#to be fair the first movie sucked but at least it was watchable

[fivetrench]

Venom: The Last Dance was such a joke. Short falling plot, horrible writing, redundant action scenes, and probably the most disrespectful death I’ve ever seen given to a main character. If your story ends with one of the lead protagonists getting dissolved in acid and also exploding, you’ve done something seriously wrong. The movie literally ended with a flashback montage playing over Memories by Maroon 5, so I think that tells you everything you need to know about the film.

[crhinge]

Breaking Down The Classic Rom-Com

I feel like I haven’t written a fun post in a hot sec so lets talk about one of my favorite subjects: Rom Coms

According to wikipedia, a Rom Com, also known as Romantic Comedy, is “a subgenre of comedy and slice-of-life fiction, focusing on lighthearted, humorous plot lines centered on romantic ideas, such as how true love is able to surmount most obstacles.” In the past, Romantic Comedies have also been called “Chick Flicks” but I think this is devaluing of both women and  the romantic comedy genre. 

The other day, I woke up to find that the most wholesome rom-com couple of all time reunited: Matty & Jenna (Aka Mark Ruffalo & Jennifer Garner). This got me thinking about the beauty of the Rom-Com and how unappreciated they can be. It has been years since we have seen a rom-com with the cultural impact of 13 Going on 30, and I would like to petition for more of them after a sad and painful year. 

I can already hear the millions (in my head this blog is extremely popular) of comments “What about To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before?!?” “What about The Kissing Booth?!?” And too that I say, "Good Riddance!” If you’re rating your rom coms on a TATBILB scale, or even WORSE The Kissing booth, I feel sorry for you. Truly I do. So let's dive into the best Rom Coms of all time, but first... 

What makes a Rom-Com good? Well let's start with a relatable as hell main character. I am talking a girl (sometimes guy), who has many flaws, but the audience can see themselves within her/him. Let's use Jenna Rink from 13 Going On 30 as an example. Well, she's literally a 13 year old in a 30 year olds body, but don’t we all still have a preteen hiding inside of all of us? She is 100% willing to be herself at every step, even if that means dancing thriller all alone. She touches on all of our insecurities, while teaching us how to break down our walls. 

Rom-Coms also need characters to make realistic choices. This does not mean that the movie itself is realistic, but rather than you can understand the choices the characters make. Again, 13 going on 30 does a fabulous job of this. Obviously, Jenna traveling in time because of wishing powder is not realistic, but the choices that her and her past self make are. Due to the insecurities of her childhood and a need to feel included, relevant, and powerful Jenna pushes important people out of her life, which happens to so many people in the real world. These decisions force her to miss out on the love of her life, and ultimately, the story ends sadly: the love of her life marries someone else and she is left with tears, wishing powder, and an old doll house. That is until she is able to travel back in time and change the course of her life. 

Lastly, Every classic Rom-Com couple needs to have chemistry. There. I said it. Hollywood loves just casting random famous actors without giving them a proper chemistry read. One great example of this is Julianne Hough and Josh Duhamel in Safe Haven. Both fun, famous, Hollywood actors who have zero chemistry. Mark Ruffalo and Jennifer Garner had more chemistry throwing back Razzles than those two did during an intimate sex scene. 

Alright, now that we have broken down the requirements of a Romantic Comedy, let's jump into the best and worst of all time.

Best: When Harry Met Sally. 9/10. A classic. A tale as old as time. Both Sally & Harry are very flawed, yet relatable characters. Sally is too picky and particular, while Harry is a player. They both suck at relationships, but make rational decisions based on their motivations. We all have friends like these two and their chemistry is on point, both on a friendship and romantic level. They bounce off of one another splendidly. 

Worst: Sleepless in Seattle. 1/10 I know, this is a strong take, but this is a terrible movie about a stalker. Meg Ryan (I don’t even remember her character's name) is the stupidest most unrelatable character I have seen in a long time. She is extremely unlovable, cheats on her SO emotionally, and flies across the country to stalk a man that she has never met before. And then you’re telling me that Tom hanks FALLS FOR HER? Nope. No. I refuse to except this. Plus, their chemistry in this is pretty mediocre (You’ve Got Mail is Way Better) and we only get to see them together once. 

Best: 10 Things I Hate About You. 8/10. I was tempted to leave all high School Rom-Coms off this list, but Heath Ledger is my exception. Talk about likability. Kat is a strong, powerful, independent woman who learns how to be more vulnerable while still being a feminist badass. We all wanted to be Kat growing up. Meanwhile Heath Ledger is the classic bad boy with a soft side, and who wasn’’t into that? Both characters grow into new people throughout the movie making them relatable, complex, and realistic. Not to mention the angel that is Joseph Gordon Levitt, who keeps the audience up beat and smiling throughout the course of this Shakespeare tale

Best: My Big fat Greek Wedding. 10/10.  Have you seen this film recently? Because it is an absolute DELIGHT and so relatable. It dives into the difficulty of family expectation and cultures merging. It also has the cutest proposal of all time with a realistic couple that fights for one another on a daily basis. You laugh. You cry. You get a dynamic cast with wonderful chemistry. You feel invested in the family and the relationship. Just a joyful wonderful film.

Worst: Something Borrowed. 0/10. If you’ve never seen this movie, don’t. Ginnifer Goodwin sleeps with her best friends fiancé and we’re supposed to be okay with it because she liked him first. Hard pass. And she ignores John Krazinski who is right in front of her. She is unlikable, unreliable, and makes dumb decisions that no one else would. 

Best: He’s just not that into you. 9/10  I will go to bat for this movie. It follows several realistic storylines in a Love Actually manor, except they actual seem legit. A woman realizing her boyfriend is never going to marry her. A girl facing the fact that maybe some guys just aren’t that into her, and she isn’t an exception to the rule. A man slowly making the decision to cheat on his wife as they are growing apart. A woman realizing that she is worth way more than her bastard husband. A woman realizing that the person she’s sleeping with will never leave his wife for her. It's compelling, has realistic characters that we can relate to, and still warms your heart in the end. 

