Sardonicast - Sardonicast 173: The Substance, Borderlands, Cabin Fever

Episode Date: September 30, 2024

Support the Show for $2 a month and receive all future episodes early at https://sardonicast.com and https://www.patreon.com/Sardonicast. Website: https://sardonicast.com Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Sardonicast Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/sardonicast Twitter: https://twitter.com/sardonicast Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/sardonicast Sardonicast Highlights: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8AhJ0bzQgs5fb9m_ZCRqkw/featured Alex's channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/IHEOfficial Adam's channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/YourMovieSucksDOTorg Alex's Twitter: https://twitter.com/IHE_OFFICIAL Adam's Twitter: https://twitter.com/2gay2lift Adam's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/YMS Intro music by: https://www.youtube.com/user/anUnkindnessvideo   Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 1:28 The Substance 28:37 Borderlands 1:05:04 Cabin Fever 1:30:16 Questions 1:57:16 Outro / recommendation

Three, two, one. Pancakes. I am Adam from your movie sex. This is Sardonicast. That was a quote from, I don't know, Borderlands. I'm Alex from I.G. And, uh, ooh, we had a similar idea, but like, check this out. Okay.

Until this mess happened? What's up, man? You want some pancakes? I'm getting too old for this shit. Can we just skip to? know, whatever this is. Bounty Hunter, not babysitter. God, I hate this planet. We're gonna need some wheels. Can you grab my bodonka donk? 60% urine, 40% fecal matter. Who knew electricity evoked defecation? The dude's got major issues. Was it the poopy mouthed ass faces? I can

move stuff with my mind y'all. There go, nice funny comedy. You just got like a whole collage of the clap trap quotes. Jack Black Clap Trap There were a couple other characters in there I just assumed they were all Clap Trap Because those are the only ones I remember Most of them are to be fair

All right Yeah Who said the pancakes one That was Tiny Tina I think Oh played by Kevin Hart Who I actually thought was more annoying Than a clap trap But we'll get into that I'm sure

Same We watched a horror movie A really well what I think Is a great horror movie I saw this at TIF and was excited and surprised to see that it was releasing so quickly after TIF. Usually, I don't know, there's like a few films at TIF where they're just trying to promote it like a bit before the release. Yeah.

But I think I saw it in the right environment. It was the opening Midnight Madness film and I stayed up for it and it was totally worth it. Even though it's two hours and 21 minute runtime, it's called The Substance. and it flew by it was I thought it was incredible I thought it was awesome and I'm glad other people are talking about it

yeah I had a great time with this I wasn't quite sure what to expect so filmmaker wasn't familiar with only one of the feature I think called revenge which I checked out before recording today actually just I have some some reference there yeah I was really surprised

by how it sounds like the blob or something taking some kind of corny, goofy horror concept, but just adding layer on layer on layer and, you know, so much like commentary and creativity and energy. It was quite a fun surprise. I will discreet on some points that you brought up, I guess, as far as the, just the flow of it, the pace of it. I had such a unique experience with this because I was in love with that first act.

The concept is really fun, just the, it's so visually striking, the use of the colors. It's got like a really confident. identity to it and the substance like going back to like that that core concept of it just the way it's kind of I want to say like the branding of the substance itself just the way it's presented and the the kind of the layers of mystery of like what how she getting this strange mystery goo that can do all the strange stuff to her and build up into this really warped kind of like satirical comedy horror by the end I just yeah was not anticipating like the levels it was going to go and

By the towards the end of that second act, I was kind of like, it was dipping slightly for me just as far as like, yeah, where is this going? Where we get? How are you going to like top this off? Because it is two hours, 20 minutes, as you said. And almost exactly as I had that thought, it escalates into a third act. So wild. So like, oh, you're like putting the foot right down on the gas. You're going. You're going there. Yeah. You're like fully exploring this. And that's this one of the strongest endings to a film I've seen in a while actually. And it. It pulled it up almost like a full couple star ratings for me with that payoff with the, I don't know, just the, I'm trying to avoid spoilers here, but like the beginning and end, like, returning to itself and just the underlying commentary of what it's doing, what it's saying. Yeah, it's doing a lot, saying a lot. And you found, what, that two hour, 20 minutes, even though it was late at night for you when you watched it, it flew by.

Yeah, it was a midnight screening. And also they did like a, oh, wow. They did a whole, like, pre-show thing. Well, Peter Koppelowski, the programmer of Midnight Madness, came out in, like, this cheesy pink 90s, like, workout home videotape gear and just did, like, a whole fucking dance to pump up the jams. It's just like, are you ready to do I'm at it? It was, like, such a great vibe and energy. They were actually handing out, like, trinkets in the line, too, of, like, I have, like, a sweat band. I think it says pump it up or something.

It's like a pink sweatband. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, there was a Q&A and everything. Director was there. Actors. Yeah, it was a great vibe. It was a great crowd, as usual with Tiff and Midnight Madness. And it's the type of movie that it's, I think it is great to see it in a crowd

because it's a very reaction-heavy type film. Like, it's pretty ridiculous. It's pretty out there and shocking. many points. Totally maximalist over the top. Did you have an audience in your theater? It was an okay audience. I was going to mention earlier, uh, the, how widely it's been released is kind of surprising to me, even like little dinky cinemas near me are showing it. I thought I'd have to travel more to see it. So I'm glad that it's at least out there. But my specific crowd was interesting. Like some of the conversations I overheard while walking out just like,

lots of, lots of butts in that movie. Yeah. But I don't know. I can I never know how to answer this with like British public because we're so stoic. Like the craziest thing will be happening on screen. Never was just in like complete silence. That is funny. But yeah, got a good reaction out of me. Like the, sorry, leaning into the more like humorous side, the satirical side and just the framing almost like in a birdman kind of way of like the fame and aging out of a superstar that's no longer that way. And casting an actor that's in sort of a similar reminiscent position as the character.

and then this antagonist, protagonist being the same person kind of role, thanks to the substance, and just exploring the idea of age, and especially how it applies to women. I remember bringing up in the Barbie movie review, how I liked that scene with the older lady on the bench. And it's like them nodding at this overall theme of this movie in the same kind of way. But explore it to me in a much more that creative. And I don't know, it's just, it's dark, it's brutal, it's clever in how it makes the, it's so avert. sexually to a degree where it's kind of grotesque, like just as grotesque as the body horror as certain boys.

It's like a really clever satirical spin on it and LA as well. I noticed that with the revenge, there's a lot of like anti-L.A., just a great location or place to mock or sit in a, just to make satire around like GTA does the same thing. It's just so easy to use that as a over the top like maximalist setting for this kind of thing. Yeah, it is very over the top and I find it funny I've seen some people criticize I guess we're not gonna spoil the ending yet, but I've seen some people criticize where it goes and say things like it was so it lost its my ability to believe what was happening because it became too unrealistic. I don't know like I think it's been satirical the entire time like from

the first five minutes you can tell it's pretty like satirical you know. Oh yeah. Oh definitely Because that was more my minor issue with her previous movie that I finished today, Revenge, where it's similarly like stylish, well made, but it doesn't do as good of a job as the substance of creating its own world that's kind of believable. And there was never a moment where I was like, well, how do the mechanics of this work? It's more like, it seems very self-aware of what it is. And I mean, just look at Dennis Quay's like performance and whatnot like it. It's not a subtle film. They used him correctly. Yeah.

It's almost in that like lack of subtlety. It's so overt and like over the top. It really works that it doesn't go into that like Paul Verhoeven problem that you can go into. It's too much. It's too, it's almost like too slimy or that there's the only point seems to be the craziness to it or the shock value of it where it feels like, no, anything that's shocking here normally has some payback that it comes down to or it's pointing at some kind of theme or idea that's interesting. It didn't really bother me in that sense.

Outside of the three main characters, be it Demi Moore, Margaret Qualigus, the same side of each other. And Dennis Quaid, I thought were all perfect. Some of the side characters in that cartoonishness didn't quite work to me for me. Oh, yeah? Because I just didn't think there were performers quite on the same level as them. Yeah, I don't know. It's a delicate thing for me with the crazy. cartoonish over the top way of presenting, there were just a couple scenes where it wasn't

working for me or like, how much credit am I giving this, how much credit are they given the audience with when it is doing stuff like a couple of those corny flashback scenes to something that happened 30 minutes ago. And like, that's always a nitpick for me and bugs me when I feel like, I think you're giving me like credit as an audience member to like keep track of some of this stuff and it's not like complicated. So I don't know if I really need that. But most of my issues were just kind of nitpicks kind of like that, just some of the tone or cartoonishness and it's just so extra.

And obviously when you're playing with that kind of excess, there might be moments here or there. I could have done with that out that there or that edit there didn't quite work for me. But most of the time it does. Like the always love talking about really strong opening shots that kind of establish the tone or look or feel of a movie. And I feel like that shot of the egg at the beginning. Yeah, it's so good. Brilliant, expressive without using a single word. That's filmmaking.

Loads of great stuff like there. There's so much energy and creativity and like just a varied selection of like ways of presenting the story. Like there's a really great time lapse at the beginning that gets returned to at the end. It's just all this unexpected hidden payoffs and creativity. It's got a vision for sure. Like it knows exactly what it wants to be. and it does things in its own way, in a creative and unique way, while still being filled with

homage. Like, it's so very inspired by like Cronenberg by... Yeah, video drama. Peter Jackson, early horror, you know, by Sam Ramey. There's so many inspirations to be found in this film. And yet it still manages to be its own thing. And it also manages to be better than a lot of what it's inspired by, kind of in the same. same realm as like, you know, shot of the dead or hot fives kind of thing where it's like you're

taking something. It's almost like a parody of like a black mirror episode, but it's better than a black mirror episode. So to describe it that way is almost kind of like selling it short. And it's still just managing to be its own unique thing, which I think is really cool. Even though it wears its inspirations on its sleeves, it never feels like it's just, oh, this is being derivative of that and I wish I was watching that. It's like, oh, cool, this is reminding me of that and I love what you're doing with it. It's kind of. Yeah, it's like this is reminding me of that and we're actually improving on concepts or

ideas here. Like you mentioned Peter Jackson and I was thinking about, I wasn't expecting to be thinking about like brain dead or any number of his kind of exploitative horror films. I was so happy to be there. But it felt like, I don't know, not to put down brain dead in any way, but the intent or purpose or at least through line of what this film is saying seems like so much more. biting as much as I love and enjoy the kind of over the top nature of a brain dead and where it goes and the humor of that there was a little extra backbone to this it felt like something unique pushing it

just how far as willing to go with the concepts and how great it looks too I mean every technical element like down to that crunchy sound design the use of colors the costuming the the practical effects mixed with the CG it's all like this really masterfully done I couldn't really find a good budget for it, but revenge was fairly low. Wiki says that it's $17.5 million. Yeah, that's great. Which is a good chunk, and I can see why Mooby has so much faith in this, and I'm glad they took this risk, because I don't know how many,

like, so they're distributing it, and I don't know exactly who funded it. I guess they have a couple of production companies here, but Mooby clearly believes in this enough to be distributing it properly, which I love. As we've seen before, other smaller distributors like A24, like Neon, have really found their stride and had their hits in pushing really out there crazy horror movies. And I'm hoping that this is the case for Mooby, too, where enough people see this and there's enough word of mouth, like even if this doesn't, you know, it's not opening it number one. But I think that this is the type of thing that enough people will be saying to go see it. And I've been seeing

this conversation online that I think word of mouth will help give it some longevity, especially, you know, as we're entering October, the spooky month. Definitely. It's got cult classic written all over. Yeah. It's going to have that cult audience for sure. Yeah. It's, uh, it's really funny to actually be able to use Dennis Quaid properly because most of the time he sucks and as soon as I saw him in this movie

and these like extreme almost like Terry Gilliam angles where every single shot he's like looking as disgusting as possible I was reminded of like like when he's eating shrimp it's like the tomato scene in Lord of the Rings you know

wow that's like the most disgusting part of the movie even and that oh man That shot of him just like pissing in the urinal. It's the most uncomfortable. It's like this awkward angle of his face. It's quite a long shot. It achieves quite a lot.

