8 Crazy Nights (2002)

3/10

Absolute dogshit movie! I watched it with my friends on the last day of Hanukkah as a joke, thinking it would just be a kinda bad film but it was unbelievably obnoxious. The only merit is the stellar animation, but it honestly just makes it more painful in a way because you have this talent being wasted on these Family Guy tier jokes. There's a reoccuring joke about one of the characters having seizures when he's overstimulated (yes we're at that level, alongside many gross-out gags), and seeing that animated with real fluidity and not in some shitty flash-looking adult sitcome style is just jarring.

The only part of the film with any merit was the sort of climax where Sandler's protagonist reaches catharsis over his parents' holiday time death, something that I actually did sympathize with him for but all the surrounding writing is abysmal. He stumbles into the town mall drunk and hallucinates the mascots confronting him and telling him to let his feelings out. Very nice vocal performances and as I said, great animation.

The conclusion where the town decides to stop beating up on the comic-relief character was pleasant enough too, but unearned with how over the top, cruel, and ableist the film is overall. And of course the final joke is that the poor man is so excited by the validation he has a seizure again. As my friend commented: "The absolute state of 2000s comedy..."

12 Angry Men (1957)

10/10

This must've been my 4th rewatch of this film but it only gets better and better everytime. Especially now as it resonates a lot with some discussions I've been having with my mom (who I watched this with) about the health of the U.S.. We have a conceptually great, but in practice, very fragile system very susceptible to the kind of public indifference and intolerance displayed by our jury.

For a crazily well-acted and written hour and change, our juror 8 does some hardcore unpaid defense lawyering for a random slum kid whose life is left in the balance of this group of crochety New Yorkers. The movie makes no bluff of how poorly this reflects upon the justice system and those everyday Americans who are supposed to be its shining stars, and when you make that bigger connection to the democratic system as a whole it kinda gets bleak. But it's also a lot of the warring perspectives of people in the room that create the biggest breakthroughs towards the not guilty verdict. It makes you remember too that no system is really worth its shit if it is not by the people and for the people.

So how do you combat the fact that 90% of Americans are anal jaggoffs who can barely even comprehend the weight of this system they participate in? You force them to care, you force them to think and learn. You fight for their right to contribute to these systems by getting sweaty AF fighting for the validity of skepticism and nuance like Juror 8! Or atleast that's what the ever hopeful progressive democrat in my heart this movie stirs says. It's preachy but god is it just a great and evergreen film.

The Mask (1994)

8/10

Just a super fun movie to watch. I have a lot of random memories of it when I was younger, specifically just the opening for some damn reason, but the whole thing is pretty nostalgic just cause I have a lot of love for that like 90s-2000s golden age cartoon revivalism.

The way the film uses the CGI cartoon antics is really peculiar because it of course has that ugly, uncanny feel to it, but it almost feels intentional with the visual style being half played as thriller. It's lighthearted but a touch surreal in a way that sticks out to me a lot. Also found myself liking the main character a lot just on the basis that he is shown to be a Looney Tunes nerd out the wazoo which inspires his persona, and I respect a fellow goofy ass.

I imagine this is like Jekyll & Hyde but better.

Hazbin Hotel (2024)

6.5/10

I have a very very long history with Vivziepop and her creations. She was one of the most influential artists on me as a child, and even though I've long outgrown her style and charms, I can't help but see a piece of my younger self in her art. The part of me that just wanted to create whatever seemed cool as hell and didn't care, and that approach made art very freeing...

But it also made the art Bad. And something I am not proud of the way I am of my stories now which I research and refine and labor over. Because those are very importnat things to do as an adult who writes stories, especially if you're lucky enough to get your stuff out there and picked up by a studio and shown as a poster child of independant online animation. Hazbin Hotel is what happens when an adult writes like a child with way too many striking but skin-deep ideas that never really coalesce into a deeper picture. Which is dissapointing deeply to me cause a lot of me still roots for the chance to see that picture of indulgent old sensibilities flourish.

I still had fun with the series, but it's something that will make you clutch your head in bewilderment at certain artistic choices and spend hours afterwards slowly letting a myriad more catch up to you. I look forward to season 2 unfortunately, mostly holding out that everything that has so intruiged me about Angel Dust's potential from Vivzie's hype comes to fruition. And that he and Husk become pals and hang out and complain gossip all day.

Scott Pilgrim v.s. The World (2010)

10/10

I do not know how you make a movie (especially a live-action one) fucking funnier than this film. I found the recent animated Scott Pilgrim series super fun, and figured I should give the older film a watch since I'm more of a movie person anyways. And though I think the animated adaption by merit of its medium aligning more with the comics gets more bang for its buck, I am blown away by how fucking packed with style this is for the sake of coolness and comedy.

It's so different from any other movie I've watched with how it uses the live-action setting to make the over the top shenanigans thrive in their ridiculousness without relying on a bunch of 3D CG to compensate. In a way Scott Pilgrim was perfect for this because it was always just about some really normal and lame ass people whose lives are heightened by these out of nowhere moments video game logic. I think it gets at that dissonance within the story that makes it so funny and gripping in a way that, yeah, you can't do with a cartoon, but also it took a lot of strong artistic direction to not lose anything in translation to live-action.

This might be one of my favorite live-action films ever for that now. I just love every fucking thig about it - the characters, the humor, the story, the vibes. If I were ever forced to make my own live-action anything I would want it to be pulling this sorta shit.