Best: The Big Sick. 8/10. Okay to be fair, this is based on a true story so it automatically has realistic characters and decisions. Maybe I should leave this off of the list, but I wish this film got the recognition it deserves. Two lovable main characters who make mistakes that are understandable. Wonderful chemistry between Kumail and his girlfriend as well as her family. 

Best: About Time. 11/10 This is hands down the best Rom-Com of all time and Potentially the best film of all time as well. If you don’t cry in this movie you do not have a heart or soul. The characters are SO insanely likable and adorable.It touches on the importance of family and valuing time and how little of it we have. The chemistry within the whole cast is palpable, and we can all relate to at least one character, whether it is the protagonist Tim, his wife Mary, his sister Kit-Kat, or his father. 

Well it is important to point out the obvious here: this list is lacking diversity in a huge way. All but one of these movies follow a cis, straight, white couple, and that is extremely concerning. People have attempted to make more diverse rom-coms over the past few years, but they all seem to be lacking one of the three core components of what makes a rom-com great: Relatable, realistic, and great chemistry. For example. Crazy Rich Asians was a fantastic film, but the high level of wealth that Nick Young comes from, made his character difficult to relate to, and I’m sorry but the chemistry just wasn’t there for me. Always Be My Maybe’s characters fell flat and it’s not a film I would want to watch more than once. Love Simon made some huge waves for LGBTQ representation in the media, but that ending kiss was unrealistic along with his friends reaction to fining out he was lying, which left the movie anti-climactic by the end. 

Now, the most recent film on this list was made in 2017. And before that 2013. So where have all the Rom Coms gone? Why don’t we see more of them. There are a few Rom Coms that could be contenders on the “Best” list from the last couple of years that include a small amount of diversity: 

Yesterday 7/10. The big question here is does this count as a romantic comedy? The love story isn’t the main plot, but is definitely a large sub-plot. This movie features an interracial couple and is highly re-watchable. The main characters are entertaining, relatable, and have pretty good chemistry. We will see if it stands the test of time. 

The Broken Hearts Gallery 7/10. This movie has gotten NO recognition. The main character, Lucy, is an extremely likable 20 something, not unlike our Ginnifer Goodwin in He’s Just not that Into You. The plot is fun and predictable but keeps you watching. I don’t know if this one will stay on my list long, but it’s definitely up there. 

But here is my challenge to Hollywood: create some new, beautiful Rom Coms that celebrate diversity but that don’t throw away the relatable, realistic, and high chemistry characters that we are just waiting to fall in love with. It’s got like 16 ideas up my sleeve, so just give me a call Hollywood. 

[incomprehensiblelentils]

Lentils’ 2020 Christmas Movie Rankings

My wife and I watched a lot of Christmas movies this year, and I thought it would be fun to rank them based on which ones I think were most watchable and enjoyable. I’ve left out a few that we watched during this time period, which are classic Christmas movies (Miracle on 34th Street), action movies set at Christmas (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Iron Man 3), or older romances set around Christmas (While You Were Sleeping and You’ve Got Mail), because it’s not fair to rank these amongst, well, some of the movies we saw.

my top 5, for those of you who don’t like reading (which is fair): The Princess Switch: Switched Again, Dashing in December, The Princess Switch, Jingle Jangle, Happiest Season.

my top 3 Chaotic Christmas Movies: A New York Christmas Wedding, 12 Pups of Christmas, The Princess Switch: Switched Again. Please watch these movies if you enjoy chaotic plots. Please especially watch the first two I listed because holy shit my summaries do not properly convey the chaos.

The Princess Switch: Switched Again (2020): Some people on the internet have been VERY RUDE about this movie and I’m sorry they don’t appreciate a true chaotic holiday gem when they see it. This movie involves two Vanessa Hudgenses, Scheduled Vanessa and Spontaneous Vanessa, who are distant cousins and not twins, switching places to try to facilitate Spontaneous Vanessa getting back together with her ex the baker, but Scheduled Vanessa is intercepted by a third cousin Vanessa, Horny Vanessa, who wants to take Spontaneous Vanessa’s place as queen. I don’t want to spoil anything that happens in this movie so that you can experience the batshittery for yourself, but I found every second absolutely delightful. It also has two very good romantic couples who are cute and who genuinely seem to like each other, which is not something I can say for every movie on this list!

Dashing in December (2020): This movie has gay cowboys, is set on a ranch, and features a squaredancing scene, so if that isn’t your bag, you are probably not going to like it very much. I found it deeply charming and the only reason it isn’t #1 is that three quarters of the way through, the lead suddenly turns back into a giant jerk for no real reason and that was very upsetting. But it all works out in the end. The main romance is very cute, there are horses, the horsemanship doesn’t totally suck ass, and there are some fun side characters. It’s not reinventing the wheel, but it’s pleasant.

The Princess Switch (2018): Again, some people are mean about this movie and they shouldn’t be because it is CUTE GODDAMMIT. It is absolutely The Prince and the Pauper but with two Vanessa Hudgenses, but also, it shows the aforementioned two good romantic couples falling in love and they are delightful. I am not saying this is a great masterpiece of romance, but the filmmakers actually tried to give these characters reasons to like each other, which, again, is not true for some of the movies on this list.\

Jingle Jangle (2020): I kind of feel bad putting this movie on the same list as TV movies that were obviously just shit out by Hallmark or whoever, because this clearly had a lot of love and heart put into it, and it really shows. I was so immediately charmed by this movie that I didn’t even mind when it immediately went in very silly directions. I don’t know if the plot makes sense at all (a cute robot shows up for seemingly no reason other than that cute robots are fun!) but it doesn’t have to, because everyone is having so much fun and there’s so much joy in this movie that I was just happy to be along for the ride. Also, I would love to see an entire movie in the stop-motion style from the opening scene.

Happiest Season (2020): I absolutely understand why some people didn’t like this movie, and I don’t want anyone to feel like they can’t dislike it, and also, it’s MY movie, and I love it, and I’m not interested in fighting about it. It helped me come out to my parents and also featured two of my faves kissing and that’s all I need. 