Yeah. It's just loads of really clever stuff like that. He's always just so fucking sweaty. He's using space well. Yeah. With his like outfits and those boots, it's so, he's like cringe worthy, but in the best of ways with that gruff voice and everything. Just a symbol of everything that's, you know, wrong with this world.

This character's trapped in. Yeah. It's really cool to have a movie that is this explicit. it and crazy, but also has a point and also has substance to what it's saying. Oh, God. You know. I was trying to think of another word, but then I went for it. And I think that this might be, I don't know.

Like, there's a real question in my mind as to whether or not the Oscars are going to acknowledge this film, because traditionally they don't for horror movies, but, but it's It's a feminist horror movie. And it's kind of art-housey. You know, it won best screenplay at Cannes. Right? Demi Moore, that conversation around, you know, her performing in this movie and the juxtaposition to like her real life in some minute way, but at least the perceived

idea of, you know, female actors getting old and not getting as much work because of age, etc., etc. I think there's enough of that conversation. that maybe this might maybe just be some kind of an exception at some point will have to see

I genuinely don't know yeah like what category though like makeup I don't know like Demi Moore's performance yeah makeup cinematography screenplay maybe like they gave screenplay

to a promising young woman right whereas like that that seemed like a weird outlier that if it wasn't a feminist movie probably wouldn't be nominated yeah but that film is

really compared to this one right I know but this this one also has a lot more creativity as far as I'm just thinking about like an 80 year old who's choosing like the an Oscar pick like I don't know they might see it as like gaudy or something I don't know I I'm not confident in either direction but I'm willing to entertain the idea that they could potentially surprise us and make an exception because they have been doing some you know surprising exceptions in the past like five ten years and

other ways, right? We had the first foreign language best picture winner and a lot of things that have gotten nominated over the past however many years. There's been a good enough where it's like, oh, okay, you're trying to address some of the criticisms with your picks over the past however long, right? So we'll see. I think that there are enough like awards centered and industry people talking about and recognizing this movie that I think it's at least not. impossible and I would like to see something like that I predicts it's going to get one sympathy not that's what I put my money down for yeah like one nomination yeah just say look it exists it's there maybe yeah but uh they're so skittish about horror though so it's because they don't

want to have to put horror clips in the clip show they don't want to scare people away from the broadcast is what they're trying to do just imagine the substance like getting nominated for makeup? Like, what do you show in the clip show? Like, which ass shot do you show? Yeah. Which gore shot do you show? Yeah, this would be a good one to see with your family. But that would just make the Oscars cool. It would be a cool Oscars, but they don't want to be cool. Fuck the Oscars. Well, that's the thing. I don't know who the audience...

So what, they think their audience is like families. The nice Oscar slap family show. They're on an ABC television broadcast is what they're doing. Right. Yeah. It's like they've, I don't know, our rated movies have been nominated in one, I guess, but like, usually not gore movies. Usually not something this crazy. Yeah, I just, I don't get the thought process to me. It's, I don't know, horror is one of the more, I don't know, expressive, interesting genres to me. It's like all over the place as far as you'll get something like this.

It really pushes these psychological concepts. You can have these miserable bad endings and general audiences are okay with it. It's one of the most interesting genres to me. I wish it had its own, it deserves its own category. And this is definitely an Oscar worthy movie, even if you're taking commentary or story aside, just how it's put together the, it is so impressively made. Yeah, the craftsmanship. Yeah, exactly.

And I, even if it is just for, I'm sorry, I'm just dancing around the spoiler aspect. Let's spoil it. Everybody fucking see this movie. It's in theaters right now. it's got a pretty wide release. You should be able to see it. We're going to spoil it now. Yeah, surprisingly so.

Definitely going to see it. But I'm talking about like brain dead and all these random videodrome, these random horror movies. Well, I was more expecting to, you know, be reminded of a video drama body horror like that. But the thing, right? Or inside? Where this goes in the last act with the substance having these rules, which are fun and goofy and cartoonish and of themselves. but the character building up these rules and learning the rules of the substance, now to swap the old body with the young body,

and eventually get into the point where she breaks the rules and then has to be punished. And the punishment winds up being a mutated blob form in this incredible amalgamation of puppetry and CG and just amazingly put together special effects for this horrifying, creepy, resident evil eyes everywhere, their faces protruding out of a big blob creature. It's so cool and creative and unexpected. I love Demi Moore's face on the side of it. Yeah, that's, because it's satirical and funny. It's also creepy.

It's really kind of fucked up and dark. It is creepy that. It's great. Because there is like, there's a deep sadness and like self-loathing for that main character. Yeah. That's really unfortunate to watch. And it is a... She's literally enemies with herself.

Right? Like that's yeah it's it's about self harm and self-hatred which is cool like it's cool to explore that with a horror concept and then have it work narratively yeah and what a great like type of character to base it around like an older woman who was a star like in the 80s like the incorporating that you know the LA side of it and how the the value of stars like that are they're like disposable once they hit a certain age and it's It's like a gross cycle. And then it's like, how do you psychologically deal with that when it's like your whole career has been built on an image of you from decades ago? And yeah, there is like something sad and depressing about it in like a birdman way.

But it's a completely different angle here because obviously the innately like sexual nature of it, what it's saying about the sexuality. And it's like, well, so we've got no value now. The sexuality, like, marketable side of that is gone. and her being like haunted by these billboards of her younger self that is, you know, having a great career and, yeah, the selfishness of each side of the character. But then also the understanding as an audience member of like why they are doing this, this world they're in is horrifying. And sure it's a hyper-reality. It is exaggerated and it is, you know, silly rules for a movie, but it is, I know, it's just making a great point with what the way it's presenting.

it because it makes it so fun and warped and entertaining. Yeah. It's just so, it's so useful to explore. There's so much to get out of it, you know, both meaning-wise and fun, crazy-wise.

Like, and they did. I love that it goes on for two hours and 20 minutes. Like, not only do I not feel the runtime, but it's like, I'm so happy that they just kept going and didn't end it

and make this, like, tiny kind of, you know, small concept movie where you just think about the things and that's it. I love that it, that it, I love, I love that it took the risk. I love that it took the initiative. It took, yeah, it took the concept to its logical extreme. And I keep feeling like, I keep feeling like I bringing up this new alien movie in every fucking episode.

You know, you're the only one that went. It was like the same thing. But structurally, there was a kind of similar thing going on where it's like an escalating creature and it's setting up, oh, it could go there. these rules are crossed and then you get there and it's like what but not really for me it's like the inverse for me where it's like a deflation whereas this was like oh yeah you've just made this movie for me you've gone you've gone to the places i only dreamed you would go and then you're going beyond that yeah awesome movie everybody should check it out it's super well made in like every way

I thought the score was great too reminds me of so many other things and still feels like its own thing still feels great. At points I was reminded of like Julia Ducourneau. At points I was reminded of Requiem for a Dream, you know, points I was reminded of Sam Ramey and obviously Cronenberg. It's like the best Cronenberg movie that Cronenberg never made. Mm-hmm. Like a spiritual successor type yeah, which is funny because he's still making movies. He's just not making good movies. And his son, right? Yeah. So someone's got to be making good Kronenberg movies. I thought it was also cool how it kind of is building in this like a Zempic thing.

I don't know how much how intentional it is or not. That's just like a coincidence. Like a Zempic is kicking off right around the time this movie comes out. And it's about the injection that solves all your problems time. Yeah. I thought that was like a cool, interesting. And just like the whole addiction aspect of that was really compelling to me for that main character, really. I've just sympathetic and dark performance there.

But also everyone knows the, they know the film they're in. It's not like borderlands where there are certain people that clearly don't know the tone they're even supposed to be going for. So yeah, everyone's in on the same concept. They're being vulnerable. It's like a lot of nudity and craziness is going on. And it's just really works well in this packaging. Yes. Great movie.

I'm giving it a nine. A nine out of ten. I fucking loved it. I thought it was awesome. I thought it was amazing as well. Slightly other than you, I'd give it a four star or an eight out of ten. Sexist. Some of that, well, yeah.

That's the reason. That's the reason why. No, yeah, it's if you enjoy any of these extreme horror concepts and, you know, taking a, what sounds like a campy, B-movie body horror thing, and elevating it to this crazy over the top level, go check it out where you can on the biggest screen possible. Yeah, see it with a crowd. Get out one best screenplay, you know?

That was a horror movie with the point. I see. I feel like this has a shot at getting like a screenplay numb and we'll see what else is competing, but... Where I get hung up is the gratuity, though, which I love and I would not change a thing about in the substance, but it's like, get out. is clever and scary, but I don't, it's not like, it's not like this, you know.

But it has a point. And I think that, I think that, I think that the Oscars have been giving screenplay, not necessarily to the best screenplay, but the one that's making a point, you know? Do you trust them to see the point there? I mean, it's pretty explicit. They'll elevate something like Green Book, but like, well, they. Well, I mean, get out, promising. young woman, right?

Those, I think, I think we might be on track to see something like the substance get a numb. I mean, I hope so just for the exposure it would give it and the eyes it would put on it. Yeah, make this an Oscar movie, fucking idiot academy voters. Yeah. I know you're listening to our podcast, all of you. There was a huge gap between revenge and the substance. Revenge was 2017. So that's a long-ass time between.

So hopefully it doesn't need to. take as much as long as that's what the director wants but uh that's been on my watch list for a while how was it by the way i thought it was really solid it was probably as beautiful as the substance not as like varied and more limited with this budget but what it does for one of these i don't know it's kind of similar what you're saying with the familiar ideas everyone has seen the you know rape revenge horror movie but again it's like got a real good commentary to it some really great like symbolism going on great color work every frame of painting type look just like this movie it was yeah entertaining it just didn't i don't think it has the the confidence in a identity that

the substance has it feels like an escalation in basically every avenue but definitely worth checking out revenge too i'd i'd recommend that yeah it definitely will awesome uh we saw borderlands sorry I'm a little sick that's the appropriate response that was part of the title that was the full that was the full title that was the original title the French title was a oh right yeah uh you know pretty cool huh Eli Roth has been killing it recently and by it, I mean his career. He was never a great director.

