13 Reasons Why - Episode 3

Alex's very boring tape

13 Reasons Why
Episode 3: Tape 2 side A

Honestly, this episode was just boring, it reiterated the same point over and over. Boys are dicks and will write mean things about you. I'm going to say now that this one might not be all that long because this episode's biggest crime was that it was just boring and I don't like repeating my same points over and over.

Episode plot: It's Alex's turn to take the blame because he took part in writing a list about the best and worst features on girls at school. It seems as though she covered this in her previous tape about Jessica and she probably could have put them both on the same tape.

Title card: Since the first episode something has been bugging me about the opening credits, and it's not just the fact that they're kind of unnecessary for a Netflix show that people binge on. It's taken me a little while to realise why I can't stand it and it's the way that the title of the show is presented to us. It's not just 13 Reasons Why or Thirteen Reasons Why, for whatever reason, someone decided that it'd be fun to combine the two, giving us Th1rteen R3asons Why and doesn't that just look fucking ugly? Do the people behind the scenes creating the title card think teenagers write this way? Especially highschoolers? I mean...maybe back in the early 2000's when Sk8r Boy was a thing it was probably cool to write that way but fuck, that's an assault to the eyes right there.

Clay: In this episode, we see Clay take a fucking volleyball to the wound on his head in gym class. It kind of comes out of nowhere but the guy wasn't paying attention and managed to just get smashed. It's painful to see and of course, the guy swears over the pain he's in. Does his gym teacher care? Fuck no, just tells him to watch his language. I mean...what a shitty teacher man. Christ.

Alex: The subject of today's tape and maybe even a victim of Hannah's spiteful tape crusade. Alex does admit to what he did and knows that what he did was terrible and rightfully so, feels terrible about it. He then *SPOILER IF YOU'VE NOT SEEN IT* tries to down himself, I'm not 100% on whether he did drown or if it was just an attempt or it was a very obvious visual metaphor to show how he's "drowning" in his own thoughts over this but damn, was this Hannah's intention? To get people to follow her if they can admit to themselves that they did a shitty thing to her? Is it me or does that sound like something out of a SAW movie?

Hannah: Thankfully, there wasn't a lot of her in this one. She continues to place blame and in this one, I do see how she could be extremely upset over the events. She becomes a pawn in Alex's petty relationship problem which causes her to lose her friend Jessica, she is then getting talked about behind her back and I mean who hasn't had that? Especially girls, girls are fucking horrible creatures and we're even worse in school because that's when we start becoming self-aware. The worst part about the episode which I do feel bad for her is where she's at the corner shop buying chocolate and Brice (Justin Prentice), a friend of Justin's, comes up behind her, grabs and squeezes her arse. That's disgusting behaviour and it's not right that he felt he had the right to do it because Hannah was noted as "best ass" on that list. It's disgusting and this is the only time so far that I support Hannah's right to be severely upset.

Tony: I'm literally going to count how many times Clay says "Tony, what the hell?" Or "What the hell, Tony?" It could be the show's secret catchphrase. Tony is also played by Christian Navarro who looks like he 100% does not belong in high school. He looks like he is in his mid-late 20's and has some gorgeous tattoos. I need some help working this out because are visible tattoos allowed in American high schools for 17/18-year-olds? If so then why is that ok? I need answers guys.

The girl's bathroom: Remember what I said when I was talking about the men's stalls in the first episode? How I was saying it was unrealistic that such lovely things were written on the walls? Remember what I said in an earlier paragraph about high school girls being evil? Turns out in this universe that's true, wanna know what they write on their walls? Here's a fancy little list for y'all.

• Eat me
• Megans a whore - look who's talking bitch
• Amy is / has (I couldn't see it that well) a big wet cunt
• Jamie is such a basic bitch
• Megan is a whore and a cum dumpster
• Lisa is a gang-banger
• Diane is a whore
• D.T / P.T (again I couldn't see it all that well but I'm sure it was one or the other) had an abortion - naming my next abortion after you bitch
• Eat Shit Janis
• Fuck you Amy
• You are so ugly no on would even rape you

How vile is that? Very. How realistic is that? For America, I'm not sure but for over here it's definitely not, the worst thing you see in a women's toilet is the stuff that's meant to be in the toilet, is everywhere but in the toilet. It's a genuine nightmare for a girl to go to the bathroom in public. I don't even know how girls miss the toilet entirely and get stuff up the walls and on the floor. You guys attaching fucking tubes to yourselves and having water fights with the door closed or something? Fuck me, it's disgusting. 10/10 would not recommend using a public bathroom in (at the very least) the North West of England. I have yet to find out what the rest of the country is like.

Anyway, that's what I thought of that one, see you guys whenever for the next one. Hopefully, it won't be as dull as this one was. Peace guys.

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this episode/series. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this series then go and support its creators by watching it again on its platform. 

13 Reasons Why - Episode 2

Hot chocolate is the cure for all things shitty

13 Reasons Why 

Episode 2: Tape 1 side B.

In this episode, we learn that you can't trust what the dead say. Should be a given because we can't ask them for any more information, thinking about it, why should we trust what anyone says in this story? It's their word against a dead girls. Besides that, we're seeing this how she wants us to see this, to paint herself as the ultimate victim. 

Episode plot: Hannah tells the story of how she became friends with another new girl called Jessica (Alisha Boe) and a new guy, Alex (Miles Heizer). Soon enough she discovers that friendship is fake when love is involved.

I have so many problems with this episode. First off, there's the counsellor, Mrs Antilli (Lisa Anne Morrison) who is the happiest person I have ever seen in my entire 19 years of life. I have no idea how anyone can be that sickeningly happy while working in a school. Then there's the fact that Hannah says that once her, Jessica and Alex are all friends, they eventually went their separate ways, or so she thought. It seems that through the lens we're seeing this, the lens Hannah has created, that Alex dropped the girls as friends because he "upgraded" as Hannah puts it. Then Jessica drops Hannah for some reason. We then see that Jessica and Alex are dating and rather than just drop either of them a text saying "hi, what's up? Wanna hang out sometime?" she decides to leave them be. 

Jessica tells Clay that it was actually Hannah that stopped coming, bringing his ideas of what he thought to be true crashing down around him as he asks "but why would she lie?" Why would she lie Clay? I'll tell you why, she's manipulating the events to paint herself a nice victim portrait, to show everyone that she was alone and nobody cared.

I understand that depression and a variety of other mental health issues can cause you to pull away from those you care about, I've been there, done that got the t-shirt and been going back and forth on a holiday there for years. But the thing is, you can't make yourself out as a victim because two of your friends got together and you didn't like it so you pulled away from them. That's not how friendship works. As you said, Hannah, friendship is complicated.

You did nothing: At the beginning of the episode, Hannah tells us, in not so many specific words, that her death, whether you're immediately linked to her or not, is your fault. And this seems to be a thing that's probably going to be pushed through every episode and I really can't be bothered with that. This is such a horrible move for this girl to make, has she thought about her own actions? Has she thought that school is going to be over soon and she'll never have to hear these rumours again? Has she thought to just ignore them and find herself some better friends who won't slap her in public and call her a slut? She's definitely planned this out more than she should have and it's going to be interesting to see how this plays out.

Clay: This little bundle of idiot innocence strikes again with not knowing how to talk to a girl. Hannah asks him if he thinks she'll ever be as pretty as Jessica and he pauses like...the fuck? You're really pretty, probably prettier than her. She then gets in a huff which...I understand I've done that more than enough times when it takes Ben more than a second to agree with me that I'm cute as fuck but then he says she's special. Bitch no, you don't do that, that's not a good save. God. This is the only scene in which I like Hannah.

Hannah: My like for Hannah was short lived, unfortunately. At the start of the episode, Hannah is telling us that she knows why we're still listening to these tapes, we want to know who else killed her and how. It's disgustingly smug and she finishes her little speech with Quote: "oh and by the way, I'm still dead." What a horrible thing to say, of course you're still dead, listening to these tapes and forcing people to be guilt ridden isn't going to bring you back, nor is it going to bring you any sort of satisfaction. If you'd faked your death and were watching this from afar to see the misery you were causing that would be understandable but you're dead. There is no point in this aside from petty vengeance for your friend getting a boyfriend.

The tapes: There's an investigation into Hannah's suicide and so far at least 4 people, not counting Clay have listened to these tapes. Why has nobody thought to hand these into the police? It could be helpful in finding out what happened and from Hannah's point of view too. Then again with Hannah not saying anything was her fault and manipulating the story so as to make the listener to feel guilty, maybe that's a good enough reason to not tell the police. Why should they trust the manipulator?

Overall, I still can't stand Hannah, and she seems to become a slightly worse person as these tapes go on, there's only so much I can take before I go mad and say things I will regret about her. Maybe she'll make me a tape. Anyway, that's it from me today, I'm heading out and enjoying the day for once so peace out guys.

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this episode/series. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this series then go and support its creators by watching it again on its platform.

Big Stan

This is really not going to be long.

Director: Rob Schnieder
Writer: Josh Lieb

If there's an actor I can't stand more than Matthew Broderick, it's got to be Rob Schnieder. Fuck him. I hate his acting, I hate his directing. I hate this film. Don't get me wrong, both these guys are probably lovely in person and I'm not going to judge them as people but...whenever I see them on screen I wanna hit something.

So what can I say about this film? It has some incredibly good actors in it, especially Jennifer Morrison who I just love in Once Upon A Time, there's also David Carradine who you might know from Kill Bill volumes 1 and 2. Let's have a look at who else is in this, Scott Wilson (Hershel from The Walking Dead), Richard Kind, (a hell of a lot of Pixar movies), Jackson Rathbone (Twilight series) Marcia Wallace (Edna Krabappel from The Simpsons) and a fair few others so I really can't wrap my mind around the fact that this film sucks when you've got some amazing actors involved. Fuck.

