What movie are you viewing at the moment?

[Rogerbh]

I watched "Jersey Boys" (2014) a Clint Eastwood film. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jersey_Boys_(film) He used most of the same cast that was in the Broadway play. Good music, back stories to some of the songs were interesting. Vincent Piazza plays one of the original members of the group, he usually plays a thug - like Lucky Luciano in Boardwalk Empire. Didn't recognize anyone else in the group. Not a bad film. Didn't make a lot of money.

I give it three of five stars.

[Sandi Anderson]

Bohemian Rhapsody 8.4/10
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1727824/

Really enjoyed it.

[Sir Honkers]

Upgrade. Kind of a bloody reboot of the Six Million Dollar Man. Very slick and satisfying.

[Oh hi Mark!]

Cam





Released through Netflix on November 16, this movie is a bit difficult for me to crack into. As implied by the title, it's about the live webcamming world, more general the sex worker realm. Since November 2015, 3 years actually, I've been into camshows. I watched them quite a bit in 2012 upon first discovery, but fell out of it. I watched a few shows in 2013, but left all that alone until 2015. I had been in one website, which I hope is fine to name these kind of places. This one was called Streamate, still going strong. In hindsight, it's not a good camsite, its structure is not really favorable for what I ended up loving about camshows. For one, the public shows are prohibited from having genital nudity, tits are fine, though girls mostly don't give that away in said shows. The premium shows are either private ones, which is a per minute deal that spans other websites, though Streamate differs in that you pay directly, while most cam sites have a token based system. The other premium show is a “Gold” show, where you tip a certain amount and watch a show that lasts whatever duration the model wants. In my history, they never go above 10 minutes. There are some exceptions, but I never watched those live. Like all cam sites, Gold shows in particular have “goals,” where a total tip amount has to be met in order to do something special, like a cumshow, or something lighter, spanks, stripping, you get the idea. On November 2015, I think through random browsing, I found Chaturbate. Unlike Streamate, you can see everything in a public show setting, and can get away with tipping nothing. Unless you are friendly with the model, that's not a good thing to them, you get labeled as a freeloader, but this system proved to be much more satisfying than Streamate, and the rest is history. Most of my perving time is spent on Chaturbate because it's one of the easiest sites to lurk and benefit from that. Of course there can be incentives to tip, whether for a public show or a private, or the equivalent of Gold shows, which are ticket shows (no set time limit necessary). Chaturbate to me is one of the biggest cam sites, if not the biggest, with its only capable competition being MyFreeCams. MFC is more pertinent to this movie review as this story's version of a camsite looks to be heavily inspired by MFC and similar sites like that.


MyFreeCams' website layout and design looks so outdated that it's ridiculous, and this movie's equivalent, FreeGirlsLive, has a similar cheap look to it. What makes MFC stand out is its ranking system. Each model has a “camscore,” and girls tend to be focused on that and strive to boost the score so they rank higher. The score is based on how many tokens they pull in each show, and the ranking and score fluctuates. There may be other factors like viewer count, but I'm pretty sure token revenue is the main factor. A girl can be number 30 in the middle of the show, but by the end, they are number 25, or number 35. This movie's ranking format is very similar. Also, the score and ranking is relative to other models, if another girl is going up the ranks, and viewers of Girl A migrate over to Girl B, the former goes down the ranks, while the other is winning the little battle. It's important to mention that as it's exemplified in a key scene in the film. All this describing of camsites is me assuming you guys are not as aware about them as myself. If the assumption is wrong, I'm sorry. You can never be too safe, this movie gains a better understanding if you know about the camming community. Hell, I would not have watched this film if not for being addicted to camgirls. It has overtaken my porn consumption, I barely watch pro porn, and if I do, it's in clips, tube sites. With the live experience, whether participating in the show in whatever way or just being a dirty lurker as I am 90% of the time, I can go through hours on certain camgirl streams. I can't say the same for porn scenes. Of course, there's a different delivery of sexual content. A 3 hour live show is not filled with sexual content, to give an example. A 45 minute porn scene is a bit more straight to the point, when you get past the story/setup crap. Also, if you want to see a girl getting banged by hard and huge dick, pro porn is more your style. Cam couples are not as numerous as solo girls. Chaturbate has couples, and even solo male streamers and transgender girls, most other websites don't have that kind of variety. MFC for example is only women, thus FreeGirlsLive has only women. I will say there's something hotter and more magical about a solo camgirl doing a hardcore show with a male, or even a girl/girl show. With pro porn, not so much, it's part of their regular output, so the magic is different, and as a camshow convert for the last 3 years, it's not as appealing. However, my tastes in pro porn kind of translate into my tastes in camgirls, mainly in the fact that I'm very picky. Only certain girl types get my regular viewing, which boils down to about 2 handfuls of women.


The seedy underbelly of camgirls and sex workers in general lends itself to horror/thriller stories. Of course, prostitutes and strippers have been represented in various ways for decades, even pornstars in a smaller capacity. Cam models are relatively young in this world of conceptualizing stories based on sex workers. From my memory, the only camgirl movies that made some kind of impact were documentary ones, namely stuff Rashida Jones produced. Hot Girl Wanted kind of qualifies, something she produced as well, but it was more on girls getting into porn. Cam is thus unique, at least to me, it fully integrates the camgirl lifestyle, and it's most likely helped by writer Isa Mazzei, who was a camgirl herself and I read it's based on her experiences as one. To go back to how I discovered this movie, it was based on seeing tweets from a camgirl I follow, where she responded to another camgirl's complaint towards the movie, which I thought was a total indictment against it. I had to read it again to get a clearer understanding, and this woman was focused on the first scene of the movie, which is a real doozy and sets the tone in some respect for the whole movie. Truth be told, I paused this movie a lot, and multi-tasked a lot during the viewing. Some things I was too selfish to pause on, such as playing Pokemon Crystal Clear, and, more justifiably, watching a camgirl live. My attention was really wonky, which is mostly my fault. Her show was much hotter than this, which isn't surprising. This movie isn't some X-rated, super steamy movie that's filled to the brim with nudity, it's definitely more streamlined to be simple to absorb and without the abundance of sexual energy. In my opinion, that would've helped it, and this is part of a debate on how the movie would resonate with me if I wasn't a camgirl addict. One close comparison, oddly enough, is to The Disaster Artist. To explain, I'm so deep into the story that said James Franco movie depicted, the story about The Room's production, the friendship between “auteur” Tommy Wiseau and co-star Greg Sestero leading up to that movie. The book that it's based on is something I've consumed in audio format over 40 times, I consider myself to have a deep knowledge and understanding of that story. Both that and my love of camshows are 3 years old, though The Room is very close to reaching 4 years in terms of my fandom over it. Remembering The Disaster Artist, I enjoyed it for the most part, and think it's an awesome movie, moreso for people that don't know the story it's based on. This goes into Cam, because there is a bit of a downside to knowing this subject too much, and that's holding the film representation to a somewhat high expectation. It's much higher with The Disaster Artist, and this movie is more fiction than a translation and dramatization of a real life story. I'm leaning to the conclusion that I might enjoy this movie more if I knew very little to nothing about camshows. At the same time, little things in this movie are fun to grasp based on my experience as a camshow lurker, which I'll detail later.