He's such a weird filmmaker. But he was friends with Quentin Tarantino, and that's what matters. Yeah, he's in that trilogy of, like, Tarantino, Eli Roth, and, like, Rodriguez. Mm-hmm. You know, they... The trio.

We kind of are in each other's movies and help each other out. Yeah. But he is more of a, like, odd one out as far as, like... Talent. I don't know, he plays with, like, like these ideas and you see these these moments in in some of his movies not all of them where you're like oh that's what is this scene doing in this movie this is like really expertly done just like out of nowhere and then it will go back to be in this fratty

douchey like unlikable piece of trash but there will be that stuff in there like a cool concept or like what what how are you mirroring these themes so well like what this is so unexpected and strange but you clearly know how to do it but what is what's stopping this coming together fully Did you get that in this movie? Born lines doesn't really fit into that though. Oh, okay. No.

No. This is like, it's way beyond any of that. It's, it's voiceless. Yeah. He didn't direct, who, the algorithm directed this. It wasn't, it's not like art. No. No one wanted, no one wanted this.

No one wanted to do this. Yeah, it's definitely not inspired. It's definitely not, like, it lacks a vision for sure. Yeah, we're in that kind of uncharted problem where you get the uncharted movie and we're like the snake eating its own tail thing. So, well, this is like Indiana Jones and Tomb Raider, which are movies, but now we've got a game that was inspired by those movies, but now we've got a movie based on the game.

And it's like all these layers and borderlands is the same. It's like, it's a bit of Mab Max and a bit of all these other franchises and things, you know, from like, yeah, a bit of Fallout and just you've seen this. You've seen everything in this. And the thing is, but I don't know how you. feel about borderlands but let me just pose it as a question how do you feel about borderlands as games i mean as games well i i enjoyed the first two never played the third one i don't like them for the story or characters i like them exactly for the guns and the shooty shoot the gameplay loop yeah yeah it's

i'm like oh that gun looks different as a funny reload animation yeah and uh yeah that's the selling point and it's funny how that was never incorporated into the film and I don't think it's impossible. I don't think it's impossible to incorporate that into a film. We're talking about gameplay, right? But you could still have some of the things that are interesting or fun about the universe or the style of borderlands and incorporate it into the film. You could maybe do a cell shaded filter or something in the film. You could maybe have, I don't know, one scene at least where they're even talking about the guns or there's something cool about the guns because wasn't that the selling point of borderlands when it first came out?

there's all these different combinations. This one has like fire damage and this is an acid. It's like they kind of showed some of that. Like they like some of the characters got poison damage at some point. But there wasn't really any like there wasn't anything to it. You know, they never they never. It didn't, it wasn't consequential. It just kind of happened.

It really seems like they didn't understand why anyone enjoyed the games. Because nothing about no. The games that was good was in the movie. It was just like, okay, we take some really annoying characters. I don't know why the fuck Tina's in this whole movie, by the way. Because she wasn't even that big of a part. Oh, I can tell you why. Right?

She's like the fan favorite marketable character. Everyone's obsessed with Tiny Tina. She got like her own DLC and all this and all that. I mean, gamers would be... ...obsessed with old girl. It's like... I know. Um, it's, that's the thing though, right?

Like, I agree with you. They're fine as games. They're totally fine. That's, that's why you play them. But the world of borderlands, the characters of borderlands, they are, oh my God, they're fucking unbearable. Not sticky. Not sticky.

In fact, quite the opposite. They only are allowed to exist in 2012. That's, that's the only place they're allowed to exist. True. Like, legally. You know, this. This felt like, oh my God. Like, I haven't heard this shit, this shit, this phrasing, but donka don't.

It's like, oh my God, I'm going back to like Ray William Johnson and all this 2012 bullshit. It's like, how did you make that, how did you spend over $100 million on this? And the car is so cursed and wrong. Everything about it. The casting, like, why is Kate Blanchett this character? Uh. I've got nothing against her. Like, she's way too good for this.

But like, way too good and a little old. The character's, like, quite young in the games. Yeah. Yeah. Like, yeah, not to point in her age or whatever, but it's like, it is weird. I mean, it's, yeah, it is weird casting. It doesn't make any sense. And certainly weird casting.

There's like one line where she says she's too old for this, but it's like, okay, well, the rest of the movie doesn't work. It doesn't, like, you can't just forgive it with that one line. Yeah, and that's like one of the worst lines ever. That's the joke, like, you make, you bring that line up to make fun of movies, lines. I'm getting too old for this, you know, it's like, every line in the movie is like that. It's that snarky 2012. Man, I haven't seen like these like poop jokes and butt jokes like this and these fart jokes on like this level for, oh my, it is just like being pulled back 10 years.

It's like a time machine. And it's like the clap jab, oh my, let me try that again. The clap trap character is, was annoying in 2012. they how did they make clap trap trap more annoying Jack black how did they do that Jack black is how they did it No but he's the gamer dude Everyone loved him is Bowser

He's the gamer guy Yeah well he's like in this movie He's not even doing the Jack Black voice He's trying to do a different voice And it's inconsistent the entire time He's trying to sound like clap trap And then it seemed like A lot of his dialogue was just them going like

Okay you ad lib for a bit And then they expected that to work like I swear half of his dialogue wasn't scripted he was just kind of fucking like like shit like him saying like I'm driving a car I'm driving driving driving I'm so good at driving I'm a robot driving like you're just ad lipping you're just ad lipping they're like hey Jack Black do you want to just pretend you're being a robot driving the car right now I'm a robot driving the car like it's fucking Rick and Morty shit like somehow worse like yeah The only thing that's good, there's one good character in all of boardlands that being

handsome jack from boardlands too. Mm-hmm. And even then I don't even know how that holds up. You're the villain, right? He was like the main villain. Yeah. And I thought maybe they'd pull him up for the villain of this movie now. I don't, I don't know who this guy was, but his performance.

He's bad and he's up against Kevin Hart, you know? Who even what's that guy? Like the, I'm the gun guy of the company. If this video game structure is not interesting. interesting like this. It's like, hey, I make the shields for this world. Remember that in the games? Look, there's a little a little thing, a machine you can buy things from. Remember that in the games? It's like, well, every single scene and everything and this is just a reference to a game. Like, oh, this is written in like a string of, hey, remember this character from the game? Hey, look, it's Dutch from Red Dead and he's playing that character from borderlands one. Remember that? Wow, dude.

Exactly. Yeah. It's like, this is everything that's wrong with this type of filmmaking. And I'm glad it hasn't worked out this time. I think it's actually one of the biggest bombs of all time now with how much was spent on it to how much is made. So I'm glad people don't go out to see this unlike uncharted or whatever, even though I don't see much in it, to be honest, as far as like artistic value to a big film project. But like, you know, do you know how much Jack Black was paid for this? Do you? Because I don't. I do. I do. I looked out because I was so, I was so, like, upset by his performance in this movie.

And, and just picturing the, let me think, 30 minutes maybe, one hour tops, like, for his added, uh, skill that he's sprinkled onto this movie. What is, for that one hour, what do you think that's worth? Was it 10 million? Not quite, but we're talking reportedly four million dollars for that. That's still crazy. That voice acting. that I'm like speechless.

And it sounds worse than if they just got the original actor also. Yeah, and he would not of course, 4 million. There's no way. And it's not like anyone saw the movie because he was in it because no one saw the movie. No. So, just have a better voice. And like the way they integrated that character, because he's obviously fully CG in every single shot he's in, He never feels like he's in the environment in any way. No.

He's almost like in a vacuum there just for the audience because they expect him to be there. Like the characters in the scene barely interact with him and he's kind of like, oh, well, I'm just the punchline of a scene. I'll do a poop on the floor or, yeah, make a crude joke or something. It's effortlessly unfunny. It's like not even a challenge, not laughing. Oh, yeah. Like I got, I laughed a couple times, but just like at the movie. Yeah, same.

things that were like, oh my God, I can't believe you're doing this. And it's like the money went into two things, two things only. And that's the weirdly high profile cast. And just like the big CG establishing shots and slides and explosions and just like, oh, it's like glossy CG that's like weightless and gooey. And I don't know, it looks like it was all done in post and like it, no rules to anything. Nothing matters. It's a video game that has strong rules.

but in a movie setting there's like no way they spin that to make it fun or whatever it's like this super generic heist kind of movie oh yeah there's no hook to it at all and it's funny because the action sucks so bad that oh my god you know even if the action weren't so infrequent and few and far between which it is like it just the action sucks so bad that by the end of any action scene it's like it didn't happen and you're just back to exposition And it's like, oh, okay, wow, we're an hour through the movie. And all I really feel that's happened has been exposition, even though there's technically been two or three action scenes,

but they're just so bad that you don't absorb any of it. Like, he sucks in directing action. Like, Eli Roth sucks at directing action. Holy shit. He's so bad. And you're saying this about the action scenes, but that's all this film has as well. Like, that's all it has.

And they're awful. Pretends to be cool. They're like unbearably bad. But I was laughing one of the last. I did get was going back to Kevin Hart. His, uh, he had, he has no clue what boardlands even is. No. I'm telling you.

The way he's playing it, he's acting as if like, yeah, I'm the cool like soldier guy. You know, I'm like the army man. This isn't like a comedy framing at all. This is, I'm serious army guy. And I'm, I'm the savior and I'm, what do you mean, Tina? No, I'm going to help you, Tina. It's like so fucking bad. He's so embarrassing in this movie.

Like his action scenes where he's like doing the gun poses and firing his weapon that I'm sure was in the game. Oh my God, is it lame? It's so insanely lame. In an interview with Empire magazine, Kate Blanchett explains why she took this role. She says, the crazy asks are usually the things I gravitate towards, the things I could never conceive of. I think there also may have been a little COVID madness. I was spending a lot of time in the garden using a change. saw a little too freely. My husband said, this film could save your life. To get prepared, she

delved headfirst in the Borderlands games. She said, my thumbs can barely control a phone, but I bought a PS5 and we played together. I wanted to know the limits of the game and what fans loved about the character. I got really absorbed in that whole world, the cosplayers, the YouTube makeup tutorials. That's fun. Do you believe it? That she, that she, yeah, because this film's been in production for a while. I think that she got COVID crazy and then just accepted the role for whatever she could do just to be like, oh, I guess I get to work on something. But I mean, do you believe that Cape Blanchet is played and finished borderlands and boardlands too? Sure, why not? And boardlands three.

She's crazy. I don't know, man. Why not? She's taking the role. I guess. I don't know. I feel like it's more likely that save my life more means we get another nice house in Italy or something. I don't know.

It's a big, big budget. sure she got paid at probably more than Jack Black. I don't know she's the titular character here. But man, it's like every five minutes they find a way to make it worse. To just add a new character that's like, oh, how can this make the dynamic worse? It's actually crazy how they managed to do it. Every time they add a new character that is a character from the games, who also is kind of annoyingly written in the games too, but like nothing like this. And it's, it's in it, I wrote down in my notes like it, It doesn't look like a movie, it looks more like cosplay, but that's an insult to

cosplay. I've seen much better at boardlines cosplay online. Oh, yeah. Like, it's so lazy and insulting to its audience. The psychos look... No one gave a fuck about this. The psychos are like not intimidating. They literally just look like fucking Walmart costumes.

