Rated R, mostly for violence. People shoot each other a lot in this movie. You know how the Coen Brothers like making gore uncomfortably realistic? There's a lot of it here and it just seems sad at times. I'm sure there's language somewhere in here. Also, people treat each other terribly throughout. There's an instance of suicide. I mean, that all kind of leads up to a solid R rating.
DIRECTORS: Joel and Ethan Coen I just did a podcast on this one! I don't know if I've done an anthology film on this website. I suppose it kind of formats itself. I can break down the individual movies and then give my two cents on the whole thing? That sounds like a plan. It's so weird that this movie wasn't marketed before the whole Netflix deal. Apparently, this movie was only in ten films and made practically nothing. When did the Coen Brothers not get the attention that they deserve? I mean, they're Oscar winners. While some of their movies don't get the same respect as others, I always assumed even the worst Coen Brothers' movie was still watchable. I'm going to spoil my take on this right now. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is pretty darned good. While I love the little effort that I need to watch this movie, I kind of like the idea of this being a box office success. Ah well, I had best just go down the line and give you my analyses of the individual films. After all, apparently there was talk about this being a television show before it was a movie. "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" -Hey, the movie starts with the titular short. I was arguing on the podcast about whether or not this one should be the first movie in the sequence. It's so good. It's also what I wanted out of the anthology as a whole. When I watch the Coen Brothers, they offer so many different versions of a movie. You always know that you are watching a Coen Brothers' movie, but that doesn't mean that they are tonally the same. These guys did Hudsucker Proxy and No Country for Old Men. Aesthetically, they are the same guys, but content-wise, they are all over the map. "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" is much more in the realm of The Hudsucker Proxy and that's what I like. While I love me some No Country for Old Men, I will watch and rewatch The Hudsucker Proxy for fun. "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" plays with a trope so well that I kind of want everyone to watch it. The Coens, through Tim Blake Nelson, keep on changing expectations. It's a misdirect of a misdirect. Looking at mise en scene, in particular, costuming, we know that our fourth-wall breaking narrator-hero is a good guy. He says he's rotten, but in a way that seems like Ned Flanders told us the same thing. But then he actually is kind of evil. But the design of the whole story doesn't match the events happening on screen. Buster Scruggs murders folks willy-nilly and that's just part of Scruggs's casual attitude towards death. Death is casual in that narrative. That's an amazing trope break, but then the final trope break plays havoc with the Mary Sue character. Scruggs is a Mary Sue. SPOILER: To have a Mary Sue shot down so unceremoniously is extremely interesting. In the back of my mind, I always wanted to tell the story of "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs." I suppose that every story in this anthology is about death, but "Buster Scruggs" sells it extremely well. It's so bizarre seeing the ending. I love it because it tonally matches, but it is kind of jarring when it comes to the other sequences of the anthology. Regardless, Tim Blake Nelson, for the first time in his career, is perfectly cast. He's great in lots of stuff, but I don't know if there's one story that can only be played by him. "Near Algodones" -People don't like this one. It's not perfect. It's no "Ballad of Buster Scruggs", but I really like it. The thing that really makes this one suffer is the fact that it is a short. There's something being told here about a guy who has criminally bad luck. When I like James Franco, I really like him. He's great in this. But Franco isn't what gets me in this short. He's the product of circumstance. If the Coens were talking about the odd nature of the West, this movie sells it well. The MVP of this short isn't really James Franco. He's fine, like I said. But Stephen Root is Milton again. Okay, he's not the exact same character, but spiritually there's a lot of crossover. I love the Milton character of this movie. It takes the Milton trope and imbues him with Ridley Scott's Alien. The instant dynamic shift is wonderful. Part of it plays on the same idea that "Ballad" did, but "Algodones" makes the shift very clear from moment one. At no point is Franco's bank robber incompetent or anything. He seems like a perfectly fine bank robber. But the opening scene seems like the cheeriest horror movie I've ever seen. The ninja-like quality of Stephen Root is great. I am still quoting "Panshot!" because of this opening. He's so hilariously scary. That's a unique emotion to elicit. When I giggle because I'm surprisingly nervous, that's an absolutely fantastic feeling. The biggest problem with "Algodones" is that the big reveal is given away in the trailer. I'm not even going to bold "Spoiler" because the trailer sells the whole thing. We know that