Comedy is dead, and this film killed it.
(There might be spoilers)
Director: Jonathan Levine
Writer: Katie Dippold
Run-time: 1hr 30minutes
Plot: Amy Schumer is a dick, goes through an apparently comedic breakup before her holiday to South America, she ends up bringing her mother, gets kidnapped after being too trusting and has to rely on her agoraphobic brother to save them.
Disclaimer: I cried at least 4 times during this film and a fair few times in the car ride back to Ben's. I would like to make it clear that, while I do cry a lot...probably too much, that I have never cried over a bad comedy. I have cried over good drama's, I've cried over emotional films, I've cried over kids films, I've cried over good comedy's and even mediocre comedies if there's a scene or two that makes me cry. Hell, just last week I cried when Hagrid burst into that lighthouse in the first Harry Potter film. But I have never been in such physical and emotional pain after watching a "comedy".
I really don't know where to start, I mean...this probably isn't just Schumer's fault I mean, a lot of honestly incredible talent said yes to this script, barring Joan Cusak who doesn't get a word but I'll get to that later. I'm also not saying she didn't say yes to the script but...she most likely did not get a script. I will say, however, that this is the fault of every single person involved in making this, and allowing it to get this far. It's sickening, it's sad, it's flat out not funny and we're forced to watch a pretty good actress, Goldie Hawn, and someone who can't act isn't a funny comedian for the majority of the film.
So what exactly is sickening about this film? After being kidnapped for a day, escaping and presumably not eating anything in 24 - 48 hours, Schumer complains that she's hungry and eventually passes out. Her mother drags her to find a doctor and Schumer is told she has a tapeworm. Fair enough, they're probably fairly common out there but then they try and get it out...you see this CGI creature come out of Schumer's throat and mouth and it's just hanging there acting like something from Alien. It's disgusting, I was almost sick in the cinema. I was heaving so much my eyes watered and I could feel my throat do that thing where it tightens up before you actually are sick. Thankfully I wasn't sick but the damage was done like.
What's bad about the film? It's not funny. Actually no it can be funny when it's focusing on Jeffrey played by Ike Barinholtz and Morgan Russell played by Bashir Salahuddin. Their scenes are absolutely golden, we all knew that one irritating person who would just hang onto you and just would not leave you alone, all you wanted to do was yell at this person and tell them to fuck off but couldn't. The scenes with these two are pretty much how you would image yelling at them going down. It's really funny, I wanna see Barinholtz pick better films considering the last thing I saw him in was Suicide Squad. I'm off topic anyway, where it isn't funny is...unfortunately any scene that Schumer is in. Her character isn't likeable, any attempt at trying to be funny feels like she's trying way too hard. It really is just painful to watch.
Joan Cusack is where I'm definitely the most split on the film...might go watch Split later, definitely better than this crap. Back to the point. Joan Cusak plays a mute and I'm already upset about that because how can you mute such a funny and incredible actress? Well, the way you can get away with that is by making her a crazy ex-special ops who cut out her own tongue to prevent herself from speaking under torture. Every single face she makes here should be put in a frame and hung on a wall. It's comedy gold and only she (and probably other equally talented actress') could pull this off. Pair her with Wanda Sykes, another insanely funny person who sadly isn't used to her full potential but is used well enough here for her to still give off a good performance.
My biggest problem is the film not allowing us to get to know these characters, to fear the main gang leader/kidnapper/whatever the hell he was. I don't even remember the characters name and granted he is a side character, but the thing is we're meant to fear him, we're meant to want Schumer and Hawn to get away from him but honestly, by the end of the film I just wanted him to kill at least one of them. Live up to this scary persona you apparently have and just off someone. Preferably Schumer's character considering what she did to him. To be honest, the only character I really felt any sort of connection to was Jeffrey and that's only because the actor is good enough to make it work.
Finally, the best thing about this film is just this one really odd, out of place shot towards the end. Once Jeffrey has found his mother and sister he runs to them and...it's like there's a camera in his body suit thing facing up at him on this really ugly angle and as he's running it's shaking. It's genuinely the funniest shot in the entire film because of how out of place and weird it looks.
This was just such a painful ordeal that the second the credits came up I grabbed my bag and left, I didn't want to be in there any longer. I couldn't continue to put myself in a bad atmosphere, I had to leave and so...I did. On the way home I couldn't stop crying, I was just on and off in tears. However, the best was yet to come. We saw a car that looked like Herbie with the registration plate that was basically HERBIE but with a couple numbers in there too. That was the best moment of the day.
That's it for today, I was also going to write up about the new Pirates film but it's just a lot of nothing that messes around with its characters personalities and sorely misuses Paul McCartney. I can't really say much more about it other than that. So now that that's done, I'll see you next time guys, peace 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 please go and support it's creators by buying tickets to go see it in cinemas / buying the DVD or Bluray when the time comes.
Wednesday 31 May 2017
Friday 26 May 2017
Top 5 worst films I've ever seen
I did the best now for the worst.
I love bad films, I really do, the worse the better in my opinion, however, that's not what this list is. This list is just the absolute worst, not so bad it's good films, just flat out terrible so unfortunately, you won't be seeing Birdemic or The Room here, those would go on another list. All genres are up to be shamed, no sequels, again that would be an entirely different list, only one Disney film because as much as I like to bash them most of their terrible work is in the sequels so...y'know, nothing that's so bad it's good as I said before, and...that's it, everything else is down to be talked about.
Here we go.
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 the films listed. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like the films listed then go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.
I love bad films, I really do, the worse the better in my opinion, however, that's not what this list is. This list is just the absolute worst, not so bad it's good films, just flat out terrible so unfortunately, you won't be seeing Birdemic or The Room here, those would go on another list. All genres are up to be shamed, no sequels, again that would be an entirely different list, only one Disney film because as much as I like to bash them most of their terrible work is in the sequels so...y'know, nothing that's so bad it's good as I said before, and...that's it, everything else is down to be talked about.
Here we go.
- Smiley. I've already talked about this one and I don't really have much to say on it, it's just a terrible film that just makes no sense and has such a stupid twist. I don't know exactly what's good about it...It's got Shane Dawson in it? Honestly, this is just such a terrible film but it's not the worst offender on the list. It's probably something fun to watch if you're into really bad horror and can't be bothered looking for the good bad horror films.
- The Good Dinosaur. It's not Disney, it's Pixar so I can put it on here and have my Disney bashing fetish fulfilled. Again, I've already talked about this one so I'll keep it short. This film had serious potential to be great, maybe even one of the best but...it's on this list and for good reason, It's predictable, the character design is butt ugly, the story is terrible, the only redeeming factor in this film is the gorgeous animation on the nature is genuinely amazing like...I really believe that was real water and not animation. It's a shame you get some horrifically ugly characters wandering through it. I hope someone takes this idea of "what if the comet didn't hit Earth and humans and dinosaurs evolved together" and runs with it and takes it to its full potential. There's nothing especially harmful in this for kids or anything but there are a couple of genuinely horrific scenes which, if you're going to put this on for your kid(s), please stay in the room with them to see whether they can handle those scenes.
- Suicide Squad. Once again, I've already talked about it. Why DC feels the need to copy Marvel is beyond me, they have some of the most iconic comic book characters around and the idea of Suicide Squad actually sounds pretty solid, we almost never get a film about the bad guys. As I said when I talked about it I was really excited to see this and it was such a letdown. Recently I watched the Nostalgia Critic's review and he made some point's I didn't even pick up on, like the fact the reason the events in the film happen is because of Waller (Viola Davis). It's a pretty funny review and I'll leave a link at the end of the list.
- Son Of The Mask. This is the last one that I've already talked about, I promise, I was looking back on what I said about it and I while I do stand by it, maybe I didn't give it enough credit for being on a similar wavelength to the original Mask comic book which was very graphic. And that's just what this film is, just a graphic assault to every single person involved, you might think it's a harmless sequel to the amazingly funny Jim Carrey film but it's not. I promise it is not. The CGI is scary, the close-up wide angles are scary, the idea that this is even a film is scary. Don't watch the film, read my review.
- Inspector Gadget. Here we go, the Disney film that I haven't yet talked about on this blog. I don't want to ramble on about it so I'll just give you the basics of why it's terrible. The live-action film starring Matthew Broderick of all people is based on a cartoon of the same name. Inspector Gadget is just that, a police inspector who has all this cool hardware in his body which helps him solve cases along with his niece Penny and her talking dog Brain. The film is not what the cartoon was. It's not funny, Penny barely does anything, Broderick is his familiar bland self, Brain doesn't talk and it's just...it hits every single wrong nerve in the body. The transitions between scenes are similar to what you'd get in Austin Powers but...it worked in those films, it doesn't work here. Everything that tries to be funny in this film just falls flat on its face and pretty much nothing works. If you have a little kid and want to keep them entertained for a bit I'd say put it on for them, there's nothing all that bad for kids in it from what I remember but as an adult, you'll suffer.
So that was my list of the top 5 worst films I've ever seen. Again while I was writing this I was thinking of others so I might do another one at some point but y'know. Please keep in mind that this is all opinion based and if you like any of these films then fab, I'm glad you liked them and maybe we can discuss them. Anyway, that's it for this week, I'll see you next week.
Links for reviews
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 the films listed. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like the films listed then go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.
Wednesday 24 May 2017
13 Reasons Why - Episode 9
CW: Talk of rape, if you don't like it please don't read this.
Who authorised this to be a tape?
13 Reasons Why
Episode 9: Tape 5, Side A
Christ, where do I even start with this one? How do I write an introductory paragraph to this? Shit, I can't, let's just get on with it.
Plot: Hannah watches as Jessica gets raped.
Rape: Just gonna get this part over and done with. It's Jessica's return to school party and she gets insanely wasted, to the point that she passes out while she and Justin are getting ready for some sexy time. Justin checks if she's awake, kisses her and leaves her on the bed. Good boy right? For now yes. He leaves the room to a drunken Bryce saying Quote: "what's mine is yours right?" (I'll be getting into that later). We then see the rape and Hannah frozen in shock and fear as she wants to do something but...can't. Jessica is in a state of denial of what happened to her after Justin tells her that the two hooked up and went to sleep and that Hannah's lying. Eventually, she remembers and is visibly shaken. Shaken probably isn't the right wording for that...words kind of escape me right now because I know as soon as I put one foot out of line with this, someone is gonna fucking slam me for it.
I do have questions about this though. How did Bryce get into the room if Justin was stood outside? Did Justin wave him in or did he just push past him? If so, why didn't Justin fight him on it? And why didn't he fight harder to keep Bryce off of Jessica? He's proven that he does care about her so...why didn't he fight harder to protect her? He could have caused a scene or gone downstairs and get his friends to fight Bryce, I dunno, just so much could have been done to stop this and nobody did anything to help this poor girl. What's worse is that because it had been so long, there is no way she could get any sort of justice or closure other than what she can find for herself. It would be hard as hell for her to do and maybe she wouldn't get the proper closure she needs and undoubtedly this is the sort of thing that will, at the very least, be in the back of her mind for years or even the rest of her life.
What's mine is yours: This is not the way you should speak, unless you're talking about your boyfriend's hoodies or if you're sharing food. Do not speak this way about each other's girlfriends. It's fucking appalling to hear this sort of language but I understand why it's important to show it so that if young people are watching this show, they can see that within this context this sort of behaviour is horrid and shouldn't be accepted. If you're seeing someone and your friend says "what's mine is yours" referring to sleeping with your partner, drop them as a friend, you do not need that sort of person in your life.
The actual tape: What the fuck does this have to do with Hannah's lead up to suicide? I don't mean to deviate from the issue but isn't that what this series is about? The thing's that lead up to Hannah taking her own life. Is it the guilt she's feeling from not doing anything? If so why didn't they show that? Why didn't they show the struggle she was having with this? Why didn't they show her try to talk to Jessica, to convince her to go to the police? I do understand the need to show this sort of thing but it just felt so out of nowhere considering this is about the events that lead to this girls death.
Also, why was this Justin's second tape? Why the hell wasn't it a Bryce tape? Bryce was the offender, Bryce was the rapist, Bryce deserved this tape. Not Justin.
Hannah: I...understand Hannah in this episode. Let me explain. When you're in a situation like that, where you are paralysed with fear there is nothing you can do to make yourself snap out of it, especially when the person you're supposed to take action against is a huge, athletic, muscular man, and you are a small woman with barely any physical traits that would enable you to come out on top in a fight. There's nothing you can do, adrenaline could probably fuel the fight and you might win if that's the case and at the very least, being at a crowded party you could cause a big enough scene to get whatever is happening stopped. But like I said, when you're paralysed with fear, you can't do shit.
I'm not saying that I agree with her actions, I'm saying I understand why she did what she did here.
Clay: To end on a slightly better note. Clay gets suspended for possession of pot. God, I swear this school is run by some sort of mini mafia it's almost funny. Marcus slips pot into Clay's bag and tells the school counsellor that he's worried about Clay, gets the police in and gets Clay's bag searched and gets him suspended in order to "send him a message". Honestly, if it wasn't so serious it'd be hilarious. I genuinely just can't deal with the kids at the school. What y'all trying to hide? What's the conspiracy?
Also, remember that gash on his head and remember when I said that the boy needs a plaster? Guess what? The boy got a plaster, hallelujah, holy shit. Seriously though, praise every higher being, this boy got a plaster. Words can't express how soothed I am by this, I'm just hoping he keeps his plaster on through the rest of the 4 episodes.
Anyway, that's it for today, I don't know what else to say really because...what else is there to say? I'm out, g'night 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.
Who authorised this to be a tape?
13 Reasons Why
Episode 9: Tape 5, Side A
Christ, where do I even start with this one? How do I write an introductory paragraph to this? Shit, I can't, let's just get on with it.
Plot: Hannah watches as Jessica gets raped.
Rape: Just gonna get this part over and done with. It's Jessica's return to school party and she gets insanely wasted, to the point that she passes out while she and Justin are getting ready for some sexy time. Justin checks if she's awake, kisses her and leaves her on the bed. Good boy right? For now yes. He leaves the room to a drunken Bryce saying Quote: "what's mine is yours right?" (I'll be getting into that later). We then see the rape and Hannah frozen in shock and fear as she wants to do something but...can't. Jessica is in a state of denial of what happened to her after Justin tells her that the two hooked up and went to sleep and that Hannah's lying. Eventually, she remembers and is visibly shaken. Shaken probably isn't the right wording for that...words kind of escape me right now because I know as soon as I put one foot out of line with this, someone is gonna fucking slam me for it.
I do have questions about this though. How did Bryce get into the room if Justin was stood outside? Did Justin wave him in or did he just push past him? If so, why didn't Justin fight him on it? And why didn't he fight harder to keep Bryce off of Jessica? He's proven that he does care about her so...why didn't he fight harder to protect her? He could have caused a scene or gone downstairs and get his friends to fight Bryce, I dunno, just so much could have been done to stop this and nobody did anything to help this poor girl. What's worse is that because it had been so long, there is no way she could get any sort of justice or closure other than what she can find for herself. It would be hard as hell for her to do and maybe she wouldn't get the proper closure she needs and undoubtedly this is the sort of thing that will, at the very least, be in the back of her mind for years or even the rest of her life.
