing his own narration. I'm not really sure why. (3/5)
Rum Runner: This was the kind of movie that wasn't really bad, but could have used better production values. A few times when characters were talking low I couldn't really hear them; they could have used a better microphone. It's basically a story about two guys running rum in the 20s using a biplane in part. One of them falls in love with a black girl and someone ends up dead. The story was probably better than that Ben Affleck movie from a few years ago or that one with Tom Hardy and Shia LeBeouf from the early 2010s. (2.5/5)
The Fitzroy: If Wes Anderson made a post-apocalyptic movie it would probably look something like this. In an alternate 1950s where poison gas has made pretty much the whole Earth's surface unlivable, a group of Brits run a hotel in an old submarine moored off the coast. Bernard is the young bellboy who keeps everything running until he's accused of murdering the hotel's owner at the behest of a sexy young singer. It was a fun movie, though one of those that could have used a Wes Anderson-caliber cast to really make it great. (3/5)
OMG I'm In a Horror Movie!: A fun low-budget comedy about a group of young, multicultural people who (probably after starring in a beer commercial) are playing Settlers of Catan when one guy rolls three sixes. Suddenly everyone hears a voiceover that's like a trailer for a horror movie. Immediately the two black guys take off, because we know what happens to most black guys in horror movies, right? And then everyone starts trying to figure out how they can avoid a horror movie fate. There were some good bits but besides not exactly top-notch actors, equipment, and so on it drags on a little too long. But the end is good as the two black guys basically murder the horror movie tropes. (3/5)
My Tiny Universe: A failed actor who wanted to kill himself finds the cell phone of a famous producer (John Heard) and instead of giving it back, makes the producer go to his house and then it all gets overly complicated. The title seems like it should be about someone who shrinks down or plays with Legos or something. (2.5/5)
Bugs on the Menu: This is a documentary about eating bugs. There is a growing movement to use bugs instead of beef or pork or chicken. Not only is it better for the environment, but also it takes far fewer resources and in some cases is better nutritionally. Predictably while much of the world already eats bugs with no problem, provincial Americans are like, "Ewwww, gross!" I think I would try some of the stuff they show, but maybe not things like maggots. Anyway, it was interesting...for about the first half. Then it just kind of seemed like it was repeating itself. It probably could have been summed up into a 15-20 minute YouTube video. (2.5/5)
Raising Flagg: I think maybe this was a TV movie, though I'm not sure what channel, but it seemed like it had commercial break cutaways built in. Anyway, Alan Arkin is Flagg, who does odd jobs and with his wife has gotten by until he gets into a feud with the bad guy from Short Circuit over some sheep pissing on a well Flagg uses. Though he wins in court, people are pissed at Flagg and he's frozen out of getting jobs. Eventually he retires to his bed to wait for the end. His various children (Lauren Holly, one of Arkin's real-life kids, and not-quite Judy Greer) then show up from different places and in helping Flagg they help themselves too. It's a fun light dramedy that's sort of a more modern and dysfunctional Waltons. (3/5) (Fun Fact: On the Rifftrax app you can watch this weird short film made by Arkin and starring his kids--one of whom I think is in this movie--called People Soup. It's as weird as it sounds.)
3 Weeks to Daytona: Ironically I watched this just a few hours removed from being in a car accident. Anyway, an aging stock car driver who moonlights as a limo driver (or is it the other way around?) struggles to make ends meet and be a father to the son he has partial custody of. Then Rip Torn (who looks like a sad hobo clown at this point) and not-quite Brandon Routh come up with a scheme to buy a place in the Daytona 500 for the winner of the next race so not-quite Brandon Routh can advertise his furniture store chain. So the aging stock car driver has to try to get his car ready and win the race with the help of his son and girlfriend. And gee, what do you think happens? It's predictable and fairly low-budget but not terrible. (3/5) (Fun Fact: Like the 80s volleyball movie Spiker that was all about the journey to get to the Summer Olympics and yet we never see any actual Olympic volleyball, we don't actually see the race in Daytona to find out how the guy does. Kind of a rip-off.)