The story falls flat on its face. Rob Schnieder gets sent to prison and has six months get his affairs in order before actually going behind bars. Fine, could be fun to see what goes down with that. Schnieder gets help from "The Master" played by David Carradine to toughen up and not get raped in jail. Again, fair enough. Where it falls apart is around the 40-minute mark, I know it was 40 minutes because I thought the film was almost over and there was an hour left. The film falls apart because this tiny ass 30-40-year-old man walks into a prison and just takes control. If I was in a prison and he walked in trying that shit I'd beat the hell out of him. And if I couldn't take him alone what with all that martial arts training he had then I'd get my gang to help me, not fucking run at him one at a time.

Speaking of martial arts training, during the first act of the film, we see Schnieder learning karate. No problem with that right so why bring it up? I'm bringing it up because he was in a child's class. Was there just such little demand for adult classes? Can this billionaire not afford private classes? What the fuck?

I will say this, there is one funny line. During a shower scene, the leader of the nazi gang has made a shiv out of a melted toothbrush and a razor blade, Schnieder sees the guy coming up behind him in a reflection and fights him. He gets sliced on the chest, looks down at it, looks back up at the guy and just says Quote: "that's gonna scar, you psycho." That's honestly just it.

The film, aside from that line, isn't funny, or worth watching. It's a waste of time and I checked the time 6 times throughout the film, at one point it was it had been 2 minutes since the last time I'd checked. This is the only time I willingly watched a Rob Schnieder film, I've been forced to do this twice, once by my best friend and the other by my boyfriend. Love hurts right. God, I need some vodka.

Ok I'm out, sorry this was short but...I can only say "this isn't a good film". There's nothing specifically bad, it's just bad. How this got a higher rating than Amy Schumer's Leather Special on Netflix is beyond me. Thinking about it, their comedy's on a similar wavelength except Schumer is less funny and grosser. Anyway, peace guys.

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this film then go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.

The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out Of Water

What a fucking waste of my time that was.

Directors: Paul Tibbitt
                  Mike Mitchel
Writers: Glenn Berger (Screenplay)
                Jonathan Aibel (Screenplay)
                Stephen Hillenberg (Story)
                Paul Tibbitt (Story)
     

I don't like Spongebob. Correction: I used to like Spongebob, I liked the first few series and the first film but after that the show was dying and it was it just...it's dead and scary and I can't stand it. I remember the ads for this movie though and honestly, I thought Spongebob had finished its television life and was going to be going out with a bang with this film that seemed to take place, mostly, on land. How wrong I was...

This film takes it sweet time getting to the surface, about an hour into the film to give a more general time. That's only half an hour for land time. Why market it as mostly land time when it's actually just the third act? And even that's not even all that great, I mean, the CGI looks really fake but it's got this feel to it that makes it believable in the surface world which definitely makes it work. There's a point in which they have to become super hero's which, going into the film, is what I thought this was going to be about. Apparently not. But this superhero section has one of the worst character designs I've ever seen. Plankton has the biggest, most muscular body out of all the characters and yet...his head stays the same size it was before he changed...it looks horrific. He literally looks like a huge body builder with a pretty long nipple for a head. It's disgusting to look at.

Speaking of disgusting, There is a squence where Plankton goes into Spongebob's brain and we get to see what that's like and I can't deal with it. It's sickeningly sweet. So sickening that it makes Plankton vomit, the vomit becomes a rainbow with eyes that calls Plankton daddy making Plankton scream in terror and rightfully so. It's disgusting. There's also a Shining parody which all the kids will get y'know.

Another thing they manage to parody that kids will understand is the bit about teamwork. Spongebob is trying to get Plankton to say teamwork rather than te-am-work and it plays out exactly how the "cool whip" bit from Family Guy does. I don't know if that was thrown in there for the adults but it wasn't even funny when Family Guy did it so why would it be funny coming from Spongebob?

I complain about this film but it's actually ok, it's better than what the series is now which is just terrible so that's a blessing. The CGI is actually pretty good, or at least it looks good and fits with the film. You can still tell that it's CGI but not as much as you can in some other films where it looks terrible so...thank God for small mercies right?

The voice acting isn't all that terrible either, especially with the seagulls who have really good voices behind them such as,  Billy West who you may know as a voice actor from Futurama, Cree Summer from a lot of reboots of great cartoons, Tim Conway and more. The live action acting from Antonio Banderas was also fun to watch, painful to listen to hear him try to sound like a pirate, but fun to watch.

I'm sorry if this seems a little rushed but I have no idea what to even say about this. It was adequate and the story revolved around teamwork and how much they could hammer in the fact that if you work as a team everything's better, unless one person fucks up, then it's just that one person's fault and nothing to do with the team. Probably a really harmful message to send out to kids but the films out there and kids love Spongebob so...that's that generation of kids not taking their part of the blame for something. Like I said, I'm sorry it's rushed but I hope you enjoyed it. Peace out guys,

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this film then go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.

Hard Candy

I literally always forget about the plot for things I put on a schedule.

Director: David Slade
Writer: Brian Nelson

This is gonna be fairly short because there isn't much to talk about specifically in terms of character or writing, my opinions on this are fairly general. Plus I only write like 6 notes on it because I was too sucked into it so I really have both a lot, and nothing to say.

First of all, I thought it was pretty good, Ellen Page plays the part of a young girl who's just out to kill a paedophile. I say kill, more rid the world of one. It's actually quite interesting that a young girl can do this sort of thing and seemingly not get caught, she can be calm about what she's doing but also worry about it when it goes wrong. It's amazing that a young girl can solve a crime and deal with it faster than the police can. She's managed to track down both the men who molested and killed a young girl and put an end to the both of them after getting confessions from the both of them. She never reveals who she is, throughout the film you think you know who this girl is, Hayley. Towards the end, you see that she's managed to lie her way through the whole thing. Was she even 14? We'll never know.

Then there's Jeff played by Patrick Wilson, known for playing Ed Warren in The Conjuring and Josh Lambert from the Insidious movies. He does a great job at playing a man who knows how to manipulate young girls, especially teenage girls. The way he consistently tries to shift the power from Hayley back onto himself is so interesting to see, the lengths he'll go to free himself from whatever it is she's doing is fun to see too, he tells her a story of his aunt who almost castrated him by fire as a child and the way he tells it is intriguing. He starts off panicked, occasionally repeating phrases, his movements are jolty, trying to break free from his bonds, he gives specific details then changes them. As the story progresses he gets calmer, more confident, like he knows that this is the story that will set him free, it has to be right? It isn't and he gets traumatised into thinking he's been castrated. He does everything he can to both get free and stay innocent if he's caught.

Just these characters alone are interesting, and clearly, a lot of thought went into them, into their development. There had to be a lot of time dedicated to these two characters because they're the only characters we see working off of each other. The psychological power play between the characters is intense. You feel Jeff's panic and calmness messing with Hayley's madness and intellect. If I have to do a character study on a character from film I would definitely do it on either of these characters. Maybe even both.

The camerawork is occasionally a little shaky, and I don't mean like a handheld camera capturing the feeling of first person walking, I mean Michael Bay action sequence shaky. However, unlike Michael Bay's disgusting shaking of the camera almost everywhere you look, here it works. It gives a sense of panic, it gives a feeling of sickness, the feeling of no control. It brings you more into the film than pushes you out of the experience.

The story is where I have problems though. The story is about a teenage girl who has managed to track down the killer of Donna Mauer, seduces him, meets him, psychologically tortures him into a confession and suicide. On paper that sounds fine but after watching I was left with some questions, such as how did she manage it? As I said before it's quite incredible that she managed to do that while the police were unable to. The film is based on suspicion, a hunch, that she has the right man. How could she be so sure of what he really did? What if he wasn't the one who did this? What if he was just some other predator who she was just blindly accusing and only gave her a confession so as to make her stop? Would his neighbour tell the police about his "niece"? What could happen to her after all of this? I don't know, but I was dragged so deep into this that I only started asking these questions while looking over all 6 of my notes.

If you get a chance you should definitely check this out, it's great if you're into psychological thrillers and power play between characters. I really can't recommend this enough.

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this film then go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.

Shrek 5?!

Because I had to find out about this when I had a busy ass morning...

Do you remember that film from 2001 that was basically a huge animated middle finger to Disney? Of course you do, it's a huge fucking meme at this point. It wasn't a great film but it beat out Monsters Inc for the first best animated picture award at the Academy Awards so...someone saw something in it I guess. Since then, it's managed to have a fairly successful life with a really good sequel, an impressively poor third film and a pointless fourth. Add onto that 2 Puss in boots spin-offs, 7 short films, 2 television specials and a Puss in boots series, and then there's every single Shrek meme plus a fucking musical. So it begs the question, with all this material to sate the masses, why a 5th film?

I'm not making this up either, I don't know when this was officially announced but I just watched something on Youtube and my naive little mind thought that it couldn't possibly be true. Unfortunately, it is. For some reason, we must all suffer from another fucking Shrek movie. Who even asked for this? I know I didn't, I know nobody I know asked for this. Maybe Ben but that could be for the memes.

I looked into it further and it was announced last year...I'm painfully late to finding this out but whatever, I'm mad about it now so I'm gonna talk about it. Anyway, given the amount of time this news has been out, what information do I have to pass on? Its release year is 2019, I've not found a specific date but my guess is that it will be a summer release. More kids are going to want to see it and what better time to get them? Summer holidays makes sense. What else? Eddie Murphy may be on board to do it, the script is apparently finished and according to Murphy in an interview with Cinemablend, he says Quote: "They took a nice long break [after 2010's Shrek Forever After]. The next Shrek...I think Jeffrey [Katzenberg] told me 2019? 2019 or 2020, it will be ready. But they've got a good script, they wrote a nice good script." The screenplay has been written by Michael McCullers, the man behind the second and third Austin Powers films.

