13 Reasons Why - Episode 2

Hot chocolate is the cure for all things shitty

13 Reasons Why 

Episode 2: Tape 1 side B.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out Of Water

What a fucking waste of my time that was.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hard Candy

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

Director: David Slade
Writer: Brian Nelson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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