3D Workers Island (2024)

10/10

There isn't EVEN a place to begin with how outstanding 3DWI is as a piece of horror. From Mr. Petscop himself, we have another example of how the symbols of games and creepypasta can be twisted to produce these gut-wrenching and evocative images of trauma, exploitation, and helplessness that can be read so many different ways. And it's that uncertainty in them that really makes them hit, even as an interpreter there is just this undercurrent of restless distress you can't even process and it just burns in the best way!

A lot of people go for a very straightforwardly supernatural approach to this story, and from what I understand this was a problem with the Petscop community too, but this work really becomes a whole different ballgame when you open up to reading things as naturally motivated and trying to understand why. Are people actually magically transfixed to the screensaver, or are they just obsessed with its secrets and perversity the way entire communities form around such ideas in real life? Are the two Pat's actually the same, or are you just scared to imagine the kind of person who sympathizes with that game could be that real. And most harsh of all, what if those people on the secrets forum ARE lying? What does it mean if the game doesn't truly show anything, why does it matter so much to them and us if something happened in a screensaver when something clearly did happen to them in real life?

That question especially becomes relevant when you ask yourself where the accompanying images of the screensaver come from! Are they an objective display of evidence, or perhaps projections? The way that the owner of the secrets forum fears he will commit when looking through real windows, but which is safer to do when looking through those virtual? The screensaver may be 3D but the story is at least 2 planes higher, there is so much to unpack and fathom. But no matter what you take from it, it is painful and haunting despite being expressed in such masterfully obscured ways.

Pikmin (2001)

9/10

Such a brilliant game with amazing atmosphere, sound, game, and character design and all that. It's a lot rougher than its later installments, but in a way that makes you feel a lot more intimate with your pikmin army and the world. There's no switching off captains to manage more, and the Pikmin even when you're directly monitoring them are insanely stupid compared to later games. It almost made me stop pitying them at all, and that was a really unique emotion for me to feel with this series.

I also almost balked on the difficulty a bit in. The simplicity of the game sometimes makes it feel limited in options, and when I saw a whole cave of enemies between me and some of the last parts in The Distant Spring the challenge felt it'd be more tedius than challenging. It wasn't that bad and I'm happy I pushed through, in a way I really value how daunting enemy encouters felt in this game compared to the jokes some are in say, Pikmin 4.

The Distant Spring might be my favorite level now, because it captures the peak of the serene yet mysterious and cruel atmosphere of the game. A lot of it wouldn't mean all that much either if not for the great writing embuing Olimar with a lot of charm. People talk a lot in the Pikmin community about a certain vibe the first has that has not really been touched yet, and yeah, I feel it, and I can see myself coming back to this game for it and its tight focus on time-management.

Cars (2006)

6/10

I've recently had a growing curiosity about Pixar's older catalogue which I've always just been kinda aware of without really knowing all that much. Cars seemed like a weird middle film between their really distinct stories like Wall-e and Toy Story and their more pop-focused stuff today, and that was def a right call.

It on the surface is just A Silly Cars Movie, but opens up to a lot more. A story about materialism, Americana, and all that good stuff, but it doesn't really stick like older Pixar films. I think it has an amazing sense of place and a real reverence for that western landscape it's situated in, but the supporting characters are very one-note gags for the most part and don't really feel like they populate this land and town that is supposed to mean so much. As well, McQueen was a funny shitty protagonist, but I didn't buy his character arc, making him just appear annoying the whole time to me.

Older Pixar has a real fetish for mid-century memorabilia that speaks to me a lot, and that's very clear in this film and its focus on a super mid-century vision of the West. I really want to love it and how the use of cars as characters creates a great cohesion between the caricature and theme, but it doesn't get as far as it needs to for a million little unfortunate reasons.

Gladiator II (2024)

7/10

Did not see the first one and only got roped into watching this for my ma's birthday. I was very hyped for it at first, as coming from 300 as my only other Ancient Guys movie it seemed like a real fresh of breath air not demonizing every brown person on screen or dickriding the fuck out of a central power, but that sadly started to fade once the plot unfolded. It went from a cool sounding film about a Roman slave trying to regain his dignity from their corrupt asses into an estranged prince plot with a different EVIL slave as the villain and lost me.

I actually really want to point out a specific scene near the end of the film too because it highlights a very odd and unintentional racial/class politics in the film. So our main guy, Hanno/Lucius as I said is an estranged prince who was sent to a North African outpost as a child now later claimed by the Romans in his adulthood and he's taken to be a gladiator. He's bought by this African senator, Macrinus who was once enslaved himself and just wants to rule Rome in it's corruption, believing it is now all it will ever be. Lucius on the other hand cares about his father's old dream of a republic.

So in their final confrontation, Macrinus has Lucius pinned beneath the water (a whole symbol of the between and life and death cause it's well directed yadda yadda), and its only Lucius' chestplate, inherited from his father, that protects him and allows him to rise and slay Macrinus. Now I know this is supposed to be about son carrying on a noble dream, but it can also so easily be read as Lucius literally being protected by his bloodright priveleges. You root for him as this prince of the slaves, but he always had an out that Macrinus never had and is bitter from fighting against.

Combine this with a lot of black nobodies who die early in the film, the only one he really mourns from his old life being his white wife, and you see how the film uses its controversial black characters as props to bolster Lucius' humble image. And even not looking at race, its a disingenuous representation of brutal class stratification between him as a slave with a man on the outside, and those doomed to Roman slavery with no out - white, brown, or black.

This is def the paranoid reading and like, there's plenty to like about the film on its own. But man, I'm never gonna be happy with Ancient Guys movies until I get my one actually about someone outside of these beloved ancient empires telling them to go fuck themselves.