Yeah, exactly. And the fact, we got a Mad Max film this year and how like wonderfully storyboarded and put together that action is in that movie. And just the look of that movie and the start. of it and the confidence of it, like, this following it is so embarrassing. Very embarrassing. It's so embarrassing. And also, like, I kept thinking throughout the movie, like, it would be beneficial for

them to, I don't know, give us any kind of communication about the psychos being, like, powerful in any way. Because in the game, they'd run up to you. And it's like, oh, this is scary because they're, like, there's a fucking charging at you and you're shooting at them. Yeah. You got to shoot them before they get to you. If they made it a bit more of like a, I don't know, like,

hoard type thing or, you know, even in the same vein as like World War Z, like how some of the characters moved and ran, then you would, you know, then when you see the characters again at some other point in the movie, you'd be like, oh, these are badass characters and I should be threatened by them. But instead, you know, you get to the ending and there's all of these psychos just kind of like looming around as part of the background, just ready. and waiting and it's like, okay, you're implying there's going to be some sort of like an action scene, but there's no stakes to it. And I don't believe that these characters are threatening in any way.

They're kind of just standing there like weird henchmen in a very unsurious movie. You know what I felt like the movie felt like the entire fucking time was like a kids television show. The entire fucking movie felt like a children's television show. Legit. Yeah. Well, you look at like Kevin Hart. and his performance or whatever, and it's like, you're at work. You're like going through the motions. You're just at work right now.

Yeah. That's all this is to you. This is just a paycheck for you. And it's so obvious and so blatant. And the fact they thought that people wouldn't notice while, you know, they're having scenes where, oh, tiny Tina randomly opens the window because she's so random and crazy. And then, uh-oh, the car is full of piss now and Kevin Hart's screaming about the piss because they're in Pierce Canyon. And it's like, oh my God.

And then a clap trap, he went poopie, and he went pooping on a floor. It's literally a kids movie, like a television show quality kids movie. It sucks. Like, it's crazy to spend, what, $120 million, and then all the effects still look bad? Like, all the effects look bad. So, like weightless and thoughtless. Yeah. It's like $100 million worth of effects.

but with no intent with no it's just like production line there's no it just feels like random people putting these shots together and then just stringing them together just because that's the product that's what we're building this time yeah 115 million dollars that is that's sickening because it's like if you want it to actually be true to the the source material i feel like i this is another thing i always say but it's like a cell shaded animated movie that would be a lot you could do that a lot cheaper than $150 million. Yeah. Isn't that funny? You know?

Like to say it's $50 million, which would be cheaper in animated movie, but the whole reason you sell shade something like in the games is normally to cover up a lack of production value. True. That's why they did it in the original borderlands. So it's like well, you could apply that kind of philosophy to it and you could bring up some of the voice actors from the games.

You could actually write something. I remember the telltale game actually being okay as far as like, oh, maybe it's like just the writing that just is unbearable in the base games. That probably is it. Boardlands 3 is the only game I've ever, like, muted, because I just thought it was so, like, the Twitch stream of bad guys.

It's just such a, so badly written and unfunny and, like, just of its time, that whole thing. But, yeah, there's not a single person who's going to watch this movie and be like, oh, I get what people like about Boardlands now. It's going to be the opposite. Like, we'd ever liked anything to do with this? Like, it's so shockingly, shockingly bad for that kind of stuff. And like, why Eli Roth outside of a paycheck? Like, is this just like another house in the clock in its walls?

Like, there's just no passion from anybody. Like, even going back to the tiny Tina, like, she was giving off the impression that she hasn't played the games or has no clue what that character is like. She was like, sleep walking through. Everyone was. There's no passion. There's nothing. There's not a single good shot. She was so unfunny and annoying.

There's, it was bad up until they bring her in, but it knows dives even more. Yeah. And she's, like, fairly important to the plot. And it's like, this is the one. They're like framing it like, yeah, this is this is the fan favorite everybody, huh? Yeah, they're just waiting for Tina's last word on this one, huh? They thought it was going to be like the kick-ass girl where everybody was like, ha-ha, the girl said fuck or something.

But then the movie was PG-13, so you couldn't even have that. Like, this is an R-rated game. Like, this is an M-rated game. It's a mature-rated game. It's supposed to be edgy. It's supposed to be like, I don't know, fun, gory or, like, shocking in some ways. Like, that was a part of the humor, right? So if you're trying to capture something in a film, you'd think you might want to capture

some of the humor, right? Like, how the fuck are you going to do that with a PG-13 movie? Yeah, it's like millennial humor too, so it's like, what? You're missing your audience almost. Like, why are you targeting it for babies? Yeah. What baby cares about borderlands? And also just way too late.

Way too late. It's such a random pick. Make this movie a decade ago, maybe. Yeah, because even though it has been delayed as long as it has. has, it was still weird to green light it then. Yeah, out of all the games that exist, out of all the properties that exist. Why this one? Because in the credits, like, I think I saw what's his name, Strauss, Zelnick or something?

It was like the CEO of Take 2. So maybe it's one of these, like, oh, we've got to get, we've got to get the movies in. We've got to get our properties onto the big screen, like Sony's doing with a, uncharted and all these other shit that's, taking everyone's breath away. It's just another, yeah, another one for the video game onslaught. But I don't know, is it possible to even get, like, worse than this? Because I ain't going to stop.

We're going to keep getting these gamer movies. You just got to find the right gamer movie. More Mario, more, like, I don't know. More baby. More baby. Here's some other fun factoids about the film. Kate Blanchette practiced conduct. for tar on the borderland set in full lilith gear she was preparing for the role of

Lydia tar while in her lilith costume and would practice conducting on set that's fun there was a rumor like or maybe a misreporting or something like I want to clear this up because I thought it was true and I just looked into it now and maybe it might not be but people were saying that Craig Mazen wrote one of the early drafts of the script and then yeah I've heard that soon a pseudonym to not have himself attached to the project and invented a name Joe Cromby. And so then people were reporting on that

as if it was true, and then Craig Mason's denying it, and then now World of Real reporting, they're saying that Joe Cromby might not actually exist, but now if you look on IMDB, it goes to Joe Amber Cromby, who is a person that wrote a couple other things that nobody cares about,

or edited some other things that nobody cares about, and then Borderlands would be his first writing gig. Who knows who the fuck Joe Cromby is? It might not be Craig Mason, but that would be a funny story. Yeah. It wouldn't be the first time. I can't remember off the top of my head, but there are some certain pen names that are supposedly like,

yeah, we'll just attribute that to this, so I don't have to have it on my own DBB or part of my body of work because it's that embarrassing. And, I mean, if he was attached to it and removed it, I would not blame him. No, yeah. Even for a second. Why would you want your name attached to this?

Exactly. Yeah. Oh, there's just so much wrong with it. Not a single good shot, not a single good scene, not a single joke that's funny. Doesn't explain anything about like the borderlands universe to make you like it in any way. No. There's a thing you have to find the chosen one. Oh, it's crazy.

Like, the use of music is so lame and corny. when it gets to the when Kate Blanchett's character turns into like a angel phoenix thing dude that was so cool the visual effects on there was so strange it almost looked like you know that sheen

AI videos have at the moment where they kind of look too glossy like too clean and like there's not enough detail going it's just a weird thing in your brain looks cheap yeah it does look cheap and just unfinished and like we

We filmed something on set, but we didn't really know how it was going to really look. And we'll just figure this out later. The whole movie has that vibe. We'll figure this out later. We'll make this work later. Like, for now, this is just a bunch of famous people in really bad cosplay, saying just some of the worst dialogue you've heard. Here's a question. Do you think that this is a rare case where Ova Bull might have done a better job?

I would love to see that movie. I think it would be more entertaining. I genuinely think it would be. At least there would be some dead kids in it. It would be more notable than this movie, that's for sure. Yeah. Give Uber Bull a hundred million. Let them figure it out.

Because Matt, like the, I was really just baffled by that tone. Trying to balance this like comedy with the serious stuff. Like they try to be earnest at points to the movie. It's like, this is, I don't know how you thought you were going to pull this juggling of tones off, because this is just annoying. Like the fact you're trying to make me care like now when three seconds ago there was a shitting robot and everyone was drenched in piss and butt stallions. And it's just like not working. All of it clashes. None of it settles.

It's just fuck this film. I'm just looking up some other stuff about it because I'm confused. So apparently Tim Miller was directing parts of it for reshoots. Oh, weird. Because apparently this screened to test audiences and Lionsgate was like, it needs more something. Uh-oh, yeah, we need to. And Tim Miller jumped in to do a bunch of reshoots, which is fun.

Like, why not? It's fun that when a studio is confronted with something that's obviously not working, They're like, let's just spend more money on it until it's good. Yeah, let's spend the whole budget again. Yeah. I'm just like, let's remake it. Random scenes as if that's going to do anything. That's what's so annoying about it.

It's like you don't write this off, but some of the stuff that is written off or canceled, you'll never see the light of day. But like, we get the borderlands movie. That went through all, all of the barriers that would stop a film getting made. This is the one that was let through. Thanks, Eli. Here's a fun sentence from the Wikipedia page. Eli Roth stated that his French bulldog pooping gave him inspiration while pitching the film.

Quote, I have to look away because she gets really shy, but one day I filmed her. She had that shy look on her face and I was like, that's clap trap trap. A scene of clap trap pooping was included in the final film. What? That kind of says it, oh, huh? Yeah. Can you imagine that pitch meeting? Oh my god, to be a fly on the wall for that.

It must be like that. How douchey it must have been. Yeah, dude, like Eli Roth is one of the biggest fucking duches in the world. I'm even pulling out phrases like, do she? I haven't thought about this stuff in 10 years. Yeah, it's such a time capsule in the worst way possible. Leave this shit buried, I say. Yeah.

Eli Roth is like the notable point. the notable person that flipped his shit over Jonathan Glazer's Oscar speech. Oh, yeah. Like, he's the, he's the guy that was like, you want all the Jews not here. Mm-hmm. It's like, okay, dude. I remember he's like in the idol?

He's like just shows up in these random places. Oh, yeah. In the idol, in glorious bastards. He's got connections. Yeah, he is. He's got those friends. Tarantino connections. Yeah.

But I'm thinking like a Rodriguez might be able to do like more with the borderlands. Yeah, this is not an IP that you can't make a good movie out of. It's not even that complicated, really. No, not at all. Like just just be funnier. Just do like a James Gunn thing. I don't know. Like if if Fallout can be a successful show, then Borderlands can be a successful film.

