When I was a kid in the 1970s, KCOP (channel 13) showed this movie. Watching it now, I can’t figure out how they did it. The movie is 75 minutes long, and half the scenes, including the climax of the movie, feature prominent nudity and/or sex. It must have been thirty minutes long.
Also: no, this isn’t a secret classic movie. It’s a silly “hey look at these boobs” film that I watched with a bunch of other folks just to make fun of it. Don’t seek it out.
…but hey, I got a good poster out of it!
This movie is about the first play performed in a video game world, and it’s all in-game recordings. During COVID lockdown in England, two actors stumble across a giant outdoor stage and are inspired to mount an in-game production of Hamlet. I’ve never played the game, but I knew that it builds its cities based on real world locations. I was amused when I saw that the stage they found was modeled on the Hollywood Bowl, which is just a few miles from my home.
There are some scenes that were clearly recreated to allow for some more nuanced acting, but most of the movie seems to be captures of actual rehearsals and performances. It’s a pretty fun spin on the “Let’s Put On A Show” movie.
My silly poster project has caused me some surprising stress about the movies I choose to see. “That looks interesting, but I don’t know how I’ll spoof the poster.” My current plan: just watch the damn movies and worry about the poster after.
This was my best idea for this movie. Does it work? Not really. It’s hard to find a GTA screenshot using one point perspective.
What a great movie. If I weren’t already into cycling, this movie would get me there.
The obvious parody poster would be Breaking Bad. Unfortunately, I already used that one, so I had to do something else that was more complicated, and far too difficult for me to knock out on a school night when I should be in bed. Please enjoy this concept of a plan for a poster:
Now I’m going to bed. I’m tired.
After we saw this, my spouse said I should call this section “Mike Leigh needs a hug.”
Some of the audience seemed to think this movie was a comedy, but it didn’t feel like one to me. Pansy says some clever things, but every word is soaked with anger and pain. She gets no relief from her caustic behavior.
A strong movie, but holy cow it was painful to watch. You know what it needs? A silly poster.
HE TRIES TO CATCH BEAVERS BUT HE LOSES HIS CLOTHES AND GETS POOP ON HIS HEAD! AND THERE’S A GUY IN A HORSE SUIT!
I love this movie.
After Hard Truths I needed something silly and fun, and Hundreds of Beavers definitely qualifies. It didn’t trigger the crazy gut laughs like when I saw it the first time, but I re-watched by myself on my computer instead of in a crowded theater so that’s not surprising. I wish I could show it to my classes so they can see that great movies don’t require huge budgets, but it’s just a little too racy for me to risk playing it for middle schoolers.
This movie doesn’t need me to make a spoof poster for it- there are some great ones out there. Seriously, look at the official Instagram feed. But I have a mission and I’m sticking with it.
Do you know what the wildest part of this movie is? This:
Things this movie has in common with Poe’s story:
Things this movie does not have in common with Poe’s story:
It’s fun to see Lugosi and Karloff in the same film, and to see Lugosi is a (kind of creepy, but still mostly) good guy, but good golly this movie is silly.
Speaking of silly, here’s this movie’s really dumb poster:
The buzz about this movie was stuff like “Pamela Anderson’s greatest performance! Incredible!” That sounds great until you remember that she’s never been known as a great actress. I don’t mean to sell her short- there are some scenes where she is absolutely riveting- but they are surrounded by acting that ranges from “okay” to “bewildering.” Jamie Lee Curtis is strong, as she always is when not terribly miscast and slogging through dreck. But my favorite performance was from Dave Bautista, who gets to play small and subtle. I’m really glad he’s been able to somehow avoid always being cast as “Large Angry Fighting Person.”
I started making fake posters this year so I could use them as replacements on Letterboxd, but the site where they draw posters from is cracking down on fan art, which means this is the last one you’ll see on Letterboxd (and it will probably disappear from there). The good news: you’ll still see them here! Another great reason to visit my blog!
My students have raved about this movie for decades. Decades! I always thought “I’m sure it’s good, but I’m too old to enjoy it.”
It’s wonderful. I’m not sure how a movie that starts with almost twenty minutes of people moving into a house is so charming, but it was absolutely captivating. The animation works so well that I found myself thinking “that girl is really good; I wonder if she made other movies.” Not if the voice actor had done more work- if the animated girl had continued her acting career.
That’s two kid movies in a row that I watched and enjoyed after years of people saying “watch this – you’ll enjoy it.” Maybe it’s time to accept I should finally watch Paddington 2.
All my silly posters can be found here: https://letterboxd.com/dogwelder/list/movies-i-watched-in-2025/
At least, they’ll be there if they don’t get mysteriously pulled.
I really thought I’d seen this one already, but as I was watching today I realized there were huge chunks I didn’t know at all. I’m glad I gt to see this in a theater, because this movie is big and bright and has ALL the colors. It’s not afraid to be a giant cartoon. It’s smart enough to know that a race movie needs lots of car crashes, but takes advantage of cartoon reality to make sure no one dies. Everyone in an crash gets wrapped in magic safety bubbles or just happens to have a parachute.
But the best part of the movie was the woman sitting next to me who could barely contain her excitement. If a tenth of the people who saw this when it came out loved it as much as she did, this thing would have made a zillion dollars.
![[br]okosz](https://media.social.lol/accounts/avatars/109/433/564/679/275/674/original/12f674152cc52aeb.jpg){kind=small}
The 2024 documentary, not the 2002 movie.
I think this would have worked better as a book, where they wouldn’t have been afraid to let Frida Kahlo’s art stand on its own. This documentary decided that nearly every image of her work had to be animated and color graded to match every other image, breaking the composition of everything she made. She complains at one point that a French artist wants to display her work with junk he bought in street markets in Mexico; I wonder how she would have felt about her work in this.
But hey, I got a pretty good poster idea!
I thought I had this whole movie figured out from the trailer. I did not. I mean, everything I expected to happen happened, but not in the way I expected.
That was a weird sentence.
Fascinating power dynamics and an incredible performance by Nicole Kidman.
…and the Letterboxd movie poster special:
