“Oh come on, why the fuck, there’s no possible reason this code should-- wrong variable.”

I have too many comments reading “… how did this ever work?”

Temporarily acknowledging the game you actually bought. It’s allowed to exist, for a FOMO-appropriate period of time. Then it gets yanked away from you, again.

Never give Nintendo money.

Cheese is definitely the right word. The scope is great - the plot is fine - the cast is stacked - but I don’t think Twohy is the right director for his own scripts. If you start poking around Wikipedia, wondering why the energy’s askew sometimes, there’s nobody else to pin it on. The writer/director also wrote The Fugitive. One of the editors was Oscar-nominated. Some of the head-scratching scenes involve Judi fucking Dench.

It’s nearly a Joel Schumacher situation, where the production needed one more person, to occasionally go “I dunno, Dave. Is it supposed to be that silly?” Either answer is fine, but if people have to wonder, you missed.

Years later, I’m still flabbergasted this isn’t the default take. The movie has deep problems, but the themes are right there in your face.

The only way it doesn’t put “anyone can be a hero” onscreen in eight-foot-tall letters is the ending. Which sure feels like Disney checked in, went “Oh SHIT,” and forced a sudden fourth act that over-corrects back toward the status quo.

Imagine if Rey hadn’t arrived on Krait. Kylo offers her the universe, she inhales to answer, hard cut. We don’t see either of them until the next movie. Instead, when the last gasp of the Rebellion was pushed deep into the caves, some rando side character saves them. A nobody with significant screen time watches the whimsical native fauna casually nudge giant boulders, and decides to just fuckin’ try. In an ideal reading, this character would not have dialog. She would not even have a name. Who she is aggressively does not matter. Only that she understood what Luke said and Rey ignored: the Force is in all living things.

Nobody can own that.

“Yep, that’s moss.”

Horror and comedy can blend perfectly because both are built on releasing tension through shock. It’s why Evil Dead 2 works so well.

But not all subgenres have compatible audiences. Combining a cartoon sitcom with torture porn to get Jigsaw Squarepants could work, technically, but it wouldn’t be a peanut butter and chocolate scenario. Idle Hands effectively meshes Can’t Hardly Wait with Donnie Darko and finds the crossover demographics are not enough to recoup a $10M budget. And they spent $25M to find that out.

Still, great stupid movie, if you’re into both ingredients. The circular saw. The cops. The bagel slicer. I’m just glad someone else remembers the damn thing, because its cultural impact seems limited to filling those kids’ rolodexes.

You can abuse the shit out of a PC speaker, even at 4.77 MHz.

Pros: Leslie Nielsen.

Cons: Rob Schneider.

Ooh, the Bill Murray WWI film! Yeah, it’s good, but it is not a fun watch.

favorably comparing it to Ultraviolet

Damning with faint praise.

Memetics predate language.

How do you feel about Surf Ninjas?

The usually-religion-themed God Awful Movies covered it. At the end of the previous podcast, two of the hosts were excited, and the third was confused as to why. The episode opens with those two bickering - like ‘who the fuck went back in time and replaced the awesome movie I remember with this piece of shit?’

And listen, I was there with you. I saw it in the ideal setting: at a frat rush. It was camp as hell, but energetic and surprising. If I sat down to watch it again I think I’d be deeply disappointed.

Joel Schumacher had the right idea, but should not have been given final edit. He was Hollywood’s last expressionist. He updated Burton’s inky-black Gotham with the garish colors of 90s comic books. It’s still deep contrast against rough concrete. The low-angle lighting on every enormous statue just happens to be neon.

But the man could not hit the right level of camp. It wasn’t completely silly, like “some days you just can’t get rid of a bomb” Batman. It wasn’t an internally-serious ridiculous reality like The Animated Series. It wanted pathos with Alfred and Mrs. Freeze, while still having… a Bat Credit Card.

It’s easily the best of the sequel trilogy, and most popular criticism is total nonsense.

It’s still a hot mess.

The casino scene is the crux of the movie. The main character - Rose - is a loyal soldier who stops a deserter ‘or her sister died for nothing.’ Planet Capitalism is where she’s disillusioned by war profiteers and makes the unsubtle decision to free their animals. By the end she prevents said deserter from repeating her sister’s sacrifice.

The Last Jedi is an anarchist critique of of Star Wars where a rebel soldier rejects the old lie.

I have no fucking idea how Disney decided to produce it as an actual Star Wars film.

the A B C B A style of story telling

“Chiastic structure” is the five-dollar term.

See also Robocop.

Idle Hands is a very late-90s stoner comedy… horror movie. This turns out not to be a winning combination of genres. It works, as both, but the audience is the overlap of a Venn diagram instead of both circles. It’s a stoner movie you absolutely should not watch while stoned.

It’s also packed with now-recognizable names. Seth Green, Jessica Alba, Vivica Fox, Devon Sawa, Elden Henson.

Absolutely bombed.