Yeah, although I will say Fallout is way better. IP overall than borderlines. Sure. Yeah. I'm saying it's not impossible. There's no reason this movie had to be this bad. Yeah, there's no excuse for how bad it is. But just write a joke. Like, all of the jokes are just

like a reference to the game or a piss, shit or or far or, I'm too old for this kind of bullshit. I can move stuff with my mind, y'all. The stuff that, um, what was it called? Not scale bound. There was like a PlayStation exclusive game that came out.

last year or something and everyone was making fun of its cringe Marvel dialogue. It's right behind me, isn't it? Dust, thorn? Yeah, that one. I'm playing it now, it's great. Yeah, it's that level of writing basically. It's like this ancient idea of like what cool, hip, funny writing was, like comedic dialogue. It's so, like a 60% urine, 40% fecal matter.

That's like a line in the movie. That is the movie. That is also what it's made of. Eli Roth is 52 years old. And it really feels like it in this film. That's, I love that. It's making a hit movie for the kids. Oh, ew.

I hate that. I don't want to think about this movie ever again. But I'm hyped for borderlines too. They can fix it with borderlands too. Oh, yeah. This will definitely get a sequel. I think Lionsgate, here's my prediction, Lionsgate's gonna fucking go bankrupt

and sell to a larger studio. They're gonna get bought out. They've been making terrible business decisions. They've got like a triple whammy of flaps like three in a row right now. It was like the Crow remake. That looked hilarious. This and there's like one other one

that just like absolutely. Oh, because they basically rely on hunger games, don't they? That's like the main thing. Yeah, so they've got like a couple IPs, which are big, Hunger Games, Twilight, John Wick,

Saw, and, yeah, Saw. But like, they keep, they keep green lighting these things

that are just like obviously not gonna work. They've got Megalopolis, don't they? Yeah, what the fuck are they doing? Why would they try? That's like the dumbest

fucking thing you could ever try to distribute, ever. Like, that's gonna be a huge thought. If Megalopolis is the end of lines gate oh that's that's gonna oh that would be cinema wow it would be cinema yeah I wouldn't be surprised um because WB is also having a bunch of financial problems too

so it wouldn't be surprising if they were bought up as well it's all going to be trickled to uh yeah but who buys it is it even like legal for like Disney to buy WB and stuff like I think it is legal get into like anti so that's not like an antitrust thing to own Marvel and DC. I mean, I think it would just happen. And then if for, I don't know, if somebody decided to make an inquiry, then they could challenge something. But like, I think they can just do it.

And unless anybody challenges it, that know who's going to stop them. The hype for Batman versus Iron Man will be too strong. On paper, we have a lot of like antitrust lies and, you know, anti-oligopoly lies in, you know, the U.S., UK, Canada, but we can see examples of that happening where it's like, okay, all three of you telecom companies are colluding, there should be an investigation, and nobody cares, and they're not doing it because you're being paid off, you fucking piece of shit, Trudeau. So I think it's just, I think it can just happen.

And even if the laws are on paper, it doesn't matter. Mm-hmm. Yeah, so maybe Netflix or. suck them up Disney in the Hmm Yeah I wonder who's gonna buy Lionsgate Because I feel like

What are they doing? Just legit what are they doing right now? Yeah they have nothing They've got Now You Three Me It's gonna come out Well they release plane Oh plane

That's awesome some of the random Divergent If we just If we just Look at I feel like if we look at A24 in neon, like they're doing pretty good for what they're doing, you know? Mm-hmm. Like, release medium-budget films.

Fund medium-budget films. Exactly. That seems to be the biggest difference to me. It's like they actually structure the finances in a way that, like, makes sense for the potential reach of the projects they're choosing. And even if there is a $20 million film that doesn't. bring its money back is 20 million compared to 200 million you know like these Indiana Jones exactly whatever it's just completely unsustainable and you could you can make something that's a hit that you didn't spend a hundred million dollars on mm-hmm yeah it's not like there aren't

examples of that they're they're countless at this point it just seems so obvious and I'm sure I know it's it's always the same case where like the the people underneath the money I'm sure the people working on the borderlands film doing the animation on set, working the cameras, they know what this is, they do. But they got the green light, they're doing their job. Like, these people at top are they just green light, this dumb shit. I guess these pitch meetings from Eli are just so, it must be so juicy, so convincing. My dog poopied.

Because a hundred million dollar investment, that's, they're looking for almost a billion back from that. You know? Which it, in what world is, is, is, is. they're gonna see that kind of return from a franchise like this. It's so crazy. They just look, oh, they did it so we can do it. We got it. So like, they look at a Mario movie or Sonic movie or the uncharted movie and they're like, yeah, well, we've got a video game. Borderlands. Video game make money. We do that now. Yeah. And it's like the worst shit you've ever seen because no one cared or tried and just took the bag. No one gave a shit. Yeah, apart from

Claptrap. Nobody watched it. Like, it's funny because we were both morbidly curious, but we both we're kind of like, there's no way we're seeing this in a theater. We're waiting for the digital. And if we don't see it in a theater, the digital will come very soon. Yeah. It's not like a Madam Webb, sorry, Madame Webb situation, you know. So this is so bad as good in some ways. But there's, yeah, there's nothing, not a single thing that's even like ironically funny about borderlines.

I had an all right time riffing on it and just doing that on my watch-along stream. So I was expecting a one out of ten and I got like a very low two out of ten. Not saying there's anything good about the movie, but I feel like it could have been worse still, you know? I feel like it's not that. It's like it's one of the worst movies for sure. But I feel like the the you can still go lower. Is that like? I don't know.

I don't know how you go lower than this as far as like if you picture like a worst case scenario for a borderlands movie. If you brought that up to me as a concept in 2012, something like this is what I'd picture in 2012. Yeah. So fast forward another 12 years and then imagine that with that added time with the lack of relevance with all of it and just the it feels contemptuous towards the audience as far as like how little anyone gave a fuck about the overall package of this how it barely even resembles

the games it's just insulting to me this is a half star to me like nice these guys can could suck one for this is it's insulting yeah two out of ten better than star wars all right we're gonna talk about cabin fever which is your recommendation. So we're doing a double Eli episode. Double Eli. Episode. Double Eli episode.

So yeah, I thought it would be interesting to do the latest Eli and the oldest Eli. Yeah. I'm glad we did this instead of Hostel. I am too, actually. Yeah, I think it was really cool. Because I was torn on that because I think I actually still like Hostel more than Kevin Viva, even though there are things I respect about. cabin fever but overall I don't know it's all over the place for me but I recommended 2002's

cabin fever as I said Eli Roth's directorial debut an hour 33 minutes long with a guy from boy meets world in a kind of classic teens in the woods poisoning the waterhole virus movie I mean that's kind of all the setup you need and it's kind of a half satirical half fratty Tim Eli Roth, sorry, attempt, Eli Roth attempt to this exploitational horror. And I feel like, as I was saying earlier, there are moments of brilliance where it almost stumbles into, oh, wow, we've just kind of tripped into an amazing movie all of a sudden. And then it will stumble out of it. I feel like there are two or three like amazing scenes in this movie, but almost everything

around it is forgettable. and I don't know, it doesn't really ring as like satirical to me or it's just these basic unlikable characters that I know are supposed to be that way and they're supposed to be douchey and fratty. That's kind of the point, but I don't know. Even though it's an hour and 33 minutes long, there's still points where it's like dragging the structures and really strange. But Matt, I can't write when I was going to say I'm done with this movie as this out of pocket ending, which is like so audacious that I was like scream laughing because it's just so so crazy the way they put a pin in it so I'm kind of conflicted on how I feel overall about this

movie I think you like it a bit me a bit more than me but I think I do what's your overall take on cabin fever yeah I mean so I haven't seen hostile in a while but I could I can pretty confidently say that I like this more than hostile. You know, obviously this movie is not the strongest satire. There's way better like satire, horror, comedy films that exist. But I don't know, like I think despite its weaknesses, even with those weaknesses existing in the film, like one of them being like, okay, a lot of the acting's terrible. A lot of the character writing is terrible.

I think that in this film, it's more forgivable than if it were. in another film. I feel like it just fits with what this film is doing, not saying like, oh, yeah, it's so expertly all the pieces just fit together and it's some sort of, you know, intentional choice throughout. But I think it's self-aware enough and the tone is silly enough that things like bad acting and bad character writing, I'm kind of just enjoying the silliness of it. I'm kind of just enjoying the absurdity of it. And it works for me in that sense. Sure, there are slow parts.

Sure, there are like terrible, dumb parts that, you know, I don't really connect with. But overall, I'm into what this movie is selling. And, yeah, it's a very strong first feature, which, you know, if this was his only film, we'd be saying how promising of a career he has ahead of him and, you know, how much potential he has. Unfortunately, it's his only good film, and it's not that good. He

just nose-dived from this point forward. Yeah, damn. How many movies of his even exist after this point that don't take themselves that seriously? Because that's one of the problems I have with

Hostel is it just, it's mostly just a straightforward torture porn just trying to ride right off of the success of saw really and it treats itself like pretty unironically in terms of what horror elements it's going for yeah whereas cabin fever like if you're not completely sold on any of the horror elements it's okay because what's happening is also kind of ridiculous and kind of funny mm-hmm i hear what you're saying with the like shittiness kind of being part of the charm and i'm with you on some levels like the when the film ended and I looked up the budget I was like okay for a million and a

half dollars that's crazy that's quite impressive actually but what you've done here for that low of budget respect it's like the complete inverse of boardlands where it's like where it's like where is that line on oh you you've actually done this you've maximized the value of this and this looks great for the amount you spent on it and it kind of excuses some of the shitty acting and it's like okay I get that um I got I got enough value out of it we we didn't get a hundred cabin fevers out of it. Yeah, exactly. So I like that.

I always like that that first kind of foray and you can see the scrappiness and the inventiveness that comes from the limitations of putting something like this together. But, man, I feel like we've got our evil deads. We've got our things from this point. There's just nothing really outside of a handful of scenes that stand out to me that make this worthwhile. I don't know. It's such a weird movie. Like when it came out 2002, it doesn't seem like that unique or fresh to me, whereas, I don't know, it's such an interesting level because the flesh eating virus thing is kind of grotesque and subdued.

It's not the biggest scale movie. It's not like a substance where it's like forever escalating. It's kind of smaller scale and more, you know, teens in the cabin like vibe. But it just stays kind of trapped within this window outside of like the first time I got out of that window and was like, oh, this is like a great scene just out of nowhere was that campfire story scene. Where the jock dude is like telling the story about the serial killer guy and it's not just verbal. actually goes into showing the visuals of the story and Eli Roth shows up in one of his weird cameos like in the bowling alley and it's like oh these visuals are funny they're silly they're complimenting what's happening this is like a good this has good presentation good energy it's not like scary but this is fun and like an entertaining tone but yeah I feel like they're siloed off these great

moments like in such rarity but I don't feel like I'm getting another one of those kind of scenes until like way later on where you're like the shaving scene in the bath I think is another amazing cringe worthy seamers like oh you're you're utilizing filmmaking here to make me uncomfortable with the sound design of the blade going across the legs and the visuals of it it's like oh this is awesome this is like martyrs with the blades over the arms and I'm like cringing at the visuals and so that's cool this is where's this you know and then just the crazy way it ends like it keeps kind of shifting perspective characters until you wind up with this ending scene that's almost detached from everything that's happened going back to this like storefront

where there's like a throwaway racist line earlier in the movie. It's kind of like the bullet point they end on where they're like racist looking dude in the shop. Like he's acting all suspicious when these black people come walking by the shop. He goes over to get the gun and then he turns out to be like a wigger and it's like Yeah, clean your gun for you guys. It's such a crazy ending. It's so funny.