To broaden the definition of this movie, it's a stolen identity story. It just has the writer shaping it into a camgirl story, supposedly based on her own experiences, which definitely needs to be addressed and clarified. I did battle back and forth on what genre this falls under. Blumhouse is the production company behind this and they're currently riding high off the success of the 2018 Halloween film. Since that's a horror movie, and reading of some of their other films, it leads one to believe this is a horror movie. I thought so going in, especially based on the first scene, which was rather horrific. As the movie went on, and the content being more obvious in being about mystery and suspense, my definition of it changed to thriller. I'd say it's more of a mystery/thriller with horror undertones, but still a qualifying genre film under Blumhouse. I'd rather focus on them being the people behind this, and not so much of it being a “Netflix film.” Obviously, Netflix didn't make the movie, they just got the rights to it and put it on their streaming platform. That still makes them accountable for this, whether they have good quality control (a lot of examples point to that being a definitive “no”). I'll zero in on just this, whether they made the right choice with backing this. I'd say yes, with a big thing being that this would not sell well in the theaters. That's not to say this movie is overly graphic, it's firmly R-rated and not more gruesome than standout gory horror films over the last 40+ years. It's simply the belief that this wouldn't have a big audience. It would only attract people who have some interest in the sex worker lifestyle and/or specifically camming, and for the people who are well into camgirls. This is a small pocket of people, a bigger audience would be attracted if it was a pornstar, or even a celebrity. An actual one, not so much one made up by the film. Its appeal status doesn't automatically cast a verdict of this movie, small projects can be awesome, that's the point of independent films. To conclude on this topic, a streaming platform is the best place for this movie, and one the size of Netflix is a bit intriguing. Key phrase, “a bit,” going back to Netflix's extremely spotty record of “original” content.


Finally getting into the movie properly, I'll give a general summary to start. The main character here is Alice Ackerman, whose cam name is “Lola_Lola.” Yeah, very creative. She strives to be in the top 50 of FreeGirlsLive, seemingly has a solid fanbase, with two particular tippers that impact this story. After doing a show at the Camgirl Clubhouse, which depicts the studio camgirl lifestyle (that's more prevalent in Europe, it's interesting that it got some coverage here), something bizarre happens. Alice can't access her account, as it's being run by a clone. That's how it appears to be, IMDB says “replica of herself.” How does that happen? Well, that's the mystery aspect, though I have to throw up a spoiler later to attempt to answer this. I feel like doing it because it has a particular effect on me that justifies digging into it. As Alice tries to search for answers, two suspects rise out of this, and that's the two tippers I mentioned earlier, BarnacleBob and Tinkerboy. They have real names, the former is is Barney (which kind of gives away his age, a somewhat old man), who makes it a habit of meeting up with camgirls in however way. I have to specify, the methods of that include a “date raffle,” where people tip for raffle tickets, and the winner would simply meet up with the camgirl. What happens during the meeting is up for debate. Girls like to say that it's purely to hang out, though I wouldn't be surprised if sex came out of it. They can't make that explicit because of the legality of it. Such a thing has been banned from Chaturbate for example, but not MyFreeCams. That further solidifies FreeGirlsLive being based on MFC. Hell, they both share “Free” in their name, obvious thing to point out, but still. Barney is a bit of a baller, very sure of himself, in one scene with Alice, he kind of brags about winning a date raffle, and then complains of one camgirl flaking in one. There's also a scene where he and Alice have a video chat (these sites have Cam2Cam features, and it's depicted in this movie), and someone enters Barney's house. Judging by the sound of the steps, it's a kid. The running and thumping, like a kid just coming back from school. Or it could be his wife, it's possible that the guy is married. Those kind of cam viewers exist, though it's mostly single men of a young or old age. Tinkerboy, in the credits he's listed as Tinker, I believe his real name was mentioned, but I don't really care to find out, so I'll stick with Tinker. A stupid name like that fits with this fucker. He's the opposite of the confident and middle aged Barney. Both are creepy though, in different ways. Tinker's creepiness is accentuated by his overly nervous personality that is depicted overtly with him sweating. A lot of his scenes show him to be soaked in sweat, making him a greasy, disgusting sight to behold. At one point I called him a “Fuckboy.” That and “cuck” are suitable names for this fucker, both terms being used quite a bit in camgirl conversations. He'd classify as a “whiteknight” too, now that I think about it. I would assume he has done some whiteknighting before, and it led to him being under her good graces, to the point of them chatting regularly. He certainly acted like in during the big physical meeting between himself and Alice. Barney and Tinker also differ in the circumstances of meeting Alice. Barney originally gets a physical date lined up with her, but it's basically delayed due to the story, though Alice would set it back up as a way to investigate the man. Tinker would get a similar treatment, where she would pay him a visit and it would be her trying to snuff him out. That one though is more forceful, and it comes after a few times where the fucker is present in places Alice is at. The first instance being at some general store where Alice was shopping and talking with a friend. He pops up and upon being seen by her, he walks away, obviously he didn't mean to be caught. Later in the movie he goes to a beauty saloon, where Alice's mom works, to meet the young lady, and give her a fucking bouquet of flowers. He tries to explain his presence, getting a job as an IT guy at her area, though it's highly implied that he lived quite the distance from Alice originally. So...stalker. As a result of all this, I pegged him as the culprit in this apparent clone story. Add on to the fact that he is an IT guy, it makes me think he can work a computer at least, but also not revealing his true computer wizardry. This would mean he's hiding his skills in cloning, which would require working a supercomputer of sorts and some other technological stuff. It's common in mystery/thriller stories to have a number of suspects, and I tend to predict on who is the true culprit, other suspects are basically red herrings. Thus, I classified Barney as a red herring. Was I right? That's spoiler territory, not there yet.


There is another suspect, but that gets cleared away quietly and quickly. A model named PrincessX does a scummy thing and lure viewers from Alice's room to hers with the reward being her going nude for the first time. I don't think that kind of upfront scummy tactic is prevalent in camgirls, I never really experienced it myself. Now, there are models on Chaturbate that would type in another model's chatroom, and would be broadcasting at the same time. They would advertise their stream, very lazily like “Mmm bb, horny pussy 4 u.” A viewer in theory would click that bitch's name, see that she's streaming, and hop over there, stealing viewers away in the process. Typically those models are low rent, PrincessX in this movie is already popular, I think she was number 1 on FGL. I go on Chaturbate loads more than MFC, so I can't say that this is something I know about. Non-nude models in general, oh of course, that's prevalent, unfortunately, in all kinds of camsites. Some eventually go nude, to keep their relevancy up, in fact a certain MFC girl had to resort to that because her non-nude and teasing status was wearing thin. It was surprising that she drew it out so long and people fell for it, because she should've bombed within a month, but she stretched the non-nudity for almost 2 years. She was a Youtuber too, which doesn't mean much to me, never heard of her. Google her if you want, ClaraBabyLegs was her Youtube or streaming name before MFC, where she became ClaraKitty. Anyways, PrincessX wanted to get Alice to drop 10 numbers in the rankings, fresh off hitting her goal of rank 50. She sure did her dirty, but Alice didn't drop 10 places, so PrincessX didn't go nude, fucking tease, I'd be pissed. Anyways, it's thought that she had something to do with the apparent Lola_Lola copy taking over for Alice, but she walked by Alice and friends watching Lola_Lola's stream, and she commented how weird that was. Alice questioned her, but it's obvious that she's not the kind of person with even the brain power to think of such a plan.


One really outrageous thing with this movie that I have my doubts over is Girls2Download. This is a website in the movie that hosts archived camshows, presumably in short time after the live show, as there are instances of Alice checking her own shit not long after the fact, hours at least. I don't think camgirls really do that, in my experiences, they are somewhat aware of these kind of sites, but none go there. Some don't know and would request for recordings, a great many of them are aware at least of them being recorded and would throw up annoying DMCA watermarks as an attempt to prevent recordings. I never understood that, especially when a lot of these sites have servers and general operations outside of the United States, thus not necessarily subjected to DMCA. Some places do bend under pressure and delete content, but overall such preventive measures are fruitless endeavors. Back to this movie, this Girls2Download thing is also an act of snitching, these websites aren't extremely well known, and as a result, they have shows of models that span years. Those larger sites in particular don't offer streaming services, instead they host the shows on a site, most of the time it's Upstore. You can do a search for them on DuckDuckGo and similar search engines that don't censor out piracy links like Google will get you results. The downside is the filehosts these sites use require premium subscription, thus it's a bit of a moot point to mention these sites by name. One may see my complaining about this aspect as weird, but hey, I can get mad at something and it would be construed as irrational. There are some outrageous things in the movie that would piss off actual camgirls, going back to the first scene pissing one particular model off. There are even some things that would piss fans like me off. I fully expected, and feared for that to happen, and thus I had a prediction that this movie would suck and be generally infuriating, trigger fuel basically. I was wrong, it's more likely trigger fuel to camgirls though. At the same time, I think it would also serve as a warning to models about how close they should be with any kind of viewer, even if they consider them friends. I thought that lesson would be made abundantly clear and would be the biggest theme of the movie, but after watching it, I'm not so sure that's the case. The message is still there though.


Since my first exposure to this movie involved a complaint from a camgirl about the first scene, I feel it's important to detail the scene. It would also illustrate the kind of bait the movie throws to the viewer. The first scene introduces Alice of course, she's in the middle of the show. One baiting element already is her outfit. Ignore the granny panties, I'm talking about the letterman jacket, she's wearing it over her bare skin. No bra, no shirt, it's a total tease. That just sets the tone for the overall nudity content in this movie, and this woman not really putting out, if that makes sense. Madeline Brewer is the woman who plays Alice, and she actually reminds me of a certain CB camgirl. For the sake of reference, I'll name her, mothandrust, another Google search journey for you. One is introduced to the web design and overall usage of this website. It looks accurate to a low rent camsite in design, i.e. MFC. I'll praise the movie for that (the person or group credit for this design is called “Chips”), it depicts that kind of camsite quite well and would have the effect of the stream being seen on a computer scene, while also showing what's behind the webcam, which would then resemble the proper filming techniques and appearance. Alice as a cam model is also rather realistic as the one who would socialize with viewers (typical with American camgirls), but still being goal oriented. Not stingy though, which is a real turnoff for me. In this scene and throughout the movie, there are shots of the chat itself, with usernames like “dragonballs” and the aforementioned BarnacleBob and Tinkerboy. The comments don't seem out of place at first, and the climax of the movie features hilarious chatroom comments. This goes back to me saying how little things in this movie pleased me, that's one of them. So far it feels realistic, but then a sharp left turn happens as the scene builds up into something gruesome. It starts with Visitor003123 tipping 25 tokens, asking how much for Lola_Lola to use a knife. Realism comes into play, she immediately bans the guy. Unfortunately that realism withers away, and you really get into true movie fiction. The man comes back, under another name, Visitor003128. Chaturbate tip notes by the way are not made public in the chatroom, a feature that other sites make public, including, guess what? MFC. Alice is still rejecting the guy, the viewers are brushing him off as well, but the guy is persistent, and tips 500 tokens. She fucking gets the knife out, and then other viewers chip in tokens by the hundreds. That's when it stops being realistic, that's some whore shit that I'm sure would trigger any camgirl. The stigma with them is that they're lowly whores who would do anything for a money, digital streetwalkers, and instead of cold hard cash, it's tokens. Like MFC, and really CB and some other sites, camgirls get a 50% cut in token revenue. A token is 10 cents in value. So 500 tokens would be $50, the model gets half of that, while the site gets the other half. This is not even counting taxes, which would probably dilute the return even further for a model. I notice that a top model would do the final goal, typically one where they have an orgasm (aka a “cumshow”), at 10000 tokens. My point is, 500 tokens just to bring a knife out and essentially tease is fucking outrageous. Things escalate further with tips daring her to do it, some pleading not to, then Visitor003128 tipping 2000 tokens. They have closeup shots of the ranking system, showing that Alice is going up 1 place every few minutes thanks to this stunt. With her desperately wanting to be in the top 50, she greatly considers the stunt, and ends up doing it...


SIKE! She sliced some fake skin attachment on her neck that leaked fake blood. So while this was an elaborate stunt by this woman, it's still really fucked up. Now, in saying that, I just remembered that there are certain models that have an extreme look to them, body modifications up the ass basically, and they would do some really fucked up shit. There's one in particular though that probably trumps them all, another MFC girl, perhaps the writer knows her, KotaMorgue. She still cams by the way, but I was first introduced to her a few years through Efukt. She did a show where she had an orgasm while a fake baby was dangling off her vagina, made to resemble an infant hanging off the womb via the umbilical cord. It was nasty, the woman got banned for it, but of course camsites don't want to lose their moneymakers so that ban was really brief, she's still going strong. She is basically the camgirl version of Marilyn Manson, I'll let that sink in. Manson in his prime, and you have to transport yourself to that period in the 90s, she's a 2010s version of that, with things fucked up by today's standard, with the added bonus of nudity. It does beg the question if she ever faked a suicide. My guess is no, and thus this movie still takes this one step too far. I felt like highlighting her anyways, just to prove that there are some depraved models out there. The difference is she's not doing it out of desperation, it's her gimmick and she lives it, Alice is just desperate. Even though it turns out to be fake, I still consider that desperate, low hanging fruit. Creative? Ehh, maybe, in the sense that she could do that in a live setting, and it looking like a really good movie visual effect. It makes me wonder how she was so skilled at that, which they never really explain. You just have to accept that some camgirls have really special talents. That's true, but man, with a talent like that, she should be in the movie effects world. While this scene is definite trigger fuel for cam models, this also proved to be a case of starting out with the most striking scene of the movie, and things, for lack of a better phrase, fall down after. It's no question that this is the most memorable scene of the movie, the most graphic it gets (apart from probably the climax, which wasn't a staged stunt). There is another apparent suicide moment where the clone is tipped into it by Alice herself (50k tokens to get that going, bitch is rich, she spends loads more in other encounters with replica Lola_Lola), and it turns out to be a stunt. Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, shame on you. I admit to being fooled in that second instance, she was a clone after all. I thought it would result in actually getting to the bottom of the mystery, the fallout from that would finish the rest of the movie. That didn't happen. That second instance too was something that would be even more difficult to stage with visual effects, even for someone as apparently talented in the field as Alice. This ties into spoiler territory, so I'll leave it there for now.


Little things the movie got right, well, the writer since she was a former camgirl. The pet cat, barely a majority of camgirls have cats. Probably a larger majority, but I've seen my fair share of dogs and hamsters/gerbils. A room strictly for camming, not every model has that, but it's certainly a notable feature. There are a few scenes where Alice signs up for a new account and takes photos of her driver's license and a selfie while holding up that ID to verify her identity, definitely something models have to do. I even did as a way to have a higher spending limit as a tipper, as well as getting 200 tokens for free. Not telling the family about being a camgirl, that is certainly a thing, and that secret is compromised. I guess it's realistic, it comes crashing down during her brother Jordan's birthday party. His buddies find her shows on Girls2Download (too easily found, they don't look like DuckDuckGo users), and they just laugh. So you know they are total jerks, and one of them rats out Alice by playing her show on his phone just as it was time to blow the candles. A bit earlier, Alice made her entrance, and Jordan didn't seem too pleased to see her, especially since she brought the cake. It indicates that he already knew thanks to those “bros.” There was the reveal coming after Jordan and his buddy wrestled to the ground and the phone with the porn play. Maybe that's when he found out, or I'm still right about him knowing by the time Alice arrived, and he was just trying to fight that guy from being so showy about the secret, and from being a rat. The last person Alice would want knowing is her mom, and boy did she find out. The silence after the reveal really made the scene feel awkward, and this is certainly believable. Despite the highly fictitious thriller element to this movie, there are some realistic things. In a way that's good because you know the writer was an actual camgirl, and she was being truthful in claiming the movie was based on her experiences. At the same time, the dramatizations do add on to the already potent stigma of camming. Like how Jaws scared people from going to the beach, this movie scares women, and anybody in general, from camming. It doesn't really celebrate camming, even going by what the ending provided, I believe most people would be a bit annoyed at what happened after the climax. I'll go more into it in the spoiler section. Even if you go by the general stolen identity thing, I would imagine there are movies with happier and more definitive endings than that, and those people weren't cam models. At the same time, an aspiring cam model can view this as an inspiration in being safe, knowing what not to do, and current models can as well. I think that will boil down more to who to really trust and socialize with, and basically not do physical meetups. Both meetups in the movie with Alice's big tippers are creepy and dangerous in different ways. For the bigger picture, the stolen identity thing, that's just overly fictitious to really interpret from a model. Knowing in a way the truth behind this cloning thing, any model would have a hard time interpreting that and relating it to real life, let alone an aspiring cam model. Overall the movie sends mixed messages, which I guess makes sense for something not cut-and-dry like camming, and sex work in general, but it doesn't really boost its profile, which I can see as something cam models would not like. They're already given something really controversial in the first scene.


Of course, Alice is not the first victim of this, with a complex stolen identity plot, there had to be previous victims. This turns out to be another camgirl, nicknamed BabyGirl, a slim and good looking black lady. It starts with Alice learning that BabyGirl is supposed to do a show with Lola_Lola. When Alice tries to question BabyGirl during her live show (also realistic that it's simple to create a viewer account, as Alice did, her username was “Teapot”), she got no answer. Before that digital confrontation, Alice called her friend Fox (same one she cammed with, to make clear) for her to get some info on BabyGirl's true identity. I assumed she came through because later, while Alice's clone and BabyGirl have their joint show, she does some Googling on her phone and finds BabyGirl's real name, Hannah Darin. Strangely, she died in 2014 (a goof that should be on IMDB's Goofs section is that while it says 1989-2014 on a tribute page, when Alice scrolls down, it said her date of passing was July 2015), hmm? It's possible then that what's happening to Alice, happened to her, and with the presence of Tinkerboy in her town, it makes me tie him into this, more on that later. My assumption about Fox coming through was wrong, look my attention span was really bad during this movie, I did a bunch of backtracking and whatnot to get this review to be fair to the movie's plot. Outing myself more, I had to edit this paragraph because I mistook the black girl in the Camgirl Clubhouse scene as BabyGirl, but it wasn't. Racist? She looked like BabyGirl, sorry, she did. Different hair, but I'm a guy, I don't pay attention too much to women's hairstyles, they both have long hair, just that BabyGirl happened to sport braids, and this other black woman didn't. Anyways, Alice got the tip to look up BabyGirl through Barney in their date scene, so it was also set up to get some info on BabyGirl, Barney being the player that he is, she assumed he knew her, and she was correct.


Continuing on with this scene, a confusing thing popped into my head. Where is Lola_Lola 2.0 camming from? Her camroom is the same as Alice's, so is she in her house? They don't seem to imply that at first, plus it is possible to replicate room decor and general setup. It gets more confusing after Alice finds out about Hannah's death, the cause of which wasn't stated. During the show, Alice and BabyGirl take a little tour around Alice's home, which nobody outside her family should know the location of. Quickly, one early scene has her showing off presents viewers sent her to her friend Fox. It's very common for camgirls to have PO Boxes. I can't remember if Alice herself indicated that she has one, I just remember a PO Box being mentioned in the film. How did Lola 2.0 and BabyGirl get in her home, while she was in another room? That simply doesn't get answered. Without going into the big spoiler, the movie's mystery/thriller status lives and dies on it being...well, a mystery. Answers aren't so clearly given, if supplied at all, and it is up to one's imagination. One downside to that though is the movie has to be really provocative and enthralling to make this kind of thing a charm and something exciting for the viewer to think about. I don't believe the movie qualifies as that. This is what you get though, live with it. Ignoring the explanation for this, it is a bit chilling, though the movie doesn't offer the chills often. Alice flips out at the end of the scene by breaking her laptop, which annoys me, total waste of a good computer.


Something I want to get into is the family dynamic in this movie. The first scene of Alice and Jordan was in their mother's saloon, and I totally thought that they were dating, not siblings. I jumped the gun there, but you know camgirls would have significant others and sometimes hide their real job from them. Alice already fibbed to her mother that she was in “web development” in the birthday party section of the movie. To which her mother labels as Alice being in an ambitious phrase, something she accepts, but I find a bit odd to label as that. The interactions between siblings though is pretty realistic in hindsight, at first when I got the confirmation that Jordan was her brother, I thought their first scene was odd. Never mind that, a fist bump and teasing is something siblings do. However, it gets weirder in a later scene with Alice and her mother. Her house gets “WHORE HOUSE” spray painted on, Alice's mom suffering the sins of her daughter. To sum things up, the mom is very accepting of her, getting over that shock of the revelation in the birthday party. What made her feel that way...was her fucking watching one of her live streams. What in the actual fuck? She complimented her poise in the show, that she comes off as confident and fulfilled, all these kinds of things. Nothing overly sexual like calling her hot, but it's still so bizarre to me that she would make those comments. Just be general and say that she supports her, don't go into detail about the way she carries herself and behaves. Obviously it's not actually Alice, it's Lola 2.0, and she struggles to make that clear to her mother, which makes sense. The mother thinks she's trying to lie to herself of what she truly is behind a webcam, and she just wants her daughter to be herself. Jordan enters the scene, obviously not bothered to talk to Alice, he gives a weird look to her. I chalk it down to his geeky face, but it's still a bit off-putting. This incredibly awkward scene ends with Alice telling her mom to watch her cat, Ziggy. It took me a while to realize that this was a good decision since Lola 2.0 basically invaded her home the night before.


Since Alice broke her laptop, she has to use the good old public library to do some research. No librarian caught her looking at porn, essentially, she went on FreeGirlsLive to do some digging. It turns out that a bunch of top models have one thing in common. A “top friend” by the name of Tinkerboy. Uh oh. Before I get into that, I do want to talk about the meetup with Barney. This was earlier in the movie, again, she believes the guy has something to do with her stolen identity crisis, so she sets up a date with him that was previously canceled. They meet at a Mexican food joint, and things get super cringy with the waiter, a total honky white boy who is absolutely horrible at Spanish. Oh my goodness, it's painful, he takes me out of that first half of the scene. When he's gone and things move to that restaurant's bathroom, the movie gets back on track with something tense. I had already made up my mind about Tinkerboy being the culprit, and given the timing of this scene (57 minutes in), it's easy to tell that this man had nothing to do with Lola 2.0. There's a possibility though, I think. It's a bit confusing because Alice hid in a bathroom stall, a women's bathroom by the way. Barney goes in and on his phone, it's shown that Lola 2.0 is online, so he questions how she can be on a date with him while also streaming. Going back to the scene, I think Barney sees the woman he's on a date with as some impostor, trying to scam him, and that Lola 2.0 is the real Alice to him, as she's streaming and whatnot. Regardless, he ends up getting his hands on her, but Alice escapes through biting.


That actually segues nicely into the Tinkerboy scene, because she comes prepared with a weapon. Not her mouth, but a pink taser. She finds out that he's staying at a motel, pays him a visit, and explains about her crisis. Sweaty creepo feels for her, wants to help her, remember my prediction was this guy was involved in this replica plot. It's fueled by this scene through his general demeanor, and then later in the scene, in the middle of the night, he's caught having a wank while having a Cam2Cam chat with Lola 2.0. The dude's first response was telling her to wait, dude, he makes perverts like me look bad. I'd stop wanking and deal with this confrontation immediately, fuck getting off. It turns out that he's not involved, but he's fully aware of this apparent cloning plot. I'll go into it in spoiler detail, but I have to continue with this scene. Alice finally confronts Lola 2.0, who assumes Alice is Tinker's boyfriend, not stunned at the fact that they look identical. During this confrontation, sweaty Tinkerboy slaps himself for some sick reason, and maybe an intentional touch, some fly passes by next to him. Alice couldn't get answers from Lola 2.0, she just calls Alice rude and whatnot. If I made any implication about Alice being weak-willed, I need to make clear that it wasn't my intention. She's not Ripley levels of badassery, just more on the basic Final Girl level in horror movies, the somewhat nameless girls that survive and kick ass in a few scenes. She bit her way out of Barney, she tased and owned Tinkerboy, both men are twice her size. She can handle herself pretty much, and in the climax, she uses some ingenuity that paints her as not some dumb camwhore. At the end of the movie though, she still comes off as a bit desperate, but at the same time, it's me judging in a way that goes against my own love of camgirls in a way. That's spoiler territory that I'll get into. Through Tinkerboy's revelation, one can assume that BabyGirl became an example of this plot, remember that she apparently died, yet there's a copy of her going strong. I don't know when this movie is dated, it could be 2014/2015, it could be present day. If it's present day, it's certainly lacking in the overabundance of camgirls that live and breathe, and die on tip-activated vibrators. That's been overly prevalent for the last 3 years, and it's only gotten worse unfortunately. It serves as a major weeding out of camgirls for me, and explains why I only watch a select few. At least 12, at most 24, I never really counted. It's a small number compared to fellow camgirl addicts that I've conversed with, and I end up being the pickiest of the bunch, though these people have their ideal camgirl looks, just as I do. Mine could be controversial, 90% of the girls I watch are North American, I can't really hang out in foreign rooms, the girl would have to be decent at English. Not very ethnic either, lots of white women, pale ones. Big booty is a common feature of the women, most are very short, 5'3” and under. I'm 6'4”, but most girls aren't what I consider tall. Young too, a few women older than me though, a really thick and tall milf for example, and I adore milfs. I wish I got into more milfs, I wish there were more hardbodied, muscular women, even bodybuilder type. The closest is Aspen Rae, who is a pornstar too, but she cams and models mostly. Anyways, you get the idea, I really got off tangent there. Anyways, yeah, the lack of tip-activated vibrator girls makes me think this is set in 2014/2015. I could criticize the movie as being outdated, the writer not really studying current day camgirls, but at the same time, the fact she nailed down pretty much every other aspect makes me think the camgirl evolution isn't so deep, easy to translate into a story, though done with the experience of a former camgirl. She didn't make the girls out to be dirty streetwalkers, though they certainly aren't glamorized, not that they should be. So that wraps up the mystery of BabyGirl, sort of.


I am going out of order, I should talk about Alice's attempts at getting outside help. It started with calling FGL support, but at first, they couldn't give her help, referencing that she was currently streaming during this call. Of course, that was Lola 2.0. To make it clear, Alice simply couldn't log into her account, her login info got changed completely. A second attempt at calling FGL support, in a video game store, getting some games for brother Jordan, the access code she gave in the previous call to verify her identity was now invalid. So someone was definitely onto Alice and made sure that she wouldn't get further into talking with FGL support. That help route immediately goes south. After the second suicide stunt where Lola 2.0 was doing the deed, Alice immediately called the police. It was funny how she tried to prove herself by showing the two cops a live stream of Lola 2.0. The middle aged cop wasn't really having it, the younger one was just curious. I'm surprised they both didn't just perv out, even a little bit. This police help didn't really go anywhere, the younger cop just kept asking how she could go through with camming and whatnot, some psychological questions blissfully ignorant people would ask.


I believe I covered everything not needing to be prefaced with a spoiler tag. So without further ado, the following is major spoiler territory, and it includes me speculating and trying to solve the mystery.


SPOILER: where to begin? Well, Tinkerboy explained that this apparent operation where clone camgirls take over for real women is something all cam sites do. His explanation was really vague, he just said “it” takes any info it can from you online and basically make a clone out of it (he didn't outright said “make a clone out of it,” I just added it to make it sound more clear). With shots of the webcam being prevalent in this movie, and it not looking like the industry standard Logitech C920, one theory is that the webcam has its own computer system that would read some data, probably have some form of extracting DNA, like a hair of the model being on the camera and it catching it, or just using fingerprints. The end result would be a clone. That's a theory I just thought of, but coming right out of the movie, my main theory was Camgirl Clubhouse. Right after that joint show with Fox that featured Alice riding a sybian, Lola 2.0 pops up. By the way, I liked the discussion on vibration, though a bit exaggerated in saying that the sybian would ruin the vagina's senses, I would rather chalk it up as a criticism towards vibrators, girls tend to use it too much in my opinion, and the sexy value can wear thin as a result. Back to this theory, is it a coincidence? Maybe not. Going by the climax of the movie and trying to explain the second suicide stunt, and to merge this theory with the earlier one about the webcam, it's possible that Camgirl Clubhouse has some kind of advanced technology that would be able to make a clone. This place is a major hub for camgirls, though it kind of assumes that camgirls can just migrate to a certain location, or they are from a certain general area. BabyGirl is confirmed to be from Georgia though, and I'm not sure where this movie is set. Not Georgia, because Alice said in that date scene with Barney that she wondered why BabyGirl would drive to see her, rather than fly first class. It was a way to lure Barney into spilling information, but it makes me think that Alice is some ways away from BabyGirl. So maybe she's just in a surrounding state? Why bring up the air travel then? Unless you can get a really short flight to cross from state to surrounding state? Too many questions, no clear answers. I had another theory about the clone being more or less a simulation, a virtual reality thing, an AI, but I had to remind myself that Lola 2.0 and BabyGirl were in Alice's house. Or were they? They never had Alice and Lola being face to face, so it's possible that the footage of Alice's house was just some simulated one obtained somehow and broadcast in a camshow format. Since I shut myself down on the BabyGirl identity, I had to take out a discussion on her. I was going to say that since Alice and BabyGirl chat in the Clubhouse, that maybe she was chatting with her clone or that BabyGirl got cloned and replaced after that scene. However, since I found out that said black woman isn't BabyGirl, I had to change things around. This still keeps my traveling questioning and Camgirl Clubhouse theory intact, she still made it to cam with Lola 2.0 after a drive. There is the somewhat conflicting theory about AI and the footage of that house tour was simulated though. I'm basically demonstrating how confusing the movie is when you think about it too much, but also how I'm really not helping in solving the puzzle, I just complicate it further.


SPOILER: I may as well cover the second suicide stunt since I kept mentioning how difficult it would be to stage it. Such a scene does go into the theory of an artificial intelligence or a VR kind of deal. She shoots herself, puts her mouth to the gun, blowing through there to the back of her head, and blood sprays from behind. I guess doing it in a live setting is possible, I'm not well versed into practical effects to know this technique. I would think some camera trickery and editing goes into it, which would go with the VR kind of deal, you can make anything possible with that, when something's simulated. This also goes with the assumption that such simulation is possible with this technology, because a more realistic depiction would have Lola 2.0's shows looking like a video game or something, with appropriate visuals to match. However, since it appears to be a real person, real settings, it goes into some sci-fi stuff. The movie doesn't have a sci-fi label to it on IMDB. I got this off a torrent, so I don't know what tags Netflix has for it. Yeah, that was pretty graphic, and it would be trigger fuel for camgirls, but at this point, the story has settled in, so anybody could see that stunt and think it was totally staged. However, the first scene doesn't qualify since the viewer doesn't know what's to come. Well, if they didn't read this review for instance.


SPOILER. Something that fuels to the simulation theorizing is that an effect is used during Lola 2.0's streams where the video gets distorted, fuzzy, static-y, whatever, glitching out. It's not just through the perspective of watching her show through a monitor, during the home invasion scene, they have the perspective of her and BabyGirl going around the place, the former holding the laptop with the webcam attached to it. That point of view still had glitching, so it indicates that even that “live” footage looks suspect. One counterpoint, to an extent, is that Alice never brings up this effect, then again, she had thought of this as some artificial being with a computer system acting as its organs and lifeline pretty much. The climax features her outsmarting the being, and if it was a perfect clone, that could fully think for itself, it probably would not play along with Alice. So, I'm not sure, and in that climax, the video feed glitched out, but the whole scene was from the perspective of Alice in her camroom. At least most of it, I remember it being all, but I could be wrong.


SPOILER. The climax of the movie, as I sort of teased from the last paragraph, sees Alice getting Lola 2.0 to play a game of “monkey see, monkey do.” Obviously it is fueled by big tipping from Alice, still a rich bitch. Anyways, it started with her being able to broadcast live along with Lola 2.0. Thus, the chatroom sees double. It's funny how they choose sides, some calling one or another a faker, and nobody really questioning how nuts and unrealistic it is. The best you get are comments like “Respect for the VFX.” I know camgirl streams can have some visual effects, like GIFs playing on a stream, other graphics popping in and out, and even a mirror effect where you can do some stuff having a split screen of the same stream, and play around with that. However, having a game like this, with two identical people, clones, and it getting bloody, come on! That's when questioning has to come into play, the movie kind of treats the cam viewers as overly oblivious, dare I say, idiots. Hey, some, half, hell, most are, but don't generalize it as everyone being fucked in the head in some way. I'm functioning pretty well dammit. Anyways, it gets bloody when Alice bangs her head against a desk top, and Lola 2.0 follows suit. It doesn't start like this though, there is light stuff like Alice stripping and she had to do the monkey act first by mimicking Lola 2.0's sexy talk, and Alice herself not sounding too sexy. Lola 2.0 gets into the violent stuff when she sees her rank going down, and she was in the top number 1 at the start of all this, I think. When it starts to get bloody and at first Lola 2.0 not bearing any damage from the first head smash, to suddenly glitching to having her nose being cracked open (fueling the simulation theory), Alice calls for Lola 2.0's login information. When she starts to fall down in the ranks following Alice telling the people to stop tipping, Lola 2.0 gives in and supplies her the login info. By this point, the glitching becomes a bit more rampant, making it more clear of this being some computer trick, a simple and vague generalization of this gimmick. Lola 2.0 laughs and chats with the viewers, as Alice digs around Lola 2.0's account and then...click, she is deleted, her whole stream ending abruptly. Nothing more violent than that, so brutal! I do have to call into question how problematic FGL is to allow multiple logins. The best kind of service would boot a current login session out, typically the first one. So either Lola 2.0 would've been booted off immediately after Alice logging in, or Alice would be kicked off from FGL thinking she made an unauthorized login. Alas, she got in easily, and that's it, Lola 2.0 is dead.


SPOILER. The next scene with Alice and her mom is a bit confusing. Getting into the words said, I'm not sure if “it” was referred to as the stolen identity thing, and Alice's mom finally believing her, or if it's just in the sense of Alice making another account and starting over. She told her mom she would “make another one” and keep on doing it. It could be both, at least the latter either by itself or attached to the former. The conversation is had while Alice's mom does some makeup to hide Alice's broken nose, even though the bent status of it is still noticeable, but that's Full HD and the camera being rather close to the nose, so, I'll let it slide. Kind of messed up that Alice didn't hug her mother, just saying thanks and leaving her to sigh and contemplate over her basically enabling her daughter to continue down this messy path. This actually went along with the final scene of the movie, showing things to end on a bit of a sour note. The final scene by the way sees Alice, with a different photo ID, with a different name (rich bitch can get that so easily I guess), and her wearing a long blonde wig, getting her identity verified. It was rather quickly though, but I guess it's possible. It took me as a viewer about 24 hours to get verified, maybe camgirls are quicker. That being said, it's the same verification process as earlier when she attempted to make a new account, but using the Alice info. She got rejected, “ID already on file,” meaning Lola 2.0 got control of that, sophisticated in that respect I guess. If she can get rejected almost instantly, I guess she can be verified almost instantly. Her new name is Evebot, there is a countdown before she goes live, and the movie cuts to black after she says “Hey guys.” So what did Alice learn from all this? To stop camming? To at least take a break to investigate this apparent cloning epidemic? No, to just plod away and take care of it when it becomes the same problem all over again. If that's not a cold statement on camgirls to keep on going, I don't know what is.


SPOILER. This one is quick. Going back to the webcam theory, I noticed a little image of some Asian character, not sure if it was Japanese or Chinese text. Chinese may be the case because if they are not doing martial arts, they are depicted in American cinema as sneaky fuckers, hacking, doing some evil stuff. It could be Japanese, and the evil is in a more perverted way, plus the advancement in technology is more like Japan's wheelhouse. I don't know, just something I really wanted to touch on, as I don't want to leave any stone unturned.


To give a non-spoiler conclusion to the story, Alice comes out of it all, and ends up still camming. It took until this review to realize that the message the movie sends about keeping on this path despite the danger, and not doing something about the danger other than basically waiting for it to occur again and being ready to take care of it, is rather cold. Hell, it could've been like, I don't know, The Ring, where the protagonist just rides out into a long winding road, with a grand mission to pursue. This movie's grand mission would've been doing more investigating about this, but instead it's essentially just letting things be, the only difference is that she's aware of what will likely happen. Basically the camgirl that just lets things be, this is all she knows, even though she is clear about the dangers of it. This is not me being anti-camming, but at least show that you learned something and will be proactive in applying that to the future. I didn't get that with her, which is unsatisfying, but if the point of the movie was to leave off with that kind of chilling conclusion, that acceptance, then it works. As someone who knows too well about the camming community, it's a bit disappointing to end the story like that, being open ended in that manner.