What I don't know for sure is whether this will be a direct sequel or a reboot of the series. Some of the sites I've looked at have said it's a reboot/reimagining of the series. If they went with that, what would that mean for the original cast? Would they be involved? If it's not that, then what the hell kind of story is it going to be? Maybe they'll do something darker with it, something like what the Cars 3 trailer is promising.

I'm really not interested in the idea of this but you know I'm going to end up fucking seeing it, just like I'm going to end up seeing Cars 3, Toy Story 4 and literally anything else that's not needed. Why did I even take the time to write this at dick o'clock in the morning? I'm going to see my friend perform at uni then go to Wales with my boyfriend, I don't have time for this. Fuck sake. A'ight, I'm mildly annoyed by this. Peace out and have a good day guys.

13 Reasons Why - Episode 1

Boy am I late to this party...

13 Reasons Why
Episode 1: Tape 1, side A.

I understand I'm very late to jumping onto this trend but that's because I didn't want to. I saw all the hype and thought no, I'm probably not going to get into it, forget it. But then I started seeing extremely opposing opinions on it and people threatening to delete each other from Facebook if they thought the show was good or bad. Some people thought it was boring or ok but that was a very small group of people in comparison, and the number of memes that flooding my feed was unbelievable so I decided to just watch the first episode and see what there is and whether it's worth talking about. Let me tell you something now, the first episode of any series is usually kind of boring to a lot of people, that's because they need to establish characters, connections and personalities. That's how it always goes, it's also there to give the rest of the story a base to start from, whether it's something that has nothing to do with the end or if it's a key part, it's always the most important episode, regardless of whether it's a bit boring or not, you have to at least get to the third episode to see if there's anything of substance. So with that in mind, I'm only going to talk about the plot to the series, this episode and the character we see and hear a lot of, Hannah (Katherine Langford).

Opening: The best thing about the show is that before the credits start which...why do Netflix do opening credits? I know they're there to get the viewer interested in what they're watching but like, it's Netflix, you got us hooked already and you know that we're gonna binge watch and you know for a fact that we're not going to forget that we're watching the same series. There's just no need guys.

As I was saying before the credits start there's a notice telling the viewer that if you've been affected by the issues tackled in the show to contact the Samaritans. The notice also gives information about how to do that and also tells you that the calls to the Samaritans helplines do not show up on phone bills. This is such a helpful notice because even though the show is about a girl who could have done this, she decides to be petty as shit.

Series plot: A girl has killed herself and as a part of her plan, she decides not to seek out help for her mental health or reach out to talk to anyone, she instead opts to record herself pushing blame onto the people around her via cassette tape. She knows that this method will take time for people get through and maybe even cost them a hell of a lot of money because cassette players are fairly expensive and not everyone has one at their disposal but does she care? No, she just wants to be unique.

At least, that's my opinion on the plot. This is probably the most attention seeking way I've seen blame get shifted onto others. The fact that she could have helped herself rather than carry out this petty plan is baffling. Why would you do that? Do you want people to suffer as you did? Maybe even leading them to end their lives the same way you did? How horrible a person do you have to be to do that? I'll admit I can be quite petty but I would never go this far as to be so horrible to those around me in my life.

Episode plot: This first episode is about Hannah's first kiss with her friend's ex, Justin (Brandon Flynn). More specifically, this episode is about Clay (Dylan Minnette) being sent the tapes that Hannah took the time to get a hold of and record onto, and he listens to them, wondering what the hell he did to her because she says that if you're listening to the tapes, you have some of her blood on your hands.

Clay, throughout this episode, is a lovely guy to Hannah, and he makes one stupid comment about "waiting for the right time" which she mistakes for him calling her a slut and storms out on him. When he gets the tapes and hears that he may have some blame on his shoulders he's understandably freaked out because he has no idea what he's done, and if the worst thing he did was accidentally call her a slut because he wasn't thinking about his choice of words then Hannah is an idiot. Boys don't think about what they're saying, they just say the words that come into their brains and spit it out, only realising afterwards when someone is visibly upset by them. Actually, it's not even just boys, girls do it. Point being, if this is the worst that Clay has done then he definitely shouldn't have received these tapes.

Hannah: I am not a fan of this character. When you first hear her voice she sounds so smug, like she's won the jackpot and is rubbing the lottery ticket in a homeless person's face. She is talking to the listener of the tapes like this was their fault. The way this character holds herself on screen is horrible, she acts as if she is Queen Bee of those around her and everybody is below her. Her attitude stinks, even for a teenager. She has such a condescending tone to her voice and when she speaks to Clay, telling him he hurt her feelings, she acts like he just hit her or something. I understand she was upset but there was just no need to do that. Just tell him what happened rather than let him think what he wants, treat him like you want to be his friend rather than walk over him.

Bathroom graffiti: I almost forgot about this but at the first part of the episode Clay is hiding out in the men's bathroom in a stall to just get away from everything for a little bit. I paused the episode and saw some wall writing that definitely wouldn't be written in the men's room, probably not even in the women's. There were only two that I could see clearly which were:
Quote: "No means NO"
Quote: "Don't let the world bring you down"
I asked a couple of guys whether this would be seen in the men's room and they both said no 'cause, as a female, I can only go off assumptions of what the men's room must be like. However, I will assume it's cleaner than the women's because trust me, I can share some horror stories about the ladies school and public bathrooms. I've heard some things about later in the series which these quotes could tie into but I'm gonna have to wait and see.

Anyway, that's it for that episode. It was ok, kind of boring and I don't like Hannah at all. Clay seems nice enough though and I'm glad that he's the character we get to follow throughout the series. I don't know what days I'll be posting these and I thought it would be better to post episodes separately so I can talk more in depth about it. Anyway, hope you enjoyed this, I've got 12 more episodes to get through and it's gonna be fun to try something new.

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this episode/series. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this series then go and support its creators by watching it again on it's platform. 

Sweeney Todd

Apparently Tom Hardy doesn't know what pain is.

Director: David Moore
Writer: Joshua St Johnston

This version of the story of the demon barber is a bitch to find on DVD. I don't know if it's because roughly nobody knows about it and have only ever seen it thinking it was the 2008 Tim Burton project which is pretty good but a less serious telling of the story. I've also already talked about that one so if you like when you're done with this one go look at that one, I'll leave a link at the end.

As I was saying, this is a more serious telling of the story, with Todd growing up in prison for a crime he never committed rather than being banished for having a gorgeous wife, killing as a vice rather than for revenge. It's definitely a better story, in my opinion at least. Let's get into it anyway.

So the bad points. Tom Hardy's acting when he's supposed to be in pain. I'm not 100% sure on what he's doing with his performance, when he's not in pain he does a pretty good job of playing the sweet, kind officer Matthew Payne but when the character has a bullet in his shoulder being dug out of him, he plays it off as he just bumped his baby toe on the door. The same with getting stabbed and having his throat cut, it's almost like he doesn't care, he tries to get away which is a point in his favour but barely any effort went into that. Maybe he was trying to not oversell it or something but it seems to be something he's carried off into the rest of his career. For example, in the horrifically painful The Revenant, DiCaprio cuts off Hardy's characters finger, Hardys reaction? Something along the lines of "oh shit". I'm not 100% on the exact phrase but damn did that character not care. I keep looking for the clip of the whole fight scene but all I get is the end scene once Hardy's character is dead and from that the only way I'll get a proper quote from the film is by watching the whole thing again which I'm not going to do. Maybe I will and write about it next month because the audience reaction was pretty interesting and I'd like to talk about it. Back to my point, Tom Hardy can't act as if he's in pain, I've gone on for too long with it, next point.

At one point, Tood (Ray Winstone) is telling Mrs Lovett (Essie Davis) what happened to his mother and how he felt when she died. It's a beautifully done scene and fairly relatable if you've had a sick loved one who has passed. It's quite moving and almost brought a tear to my eye but apparently, the story served as some sort of aphrodisiac for the recently widdowed Mrs Lovett as she climbs on top of Todd kissing him passionatey until they both hit the floor and he revolts in sickness away from her. I don't know what it is about sick, dying mothers in film but in this case, it's to serve a sexual purpose rather than to develop a connection between both the characters who are speaking, and the audience. "Develop a connection" probably wasn't the right choice of words for this scene but whatever.

Finishing off my bad points, Todd's father is a dickhole character. He really is, he gets his son locked up for a crime he never committed and then shows up 20+ years later, demanding a shave then comes back and blackmails his son once he finds out what he's been doing. I suppose it fits with the character and the actor David Bradley does a fine job of playing a drunk. Eventually, Todd cuts out his father's tongue while the man is passed out drunk. I have no problem with the act itself. It's an act of self preservation after all, the man just threatened to hand you over to the police unless you pay him off, cutting out his tongue is the best way to make him suffer with it. My gripe with this, however, is that while he was passed out drunk he could have gone into schock and choked on the blood gushing from his mouth and died. He didn't and went to the police where he was asked extremely stupid questions such as Quote: "Did you lose it through sickness?" And "Did you bite it off?" I'm no expert on things like this but if he lost his tongue through sickness or from biting it off, why the hell would he go to the police? What would be the need for them if he had bitten his own tongue off? To share the story of the idiot? And how the hell do you lose just a tongue through sickness? Is there an illness which causes the tongue to drop off? I understand the police wanted to get to the bottom of the missing tongue thing but damn, don't ask stupid questions like that.