What's mine is yours: This is not the way you should speak, unless you're talking about your boyfriend's hoodies or if you're sharing food. Do not speak this way about each other's girlfriends. It's fucking appalling to hear this sort of language but I understand why it's important to show it so that if young people are watching this show, they can see that within this context this sort of behaviour is horrid and shouldn't be accepted. If you're seeing someone and your friend says "what's mine is yours" referring to sleeping with your partner, drop them as a friend, you do not need that sort of person in your life.
The actual tape: What the fuck does this have to do with Hannah's lead up to suicide? I don't mean to deviate from the issue but isn't that what this series is about? The thing's that lead up to Hannah taking her own life. Is it the guilt she's feeling from not doing anything? If so why didn't they show that? Why didn't they show the struggle she was having with this? Why didn't they show her try to talk to Jessica, to convince her to go to the police? I do understand the need to show this sort of thing but it just felt so out of nowhere considering this is about the events that lead to this girls death.
Also, why was this Justin's second tape? Why the hell wasn't it a Bryce tape? Bryce was the offender, Bryce was the rapist, Bryce deserved this tape. Not Justin.
Hannah: I...understand Hannah in this episode. Let me explain. When you're in a situation like that, where you are paralysed with fear there is nothing you can do to make yourself snap out of it, especially when the person you're supposed to take action against is a huge, athletic, muscular man, and you are a small woman with barely any physical traits that would enable you to come out on top in a fight. There's nothing you can do, adrenaline could probably fuel the fight and you might win if that's the case and at the very least, being at a crowded party you could cause a big enough scene to get whatever is happening stopped. But like I said, when you're paralysed with fear, you can't do shit.
I'm not saying that I agree with her actions, I'm saying I understand why she did what she did here.
Clay: To end on a slightly better note. Clay gets suspended for possession of pot. God, I swear this school is run by some sort of mini mafia it's almost funny. Marcus slips pot into Clay's bag and tells the school counsellor that he's worried about Clay, gets the police in and gets Clay's bag searched and gets him suspended in order to "send him a message". Honestly, if it wasn't so serious it'd be hilarious. I genuinely just can't deal with the kids at the school. What y'all trying to hide? What's the conspiracy?
Also, remember that gash on his head and remember when I said that the boy needs a plaster? Guess what? The boy got a plaster, hallelujah, holy shit. Seriously though, praise every higher being, this boy got a plaster. Words can't express how soothed I am by this, I'm just hoping he keeps his plaster on through the rest of the 4 episodes.
Anyway, that's it for today, I don't know what else to say really because...what else is there to say? I'm out, g'night 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.
Monday 22 May 2017
Top 5 best films I've ever seen.
Because a top 5 list is definitely not a lazy thing to do.
I'm sorely lacking in any sort of motivation to even do anything lately and I apologise for that, but I'm just trying my best so I'm sorry if this sucks but y'know, we're all gonna have to deal with it for now.
With that out of the way, this is a list of the top 5 best films I've ever seen in my painfully long 19 years of being. This list includes all genre's of film and I've limited it down to only one Disney film because...hell if I picked all my favourites including all the Disney films then they'd take up the whole list and I might as well just name it "Top 5 best Disney films I've ever seen". Maybe I could do a list of those one day...It might have to be more than 5 but I might still do it. I also won't be giving sequels their own slot on the list, however, if I did like the film and its sequel then I'll put the sequel on the list. The films listed are in no particular order. Keep in mind that this is my own opinion and the best films I have ever seen will probably be different to the best you've seen.
With that said, onto the list.
I'm sorely lacking in any sort of motivation to even do anything lately and I apologise for that, but I'm just trying my best so I'm sorry if this sucks but y'know, we're all gonna have to deal with it for now.
With that out of the way, this is a list of the top 5 best films I've ever seen in my painfully long 19 years of being. This list includes all genre's of film and I've limited it down to only one Disney film because...hell if I picked all my favourites including all the Disney films then they'd take up the whole list and I might as well just name it "Top 5 best Disney films I've ever seen". Maybe I could do a list of those one day...It might have to be more than 5 but I might still do it. I also won't be giving sequels their own slot on the list, however, if I did like the film and its sequel then I'll put the sequel on the list. The films listed are in no particular order. Keep in mind that this is my own opinion and the best films I have ever seen will probably be different to the best you've seen.
With that said, onto the list.
- Fantasia. Alright, let's get this Disney one out of the way. This is such a gorgeous film and to me, it's the peak of Disney animation. Fantasia is an experiment in art which is just so interesting in its background. Originally intended to be a Micky Mouse short to bring the irritating Mouse back into the limelight with the short titled The Sorcerers Apprentice, which is also where you see that cute little wizard's hat first appear. Apparently, the budget for that short just kept growing and growing until eventually, they decided "fuck it" and made a feature length film about it. This entire film is just amazing and you really do see the artistic expression that, honestly, you very rarely ever get with an animated film with a structured story that's meant to suck you in. I'm not saying you don't get sucked into these films, I'm just saying that you see an animated story and while there is artistic expression involved, the animators have to go with the actor's performances rather than letting themselves lose y'know? If you haven't seen it yet I definitely recommend it because it's a beautiful film and as far as "underrated Disney films" go, this is definitely among them.
- The Exorcist. I would like to clarify right now, that I haven't seen this recently, nor have I seen it in the past 10 years. I saw this once when I was a child and it scared the hell out of me. I was 9 years old and had to sleep in my parent's bed for two weeks. I would also like to clarify that my parents were not the ones who showed me this film, they were good to me like that. I was shown this film by some girl I was apparently friends with who was the same age as me, we were at her mother's friends house or something which was about an hour or more away from where I lived so I couldn't just leave, I had to sit and watch it and deal with the trauma as a young girl is very convincingly possessed by a Demon, not the Devil. I understand that's a massive misconception considering Regan herself says Quote: "And I'm the Devil, now kindly undo these straps." How do I know she's not possessed by the Devil considering she's said it? I did some research. It seems as though the demon (Pazuzu) has a fairly heightened sense of self.
- Face/Off. Onto something a lot less scary, this film is definitely one of my favourite films ever. But this isn't a list of my favourites, this is a list of the best I've seen and the reason it's on here is because it has one of the best concepts a film can ever have. Over actor Nicolas Cage playing over actor John Travolta in a film that practically encourages them to overact and take advantage of our favourite American cop cliches. The film also comes with some perfectly stupid lines of dialogue that you can just throw into the conversation and either get a laugh out of the quote or just some weird looks. I've already written about this so I'll leave a link at the end of the list and you can read more about what I thought of it there.
- A Clockwork Orange. Again, I've already talked about this one before so I'll keep this short. This film ignited my love for both Kubrick films and Malcolm Mcdowell. I love the book, in fact, I own about 3 or 4 copies of it, two have a sort of dictionary so people can understand the language used and the other(s) don't. The film centres on a "boy" who is just besotted with violence of all kinds and ends up in prison where he is conditioned to do no wrong going against his natural urges. Being a Kubrick it's obviously amazing to look at, you can just watch this with the sound off and just admire every shot in the film, it's beautiful and very clearly the result of a perfectionist's hard work. I definitely recommend this film too because damn, it's amazing.
- Hot Fuzz. From amazing art to possession to over acting and brainwashing to...a Simon Pegg and Nick Frost comedy? Yeah but you see, this is one of the best comedies in years. I watched it last night and pretty much every joke works, nearly every line of dialogue comes back as an awesome one-liner, even something as mundane as Aaron A Aaronson comes back as a throwaway joke at the end but it shows the level of attention the writers gave to this. They looked at nearly every trope in police action films and just played with them. There are even two very plausible reasons for the events in the film but of course, the silly route is the one the characters take making the joke even funnier. The best part of the film? It accurately portrays life as a police officer, specifically one aspect, and it's that there is a lot of paperwork involved which is something big budget blockbusters seem to neglect a lot of the time. I don't know what else to say other than you should see it, at the time I'm writing this it's on Netflix so head there if you want to try it for yourself before buying a copy of it.
So that's the list, the top 5 best films I've ever seen. As I was writing this I thought of a few more films but they were fairly recent, only being out for a year at most so I didn't put them on the list for that reason. I might do another list of those at some point but this will have to do for now. I hope you enjoyed it and if you have a different opinion than me on these films then I'm open to discussing it with you.
Links to reviews
A Clockwork Orange
Face/Off
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 the films listed. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like the films listed then go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.
Links to reviews
A Clockwork Orange
Face/Off
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 the films listed. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like the films listed then go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.
Wednesday 17 May 2017
13 Reasons Why - Episode 7
I'm over halfway through and I'm very proud of myself that I'm managing it.
13 Reasons Why
Episode 7: Tape 4, Side A
What the fuck kind of episode did I just watch? I'll tell you what I just watched, I watched Hannah be petty and nasty, I watched Zach try to be nice and then dish out some truth, I watched Clay just kind of fucking give up on everything because he doesn't know what the hell to think anymore. He knows he can't trust Hannah's words, and he's just so insanely pissed at everything. Fuck. I'm so mad at this episode.
Plot: For this one, I'm just gonna quote the Netflix summary
"Another student sabotages Hannah during a class project. Clay's nightmares about Hannah spill over into the daytime."
Why is the plot bullshit? I'll tell you why. Because nobody sabotaged Hannah. Zach sat with her and tried to cheer her up after what happened with Marcus. He didn't have to, he could have just left and bitched about her but he didn't, he was nice enough to sit with her and try to stick a damn spoon to his nose. He then sits with her at lunch the next day and tells her he likes her. He leaves cute little bunnies in her compliment bag in class. He drew hella cute bunnies for this girl, that's cute as fuck and why would anyone do that just to get some ass?! He keeps the letter she writes him. How the heck is ANY of this "sabotage"???? Fuck off Hannah Baker, there was no need to be so damn rude about this.
The conversation: Here, I'm gonna give you a rundown of the conversation in which Zach tells Hannah he likes her. Word for word how it's said in the episode.
Zach: This isn't about Marcus, I never got the chance to say something. The thing is, you were the valentine I was hoping for.
Hannah: What?
Zach: I was hoping that I got your name on my y'know, valentine list thing.
Hannah: Because I'm easy?
Zach: No, seriously no, look the whole night with Marcus and everything, I couldn't believe you were on his list and not mine.
Hannah: Zach, I don't know if you're doing this on a dare or whatever -
Zach: It's not a dare, it's not, I just...I know you think every guy likes you 'cause you've got this great ass, but I like you for so much more than that
Hannah: Oh my God you're such an idiot
Zach: What? What'd I say?
Hannah: The fact that you don't even know...
Zach: I meant it as a compliment
Hannah: Zach, walk away.
What exactly did he say? He said he thinks she's more than a great ass clearly insinuating that he thinks she's funny or smart or lovely or all of the above or more. How the hell is that misconstrued as an insult? I mean I see where her distrust comes from but fuck sake Hannah, the guy even apologised and you couldn't care less, he then spits truth at you that you bring some of your shit onto yourself and you give him a fucking tape?! God sake.
Popularity = not lonely: You said it yourself, Hannah, you don't know what somebody else's life is like so why the hell do you think that Zach doesn't know what it's like to be lonely? Who the hell are you to even be making assumptions on someone else's life and whether they're lonely or not? Maybe, just maybe, you should have talked to him about this sort of thing so that maybe you could have been friends and maybe, even more when you see that he isn't a piece of shit like the guys you seem to go for in this school.
Popular people don't always have the best life. Popular people can be depressed, they can be lonely, they can be sad, stressed, anxious etc. Just because they are popular does not mean they aren't human and immune to human emotion. It may seem as though they have their life put together but people with these issues are amazing at hiding them in order to fit in.
The lies: Hannah Baker is a liar, confirmed. She says on the tape that she wrote Zach a letter, pouring her heart out and telling him things that she never told anyone before. She goes on to say that Zach balled the letter up and dumped it on the school floor to which she then balls him out in the corridor in front of everyone. Turns out, she's a liar. Because Zach didn't ball the letter up and throw it to the ground, he kept it. He shows Clay the letter and asks him if he wants to read it. Clay declines the offer but he now knows that he can't trust everything Hannah says.
Clay: Bless this boy. Bless him. He is going through so damn much with these tapes that's he's getting hallucinations of Hannah bleeding out on the basketball court, he constantly mishears what people around him are saying, thinking they're blaming him for Hannah's death. This poor boy is losing his grip on reality. I'm glad he gives the tapes back to Tony but he still kinda just loses his shit when he kicks off about the school to the new foreign exchange students. Can this guy please get some sort of therapy? He needs it, I need it for him, we all need him to get the help he needs. To deal with Hannah's death and to come to terms with whatever feelings of guilt he has over her death and get on with his life. After watching this episode I'm so worried about the state of this boy's mental health and I can see him in a spot next to Hannah by the end of the series.
Hannah: Fuck her. I don't know why she made this tape. She's genuinely just playing the victim. At least here she is trying to seek out help by putting an anonymous note in the class discussion bag which I can support her doing. Asking for help is a scary thing, especially when it comes to your own mental health. You think that you're bothering people and that you can handle it, reaching out is the hardest thing and I'm glad she did it. Good on her. Shame she was a dickhead the rest of the episode. She thinks she doesn't have friends anymore and I swear she must have forgotten that Clay was in her life and that so far he hasn't done anything to her so far. No friends my butthole.
Failure: Like I said, Hannah reached out and asked for help, fair enough. Obviously, she didn't get any help because...she's dead. The thing is, Clay asks Mrs Bradley (Keiko Agena) whether she thought it was important to help Hannah Baker she says of course it was. Thing is, she could have helped her. She could have looked at the note and compared the handwriting, found the people with similar handwriting and called them to see her separately so it would be just the two of them and then maybe Hannah would admit it was her and that she needs help and maybe she'd still be about and we wouldn't have to suffer through this bullshit episode.
Special death: There is a scene towards the beginning where Clay's parents are talking about him dealing with Hannah's death. His father says something along the lines of "a girl died and he didn't know her" I don't know I didn't write it down. His mother then says Quote: "Hannah Baker didn't just die she slit her wrists and bled out in a bathtub"
Does that mean her death was special because she brought it on herself? Death is death regardless of how it comes to a person. It's a heartbreaking thing, especially when it comes too soon and definitely as a result of suicide. The fact that Hannah slit her wrists and bled out doesn't mean she didn't die, it doesn't mean her death was special. They're acting like it's an M&S food porn ad. It's not just a death, it's a Hannah Baker death. What the fuck?
This episode just touched all the wrong nerves and I feel like it's highlighted the worst of the series so far. It's made Hannah out to be a victim when people are being nice to her, it treats her as some sort of tragic figure with the way people talk about her death. It's putting Clay through some severe emotional pain that's affecting his daily life in the worst way. I'm vexed and I'm out to make another brew and put myself through more pain. 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 7: Tape 4, Side A
What the fuck kind of episode did I just watch? I'll tell you what I just watched, I watched Hannah be petty and nasty, I watched Zach try to be nice and then dish out some truth, I watched Clay just kind of fucking give up on everything because he doesn't know what the hell to think anymore. He knows he can't trust Hannah's words, and he's just so insanely pissed at everything. Fuck. I'm so mad at this episode.
Plot: For this one, I'm just gonna quote the Netflix summary
"Another student sabotages Hannah during a class project. Clay's nightmares about Hannah spill over into the daytime."