Noelle (2019): I was previously under the impression this movie was bad, and I don’t know why, because it’s a little embarrassing and cheesy at times, but it’s sweet. I suspect what will make or break it for you is if you like Anna Kendrick, and because I like Anna Kendrick, I like watching her play a neurotic Claus sibling trying desperately to fix the problem she accidentally caused. One weird thing though: this movie tried to convince me about halfway through that she was both spoiled and selfish, and I don’t actually think that’s true at all. I think she was a little naive and sheltered and wanted people to like her way too much, but she’s not really shown to be a selfish person - she’s constantly paying attention to other people in the real world and her brother is the one who refused to admit that he wasn’t cut out for the Santa gig and instead fucked off to “find himself” or whatever. It was weird! But anyway, I liked this movie a lot.

I’ll Be Home For Christmas (1998): So this movie...one Christmas Eve when I was in high school, I was having trouble falling asleep for whatever reason so I went downstairs to get some water. My mom happened to have the TV on and this movie was just starting, and she invited me to join her. Fun fact: this movie went to theaters and it stars Jonathan Taylor-Thomas and Jessica Biel. It is one of the dumbest movies I’ve ever seen in my life and at no point does anyone in it actually behave like a human being. It’s about a smooth-talking jackass who has to be bribed to come home for Christmas and then, after one of his dumbass moneymaking schemes lands him in hot water, he gets abandoned in the middle of the California desert wearing a Santa suit and glued-on beard. He then has to beg, lie, and cheat his way home for Christmas dinner so that his dad will give him a vintage Porsche they fixed up together. I have no defense for this character; he is insufferable and only becomes marginally less so by the end of the film. But also, I have to watch this movie every year (usually with my mom, although not this year for obvious reasons) or it doesn’t feel like Christmas. 

A Cinderella Story: Christmas Wish (2019): We own this on DVD and have seen it three times. In our defense, we wanted to support Gregg Sulkin from Runaways and Isabella Gomez from One Day at a Time, both of whom feature prominently in this movie, and also sing songs. This is just Cinderella But At Christmas, and if that doesn’t sound like fun to you, I don’t think anything I can say will change your mind. I will say that the songs are amusingly autotuned, there’s a disabled dog that’s very cute, and I personally think that the leads have slightly better chemistry than some of the pairs on this list. But it is literally just another Cinderella Story movie.

The Knight Before Christmas (2019): This movie is Thor (2011) But At Christmas, and it would have been slightly higher except I always forget about the plot where at the end the knight becomes a cop. Bad, obviously! But anyway, the plot of this movie is: nice but clueless dude crash-lands on Earth for Reasons and bumbles around trying to figure out what’s up, while falling in love with a nice lady. That’s just Thor and you know I’m right. And for as dumb as this movie is, at least it’s ambitious. I have learned that Christmas movies can do one of two things to please me: a) have actors that have decent chemistry and charm and are fully committed to whatever nonsense is going on, or b) have absolutely batshit chaotic plots. This movie is like a 4 out of 5 on the chaos scale and I like it a lot, besides the copaganda. I hope this also gets made into a trilogy and Cole isn’t a cop anymore.

A Christmas Prince 3: The Royal Baby (2019): I will get into my problems with the first two Christmas Prince movies later, but my main criticism is that they are kind of boring and not chaotic enough. This one decided to make up for that by incorporating a missing ancient treaty, a curse, and a ghost, as well as a subplot about Girl Power (I use this semi-ironically) and a subplot about cousin Simon potentially committing treason again. I was so excited that things were happening in this movie the first time I watched it that I may be a little biased, but oh well. Oh, I was also absolutely terrified it was going to be racist and it is...mostly not? There are a few questionable moments but like mostly it’s fine.

Christmas With the Prince (2018): I wanted to watch this because the summary on Netflix did not match the summary on Google at all, and that’s because, uh, they’re both sort of right? Ostensibly this movie is about a pediatric oncologist who comes back into contact with an old almost-flame, who just happens to be the prince of a tiny European country, because he fucked up his leg and needs somewhere private to stay. And apparently a pediatric oncology ward is the best place for that? But then after they fall in love this random Russian lady shows up and is like “that’s my fiance.” This happens maybe twenty minutes from the end. Anyway, this movie isn’t great but I liked the lead guy way more than I thought I would and it has some cute kids in it.

A New York Christmas Wedding (2020): I...am at a loss for words to describe this...motion picture. On the surface it is a cute idea: a young Black woman, Jennifer, is getting married to her boyfriend on Christmas Eve, but she’s given a chance by her guardian angel (stay with me) to go back in time and redo her life, after losing touch with her childhood best friend, Gabrielle, who she was always in love with but never confessed her feelings to. She wakes up in an alternate timeline, where she and Gabrielle have been together for years and her beloved father is still alive. Then the movie, uh...veers off into some very odd places! They go to their Catholic priest and ask him to marry them, and he is like “but the Bible” and they are like “but that’s bullshit” and he’s like “shrug” and then later during a sermon he’s like “actually that IS bullshit, everyone gay in this church come stand up here with me. We love you. Also we’re going to perform a wedding now” and then he marries Jennifer and Gabrielle. And then Jennifer’s angel shows up and is like “you have to choose between this life and your old life now” and then uh...I really hate to spoil this next thing. It is the weirdest choice I’ve ever seen a movie make and if you’re even the slightest bit interested in this movie, I think you should experience this plot point for yourself. I’m going to put the batshit spoiler in ROT13 in case you want to avoid spoiling yourself. (GJ: fhvpvqr) Wraavsre'f thneqvna natry erirnyf gung ur vf gur fba bs Tnoevryyr, jub va gur bevtvany gvzryvar tbg certanag nf n grra naq ure snzvyl frag ure gb n ahaarel. Fur zvfpneevrq naq fhofrdhragyl qvrq ol fhvpvqr. Uvf anzr vf Nmenry Tnovfba. Anyway, uh, this movie isn’t very good, unfortunately, the adult leads have no chemistry and Gabrielle’s adult self is actively unlikable (the teen versions of them are cute!), but I think it’s 1000% worth a watch for the sheer chaos of it all. I...recommend it for that, I guess? Oh, also there’s a sex scene that plays a slow sexy version of “O Christmas Tree” in the background and I felt like I was losing my mind. 