Leaving the bad and onto the good, you may know David Bradley from Hot Fuzz where he plays a farmer who's (I'm guessing) west country accent is so thick nobody can understand him, he also played Argus Filch in the Harry Potter series. It's a bit strange that both films about a man slaughtering his customers and making the town cannibals from feeding them the meat of the men he kills, has connections to a series based on an orphaned idiot wizard who learns magic at a school where the Headmaster couldn't care less about anything other than fucking with everything.

The writing here is also very good, filled with that dry British humour we all love. There's a moment where Mrs Lovett is sick and bed bound and Todd is taking care of her. Mrs Lovett is convinced she's dying, she has a fever and can feel the fires of hell licking at her already, she goes as far as to say Quote: "it's the judgement." To which Todd replies "it's a fever." as bluntly as he can. It's probably not even meant to be funny but it cracked me up.

Another thing that made me laugh was the ending, I'm gonna say this now so you can't complain later *Spoilers* because this involves the very end of the film. The ending isn't supposed to be funny, it's meant to be a character going out on their own terms, suicide is not funny no matter what the situation, but, like in Of Mice & Men it's the execution of the scene that kills me. I'll go more into that next month when I talk about it but I'm gonna stay focused on this film for once. Todd is about to be taken to his death and the prison guards are about to shave him, one of them starts and he kicks up a fuss saying if he is to die, he's to die with the best clean shave he is popular for. The guards are like "fuck it yeah, you go for it pallio, you put a blade to your neck you throat slitting murderer, we trust you to not do anything untoward" and you know what happens, he shaves, gaining the trust of the guards watching him, then cuts his throat and goes out the way he took out the innocents who came to his barber shop. The fact that these guards are so stupid is almost hilarious, I honestly doubt something like that would fly back then and I hope those guards lost their heads in place of Todd.

Finally, I love the dramatic tone the film seems to carry, by dramatic I don't mean like American soap opera dramatic where someone sneezes and it turns into a three part episode of them blowing their nose and all the severe consequences that could come from that. When I say dramatic I mean there are slight overexaggurations with things but it's still a realistic story. Think more along the lines of a docu-drama. With this being a product of the BBC the tone of the film feels less Hollywood produced and more along the lines of something serious and it definitely benefits the story.

Overall, I'm not sure which of the two Sweeney Todd films I prefer, this one would be for a chilled night in front of the tv before going to bed or something, whereas Tim Burton's version is definitely the one you put on when your friends come over for a brew and it turns into getting drunk and ordering kebabs that you know you're not gonna finish because they go cold too quick but you do it anyway because you're a creature of habit. Either way, both films are enjoyable and both are definitely worth watching.

Link to the Tim Burton version - https://somegirltalksaboutmovies.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/sweeney-todd-demon-barber-of-fleet.html

That's it from me for today, have a good day, life whatever, peace.

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a criitque which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this film then go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.

Salad Fingers

Scarier than any horror movie out these days.

Creator: David Firth

I wanted to do a series, maybe it's not a film film but you can easily watch it all together and get an hours worth of footage in which you can see some sort of a storyline forming. I personally only saw a storyline which came from me intensely watching The Film Theorists theory on this series over and over again because I apparently have no life anymore if that's all I'm gonna fuckin' do. Side note, not bashing that channel, they're great love 'em go look at them if you've not already.

How am I going to talk about the series then? I have no idea, I could just do my overall thoughts on it or I could do thoughts on each episode and then talk about it overall. Probably going to do the latter. Fuck, I don't know shit. Ok, grab a brew and let's get into it.

Episode one: Spoons.
I remember the first time I ever saw this, I was in my year 9 R.E class and all we ever did that year was watch films and discuss the religious element in these films. Every film we watched, it was blatantly obvious with the religious themes eg Bruce Almighty but sometimes towards the end of class, if we'd covered everything we needed to, our teacher would let us fuck about on Youtube and that is where I was first introduced to our leafy green friend. I won't lie to you, I was disturbed. Watching this...thing on the interactive whiteboard run it's fingers over rusty spoons and kettles made me so uncomfortable. The background music and the soft, high-pitched voice only added to the discomfort. This feeling was definitely not shaken when I watched it again for notes. It was duller than it was before, but it was still there. Overall I thought this short episode was a bit creepy and definitely still uncomfortable.

Episode two: Friends.
I hated this episode. It took the uncomfortable feeling from the first episode and just dialled it up, but I did notice some things about Salad Fingers himself. He has hair on his fingers. I don't know why I thought that was important to note down but it was important. Maybe it's because it just seemed a little strange that a character known as Salad Fingers has hair on them, is the salad mouldy? I don't know like I said, I just thought it was important. Why have I said that this was the one dialled up the discomfort factor? There's a strange tonal shift in this episode. There's a moment in which Salad traps a child in the oven, seemingly innocently as he says that he is cooking a fish but can't reach it. Salad sticks a nail through his finger, tells us how he loves when the "red water" comes out, he then passes out and we see his dream of being in a butcher's refrigerator, with slabs of meat hanging everywhere. He runs into his puppet friend Hubert Cumberdale (remember that name) who proceeds to scream at him. He wakes up and ignores the burning child in the oven. The most uncomfortable thing for me was seeing the nail go through the finger and a ghostly pale Salad passing out. That and the child murder. I definitely thought that so far, this was the most uncomfortable episode.

Episode three: Nettles.
Definitely a very sexually charged episode. Probably a little too sexual for me at least. Don't get me wrong I'm not a prude and I definitely won't say anything against people's sexual tastes and such but I have my limits. And seeing a green mutant...creature? I guess is what he is, I'm not sure. Seeing that talk about
Quote: "Enjoying the pleasures of nettles", rubbing them over his nipples causing him to lactate while an armless zombie watches him. The sexual overtone is really obvious and adds to the already uncomfortable tone that was already established in the first two episodes. That's about it. Weirdly sexual for some reason. Next episode.

Episode four: Cage.
Or as I like to call it, the episode starring my best friend's unborn demon child. God, I'm horrible but I swear that thing's gonna come out evil. This episode honestly seems like more of a reaction to being a parent or being in a lifetime commitment. I'm not sure, it just seems that way to me, probably because of my intense binge watching of Film Theorists and that's a part of it. This was actually the most underwhelming episode with it just being a little odd and not really upping the intensity of the series that, at this point, I was expecting.

Episode five: Picnic.
This was more surreal than anything else. I feel like this was taking less of an uncomfortable, disturbing direction, and takes more of a surreal, disturbing direction. I had no idea what was going on with this, it starts with Salad on the phone of which the cable is cut so he obviously isn't talking to anybody yet he's trying to organise a picnic. We then see him in a wedding dress. Has nothing to do with this episode so I won't dwell on it. Next, we see Salad at the picnic and a little girl approaches him and sits down, joining the picnic. Salad then says Quote: "I shall elect you as my new playmate" which gives off a certain sort of feel. The sort of feel where you see someone strange hanging out outside the primary school gates. You're not entirely too sure about what this person's intent is but you probably wouldn't let your kid be around them unsupervised y'know? Back to the episode, the girl starts to talk with a similar voice to our green protagonist and this, rightfully so, freaks him out and he retreats back to his house and hides in the corner. I'm not sure what angle this episode was going for, in fact, I'm not even sure it was going for an angle at all. It just seemed really surreal. Maybe the girl triggered a traumatic memory in his subconscious? I don't know. I did like this episode, even if it seemed a little lacking in a direction.

Episode six: Present.
This was by far, the most disgusting of the ten episodes of the series. Salad eats one of his friends, comes across the dirtiest toilet I've ever seen and proceeds to stick his hand down it, proclaiming there is enough water in it to wash his petticoat. He gets home and sees himself sat in a chair, staring at him disapprovingly. The version of Salad that is sat down speaks to the version of himself that has just walked in, calling him Jeremy Fisher, the friend previously eaten by Salad himself. We then see him actually speaking to Jeremy Fisher, who is now back as a finger puppet and no longer eaten. Salad then says Quote: "I never did get to sample the delights of your flavour" as he brings his hand up to...I guess re-eat Jeremy, there's a cut and we see Salad eating his own brain. It's fucking disgusting. I didn't like this one. It kept some of the strangeness that seemed to be coming out in the previous episode but went to a gross level with it. Maybe this has something to do with mental health and how your own "bad thoughts" eat at you. Either way, this was gross.

Episode seven: Shore Leave.
This episode is just a bit odd. Salad finds what he thinks to be his brother who is back from the great war on shore leave. The episode follows a fairly straightforward plot. He spends time with his brother, sends him back into the trenches after crying about having to say goodbye to his brother. We then see what I'm assuming is a flashback to Salad being a performer, singing We'll Meet Again, a song from the first world war which was meant to give the wives hope that their husbands would return safely. Salad then has a diva tantrum and glides off the stage. I make note of the gliding as he's also wearing the dress I mentioned from an earlier episode. People tend to say that brides "glide down the aisle" which I think is the point being referenced when Salad glides off the stage rather than walks. Either that or they just couldn't animate him walking. Overall this was a fairly run of the mill episode that was just kind of boring.

Episode eight: Cupboard.
This was a very interesting episode as it's the first episode where I realised that the animation had gotten better, Salad Fingers now has nails and it seems to follow the idea of domestic abuse. Roger (the radio) can get a "little uppity" when he hasn't had his "sustenance" maybe a metaphor for getting violent when he's not wasted? Roger then starts screaming leading to Salad hiding in his safety cupboard. He plays with his hands and is possibly reenacting something from memory, where he is being berated for having skinny long legs and therefore won't be sold something. Maybe this is something that Roger has said to him? The episode takes a gross turn when Salad finds a hair and runs across his eyeball. He adds this to his collection of hairs on the wall. We then see him in bed with Hubert Cumberdale, another of Salad's finger puppet friends and he just flicks the poor thing out of the bed and into the poo bucket, then gets angry at him for being messy. It turns out, however, that Salad is done with Rogers abusive behaviour and threatens to kick him out, only for Roger to demand that Salad cleans the house. Salad refuses. Roger repeatedly says "do it now" leading to Salad eating his hair collection and hiding in the safety cupboard. This has a very strong feel of domestic abuse and ends on a very sad note making it hard to not sympathise with this child murdering creature.

Episode nine: Letter.
The episode where Salad gives birth to...fucking something and names it Yvonne. I don't like this one simply because of that. Salad thinks he's about to die, gives birth Alien chest burst style and gives it the same name as my mother. He then washes a window with the baby after saying he can't take care of it because his health is deteriorating. He also writes a letter with his skinned finger saying he can't go to the war today because he still feels a bit shit. I don't know maybe I'm just bitter about the "baby" having the same name as my mum but I just didn't like it.

Episode ten: Birthday.
Definitely the most graphic and disturbing episode of them all. A horse from an earlier episode is brought back and brutally slaughtered by a weird doctor with claws for hands. That shit's not done off screen either, you seem this doctor hacking away at the horse and it's fucking crying. It's looking into the camera and crying. Salad then heads home to find his now dead zombie friend as a pile of bones, surrounded by other horses. Salad blames the horses for skinning his friend and kicks them out, only to find a table of extremely deformed versions of himself sat at a table and I don't know which of those things is scarier. There are two eating brains, one with a more disconnected mouth than the other, there's one eating, what I'm assuming to be a mushy brain, out of a cup which later smashes its fists on the table and screeches. It's mouth coming way out of its face giving it a very normal yet freakish look. Another one is just smashing its fist on the table, it seems to have been doing this for a while considering its hand is bloody and there are blood stains on the white table cloth. It has no jaw. The final one I won't be able to describe other than faceless. We never see its face throughout its screen time which an argument could be made saying that's why it's the scariest. A person's imagination can run away with possibilities more dramatic than what may actually be. By far this was the scariest of all the episodes.

So that's what I thought of the episodes separately, but how do I feel overall? I thought that this was a very good series. The animation got better over time, it got stranger over time and it definitely got creepier over time. Yes, some episodes didn't even hit the creepy mark but overall it built it up nicely. Another thing I loved about it was it was creative and it's own thing. It didn't go diving into a coherent backstory for the protagonist which fit for this sort of thing. It's pretty damn good. You can watch all the episodes on youtube, separately or all together. In total the run time is about an hour. Maybe if you want a decent theory on the subject then check out The Film Theorists video's on it. I wouldn't recommend showing this to any young children, especially episodes 2, 3, 6, 9 and 10.

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how this series made you feel. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you enjoy this series then go and support its creator by checking out his Youtube Channel and other works.

Smiley

If there is a God, let him kill me now, for I have seen the worst in humanity and no longer wish to be a part of it.

Director: Michael J. Gallagher
Writers: Glasgow Phillips (Screenplay and Story)
                Michael J. Gallagher (Screenplay)
                Ezra Cooperstein (Story)

There are only a certain amount of times a person can say "that's stupid" and "stop it" and "I hate this fucking movie". I hate this film because it's stupid, the rules don't make sense, the "twist" ending makes no sense, the main character is impossibly stupid and hateable, it's boring, it drags on and on and on and on and won't fucking end, it gave me a headache and committed the worst crime it could as a psychological slasher - it wasn't scary. I have a headache from internally screaming at this film, from digging my nails into my head in frustration. I can't promise a short review, or a long review or even a coherent review. Know what? I'm not even sure I can promise a review. What I can promise, is a rant. A rant I have given, in part, to the people I was talking to while watching this film. So I'm going to take a deep breath, take a painkiller and get into this shit.

Let's discuss our lovely leading lady Ashley (Caitlin Gerard). I despise this character as much as a human can, maybe more. She is an idiot. I don't mean in the sense that she's just a ditzy blonde, oh no, she's fucking gone. She has no brain cells. I'm amazed she got into college. Then again with the state of the American education system and them letting in someone who wrote #BlackLivesMatter over and over as their entry essay...it's no surprise this character was let into higher education. Fuck. Ok, so how is she an idiot? Maybe she isn't academically thick because we only see her in one class and that's a science class where it's just conversation between Mark (Toby Turner) and the professor (Roger Bart) with the occasional bit of nonsense from Ashley which somehow relates to her science class. I'm not sure how academically intelligent she is, but I know for a fact she's a total social idiot. She took one puff on weed and went about acting like she was high off her head, even going as far as to say Quote: "I think I'm high off your marijuana." She had no idea what 4Chan was, and I get that this was back in 2012 but...I knew what 4Chan was back in 2012 and I was 15, this girl is at least 18 and don't come for me saying "oh maybe she wasn't into the internet all that much" bitch neither was I and I knew it wasn't a fucking Asian dating site. Fuck off. And later in the film she's speaking to her psychiatrist and tells her she stopped taking her Lithium for Bipolar Disorder because, Quote: "It made me fat and stupid." Oh but you see, that's ok because she was monitored by her doctor and came off gradually rather than just outright stopping. What got me so angry about this is she stopped taking her medication for one of the stupidest reasons ever. Weight gain comes as a side effect of a lot of medication and if that medication works it's down to you to deal with the side effects. If your medication is making you gain a little weight then change your eating habits to work with the medication, don't fucking drop it because of a little bit of weight gain. On the flip side of that if it's uncontrollable then you should speak to a doctor about it to see if they can change the medication so you don't run into some other health issues that relate to weight gain. Common sense. I don't know whether this character was written as an idiot blonde to continue the "blonde girls are stupid and only care about their looks" stereotype or they thought their audience was so stupid they needed someone to relate to? I understand that some people may not have known what 4Chan was but you didn't need to get out that bit of information so fucking clumsily and make your character look so stupid.

Speaking of stupid, wanna know the rules for Smiley to work? It's essentially like Bloody Mary where you say her name three times and she appears except with this, you're online and type to your video chat partner "I did it for the lulz" three times. I'm gonna rip into that soon. Now, just typing "I did it for the lulz" three times won't do it. You have to really want to kill the video chat partner, and you have to picture smiley killing the person you're video chatting with or else Smiley won't show up and kill them. Got it? Simple enough right? Would be if it wasn't so fucking dumb. "I did it for the lulz"? Fuck is that? I know 2012 was the year of classic memes and Lolcats were everywhere and the letter s was always replaced with the letter z BUT was it really necessary to change the o to u? Ya made the meme worse and watching this in 2017 makes this dead meme even more dead and it really fucking hurts.

Wanna know what else fucking hurts? The fucking ending to this film. It's BS twist. I'm not gonna give spoilers because this film was already ruined by being fucking made. We see that Smiley has killed Ashley and as she hits the ground, the film cuts to the professor discussing, humanity, morality and the light and dark side of life and what keeps us from doing bad shit just because we can. I think that's meant to summarise the ideas of the film? I don't know I was just waiting for this to be fucking over. It wasn't over. There were 10 minutes left and I figured "I've come this far, might as well suffer some more." And suffer I did because it's revealed that Smiley is actually a group of people who Ashley met at the party at the beginning of the film and they all discuss what a great thing they've created and how funny it is that they've killed her and how Smiley is fake. My question is this: if Smiley is fake then how is it possible for him to appear in the opening kill if the girl didn't even know what the urban legend of Smiley was until her little sister told her about it? But then the film pulls a double twist and it turns out that the fake Smiley's are actually imitating the real supernatural entity that's real and I just don't see the fucking point in that. It's so fucking stupid. Leave it at him being real. Who even cares? Me apparently but who else cares? Also. Why the fuck were they just going after this one girl? What was the point? This question is even asked by her friend, Proxy (Melanie Papila)....what a fucking stupid name...at the end of the movie. Yeah she actually says Quote: "why were we doing this?" for Zane (Andrew James Allen) to reply to her by typing "I did it for the lulz" 3 times which brings in the reveal that Smiley is real and kills her and I swear to God...I just can't deal with this fucking stupid ass movie.

This movie is stupid.
This movie is bad.
This movie isn't scary.
This movie is an hour and a half long and fucked if it feels like that.
This movie is boring.
This movie is one of the worst things I've ever seen.
I hate this fucking movie.

I'm sorry if this doesn't make sense or is too rambly or I've gone over the same point over and over or this is just terrible but fuckkkkkkkkkkkk!!!!!!!!!!!!! I hate this fucking thing. I just had to get this out of my system. The only redemption is that a good chunk of the cast and crew went on to do better things and can look back on this as a sign that no matter what happens in their career, they could do worse. That's it for now. I'm off to shove a pen up my nose and smash my head on a desk. Peace.

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you enjoy this film and let's be real you're not a big group but bless you regardless of your taste in cinema, then go support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray (if it's even on Bluray).

Swiss Army Man

How has this flown under the mainstream radar?

Directors: Daniel Kwan
                  Daniel Scheinert
Writers: Daniel Scheinert
               Mary Elizabeth Winstead

This is such a good film and it's just as quotable as Face / Off. I really can't believe how under the radar this actually is, especially considering it has Daniel Radcliffe in it I mean...who doesn't want to see Harry Potter talking about sex and farting and spouting philosophy about shit? I'm honestly kind of amazed that this isn't really talked about all that much. Why? Let's get into it.

Like I said, this is extremely quotable, some of these I could use on my friends when I'm talking to them and they won't even realise. Unless they read this...I mean...I've got a grand total of about 3 people I speak to regularly with the occasional people dropping in and out of my life...I'm popular I promise. Quotable movie. Stop getting sidetracked by the number of people that love you. My favourite quotes came from Manny (Daniel Radcliffe). Like, he's a corpse who has no recollection of life...alive I guess is the way to put it? He's having a conversation with Hank (Paul Dano) about sex and says Quote: "Remember when you put that cork in my butt? Did that count as sex?" Can't lie, this line made me laugh a little. Another line from the corpse - Quote: "What if I say something stupid? I'd just wanna die." This wasn't as funny as the first line but it's still funny. My final favourite quote, again from Radcliffe, comes at a time when Hank dresses as a woman to jog Manny's memory. Manny starts singing and Hank asks why Manny replies with Quote: "I'm singing a song so you don't overthink things." Again, this made me giggle a little. I think it's mostly down to how deadpan Radcliffe's performance is as this corpse who is coming back to life through the act of love. He obviously can't use his body language or face much to perform along with the lines he's given and I loved the way he said things.

The way this is shot is really beautiful too, it's very bright and warm and makes you want to go out and look at the world and how gorgeous it is. Even the shots at night are bright...for night time shots at least you know? There's also shots representing Manny falling further and further into a dark abyss which, given that he was talking about how his friend had lied to him and that he couldn't trust him, looks as if he's seeing life for what it really is. Considering how naive he is, y'know, with not knowing shit about how to function as a living being, it looks as if he's seeing the fact that his friend lied to him as something much worse than what it is. I mean...yeah claiming that the woman you're stalking is the wife of the corpse you're now best friends with is a bit much. Far fetched, but a bit much. Maybe this could be a way to see how children see things, overexaggerated and easily distrustful of something that's already hurt them but so easily willing to trust again because kids are just so chill about everything. I dunno, that's what I got from this, I could be way off.

Regardless as to how good this is, it's not without it's one little piece of bullshit. The phone. The phone that is the central thing aside from these characters friendship. Hank is on this deserted island long enough to grow a big bushy beard and hair long enough to reach his shoulders which I'm guessing is about 2 or 3 months, depending on how fast his hair grows. When we first see this phone it's got 10% battery left like...I get that you can make a battery last a few days if you don't use it but shit, what fuckin' phone are you using buddy? Christ, and the amount of times this is used and its life is so well sustained like...where can I get one of these so I'm not having to charge my phone every night. My God, it's some weird bullshit but because it's an important piece of the plot it doesn't die. Wouldn't it make more sense for the phone to die and that's why Hank has to dress up like the woman on the lock screen? I know it's predictable but it would have been more realistic. Then again this film has a corpse that comes back to life through the power of love and chooses when to die and when to come back to life so I guess any sense of realism is out the window.

Also, while I was looking for the film online I found a promotional site where you can play with Manny's corpse which I love, I played it before I watched it and it's just a fun thing to do to waste your time. Kind of like minesweeper. I'll leave a link here for it - swissarmyman.com

So this is a pretty good, very underrated film. It's both touching, lovely and funny. Please go and watch this film, even if you're so die-hard Daniel Radcliffe is Harry Potter, please look at this and look at him growing as an actor. He's so good in this and the chemistry with Paul Dano is so good. You really do believe the friendship between the two guys and you can believe the love thank Hank feels for Manny, both in the romantic sense and friendship sense. Actually, that's something I hadn't mentioned. There's a subtle romance that's played up like a roleplay between Manny and "Sarah" which was Hank in an impressive drag outfit considering they're stuck in a forest. Towards the end of the film it gives off a kind of Titanic feel, where Hank takes Manny's name in order to escape his previous life, unlike Rose, he backtracks on his own decision and tries to prove that Manny is an alive corpse. It's really sweet to see.

Ok so that's what I thought about this, and this time I didn't leave anything out. Pretty good film, go check it out.

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this film then go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.

Saló or the 120 days of Sodom

You think this won't get worse...it does.

Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini 
Writers: Sergio Cilti (Screenplay)
                Pier Paolo Pasolini 

Before I even get into this, I was dared to watch it for this blog and I thought, y'know what, why not do it, doesn't sound all that bad and maybe there'll be some decent commentary. I read the IMDb plot synopsis and thought "Shit, I'm in for a wild ride."

Boy, was I...sort of right.

What do I mean by "sort of right"? The plot synopsis promised me something in the direction of the abuse getting more and more violent, making the audience get more and more uncomfortable until they don't want to watch it. Until they can't handle it and have to turn it off and burn the disc/laptop whatever they're watching it on to feel clean again but...there was only one section which made me feel physically sick and that I should be blessed by a priest for watching it, aside from that, it was kind of interesting.

So this is an Italian film and let me tell you something, finding a version of this online with English subtitles is an absolute ballache, I went through about 3 different versions of the same thing and it took me half a day to watch it the whole way through. When I finally got the whole way through it I felt a little dirty but I had a whole lot more motivation to start learning Italian again, what a fucking nice language man. So beautiful, every word rolls off the tongue and if I watched this without subtitles I probably wouldn't care about what was on screen, I'd be just loving hearing these words flow. But I had to watch this with subtitles and I swear that was the better option.

Why was watching this with subtitles the better option? Some of the lines are very interesting to read the philosophical talk which looking back on my notes I apparently didn't fucking write down, but what I did write down were stupid ass lines like Quote: "There are a thousand occasions when one does not require a woman's anus." That's apparently the kind of shit I felt should have been noted. Fuck sake, I did let out a little giggle at that line though. Another line that I felt worthy of being noted to be put into my writing today was Quote: "His penis overcome by victory, cried tears of blood over me." This specific line came from the first storyteller. The storytellers are there to tell stories before dinner to get everybody in the room, listening to the stories, aroused. I heard that line and almost shouted THAT'S NOT SEXY! Upon further thought, if the people in this room think paedophilia, rape, urophilia etc is sexy, maybe a bleeding penis is sexy to them too. I just was not down for that line.

Another thing I wasn't down for was the fact that the masters had no concept of "there is a time and a place for certain activities." What do I mean by that? Well after the first session of storytime they go to eat dinner and a soldier trips a naked servant and starts fucking her. That was fucking inappropriate, I mean...c'mon people are fucking eating, regardless if they're your little slaves, let them eat in peace man. Then one of the masters (who looks so much like Dana Carvey I genuinely thought it was him for a good majority of the movie) gets up and starts shoving his bare backside into people's faces in an attempt to get fucked, eventually he gets on all fours next to the girl who was tripped and the soldier fucking her decides to go in on the Dana Carvey master with no preparation at all and this guy is just grinning and loving it. You just know that if that was a real situation, that guy wouldn't be fucking grinning come morning. I mean...his arse would be fucking shredded, he'd be in agony. The other moment was during a wedding between two of the captured people, one of the masters just goes through all the bridesmaids and groomsmen and just molests them. I get that this is the sort of thing where the victims just have to grin and bear it and allow their masters to do whatever they like with them but...I was just so mad at this guy. You do not go about the people involved in the wedding molesting them. Save that shit for the reception. Once he's done with his rude interruption the wedding is just over and done with in a good few seconds and we can move on.

This film is split into 3 circles. The circle of manias, the circle of shit and the circle of blood.

Circle of manias
I think that...the weirdness of the way the masters handle their victims and the fact that they can't keep track of their own rules and their sexual appetites would validate the title of this circle. It also gives an insight into what could be coming, 'Cause let me tell you, no matter how odd and frantic this first section may seem...I promise you, it gets worse.

Circle of shit
Does what it says on the tin. A lot of shit is used and it's fucking disgusting to look at. I feel sick even thinking about it. This section is definitely NOT for the squeamish. I'm not all that squeamish and I almost turned this off. It's fucking gross and if this was the whole film I wouldn't recommend it.
Circle of blood
This one is a flat out lie. It says circle of blood and yet...as far as I saw there was no blood. There was murder and torture, no blood. Oh, wait no, I lied. There is blood and it is by far the best thing I've seen in this fucking movie. One of the soldiers is having an affair with a black maid. He gets caught fucking her and stands, fully naked, dick pointing at the masters who have caught him, fist in the air, waiting for death. He gets shot multiple times and I swear, if I had a dick, that's how I'd wanna go out. That is probably one of the funniest and most surreal things I think I've ever seen in my life and I fucking loved it.

The last thing I'm going to talk about is this weird thing in the beginning of the film. It has nothing to do with the rest of it and is totally pointless and yet...I have to talk about it. The four masters sign an agreement of something which I apparently didn't think was important enough to make note of which is a decision I'm regretting now. I'm terrible at notes sometimes. Back to the point, the masters' sign an agreement and they make arrangements to marry each other's daughters.

The President will marry Tatiana, His Excellency's daughter
The Speaker will marry Susy, The President's daughter
Quote: "Your Excellency and my brother the Bishop will marry my daughters." I'm sorry that the last one is a quote but I didn't know who it was that was speaking so while doing my notes I just had to write it as a quote and leave it at that. The point is, they're set to marry each other's daughters with some incestuous overlap.

This part doesn't come into play as later in the film, it seems as though they're already married to the storytellers and three of them marry male victims and it doesn't look like the daughters even show up again. They get put into arranged marriages and are then forgotten. What the hell was the point in that? Was it to set the tone? Was it a plot thread that was forgotten about but it was already shot and they needed to fill the runtime? If they show up again and someone else noticed that let me know.

That's pretty much all I can say, some things went nowhere, some of it was just flat out disgusting and the rest was just kind of interesting with some probably unintentionally funny moments. I'm not sure about how others feel about this but a quick look at Rotten Tomatoes suggests it's a pretty good film. People seem to like this and I'm just kind of indifferent to it. I'm glad I saw it, don't get me wrong and I did think that it's interesting to watch, regardless of how gross it can be and I'd recommend it to those who are interested in wanting to see something like this. However, I did feel like it was trying to say something important about government corruption and how the leaders can do whatever they like but...it's not talked about in the movie and I feel like there should be some clarification on what this thing is trying to say.

Anyway, that's it I guess. Fairly indifferent to it. If you wanna suggest something for me to watch and talk about that I've not done yet then let me know by commenting on my posts or messaging my Facebook page Some Girl talks about films, my Twitter @SomeGirlTalks, or email jessm1199@gmail.com and I'll put it into my schedule for the next month. Unless I already have in for this month. Either way, I'll write it up, I promise.

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this film then go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.

The Good Dinosaur

I'm not attacking Disney this time, I'm attacking Pixar.

Director: Peter Sohn
Writers: Bob Peterson (Original concept and development & Story)
                Peter Sohn (Story)
                Erik Benson (Story)
                Meg LeFauve (Story & Screenplay)
                Kelsey Mann (Story)
                Peter Hedges (Additional screenplay material)
                Adrian Molina (Additional screenplay material)

Is this the worst Pixar movie? For me it is, I mean with Cars it can be considered the worst by the high standards Pixar has set for themselves but at least Cars knew what it was about. It knew it didn't have an interesting idea behind it and it was there to sell toys. The Good Dinosaur, however, doesn't. It had an interesting idea and honestly looked like it was going to be something of substance but it was the most recycled thing I think I've ever seen and that hurts me, Pixar is a great company and it's awful to see this sort of thing come from them. I remember being so excited to see this when it first came out, I hadn't seen any trailers but I'd heard about it and had read very basic story synopsis so I had no idea as to what this would look like or what would happen. Turns out this interesting sounding dinosaur movie from Pixar fucking sucked hard. And I watched it again so I could bitch about it on the internet.

So first of all, I'll say this, the film probably (definitely) blew the majority of its budget on the animation for the nature shots. I swear that, if this was just an animated nature movie, you probably could not tell the difference between life and animation. It's gorgeous, honestly, it really is and I just can't believe that this is animated. The problem with that? Character design on the main dinosaur Arlo (Raymond Ochoa) just...really doesn't fucking fit. It's this bright green thing that just...even I could draw it, and I'm no great artist. In fact, I really can't fucking draw, I'm not all that creative when it comes to drawing, I draw a blank and yet if I wanted to draw a dinosaur, that's something I'd probably come up with and I really expect more from Pixar.

Another problem is how much it rips off The Lion King. When you're watching this, you immediately get the sense that one of the parents is going to get the chop. Unlike with other Disney or Pixar products, you see the parents together and you (mostly) don't see what's coming for them but here, it was just blatantly obvious from the first minute. I won't say exactly how the father dies but you'd swear that it just fucking took the idea of the wildebeest coming for Mufasa and switches it out for muddy ass water. It's also kinda brutal the way the father is killed I mean...you don't see it but the way it just cuts to black as the water hits him is fairly aggressive and in a way, it just kind of comes out of nowhere. The father is just looking his son in the fucking eyes and just gets fucking body slammed by this body of water. It's aggressive and brutal and kinda comes out of nowhere when you think about how sugary sweet this thing started off like.

Speaking of brutality in this film, the boy, Spot (Jack Bright) rips the head off of this bug and it kinda comes out of nowhere. He's trying to give Arlo food and is trying to work out what he'll eat and it's understandable, being an omnivore seeing this huge creature and, I'm assuming seeing larger dinosaurs eating other animals, thinking he'll eat them but of course Arlo turns it all down. Spot then assumes he doesn't know how to eat so...he just rips the fucking head off this thing. Next brutal moment, which is the one that fucking got me. After a devastating storm which wiped out a good chunk of...wilderness I guess, three pterodactyls comes down and seem like they're searching for injured critters to help in the aftermath. Seemingly a nice thing to do right? Arlo thinks so and decides to help them find this cute fucking thing, I mean it looks like one of those fluffy toys with the huge eyes that whenever you go to the zoo/aquarium/Claire's accessories etc you really want one but know it's kind of a waste of money 'cause you're almost fucking 20 and can't be buying yourself cute ass toys anymore. Yeah, one of those things and I swear to God, like, they go to the trouble to rescue this thing but then it just fucking shoves the thing into its fucking throat and I'm trying to Google the image because no words I can think of to describe it will do it justice. I swear it's probably the most disturbing moment in the entire fucking movie. I know I've talked before about it being good for kids to be scared but like I said when I was talking about Son of the Mask: you gotta fucking ease into it, you gotta show that you're heading to dark fucking places. The good dinosaur definitely does not do that. It's brutality just comes right the fuck out of nowhere and like...fuck I can't think of any other way to describe the fucking sick things this film comes out and does. I just found a Youtube clip of the scene I just talked about so I'll drop a link if you've not seen the film yet and have no idea what the fuck I'm talking about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-XOcRiSUOo

Moving onto something positive, however small it is, the triceratops. He doesn't appear again in the film and it's upsetting because he's just such a fucking weird character that you actually want to see him again. This guy is a little crazy and it seems like he's managed to get himself some friends who go by some fucking weird names.

1. Fury. He protects from the creatures that crawl in the night.
2. Destructor. She protects from the mosquitoes.
3. Dream Crusher. He protects from having unrealistic goals.
4. Debbie. Debbie is apparently a bird with a name who comes across to me as a bit of a shit starter. 

The triceratops has seen what Spot can do and decides he wants him for his little group and the way he gets to keep him is if he names him. What are the names the triceratops gives the boy?

1. Killer
2. Beast
3. Murderer
4. Funeral Planner
5. Haemorrhoid 
6. Frank
7. Maniac
8. Violet
9. Lunatic

I don't know why exactly these names were thrown in but...looking at the age group this film seems to be aiming for but I doubt any of them will know what a haemorrhoid is, let alone get the joke behind it. I guess it was thrown in for the parents but...the joke just kinda failed.

My last thing I'll bitch about is the whole "make your mark" thing. In the first third, it seems like an important thing to make your mark in mud on this silo that the father had built to store food in. The way you get to make your mark is determined by you doing something big for a purpose bigger than yourself. At least, that's how it comes across. So how do these dinos make their mark?

• Poppa  (Jeffrey Wright) - Built the silo.
• Momma (Frances McDormand) - Presumably pushed out that huge fuck of an egg that Arlo came out of.
• Buck (Marcus Scribner) - Cleared a field of trees.
• Libby (Maleah Padilla) - Prepped the field to sow the seeds.
• Arlo - Made it home alive and well. 

Now I'm no big judge on anything to do with doing anything bigger than myself for a purpose bigger than myself but...I think the only one who was even scraping the barrel of that definition was the mother because...fuck did you see the size of that fucking egg? You think childbirth would be horrific, imagine pushing that bitch of an egg out only to then have the tiniest ever dinosaur baby come out of it. Shit, I'd probably be so disappointed if I pushed that out. 

That's it, I'm so done with this movie, I hate it, it's scary and not good for kids. This would have been so much better if there was a better character design and it was silent and just showed how these creatures could have gotten along together, evolving alongside each other. This is just such a fucking missed opportunity it makes me sick to think of all that fucking wasted potential in this movie. I hope someone has seen this idea, seen the wasted potential and is working on a movie that will deliver what's promised. A good dinosaur movie. Something I would 100% be ok showing to a child, teenager or an adult. 

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this movie then go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.

Fatal Attraction

I only wanted to look at this because I heard about the alternate ending.

Director: Adrian Lyne
Writers: James Dearden (Screenplay and short film)
               
This is a film about a man's "one-night stand" that goes all kinds of wrong and the woman stalks him and his family in an attempt to get him to love her. I put the phrase one-night stand in quotes because this was not a one-night stand, it was an extremely short-lived affair lasting an entire weekend. Whoever keeps saying it was a one-night stand needs to look at how long one night is. Hint: it's not a weekend involving fucking at least 4 times.

Before I get into what I thought of it, shout out to Does the dog die, I saw there was a dog in this very early on and I remembered an animal dies in this. Does the dog die is a site where, if you see an animal in a film and think "is this poor beautiful innocent soul going to die?" You can just type the name of the movie and it tells you whether the dog or any other animal in the feature gets the chop. It's a very helpful site and it helps you to prepare for what may or may not come to pass. I'll leave a link in case you wanna check them out.
https://www.movieswhere.com/topic/detail?topicId=1

So what did I think of this film? I loved it, it was a slow build up to a climax that made my blood feel like it was full of electricity. I love when films do that when they make you feel so tense you feel like your entire body is pulsating with this voltage. I feel like this is the film that also started the trend of the "psycho girlfriend", and while this film clearly shows that it's not going to end well if you become the "psycho girlfriend" but if you look at the shit some girls share and how they behave...I think you could trace it back to this film. Isn't this where the term "bunny boiler" came from too? *hint, that's a clue to something that happens if you've never seen this.*

The sex scenes are interesting, I mean the first time they fuck there's water involved and I just don't get it but I guess people do weird things when they're feeling such passion? Like I don't think I've ever been dry-humped at a sink, turned the tap on and started dripping the water over my partner and in their mouth. Crazy concept to me that. The second time they do it in an elevator, but it's one of those ones where it's not completely blocked off and you can see inside from the outside if you get what I mean? I have no idea what those ones are called but they're cool. Scary as hell, but cool. The third time I think happens off screen and the fourth time is just implied after they've had dinner. If anything, at least it looked like Alex (Glenn Close) got some damn good sex out of it. Like, in a way I can see exactly why she turns a bit crazy. I mean, if she's gotten something like that she probably won't wanna give it up anytime soon.