Why is the plot bullshit? I'll tell you why. Because nobody sabotaged Hannah. Zach sat with her and tried to cheer her up after what happened with Marcus. He didn't have to, he could have just left and bitched about her but he didn't, he was nice enough to sit with her and try to stick a damn spoon to his nose. He then sits with her at lunch the next day and tells her he likes her. He leaves cute little bunnies in her compliment bag in class. He drew hella cute bunnies for this girl, that's cute as fuck and why would anyone do that just to get some ass?! He keeps the letter she writes him. How the heck is ANY of this "sabotage"???? Fuck off Hannah Baker, there was no need to be so damn rude about this.
The conversation: Here, I'm gonna give you a rundown of the conversation in which Zach tells Hannah he likes her. Word for word how it's said in the episode.
Zach: This isn't about Marcus, I never got the chance to say something. The thing is, you were the valentine I was hoping for.
Hannah: What?
Zach: I was hoping that I got your name on my y'know, valentine list thing.
Hannah: Because I'm easy?
Zach: No, seriously no, look the whole night with Marcus and everything, I couldn't believe you were on his list and not mine.
Hannah: Zach, I don't know if you're doing this on a dare or whatever -
Zach: It's not a dare, it's not, I just...I know you think every guy likes you 'cause you've got this great ass, but I like you for so much more than that
Hannah: Oh my God you're such an idiot
Zach: What? What'd I say?
Hannah: The fact that you don't even know...
Zach: I meant it as a compliment
Hannah: Zach, walk away.
What exactly did he say? He said he thinks she's more than a great ass clearly insinuating that he thinks she's funny or smart or lovely or all of the above or more. How the hell is that misconstrued as an insult? I mean I see where her distrust comes from but fuck sake Hannah, the guy even apologised and you couldn't care less, he then spits truth at you that you bring some of your shit onto yourself and you give him a fucking tape?! God sake.
Popularity = not lonely: You said it yourself, Hannah, you don't know what somebody else's life is like so why the hell do you think that Zach doesn't know what it's like to be lonely? Who the hell are you to even be making assumptions on someone else's life and whether they're lonely or not? Maybe, just maybe, you should have talked to him about this sort of thing so that maybe you could have been friends and maybe, even more when you see that he isn't a piece of shit like the guys you seem to go for in this school.
Popular people don't always have the best life. Popular people can be depressed, they can be lonely, they can be sad, stressed, anxious etc. Just because they are popular does not mean they aren't human and immune to human emotion. It may seem as though they have their life put together but people with these issues are amazing at hiding them in order to fit in.
The lies: Hannah Baker is a liar, confirmed. She says on the tape that she wrote Zach a letter, pouring her heart out and telling him things that she never told anyone before. She goes on to say that Zach balled the letter up and dumped it on the school floor to which she then balls him out in the corridor in front of everyone. Turns out, she's a liar. Because Zach didn't ball the letter up and throw it to the ground, he kept it. He shows Clay the letter and asks him if he wants to read it. Clay declines the offer but he now knows that he can't trust everything Hannah says.
Clay: Bless this boy. Bless him. He is going through so damn much with these tapes that's he's getting hallucinations of Hannah bleeding out on the basketball court, he constantly mishears what people around him are saying, thinking they're blaming him for Hannah's death. This poor boy is losing his grip on reality. I'm glad he gives the tapes back to Tony but he still kinda just loses his shit when he kicks off about the school to the new foreign exchange students. Can this guy please get some sort of therapy? He needs it, I need it for him, we all need him to get the help he needs. To deal with Hannah's death and to come to terms with whatever feelings of guilt he has over her death and get on with his life. After watching this episode I'm so worried about the state of this boy's mental health and I can see him in a spot next to Hannah by the end of the series.
Hannah: Fuck her. I don't know why she made this tape. She's genuinely just playing the victim. At least here she is trying to seek out help by putting an anonymous note in the class discussion bag which I can support her doing. Asking for help is a scary thing, especially when it comes to your own mental health. You think that you're bothering people and that you can handle it, reaching out is the hardest thing and I'm glad she did it. Good on her. Shame she was a dickhead the rest of the episode. She thinks she doesn't have friends anymore and I swear she must have forgotten that Clay was in her life and that so far he hasn't done anything to her so far. No friends my butthole.
Failure: Like I said, Hannah reached out and asked for help, fair enough. Obviously, she didn't get any help because...she's dead. The thing is, Clay asks Mrs Bradley (Keiko Agena) whether she thought it was important to help Hannah Baker she says of course it was. Thing is, she could have helped her. She could have looked at the note and compared the handwriting, found the people with similar handwriting and called them to see her separately so it would be just the two of them and then maybe Hannah would admit it was her and that she needs help and maybe she'd still be about and we wouldn't have to suffer through this bullshit episode.
Special death: There is a scene towards the beginning where Clay's parents are talking about him dealing with Hannah's death. His father says something along the lines of "a girl died and he didn't know her" I don't know I didn't write it down. His mother then says Quote: "Hannah Baker didn't just die she slit her wrists and bled out in a bathtub"
Does that mean her death was special because she brought it on herself? Death is death regardless of how it comes to a person. It's a heartbreaking thing, especially when it comes too soon and definitely as a result of suicide. The fact that Hannah slit her wrists and bled out doesn't mean she didn't die, it doesn't mean her death was special. They're acting like it's an M&S food porn ad. It's not just a death, it's a Hannah Baker death. What the fuck?
This episode just touched all the wrong nerves and I feel like it's highlighted the worst of the series so far. It's made Hannah out to be a victim when people are being nice to her, it treats her as some sort of tragic figure with the way people talk about her death. It's putting Clay through some severe emotional pain that's affecting his daily life in the worst way. I'm vexed and I'm out to make another brew and put myself through more pain. 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.
Monday 15 May 2017
The Love Guru
I just witnessed the death of a career.
Director: Marco Schnabel
Writers: Mike Myers
Graham Gordy
Runtime: 1hr 27 minutes.
Plot: Mike Myers plays a self-help guru who is asked to fix the relationship between a hockey player and his wife to get the team, the Toronto Maple Leafs, back on track to winning the Stanley Cup. Justin Timberlake, Jessica Alba, John Oliver, Verne Troyer, Ben Kingsley and more, aid Myers in his career suicide.
This is a bad film. It has its good moments, but it's still a terrible film. I'm not entirely sure if this was deliberate choice to end Myers career on the big screen, or if it was just bad choice after bad choice leading to this but this did effectively kill his hot streak but aside from roles in Shrek and his cameo in Inglourious, this is why you don't see him much. It's good that he was such a hit on SNL and shot to stardom through various other projects or else he wouldn't have the financial capability to live his life how he likes. I'll say this now though, I'm personally not a big fan of Myers comedy, acknowledging that what you're saying isn't funny, is not funny, to me at least. I'm sure he's a nice guy I mean, he's from Canada, the birthplace of niceness, I just don't find him all that funny.
I've seen this film twice now, once when my friend made me watch it, and again the other day to write notes on it, knowing that it's a bad comedy does not make you look for the good in it, it almost emphasises the worse elements in the film. Such as the CGI, there's a short flashback scene where Guru Pitka (Mike Myers) thinks back on his first encounters with Guru Tugginmypudha (Ben Kingsley. Guru Tugginmypduha is a severely cross-eyed man who makes painfully inappropriate sexual jokes about Pitka's now dead parents, thought I'd get that out of the way. Mike Myers plays his child self which you would think...could work, maybe he dubs over the boy's words with his own voice or maybe he could use an over the top voice for the kid or something but no, what we're treated to is horrific. What we're lucky enough to witness is Mike Myers head, horribly CG'd onto this poor child's body and...it's almost like Myers did this boy's head movements and such on a green screen which was the cut and pasted onto this kids body when editing. The head is out of proportion and Myers tries to do a kids voice but you don't really pay attention to that, you pay attention to this scary thing that's been presented to you and you almost start to wonder what something this freaky is doing in a Mike Myers comedy. We can accept the inappropriate sexual jokes but can we accept this? Maybe Cat In The Hat fans but not most people.
The film also seems to mock self-help "gurus" by having Pitka do a seminar where he is just spouting basic "helpful" philosophy and saying words and turning them into abbreviations(ish) and that's all the seminar is. And that's all it is, just a short 5 minutes which is about 30-45 minutes in their time, Pitka even has time to plug his t-shirts too, very reminiscent of those self-help gurus who seem to focus more on spouting basic, apparently helpful philosophy in a manipulative tactic to get paid and maybe famous quite quickly. However it doesn't seem as though this aspect is being done to highlight any issue, it's just sort of stating the issue that it's used as a money making scheme for fame and fortune and just shoves a couple jokes in saying "there's the issue now laugh at it." I'm not going to say that this should have given any answers as to how it can be used to benefit people in their lives. Honestly, I think Family Guy dealt with this a lot better. In the episode, Brian writes a best seller Brain's book Faster Than The Speed Of Love's unsold copies are returned to the Griffin's household and there's a lot of them, Brian sees that the books that are hitting the bestseller list are biographies of Michael Jackson and self-help books and so decides to write one to get to the top of the bestseller list. Once he's there he becomes a total dick and eventually confesses that he isn't proud of what he wrote and that he wrote it in a day. This is a mocking of something but also shows the reality behind the fame smokescreen. When a 20 minute Family Guy episode gets a message across better than your hour and a half film then you've got something to worry about.
One of the best things in this film in this little remote control cushion that Pitka uses to make a grand entrance and I swear if I can find one of those things I'll get myself one. It's great, it just looks so weird to see a guy on an actual moving cushion and nobody question it. I don't even know if it's some sort of stereotype or not but I kind of don't care because I want that cushion.
To close on, I'll leave you with this scene, Mike Myers sat atop an elephant in his Guru Pitka costume, wearing crocs, making jokes about whether you would help your uncle, Jack, off of an elephant or help your uncle jack off an elephant. Scene is followed by dead air.
G'day kid's, peace 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.
Director: Marco Schnabel
Writers: Mike Myers
Graham Gordy
Runtime: 1hr 27 minutes.
Plot: Mike Myers plays a self-help guru who is asked to fix the relationship between a hockey player and his wife to get the team, the Toronto Maple Leafs, back on track to winning the Stanley Cup. Justin Timberlake, Jessica Alba, John Oliver, Verne Troyer, Ben Kingsley and more, aid Myers in his career suicide.
This is a bad film. It has its good moments, but it's still a terrible film. I'm not entirely sure if this was deliberate choice to end Myers career on the big screen, or if it was just bad choice after bad choice leading to this but this did effectively kill his hot streak but aside from roles in Shrek and his cameo in Inglourious, this is why you don't see him much. It's good that he was such a hit on SNL and shot to stardom through various other projects or else he wouldn't have the financial capability to live his life how he likes. I'll say this now though, I'm personally not a big fan of Myers comedy, acknowledging that what you're saying isn't funny, is not funny, to me at least. I'm sure he's a nice guy I mean, he's from Canada, the birthplace of niceness, I just don't find him all that funny.
I've seen this film twice now, once when my friend made me watch it, and again the other day to write notes on it, knowing that it's a bad comedy does not make you look for the good in it, it almost emphasises the worse elements in the film. Such as the CGI, there's a short flashback scene where Guru Pitka (Mike Myers) thinks back on his first encounters with Guru Tugginmypudha (Ben Kingsley. Guru Tugginmypduha is a severely cross-eyed man who makes painfully inappropriate sexual jokes about Pitka's now dead parents, thought I'd get that out of the way. Mike Myers plays his child self which you would think...could work, maybe he dubs over the boy's words with his own voice or maybe he could use an over the top voice for the kid or something but no, what we're treated to is horrific. What we're lucky enough to witness is Mike Myers head, horribly CG'd onto this poor child's body and...it's almost like Myers did this boy's head movements and such on a green screen which was the cut and pasted onto this kids body when editing. The head is out of proportion and Myers tries to do a kids voice but you don't really pay attention to that, you pay attention to this scary thing that's been presented to you and you almost start to wonder what something this freaky is doing in a Mike Myers comedy. We can accept the inappropriate sexual jokes but can we accept this? Maybe Cat In The Hat fans but not most people.
The film also seems to mock self-help "gurus" by having Pitka do a seminar where he is just spouting basic "helpful" philosophy and saying words and turning them into abbreviations(ish) and that's all the seminar is. And that's all it is, just a short 5 minutes which is about 30-45 minutes in their time, Pitka even has time to plug his t-shirts too, very reminiscent of those self-help gurus who seem to focus more on spouting basic, apparently helpful philosophy in a manipulative tactic to get paid and maybe famous quite quickly. However it doesn't seem as though this aspect is being done to highlight any issue, it's just sort of stating the issue that it's used as a money making scheme for fame and fortune and just shoves a couple jokes in saying "there's the issue now laugh at it." I'm not going to say that this should have given any answers as to how it can be used to benefit people in their lives. Honestly, I think Family Guy dealt with this a lot better. In the episode, Brian writes a best seller Brain's book Faster Than The Speed Of Love's unsold copies are returned to the Griffin's household and there's a lot of them, Brian sees that the books that are hitting the bestseller list are biographies of Michael Jackson and self-help books and so decides to write one to get to the top of the bestseller list. Once he's there he becomes a total dick and eventually confesses that he isn't proud of what he wrote and that he wrote it in a day. This is a mocking of something but also shows the reality behind the fame smokescreen. When a 20 minute Family Guy episode gets a message across better than your hour and a half film then you've got something to worry about.
One of the best things in this film in this little remote control cushion that Pitka uses to make a grand entrance and I swear if I can find one of those things I'll get myself one. It's great, it just looks so weird to see a guy on an actual moving cushion and nobody question it. I don't even know if it's some sort of stereotype or not but I kind of don't care because I want that cushion.
To close on, I'll leave you with this scene, Mike Myers sat atop an elephant in his Guru Pitka costume, wearing crocs, making jokes about whether you would help your uncle, Jack, off of an elephant or help your uncle jack off an elephant. Scene is followed by dead air.
G'day kid's, peace 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.
Friday 12 May 2017
13 Reasons Why - Episode 6
I got it, I finally got it, Dylan Minnette is from that Don't Breathe film. 6 Episodes in and I finally worked out why he looked so damn familiar.
13 Reasons Why
Episode 6: Tape 3 Side B
This show is exhausting to watch. Or at least it is for me, I just have no motivation to want to finish this series and good God am I ready for this to just end. At least this one gave me something somewhat interesting to talk about, whether it knows it or not. I'm aiming to watch and write 3 of these up today and then I can leave it for a little while and then come back to it.
Episode plot: It's Marcus' tape and it seems like we're keeping up the narrative of guys being complete and total shit heads and not growing bored of a rumour when it's pretty much dead at this point. Clay also gets played by Sheri (Ajiona Alexus), who he seems to actually like until he finds out that she may have just been acting nice to get him to stop listening to the tapes.
Scar: I'm so bothered by the fact that Clay no longer has a plaster over his head gash, why has he not seen a doctor or nurse or someone with some sort of medical history? That thing genuinely looks like it could get infected any moment and I just need him to cover it up. For his own health as well as mine because that is giving me some severe stress related health issues...Although that could be eating 5 packs of Jaffa Cakes and living off coffee. I'm not sure, either way, I hope that that scar doesn't become some sort of health issue for Clay. This precious boy needs protecting.
Marcus: Remember how I said that Marcus was probably my favourite? At least for that one episode. Well, he sucks now. He's terrible. Why? Well, I'm gonna learn you a thing about the guys in this show. They all seem to think it's appropriate to somehow assault a girl because "she's easy".
