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Friday Fun Thread for August 28, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Have you ever gone to see a film in the cinema, and left early? If so, why?

I'm pretty sure the only film I left early was They Wait in the Dark, leaving within the first half hour. It was a low-budget independent horror film, and it was just so amateurishly assembled that any expectation of enjoying it was quickly abandoned. It was bad, but not even in a "so bad it's good" campy way. It just felt like a student film with an inflated runtime.

The first film I went to see in the cinema by myself was Unfriended. I remember considering leaving early (because I was so scared: indeed, this is a testament to its effectiveness as a horror film), but in the end I stuck it out. I'm glad I did.

My mum told me the only films she left early were Trainspotting (which I've seen several times and love) and Dangerous Liaisons (which I haven't seen). In both cases I think she left because she found them offensive, rather than poorly made. I can certainly understand in the former case: as a parent, watching a movie in which a baby starves to death because its junkie parents are too strung out to notice its wailing is bound to hit different than it would for a childless person like me, even if that scene is included in order to condemn the perpetrators' lifestyle.

I haven't, but my wife has.

She walked out on Gaspar Noe's [Climax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climax_(2018_film)). Having stayed and finished it, I now believe I should have done the same.

She also didn't finish the new Bladerunner. Somehow, she hadn't watched the first movie and was quite confused by what was going on. She also doesn't care for Gosling, so felt no need to stay when she lost the plot.

edit: wtf, the link is rendered perfectly in the comment preview, but not in the actual comment. Zorba, why does The Motte use two separate Markdown renderers?

Climax. Weird.

I watched one of his earlier films, Irréversible, during Covid. I'd read a summary of the plot well over a decade prior, and essentially spent the intervening years building up the courage to watch the film. It was exactly as gruelling and punishing an experience as I'd expected, and easily one of the most disturbing films I've ever seen. It's a film that achieved exactly what it set out to do, for which I can only admire it, and yet not a film that I'd recommend to anyone, and especially not to a woman.