James Franco is going to be hanged twice. I think that's what the Coens wanted the movie to be about: a guy who unlucky that he keeps getting captured and sentenced to death. It really becomes about two things. The movie should be about surviving the bank heist or the movie should be about the bank robber who keeps escaping death only to be thrown into peril once again. Doing both is a little bit of a cop out. Getting hanged only twice doesn't really sell for me as much as a guy who is about to be hanged five times. Regardless, I still think that this entire sequence is effective. It's fun and a nice chaser from the absolute insanity that "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" offered. "Meal Ticket" -And now the dark turn happened. I like it. I'm going to defend most of the stories in this anthology and I feel like I have to come to the rescue of "Meal Ticket." It is such a bleak entry to be entered into this collection of stories from the West. This is the Miller's Crossing of the group. It's incredibly somber and depressing. Perhaps I love all of the misdirect happening in all of the sequences. I love me some misdirect and "Meal Ticket" offers a character shift that I didn't see coming. It's not a "smack in the face" transition. The other two offer that. This is a story that plays with what we assume a character is about. SPOILERS: I thought this was a story of a put upon custodian. I should have realized that the story was called "Meal Ticket", but it seems like Liam Neeson's character was this quiet saint. In the course of how many limited minutes, I realized that he's a terrible person. That's pretty great and most of it is done silently. The only real dialogue we get from the two protagonists are the lines that are spoken in the show. They don't talk. We don't get a clear relationship between the two. Harry Melling is just heartbreaking. The way that he is framed as an exhibition is just rough. I'm called back to Tod Browning's Freaks. The use of repetition builds such sympathy for the character. The Artist has talent. But everything is done for him. As talented as he is, he's there because people want to see a quadriplegic. In the few minutes that this movie shows these characters, it comments on the fickle nature of people's need for entertainment. Again, I thought the people were won over by his elocution, but it is simply about the novelty of seeing a limbless man. It is in that montage of repetition that we see the same performances with dimming and dimming expectations. I became the audience who had already seen such a show. And the trade-off is the most painful. Yeah, I wanted to know how the chicken did math too. But the value of human life is so cheap in this world. We always hear how life is cheap in certain parts of the world. "Meal Ticket" is possibly the most effective example of "Show, Don't Tell" that I've noticed when it comes to this theme. It's really hard to watch, but it is completely worth it to study this sequence. The death in both of their eyes is constantly there. I can't believe that Harry Melling was Dudley Dursey. He's so good here and he makes the scene. That's in a two man sequence with Liam Neeson, so keep that in mind. "All Gold Canyon" -I like all but one of these sequences. "All Gold Canyon" isn't my least favorite. Oddly enough, it was the last one because I didn't get it until someone explained it to me. I'll get to that one is a second. But this is my second least favorite. It's still pretty good, but I also don't really know what this adds to the whole collection besides Tom Waits and pretty scenery. Honestly, "All Gold Canyon" is the prettiest one to look at. I learned a ton about panning for gold, which is fun for me, I suppose. It just doesn't seem as tight as the others. Considering that these are shorts, it is so odd that there isn't a lot of content here. I mean, I can watch Tom Waits talking about Mr. Pocket the entire time, but I kind of want some different structuring throughout. There's a weird Chekhov's Gun that never really fires. Waits steals the egg. He climbs the tree. He takes three eggs, sees the owl, and returns them. If nothing happened from there, I'd be fine with it. But then he still steals and eats one of the eggs. Where's the albatross? I know that he befalls bad luck, but I don't see the correlation between the man and the egg. On top of that, everything kind of works out for Waits, even though he stole the egg. I know, real life doesn't have that direct connection between egg thievery and a man getting shot, but I know the rules. The first two stories took the trope and messed with it. The trope was acknowledged and then subverted. But with "All Gold Canyon", the trope is there, but actively ignored. I also feel like that wasn't meant to be a commentary on the trope. Instead, we have a very lonesome story. If the Coens were talking about how the pioneer was a lonely person, that was accomplished. But having a single character without much of an arc doesn't really feel like a story. Rather, this is a character in a much larger story that is played around with in this story. Are there satisfactory moments? Sure. I would have been straight up mad had he not found Mr. Pocket. But does the miner really learn anything? Does he grow? Is he any different for having found Mr. Pocket? He