I'll elaborate. It's Valentine's day (I think) at the school and they're doing a fundraiser "Oh my dollar valentine" where you pay a dollar, fill out a form saying who you are and what you're looking for in a partner. You hand the form back and you're given matches based on your answers with the person's number beside their name. That's a huge issue on its own but we'll leave it at that. Hannah ends up on Marcus' list so he calls her and asks her out. She spends a while thinking about it but decides she'll go out with him. He shows up like an hour late with all his friends and they seem to be watching them. Turns out, Marcus only appears to be a nice guy to Hannah when all he wants is to fuck her. He moves from his side of the booth to sitting beside her and runs his hand up her leg and under her skirt. Hannah obviously fights him off to which Marcus kicks off with her and storms out, probably feeling like he's wasted his time. Hannah just sits there in stunned silence and is visibly upset.
I don't know which is worse really, the attempted assault or the workers seemingly not caring about the very loud kick off and the clearly very upset girl shaking and crying in the booth. Now if this is really what went down then the workers are just horrible or just don't care. It's fairly likely that this is what happened but at the same time, we're also just listening to this from the point of view of a dead person, we can't fully trust this as we can't get the proper verification of these events. During Hannah's closing monologue, we see Zach sitting opposite Hannah so I think Zach is next on the list.
Clay: This poor guy is going through so much because of these tapes. He's getting so upset and the people around him think it's down to grief which, I suppose some of it is but it's probably mostly down to the emotional torture of these tapes. I really can't imagine what this is like for him and then for him to just seemingly get used by a girl he seems to genuinely have feelings for just adds a whole other level of emotional upset to this poor guy. Honestly, I won't be surprised if by the end of the series Clay ends up with Hannah. It's horrible just watching him want to reach out but ultimately can't because he doesn't know what sort of consequence he'll face from it. Will it be a beating from the people at school? Will it be unwanted therapy from the school? Will he have to testify in court? What about the pain it would put Hannah's parents through and would it be worth all of that trouble? I feel so bad for him and at this point, I hope he did something fucking terrible to make all this pain justified.
Guy talk: For all my complaints about this show, it seems to capture how guys talk about girls. Some are complete dickholes whereas some are nice and help others find love. I can only speak about how the lovely English boys talk, and the majority are almost complete scumbags. Then again I am only 19 and therefore I don't have much experience with mature guys, regardless it seems to have captured the language almost perfectly. It's nice to see a variety in language even when it seems that the characters themselves are a bit dull.
That's it for episode 6, it's taken me like a week to do this. When I started writing about this one I felt like I had little to no motivation and somehow I've found a little bit of motivation so I'm gonna burn that shit out and blast through as many of these that I can before I lose all energy to do anything again. See ya in the next one, 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 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 6: Tape 3 Side B
This show is exhausting to watch. Or at least it is for me, I just have no motivation to want to finish this series and good God am I ready for this to just end. At least this one gave me something somewhat interesting to talk about, whether it knows it or not. I'm aiming to watch and write 3 of these up today and then I can leave it for a little while and then come back to it.
Episode plot: It's Marcus' tape and it seems like we're keeping up the narrative of guys being complete and total shit heads and not growing bored of a rumour when it's pretty much dead at this point. Clay also gets played by Sheri (Ajiona Alexus), who he seems to actually like until he finds out that she may have just been acting nice to get him to stop listening to the tapes.
Scar: I'm so bothered by the fact that Clay no longer has a plaster over his head gash, why has he not seen a doctor or nurse or someone with some sort of medical history? That thing genuinely looks like it could get infected any moment and I just need him to cover it up. For his own health as well as mine because that is giving me some severe stress related health issues...Although that could be eating 5 packs of Jaffa Cakes and living off coffee. I'm not sure, either way, I hope that that scar doesn't become some sort of health issue for Clay. This precious boy needs protecting.
Marcus: Remember how I said that Marcus was probably my favourite? At least for that one episode. Well, he sucks now. He's terrible. Why? Well, I'm gonna learn you a thing about the guys in this show. They all seem to think it's appropriate to somehow assault a girl because "she's easy".
I'll elaborate. It's Valentine's day (I think) at the school and they're doing a fundraiser "Oh my dollar valentine" where you pay a dollar, fill out a form saying who you are and what you're looking for in a partner. You hand the form back and you're given matches based on your answers with the person's number beside their name. That's a huge issue on its own but we'll leave it at that. Hannah ends up on Marcus' list so he calls her and asks her out. She spends a while thinking about it but decides she'll go out with him. He shows up like an hour late with all his friends and they seem to be watching them. Turns out, Marcus only appears to be a nice guy to Hannah when all he wants is to fuck her. He moves from his side of the booth to sitting beside her and runs his hand up her leg and under her skirt. Hannah obviously fights him off to which Marcus kicks off with her and storms out, probably feeling like he's wasted his time. Hannah just sits there in stunned silence and is visibly upset.
I don't know which is worse really, the attempted assault or the workers seemingly not caring about the very loud kick off and the clearly very upset girl shaking and crying in the booth. Now if this is really what went down then the workers are just horrible or just don't care. It's fairly likely that this is what happened but at the same time, we're also just listening to this from the point of view of a dead person, we can't fully trust this as we can't get the proper verification of these events. During Hannah's closing monologue, we see Zach sitting opposite Hannah so I think Zach is next on the list.
Clay: This poor guy is going through so much because of these tapes. He's getting so upset and the people around him think it's down to grief which, I suppose some of it is but it's probably mostly down to the emotional torture of these tapes. I really can't imagine what this is like for him and then for him to just seemingly get used by a girl he seems to genuinely have feelings for just adds a whole other level of emotional upset to this poor guy. Honestly, I won't be surprised if by the end of the series Clay ends up with Hannah. It's horrible just watching him want to reach out but ultimately can't because he doesn't know what sort of consequence he'll face from it. Will it be a beating from the people at school? Will it be unwanted therapy from the school? Will he have to testify in court? What about the pain it would put Hannah's parents through and would it be worth all of that trouble? I feel so bad for him and at this point, I hope he did something fucking terrible to make all this pain justified.
Guy talk: For all my complaints about this show, it seems to capture how guys talk about girls. Some are complete dickholes whereas some are nice and help others find love. I can only speak about how the lovely English boys talk, and the majority are almost complete scumbags. Then again I am only 19 and therefore I don't have much experience with mature guys, regardless it seems to have captured the language almost perfectly. It's nice to see a variety in language even when it seems that the characters themselves are a bit dull.
That's it for episode 6, it's taken me like a week to do this. When I started writing about this one I felt like I had little to no motivation and somehow I've found a little bit of motivation so I'm gonna burn that shit out and blast through as many of these that I can before I lose all energy to do anything again. See ya in the next one, 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 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.
Thursday 11 May 2017
13 Reasons Why - Episode 5
I wrote the notes for this a week ago and fully forgot to write about it then.
13 Reasons Why
Episode 5: Tape 3, side A.
I'm getting so sick of Hannah, I really am. I get that teenagers make small things extra dramatic and exaggerated but I feel like this episode is just stating the obvious. Girls are evil. Yes, we are, we're manipulative, nasty and fake as fuck, especially in school. Girls are fucking horrible, we will pick apart anything we find fault in, we grow out of it enough to be tolerable in society but there is always that underlying thing of us being nasty and most of the time, it'll take something big to unleash that beast. This episode seems to think that nobody knows how nasty girls are and seems to want to hammer home that girls are evil and that this is important to know.
Episode plot: Courtney Crimson is a backstabber and a liar, this is her tape for being a scared girl who is also a bit of a bitch.
Courtney: First of all, what sort of fucking name is Courtney Crimson? It's like Jupiter Jones or Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey or some other stupid shit like that. It's a really painfully unimaginative and I feel like this name would be way more at home in a DC movie. The shitty thing that Courtney does here is telling a guy (I don't remember which one and I'm not watching the whole episode again just for a name) that Hannah get fingered and sucked dick on a park. Very typical weekend behaviour among teenagers in England but apparently not so much in America so of course this upset's Hannah. In Courtney's defence, if the positions were reversed, Hannah would probably do the exact same thing or worse.
Clay: Clay seems to be falling down the rabbit hole of depression and that's worrying me. If this series ends with him in a grave next to Hannah's I'm gonna be so pissed off, it's going to be because of these tapes that he did that and that's not going to be very productive to this narrative the show is trying to push. Actually, I don't know what narrative this show is trying to push...
Clay also has a bit of a dick moment, taking Courtney to Hannah's grave. Courtney is very clearly distressed by this which...who wouldn't be? Things like this have to be done in a person's own time and you shouldn't force them to confront this sort of thing until they're ready to do it themselves. This could have some sort of traumatic effect on Courtney, I mean, she's listened to her tape and knows what she did and now she's having to look at the consequence of her actions? She may not have dealt with what she's done yet and like I said, this could have really screwed her up emotionally.
I'm kind of not loving Clay so much but I can sort of see where he's coming with this shit. He can't stand what these people have done to Hannah because obviously he really liked her and because he's not gotten to his tape yet, he doesn't want to deal with his own consequence yet and therefore is going overboard on punishing others.
The Crimson men: These guys are hilarious, I can't deal with it. They are the gay couple who are parents to Courtney, again I don't remember names but if they come up in future episodes I'll credit them. In this episode, they only have one scene in the coffee shop with Courtney and they're discussing having a dinner with another family. One of them suggests she brings Zach (Ross Butler), the other agrees and adds that they would have beautiful babies, to which his husband tells him that he can't say that because Quote: "it's racist and sexist."
How is saying a couple would have beautiful babies be interpreted as racist and sexist? Is it because both of them are Asian and the two of them would have beautiful babies because of that? Is it sexist because he's saying she'd have a baby? Fuck, I don't get it at all but it's hilarious nonetheless.
The tapes: It seems that Tony is responsible for this method of torture. After he fixes Hannah's car at the Winter Formal, Hannah tells him that she thinks it's cool that he still listens to tapes. At the very least we know that her parents sell blank cassette tapes and that's where she got them from to be able to record them. One mystery down I guess.
The dream: There's a really well-done dream sequence to open up the episode, that's not even a spoiler, you can tell by the way Clay is behaving around Hannah. It's really nice and shows more or less what Clay is going through in his subconscious and the way that Hannah yells at him to do something could be showing that he feels some sort of guilt for not doing anything when he didn't know anything was wrong. I don't know but it's good to be able to use what I learned about semiotics in first year. Always good to use your education.
Hannah: Hannah, once again, barely does anything in this episode besides kick off with her friend for stabbing her in the back which is understandable but at the same time, I still don't like her because her attitude still fucking stinks.
That's it for this one, I really don't know how I can even carry on watching this series because it's just boring and repetitive and I almost don't really want to watch the emotional downfall of a generally sweet character that has, so far, done nothing wrong to this girl other than be a bit of an idiot. Thing is, I'm 5 episodes in, I'm committed to this, I'm not giving up I might take a break because I don't have the energy but I'm gonna get through it. Fucking watch me. That's it for today though, I'm 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 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 5: Tape 3, side A.
I'm getting so sick of Hannah, I really am. I get that teenagers make small things extra dramatic and exaggerated but I feel like this episode is just stating the obvious. Girls are evil. Yes, we are, we're manipulative, nasty and fake as fuck, especially in school. Girls are fucking horrible, we will pick apart anything we find fault in, we grow out of it enough to be tolerable in society but there is always that underlying thing of us being nasty and most of the time, it'll take something big to unleash that beast. This episode seems to think that nobody knows how nasty girls are and seems to want to hammer home that girls are evil and that this is important to know.
Episode plot: Courtney Crimson is a backstabber and a liar, this is her tape for being a scared girl who is also a bit of a bitch.
Courtney: First of all, what sort of fucking name is Courtney Crimson? It's like Jupiter Jones or Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey or some other stupid shit like that. It's a really painfully unimaginative and I feel like this name would be way more at home in a DC movie. The shitty thing that Courtney does here is telling a guy (I don't remember which one and I'm not watching the whole episode again just for a name) that Hannah get fingered and sucked dick on a park. Very typical weekend behaviour among teenagers in England but apparently not so much in America so of course this upset's Hannah. In Courtney's defence, if the positions were reversed, Hannah would probably do the exact same thing or worse.
Clay: Clay seems to be falling down the rabbit hole of depression and that's worrying me. If this series ends with him in a grave next to Hannah's I'm gonna be so pissed off, it's going to be because of these tapes that he did that and that's not going to be very productive to this narrative the show is trying to push. Actually, I don't know what narrative this show is trying to push...
Clay also has a bit of a dick moment, taking Courtney to Hannah's grave. Courtney is very clearly distressed by this which...who wouldn't be? Things like this have to be done in a person's own time and you shouldn't force them to confront this sort of thing until they're ready to do it themselves. This could have some sort of traumatic effect on Courtney, I mean, she's listened to her tape and knows what she did and now she's having to look at the consequence of her actions? She may not have dealt with what she's done yet and like I said, this could have really screwed her up emotionally.
I'm kind of not loving Clay so much but I can sort of see where he's coming with this shit. He can't stand what these people have done to Hannah because obviously he really liked her and because he's not gotten to his tape yet, he doesn't want to deal with his own consequence yet and therefore is going overboard on punishing others.
The Crimson men: These guys are hilarious, I can't deal with it. They are the gay couple who are parents to Courtney, again I don't remember names but if they come up in future episodes I'll credit them. In this episode, they only have one scene in the coffee shop with Courtney and they're discussing having a dinner with another family. One of them suggests she brings Zach (Ross Butler), the other agrees and adds that they would have beautiful babies, to which his husband tells him that he can't say that because Quote: "it's racist and sexist."
How is saying a couple would have beautiful babies be interpreted as racist and sexist? Is it because both of them are Asian and the two of them would have beautiful babies because of that? Is it sexist because he's saying she'd have a baby? Fuck, I don't get it at all but it's hilarious nonetheless.
The tapes: It seems that Tony is responsible for this method of torture. After he fixes Hannah's car at the Winter Formal, Hannah tells him that she thinks it's cool that he still listens to tapes. At the very least we know that her parents sell blank cassette tapes and that's where she got them from to be able to record them. One mystery down I guess.
The dream: There's a really well-done dream sequence to open up the episode, that's not even a spoiler, you can tell by the way Clay is behaving around Hannah. It's really nice and shows more or less what Clay is going through in his subconscious and the way that Hannah yells at him to do something could be showing that he feels some sort of guilt for not doing anything when he didn't know anything was wrong. I don't know but it's good to be able to use what I learned about semiotics in first year. Always good to use your education.
Hannah: Hannah, once again, barely does anything in this episode besides kick off with her friend for stabbing her in the back which is understandable but at the same time, I still don't like her because her attitude still fucking stinks.
That's it for this one, I really don't know how I can even carry on watching this series because it's just boring and repetitive and I almost don't really want to watch the emotional downfall of a generally sweet character that has, so far, done nothing wrong to this girl other than be a bit of an idiot. Thing is, I'm 5 episodes in, I'm committed to this, I'm not giving up I might take a break because I don't have the energy but I'm gonna get through it. Fucking watch me. That's it for today though, I'm 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 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.
Suicide Squad
Why can't there be a good DC film anymore?
Director: David Ayer
Writer: David Ayer
Runtime: 2hr 3minutes
Plot: Superman is dead and so in preparation for the next Superman, who the American's have convinced themselves is going to be a terrorist, they have created "Task Force X" which consists of a group of criminals.
