Sardonicast - Sardonicast 178: Memoir of a Snail, Smile 2, Tetsuo: The Iron Man

Episode Date: December 9, 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 Fan art: https://old.reddit.com/r/Sardonicast/comments/1h34t4t/my_sardonicast_fan_art/ Timestamps: 0:00 Intro + movie news 12:11 Memoir of a Snail 49:48 Smile 2 1:21:06 Tetsuo: The Iron Man 1:48:40 Questions 2:15:14 Outro + recommendation

Three, two, one. You want a taste of my sewage pipe? That was a quote. From Dwayne the Rock Johnson's Moana 2. I thought it was from the new MCU movie. Are those not the same thing? Yeah, probably. How are you?

I'm not doing the best, as you can probably hear in my voice. voice. I'm here to fight. I did it in the midst of COVID. I can do it with it with a calling it the honor a cold because of the granny that gave me it. And it's just been lingering in my nose. But I got to do my intro thing though. Like ready? I'm ready. Okay. I forgot we're an audio only thing. Oh, you're trying to do hand gestures. No, I was doing a big smile. Oh, big smile. A ear to ear. Oh God. I can't believe that that was a part of your plan. You really are sick.

Did it, yeah. If I'm a loopy, this episode is going to, that's going to be why. Okay, I'm just all medded up now. And I don't know, Smilers too kind of made me feel that way as well. I'm calling it Smilers because I don't, I don't know. We never talked about that first movie, did we? I don't know. I've got one of those, um, what's that phenomena where you've like, the Mandela effect?

I've got like a Mandela effect, uh, smile, Smilers won Sadonacast episode in there, but I guess we didn't. But I definitely saw it. I didn't really like it. My Mandela effect is, I thought I lived in a universe where it was pronounced Mandela effect.

Oh, yeah, that's on me. I don't know how you pronounce anything. Cate Blanche. I'm just making fun of you for being British. Wouldn't be the first time. No,

whatever. You know, it's funny. There was, um, Jack, who manages the Sardonicast Highlights channel, was on the Patreon Hangout. And we mentioned the... We were talking about, like, Alien Romulus. And I did the...

Oh, yeah. ...shundahua. And Jack's like, it's always okay to make fun of British people, sigh. But I would like to point out, you know, even though I think people... do take it too far. I do think that people find like this weird social... Like too far how? Well, could... Like the colonizer thing where it's like...

It's like the socially acceptable form of like poking fun at a culture. You could say racism depending on the context, but I would still like to point out that like if there was a character in Alien Romulus that was like, oh yeah, buddy, there's something in the water, eh? I think I would be laughing just as hard. Like, come on. I think I would be laughing just as hard and meming on it just as hard. I would kind of love that. That's, that's as ridiculous. And I understand that in the UK, you probably are around a lot of people with that thick of an accent. But to the rest of the world, it is so uncommon in the same sense that like, I'm not going to hear that rural Eastern Canadian accent in Vancouver, unless, unless it's just

one word from, what's his name, James McCalla, where he sounds completely normal, except says the word abut for some reason, and he's also from Vancouver. Right, yeah. And nobody talks like that here. It's taken like 10 years for that to swing, because like in the 2010s, it was kind of gave your leg up to be British. And that was like the inverse. Everyone hates your ass if you sound English, especially.

I mean, yeah, there is, I would say like in the Twitter era for sure, there's a lot of of, you know, the whole colonizer thing. Yeah, which I don't know. It's like we have, I don't know, I'm going to be patriotic here. Hell you. You might have the best sense of humor in the world, so we can take it. Ouch. Get over it.

You know what I'm saying? Mm-hmm. Well, you know what, well, no, I do. I do. Because I'm smart. Um, somebody, somebody commented that they missed when we talked about movie news at the beginning of an episode. There hasn't been much movie news over the past while.

Like there hasn't there hasn't been anything. Yeah, it's like what? There's a new Disney remake. Yeah. Oh, wow. We got Lilo and Stitch teaser. We could talk about that. How to Train Your Dragon.

Although I was actually upset about that. It was the Marcel the Shell with Shoes-on director. It's like helming that Lilo and Stitch. Oh, really? That's it? Yeah. So it's like, oh, man. For Lilo and Stitch.

For Lilo and Stitch. I was like, man, I thought, I really like that movie. There's a lot of, like, promise and potential there. Maybe they just want to get into the Hollywood system or whatever, but... Yeah, they always scoop up some poor sap that wants to make millions of dollars. Another Tycho or Titi, maybe. Yeah. Yeah.

The torture. You're no longer making art for art. Uh-huh. You're now going to do it for money. Oh, well. That's fine. I did find some movie news, though. What's happening?