A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding (2018): As I said in my commentary on the third movie in this series, the worst sin this movie commits is being kind of boring. It also manages to make the romantic hero, Richard, even worse than in the first movie, where he was just kind of useless and petulant, because in this movie he is actively failing to do anything to revive the failing economy of his country. I have seen people complain that the prince in The Princess Switch and Cole in The Knight Before Christmas have no personalities; they are delightful compared to the wet paper bag of a man in this movie. Rose McIver is adorable and I don’t think any of this is her fault, she’s doing her best in these movies, but woof.

12 Pups of Christmas (2019): The Google summary of this movie, which we found on Hulu, is this: “Struggling to keep his dog GPS locator company afloat, Martin expects his new hire, Erin, to help him save the company and find homes for 12 puppies that were left behind after a photo shoot. As they work together, Erin and Martin begin to discover each other's positive qualities and find love just in time for the holidays.” My wife and I love dogs, so we put this on, expecting cute dogs. This movie contains approximately 80% chaos and 20% cute dogs. It opens with our heroine, a canine therapist, coming home from work to have dinner with her fiance and best friend. We find out that Erin and fiance are moving to California soon for her new job (they live in New York). Fast forward a few days to their courthouse wedding, at which point her fiance and best friend confess to having an affair, and she is dumped. Heartbroken, she moves to California alone, and ends up moving into the company-provided house. It is just a two-story house (??) that the CEO’s sister owns (???) and rents out to employees (????). Also Erin is, as the Google summary says, expected to come up with some grand idea to save the company. And there are 12 random puppies also. They are cute puppies. Oh, also Martin, the CEO of the dog collar company, hates dogs for some reason. Martin’s sister is aggressively friendly towards Erin in a way that I interpreted as sapphic. At one point, after they find a home for dog #3, Erin’s former BFF shows up on her doorstep (?????) begging to be let in. She insists that the fiance was also two-timing her, and she has proof that he had FIVE OTHER GIRLFRIENDS ALL AROUND THE COUNTRY - “that’s why he’s a traveling businessman”!!!! Erin never asks to see her proof, but I guess she believes her, because she lets her inside and then makes her take care of the remaining eight dogs out of spite. I guess they make up at some point. Anyway, somewhere in here Erin and Martin are starting to fall in love and also come up with a way to rebrand the business, so hooray for them. We also learn that the reason Martin hates dogs is that his beloved childhood dog, uh, ran away? Disappeared? Got eaten? He insists that “not knowing [what happened to him] was the worst part,” but I was out here expecting to see the child finding an actual dead dog like it’s John Wick or something so this was a little anticlimactic. They go on a business trip to New York talk with Important Japanese Investors, during which they fuck (it is? romantic? allegedly?), and then the morning of their meeting Erin’s shitty ex shows up in the hotel lobby to bother her. Martin decks him square in the face for not leaving her alone, and then someone calls the cops, because I guess this movie said ACAB, and both dudes get arrested and Erin has to do the presentation alone. And then in the last five minutes Martin gets out of jail and Erin says that she gave the presentation to the investors...in English, and their translator was twenty minutes late, and so the investors understood none of what she said. Thankfully we are spared actually seeing this “joke,” but they do play racist music over her explanation. Then Martin reconnects with his rich dad who bails out the company instead, and also he adopts the four remaining dogs. This movie was fucking bananas and very bad and I need more people to understand exactly how bad. Watch this movie.

A Nutcracker Christmas (2016): Amy Acker has two Christmas movies and this one seemed more palatable than Dear Santa, so here we are. I like to watch Amy Acker be cute and dance, and she has an adorable teenage niece in this movie that she’s helped raise. In this movie she’s a former ballet dancer whose sister (hilariously, one of the Wynonna Earp lesbians) died in a tragic car accident, and she never got to dance the part of the Sugarplum Fairy. Spoiler alert: she gets to by the end of the movie. Unfortunately the love interest is basically Satan incarnate and does not deserve her at all, so unless you like yelling at romantic leads I can’t really recommend it. 

Godmothered (2020): This movie is just, uh, Enchanted but worse, and also it should have been sapphic and it isn’t? Poor Jillian Bell is doing her best and is adorable, but it’s not enough to save this movie for me. If Disney were not cowards she would have fallen in love with single mom Isla Fisher. Oh, it also ends with the very white younger daughter doing a public cover of “Rise Up” by Andra Day that the audience joins in on, which, considering its use in the BLM movement the last couple years, felt, uh, not great to me.

A Christmas Prince (2017): It’s maybe not far to compare this to the rest of the Netflix Christmas Cinematic Universe, because it was the originator. But also, it’s pretty boring. Sorry. Simon, or Fiddles (Fake Hiddles/Tom Hiddleston) is the best character.

Married by Christmas (2016): Apparently an alternate title for this is The Engagement Clause, which is sort of funny. Anyway, this has Jes Macallan and we, being big fans of Legends of Tomorrow, lost our shit when we found this on Christmas Day and had to watch it. The plot is that Jes’ character runs the family business, but their shitty grandma died and left a clause in her will where the business goes to the husband of whichever granddaughter gets married first. You would think that Jes’ sister and her fiance would postpone their Christmas Eve wedding to give Jes time to set up some kind of platonic wedding for business purposes, since Jes’ entire life is this stupid business, but nope, they immediately turn into monsters who are determined to get their hands on the business for ???? reasons???? It’s not very good, as you can tell by how low it is on the list. Jes Macallan is not a convincing straight businesswoman. I wouldn’t even really enjoy this movie as an Avalance AU.