Story time: I saw this either the day it was released or the day after it was released here, and I saw it with a girl I barely know. She rang my best friend and when she didn't pick up the phone, she rang me and asked if I wanted to go see it. I was down because why not? Kelly's more a Marvel fan and Ben was working and...at the time they were the only friends I had to go see a movie with. Anyway, we went and we came out with totally opposing opinions. She absolutely adored the film and I thought it was just crap despite the fact that I wanted this to be good, I wanted to at least like this film and I didn't, it really bothered me. I've since seen it 4 more times and each time I find something astoundingly bad and new and honestly I fucking hate both myself and the film every single damn time I watch it.
I really don't know where to even start with this? Do I praise the small things or do I just go in on it and save the pleasantries for the end? Shit...Know what, I'll do a compliment sandwich. What's that?
It's where you say something positive, do the negative things, then end on a positive note. Hopefully, that will work better than just attacking...maybe.
Ok so, compliment one: Some things on the gag reel on the DVD, while not all that great, could have been included in the film. Like Will Smith sneezing, that's hilarious, absolutely shit's Margot Robbie up and she sort of stays in character when he sneezes next to her, that would have been better than the awkwardly scripted "comedic" dialogue.
Negatives...Shit how can I do this...let's go through characters first then everything else because this is such an interesting thing to watch fall apart I can't just talk about stand out negatives, I gotta go through everything. Because to learn from your mistakes, you should know where you dun goofed.
Deadshot is probably one of the better characters where character development has been attempted. Key word though attempted. It's still blatantly Will Smith doing his Will Smith-y thing which is cool and all but...it's still just that. It's kind of boring but you know I was going to say it's better than the other characters we see but like I don't know man. I don't know. Deadshot has a daughter too who's mother is very neglectful, going out at night and getting wasted leaving the girl to look after her which is of course shit and she clearly is stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to family but who would you rather place her with? The mother who apparently couldn't care less and gets wasted all the time or the father who's pulling in like...$2,0000 a hit who seems like he genuinely cares for her? I mean yeah he's a hitman but...he's got the funds and the heart to care for this child.
Harley Quinn...is not that terrible. The character's voice is irritating, and she's way too easily seduced alongside just being in this line-up to be a sex symbol. That's all she is, a sex symbol. I mean they try to get us to sympathise but she's just so fucking boring and mouthy and she's always trying to kick off with everyone that she actually comes across as really unlikable which I'm certain wasn't the goal when writing her. Any previous iteration of Quinn is sympathetic and complex and a pretty great character. So much so that she was created for the animated series (one of the best Batman things out there btw) and she was adopted into this universe. That's how great a character she is. It's actually really insulting that she was made to be a boring, mouthy, sex symbol in this. I'm sure Margot Robbie was doing her best with the material she was given but my God it just doesn't work. She was a great choice for this character when you think about it...how did anyone fuck this up?
I'll say this once, and only once. Suck my dick if you didn't like this version of the joker because it was a "silly" portrayal of the Clown Prince of Gotham. There is no way on God's polluted, mess of a planet that you can make this character 100% serious. Also, did you not see the mess they made of the whole film? Don't target this one character for being "silly" because....I mean did you see the rest of the damn film? I don't think ya did boo. This Joker is probably my favourite aside from Jack Nicholson and Mark Hamil, this is what I imagine the Joker to be. A prankster but also a ruthless gangster. This was one of my absolute favourite parts of the film, and it's such a shame that Jared Leto got fucked so hard when it came to his like...what...5 or 6 scenes? This guy deserves his own movie. I mean...the one thing I can pick apart with this guy is the fact it literally started "daddy" as a fucking trend and it was all over my social media for fucking months after this came out. It's still going in some places and you know that these girls are still following it as a trend because why would
you legitimately publish your sexual appetites on fucking Facebook? Get bent. Anyway, fight me if you don't like this Joker man. If nothing else, he was fun to watch because of how much fun Leto was having playing this character.
The Flash came up in this and I'm so proud of Ezra Miller. That's it...moving on...
Captain Boomerang. Well...at least we know Deadpool is influencing films before it was even out. It's a shame that we don't see much of this character, I mean, we get something like 10 minutes (or less)
of screen time for Deadshot and Harley but this guy gets something like...I dunno maybe 5 minutes? Maybe less, I don't know. It's just a weird thing to do, almost as if...they wanted you to focus more on Deadshot and Harley and the other characters are just side characters that you're not supposed to really care about. But why do that when the film is called Suicide Squad. It just makes no sense. Jai Courtney at least makes this role memorable in being pretty funny. Shame he gets sort of sidelined.
Killer Croc is in this movie too. Bet you didn't know that. The most interesting thing about this character is the actor behind the character, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje. I'm really really sorry if I spelt any of that wrong but look what a damn cool name that is. I hope that if there is a future role for him as Croc he gets more time devoted to him because this character seems like he could have been pretty great but is reduced to spouting self-love and acting tough. He grunts a lot and manages to get a grand total of around 7 lines in the entire film. Trust me, I counted. Hate that this character gets shafted worse than the Joker.
El Diablo. Easily the most interesting character in this damn film, why? Becuase he's caused so much
pain in his life, he acknowledges that and refuses to raise his hands in violence again. Why isn't he all that talked about? He too gets sidelined for the focus to be on Harley and Deadshot. Give this guy a movie. Now. I want to see how he stopped repressing his power and started using them for his own gain. How he adapted to falling in love and having a family. How he dealt with that pain in prison. I'm always so damn mad that this character didn't get enough attention. It's made worse by the fact that with some pretty cool makeup and a pretty good performance from Jay Hernandez it's kind of a worse loss.
Then there's Rick Flag, the soldier that berates Deadshot for being a killer for hire even though he is essentially the same thing but with less pay and thinks he's on a higher moral ground, he also golfs with a 3 handicap and was originally intended to be played by Tom Hardy I think who dropped out to due to "scheduling issues". Roughly translated he didn't like the script and thought that his commitment to the terrible The Revenant was more important. I honestly don't blame him. His replacement, Joel Kinnaman, did a decent job of playing the character and I did like the character at the start of the film but there's only so much preaching I can take.
Dr June Moon is probably the worst archaeologist in the history of archaeology. She travels alone to a cave, and breaks open an ancient artefact. Yes, there is the argument that Enchantress was calling to her to free her but I kind of don't buy that shit. She's also the love interest of Rick Flag when she's not in witch form, which is Amanda Waller's way of controlling Rick to get him to do whatever she wants him to. Probably my favourite manipulative move in this whole film. Back to Moon though. There is one really awesome shot in which she calls upon Enchantress and Enchantresses hand entwines with Moon's and flips over, completing the transition between characters. That's a really cool shot too because all we see is the hand...shame we don't see that again. Cara Delavigne...God bless her she's doing her best here but this wasn't a role for her. I don't know what direction she was given toward the end of the film but it wasn't the right one. It looks as though she might actually be in pain with the way she's moving her body, which is never good for an audience member to see, I almost wanted to give her some paracetamol or something, twisting and jerking your body about like that can't be healthy. The important thing is she tried and did her best
Katana is here...I don't know why. She's introduced to us in a dew seconds of flashback and given a supposedly emotional scene before the climax where she's crying to her sword which contains the soul of her husband and I think we're meant to really feel for her but...we don't. She serves literally no purpose in the film and she would 100% do better if she was given a bigger part or even her own film because I just don't think she's used very well. Karen Fukuhara again does her best but there really isn't any payoff with the character.
Griggs is another of my favourite parts of the film, mostly because I thought he was played by John Gallagher Jr who is slowly becoming one of my favourite actors but he's not in this movie. Instead, Griggs is played by Ike Barinholtz who is actually quite funny and enjoyable to watch until he just kind of....drops out of the film altogether. Why? I don't know, he doesn't even show up at the end when everyone's back in prison.
Finally, there's Viola Davis as Amanda Waller. She is probably the coolest person in this film, she's stern but you can feel there's some sort of nasty undertone with her...shame they went overboard and made her a little bit psychotic and kills a whole room of people because they didn't have clearance for...something...I don't know what that something was, maybe it was knowing of the squad I don't know but she could have bribed them to keep their mouths shut rather than blow all the heads off. Then when the squad saves the whole fucking world she comes out holding this machine that could blow all their heads off like...no, there is no need for that at all. They saved your life twice, they saved the world and you're gonna blow their heads off too? Nuh-uh, I don't think so.
So that's it for the characters, what else is wrong with this? Well for a start there's at least 18 music cues in this and I think about 11 of them are in the first half hour all rushed together. I wouldn't even be all that bothered about it but they went to the effort to get artists to cover and create music for this film and throughout the entire thing I think about 3 were used and the rest were the original songs that were covered for the soundtrack album. I mean, I'm glad I didn't have to hear Panic at the Disco cover Bohemian Rhapsody but what's the point in having people cover and create music specifically for the film but not put it in? Also before anyone kicks off I love Panic, I'm just against people covering Bohemian Rhapsody because there's literally only one person on this planet that can sing it perfectly and he's dead.
Moving back to Enchantress, I have a few questions. What exactly was she doing when she first inhabited June Moone's body while Waller's team were searching for her heart? Was she just chilling in her swampy bath? Was she laying waste to everything she saw? I would like to know, I feel like this is an important detail. And how convenient was it that her heart was actually in the same cave as the little statue that she was found in? Not very good at hiding your heart there. Also, why was her heart not in her body? Why was she in that little statue in the first place? What is her backstory? Waller says everything they know about her is in the briefing packs but like...was the audience who never read the comics issued with that briefing pack? If so I wasn't given one and I want one because what the hell, I want at least some background rather than "here's this now accept it and carry on with no questions". I have questions movie and you ain't answering shit. There's also the fact that at one point, Enchantress brings herself out while Moone is sleeping...could she do this before? Why did she choose to do it now? What exactly was her motivation? Finally, there's how this character transitions between Moone and Enchantress. Saying "Enchantress" brings the witch out but...saying it again brings Moone back? Would it not make more sense to have her say "Moone" or something to bring her back? How does this work fellas?
Then there's the fact that Flag watches as Enchantress takes over and goes missing for a little bit then suddenly something not human starts attacking the city. What's the best course of action for that? Oh yeah, send the witch who went missing just before this shit went down into the battle and hope for the best. Of course, pat on the back guys, way to do your job well, y'all deserve medals.
Do you remember that scene where Harley Quinn is stood...somewhere and says something weird then claims it's the voices? Of course you do, it was probably the most marketed part of the film outside all the Joker's scenes. So if it's marketed as much as it was, of course, that means it's a big part of the film right? Hahaha, you thought wrong buckaroo. It's actually one tiny part of the film and has no relevance to anything outside of itself. The voices thing isn't even used outside of that part. I don't know if it was meant to be funny or if it was meant to a big part of the character but was cut out of the film and that little bit was just left in, I don't know. All I know is that that part was stupid and pointless. In fact, I actually think it was meant to be a joke because you can hear the dead air in which the film thought you were laughing at it. Unfortunately, nobody laughed, and it stayed awkward dead air.
Do you also remember that scene where Harley escapes and hangs onto a rope which is hanging from a helicopter? She has her little neck tag disarmed meaning Waller can't blow her head off so she asks Deadshot to kill her and the man who is the best shot in the world "misses" such an open shot? Even though he's been asked to do it in return of either seeing his kid or full custody of her, I don't remember but it's something to do with his daughter and he "misses" the shot, sacrificing that for a woman he's known for a day? I'll call bullshit on that one. The thing is, Harley plays along, acting like she's been shot but like...how did she know to do that? Did she just decide that the next shot fired she was going to play dead? Why? You're a free bitch, just climb that rope to your boo.
Speaking of playing dead, the Joker pulls the best stunt ever. The copter he saves Harley in gets shot down, he pushes her out in a bid to save her life but for whatever reason doesn't save himself, honestly, that makes no sense. Why would you choose to go down with the copter? Was it to fake the audience out? Of course, it was. Shame it didn't work on me though, I can tell this bullshit apart from a real death. I remember when I saw this in the cinema the girl I saw it with was almost in tears, she was so upset that they "killed" the Joker, and so were a lot of people actually. I remember a pretty audible gasp coming from a lot of the people in the almost full screening and I just didn't know why. In a way, I hoped that they did kill the Joker because at least then they would have followed through with something and done something impactful and maybe developed Harley's character a little more. I was proved right though. It was a fake out. I even said to the girl I was sat with that he'd be back at the end of the film to break Harley out of prison if that's where she ends up and I was so fucking right it almost winded me. I was so mad that I was actually able to predict the end of the fucking film. In fact, I'm still mad. I dare you to go down in flaming copter that explodes when it crashes and come out without a damned scar on you. Fuck.
Another fake death comes from the psychotic Waller. Enchantress is using her...tentacle? I don't know what it is but she's got some magic bullshit attached to Waller which is gaining government intel so that Enchantress can destroy the world. When Enchantress is defeated Waller emerges unharmed. Deadshot was also pretty sceptical of this which means the script was aware of this meaning the writers were aware of the bullshit going down. She emerges and Deadshot says something like "oh you're dead" or something like that. Maybe he's saying he'll kill her? It comes off more like "Nah, you're supposed to be dead after what you just went through" I mean, even she survives a fucking copter crash. Are those just like...bumped elbows or something? Hurts for a moment but you just move on with your life? This is a helicopter crash, even Michael Bay is telling you that's too much.
What else is there? Like I don't wanna make this too long but I have about 6 pages of notes of shit that I want to discuss or bitch about and I feel like this is already getting a bit too long. I'll just do a couple more...
There's the editing which is just...horrific. The colours, the choppiness, the way it allowed fight scenes to go on too long and the sporadic light to darkness. I know this was edited by the company that cut the trailer together but...why would you do that to the movie? Did they blow their budget on the music and only had enough left for the film to be edited by the company that did the trailer. I have nothing against the company the put the trailer together, they did a good job. The trailer got me hyped for a comic book movie which never happens. Not even with normal films so I thought y'know what, we'll try it. Just a shame that this company couldn't put a film together properly.
Another Enchantress problem that I noticed when looking at my notes is that June Moone is American and Cara Delavigne does the accent well enough but...why does Enchantress speak with an English accent when it comes to speaking to the rest of the characters? Is there some bias against English people where we're just destined to play villains in American movies? Is that racist? Speaking of racist isn't ese like n***a for the latina community yet Deadshot pretty much just refers to Diablo as ese? And moving on from racism there's some blatant misogyny too. There's a moment during the exhausting climax in which Deadshot says to Flag Quote: "- Get up there, smack her on the ass and tell her to knock this shit off." It's meant to be a joke obviously, but you just know that some people out there would take it seriously and complain about it being a line against women. There's another moment when the squad is all brought together and the final member gets out the car and punches a woman because "she had a mouth". We don't see what she did to him, we don't know if she was a mouthy cow or not so this attack just looks a little bit unprovoked.
The slo-mo in this film is also fucking ridiculous. You want this thing to speed up and be over but they choose to drag it out and make us suffer. Thought that needed pointing out.
The relationship between Harley and Joker is also disgusting. They clearly made them truly love each other because it would bring in more ticket sales and talk of what a great couple they are which totally undermines the true relationship between the two characters. I'm talking about the abuse. Why take away such a dark element which was pretty key to Harley's character? Oh right yeah because this was meant to be a funny, campy comic book movie and you obviously can't have serious issues talked about in stuff like that plus if there was abuse the film might not have gotten that all-important PG-13 rating it needed to bring in the biggest crowd and therefore higher ticket sales. Silly me haha.
Another problem which is really nitpicky but I just have to pick out is Harley's hair. As Dr Harleen Quinzel she has blonde hair. When she jumps into the acid she gets bleach blonde hair and when the joker jumps in after her his shirt and her shirt blend together to give her the blue and pink tips to her hair...I mean..the colours would have blended together and made her hair purple but whatever. Plus they kissing in a boiling vat of acid so...y'all dead. When she's in prison her hair is crazy long and has just faded blue and pink ends but when she's being transferred from the prison to I think an army base, her hair is short and has bright blue and pink hair ends again. Was she allowed a hair appointment on that transfer? I only actually noticed this on my final viewing of the film and it bothered me.
Finally, there's a moment in the climax where Deadshot is about to shoot Enchantress and he gets a vision of his daughter telling him not to because it's the only way they can be together. Why? He has to shoot Enchantress because if not he'll never see his daughter again because she'd be dead because the world would have ended. Why was this even a struggle for him to pull the trigger? It's just so fucking stupid. If this was an innocent person that he had a gun to then I'd understand it but...no.
So to complete this compliment sandwich...there's a guy in the IMDb cast list called Panda Man. Obviously referring to the guy who shoots places up wearing the most impractical panda costume ever. Just a fun little thing to note.
Anyway, that's it, I'm done, this was therapeutic and tiring at the same time and I'm glad I was able to just fully bitch about this thing even if it did take me about 7 hours to write. I'm just sad that I've had to own the DVD to be able to fucking do this. I've paid money twice to suffer through this and I'm done. Let's just hope that Wonder Woman or Justice League are any better. A'ight, I'm out, 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 like this film then go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.
Plot: Superman is dead and so in preparation for the next Superman, who the American's have convinced themselves is going to be a terrorist, they have created "Task Force X" which consists of a group of criminals.
Story time: I saw this either the day it was released or the day after it was released here, and I saw it with a girl I barely know. She rang my best friend and when she didn't pick up the phone, she rang me and asked if I wanted to go see it. I was down because why not? Kelly's more a Marvel fan and Ben was working and...at the time they were the only friends I had to go see a movie with. Anyway, we went and we came out with totally opposing opinions. She absolutely adored the film and I thought it was just crap despite the fact that I wanted this to be good, I wanted to at least like this film and I didn't, it really bothered me. I've since seen it 4 more times and each time I find something astoundingly bad and new and honestly I fucking hate both myself and the film every single damn time I watch it.
I really don't know where to even start with this? Do I praise the small things or do I just go in on it and save the pleasantries for the end? Shit...Know what, I'll do a compliment sandwich. What's that?
It's where you say something positive, do the negative things, then end on a positive note. Hopefully, that will work better than just attacking...maybe.
Ok so, compliment one: Some things on the gag reel on the DVD, while not all that great, could have been included in the film. Like Will Smith sneezing, that's hilarious, absolutely shit's Margot Robbie up and she sort of stays in character when he sneezes next to her, that would have been better than the awkwardly scripted "comedic" dialogue.
Negatives...Shit how can I do this...let's go through characters first then everything else because this is such an interesting thing to watch fall apart I can't just talk about stand out negatives, I gotta go through everything. Because to learn from your mistakes, you should know where you dun goofed.
Deadshot is probably one of the better characters where character development has been attempted. Key word though attempted. It's still blatantly Will Smith doing his Will Smith-y thing which is cool and all but...it's still just that. It's kind of boring but you know I was going to say it's better than the other characters we see but like I don't know man. I don't know. Deadshot has a daughter too who's mother is very neglectful, going out at night and getting wasted leaving the girl to look after her which is of course shit and she clearly is stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to family but who would you rather place her with? The mother who apparently couldn't care less and gets wasted all the time or the father who's pulling in like...$2,0000 a hit who seems like he genuinely cares for her? I mean yeah he's a hitman but...he's got the funds and the heart to care for this child.
Harley Quinn...is not that terrible. The character's voice is irritating, and she's way too easily seduced alongside just being in this line-up to be a sex symbol. That's all she is, a sex symbol. I mean they try to get us to sympathise but she's just so fucking boring and mouthy and she's always trying to kick off with everyone that she actually comes across as really unlikable which I'm certain wasn't the goal when writing her. Any previous iteration of Quinn is sympathetic and complex and a pretty great character. So much so that she was created for the animated series (one of the best Batman things out there btw) and she was adopted into this universe. That's how great a character she is. It's actually really insulting that she was made to be a boring, mouthy, sex symbol in this. I'm sure Margot Robbie was doing her best with the material she was given but my God it just doesn't work. She was a great choice for this character when you think about it...how did anyone fuck this up?
I'll say this once, and only once. Suck my dick if you didn't like this version of the joker because it was a "silly" portrayal of the Clown Prince of Gotham. There is no way on God's polluted, mess of a planet that you can make this character 100% serious. Also, did you not see the mess they made of the whole film? Don't target this one character for being "silly" because....I mean did you see the rest of the damn film? I don't think ya did boo. This Joker is probably my favourite aside from Jack Nicholson and Mark Hamil, this is what I imagine the Joker to be. A prankster but also a ruthless gangster. This was one of my absolute favourite parts of the film, and it's such a shame that Jared Leto got fucked so hard when it came to his like...what...5 or 6 scenes? This guy deserves his own movie. I mean...the one thing I can pick apart with this guy is the fact it literally started "daddy" as a fucking trend and it was all over my social media for fucking months after this came out. It's still going in some places and you know that these girls are still following it as a trend because why would
you legitimately publish your sexual appetites on fucking Facebook? Get bent. Anyway, fight me if you don't like this Joker man. If nothing else, he was fun to watch because of how much fun Leto was having playing this character.
The Flash came up in this and I'm so proud of Ezra Miller. That's it...moving on...
Captain Boomerang. Well...at least we know Deadpool is influencing films before it was even out. It's a shame that we don't see much of this character, I mean, we get something like 10 minutes (or less)
of screen time for Deadshot and Harley but this guy gets something like...I dunno maybe 5 minutes? Maybe less, I don't know. It's just a weird thing to do, almost as if...they wanted you to focus more on Deadshot and Harley and the other characters are just side characters that you're not supposed to really care about. But why do that when the film is called Suicide Squad. It just makes no sense. Jai Courtney at least makes this role memorable in being pretty funny. Shame he gets sort of sidelined.
Killer Croc is in this movie too. Bet you didn't know that. The most interesting thing about this character is the actor behind the character, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje. I'm really really sorry if I spelt any of that wrong but look what a damn cool name that is. I hope that if there is a future role for him as Croc he gets more time devoted to him because this character seems like he could have been pretty great but is reduced to spouting self-love and acting tough. He grunts a lot and manages to get a grand total of around 7 lines in the entire film. Trust me, I counted. Hate that this character gets shafted worse than the Joker.
El Diablo. Easily the most interesting character in this damn film, why? Becuase he's caused so much
pain in his life, he acknowledges that and refuses to raise his hands in violence again. Why isn't he all that talked about? He too gets sidelined for the focus to be on Harley and Deadshot. Give this guy a movie. Now. I want to see how he stopped repressing his power and started using them for his own gain. How he adapted to falling in love and having a family. How he dealt with that pain in prison. I'm always so damn mad that this character didn't get enough attention. It's made worse by the fact that with some pretty cool makeup and a pretty good performance from Jay Hernandez it's kind of a worse loss.
Then there's Rick Flag, the soldier that berates Deadshot for being a killer for hire even though he is essentially the same thing but with less pay and thinks he's on a higher moral ground, he also golfs with a 3 handicap and was originally intended to be played by Tom Hardy I think who dropped out to due to "scheduling issues". Roughly translated he didn't like the script and thought that his commitment to the terrible The Revenant was more important. I honestly don't blame him. His replacement, Joel Kinnaman, did a decent job of playing the character and I did like the character at the start of the film but there's only so much preaching I can take.
Dr June Moon is probably the worst archaeologist in the history of archaeology. She travels alone to a cave, and breaks open an ancient artefact. Yes, there is the argument that Enchantress was calling to her to free her but I kind of don't buy that shit. She's also the love interest of Rick Flag when she's not in witch form, which is Amanda Waller's way of controlling Rick to get him to do whatever she wants him to. Probably my favourite manipulative move in this whole film. Back to Moon though. There is one really awesome shot in which she calls upon Enchantress and Enchantresses hand entwines with Moon's and flips over, completing the transition between characters. That's a really cool shot too because all we see is the hand...shame we don't see that again. Cara Delavigne...God bless her she's doing her best here but this wasn't a role for her. I don't know what direction she was given toward the end of the film but it wasn't the right one. It looks as though she might actually be in pain with the way she's moving her body, which is never good for an audience member to see, I almost wanted to give her some paracetamol or something, twisting and jerking your body about like that can't be healthy. The important thing is she tried and did her best
Katana is here...I don't know why. She's introduced to us in a dew seconds of flashback and given a supposedly emotional scene before the climax where she's crying to her sword which contains the soul of her husband and I think we're meant to really feel for her but...we don't. She serves literally no purpose in the film and she would 100% do better if she was given a bigger part or even her own film because I just don't think she's used very well. Karen Fukuhara again does her best but there really isn't any payoff with the character.
Griggs is another of my favourite parts of the film, mostly because I thought he was played by John Gallagher Jr who is slowly becoming one of my favourite actors but he's not in this movie. Instead, Griggs is played by Ike Barinholtz who is actually quite funny and enjoyable to watch until he just kind of....drops out of the film altogether. Why? I don't know, he doesn't even show up at the end when everyone's back in prison.
Finally, there's Viola Davis as Amanda Waller. She is probably the coolest person in this film, she's stern but you can feel there's some sort of nasty undertone with her...shame they went overboard and made her a little bit psychotic and kills a whole room of people because they didn't have clearance for...something...I don't know what that something was, maybe it was knowing of the squad I don't know but she could have bribed them to keep their mouths shut rather than blow all the heads off. Then when the squad saves the whole fucking world she comes out holding this machine that could blow all their heads off like...no, there is no need for that at all. They saved your life twice, they saved the world and you're gonna blow their heads off too? Nuh-uh, I don't think so.
So that's it for the characters, what else is wrong with this? Well for a start there's at least 18 music cues in this and I think about 11 of them are in the first half hour all rushed together. I wouldn't even be all that bothered about it but they went to the effort to get artists to cover and create music for this film and throughout the entire thing I think about 3 were used and the rest were the original songs that were covered for the soundtrack album. I mean, I'm glad I didn't have to hear Panic at the Disco cover Bohemian Rhapsody but what's the point in having people cover and create music specifically for the film but not put it in? Also before anyone kicks off I love Panic, I'm just against people covering Bohemian Rhapsody because there's literally only one person on this planet that can sing it perfectly and he's dead.
Moving back to Enchantress, I have a few questions. What exactly was she doing when she first inhabited June Moone's body while Waller's team were searching for her heart? Was she just chilling in her swampy bath? Was she laying waste to everything she saw? I would like to know, I feel like this is an important detail. And how convenient was it that her heart was actually in the same cave as the little statue that she was found in? Not very good at hiding your heart there. Also, why was her heart not in her body? Why was she in that little statue in the first place? What is her backstory? Waller says everything they know about her is in the briefing packs but like...was the audience who never read the comics issued with that briefing pack? If so I wasn't given one and I want one because what the hell, I want at least some background rather than "here's this now accept it and carry on with no questions". I have questions movie and you ain't answering shit. There's also the fact that at one point, Enchantress brings herself out while Moone is sleeping...could she do this before? Why did she choose to do it now? What exactly was her motivation? Finally, there's how this character transitions between Moone and Enchantress. Saying "Enchantress" brings the witch out but...saying it again brings Moone back? Would it not make more sense to have her say "Moone" or something to bring her back? How does this work fellas?
Then there's the fact that Flag watches as Enchantress takes over and goes missing for a little bit then suddenly something not human starts attacking the city. What's the best course of action for that? Oh yeah, send the witch who went missing just before this shit went down into the battle and hope for the best. Of course, pat on the back guys, way to do your job well, y'all deserve medals.
Do you remember that scene where Harley Quinn is stood...somewhere and says something weird then claims it's the voices? Of course you do, it was probably the most marketed part of the film outside all the Joker's scenes. So if it's marketed as much as it was, of course, that means it's a big part of the film right? Hahaha, you thought wrong buckaroo. It's actually one tiny part of the film and has no relevance to anything outside of itself. The voices thing isn't even used outside of that part. I don't know if it was meant to be funny or if it was meant to a big part of the character but was cut out of the film and that little bit was just left in, I don't know. All I know is that that part was stupid and pointless. In fact, I actually think it was meant to be a joke because you can hear the dead air in which the film thought you were laughing at it. Unfortunately, nobody laughed, and it stayed awkward dead air.
Do you also remember that scene where Harley escapes and hangs onto a rope which is hanging from a helicopter? She has her little neck tag disarmed meaning Waller can't blow her head off so she asks Deadshot to kill her and the man who is the best shot in the world "misses" such an open shot? Even though he's been asked to do it in return of either seeing his kid or full custody of her, I don't remember but it's something to do with his daughter and he "misses" the shot, sacrificing that for a woman he's known for a day? I'll call bullshit on that one. The thing is, Harley plays along, acting like she's been shot but like...how did she know to do that? Did she just decide that the next shot fired she was going to play dead? Why? You're a free bitch, just climb that rope to your boo.
Speaking of playing dead, the Joker pulls the best stunt ever. The copter he saves Harley in gets shot down, he pushes her out in a bid to save her life but for whatever reason doesn't save himself, honestly, that makes no sense. Why would you choose to go down with the copter? Was it to fake the audience out? Of course, it was. Shame it didn't work on me though, I can tell this bullshit apart from a real death. I remember when I saw this in the cinema the girl I saw it with was almost in tears, she was so upset that they "killed" the Joker, and so were a lot of people actually. I remember a pretty audible gasp coming from a lot of the people in the almost full screening and I just didn't know why. In a way, I hoped that they did kill the Joker because at least then they would have followed through with something and done something impactful and maybe developed Harley's character a little more. I was proved right though. It was a fake out. I even said to the girl I was sat with that he'd be back at the end of the film to break Harley out of prison if that's where she ends up and I was so fucking right it almost winded me. I was so mad that I was actually able to predict the end of the fucking film. In fact, I'm still mad. I dare you to go down in flaming copter that explodes when it crashes and come out without a damned scar on you. Fuck.
Another fake death comes from the psychotic Waller. Enchantress is using her...tentacle? I don't know what it is but she's got some magic bullshit attached to Waller which is gaining government intel so that Enchantress can destroy the world. When Enchantress is defeated Waller emerges unharmed. Deadshot was also pretty sceptical of this which means the script was aware of this meaning the writers were aware of the bullshit going down. She emerges and Deadshot says something like "oh you're dead" or something like that. Maybe he's saying he'll kill her? It comes off more like "Nah, you're supposed to be dead after what you just went through" I mean, even she survives a fucking copter crash. Are those just like...bumped elbows or something? Hurts for a moment but you just move on with your life? This is a helicopter crash, even Michael Bay is telling you that's too much.