Since this is a brand new movie, I won't go into trivia, the only important one is that Isa Mazzei used to be a camgirl, which I've mentioned lots of times already. I do want to address the nudity. It's very light, given the subject matter. Alice at best goes topless, while her butt at best is covered in big panties and booty shorts. No g-string thong, of course in saying that, there's no bare ass. Certainly no bush. In the first third of the movie, there was a series of clips that pretty much served as meeting some unwritten quota in the nudity department. They are of camgirls doing their thing, and judging by the quality and overall appearance, I believe the clips are of actual camgirls. So, more boobs here, the closest to bottom viewing is a light bush. You can see some fully naked girls, but they have their legs closed, and it's from the front, so you don't see how much booty meat they are packing. Seeing as how one of my last movie viewings was American Pie Presents: Beta House, it's funny that such a movie has more nudity than this film. College is wilder than camming? I guess so. Obviously, two different movies, different genres, but there does exist the erotic thriller genre, and this movie would've really been interesting if it crossed into that territory. It would've been easy to do as well, just up the raunchiness, even just having more nudity, more of a sense of sexual acts done on these live streams. BabyGirl for example, rather than just lying there and talking about her show with Lola 2.0, she would be doing the talking, while fully naked, or even while masturbating, and you can just have the sound of a vibrator going off and the camera being right at her face. Even that would be good, but you just had to make her out to be a pillow queen, a sad theme in a lot of camgirl rooms. Pillow queen, I define as women on cam who just sit or lie there, typically on a bed, a couch, by their pillow, or on a pillow, and just do nothing. They can talk, that would be a step above, but a good amount of women don't even do that. It is actually realistic, but hey, I wanted something steamier. If you expect this to be a wankfest, I have to break it to you that such a thing is impossible here. I can understand the lead girl not getting down and dirty, but it can be annoying how much she covers up, even just by the first scene. Her topless scene only happens while taking a bath too, what the fuck? Nice boobs and nipples though, and yeah, she was still on the clock, she was having a Cam2Cam session with Barney, this was right after the first scene by the way. Also, just to be clear, Cam2Cam sessions cost tokens, these aren't freebies.


I guess that's it, time to wrap up. I said at the start that this movie is rather difficult to discuss because of my deep involvement with camgirls and the state of holding this to a particular standard and expectation, higher than a regular viewer. Putting these thoughts to screen has gradually made me more sure of myself in my overall critiquing of the movie, and thus the final score. I think the fact the movie leaves such a mixed bag of emotions for me made it difficult to really rate and give a definitive opinion of at first. Hours later of just my regular stuff and the long amount of time alone of this review has made things easier to convey. I never thought the movie was great, it was just a matter of whether it was good or bad, what particular score I would give it out of 10. I had gone back and forth with it, and even during the movie I had that debate as I was a bit critical at one point, but then laughed and had a good time at another, which to specify was the birthday party section. Seeing those goobers go all crazy over seeing Alice cam was actually entertaining. Also, laughing at how much a creepy and sweaty fuckboy Tinker was made me entertained. There were definitely moments where I could back away from the critiquing and enjoy myself, and some moments where I got properly thrilled and bought into some chilling things. They are few and far between though. I didn't feel like I wasted my time, however, and I may watch this again. Not any time soon, that's for sure. In the end, it is definitely a mixed bag for me. I think if someone who had no knowledge of camgirls tackled this, the trigger percentage with me would've been high, and I would've been angry at the misinformation and bad statements on camming. Isa Mazzei didn't have to glamorize and lionize camming, and she didn't end up doing that. I'm fine with that, and I'm not really taking director input into play. Maybe, director Daniel Goldhaber also has a story credit to this, but Isa Mazzei wrote the script, so I'm putting this all on her, especially knowing how she was a camgirl. I'm sure someday I'll find out what her cam name was and I'll perv away, she looked decent enough. I'm not fussed with doing an intensive search at this moment though. I looked at ratings, IMDB has it at 6.1/10 from 1854 users (it was 6.3 when I first watched the movie, at the time of this post, that was 36 hours ago), and RottenTomatoes' audience score has it at 68%, with an average rating of 3.65/5 based on 219 user ratings (62% when I last checked 24 hours ago). Surprisingly, the critical score is 95%, certified fresh (94% when I checked 24 hours ago). That is just ludicrous to me, especially looking at the average rating being 7.2/10, with 55 reviews being counted, though only 3 of those were “rotten” while the rest are fresh. RottenTomatoes has kind of grown to be a joke, they've been at the center of review controversy and typically the critic rating differs greatly from the audience rating. When they're in line, that's when it's more believable, but with examples like Venom, to me they shouldn't be looked at as the be-all end-all. IMDB has its own problems too, especially when movies are brand new and they rate really well, I still get a little hesitant, those scores typically get lower anyways. Sometimes I go back and forth on which to buy more, but this particular movie's rating on RottenTomatoes makes me want to side with IMDB more. I'll quote the Critics Consensus on RottenTomatoes, it would actually bring about my own critiquing of the movie in a rather interesting way.

Smart and suspenseful, CAM is a techno-thriller that's far more than the sum of its salacious parts -- and an outstanding showcase for Madeline Brewer in the leading role.

Uh, no. Is it smart? It's not dumb, for the most part, I'll say that. It's definitely a techno-thriller, and while I won't say it's all that smart, it's definitely well thought out. I guess I'm too biased, but this consensus is not biased enough. Suspenseful? In some ways, definitely, but I've seen more things that exceed in suspense compared to this movie. Outstanding showcase for Madeline Brewer? Oh hell no! She wasn't bad, not at all, but I would not classify her performance as outstanding, it was decent, serviceable, nothing groan-worthy about her performance. Outstanding, that's a major exaggeration. Far more than the sum of its parts? Uhhh, I'd say it's even, when added all up, it is what it basically said it was going to be. Maybe a bit less if I hung on tightly to a particular vagueness. Also, I mentioned the coldness of the ending, that can be good or bad, obviously these people think it's great. I wouldn't hop on that hype train. I will say that despite the rating I'll give it, the movie is worth seeing, just because it is rather unique. The subject matter makes it unique though, the storytelling doesn't fully follow suit with that, you can take out camming and put some other job, more likely something on a corporate level, and make a movie out of that (the two physical meetups would be altered to be Tinder dates or something of the like). The fact that it's about camming gives it that initial expectation of it being a page-turner in a cinematic sense, but there are some things that call for skimming through. Is it some groundbreaking thriller? Not necessarily, if focusing on just the subject matter of camming, sure, but it's just really a new telling of a familiar story. This century has already gone into technology-driven identity theft and in general “techno-thrillers.” Also in general, the use of modern forms of communication, such as social media, has been done far better in other movies. The Social Network is a golden example of that, and it's somewhat based on a true story, and this movie is based on supposedly real life experiences that Isa Mazzei had as a camgirl. I don't think this movie hits the high mark that it possibly could have with such a fresh topic. It tried though, I'll give it that, and it didn't outright suck at it. I just disagree strongly with what RottenTomatoes has to say in that little blurb and their favorable score. I basically agree more with the the IMDB rating. It is passable for me. Maybe if I wasn't too into camgirls, I would like it more, as I could be like “Whoa, camming can be that dark? Gee, I can't imagine!” I assume Isa Mazzei wanted to reach that kind of audience, and not so much the camming community. At the same time, she does represent camgirls somewhat fairly, businesswomen, have some friendly relationships among other models and their viewers, though I can speak from experience that it can get even friendlier without any danger to that, but such a thing is not exciting for movies, right? Again, if someone that is totally oblivious to camming would've tackled this, it would've been highly inaccurate. This has a great deal of accuracy, though it's a bit too cold in that. The movie is still young and I haven't really explored the camgirl community this wpast eekend to gauge the overall reception to this. Only a few, one said it was great, the other only complained about the first scene. I imagine it will be a mixed bag, that's a good prediction to go with, hell, it's a mixed bag to me. The pacing is good by the way, not too long, the credits feel the longest though, about 5-7 minutes worth, and it's overall a 94 minute movie. The thriller aspects are decent, the mystery is good, the acting is serviceable. I wouldn't say “salacious” in any part, as RottenTomatoes said, critics who don't browse for porn? Weird. There are a few sexy bits, but they are very much in the tease department, “salacious” would be a massive exaggeration. You can tell by the words I used in those final thoughts that the movie is just okay. As far as flaws, it's not exciting throughout, it was not positively open-ended (Inception is an example that's positively open-ended, wondering what really happened and theorizing is exciting, though Michael Caine put a nail on that this year), how this creepy cloning plot came about and explained was not very well in my opinion. I mentioned things that annoyed me like the usage of Girls2Download, acting a bit on the unrealistic side while also snitching on something that thrives on being relatively hidden, and some really confusing things. Then there was the weirdness in Alice's family dynamics, more clear being with her mom. All these things and more come together to make a mixed bag. I keep saying that, but it's absolutely true for me. Sequel? Who knows? I don't want to speak on that as if it could possibly happen, it'd be a waste of time. In conclusion, this movie passes just barely for me, it certainly made for a very involved, long, and interesting review. I said in my Power Rangers 2017 review that mixed bag/mediocre films can get me typing the most, and this movie is another example of that. I just get caught up debating with myself over a final rating and giving lots of shine to the good and the not-so-good or straight up bad. More or less, this movie is not-so-good, but I'm content in having seen it. I do hope I get into some conversations about it, or just overhear conversations about it within camgirl circles. For now, I'm happy just to share my involvement and this review with this forum.