Revenge of the Samurai Cop: the original 1991 movie was a bad ripoff of the Lethal Weapon and martial arts movies. It became infamous years later, probably in part thanks to the Rifftrax, and so this awful sequel was made. It brings back the old cast and adds Bai Ling and Tommy Wiseau, who seem to be in a competition to see who can act worse. It's sad to watch because Ling has been in good movies like The Crow, so she should know better. The "story" is almost incomprehensible, the acting is hammier than a restaurant on Easter Sunday, and the effects are anything but special. Probably the worst thing was seeing in the credits that this was funded by Kickstarter and Indiegogo; just think of what decent projects could have been made with that money. (0/5)
Death Game: Proving the Samurai Cop movies were no fluke, this movie is from the same director and every bit as awful as Revenge of the Samurai Cop. Terrible acting, an incoherent story, lousy effects, and pathetic green screen sets make it really hard to watch. So after about half an hour I stopped watching. (0/5)
Gumshoe (or Help! My Gumshoe is an Idiot!): Kind of a low budget version of The Pink Panther or Naked Gun movies. A schlubby PI who thinks he's hard-boiled gets hired by a dame to get some blackmail back but soon it turns to murder and a theft of jewelry like a Marlowe mystery. A lot of kinda lame dad jokes but still entertaining as the gumshoe blunders his way to solving the case. (3/5)
They Call Me SuperSeven: This is like if you rebooted the old Mexican or Spanish superhero movie Superargo only more in the style of The Tick and did it all on a Rollergator budget. A really cheesy superhero/secret agent parody that really goes nowhere. There are some funny bits but it basically could have been about 10 minutes long for as much story as there is. (2/5)
The Takeover: I watched about 10 minutes of this "comedy" and got a real James Nguyen vibe from it. Really cheap camera work and poor acting. Definitely one to avoid. (1/5)
You May Not Kiss the Bride: Surprisingly this was a real, professional movie with some actors you might have heard of like Kathy Bates, Mena Suvari, Vinnie Jones, Rob Schneider, and Tia Carrere and guys you know you've seen but don't remember their names like Kevin Dunn (the dad in Transformers among hundreds of things) and Stephen Tobolowosky (Ned Ryerson in Groundhog Day among hundreds of things). The plot is sort of cliché as a pet photographer is forced by a gangster to marry his daughter so she can get citizenship. I thought it would become Forgetting Sarah Marshall as they go to Hawaii for their honeymoon but the girl gets kidnapped and so it becomes more of a comedic action movie like a discount Romancing the Stone. It's pretty good if you're into that sort of thing. (3/5)
Wal-Bob's: Another one that would probably be better if it had better production values instead of basically being a film school project. A jock who was the Big Man on Campus in high school flunks his SATs and loses his football scholarship, so he goes to work at a pharmacy that's supposed to be like Walgreens. The store is really weird because the stockroom is upstairs and there's a parking garage and like a lot of workplace comedies they have far more people on staff than a real drugstore would. Anyway, they have their own sort of football game they play upstairs and the jock makes friends and learns life lessons and stuff. He falls in love with a black girl so they attempt to have some real life issues. Again if they had had money for real actors, cameras, and a less fake store it would have been better. (2.5/5)
W@nnabe: A mockumentary about the degradations of a wannabe actor. A British guy who was in a boy band until the rest of the band dies in a bus accident is trying to make it as an actor in LA. But other than the weird indie movie Heir of the Dog (where he plays a dog in a suit sort of like that show Wilfred) he doesn't have much happening. There's a rival from a different boy band who's trying to horn in on his acting gigs and roommate too. It's pretty decent and the mockumentary style works better for low-budget movies like this. (3/5)
Jake's Corner: This was misfiled under "action" and at first I thought it'd be a Roadhouse or Radical Jack-type movie but in reality it's more of a light drama. After his parents die, a kid comes to live with his uncle in the tiny Arizona town of Jake's Corner. His Uncle John, who looks like if Tom Berenger put on a few pounds to play Billy Ray Cyrus, won the Heisman Trophy in 1990 and uses it as a doorstop. Uncle John puts the kid to work in the bar as a busboy even though he's only like 10. And doesn't tell him about his parents dying; he just says they're in a hospital. But you know the kid will remember. There's a mix of characters like Danny Trejo as a crazy guy who cleans up garbage, a Brazilian waitress, a Bosnian bartender, a black guy who always wears shades and paints weird paintings, and Diane Ladd as an old lady who won't leave her trailer. Other than shooting some frat jerks with paintball guns there's really no action to speak of and the drama doesn't really rise above your typical Hallmark movie. There are worse ways to spend not-quite 2 hours. (2.5/5) (Fun Facts: the credits thank Ty Detmer, the real winner of the Heisman Trophy in 1990 and the movie was produced by former Phoenix Suns player Dan Majerle. It was filmed in 2008 somewhere near Scottsdale and ironically I was in Scottsdale in 2008, so in theory I could have run into someone from the movie.)
An Innocent Kiss: This was pretty much a sitcom plot stretched to almost 2 hours. A pest control guy in South Carolina has a wife and two kids and one day she kisses his brother and he gets pissed and she gets pissed at him being pissed and then everything is made better pretty easily. Burt Reynolds cashes a paycheck as the grandpa. It wasn't a bad movie or badly made, but it didn't really hold my interest. (2/5) (Fun Fact: the opening shot shows the Gurnee, South Carolina "Peach Tower" that was featured in a first season episode of House of Cards where Frank Underwood had to broker peace after someone died trying to take a picture of the thing that looks like a sex organ, which was all much more interesting than this movie.)