has something physical to do, which gives him some time killing action. But this story is kind of the equivalent of an old man finally getting his lucky lottery winner, only to have it stolen and then instantly returned. It's not a horrible story; it's just almost not a story. It's character and atmosphere. Give me arcs if its a character thing. You don't need a plot. You just need something. "The Gal Who Got Rattled" -This segment is almost a movie in itself. I imagine that this was probably a treatment that was just too short to justify a whole film, but it takes up the majority of the film. I really like this one and I really hate this one. The only thing that really pulls me away from it is the length. The thing I really like about anthology films is that they are so compact. There's an attention span that is required. At a whole bunch of points in "Rattled", I kept thinking that I was nearing the conclusion, only to go onwards. I mean, I get it. The story hinges on the relationship between Mrs. Longabaugh and Billy Knapp. We have to believe that they make a reasonable couple to make the conclusion have meaning. Love takes a long time to make it worthy. You could tell us that they are in love, but that almost pulls away from Billy's commitment to the whole affair. Alice is just bizarre enough to be an odd choice for someone like Billy, but not so odd that her character can't exist in this drama. It's so odd, trying classify this story. I couldn't call it a Western rom com because it isn't really funny. Rather, it is a Western romance that has funny parts attached to it. It's so odd to think of this movie with the certain parts. There's the odd comedy and tragedy of President Pierce. There's the comeuppens that is attached to Alice's brother. Mr. Arthur is just a plain old confusing character. On top of that, this is the story of the group that stresses the sprawl of the West. Yet, the West is kind of repetitive. They are on their way to Oregon and you have these absolutely amazing locales. But these locales don't actually tie to the story intimately. Rather, the stress is how open the land is. It's the conclusion that sells the entire piece to me. It's just the right level of tragic. It's a bit much, if I am honest. But that is what I needed after so long a sequence. The conflict between the Native Americans and Mr. Arthur is perfect. We get a little bit of that Mary Sue return with Mr. Arthur. But he makes a mistake. He doesn't make the mistake that Buster Scruggs makes, but he makes one nonetheless. His story, being more grounded, allows the tragedy to take place. The plate at the beginning of the scene is absolutely the best one because it has a dramatic irony on the audience. For once, the movie knows more than I do and it is revealed at the end what the major question will be. I like that a lot. "The Mortal Remains" -I don't think I've ever felt dumber than having someone explain "The Mortal Remains" to me. Most like a play, the story is the conclusion to the film. It's a lot of dialogue and it felt very much like this was black box theater. It's so weird. Usually, anthologies try ending on a bang. The middle ones tend to be boring and the beginning and end really try to sell the piece. However, "The Mortal Remains" has characters that have all kinds of cadences and accents arguing and bickering with each other. When I exercise, as I was doing when watching this, I watch with the subtitles. Even with the subtitles, there was a bit of a barrier between understanding the true intentions of each characters. I never looked for a twist or an interpretation. I was looking for a straightforward story and I didn't think that this was going to be the Twilight Zone episode of the group. When I discussed with Henson the meaning of the last one, he treated it like everyone was supposed to understand that from the word "go." I mean, it makes a lot more sense now and I wish that I understood that at the time, but now I feel stupid. I was really tempted to rewatch that last sequence before writing this so I could save face, but I also had to acknowledge that the whole obvious title meaning went over my head. Part of it is that I was extremely tired. "The Woman Who Got Rattled" is a lot to take in and I just wasn't in the mood for a slow discussion about love lives and bounty hunters. This is when I needed my "Panshot". This is when I wanted Buster Scruggs to return. I know that people adore this one, but because I missed the point, it did nothing for me. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a good watch. It is so great knowing that Netflix is scooping up amazing stuff that isn't worth ignoring. While it isn't the Coens' best movie, it is a closer return to form that I've seen for a while. I really love anthology stuff and I hope to see more big names attached to Netflix in the coming releases.
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TV-MA, but I can't even promise what the movie does or doesn't have. The best I can do is tell you the version I got, which involves suicide, violence, language, and drugs. But who knows what's out there? There could be tons of nudity for all I know. What version gets you there? Maybe choosing the wrong cereal makes this movie something horribly risque. Okay, I doubt it. But still, tons of options out there. TV-MA.