A Princess for Christmas (2011): Here we are, the worst one Christmas movie I watched this year. I don’t actively harbor any ill will towards Katie McGrath, although I confess to feeling a bit “her?” but it’s fine. I was hoping this movie would enlighten me to her appeal. Instead, this movie actively got on my nerves in multiple ways, including trying to pass Katie McGrath off as a normal American retail worker instead of an Irish vampire/sorceress/supervillain/fairy/whatever she is. Her accent is shockingly awful, which I’m not sure is actually her fault, is there a reason her family wasn’t just British? That wouldn’t have saved the movie but it would have made it just slightly more palatable. At every turn it makes the worst choices, including a scene where Katie’s character puts on a rap song and she and the prince dance to it in an attempt to show them “loosening up,” and then the mean grandfather comes in and demands that they “turn this ghetto music off.” YIKES. I know these movies are the whitest movies ever by design but was that racism necessary? The only Black people I actually saw in this movie were some of the servants, I think? Speaking of the servants, at the end of the movie there’s a grand ball and Katie’s dress gets fucked up, and she’s about to leave the country, and then the servants are like “don’t go! We pooled our money to buy you another nice dress!” which, also yikes! This movie has a real classism problem. It also was so boring I zoned out of it multiple times, and I have sat through Manos: The Hands of Fate and Birdemic multiple times. This movie has no chaos whatsoever and I hated all the characters. 0/10 do not recommend under any circumstances.

[deltaengineering]

Winter Anime 2019 Part 3: High on Concept

If you wait long enough, you’ll find something good to say.

Doukyonin wa Hiza, Tokidoki, Atama no Ue / My Roommate is a Cat

What: Misanthropic mystery author picks up tough stray cat, both get healed.

✅ The cat acts like a cat, the misanthrope acts like a misanthrope.

✅ The approach of telling the same simple story from the perspective of two characters that can’t really communicate effectively is interesting.

✅ This is very basic, but it works. I like both characters, and it's generally inoffensive. Pretty much Barakamon with less of a focus on telling you exactly what to feel. Might watch more of this.

❌ I see we’re now at the point where shows get localized titles that sound like lazy translations of bland Japanese names even when the Japanese title is not that bland to begin with. Lovely.

Dimension High School

What: A bunch of kids press XXX and YYY and are sucked. Wooow.

✅✅ The wraparound segments look extremely realistic. If there was more lensflares and shots of feet I’d almost say someone has finally beaten KyoAni in making anime look like a cheap, egregiously overacted J-Drama.

❌❌ Sadly, the puzzle dimension they end up in just looks like homemade MMD animation, because it is. I mean, at least it’s mocapped, but apparently with a Kinect.

❌❌ E.g., they make jokes about clipping and they kinda have to because everything clips into everything else all the time.

❌❌ Did I mention that all they actually do is solve lame puzzles and fail to be funny about it? It’s really getting to the levels of the dreaded “barely animated voice actor improv podcast” at these points.

♎ Suwabe’s in it, and that’s never an outright bad thing. He’s voicing the quizmaster, in the process proving he’d do anything for a paycheck. I wonder if he has a fiverr acocunt.

Domestic na Kanojo

What: Highschooler loses virginity to one night stand, finds out that it was the sister of the teacher he has a crush on. Incidentally, the mother of both also just married his father. Zany!

✅ This is presented like a low-key, slow drama, and it’s not even bad at that. Some good directing going on here, at least in the beginning.

❌❌ Really just too bad that it’s impossible to take seriously with a setup as contrived as this, not to mention taking it as seriously as it apparently wants to be taken. It’s also not exactly original.

❌ I’m not gonna say that sketchy relationships can’t work (it worked fine for KoiAme, for example), but embedding your suddenly also incestuous pupil-teacher affair in the setting of a harem comedy, complete with other sister walking in on attempted drunk blackout kiss, is not giving me confidence that this has the chops to pull it off.

❌❌ The show this reminds me the most of is Love and Lies, and that’s a real bad calling card to have.

Girly Air Force

What: Girl-shaped fighter jets fall in love with a dude.

❌❌ It’s just another military-hardware-is-cute-girls-actually show in the vein of Strike Witches, the kind where they think that having a few plane CG models is already thrilling content.

❌❌ But then it doesn’t even turn out to be that in practice, because most of the episode is taken up by lame “worldbuilding” (i.e., coming up with excuses for why your fanservice show has to be the way it is) and trying to make your bland harem lead interesting, which is a futile endeavour.

❌ The most interesting part is still the CG dogfighting, such as it is. It’s not great either. Also, girly planes are pink.

♎ Honestly got a laugh out of them randomly picking a Gripen as heroine unit  in addition to actual JSADF hardware, because that’s a sleek-looking plane. The biggest prank the JSADF ever pulled on the otaku industry is buying the chubby F-35, which is nowhere to be seen here.

Go-toubun no Hanayome / The Quintessential Quintuplets

What: Empoverished highschooler is hired as a tutor for some rich quintuplets with large breasts.

❌ This is a blatant harem setup that would make a 2003 bishoujo VN blush.

✅ However, in practice it’s much better than it sounds. It knows it’s a wacky romcom with a dumb premise and it does not pretend otherwise.

✅ So it’s lighthearted, but it’s also surprisingly classy. In fact, it’s classier than Domestic no Kanojo, which is a show that’s actually trying to look respectable and failing.

✅ The relationships are also very feisty, with an energy that a comedy needs. There’s a lot of sass to go around here. Probably the best of these I’ve seen in a while, so I’ll give it three eps.

Kemurikusa

What: After getting pulled off the sequel, the Kemono Friends crew made their own version. Presumably there are blackjack and hookers in this show’s future.

❌ If you are a fan of KF’s “charms”, fear not, you would not be able to tell these people made another anime before. It's still total amateur hour.

❌❌ It’s not even the “looks”, though those certainly are not a highlight. The design is okay and the animation is bad, but I’m not incapable of enjoying shows with bad animation. What really kills it is the editing. I usually don’t comment on editing because that’s almost always competent and only very rarely great, but Kemurikusa has uniquely lazy and badly timed editing. Every shot being seconds longer than it needs to be is already an annoyance in low-key dialog scenes, but the alleged action is laughable and allows you a long, unblinking stare at every frame of bad animation. I really do wonder why they even bother with it when it’s so terrible.

✅ The setting seems alright, even though it’s just a reskinned Kemono Friends. At least it’s not gijinka nonsense this time (which makes one wonder where the gimmick characters are supposed to come from, but I digress), and it’s more upfront about what it actually is too. I’d call it mildly intriguing.