I also wanna talk about the endings. In the theatrical release, Dan (Michael Douglas) has had enough of Alex's antics and it comes to a head when she takes his daughter for a few hours and his wife ends up in the hospital. He takes his case to the police and they agree to bring Alex in for questioning over the situation, the next day Dan gets a call and it turns out the police went to her house and it appears she's missing so what does he do? Runs his wife an overly filled bath and gets her a cup of tea. Y'know, the safer option. Not like I'd wanna get my wife and kid out of the house if my animal murderer, stalker knew where I lived, and had gone missing. Nah, just run my busted up wife a too full bath. Of course, this backfires because it seems as though Alex has made her way to the house and into the bathroom. She then proceeds to attack Beth (Anne Archer). Dan can't hear the attack because he's boiling the tea kettle on the stove which...I have a whole lot of issues with that already and I don't wanna get too off track with this. So as I said, Dan can't hear the banging and blood-curdling screams coming from his wife and her attacker, his daughter doesn't wake up throughout this also. Eventually, he does hear the commotion once the kettle has stopped kicking off and he makes his way up to the bathroom and drowns Alex, only for her to fake out her own death and Beth shoots her when she rises from her watery bathtub of a pseudo-grave. The child sleeps through the loud ass gunshot too. I call bullshit on that. This ending is good, and I guess was more of a people pleaser but...there's just so many holes like...how did Alex get into the house undetected? Why did Beth leave the bath so fucking full, even before Alex came in that bath was too full and would have spilt onto the floor if she'd gotten into it? Where did the gun that Beth had come from? Why did that child not wake up from her mother screaming, another woman screaming, her father screaming and a gunshot yet somehow wakes up when her mother is mildly kicking off when she's told that Dan cheated on her? I guess this isn't an especially bad ending I mean, it does show how much a man can take when his families life is threatened but this just seems a little too dramatic for the story that came previously.

Now then, the alternate ending is a lot less dramatic. Still a little flawed but a lot better and ties in a lot more. In this version, Alex is already dead. The police show up to Dan's house and gives him the news, bringing a homicide detective with them, Dan, of course, is a little confused because they said it looked like she'd killed herself but the reason this is even considered a homicide case is because of this one line. Quote: "In my experience, a woman who wants to kill herself doesn't cut her throat with a 9" kitchen knife." Which...is a little stupid, Dan had already told the lieutenant that she'd tried to kill herself before but cutting her wrists, what's to say the next logical step would be antagonising a bull to maim herself? Logically, the next step up would be the throat with a knife lying around. Despite how much women like to plan things out but when it comes to suicide the plan to do it is there but how and when generally is on impulse. In my experience and knowledge of the subject at least, correct me if I'm wrong like. So Dan is then arrested on a murder charge and he tells Beth to go inside and call his lawyer, she does go inside and while searching for the phone number she comes across a tape Alex had made for Dan telling him he's a piece of shit and she loves him and doesn't know what she'll do without him. When Beth plays the tape, she hears Alex talk about killing herself if Dan continues to push her away, this is the evidence Dan needs to be cleared of the charges and as Beth gets up and shouts for her daughter to get ready the shot fades into a shot of Alex taking her own life, sitting on the bathroom floor listening to, what I assume is a number from the opera Madam Butterfly. Personally, I feel like this fits with the film better, it's not tense but it's tied into previous events in the film. The tape comes back into play rather than looking like another psychotic antic from Alex, it becomes a useful plot device. Like I said, the theatrical ending works well too considering it was meant to be a bigger final note for audiences at the time to latch onto and remember more. I just prefer the original.

Anyway, that's what I thought of this movie, it's pretty good and I don't know why I'd never seen it before but I guess you just gotta look at something and think, might as well, what could be the worst that can happen. If you've not seen it, you should definitely go and check it out.

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this film then please go and support it's creators bu buying the DVD or Bluray.

Hercules

What the fuck is this confused thing doing?

Directors: Ron Clements
                  John Musker
Writers: Ron Clements (Animation Screenplay)
               John Musker (Animation Screenplay)
               Donald McEnery (Animation Screenplay)
               Bob Shaw (Animation Screenplay)
               Irene Mecchi (Animation Screenplay)

               Kaan Kaylon (Story)
               Kelly Wightman (Story)
               Randy Cartwright (Story)
               John Ramirez (Story)
               Jeff Snow (Story)
               Vance Gerry (Story)
               Kirk Hanson (Story)
               Tamara Lusher-Stocker (Story)
               Francis Glebas (Story)
               Mark Kennedy (Story)
               Bruce M Morris (Story)
               Don Dougherty (Story)
               Thom Enriquez (Story)

Here's a little insight as to how I write these things. I get who wrote the film who directed it and any extra info I need and then I watch the movie I'm going to write about. My initial line comes after I've written my notes. I think I watched Hercules once back when I was in school, like in year 7 so I don't really remember how I thought of it so I'll be going into this with a clear mind. I looked at all my information and I already have doubts. Look at the fucking state of that, for real just look at it. This is either going to be the most underrated thing I've ever seen in my entire 19 years of life OR it's gonna be a fucking mess. I just finished writing up Cry-Baby and it's 4 am now, I just thought I'll get my initial information out of the way first so I can just get a brew in the morning (1 pm but who even cares?) And I can get straight into it. Looking at that fucking list is already making me want to procrastinate. I'm gonna go to bed and I'll be back to writing this in a few hours...hopefully.

*12 hours later*

Right, I may have procrastinated but gimmie a break, I was up until 4 am and couldn't sleep til around 6 am so y'know. As predicted, however, this sucked. Fucking 18 writers for this and they came up with the most boring, clichéd,  done to death story. That I swear stole from both The Little Mermaid and The Hunchback of Notre Dame in the music department. Maybe it was just me wishing to hear something good or there were themes of it and they most definitely weren't hidden. For reference, I got Hellfire vibes from the number I can go the distance and I got some Kiss the girl vibes from I won't say I'm in love. Like I said, maybe that's just me thinking that but I just felt it there.

So because this sucked there's a fair amount of problems, one of which I've already talked about. 18 fucking writers just for such a done story is such a big problem, it's understandable don't get me wrong, having that many people working on the same thing are obviously going to cause some creative differences and hard compromise. Hell working in a creative group sometimes it's best to go with the easier and safer option to please everyone and have a better working environment, it's a shame that the film suffered because of this because they could have made this very interesting. Personally, I think if you have a group that big writing for the same thing maybe split them off into smaller groups of people who have similar ideas, these groups write the script and everybody comes together once done and works together to combine all these scripts in a logical, coherent way to make a good film. I know that's probably not how it's done due to time constraints and budgets and a whole heap of other things but if it was possible then maybe if there was such a big team this could work? I don't know, moving on.

Another issue would be how Hercules (Tate Donovan) parents break the news to him about him being adopted. The story itself was done off screen as we've already seen what happened, but it's Hercules reaction to it that gets me. He's just kind of like "oh ok, I'll go talk to Zeus then and see what the big guy thinks." He doesn't seem to process it, he doesn't seem to be sad or grateful or confused, he just seems to be ok with it. Now I'm not an expert on being left for dead as an infant or even adopted but I feel like after being told you're adopted at the very least would leave you feeling pretty confused, maybe even angry at your biological parents for giving you up, possibly even grateful to your adopted parents for taking you in and loving you regardless of them not being blood-related. Throw in being left for dead and you've got a whole new set of emotion to deal with and like I said, I'm no expert on this subject but Hercules just seems to roll with it like he forgot to put his dishes in the sink or something. A mild inconvenience but it can be sorted out pretty quickly.

Finally, I'm going to talk about the artistic concept. Ancient Greece meets Vegas? Does that fit? I mean it worked for Aladdin which this film is kinda ripping off really, I mean think about it; the most likeable character is blue, ancient city in the past with the most likeable character making references to pop culture today, an independent female character who needs saving at the end. It's Aladdin in Greek clothing. The people who worked on this were flailing about struggling to come up with something to bring the company back to its great stride, remembered how popular Aladdin was and thought "holy Hell, let's do that but Hercules instead". I wouldn't mind so much if it weren't so obvious but...it is and it's a bother.

Positively speaking, the artwork is beautiful. It's done by Gerald Scarfe, an English artist who has done work on projects such as Pink Floyd: The Wall and a fair amount of other work for Pink Floyd and other minor projects like opening credits for Yes Minister. His work is really interesting to look at and while it is still interesting and lovely to look at here, it seems muted and out of place in a Disney feature. 

Another positive is James Woods as Hades. Oh my gosh, bless this man for doing this role. I'm not going to say that this performance and character save the film, they don't, but they do make you look forward to something other than the end credits. Woods doesn't portray Hades as an evil deity,  he plays it more like a stressed out guy who got the shitty end of the stick and has to deal with what he's got. It seems to make him more human and normally I'd say that it sucks and you should go all out and make him evil but considering there is such a lack of relatable characters in the film, coming to a grand total of 1 including Hades, it's a good thing...for once. I think that with all the Disney live-action origin stories, and considering they're giving the actual devil a more human backstory, I think they could maybe give this guy a pretty cool backstory. 

Overall, this sucked, I got so bored watching it but I got through it and I've managed to write about it as best I could, I'm sorry it's not a huge in depth discussion on the inaccuracy relating to the Grecian mythology and the story of Hercules but...I guess that'll make the kids wanna get into learning this stuff and so it can inspire educational motivation. Anyway, I have food so I'm gonna get eating and then I'm gonna start working on my next film. I should probably stop attacking Disney too...

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this film then go and support its creators by buying the DVD orBluray.