DIRECTOR: David Slade I wasn't sure that I should be reviewing Bandersnatch because I thought it was just another episode of Black Mirror. Don't get me wrong. I love Black Mirror. While I write about films to an obsessive level, I also love me some tee-vee. But Netflix labeled this as an "Interactive Film" and, given the length of film, which is apparently TBD, I have to fulfill my quest to write about every movie I see. (I don't have to do anything, but that is very thematically in line with Bandersnatch.) I don't mind writing about Bandersnatch one bit. It became a hardcore obsession for the past 48 hours. I want to talk about it with everyone because it is such a trippy experience. We started the movie around 11:00 at night on New Year's Eve. We were going to wait until our baby started crying before we went to bed after the ball drop and we actually got really far. But we didn't actually finish that night. Let me tell you that I couldn't sleep for a long time. I went through choice after choice and tried to figure out how I got the point I did. I wondered what other choices I had made and what other choices might have led to. Bandersnatch made me believe that I have always loved "Choose Your Own Adventure" stories. But the more I think about it, that wasn't true. I love Telltale Adventure Games. But in terms of actually loving Choose Your Own Adventure, I was always ambivalent. That's how good Bandersnatch is. The Choose Your Own Adventure model has always been a gimmick, often relegated to DVD special features. I think a lot of that comes from the fact that the technology was never really all that seemless. Bandersnatch is pretty impressive. It really does feel like a film. When the results of my decisions come into play, the movie plays out like that was the only choice to make. There's no real transition between the choice and the consequence. It was only on my second viewing that I could really wrap my head around the multitude of choices. I didn't get far into my other viewing, but it was odd to see the movie just naturally take a different path. Those paths were as seemless as the ones I had chosen. That's a lot of what gets me about Bandersnatch. The movie works as a movie regardless of what choice I make. It's only when you hit a dead end that you are pulled out of the narrative. There's a lot going on with Black Mirror stuff. Part of that experience is the fact that Black Mirror tends to get heady, but is often solveable by the end. When Stefan hits a wall in the narrative, he is transported back to where I made a poor decision and I can alter those choices. I don't think I will ever truly understand every element of Bandersnatch because Bandersnatch only works when it is a little bit cryptic. Brooker is really good at communicating his themes and the same is true with Bandersnatch. But usually I can understand the vehicle that gets there. SPOILERS ABOUT MY INDIVIDUAL CHOICES: I suppose this means that I can't get too spoilery because you may make drastically different choices. The movie thrives on the idea that you will make mistakes. While the story has tangents in many many directions, there are a few choices that are story-breaking mistakes. Honestly, I think the first major choice I made was the wrong one. From there, I was given a fake choice to send Stefan back in time to correct his mistake. This is what I don't understand. I'm pretty sure that Bandersnatch is not a time-travel story. But there is a practicality element to the whole thing. After all, the point of Choose Your Own Adventure is to find the best ending. With a book, you can flip back and forth. With a story that's chronological and streaming, there has to be a function that allows the same experience. Brooker is way too smart of a guy. Like, he has to be scary smart. He doesn't let me experience things in the same way each time. There's this weird moment where little things change between viewings. If I make a mistake, it's mostly the same. Heck, some of them are exactly the same. But then there are times when little important things change. And that's when the meta narrative comes out. I love the meta narrative. There are a handful of moments that made my jaw drop because it broke the rules of what a story should be. Sometimes it is when different passwords work and have a different effect on the contents of a box. Other times, Bandersnatch addresses my life as a viewer. Calling out the fact that this is a product of Netflix is completely insane. I know that a lot of the Netflix stuff makes its way to home video, but would that even work with home media? The Netflix experience is quintessential to the viewing process, which shouldn't actually be a thing. I read one criticism and, I have to admit, that it has validity. I'm sure that there are many criticisms of this movie, but I don't have time for that. There is one thing that gets under my skin. This is inherent to the Choose Your Own Adventure format, but Bandersnatch takes it to a level I had yet to see before. Many of the options are binary. Think about that for a second. That means that every problem only have two solutions. This isn't an open world. As many choices as there are, you are still fundamentally on rails. Brooker kind of took that a step further. Many of Stefan's options are both very similar. Brooker is trying to make the whole thing about powerlessness and mental illness. The movie desperately wanted me to kill my dad. There were so many times where the movie pushed me in that direction and I just wanted to fight that thread. This is all keeping in mind that this was often wildly intentional. The most satsifyingly frustrating options are the one where there is only one decision. If