❌ I don’t mind mystery and certainly prefer it to exposition bombs, but instead of that this episode quickly establishes the most basic facts... and then repeats them over and over and over some more. Combined with non-editing, this makes for horrible pacing. 

♎ I had no opinion on KF’s longer-term qualities, because the first episode was so boring I never got any further. I won’t have an opinion on this show’s long-term qualities for the same reason.

Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka

What: Magical girls are tragic, shoot gun’s.

❌❌ Yo bro, what if magical girls but dark? Surely such a thing has never been attempted.

❌ The particular source of grim here is that these girls are war vets and fight with semi-realistic weaponry, so there’s a fair bit of the ol’ milwank in this one as well.

❌ The best part of the entire show is that the enemies they originally fought looked like cute teddy bears. Of course, this is dropped in favor of just slicing and dicing some random terrorists in the main narrative. I guess “dark magical girl” is still too outlandish a concept, gotta go with ripping off The Punisher again.

❌ The characters so far are nothing special, you got your PTSD Rambo and the generically cute tomodachis she swears to protect. Such contrast!

❌❌ If you must make these 80s action movies with some otaku gimmick pasted on top, would you mind making the action look good at least? Because I don’t care how many gallons of blood you paint in your dramatic but conspicuously non-moving pans.

Meiji Tokyo Renka

What: Spiritually sensitive lonelygirl gets kitsuned to the Meiji era, which is full of delicious beef and some handsome men too I guess.

✅ This isn’t an outright comedy, but it goes all in on everyone’s fabulosity level to a degree that it’s really already three quarters to Dame x Prince.

✅ Similarly, the lead is not quite as unimpressed with these hams as Ani was, but she certainly has a lot more interest in roast beef than in these guys always trying to pull her into sparkly chin-holding poses &c.

✅ Meiji Tokyo Renka doesn’t seem to be anything special, but it gets the tone right and is expressive enough to not become boring.

♎ While certainly watchable right now, with these there’s always the chance that it decides to launch into real drama in the long run, which in turn almost always goes wrong.

Yakusoku no Neverland / The Promised Neverland

What: An orphanage’s happy daily life gets upended by the realisation that they’re just pizza rolls for some demonic entities.

✅ I watched this right after Kemurikusa and let me tell you, it sure helps if you’ve got professionals on the team. This is a highly competent show as far as cinematography and editing is concerned. While there isn’t any reason to go all out on the action sakuga, this show looks real good.

❌ I’m not feeling the character design, to be specific I think everyone’s chin is too big. This sounds like a real assholy nitpick, but be aware that this will impact around 90% of the time you watch this. 

✅ The premise is workable for a shounen manga, even if hardly original (remember Owari no Seraph?) At least it’s not kids with superpowers spamming beams at each other while discussing the nature of heroism, and seems to be going for a more mindgames-based approach in the vein of Death Note. The characters are just barely good enough so far. In the end it’s not so much the premise, but how well the production values are able to sell it. And that’s what Neverland is good at.

❌ It’s specifically a Weekly Shounen Jump manga, and that is huge red flag. Sure enough, while the visuals and mood deliver, the dialog writing justifiably assumes the reader is a moron. Almost every line in this is either straight universe exposition or someone reading someone else’s character sheet back to them. It’s insane and not even necessary because their actions establish all of this just fine, but hey, WSJ readers amirite?

❌ Also, since it’s a successful WSJ property, don’t expect an ending or be prepared to watch this show for years. Most likely both.

♎ This seems like it could be entertaining once the exposition is out of the way and the real meat of the narrative starts. Then again, at that point pacing would come into play, which is yet another achilles heel of WSJ-style shounen manga. Against my better judgement, I’ll probably have a look how this develops, but I don’t expect much.

[epsilonlaylay-blog]

Why I Hate The Paranormal Activity Franchise

I hate the Paranormal Activity franchise. Someone actually accused me of hating them just because they are popular, which I can’t tell if that’s sarcastic or what. If I hated found footage movies just because they were popular then I wouldn’t like Blair Witch or REC or well there’s countless others. I don’t hate movies based on how popular they are or not I hate movies based on how bad they are, popular or not. I like movies based on how good they are popular or not. Doesn’t matter. A lot of people hate Blair Witch. A lot of people hate the new IT movie. A lot of people hate a lot of things that I like and are also GOOD movies. A lot of people like really BAD horror movies like It Follows and It Comes At Night and A Quiet place. How popular a movie is or isn’t will never, EVER be how I judge movies. That being said, since someone does think I hate those movies just because they are popular which is a stupid idea, I’ll explain why they are, in actuality, very bad movies.

Paranormal Activity One:

Now, the very first one isn’t SUPER bad I mean it’s passable. Though 99% of the scary moments in the first one are jump scares, it was at least a somewhat original concept for the time. The acting isn’t super horrible, at least not from Katie. Everyone else seemed kind of just idiotic or stiff on camera I don’t know. For just a single, stand alone, found footage movie I can say it’s decent. I don’t hate it and I don’t love it. It was a novelty more than anything and had it just been that one movie then I wouldn’t hate the idea so much but it wasn’t just that one movie. It is the best one of the franchise other than the fourth one, I think? The Marked Ones? Which has nothing to do with any of the rest of them (seemingly) and though I wouldn’t call that one awesome either it was far easier to get through than the ones that dealt with the overall story.

Paranormal Activity Two:

This is where it already starts to fall apart. Especially since this family rigged up their entire house with super HD awesome security cameras with sound? Why? Then they have them running constantly to somewhere? Like where is all this footage being recorded and saved? The police found all of it, clearly and kept it. Not only did they keep it, they edited it down to support a full storyline narrative like in the first. All of the movies do this and start (or end) with some message that this is police archive footage or something like that. Why though? Like, if the police did have this footage and it was archived they wouldn’t have edited it into an actual movie that told a story. They may have the events in order but they’d literally only have the events. Stuff that actually happened. They wouldn’t have 90 minutes of pointless fooling around and stupid conversations that don’t pertain to the events at hand. They’d just have what was relevant to the case. If they would even hold onto it at all. The most important footage in each of these movies is when the people are murdered and that’s about it. The rest of it is irrelevant and it even seems by the events of the second movie Katie is wanted for the murder of Micha. Not a ghost. The police would have no need to keep hours and hours of pointless footage archived and edited in such a way that it tells a story to this level. We also start to get into the problem of them having to make shit up to cover their asses because they didn’t think there would be a sequel so a lot of stuff just doesn’t make sense compared to the first movie.

