Month: May 2022

Law Abiding Citizen 2 in Development: The Question is WHY?

Village Roadshow is heading back to prison to free Law Abiding Citizen 2, but I’m curious who is patiently awaiting this sequel?

Variety is reporting that Village Roadshow is teaming up with Rivulet Films to develop the sequel to the 2009 thriller that starred Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler. The original film grossed $126 million on a budget of $53 million, so it may have turned a slight profit (with theaters taking half the gross and an unknown marketing budget), but it recently sparked a resurgence when it debuted on Netflix, entering their Top 10 list of most-watched movies & shows. Variety reports that screenwriter Kurt Wimmer (Equilibrium, Point Break 2015) will return, but not much else is known about the project during this early stage.

I remember very little of the first film outside of my disappointment upon viewing it, so I had to do a little research to freshen my mind on the plot details. Clyde, the “villain” of the film, played by Butler, dies at the end, and I cannot recall any other threats, so I’m curious where the film’s sequel would take us or if this is an ill-advised attempt to cash in any IP that Village Roadshow can.

With the uncertain box office profitability of the first film and the 26% Rotten Tomatoes score, I guess I just don’t understand this play, but maybe there’s an idea that’s been gestating for 13 years. All that aside, I have been very mixed with the current slate of Wimmer’s screenplays (the screenwriter recently wrote and directed a new Children of the Corn film back in late 2020 that has yet to see a release, which doesn’t bode well).

Looks like we’ll be adopting a Wait-and-See policy on Law Abiding Citizen 2, but the question is…

Are you interested in seeing a follow-up to Law Abiding Citizen? Do you even remember the first film? Let me know and drop a comment with your thoughts on this new project!

-Kyle A. Goethe

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Shortbus is Too Much for Amazon Video!

It appears that streaming giant Amazon Video cannot handle the “offensive content” contained in John Cameron Mitchell’s 2006 film Shortbus.

The critically acclaimed controversial film Shortbus has finally hit streamers across the landscape after previously being unavailable, and though you can now find a copy of it on Google Play, VUDU, and Apple TV, Mitchell’s film has not appeared on Amazon Video, and we are now learning a bit more about why it’s missing.

Indiewire has reported that Amazon’s official reasoning for the exclusion comes down to “captions are out of sync” and “offensive content.” It should be noted that the subtitles are fine on every other service, and the error response that Oscilloscope Laboratories, who submitted the film to Prime Video, actually received reads: “We aren’t making your title available on Prime Video as it violates our Content Policy Guidelines.”

Oscilloscope’s president, Dan Berger, stated, “There’s no shortage of dicks readily available on Amazon.” He’s not wrong. There’s a sizable number of films on Amazon Video that featured unsimulated sex scenes in their productions and finished products, and I’ve noted several below (some of these are even featured for free as part of Prime Video):

  • Double Face (1969)
  • Cry Uncle! (1971)
  • Score (1974)
  • Female Vampire (1975)
  • Blue Movie (1978)
  • Romance (1999)
  • Sex and Lucia (2001)
  • 8mm 2 (2005)
  • Lust, Caution (2007)
  • Otto; or Up with Dead People (2008)
  • Gutterballs (2008)
  • Enter the Void (2009)
  • The Band (2009)
  • Dogtooth (2009)
  • Stranger by the Lake (2013)
  • Wetlands (2013)
  • Pasolini (2014)
  • A Thought of Ecstacy (2017)

Now, it should be noted that Amazon is a business, and a business is allowed to have principles around what they want to market and sell and what they do not, but it strikes me that they used the excuse of subtitles for this film when their statement about content that violates their Guidelines should suffice.

But that also doesn’t solve the question pertaining to the amount of other films with the same type of CONTENT that should flag the same part of their GUIDELINES. Why is Shortbus excluded from the servce but you can easily watch Blue Movie or Lust, Caution or Wetlands without issue? Is it because Shortbus is incredible well-known for its unsimulated sex? That would’nt surprise me as the service also excludes the notable Nymphoniac Part 1 & Part 2 which featured the same. Or is there another reason we aren’t privy to? Is Amazon Prime excluding because it caters to the LGBTQIA+ group? I’m not saying that I believe that, as I haven’t seen many of the films from the above list that Amazon does service, but I’m just asking questions to figure out why Shortbus would be out when so many other films are not.

I don’t think we can figure out the answers to this mystery at this time, but hopefully the company will provide more clarity to their decision to help readers and fans of Shortbus understand the reasoning behind their decision.

Shortbus is currently available at most other digital services.

So what do you think about Amazon Video’s exclusion of Shortbus? Will you be checking out the film at another digital retailer? Let me know with a comment below!

-Kyle A. Goethe

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