And the audacious is the word for it. It's like, you know what? It's shit posty. I've got to give you credit for that. Yeah. That is shitposting. It's a joke. I like that it knows it's a joke.

That's insanely. That's an amazingly weird joke to end it on and I respect that. I respect a lot about this movie. It's just, I think it is also in hindsight because I had this rated like really low, unfairly low. from memory. I had it as like a one star or something. And I remember why.

It's because I went through most of Eli's movies, but in like the wrong order, I was doing it is more recent stuff first. So by the time I got there, I was like so kind of over him as a director when perhaps it was an unfair way to do it because you're right. If this was the only film he'd ever release,

it'd be like, remember that weird cult, cool, weird horror movie, having fever. But it's more like, I remember when Eli Roth like had some signs of something kind of interesting. Because yeah, like green inferno, knock knock, house with a clock and its walls. No, those are like some of the worst movies ever made. I can think of few.

Exactly, yeah. I can think a few more joyless experiences than doing an Eli Roth marathon. What the fuck were you thinking? What do you mean? Why did you do this? It's the way I used to watch most films was like I'd find a director I found interesting or It was just weird or curious to me because I really dug Hostel when I first found it. I'd gone through like the saw movies that were out around the time.

I thought the concept was kind of cool of this big mysterious organization that's kind of like killing tourists in sadistic ways. There's something intriguing about that to me. I haven't seen it in a long time, but there's something morbidly curious about that. So then I watched Hostel 2, which he directed. And then yeah, yeah, I don't know why. I honestly can't explain why green inferno going in there. Yeah. Knock knock is like maybe the worst movie.

Like, it's, it might be, if I had, if I had ranked like my worst movies ever made, I think that would be somewhere on the list. That would be on the list is knock knock. It's fucking horrendous. So you get no humor from knock knock. It's not whether or not I get any humor from it. It's just one of the worst experiences for, like, overall. It's a fucking weird fan fiction.

Yeah. And Keanu Reeves is like, I feel bad for him, like, as the actor, the entire time in that movie. Yeah, it's kind of humiliating. If there's ever any film to show his evidence that Keanu Reeves is not a good actor, that's the one. Like, that's the undebatable one. Like, if people are saying, oh, yeah, Keanu Reeves is just great. Sometimes he's miscast. You show them that movie, their minds will be changed.

I feel bad for Keanu for that movie existing. Yeah. I regularly watch that scene where he's like buried. in the garden watching the phone. No. No. His performance. Ra.

Yeah. Wow. Fun fact. The smiling bald guy in the bowling alley scene was not Eli Roth, but was his brother Adam Roth. Oh, really? Yeah. I always thought it was Eli, too, and then someone corrected me.

Oh, so that, so they, I thought he was in it twice. But if that's his brother, that means the other director, or the real director cameo was the character that shows up mere minutes after that story time. The guy with a bag of weed. Yeah, which is funny because it looks like it's just the same guy twice. Yeah, that's why I figured it was

They look identical. Him in both. But I just figured, oh, this is kind of a out there movie, maybe I don't know. It's the kind of thing Eli would do. Why not? Yeah, why not? Have a director play two characters. Like, who gives a shit?

The movie is a joke anyway, you know? Yeah, which is kind of like I the humor only works half the time for me because the I don't know the fratty douchey side of it's just like man if that was more like clever or subtle or something I don't know maybe this would elevate it but it seems too tied almost to the the campy bad stuff it's parodying it's like almost too tied down to that it's not it's not escaping it enough. Yeah. It is for like moments, flashes.

Sure. Overall, it's not. Whereas I feel like the best kind of filmmakers are able to elevate something like that. I feel like that's what, you know, his friends with Tarantino, Rodrigo's. Yeah. They're good at doing that. Everyone around him. Something that pulpy or poppy.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's not like a very deep movie. No. Hmm. I think it's funny. just have, I don't know, like, it's not the type of film where the commentary is explicit if it's even there, right? Like, in terms of being a satirical horror movie, it's like, okay, you're using the existing tropes.

You're not really saying much about them, but it's still kind of amusing to just see these terribly written characters that all hate each other that are just friends for some reason, but they, none of them like each other clearly. like it's just it's so shitposty and dumb that even even if there isn't any kind of like intelligent decision making behind it it's still funny to me i like watching a good shitpost dumb piece of shit yeah that's yeah it's a delicate balance for me right so i appreciate the shitposty stuff but it's at what level am i supposed to i don't know it's kind of that deadball problem where it's like hey the joke is the writing's bad in the scene. So does that make it not bad or annoying?

We say, yeah, we kind of know how bad and dumb this is, huh? I mean, if as long as you're going over the top with it, the problem with Deadpool is, you know, in those moments, it's just the only thing that exists is the fourth wall break and wink at the camera and that's it. Whereas in this, it's like, okay, you're doing some fun gore stuff on a budget. The concepts are fun. And even with the gore and practical effects,

like none of it has done incredibly well, but it's the type of concept where it works because of your imagination anyway. You know, like just red marks on the skin. And, you know, it's a very simple effect, the leg shaving scene. But you just have the sound effect and your mind fills in the rest.

And it doesn't have to be a complicated, you know, expertly made practical effect. It can just work well enough and your imagination fills in the rest. I think that it's good for what it tries to be in many senses. I guess, yeah, it's just what it's trying to be just isn't like the ceiling's kind of low. Yeah. You know what I liked a lot about the movie was the score.

I love cello and I thought that it worked really well. And it's memorable. It works like it's it adds a level of tension to it but still doesn't take away from like the silly nature too much, but it does elevate each scene that it's played in, I feel. I don't know if I ever really felt tension in the movie. It was more just kind of like silly and entertaining

and the, yeah, the fratty, douchey characters or whatever and the way they're clashing was where I was getting my enjoyment from. And also kind of, again, in an inverse way to borderlands entirely, was enjoying the time. capsule nature of it is a little early 2000s time capsule with like how many of the punch lines and the jokes are just like, you're gay and like this kind of stuff. That was kind of like being thrown back an extra decade. Watch borderlands to go back to 2012.

Watch this to go back to 2002. True. Pancake scene, a classic. Dennis. Yes, it's got some good scenes. He's got some funny moments but it's like as a whole I can't I can't

Okay It was kind of funny like how they justify the Because it spreads through the water It's like the jock dude He's like I'm a drinking beer as a challenge It's so silly That's silly but that's the kind of silliness It sort of works for me where it's like

You're indicating that you kind of care about the setups To what you're doing And it's like oh is he going to be the survivor then It's like, this is kind of a little bit more interesting, like indicating that you actually care about this as a film on some level, maybe. Yeah. Beyond just the shippost nature, which I do appreciate, but like, how far can that take you? Hmm. I like the shot right after the chaos of the, you know, the car getting broken and the guy vomiting in it where they're all around the table and they're just explaining like, oh, that was so fucked up, what happened?

and you have the main actor just like playing with honey in his fingers and the camera like slowly. That was a good shot, yeah. Yeah, it's a nice little touch because it's not only a great visual that's just interesting to look at, but it also kind of reflects the detached nature of the character. Yeah, like it's crazy to think that there's like a good shot in the movie or in any one of Eli's movies.

Like a really great shot. Yeah, that's what I mean about him. Yeah, that's why I describe it as like stumbling. But it's like, how are you reaching that like brilliance where it's like if each shot was at that level, then you would have like a classic on your hands. Yeah. You know, to be able to just delve in that little bit but not fully carry it. It's kind of what I guess made him interesting to me. It's just all over the places.

So he's not interesting in the same way anymore. That's for damn sure, but maybe once. I hear the Thanksgiving movie is kind of enjoyable. but I wasn't going to rush out to see that. Yeah, I'm not in any rush to see that. I don't trust Eli? I don't trust him. Yeah.

I just, I just, because of his name, I keep thinking about a scene of Daniel DeLuice and Paul Dono with bowling. I'm screaming. Oh, yeah. Imagine Paul Donno is him in the bowling alley with the ball. Bulls flying towards Eli. That's great. Drink your borderlands milkshake, Eli.

I think it's funny because, having watched Borderlands right like the night before watching, re-watching Cabin Fever. And the one particular thing about Borderlands that really stuck out to me was like, holy shit, he sucks at directing action. And then in Cabin Fever, I was like, oh, wow, he's always sucked at directing action. Like the worst scenes are the action scenes.

He doesn't know what the fuck he's doing. Like in that chaos of like, you know, the gunfire and the, the guy vomiting and, you know, they're hitting him with the bat. Like, the way it's shot and edited is fucking atrocious. And, you know, I didn't notice that when I was however old watching this movie for the first time. I was just kind of like taking it at face value and enjoying it for what it is. But now watching it again, especially with the fresh experience of all the terrible action in Borderlands. I'm like, damn, he's never learned how to direct action.

this entire time. Like he's always sucked at it and he hasn't learned a single fucking thing. Like he's gotten worse as a director. I'm not even convinced he directed those action scenes. You know, in Borderlands, whenever it turned into just a sequence of CG goo, every shot was just 100% CG.

I just don't believe that he does anything for that. Like, it's all just affects people. No, there was a bunch of like, quote unquote action scenes in Borderlands that were not like CG. Like the one near the, the beginning where it's just like they're in the hallway and they're like shooting at each other. Oh, I need like shoot out.

Yeah. Like those are just awfully directed. Like it's horrendously directed action. Like there's no satisfaction to anything you're showing. Like they're relentlessly unsatisfying action scenes. And the same is true. Even in cabin fever. The small amount of quote unquote action that we get is just, just learn.

It's been 20 years It's been over 20 years So you're not gonna learn How to do something I feel like there are a few directors like that That really just can't do action M. Knight pops into my head He's really bad at it as well

Yeah, just no comprehension for it apparently No But it's like if you know that's not a strong suit of yours You could hire somebody to help with the action scenes You don't have to do the action scenes Or not direct the borderlands movie Yeah. Well, yeah, we use that as an opportunity to get creative and like, well, I know I'm bad

at action scenes. How can we imply some action or do something interesting? I don't think he knows he's bad at action scenes. CG cars flying around. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing though is, um, even with my critiques of cabin fever, it's weirdly memorable.

I haven't seen it in a long time, but within five minutes, it was coming back to me. It was flooding back to me. I remember this scene that's weird I haven't seen this is so long but I'm actually remembering a lot of this

which is something that's more that can be said for a lot of mediocre movies I've seen true yeah it's it's a

I'll be watching this movie ever however many years you know always come back to it it's nostalgic for me yeah it's got a nice little special place in my timeline I enjoy

coming back to it yeah I'm giving this one a six out of ten I think it's a great first feature I man I kind of agree I it's just hard to look back and be like

there was potential here I don't know to me it's like this could go one or two ways where like oh there's there's like a shine in here there's a spark in here that could blossom or maybe it was just just like almost feels like an accident. Like it genuinely does, like with all of it taken in holistically, all of his films.