Paranormal Activity Three:

This is the one where they flash back all the way to the 80s with Katie and Kristie as kids. The mother seems utterly unconcerned with most of it and the boyfriend or step father, though he has a crap ton of stuff actually recorded on camera to prove to the mother what he’s saying, he just never shows it to her? Like he brings up, repeatedly that something is going on in the house or there are ghosts or demons or something but he never shows her the footage of what he’s talking about. He always just shows her something else. Plus, it’s the 80s but he has like 8 different cameras, they are recording all the time, the quality is HD, I mean come on. He’d literally have boxes and boxes and BOXES of tapes if he was recording that much and if he was recording over other stuff that he already filmed the quality of the footage would in no way be as good as what was presented to us. Then we have that stupid ending where the girls are like getting married to the demon or something? And there’s a witch coven? Like you lost me there. It’s just getting dumber and dumber. At least the kids were decent actors (usually children can’t act for shit) so…I mean it was kind of watchable but it was more unintentionally hilarious than scary.

Paranormal Activity Four:

So then we have this one which starts out with a random family that seems to be totally not connected to the main story at all. Until you find out that the main girl’s brother is adopted and he actually is Hunter or something. The baby from the first or second movie, whatever, that Katie kidnapped from Kristie. For some reason. Like I guess he’s the Toby ghost or supposed to have Toby inside of him or get possessed by Toby or…whatever the case may be you can rest assured that it makes no sense. Once again we have the problem of cameras recording ALL the time, with no feasible way to save the footage. Then we have the problem of the family knowing this is the case and just NEVER CHECKING THE FOOTAGE. I mean at a certain point they just stop checking it. There, that’s it. They know there’s a ghost, the girl knows she has proof on camera, she just decides to NEVER show her dad and the dad NEVER wants to listen even though they all set up the cameras in the first place to catch this fucking ghost. Then at the very end the dad tells the girl to go get help and she literally carries her fucking laptop, while filming her, across the street, to get help…like UGH none of these people even act the way normal humans would act in this situation. Especially not carrying a fucking laptop with them to film something while they get help. Give me a damn break.

Paranormal Activity 5 (The Marked ones):

Okay to be fair I only saw this one once, like the others, and I don’t remember it having freaking anything to do with the main story. If it was a prequel or what. I don’t feel like looking it up either. It was about some hispanic (possibly Mexican) kids who were getting possessed or paranormally attacked by I guess the same ghost or demon or whatever that’s part of the main story. Works well as a stand alone and other than the first movie it’s the most decent one to watch but that’s not really saying much I just hate it the least out of all the rest of them. Moving on. If this does have something to do with all the rest of them and the main story, feel free to remind me or explain how because I really don’t remember them being connected to each other in any way and I fully admit right now I might be wrong.

Paranormal Activity Ghost Dimension:

This is the last one in the series, hopefully forever. I don’t even know how they got to 6 movies but this one did make the least amount of money and then Oren Peli (the guy who created this abortion of a franchise) claimed that this was how it was supposed to end and what he had planned all along and what he wanted and blah blah blah bullshit lip service. Which can’t possibly be true. If it is true then he’s admitting that he had a shitty nonsensical open ending planned the ENTIRE TIME. I think they just ran out of funding and the movies were tanking at the box office and he had to pretend this is the ending he wanted.

Once again this is seemingly a random family that has nothing to do with anything that they vaguely connect to the main story. It was also in 3D and I will admit the 3D effects were cool but that’s about all it had going for it. Like if you don’t see it in 3D and you don’t see it in the theaters I can’t imagine it’s any good. Like literally ALL of the rest of the films it relies heavily on jump scares and only on jump scares and of course the really cool 3D effects which only actually are cool if you can see them in a theater and in 3D and then there’s some stupid ending about the main little girl Leila and her mom going back in time and getting married to Toby the demon or something, the END.

So if it isn’t apparent why I hate these movies I’ll give it to you in summary:

1. They rely on the very cheap gimmick of found footage because they don’t want to work on an actual plot or really hire good actors. Low budget means higher box office profit.

2. 99% of every scare in every movie is a jump scare. They even use this low frequency vibration noise that is somewhat undetectable by most humans and makes them “uneasy” except if you’ve seen 1000 of these movies that only rely on jump scares then you can pretty much tell when a jump scare is about to happen so you are probably immune to that trick. I guess most regular movie going idiots aren’t so they are basically tricked into thinking it’s scary because of an involuntary response that their body has to low frequency noises. Yeah, if you need to jam that into your horror movie? It’s not good.

3. The only reason the first one got so big in the first place was the old “This movie is too scary for general audiences you can’t see this movie” trick where they made people DEMAND to see it via some website. Except that was all just a gimmick, as I said. The movie was scheduled for a wide release anyway. Once again, if you are relying on gimmicks to get people in the seats instead of the quality of your actual movie it’s not going to be a good movie.

Though the first movie is decent that’s about all it is. Decent. People complain that nothing happens in The Blair Witch project and that’s why it “Sucks” but even less happens in these movies and they’ve had 6 of them now. These are objectively worse than the first Blair witch and has much larger following. Why? I have no idea. The story lines in all of them are dumbed down for audiences to a high level. It’s clear that each time they got green lit for a new sequel they shat their pants and forgot what they even did in the last one and had to quickly make up for it by doing an awful rush job that barely held the movies together via a very paper thin plot.