6/10


PS: just as I was finishing the review, I went on Snapchat. Their “Discover” section would have articles, advertisements, and even some individual Snapchat channels. On the top row, funnily enough, was a woman by the name of “BabyGirl.” WOW! She appears to be black too. Technically, the BabyGirl in this movie has her name spelled out to include an underscore, so it's actually “BabyGirl_.” This BabyGirl though has a period next to her name, small differences, but still a wacky coincidence.

[Rogerbh]

I watched "Juan of the Dead" (2010) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_of_the_Dead - a Zombie Apocalypse comedy set in Havana - where apparently no one has ever seen a Zombie film. The main players all speak Spanish so I had to pay attention to the bottom of the screen to read the subtitles. There is a beautiful actress - Andrea Duro - that made me think that Valentina Nappi or Maria Visconti had done a normal film. Not quite as busty as those two, but still made me watch the entire film. She failed to show her chest, quite a pity.

The entire film, the "authorities" were blaming the US for the "dissidents" who were taking bites out of their fellow Cubans. A strange take on a Zombie film where guns seemingly are very rare, not one AK47 to be seen.

One attractive lady goes topless for less than 10 seconds but she doesn't last too long. Fat guys and gay guys are more prominent. Havana, pre-Zombie, looks like shit. Guessing the year depicted to be in the 90's as the main character is an Angola vet. If you like Zombie films, not a complete waste of time.

I give it three out of five

[neo2008]

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald






Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) returns to track down the woman he has fallen for ina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston) and to be commisioned by Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law) to find Credence Barebone (Ezra Miller), before dark wizard Grindelwald (Johnny Depp) can get his hands on him.


PRAISE : So much better this time around !! The silliness and long drawn out moments to just show off SFX are kept to a minimum.It's well acted by the entire cast which includes : Claudia Kim, Carmen Ejogo, Zoe Kravitz, Alison Sudol, Dan Fogler, and Callum Turner.
Director David Yates keeps things moving steadily for the most part.
The inclusion of some characters give the film a boost.I actually felt something for the characters.Some strong emotional moments and multiple romances brought strength to the story,actually making the film intriguing.
I found the climax to be very involving and action packed.Some really amazing and stunning SFX and a great score by James Newton Howard.


PROBLEMS :I was about to pull out a notepad or hoped there was an App i could use to keep up with the numerous story threads.If you dont pay close attention especially to the flashbacks you will be confused.
Depp was good but i felt he wasnt given enough time to shine,and was only able to display his skills fully at the films climax.There are a couple of dull moments.Some characters are sidelined.

Im far more invested and im actually looking forward to the next 3(?)chapters in this tale

Scale of 1-10 a 7½






WIDOWS





After their husbands are killed during a heist the widows of the men are cornered into trying to pulloff a heist themselves.



PRAISE:The acting in this film is off the charts great.The cast does a great job which includes :
Viola Davis, Daniel Kaluuya, Brian Tyree Henry, Robert Duvall, Colin Farrell, Cynthia Erivo, Carrie Coon, Elizabeth Debicki, Michelle Rodriguez, Liam Neeson.
Their perfomances are laces with intensity,intimidation and raw emotion.
Scenes crackle with devestating dialogue.
The opening action sequence hit me like a lightning bolt.I liked how the film displayed how the women were novices to anything criminal and had to find their rhythm together and individually.
I loved how Director/writer Steve McQueen and writer Gillian Flynn didnt make it easy for the widows.


PROBLEMS: A major plot twist was extremely predictable.The film meanders here and there and i kept saying wow i wish they would pick up the pace here.It was odd how some scenes were shot but maybe the director was trying to show off or it was anod to something i couldnt recall
Theres a big plot hole i couldnt make peace with long after i left the theatre.


Widows is a good film but not the great one i hoped it would be and may be a bit over hyped.

Scale of 1-10 a 7½

[Tmee2020]

Originally Posted by Brecht

Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973)

Pat Garrett (James Coburn) used to be an outlaw. Now he's an old fart who has come to the conclusion that it's better to sell out and stay alive. He becomes a tool of the cattle barons in New Mexico who wish to establish their notion of law and order. But those plans are opposed by many outlaws who are celebrated as heroes among locals. One of them is Garrett's old friend William Bonney aka Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson). After making him a sheriff, the cattle barons hire a somewhat reluctant Garrett to hunt down Billy the Kid...

Directed by Sam Peckinpah.

I saw this at a Drive-In in 1974, within a year of its release. I remember thinking it was pretty disjointed. There have been different versions re-released in recent years.

Shown again in a local cinema. This time around I was disappointed.

[Wendigo]

Godzilla: Final Wars (2004)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0399102/


A kaiju slug-fest of massive proportions as a race of aliens arrived to enslave the Earth then after capturing all Earth's monsters then release Gigan, a small band of freedom fighters release Godzilla so he can fight Gigan.
Starring every Toho creature you can think of and disposing of the US version of Godzilla in a couple of blows accompanied by a sly dig at the beast.

Monsters, mutants and Mothra kicking Gigan's ass, what's not to love???

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6qjTUzkNYk

[73north]

Originally Posted by LV Gas

Bohemian Rhapsody 8.4/10
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1727824/

Really enjoyed it.

also saw this Film on Sunday , and really enjoyed it as well

[Starkos]

Originally Posted by LV Gas

Bohemian Rhapsody 8.4/10
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1727824/

Really enjoyed it.

Originally Posted by 73north

also saw this Film on Sunday , and really enjoyed it as well

I second that Solid biopic by Bryan 'Usual Suspects' Singer That whole Live Aid sequence is particularly epic.