you were wondering, throwing caution to the wind while reading this summary and analysis of a movie you hadn't yet watched, you have to make a choice. Not making a choice is not a choice in itself. Rather, Netflix will play the game for you, making decisions one way or the other. I always loved that Telltale treated silence as a choice in itself. It was always the secret choice. It kind of served as a form of rebellion to the choices you were given. I desperately tried to fight one of the choices. I didn't like the binary I was offered, but Netflix made the decision for me. I read somewhere that the only way to see as many options as possible was to let Netflix play the movie by itself. You know, like a traditional film? But keeping the options binary establish a pretty intense tone. Also, and this is me playing apologist, but the story is about mental illness. I mean, it's not the central theme, but it is running throughout. Stefan is convinced that there are no right answers to his problems. Thus, when he is presented with two negatives, it is because he doesn't have my life. His life, from his perspective, is unfixable. The universe wants to destroy Stefan. Offering him a happy choice probably seems unrealistic. There are no happy endings; just less sad ones. I offer no solutions to this. I like Black Mirror's bleak tone throughout its series. To cheer me up with a happy ending doesn't really ring true to what I like. I think its that negativity that kept me thinking about the options. A clear positive path almost seems like a cop out. Everyone would be fighting for the happy ending and think of all of the stories we would have missed out on. SPOILER ABOUT MY ENDING: I got the kid death ending. Perhaps this supports the theory that time travel exists in this universe. Because I don't have the time to watch and rewatch and rewatch Bandersnatch, I read the wiki on it. There are apparently five main endings. I watched three of those. I had the ending that io9 claimed was the best ending. But there's one out there that I'm really interested in. I really wanted the Pearl ending, even though I don't think that it offers anything new about Colin. Colin's story confuses me. Since I'm all about the spoilers, I don't know what Colin's suicide proves in the story. Colin seems like the sage character throughout. He has so many answers about what's happening to Colin throughout. To have Colin leap over the building to his death and not come back is mindboggling. After all, Stefan would have come back. The story doesn't end with Stefan's suicide. As far as I understand, Colin dies by suicide in every version of the narrative. From reading up on this and thinking about it, Colin's belief that he launches himself off the balcony knowing that a multiversal version of himself lives on. But he doesn't. In every version of the narrative, Colin dies. Also, what does that prove to Stefan. Best case scenario: Stefan sees that Colin is not afraid of death. The closest thing to a point that he's trying to make is that Colin is more concerned with his point than living, knowing that he'll continue on in some other form. I wonder if Brooker made it an intentional point that Colin can't possible live on because he gave him no other options. It's interesting, but confusing at the same time. Because Stefan is an unreliable narrator, I don't really know what to think about this moment. It's also really weird that the Stefan we experience by the end is most likely not the same Stefan we started with. The Stefan I know lives at home with his dad, knowing he released a mediocre game. Is that the same guy who ends up in a jail or just dying in the middle of a therapy session? I don't know. I just restarted playing the Thompson Twins. Good choice. PG! I have, for years, been telling people that Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was the first PG-13 movie. Where did I possibly hear that? How was I spreading lies back and forth like I have? I mean, it is the perfect candidate for PG-13. A guy gets his heart ripped out. It's got all kinds of gross stuff, usually resulting from an odd xenophobia that follows this movie. That dinner sequence alone is horribly gross. If you don't like bugs, then there's all kinds of scary stuff. Kids are constantly in danger in this movie. There's blood, torture, violence towards kids, casual racism! The works! PG.
DIRECTOR: Steven Spielberg It's the one that everyone hates. Okay, it was the one that everyone hated, until Kingdom of the Crystal Skull showed up. That changed everything. Now, it's the one that's not as good as parts 1 and 3. To me, this one was ALWAYS the one that wasn't as good as parts 1 and 3. That doesn't seem like a ringing endorsement, but I really liked the Indiana Jones trilogy once upon a time. I still really like them still, but now I'm apparently way more woke. (I'm working. That's what woke really is. It's trying to be woke.) The Indiana Jones series is possibly one of the more trying pieces of my childhood to stand next to. It's going to be weird for my kids to see Indiana Jones movies. I might be able to scrape by and still enjoy them as fun movies. But Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom reminded me, more than the other movies in the series, how closeminded Americans think indigenous people are. I might comment on this concept throughout my analysis, so please bear with me. But I also want to look at how Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom dares me to have fun despite having some really backwards idea about culture. I'm going to start off safe. The beginning of Temple of Doom is one of my favorite opening sequences ever. Some people go with the Kali-Da