What else is there? Like I don't wanna make this too long but I have about 6 pages of notes of shit that I want to discuss or bitch about and I feel like this is already getting a bit too long. I'll just do a couple more...
There's the editing which is just...horrific. The colours, the choppiness, the way it allowed fight scenes to go on too long and the sporadic light to darkness. I know this was edited by the company that cut the trailer together but...why would you do that to the movie? Did they blow their budget on the music and only had enough left for the film to be edited by the company that did the trailer. I have nothing against the company the put the trailer together, they did a good job. The trailer got me hyped for a comic book movie which never happens. Not even with normal films so I thought y'know what, we'll try it. Just a shame that this company couldn't put a film together properly.
Another Enchantress problem that I noticed when looking at my notes is that June Moone is American and Cara Delavigne does the accent well enough but...why does Enchantress speak with an English accent when it comes to speaking to the rest of the characters? Is there some bias against English people where we're just destined to play villains in American movies? Is that racist? Speaking of racist isn't ese like n***a for the latina community yet Deadshot pretty much just refers to Diablo as ese? And moving on from racism there's some blatant misogyny too. There's a moment during the exhausting climax in which Deadshot says to Flag Quote: "- Get up there, smack her on the ass and tell her to knock this shit off." It's meant to be a joke obviously, but you just know that some people out there would take it seriously and complain about it being a line against women. There's another moment when the squad is all brought together and the final member gets out the car and punches a woman because "she had a mouth". We don't see what she did to him, we don't know if she was a mouthy cow or not so this attack just looks a little bit unprovoked.
The slo-mo in this film is also fucking ridiculous. You want this thing to speed up and be over but they choose to drag it out and make us suffer. Thought that needed pointing out.
The relationship between Harley and Joker is also disgusting. They clearly made them truly love each other because it would bring in more ticket sales and talk of what a great couple they are which totally undermines the true relationship between the two characters. I'm talking about the abuse. Why take away such a dark element which was pretty key to Harley's character? Oh right yeah because this was meant to be a funny, campy comic book movie and you obviously can't have serious issues talked about in stuff like that plus if there was abuse the film might not have gotten that all-important PG-13 rating it needed to bring in the biggest crowd and therefore higher ticket sales. Silly me haha.
Another problem which is really nitpicky but I just have to pick out is Harley's hair. As Dr Harleen Quinzel she has blonde hair. When she jumps into the acid she gets bleach blonde hair and when the joker jumps in after her his shirt and her shirt blend together to give her the blue and pink tips to her hair...I mean..the colours would have blended together and made her hair purple but whatever. Plus they kissing in a boiling vat of acid so...y'all dead. When she's in prison her hair is crazy long and has just faded blue and pink ends but when she's being transferred from the prison to I think an army base, her hair is short and has bright blue and pink hair ends again. Was she allowed a hair appointment on that transfer? I only actually noticed this on my final viewing of the film and it bothered me.
Finally, there's a moment in the climax where Deadshot is about to shoot Enchantress and he gets a vision of his daughter telling him not to because it's the only way they can be together. Why? He has to shoot Enchantress because if not he'll never see his daughter again because she'd be dead because the world would have ended. Why was this even a struggle for him to pull the trigger? It's just so fucking stupid. If this was an innocent person that he had a gun to then I'd understand it but...no.
So to complete this compliment sandwich...there's a guy in the IMDb cast list called Panda Man. Obviously referring to the guy who shoots places up wearing the most impractical panda costume ever. Just a fun little thing to note.
Anyway, that's it, I'm done, this was therapeutic and tiring at the same time and I'm glad I was able to just fully bitch about this thing even if it did take me about 7 hours to write. I'm just sad that I've had to own the DVD to be able to fucking do this. I've paid money twice to suffer through this and I'm done. Let's just hope that Wonder Woman or Justice League are any better. A'ight, I'm out, 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 like this film then go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.
Wednesday 10 May 2017
Jurassic Park
No unauthorised breeding at Jurassic Park.
Director: Steven Spielberg
Writers: Michael Crichton (Novel & Screenplay)
David Koepp (Screenplay)
Runtime: 2hrs 7minutes
Plot: Dinosaurs are real, protect your loved ones. Lawyers suck and Sam Jackson doesn't swear. I really don't know of anyone who doesn't know the plot to this but a guy builds a theme park centred around cloned, dangerous dinosaurs but needs outside opinions so he can continue to get funding for the place. As you can guess, shit goes down.
Shit man, how have I never watched this the whole way through? I mean I heard that the effects were amazing but I thought they probably look a bit crap considering this came out in '93 but what the hell do I know. These effects are still so amazing. I can't get over how good they are. I really think this film was worth the 2 hours it took from my life and I definitely respect the fact that it doesn't feel like it's taking 2 hours from you. I really can't wait to watch the rest of these if this is the high bar that's been set.
Let's get into the bad stuff first to get it out of the way. Hammond (Richard Attenborough). Hammond is such a piece of shit. How? He uses his grandchildren as some sort of test audience which I suppose is fine if he was 100% confident in this project which he seems to be but at the same time, his park is being investigated before it's even open. That should be a little bit of a red flag. As you know, shit happens and his grandchildren are put in danger. What does Hammond do? Sends a guy out in a jeep to get them back. The jeep goes out, gets Jeff Goldblum and comes back without the grandkids. This should make someone go out of their mind with worry and what does Hammond do? Have a solo candlelit dinner and have a conversation about his flea circus. Not go out and risk his life for his grandkids, have a discussion about a damn flea circus. This guy's a dick, why do people say that he's a nice guy? Is it because it was Richard Attenborough? I don't know, I didn't like this character.
The writing is a little bit...how do I put it? Stupid? Yeah, the writing can sometimes be a little bit stupid. By sometimes, I mean the occasional line, I think everyone gets a stupid line in this but I have a few favourite stand out stupid lines. The first comes from the King of whispering and mumbling and uhm-ing; Jeff Goldblum. He's in the electric car approaching the gates to the park, he's already been given all the information and clues he needs to know there are dinosaurs here and what does he say? Quote: "What have they got in there? King Kong?" I'm sure this was meant to be a funny line, probably meant to come out as sarcastic but it didn't come out that way. My initial reaction to that line was "fuck have you been doing this whole time?" Honestly half the time Goldblum was talking I just tuned out. I don't know why maybe it's because I just don't like his voice or his speech pattern or whatever but you could not pay me to pay attention to him in this film.
Another stupid line comes from Dr Grant (Sam Neill) after the first T-Rex incident (one of the coolest fucking things I've ever seen in my entire life). Tim (Joseph Mazzello) is stuck in the Jeep which was launched into a tree. Grant climbs the tree to get Tim out and asks Quote: "Are you ok?" Now I get why he's asking this, don't get me wrong on that. He's making sure there's no severe damage done to the child's body, the thing is, I just find it a bit stupid to ask someone who has gone through such a scarring near death experience to ask if they're ok. It's not like little Tim is gonna come back at him like "Yeah man I'm great, almost got eaten by an extinct creature that my grandfather brought back to life knowing that this was such a fucking dangerous predator, then I almost got flattened by a car but aye, I'm alright, wanna go grab a pint and wait for all this to blow over?" Like, it's just a bit stupid.
The last stupid line comes from Tim. Grant is telling the children that the (I think) Brachiosaurus is just like a big cow. Tim says Quote: "I like cows". Good for you kid. Glad you got that off your chest. What's even better about this line is that it sounds like it was edited in later while they were putting the scene together. It's just funny.
Finally, for negative points, Tim should be dead. He was electrocuted and flung off of this electric fence that should have a high enough voltage to keep extinct, smart predators from escaping and maybe even preventing them from wanting to escape. This child should be dead. End of. He got fucked so badly. I'm amazed this kid survived.
Ok, I'm done complaining, let's get to the good stuff. The CGI. This is where effects look good, it's used sparingly and even though you can tell in some places like when the T-Rex is spinning the upside-down Jeep, but the majority of the time I couldn't even tell when it was a computer effect. A lot of effort clearly went into making this look as real as possible and it pays off. Near enough every effect blends together to create something so believable that apparently, people in the filmmaking business don't seem to want to do anymore because just doing CGI is a lot cheaper and easier to do than craft animatronics and puppets which I understand but...maybe sometimes that would be nice? At least use a couple of practical effects somewhere rather than just CG over everything.
The dinosaurs are great, they look great, especially the raptors. Where the hell am I gonna get one of those things? They're so fucking cute, I mean yeah they're dangerous predators and incredible hunters but at the same time...they're so damn cute and I want to hold one. The T-Rex has her moments too. I say moments, she pretty much just steals the movie and makes everything at least 50x more awesome. She is the best thing in this film. Fuck the people, fuck the story arcs, fuck whatever argument Goldblum makes against the park, fuck everything. She. Is. This. Movie.
Another thing I loved is the reactions of the people when they first see these things. They're just in complete shock and awe. They're amazed at the sight before them, these extinct creatures that they've studied their entire lives. They love these things and honestly, what would you do if you saw these things alive and in front of your face? Damn. And the fact that you don't even see these things until about halfway through the movie which is pretty great considering that even the marketing for the film wouldn't show the creatures. Tension building at its finest.
I'm really trying to think of other things in this that aren't dinosaur related but...I really can't. They're the best thing and I won't hear a word against those babies. They're precious. Anyway, I think that's it for today, 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.
Director: Steven Spielberg
Writers: Michael Crichton (Novel & Screenplay)
David Koepp (Screenplay)
Runtime: 2hrs 7minutes
Plot: Dinosaurs are real, protect your loved ones. Lawyers suck and Sam Jackson doesn't swear. I really don't know of anyone who doesn't know the plot to this but a guy builds a theme park centred around cloned, dangerous dinosaurs but needs outside opinions so he can continue to get funding for the place. As you can guess, shit goes down.
Shit man, how have I never watched this the whole way through? I mean I heard that the effects were amazing but I thought they probably look a bit crap considering this came out in '93 but what the hell do I know. These effects are still so amazing. I can't get over how good they are. I really think this film was worth the 2 hours it took from my life and I definitely respect the fact that it doesn't feel like it's taking 2 hours from you. I really can't wait to watch the rest of these if this is the high bar that's been set.
Let's get into the bad stuff first to get it out of the way. Hammond (Richard Attenborough). Hammond is such a piece of shit. How? He uses his grandchildren as some sort of test audience which I suppose is fine if he was 100% confident in this project which he seems to be but at the same time, his park is being investigated before it's even open. That should be a little bit of a red flag. As you know, shit happens and his grandchildren are put in danger. What does Hammond do? Sends a guy out in a jeep to get them back. The jeep goes out, gets Jeff Goldblum and comes back without the grandkids. This should make someone go out of their mind with worry and what does Hammond do? Have a solo candlelit dinner and have a conversation about his flea circus. Not go out and risk his life for his grandkids, have a discussion about a damn flea circus. This guy's a dick, why do people say that he's a nice guy? Is it because it was Richard Attenborough? I don't know, I didn't like this character.
The writing is a little bit...how do I put it? Stupid? Yeah, the writing can sometimes be a little bit stupid. By sometimes, I mean the occasional line, I think everyone gets a stupid line in this but I have a few favourite stand out stupid lines. The first comes from the King of whispering and mumbling and uhm-ing; Jeff Goldblum. He's in the electric car approaching the gates to the park, he's already been given all the information and clues he needs to know there are dinosaurs here and what does he say? Quote: "What have they got in there? King Kong?" I'm sure this was meant to be a funny line, probably meant to come out as sarcastic but it didn't come out that way. My initial reaction to that line was "fuck have you been doing this whole time?" Honestly half the time Goldblum was talking I just tuned out. I don't know why maybe it's because I just don't like his voice or his speech pattern or whatever but you could not pay me to pay attention to him in this film.
Another stupid line comes from Dr Grant (Sam Neill) after the first T-Rex incident (one of the coolest fucking things I've ever seen in my entire life). Tim (Joseph Mazzello) is stuck in the Jeep which was launched into a tree. Grant climbs the tree to get Tim out and asks Quote: "Are you ok?" Now I get why he's asking this, don't get me wrong on that. He's making sure there's no severe damage done to the child's body, the thing is, I just find it a bit stupid to ask someone who has gone through such a scarring near death experience to ask if they're ok. It's not like little Tim is gonna come back at him like "Yeah man I'm great, almost got eaten by an extinct creature that my grandfather brought back to life knowing that this was such a fucking dangerous predator, then I almost got flattened by a car but aye, I'm alright, wanna go grab a pint and wait for all this to blow over?" Like, it's just a bit stupid.
The last stupid line comes from Tim. Grant is telling the children that the (I think) Brachiosaurus is just like a big cow. Tim says Quote: "I like cows". Good for you kid. Glad you got that off your chest. What's even better about this line is that it sounds like it was edited in later while they were putting the scene together. It's just funny.
Finally, for negative points, Tim should be dead. He was electrocuted and flung off of this electric fence that should have a high enough voltage to keep extinct, smart predators from escaping and maybe even preventing them from wanting to escape. This child should be dead. End of. He got fucked so badly. I'm amazed this kid survived.
Ok, I'm done complaining, let's get to the good stuff. The CGI. This is where effects look good, it's used sparingly and even though you can tell in some places like when the T-Rex is spinning the upside-down Jeep, but the majority of the time I couldn't even tell when it was a computer effect. A lot of effort clearly went into making this look as real as possible and it pays off. Near enough every effect blends together to create something so believable that apparently, people in the filmmaking business don't seem to want to do anymore because just doing CGI is a lot cheaper and easier to do than craft animatronics and puppets which I understand but...maybe sometimes that would be nice? At least use a couple of practical effects somewhere rather than just CG over everything.
The dinosaurs are great, they look great, especially the raptors. Where the hell am I gonna get one of those things? They're so fucking cute, I mean yeah they're dangerous predators and incredible hunters but at the same time...they're so damn cute and I want to hold one. The T-Rex has her moments too. I say moments, she pretty much just steals the movie and makes everything at least 50x more awesome. She is the best thing in this film. Fuck the people, fuck the story arcs, fuck whatever argument Goldblum makes against the park, fuck everything. She. Is. This. Movie.
Another thing I loved is the reactions of the people when they first see these things. They're just in complete shock and awe. They're amazed at the sight before them, these extinct creatures that they've studied their entire lives. They love these things and honestly, what would you do if you saw these things alive and in front of your face? Damn. And the fact that you don't even see these things until about halfway through the movie which is pretty great considering that even the marketing for the film wouldn't show the creatures. Tension building at its finest.
I'm really trying to think of other things in this that aren't dinosaur related but...I really can't. They're the best thing and I won't hear a word against those babies. They're precious. Anyway, I think that's it for today, 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.
Tuesday 9 May 2017
Hotel Transylvania
Why does everybody hate Adam Sandler?
Director: Genndy Tartakovsky
Writers: Peter Baynham (Screenplay)
Robert Smigel (Screenplay)
Todd Durham (Story)
Dan Hageman (Story)
Kevin Hageman (Story)
Runtime: 92 minutes
Plot: Due to the persecution of the classic horror icons (and other monsters) Count Dracula (Adam Sandler) builds a hotel as a safe space for the monsters and his daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez). On his daughters 118th birthday, a human Johnny (Andy Samberg) shows up and threatens his view of the humans altogether.