I’m not even against telling a story in flashbacks if it’s done right and attention is paid to details and it makes sense. I mean as bad as the Saw movies can be in some areas and I will admit that, they at least tried a fuck ton harder to try to make them connect WAY more coherently than the Paranormal Activity movies. Whoever they hired for continuity for the Saw movies did their job. Whoever they hired for the Paranormal Activity movies was either high or didn’t give a fuck. I doubt the studios did either as this was a cash cow for them so as long as people went to see these movies they didn’t care how good they were.

At the end of the day, these are just really bad movies. They rely on gimmicks and jump scares. That’s it. If you need to be TOLD how scary a movie is, literally in the advertising, and once you get in there 99% of the scares are loud noises, then what has been accomplished? What have you just spent your money on? Long running franchises can be good and profitable if people actually put some kind of care into making them. That’s what makes the first 6 Saw movies really good together (and literally nothing after that they should have ended at 6). It is not impossible to make a good horror franchise that people love if you take your time and make sure everything makes sense. That was not done with these movies, and it’s obvious. I’m glad they are over now and have no foreseeable future because they don’t deserve it.

[kmp78]

WELL THAT WAS... a movie. 🤷🏼‍♀️

First some non-spoilery bits:

Fair game: it wasn't as bad as expected.

Childish as fucking hell (those flying scenes... c'mon now... 🙄) but it was watchable.

ONCE!

Nooooooo way am I ever sitting through that again! ✋️🙄

Performances: sorry echeboos but your boy SUCKED AAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSSS. 🤦🏼‍♀️

No life in him whatsoever (pun intended!). 😴

He was at least a tad bit less catatonic than in TO, but that's not much of a compliment! He once again busted out that Barry White baritone which he uses to show how ssssssserious he is about what he's doing. 🙄

Matt Smith by comparison was 🔥. He really out-acted JL in every scene he appeared in - and his performance actually only highlighted how lackluster JL was. 🤦🏼‍♀️

MS's acting grade: A- because he gave his all even tho the material was 🙄.

JL's acting grade: C because he gave TOO MUCH without actually giving anything! 🤷🏼‍♀️

I just don't get it! Maybe it's because I know too much of his bs to ever be able to be objective about him on screen but holy fuck once again he seemed to be operating on a whole different frequency from everyone else! 🤷🏼‍♀️

And as far as Not-Eiza goes...

Pfffft. Useless character and zero chemistry with JL. 👎

Also useless: Tyrese. Literally ANYONE could have played that role, and his police partner was actually a lot better and funnier! 🤷🏼‍♀️

I have no opinion on the much-hated CGI because I don't watch CGI movies. I have no idea if they were good or not.

I would however love to see footage of JL growling and contorting his face while filming this thing BEFORE they added the CGI fangs and makeup and whatnot! I bet that footage would be better than this finished product! 😂

So yeah. It was watchable, but even I with 0 comic book movie knowledge can understand why diehards were not pleased. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Overall I'd give this a 6/10. It would have been a 5 but 1 special scene deserves its own merit (read on to find out! 😛).

AND NOW!!!!!!!! 👇

DO NOT READ AHEAD IF YOU WANT TO WATCH IT WITHOUT KNOWING DEETS!!!! 🤨

My very first deeeeeep sighs came within the first 5 mins... 🙄

I mean... GREECE...???

Why?! Why were they in Greece?! That had nothing to do with anything?! 🤨

Completely pointless side plot - AND EVERYONE IN GREECE SUDDENLY SPEAKS ENGLISH??? 😑

Pet peeve #1 right there. 🙄

Also that "cripple act" got old reeeeeeeal fast... 😴

I seriously got annoyed seeing him hobbling around to the point where I just wanted to scream "GO GET A FUCKING WHEELCHAIR!!!" 🙄👨‍🦽

I mean I'm sorry I know that's insensitive but COME THE FUCK ON! 🙄

Driving home this handicap thing sssssoooo haaaaarrrdddd was just super annoying! 🙄

Altho I will say that the obvious Keyser Soze reference when Milo left the jail made me chuckle... 🤭😉

Another annoyance: THE CAT LITTER THING!!!!!!

Whose cat comes running when you shake HIS/HER LITTER BOX?????????????

Shaking a plate with kibble I get, but...

LITTER BOX????? 😳

Has the screenwriter ever met a cat? 🤔🐈‍⬛

And speaking of screenwriting errors: anyone else find it strange that towards the end when MM and MB were in the lab, they embrace and he said "You need to go...", but then HE WAS THE ONE WHO LEFT. 😂

I found that hilarious... 😂🤷🏼‍♀️

But wtf were those extra scenes in the credits?! I thought I was having a stroke cos suddenly there was Batman being whisked away by cops (why the f was Keaton even dragged out for this?!) and then Morblo speeding in the desert and meeting some alien robot thing...???

Saying that was weird is an extreme understatement... 😳🤔

My Top 3 fave scenes were:

#3: The scene where adult MM goes to see adult Milo for the first time and he's getting treated by the doc and they had a discussion smthg along the lines of:

Milo: "Where have you been?"

MM: "I'm trying this new thing called work, I'm sure you've never heard of it..."

Milo: "No I don't believe I have."

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

Somehow I can imagine JL having that same convo with... someone else. 😏

#2: Getting to hear JL utter the word "COSMO"!!! 😂

TWICE!!! 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

I had my reasons to giggle. 🤭

Aaaaaaaaaaaand of course the #1 HANDS DOWN BEST SCENE AND THE REASON THIS WENT FROM 5 TO 6...

IF YOU'VE SEEN THE MOVIE AND YOU'RE A REGULAR HERE...

YOU KNOW WHAT SCENE I'M TALKING ABOUT. 😂

The greatest easter egg of all time. 😂

That cafe scene with MM and MB.

Them sitting in the booth, him apologizing and her asking "How do you feel?"

And he goes...

"I FEEL... INCREDIBLE".

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

You best believe I laughed out loud. 😂

No one else did... 🙈

He def needs a screenwriter credit for that because I KNOW FOR A FUCKING FACT HE ADDED THAT THING HIMSELF!!!!!!!!!! 🤓

That really made the whole experience a somewhat enjoyable one for me. 🙃

So yeah indeed. That's how I experienced this thing.

It was... a movie. 🤷🏼‍♀️