It's just like, I don't know, quite irritating to me, quite, almost like a missed opportunity in ways. But it's still enjoyable. This would be a two and a half star for me. I can give it a like as well. Nice. That ending alone, it's like that half star at the end. It's the biggest laugh I got. I was, I didn't, that's one thing I didn't remember somehow.

Um, caught me off guard. So, okay, appreciate the audacious nature of that because that is, that's insane. It feels almost like, that was the whole point of the movie. It was like, he thought of that joke and was like, right, we got to get there. And there's something kind of hilarious and entertaining to me about that. But, uh, yeah, it's a bit of a mess to get there. If only he learned ever I feel like this is maybe an example of

just the power of limitations and what that can do to a project because I this feels like everything that worked about it was probably just because you know he had limitations and he was a director that needed to prove himself and he had his career writing on us you know you like you need to have yeah you got to be scrappy

that works And you can see that there is like some sense of passion within this movie that just no longer exists in everything he's directed since almost. Yeah, there is a deep sadness to contrasting these two films where it's like even though I don't love it overall, there's still a movie and it's a movie I respect and there's clearly hard work and dedication but into. Whereas, yeah, boardlands is not that way. And that's what he is now. the worst. All right. Question time.

Let's do some questions then. From the Sardonicast community, head over to the suggestion thread over on the subreddit. To leave questions for future episodes just like butter 4-6-7 did. With the US election coming up soon, there's been a noticeable increase of conservative movies popping up into theaters. Those include Matt Walsh's Am I Racist, a new documentary about Trump, a biopic about Ronald Reagan, and so many more. My question is, do you guys think this increase in conservative movies in theaters is a direct result of Sound of Freedom being a surprise hit last year? Or do you think this is just a way to trick conservatives to buy tickets to bullshit propaganda in the lead up to the election? Hmm.

It's not new. These things have existed for a long time. Yeah, it doesn't feel new to me. Yeah. I just... There's a billion movies that, like, will play in the United States, but not outside of the United States. that are just like clearly tailored for a US audience, right? Like God's not dead.

Like that was a huge hit, right? That had like fucking abode sequels and all these weird religious movies, right? And that Ronald Reagan movie doesn't feel like a response to sound of freedom. Like the way these productions work, they can be like years that are working on these things and floating around. It's not a new thing, is it? It just seems like, I don't know, they mentioned the Matt Walsh movie. there's just, it feels like in the last 10 years or so, this rise in this style of documentary

that's kind of shared a lot online. It tends to be more documentary style than narratives like Sound of Freedom, but that seemed to be more of an exception, the Sound of Freedom explosion last year. But yeah, it did. Like there's things that are going to try and recreate that success that are just not going to.

Yeah, of course. But like was Civil War for an example? as an example playing into this kind of thing? I mean, kind of. Like, it's definitely opportunistically capitalizing off of the concept of, like, civil unrest. Yeah, and knowing that elections coming. Yeah. Doesn't seem like a new thing.

No, yeah, it's not new. Just going to get more and more of it, probably, with the way, with the popularity of the way it's spread online, I guess. Conservatives love Matt Walsh. And, uh, I don't know, there appears to be some sort of like production value to the stuff he's doing. So you saw the what is a woman documentary. I didn't.

I did. I did. I kind of describe it more as like watching an SJW owned compilation than like an actual. Yeah. Thoughtful movie or documentary. But it's just, yeah, the daily wire productions, they're like a mega company. They make hundreds of millions of dollars, the daily wire. So now they're like a big player in, I guess.

the entertainment space. They're making films. They're making these documentaries often with disliked of like, I guess we're making this to try to annoy you. And then you get annoyed because we're trying to annoy you. And then we can say, hey, we've made this awesome point because you're so annoyed, right? And you wouldn't be annoyed if we weren't making this point. It's like, I know, there's something disingenuous about it to me.

It doesn't seem like the best way to accept. explore the genre of documentary, I don't know, but I haven't seen, am I racist? Look, I'm tired of politics in movies, but am I racist is a masterpiece, but I am tired of politics in my art. Well, yeah, I guess I just, I don't know what we're talking about. I just don't know, because that is, you're mocking, like, a quite a common opinion. I don't know really how to relate to it or how to pass it because I just don't really think about movies and entertainment in that way. It's like sure, if you're like apathetic and aren't interested in politics in any way, that doesn't mean that it isn't, right?

Or like, it's only good if it agrees with your worldview. I don't know. I guess I can kind of pivot this into another question on similar lines, which I kind of want to get into from No Juggernaut 5339, who says, well, the term woke has obviously been hijacked by conservative media and has blatantly overused mainly to criticize diverse casting in media. Are there any movies that you guys would actually consider woke in a way that actively detracts from your viewing experience and what makes a movie actually woke in your eyes? I feel like this, yeah, this kind of goes in tandem with what we're talking about there. It's like, what are we talking about? What does it mean? Like, it seems like it just means whatever you want it to mean based on what your audience capture is.

Woke just means left leaning is all it means. But there's nothing that's been bad because it's left leaning. There's been things that are bad because it's insincere, right? So you can say the Barbie movie is woke, right? But it still works because it doesn't feel completely insincere. right? So something, there's tons of examples of, you know, the insincere inclusions in some Disney movies where it's like, okay, there's like a character that like says she's gay for one second and then they cut it out for Russia and China. That's insincerity. That's the issue with it. It's not the fact that there's a gay character in it. It's the fact that it's insincere. Right. So that we don't even need to use the word woke to describe what's wrong with it. It's the insincerity. And that's an issue regardless of, whether or not something is left-leaning or political, like insincerity is bad in any movie

when I don't believe that what they're showing me is coming from a real place. That sucks regardless. That sucks when it's just a bad horror movie with no political implications at all, right? Yeah, that's my similar assessment too. It seems like it's most often used to just describe something that, yeah,

it's like badly written or sucks, but instead of just saying that, It's like, oh, there's at least one minority in the cast, so I guess it's woke. Like, what is that mean? I don't get what their problem is, is that gay people exist, people of different races exist. What is the issue with that? Like, I don't get the, how to disconnect those things with the way it's used. Because you Google, like, earlier I was like trying to find, okay, what are the movies that are most commonly known as being woke?

And yeah, it's like light year because of the kiss. Ghostbusters 2016. It's just a shitty comedy. Like, it's just badly written, badly made. There's so much, yeah, Barbie, you said. Strange World, that's another one that's often in these YouTube shorts propped up. It's like, look, Disney went woke and because of it, they went broke because of Strange World, having a gay character. And it not the fact that it just looked insanely generic, had bad marketing was not an interesting.

looking films so people didn't see it. Yeah. I don't know. It feels like people just projecting this onto it. Yeah, you could, you could describe movies like everything everywhere all at once or parasite as being woke that they're just not insincere movies. Then that's why they work. It's really not that complicated.

Yeah. I don't know why people don't understand. I don't know. The fact that it's, yeah, you still see it like, I don't know. I feel like the term SJW felt more like it was restrained. to the internet but now you see it on TV they're arguing about wokeness they're talking about like wonkness in like parliament in my country and stuff like this it's like oh it's funny what we what are we talking about because I heard um I think

it was Chris Reagan brought this awesome point on this note where he was talking about Seinfeld how it was a it was mandated that the Julia Louise Dreyfus character needed to be added because the cast wasn't diverse enough in adding her they almost objectively made the show better. She's the best one of the four. She's the funniest of the four, maybe arguably against George. But that made the show better. And if it was made better because of wokeness does that mean, what does that mean? If it just means it's a pointless. Well, exactly, right? Like, so the inverse would be if her character sucked, then it would be, like if let's say we had the exact same media echo chamber infrastructure audience capture thing going on

during Seinfeld being a new show then that would be like an example of oh woke killed this I was like no it's the insincerity that killed it you can still have a well written character so yeah it's just if it's well made or not like who was complaining about like you can't even say that anymore because people were complaining about spiderverse or like arcane Game of Thrones even you could say is woke, but it's like no one says that just because you like it and you think it's interesting and well written. It's a very easy way to assign blame while also giving treats to your audience that want to hear a very specific type of thing to tie it into larger cultural issues or a larger frame of framing of thinking about the world. And it's an easy way to do that without actually engaging with what's happening. in the media or trying to go into what makes something work in a piece of media.

It's a really easy way to just assign a label onto something without engaging with it. It's really that simple. Yeah. And it's just frustrating that all the biggest conversations, it seems culturally, about film, but always through that lens. It's like never about the actual interesting things about the film. It's just always that one thing all the time. It's like no one even knows what we're talking about.

There's such a meaningless parrot word. It's normy shit now. Fuck, yeah, fuck Pierce Martin. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Speaking of, well, I was going to say things we should fuck, but that sounds weird considering what about saying? Penguins conflice is this, anyway, 21.

How loud did you cheer when Jack Black said, I am Steve in the Minecraft movie trailer Remember it's a kid's movie so you have to like it Oh I haven't even seen the trailer yet I'm waiting to You haven't seen it? Yeah because I wanted to react to it on stream And I've kind of been sick and you know I just haven't gotten to it

So I actually haven't seen the Minecraft movie trailer yet Sorry Oh wow okay No spoilers please Well it's cool Yeah so I won't spoil it for you but let's just say you're in for a treat Okay I found out

that it's the director of Napoleon Dynamite. Yeah, weird that, isn't it? Yeah. Like, why? Director for hire. Well, I mean, the reason why is because it doesn't matter what the movie is and people are going to see it anyway. So it doesn't matter who the director is. Because it doesn't matter what the movie looks like. Because everybody's going to say, oh, it looks bad, but they're going to see it anyway, like the emoji movie. Yeah, this has a way higher ceiling than the emoji movie. I feel like billion plus on this guy.

I feel, even though everyone's making fun of it, it's Minecraft. Yeah. every baby is going to go see this. I'm going to do my fucking part and not watch it in theaters. So when all of you complain that it's making money, it's your fucking fault if you saw it. I'm doing my part. I'm not seeing it in theaters. Do you think some of these that's like, there's nothing you can do?

Like with borderlands, we didn't see that, but we would have, if maybe it was interesting, but like, no matter what we do, everyone is seeing that Minecraft movie, even with how bad it looks. Well, you think the principle is strong enough just to deny. If you can get fucking the Spider-verse guys on the Minecraft movie, they can make something good out of it. Get the Lego movie guys. Well, it was going to be the Always Sunny dude. He was attached to direct it before. Who?

And write it. You know, the main guy from Always Sunny. I'm always scared to say his name. It's like an Irish name. I always say wrong. I forget his name. Which one are you talking about? I don't know, who is the main guy?

No, I'm just... Danny DeVito. Danny DeVito, yeah. Rob McHelney, yeah. I don't know why I consider him the main guy, but I do. Oh, I didn't know he was attached to this in anyway. Yeah, he was attached for a while. It's one of those, like, been around, been talked about for ages.