I love this film but it's not always been that way. I remember a few years ago I was at the cinema and saw posters for this and thought it looked a bit shit. In all honesty, I wasn't even into films at that point in my life and only ever went to see things my friends asked me to go and see or if it was something that really grabbed my attention. Crazy times considering now all I do is sit around watching stuff to bitch about on the internet. Anyway, cut to a few years later and my friend's parents were away so I was staying with her because she had a crippling fear of being alone in the house. We had fun, we made food and baked cookies and had a brew and couldn't find a tv show to watch but this was on ITV2 so we thought fuck it, see what it's about. We thought it was just so funny, we loved it. A couple hours later we saw the trailer for the second one on Facebook and we thought damn, we seeing that when it's out if it's half as good as this one was. It was ok, not as good as this but was ok.
When I first saw this, I wasn't aware of any chronic Sandler bashing. I knew he'd made crap but I never thought that people would hate him regardless of whether he put out any good content. Looking at the 45% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes and the reviews it got, I'm amazed. Like I understand that comedy is subjective and all but...this is a good film. It's not groundbreaking or anything but it's fun, energetic, entertaining, the animation is pretty good, it's very fast but knows when to take a breath and be calm for its emotional moments. I really don't see how critics thought this was just trite to entertain a 5-year-old. But this is all just opinion based and everybody has a different opinion which is fine, I'm not going to slate people for not finding it funny, I'm just saying I don't find it fair that this film got bashed because Sandler was in it. I mean...it could have been worse. It could have had Rob Schnieder in it.
Anyway, I'm not here to talk about my history with the film or the critic's feelings when it came out. I'm here to tell you what I thought about it when I watched it. So what did I think re-watching it? It was still funny, yes it has problems but what film doesn't? What are the problems? Let's get into it.
My first issue with this is how dead mothers in films, who die suddenly, seem to know they're going to die and create a heartfelt gift for their child's 18th birthday. It's kind of amazing to me, I get it when the mother is ill and dying and have time but it just seems a little coincidental that the mother's last words would be "I made this for our child, don't let them near it until their 18th and it has to be at a critical point in their development as a person and will change your relationship with our child forever." I don't know, this is just confusing to me.
Looking back on my notes and thinking back to it, that's the only issue I can think of, I'm sure I'll probably find more when I watch this again, I always do. So let's get into the positives.
I love the thing with Quasimodo and his rat, Esmeralda. Did he name the rat after his lost love? Is the rat an example of the woman in the book rather than the Disney adaptation? I don't know but it's a cool thing to put in there for those who love the book or the Disney film or both really. To be honest, I never even picked up on it until maybe the fourth or fifth time I watched this and I was kind of blown away by how I didn't notice it.
Steve Buschemi as the wolf-man is probably my favourite character in this, I mean, how can you not feel bad for this guy? He's got around 20-30 pups who don't respect him bar one, his wife is heavily pregnant with another litter of pups, he can't sleep because these pups are apparently overly energised insomniacs and as soon as he gets a second of sleep the alarm goes off. This poor guy just can't catch a break and even gets judged by his friends for eating a herd of sheep blocking the road because...that's what wolves do. I just love Buschemi anyway but I love him in this role too.
This film also raises important questions, such as where exactly did this thing with Dracula saying "bleh bleh bleh" come from? I've not read the book in a while or watched the Hammer classics but I don't think it started there. Maybe it was in a comedy skit? SNL maybe? It probably started before SNL though...shit I don't know but this is important and I would like an answer to that.
Overall, I do love this film, the heartfelt moments are well done, the connections between the characters are believable, the humour is good, there are fart jokes for kids, there's character based humour for adults which is especially funny with the invisible man and wolf-man. It's kind of educational in the sense that it brings to light different monsters to kids attention, like some kids will know of Frankenstein but not a lot will know of the bride of Frankenstein. It's great, and something fun to show kids, especially around Halloween, y'know, with all those monsters. This is a pretty good project from Sandler and if you wanna hate on something of his, go hate Pixels, that's terrible and judging by the promotional shots of Sandler's face, even he wasn't all that happy with that one. Anyway, that's it for today, 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.
Director: Genndy Tartakovsky
Writers: Peter Baynham (Screenplay)
Robert Smigel (Screenplay)
Todd Durham (Story)
Dan Hageman (Story)
Kevin Hageman (Story)
Runtime: 92 minutes
Plot: Due to the persecution of the classic horror icons (and other monsters) Count Dracula (Adam Sandler) builds a hotel as a safe space for the monsters and his daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez). On his daughters 118th birthday, a human Johnny (Andy Samberg) shows up and threatens his view of the humans altogether.
I love this film but it's not always been that way. I remember a few years ago I was at the cinema and saw posters for this and thought it looked a bit shit. In all honesty, I wasn't even into films at that point in my life and only ever went to see things my friends asked me to go and see or if it was something that really grabbed my attention. Crazy times considering now all I do is sit around watching stuff to bitch about on the internet. Anyway, cut to a few years later and my friend's parents were away so I was staying with her because she had a crippling fear of being alone in the house. We had fun, we made food and baked cookies and had a brew and couldn't find a tv show to watch but this was on ITV2 so we thought fuck it, see what it's about. We thought it was just so funny, we loved it. A couple hours later we saw the trailer for the second one on Facebook and we thought damn, we seeing that when it's out if it's half as good as this one was. It was ok, not as good as this but was ok.
When I first saw this, I wasn't aware of any chronic Sandler bashing. I knew he'd made crap but I never thought that people would hate him regardless of whether he put out any good content. Looking at the 45% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes and the reviews it got, I'm amazed. Like I understand that comedy is subjective and all but...this is a good film. It's not groundbreaking or anything but it's fun, energetic, entertaining, the animation is pretty good, it's very fast but knows when to take a breath and be calm for its emotional moments. I really don't see how critics thought this was just trite to entertain a 5-year-old. But this is all just opinion based and everybody has a different opinion which is fine, I'm not going to slate people for not finding it funny, I'm just saying I don't find it fair that this film got bashed because Sandler was in it. I mean...it could have been worse. It could have had Rob Schnieder in it.
Anyway, I'm not here to talk about my history with the film or the critic's feelings when it came out. I'm here to tell you what I thought about it when I watched it. So what did I think re-watching it? It was still funny, yes it has problems but what film doesn't? What are the problems? Let's get into it.
My first issue with this is how dead mothers in films, who die suddenly, seem to know they're going to die and create a heartfelt gift for their child's 18th birthday. It's kind of amazing to me, I get it when the mother is ill and dying and have time but it just seems a little coincidental that the mother's last words would be "I made this for our child, don't let them near it until their 18th and it has to be at a critical point in their development as a person and will change your relationship with our child forever." I don't know, this is just confusing to me.
Looking back on my notes and thinking back to it, that's the only issue I can think of, I'm sure I'll probably find more when I watch this again, I always do. So let's get into the positives.
I love the thing with Quasimodo and his rat, Esmeralda. Did he name the rat after his lost love? Is the rat an example of the woman in the book rather than the Disney adaptation? I don't know but it's a cool thing to put in there for those who love the book or the Disney film or both really. To be honest, I never even picked up on it until maybe the fourth or fifth time I watched this and I was kind of blown away by how I didn't notice it.
Steve Buschemi as the wolf-man is probably my favourite character in this, I mean, how can you not feel bad for this guy? He's got around 20-30 pups who don't respect him bar one, his wife is heavily pregnant with another litter of pups, he can't sleep because these pups are apparently overly energised insomniacs and as soon as he gets a second of sleep the alarm goes off. This poor guy just can't catch a break and even gets judged by his friends for eating a herd of sheep blocking the road because...that's what wolves do. I just love Buschemi anyway but I love him in this role too.
This film also raises important questions, such as where exactly did this thing with Dracula saying "bleh bleh bleh" come from? I've not read the book in a while or watched the Hammer classics but I don't think it started there. Maybe it was in a comedy skit? SNL maybe? It probably started before SNL though...shit I don't know but this is important and I would like an answer to that.
Overall, I do love this film, the heartfelt moments are well done, the connections between the characters are believable, the humour is good, there are fart jokes for kids, there's character based humour for adults which is especially funny with the invisible man and wolf-man. It's kind of educational in the sense that it brings to light different monsters to kids attention, like some kids will know of Frankenstein but not a lot will know of the bride of Frankenstein. It's great, and something fun to show kids, especially around Halloween, y'know, with all those monsters. This is a pretty good project from Sandler and if you wanna hate on something of his, go hate Pixels, that's terrible and judging by the promotional shots of Sandler's face, even he wasn't all that happy with that one. Anyway, that's it for today, 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.
Sunday 7 May 2017
13 Reasons Why - Episode 4
What the fuck is up with everyone?!
13 Reasons Why
Episode 4: Tape 2 side B
So far, this episode has the worst message with the worst intention. Make your own justice. I can see how that can be a good thing I mean, as a teenager nobody takes you seriously and at one point I've had to get my own justice for something but that doesn't mean it's right. You shouldn't do that. I in no way advocate violence in any way and you definitely shouldn't encourage others to be violent to another person. It's not funny, all you're doing is giving another person pain or fear. If you feel so strongly about what this person has done to you, talk to the police. Do not insight violence on others.
Episode plot: Hannah has a stalker and decides to encourage others to damage that person's home, Clay takes it to a whole other disgusting level.
Marcus: Marcus (Steven Silver) is my absolute favourite person in this episode. First, he shows up in this really cool sombrero that lights up and plays a song. My absolute favourite hat. Then he brings us a well-needed slice of truth. Clay says something about the rules of listening to the tapes which...I literally don't remember them, I really don't, to which Marcus tells him -
Quote: "Dude, Hannah's dead. I'm sorry but it's true, nothing anyone did to her was any different than what happens to every girl that ever went to high school. She just wanted attention. And then leaving those tapes? That's a fucked up thing to do, no one deserves that."
Seems to sum up my thoughts on her pretty well. The only thing I didn't like about him was that he called Taylor (Devin Druid) a psycho. I mean yeah he did some gross things but not psychopathic.
Taylor: So what did he do to be called a "psycho"? He stalked Hannah, took pictures of her in her bedroom and took pictures of her making out with Courtney (Michele Selene Ang) and then had the gall to spread one of the pictures around school when she rejects him. This is horrible behaviour but in no way deserves what comes to him.
What Hannah should have done was talk to either someone at the school with Courtney, they have the proof that photos were taken, they both caught him at the same time and maybe he had backup copies on his phone or in his dark room. All they had to do was keep quiet about telling someone about it and he'd have been busted and suffered the proper consequences.
Hannah: Good fuck I don't know what the worst thing she's done so far is. She made these tapes blaming everyone in her life for this. She made a second set of the tapes because why the shit not. She never left her parents a tape or a note to ease their thoughts (to an extent). She didn't have to give them 13 tapes telling them who did it and how she could just tell them that her head wasn't in the right place to carry on living or something like that. Maybe just a note telling them it's not their fault. I dunno, just a shitty move. Finally, she encourages the people who listen to the tapes to throw rocks at Taylors window. That's a new level of shitty.
She says she wants him to feel what she felt, to not feel safe in his own bedroom. How nasty is that? How sadistic is that? How can she wish that on someone else? What if she was beaten and raped in her own room? Would she wish that on whoever did that to her? Fucking disgusting, honestly.
Clay: Speaking of disgusting behaviour, Clay, as I said before, takes it to a new level. Rather than throw a rock at his bedroom window, he takes a picture of Taylor from behind, naked and sends it around in a group message to the whole damn school. When Tony asks him "what the hell?" (see it's in this one too just not directed at Tony) Clay replies "Making my own justice." I'm not sure the exact wording but it was something along that line. And that is vile behaviour.
If there are kids watching this, like 12-18-year-olds, do not take this as how you should deal with things. Actually y'know what, no matter how old you are, don't do this shit. Just because someone did this to you doesn't mean you should do it back or get people to do it to you. Do not be this horrible. This episode promotes violence and violation of privacy because "they deserve it". Nobody deserves it and please do not listen to the message of this episode. Anyway, that's me done for the day, I'm hungry I'm gonna go get food. 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.
13 Reasons Why
Episode 4: Tape 2 side B
So far, this episode has the worst message with the worst intention. Make your own justice. I can see how that can be a good thing I mean, as a teenager nobody takes you seriously and at one point I've had to get my own justice for something but that doesn't mean it's right. You shouldn't do that. I in no way advocate violence in any way and you definitely shouldn't encourage others to be violent to another person. It's not funny, all you're doing is giving another person pain or fear. If you feel so strongly about what this person has done to you, talk to the police. Do not insight violence on others.
Episode plot: Hannah has a stalker and decides to encourage others to damage that person's home, Clay takes it to a whole other disgusting level.
Marcus: Marcus (Steven Silver) is my absolute favourite person in this episode. First, he shows up in this really cool sombrero that lights up and plays a song. My absolute favourite hat. Then he brings us a well-needed slice of truth. Clay says something about the rules of listening to the tapes which...I literally don't remember them, I really don't, to which Marcus tells him -
Quote: "Dude, Hannah's dead. I'm sorry but it's true, nothing anyone did to her was any different than what happens to every girl that ever went to high school. She just wanted attention. And then leaving those tapes? That's a fucked up thing to do, no one deserves that."
Seems to sum up my thoughts on her pretty well. The only thing I didn't like about him was that he called Taylor (Devin Druid) a psycho. I mean yeah he did some gross things but not psychopathic.
Taylor: So what did he do to be called a "psycho"? He stalked Hannah, took pictures of her in her bedroom and took pictures of her making out with Courtney (Michele Selene Ang) and then had the gall to spread one of the pictures around school when she rejects him. This is horrible behaviour but in no way deserves what comes to him.
What Hannah should have done was talk to either someone at the school with Courtney, they have the proof that photos were taken, they both caught him at the same time and maybe he had backup copies on his phone or in his dark room. All they had to do was keep quiet about telling someone about it and he'd have been busted and suffered the proper consequences.
Hannah: Good fuck I don't know what the worst thing she's done so far is. She made these tapes blaming everyone in her life for this. She made a second set of the tapes because why the shit not. She never left her parents a tape or a note to ease their thoughts (to an extent). She didn't have to give them 13 tapes telling them who did it and how she could just tell them that her head wasn't in the right place to carry on living or something like that. Maybe just a note telling them it's not their fault. I dunno, just a shitty move. Finally, she encourages the people who listen to the tapes to throw rocks at Taylors window. That's a new level of shitty.
She says she wants him to feel what she felt, to not feel safe in his own bedroom. How nasty is that? How sadistic is that? How can she wish that on someone else? What if she was beaten and raped in her own room? Would she wish that on whoever did that to her? Fucking disgusting, honestly.
Clay: Speaking of disgusting behaviour, Clay, as I said before, takes it to a new level. Rather than throw a rock at his bedroom window, he takes a picture of Taylor from behind, naked and sends it around in a group message to the whole damn school. When Tony asks him "what the hell?" (see it's in this one too just not directed at Tony) Clay replies "Making my own justice." I'm not sure the exact wording but it was something along that line. And that is vile behaviour.
If there are kids watching this, like 12-18-year-olds, do not take this as how you should deal with things. Actually y'know what, no matter how old you are, don't do this shit. Just because someone did this to you doesn't mean you should do it back or get people to do it to you. Do not be this horrible. This episode promotes violence and violation of privacy because "they deserve it". Nobody deserves it and please do not listen to the message of this episode. Anyway, that's me done for the day, I'm hungry I'm gonna go get food. 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.
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