sequence with the heart ripping. Nope. When I think of Temple of Doom, I think of Club Obi-Wan and "Anything Goes". It's such a nice departure from Raiders to establish that Indy isn't always going to be one thing. We know he's going to be steeped in the '30s, but it isn't always Indy v. the Nazis. It's not always the desert and torches. Sometimes, it's Shanghai and nightclubs. It's why Bond works so well. He has a main bad guy, but it always kind of looks different. And the beginning of Temple of Doom is remarkably entertaining. Aesthetically, it makes me happy. The dance number calling back to the Busby Berkeley days requires no warm up. Tonally, "Anything Goes" shouldn't work for Indiana Jones. The protagonist almost dies in the first five minutes of the movie and we have to launch into this with "Anything Goes"? It's gutsy, but it pays off harder than I think any other moment in the Indy series does. It is the most risky. There are better sequences, but they are all safe bets. To start the sequel with something so tonally different from what is expected out of Indiana Jones is phenomenal. Yeah, I like the whole film, but once the Lao Che's airplane takes off, I settle in for scenes that never transcend the fight in Club Obi-Wan. It's odd to think of Indy dying in that sequence. There's balloons falling from the ceiling. I think everyone's big problem with Temple of Doom, from a non-anthropological perspective, is Willie Scott. I was going to save this for later, but I need to discuss her involvement with the opening scene. Willie Scott is supposed to suck. You hate her? Good! Kate Capshaw did her job. We're supposed to be rooting for Marion. If you are too attached to Willie Scott, then their relationship looks really bad and Indiana Jones is even worse as a toxically masculine character than he was before. I keep coming back to James Bond. But James Bond is a broken character. You are kind of meant to pity and hate James Bond. Indiana Jones was the hero of these series. He smiles. He isn't a drunk or a killer. He kills, but he gets no satisfaction out of killing. To make him a guy who is in love with Willie only to move onto Marion makes him pretty despicable. So Willie had to kind of be the worst. (I'm really not trying to justify this, but it ended up coming out that way. Sorry.) But Kate Capshaw in the opening sequence crushes. We get that's she's a major star in her own little world. She is used to having her way because she's talented and stunning. Then interposing her into this world where she is standing between Indiana Jones and the antidote works so well. This trope has happened before and since, but I don't think it works better than Willie going after the diamond while Jones goes after the antidote. But you really have to understand that every choice that Willie makes is on purpose. We can't have Marion twice. I've seen annoying characters that don't work. Willie does work as an annoying character. The fish out of water sequence is such a contrast to Marion. Marion wasn't quite the equal for Indiana Jones, but she is able to handle herself when its necessary. Willie, on the other hand, causes more problems than she solves. Also, let's call a spade a spade. Willie is us. You can hate her all you want. That's completely reasonable. But we would act like Willie for most of the movie. Okay, you may not be looking for riches and luxury. But you also wouldn't want to eat any of the food. Also, Willie gets more points for going through the bugs situation than I could. I probably wouldn't have gotten that close to the hole, let alone reach my hand in it. Keep that in mind. Raiders really never had the avatar for the audience. Sure, Willie is pretty unflattering considering that she represents us. We all want to be Marion or Sallah. I also want to remind you that Temple of Doom has Short Round. I don't really get why his name is Short Round. It kind of hearkens back to Will Eisner's The Spirit for me, which might not be a woke comparison. But Short Round is one of the few really successful kid sidekicks. I'm not saying that they don't exist, but on film, they tend to be lame. But Ke-Huy Quan is amazing in this movie. Okay, it's '80s amazing, but he's still pretty great. Quan's performance is so odd in this movie, but it is captivating. I looked up his IMDB page because I want to know what's up with him today. He was such a joy in both movies I know him from and then he kind of fell off the Earth. I honestly wish him well because he's fun in this. It's so interesting what Short Round's skill set actually entails. He seems to either be completely inept or he can just kill everybody. It oddly works for the movie. But "No time for love, Dr. Jones"? That line exists. That is a treat for everyone. You can complain about WIllie Scott all day long, but you have Short Round to savagely roast her whenever you need that. Yeah, I don't love how they treat India. The beginning of Raiders has this treatment of the natives as savages. But India in this one focuses on the savagery of India. There are two Indias in Temple of Doom. There's the India that is of the monarchy and the upper crust. They are seen as distant and cold, eating things that are inedible. They are about excess while their people starve. Oddly enough, the British overseers are kind of seen as the heroes, taming the simplistic backyard that they reign over. It's really odd seeing this dynamic in film today. I thought we all understood that the monarchy wasn't awesome, but that's infinitely better than the cult of Kali. Yeah, their bad guys because they are worshiping an evil god who wants to torture kids. This isn't all of India. But even the noble Indians are considered a