Everyone assumed it was going to be like animated. There's another one of these video game things. It isn't, even though it would be probably cheapy and easy. live action at all no no it's kind of uh no good reason it's kind of what I was expecting the Mario movie like the worst case scenario for Mario movie to be oh I've been sucked into the game you know that kind of shit um Jumanji I'm like in the game now bro I am Steve wow dude it's a creeper the creeper the creepers right behind me isn't it yeah hmm yeah so that that's gonna be awesome do they say

that in the trailer I'm uh if you had to put money down what do you think not seeing hmm I yes okay hold that thought okay revisit that when you see the trailer all right mm thank you okay let's do this one from Loll Jow 21 as I'm sure you guys are aware we're finally getting a third film in the 28 Days Later series titled 28 Years Later, being directed and written by Danny Boyle and Alex Garland once again and starring Jody Comer, Aaron Taylor Johnson, and Ralph Fines, and Killion Murphy returning as well. Love your episode where you discuss the first two films. Would love to know your thoughts and hopes for the upcoming film.

I enjoyed revisiting those movies, the first one in particular. I was kind of shocked by how bad 28 weeks later held up. Maybe the worst aging movie of all time. Crazy. Yeah, that was wild. But Danny Boyle and Alex Garland coming back is a good sign. Yeah. Especially I was concerned that Alex Garland maybe wouldn't come back to Reichs. I feel like that's essential, that combo of them. So that gives me some hope. Have you seen any of the production pictures of the rigs? They've got the iPhone. Yeah. I think it's iPhone 15s they're shooting it on, which is kind of interesting. Which is cool. It sounds like they're going back to

their roots in terms of making like stylistic choices for how to shoot things. Yeah. Anybody who's not familiar with the first 28 days later film, they specifically shot them on digital just for stylistic purposes back when digital was not even like that practical to do in terms of, you know, getting a good picture. But it works really well for the film. So I'm glad that they're doing interesting things like that. Also, my understanding is that it's not just 28 years later, but they're doing like an

entire trilogy that I think Danny Boyle is at least directing the first one. I think somebody else might be signed on to direct one of them. But like we're getting another three movies apparently. Oh, really? Okay. Is that what I, yeah, that's what I heard. Interesting. Let me fact check that.

Because my only concern is like, it's cool they're doing the iPhone thing. They've got to do something kind of stylistically extreme. I feel like because of just how tired, like zombies are. I don't know if people really care about that in the same way as the early 2000s and the mid-2000s. We're on fire everything zombie-related was. So hopefully that forces them to get creative and show us something kind of fresh. A good cast, too. So there's some hope.

Yeah. And if they're like, okay, so it does look like they're doing like a trilogy of sequels. And so that, hopefully, you know, with these people involved, Garland and, boil. Hopefully that means that there's enough faith in this that they'll make something good. You know? Like, hopefully. If the first one sucks, that would suck. Yeah. And hopefully they keep the budget reasonable too. Yeah, 75 million apparently. Okay. That's, hmm. Yeah. I'm definitely curious. I'm not Who knows? Instinctually against it.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, this one from Lou 9618 is interesting. Would Adam ever consider going to the BFI film festival? Yes. Would you? Yes. You haven't been, have you?

I'm doing it for the first time this year. No, I think it's usually too close to TIF and VIF. It is very close to it. Yeah, it's October. I think it might overlap with VIF. Yeah, it's kind of annoying. So there's often film festivals that I wind up not doing just because I already have my regular routine. But like I'd like to change things up and I'd like to go to some new ones.

I'd like to go to BFI. I'd like to go to like Fantastic Fest one day. That would be fun. I've always heard good things about Fantastic Fest. Apparently they showed Terror Fire 3 this year. Oh, fun. Yeah, there was a good selection of stuff at BFI this year. It was really fucking annoying getting tickets for what.

little I did manage to get. But like the Mary and Max director's new film. Nice. It's going to be there, the stop motion one. But I couldn't get a ticket, though. Like, Blitz is going to be there. I have some really good shit that just couldn't get tickets for. I got some of the big ones, though, in the four days I'm going to be there.

Okay. That's exciting. I'll report back what it was like. Yeah. Yeah, I think I've got a bit of the bug after you introduced me to TIF. I hope it's not too. started you did say it's like the best you your favorite one yes i hope it's not too good to ruin others for me i mean yeah i mean i enjoy film festivals in general so yeah i don't think i've had

a bad film festival experience like as a whole there's some that are better than others obviously yeah and they got all these weird uh like experiences and stuff set up as well that you can do in between showings or whatever like these interactive VR thing and there's all sorts going on. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, looking forward to 28 years later, which are we about 28 years later?

When's the release date? When did the foot? 2025, it says, so I guess it's in title only. Not quite. It's not far off. Just pretend. I mean, Killian will have aged appropriately. Oh, yeah.

I'm curious, didn't the Ralph Fine's character get taken out? How's that going to work? I don't know. Okay, yeah. We'll see. Well, we will see. The whole movie's a flashback. Maybe.

Einstein, IOS, is this to say? To what extent do you guys feel like you're simply recommending something to people, doing extensive analysis of said thing, or regarding it as a work existing among the history of the art form? Would you even distinguish those as separate things when doing art criticism? Hmm. It is kind of a combo of all these things, but it's like the matter of separating, I guess, it's like different discussions in my mind, like the context of the film, my personal opinions on the film, my experience with the film. All of these things are important, but there are, I guess they're different angles to approach it from.

Um, but sometimes an extensive analysis isn't necessary. Like I wouldn't say the like the cabin fever discussion was necessarily extensive, but it's not really an extensive film, you know, like, what threads are there to pick at in crazy depth. I'm sure someone could do it, but like, it's not always the way. We're not always going to have hour long conversations like we might do with something else, like the dream movie we did with that was amazing philosophical deep discussion that, when all different directions

and you can't really predict when that's going to happen or when it's not. Yeah, I mean, the, you can't, I'm not going to force myself to just bullshit

about something that I don't have a lot to say about. And some of those are movies that I still recommend and enjoy. And depending on like the format of me discussing them, like if I'm recommending it in like a quicky thing and it's, you know,

like this is in theaters and I want people to see it, I'm not going to go into like a, a detailed discussion about like the themes of the film because I want people to experience the film for themselves, right? Whereas something like, I don't know, Synecdochia, New York that's been out forever and I have the most personal experience with it that I possibly could, then I'm going to have a lot more to say about it and it's going to become like much more extensive of a project or, you know, if I'm talking about like the Lion King or anything to do with the production behind that or, you know, these.

weird kind of hyper fixations that I have where I obsess over like every detail of something, right? That's not going to happen with every movie. And there's a lot of movies that I'm going to love that I just don't feel like I want to bullshit about because I want my content to be sincere too. And I understand that, you know, if I was looking at what I do as purely as a job and that's it, then I'm sure I could, you know, insincerely bullshit about a lot of movies. And, you know, the goal would be like pretending to be smart or something, but I would rather just create sincere content. Yeah.

I feel like you can kind of tell when that's the intent, when there isn't a passion behind it. Yeah. Because yeah, that's what I'm looking for. It's crazy how many fucking channels exist where they're just summarizing a fucking movie. And the way they present their information,

it's as if they're saying something meaningful, but they're not. And a lot of people just fucking. fall for it and people love it. Like they're duped. They don't understand that what they're watching is like pretend analysis. Yeah. They're just summarizing the movie.

Yeah, because it's like a whole subcategory of content, especially for films that are slightly more abstract or open to interpretation. Like ending explained. And then it's like, oh, you didn't say anything that wasn't like obvious to literally everybody that watched it. Uh-huh. Oh, you're just making content. Yeah.

You're literally just tricking people into clicking on your video and some people are, I guess, not media literate if we're going to use the term enough to understand what they just watched. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So I feel like it's a healthy mixture of all these things. Sometimes it is just a simple recommendation. Sometimes there is something more extensive to say.

And yeah. But I think it is always relevant as far as where it sits in the full. picture of film like you can't talk about it particularly in a vacuum a lot of the time like a movie is important how it relates to everything around it but yeah interesting to think about yeah all right one more are we done how about we wrap up with this one right one more let's wrap up on this one from J MJCC 1999 would you rather be an extra on a movie directed by one of your favorite directors so you can watch him or she work behind the scenes.

Him or she. Or she will be an extra. I'm fried today. I don't know what's wrong with me. Too much caffeine maybe. He or she work behind the scene. I'm so late thrown off now. Or be an extra on one of those movies where everything went wrong and have a chance to

watch a shit show happen in real time. So either working on a movie watching one of your favorite directors work or just be a part of one of those shit show everything going wrong madam webs or board lands or whatever favorite director favorite director for sure yeah i would i would like to watch them work yeah i would like to be on a set that some you know there's there's actual things happening in considerations being made and i you know that would be a part of like a learning experience that i could carry over into you know not only my commentary and experience with film but you know, potential future projects that I might want to involve myself in.

Like, I feel like I could learn something from that, whereas kind of watching a train wreck is just more like almost reality TV fun, you know, like, you're kind of just, I don't know if I would learn as much from that. Let me pitch this there. There is always something to learn, though, I guess. Megalopolis. I would love to just be a fly on the wall for something like that. You haven't even seen it yet.

I don't even need to. I'm really liked. It's one of those where it's like the story behind it is so much more interesting than the film itself. Like to see his style of directing and like carrying all of this weight on him with all these films from his past. And there's something interesting about that to me. I definitely do something like that. But he'll see what you're saying with one of your favorites. That might be more.

I don't know. It's less juicy. guess as far as like, I don't know, I'm projecting my, just the joy I get from being tangentially linked to hunt down the Freeman and just knowing like that mess and like having the behind the scenes of that. It's like so enjoyable and fun to me. I mean, maybe my favorites would include people like Neil Breen, you know? Yeah, imagine being on set for, that would be wonderful.

Wouldn't that be amazing? That'd be great. Yeah. But he's, he's one of my favorite artists. So true. I would like to see a genius at work. Damn, yeah. I think we've done it.

All right, we done it. We done did it. It's my turn to recommend something. What'll be got. I'm going to stick with the Halloween. Scaries. I guess. And damn, you know, there's some things that I would love to recommend,

but in recommending them it would feel weird if I didn't recommend like the two movies and we don't like I don't know I feel like I need to do something easy while I'm like in the process of moving across the country and all the shit going on so we're doing we're doing an easy one we're doing a simple one it's a single film it's on YouTube it's available on YouTube it's called don't let the river beast get you okay river beast all one word it's from 2012 written and starring Matt Farley, and also written and directed by Charles Roxburgh, and I have not seen it. Okay.

I'm loving the poster. Yeah. Some Zat kind of energy. Nice. Looks like my cup of tea. Yeah. So we might also talk about another thing. I guess I won't mention it here.

We'll talk about it after the podcast, but there's a new thing that came out that I can. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it'll be a good episode. If you don't want to be spoiled for don't let the River Beast get you with an exclamation mark.

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All right. Thanks for listening, everybody. Thanks, everybody. Have a happy Shrek 5. Have a happy. borderlands. Oh, no. We can't because Eli Roth corrected it, so we can't have a happy borderlands. All right. Bye, everybody. Bye.