End of Days, Inc.: This was under "Foreign Films" though it was made in Canada. I guess technically that is foreign. Anyway, it's a weird little movie about a few people in a factory that does...something. On their final night they have to complete a big order and maybe get a bonus...or they'll die. It's all a bit strange but kind of fun. I was confused about the time this takes place in at first because all the technology is really old and yet the receptionist has beach waves with pink highlights and another woman has modern-looking glasses? So I guess it was in modern times but for some reason all the equipment is old. (2.5/5)
Tentacle 8: A pretty dull movie about some kind of conspiracy to do something for some reason. At the center of everything is some guy who's like a really-depressed Clark Gregg. He's abducted in the beginning but then that turns out to actually be towards the end of the movie, which just made things unnecessarily confusing. If you're like this guy who did a whole A to Z on conspiracies you might like it more and pay more attention to it. Unlike some others the movie was professionally made, just not a story that really grabbed me. (2/5)
Guardian of the Highlands: This is the sort of movie that couldn't really decide what it wanted to be. It's cheap-looking CGI animation with characters looking sort of Wallace & Grommet like. So you might think it's a movie for kids...but there's some adult content like the women are all really sexualized with huge boobs and Barbie curves and the old guy "flirts" with one of them. Also a couple of rabbits fall in the water and one is nearly paralyzed and a rabbit and beaver are nearly chopped up in a dam. So I'm not sure this is really appropriate for kids. Sir Sean Connery voices the titular "Guardian" and Alan Cumming is his anamorphic goat who breaks the 4th wall like he's Deadpool. It was a thoroughly strange affair. (2/5) (Fun Fact: there are a bunch of James Bond references like the opening credits, various signs referencing movies, and Sean Connery's character even drives the old Aston Martin from Goldfinger. Alan Cumming was also a villain in Goldeneye.)
The Lost Dogs: Since this was in the "Comedy" section and about stealing a rich couple's bulldogs, I thought it'd be a delightful romp. Instead, this is more like one of Guy Ritchie's early films like Snatch or Revolver as it's more of a heist movie that takes place in the UK. At one point the dognappers cut off the ear of one of the bulldogs so it's definitely not a delightful romp. That being said it wasn't a terrible movie. The production values were professional quality; it just wasn't what I was expecting. Something to keep in mind if I ever write my Dognapping story. (2.5/5)
Sullivan: This was a 22-minute short film about a nerdy kid who loves 80s movies (though it was made in 2012 and seems to take place then) and dreams of knocking out Sullivan, the star football player, and taking his place. It then gets a little over-the-top before he comes back to reality. It was pretty fun though. This was apparently made for a graduating class in a Western Michigan school. Why it ended up on this app under "Foreign" films, I have no idea. (3/5)
The Last Schnitzel: This was another short film, from Turkey, I think. It's a weird little dystopian story. In a future where Earth is pretty much dead and people are moving to Mars, the US is about to finish off the planet with some nukes. The Turkish president only has room for a few people on his escape ship. So he challenges his chef to make him a chicken breast. Except there's no real meat anymore. What to do? Well, the clever chef slices off a chunk of his ass and cooks it up and the president doesn't know the difference. So the chef, minus some butt cheek, gets to escape as Earth is destroyed. Yay? It was very strange--and not just because it was in Turkish or whatever with subtitles--and yet the end is funny. Though with a good environmental message. (3/5)
Overall, the Movie House wasn't as bad as I thought. It was basically like other small-time apps like Popcornflix only you get paid. Really, I don't know why they need to be so misleading with this whole "premium" movie thing. For me, just saying I can essentially get paid to watch some not-terrible movies sounds like a good deal to me. You could actually get the $5 gift cards with not much trouble and if you pick the Amazon option you don't have to use them on movies. I have in fact never used any on a movie; I've just used them on normal stuff I routinely buy from Amazon.
Unfortunately after about a month it seemed they started dialing back how much credit you get per movie. Before a movie would get you like 20-25% it seemed like. Then after about a month it seemed to be more like 7%. Probably they were giving away too many rewards so they had to scale it back. Between that and they don't really seem to add many movies to their selection, I'm not sure how sustainable it is. There are also glitches where some movies don't play or more weirdly, some play the video with no sound. I tried it on both of my Roku devices and it was the same on both, so it's probably not just me. I reported the issue to their support...and got no response. And it likely has still not been fixed.
They did recently add a feature where once a day you can spin a wheel with your remote and get rewards--usually an extra 5%, which at this point is pretty much like watching a movie. That makes it a little better but still even if I put on a movie before I leave in the morning and at night when I go to sleep, it'll take a week to get a gift card. But I guess that's not nothing, right? And with all the shit I buy on Amazon, those gift cards come in handy.
And if you do the wheel 5 days in a row you get a bonus gift card. So even if you don't watch any movies and just spin the wheel every day you could get like $30 in gift cards. And even if you just got 5% a day you'd get at least 1 more. But I'm sure anyone reading this will just say, "Meh, whatever." And pretty much pass up free money.
This is something I really wish some other streaming services would do. Some like Peacock where there's really not that much I want to watch, it might give me some incentive to watch.
No comments:
Post a Comment