superstitious lot who has no sense of logic or reason. They are all about the Shankar (I think) Stones. They are seen as impoverished. I'm not saying that the poor don't exist in India. They totally do. But this is our only view of India. You are either poor and simple or rich and greedy. There's a silver lining to all of this when the maharajah comes out of his possessed state. He seems like a pretty nice kid then. But it kind of has the message of the Western hero. I don't love this altogether. But then again, this movie is fun. It's 1984. It's odd to think of my childhood as a time of burying our heads in the sand, but that was the narrative we were spreading. From an action perspective, the movie is actually pretty great. I really like Temple of Doom. What's weird is that the middle almost doesn't make sense. From a storytelling perspective, the narrative is almost criminally simple. Indiana Jones, for being so good at being an archaeologist, just stumbles into the plot. He keeps just happening upon the next step towards finding the kids. The more I think about it, there's no way that Indy would have just found the kids the way he did. He got put in a room and found a gust of air. What are the odds that the gust of air would have taken him to the exact place that the kids were kidnapped? It is lightly explained away by the poor man in the village, saying that they were destined to arrive there. If Indiana Jones is the agent of destiny, I suppose that there was nothing to fear the entire time. But regardless, it is fun. While thinking about this, we know criminally little about the cult leader in this movie. He's scary looking, which is great. But that's about as far as I can take it. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom may not have aged well, but it is still phenomenally fun. It's even better knowing how much of a stinker Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is. I wish it wasn't so regressive. But from an action movie perspective, it is still very much good Indiana Jones. PG, because everything animated is PG! There's a lot of butt and fart jokes. Like...a lot. I can't stress how uncomfortable the butt jokes made me. There's so many. So many butt jokes. There's some very cartooney violence, so I wouldn't worry about it from that slant. I tend not to let my kids watch the Teen Titans GO! TV show, but I let them watch this. I don't get me either.
DIRECTORS: Aaron Horvath and Peter Rida Michail All break long, I've been trying to find time to write. Now I have time to write and I don't want to do it. (I've been having a day.) I would like to point out that my daughter has started her own blog. Apparently, she was inspired by her dad. *So! Proud!* But that's the explanation for why I watched Teen Titans Go! To the Movies. I love bonding with my kids. They got this for Christmas. Then they had to go and watch the movie with their friends...twice. You think I'm going to let that stand? I had to watch this movie with my kids. I don't care if it was the third time that they had watched it in three days! And you know what? I didn't regret it. Teen Titans Go! as a TV show has always been something to kind of avoid. It has that odd frenetic energy that kids' programming seems to have. It screams Cartoon Network. I know that when I got on board of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, I should have seen what way the wind was blowing. Considering that I watch a lot of superhero related programming, I suppose the line had to be drawn at the majority of animated properties. I really don't want to be a snob about animated superhero stuff, It has so much of my favorite stuff in it, but I also want a narrative. This stuff is almost intentionally anti-narrative. (I'm not talking literally, but it seems to communicate a lot of the concerns I had with the show.) But I heard that the movie was pretty good and it really is fairly solid. It kind of does the best parts of the show while still keeping some kind of focus. I'm dancing around that word: focus. Because the show and storytelling is so frenetic, the filmmakers had to balance the weirdness of the show and the needs of a movie. I'm going to get a little SPOILERY (mainly because I'm running out of time to write this), but there's an entire subplot about time travel. It's about ten minutes of film. It's not insignificant, but I've never really seen a movie do this. The movie is about Robin trying to get a superhero movie made about himself. Because he's a sidekick and lives in a universe where the Teen Titans are not traditional superheroes, he realizes that the only way that he could be made famous is to prevent all of the famous superheroes from having tragic backstories. I've never seen a movie so unapologetically state that they are stalling for time. Because it is intentionally a stall for time, it really works. But it would only work in the Teen Titans Go! movie. I can't think of another property that would be able to handle it, but it is like it stuck a mini-episode in the middle of its film. It's great. The very concept of all of the characters is absurd. Teen Titans Go! exist in a world where stakes are insanely low for superheroes. The world is swamped with them. Batman and Superman are heroes and they handle major threats. But the Teen Titans have Titans Tower, looking over Jump City. (I think it is Jump City. This is new to me.) But threats are comically silly and low stakes. Very rarely do the Titans ever get into scraps. Heck, for all I know, for the run of the show, the Titans may not actually stop any bad guys. What this creates is a team that have super powers, but don't actually do anything with these super powers that is productive. This makes the movie endlessly cheery. It is such cinematic candy that I think I need to watch this movie every time I watch a Christopher Nolan or Zack Snyder entry into the DC Universe. It's really interesting that the Teen Titans fits into any mold that the storytellers want. There was the former Teen Titans animated show that had a silly edge to a fairly straightforward superhero narrative. There is Teen Titans Go! that ramps up the silliness to a level previously unseen. The new Titans show on DC Universe looks bleaker than any other property that I've seen. I don't know what foundational elements make the Titans able to be molded into what seems to be an infinite amount of situations, but I do like that we get these characters in multiple forms. Because the characters are so cheery, there were some trappings that the filmmakers cleverly avoided to get the film to work at all. If the stakes are as low as the movie makes them out to be, there are certain children's movie tropes that the film wisely chooses to ignore. For such a perky movie, the movie almost seems to be casting light on the cliche's of children's films. The movie telegraphs that the team is going to split and forget their friendships, only to come back stronger for being together. The movie actively and in the most metatextual way comments on how trite this idea is. Instead, the movie grabs onto the viewer and refuses to let go. There's something always happening and a joke always to be told. I mean, thank goodness not every movie is Teen Titans Go! to the Movies, but it does have fun. Oddly enough, the scale of this film is kind of impressive. When a TV show, especially an animated one, makes the jump to the big screen, there's something oddly forgettable about the transition. Often, the animation budget goes up and there are large setpieces to make it the most important entry in the story. I'm going to use The Simpsons Movie as an example. I love The Simpsons Movie and will probably defend it for a while, but it is a dot-the-i's movie. It takes everything and makes it bigger. It doesn't really look like an episode of the show, but doesn't feel that foreign to the whole thing either. Teen Titans Go! to the Movies kind of looks like a Teen Titans Go! episode and I appreciate that. The scale actually goes into putting the narrative in the story along with musical numbers. Again, I have kids that are the right age to get really into obsession, so the music has been blasting from Alexa all Christmas break. But the music is pretty good. Again, like the whole movie being rather juvenile, the music is as well. But the songs are catchy and they do tell the story pretty well. Similarly, bringing Slade / Deathstroke into the film was also a great decision. (When did the DC Universe decide to drop the whole "Deathstroke the Terminator" moniker and just use his alter ego as his villain name?) I don't know what weird deal that Will Arnett has with DC properties, but that needs to keep on happening. Between his voiceover work as Batman and this, I absolutely love what he's doing for their funnier properties. It's bizarre that, considering that a lot of this movie is based around the idea that the Titans need a real villain, that this rendition of Slade is fairly inept as well. Like, he's better than the Titans, but that's not saying much because these Titans are criminally distractable. But the thing that made me most love the movie was the love for the DC Comics. DC has been kind of my ex-friend list for a while. I used to love DC before the DCEU showed up. But around the DCEU, the New 52 happened and DC tried becoming everything I didn't want. It was sad and gloomy and extreme. Why, DC? I know that the Nolan movies really pulled out the crowds and those were bleak, but it is nice to know that DC didn't really forget its heritage. There's so much love for the old characters in this movie. Sure, it comes out in the form of jabs. But those jabs are so clever and fun. When I saw the Challengers of the Unknown, I nearly lost it. (I'm lo-key advertising that I'm one of the nerds who knew who they were before the explanation.) But the movie is this great satire about nerd culture today. It is so aware of what nerdy obsession has becoming. It discusses how the underground became the mainstream. It's commentary on the Marvel / DC film feud is also almost cathartic. That cameo is pretty outstanding and I love the fact that DC can call out stuff like Guardians of the Galaxy and Deadpool without fear of retribution. Marvel used to call DC the "Distinguished Competition" and Teen Titans Go! to the Movies reminds us that we shouldn't always be so serious about our love for superheroes. Instead of the toxic culture that can kind of surround our loves, the movie stresses that comic books are kind of meant to be fun and taken loosely. There is no continuity to the Teen Titans Go! characters and that makes for freeing storytelling. Yeah, it's good to get invested, but that's only if you can laugh at yourself. Teen Titans Go! to the Movies is more fun than it has any right to be. It is great for everyone, but really sells itself well to the hardcore comic book fans. The story is the right amount of fluff that I needed from time to time. Yeah, I know movies like Aquaman are out there right now. But honestly, I was more excited to see this one instead of Aquaman. That being said, why haven't I seen Aquaman yet? |
Film is great. It can challenge us. It can entertain us. It can puzzle us. It can awaken us.
AuthorMr. H has watched an upsetting amount of movies. They bring him a level of joy that few things have achieved. Archives
April 2024
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