Dwayne the Rock Johnson. in a BBC interview said, fans should feel free to sing in the cinema. Quote, especially if you love music, that's the fun part. And this was in an interview ostensibly talking about Moana too, which is a musical where theoretically there will be new songs that people haven't heard yet. So I don't know if he's expecting. them to all listen to the soundtrack released before the actual film, memorize the songs,

and then sing to them, or by multiple tickets to the movie, or he's just talking about other movies. But I don't know. He might- Yeah, I don't know. This conversation is happening around Wicked, but I don't think he mentions that in the interview. But is this like a thing? It doesn't feel like one of those controversial movie talking

points because I've seen more about like speaking of wicked people taking pictures of the title card and like putting it on social media and stuff like that and that's actually like an intrusive annoying trend where it's like have you ever seen a musical and had the the crowd start singing along in a way that's irritating outside of like I don't know those like rocky horror shows you can go to everyone but there's such a different vibe for things like that and no one would call that problem yeah when something's like 50 years old and you're seeing like a it at a like a cult showing where like the premise of going

is that everyone involved is already a super fan then like sure but if it's like a new movie that's out then you're kind of just ruining the experience for everybody else like I don't know they're singing in the movie it'd be nice to hear the singers hired to sing in the movie sing and not some tone deaf idiot but does this happen

she wear shorts skits I wear t-shirts I love to be a demigod Yeah Yeah you know You know how fucking respectful I was When the Lion King got a re-release in theaters I did not say Every line

From Scar, even though it was in my head And I could have Yeah, I was about to say It's definitely your head I could have done that But I didn't Because I'm a decent human being Well the rock thinks it's okay though

So you should have done it And what the rock says goes, I'm afraid. Oh, yeah. Somebody is like, excuse me, can you stop? I just, like, have the article ready on my phone. You've got to print it off. Oh, yeah. I print it out.

And go, shh. And go back to miming along. Yeah. Well, the rock says something stupid. That's movie news. I mean, I feel like we've done this one before. I feel like we've done this. exact same thing hey the rock said something dumb was this the press tour for I just I just

remember red one like redone people have messaged me like they want me to watch red one it's like this this film looks like Ryan Reynolds should be in it I know I if you told me Ryan Reynolds was in it I would have believed you is it is it Ryan Gosling that's in it oh no it's uh Captain America oh Chris Evans yeah okay Chris Evans yeah one of the many Chris's, who needs to get a new agent. Unless, well, he probably likes money too. You know, it's got a $150 million budget or something. It might be higher.

It would seem he likes money a lot. Yeah. What are you going to do? Pass up a movie with the rock in it? I know, right? I have to be in Red One. Mm-hmm. I'm wondering...

Yeah, I'm not watching Red One. Like, I would take that job. No one would want me for that job. I'd probably get bullied forever for my acting and being in that movie. But, you know, I'd do it. Yeah, you right now, but what about you as Chris Evans, where, like, you have all that Captain America money already in your pocket? A lot of Captain America money, not a lot of range, though.

Mm. You know? He used to pick kind of interesting projects, though. He was in, like, Snowpiercer and, uh, Wasn't he in a... Sunshine. Oh man. Sunshine, that was what I was trying to pluck.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So he definitely needs a new agent or something. Well, I don't know if it's like an Al Pacino situation where there was news recently about his finances where he was like justifying why he was in like Adam Sandler comedies and whatnot and these blatant ads and stuff because they just, they get used to having, I guess, like $50 million in the bank and then they buy mansions all over the, the world and the upkeep of them like just drains them over years and they're like oh crap i didn't

manage my finances very well yeah it's like cool man yeah i'm glad you can just uh pop into an adam sam the movie and get an absurd paycheck um anybody when you when you start living a lifestyle that requires you to be making as much money as like the most you've ever made in your life but consistently forever even though your work is gig work basically Uh-huh, I don't get it. I don't get it. It's like Nicholas Cage buying T-Rex skeletons and stuff like this. It's a dreamland, some of these people are living in.

I don't think I'd get hooked on that. Like, I don't think I would do... No. I just, I don't think it's in my character. No, me neither. It's just so excessive. It's excessive when I agree I just, is so alien to me. I can't relate.

It's for big status. It's for big status bros. Got to have that T-Rex skeleton. I've got to have it. Yeah. It's made for me. It's beckoning me. Never ask why.

Never ask why you need your 10th mansion in a country you never go to. Yeah. And like, what is it? I think it was like Kanye was like bragging about like he owns mansions with swimming pools. He's never even swam in. And it's like, is that really a good thing? No, it's not. That's kind of pathetic.

It's a problem. Yeah. It's a mental health problem. Yeah. So you can brag about it? Yeah. No. We watched a film called memoir of a snail's shah.

Snails show. Gay show? Mewar of a gay snail. Oh. Oh, okay. I mean, that's... Oh, man. Can I

We're not talking God damn We're not just going right into spoilers Okay Yeah We're going to talk a little bit about the movie Because I think we both loved it As expected

There's very few movies in a year That I'm like Anticipating and excited for And we'll go out of my way to see This is one That wasn't even playing in fucking Vancouver But I saw it in Seattle So

Oh that's random Yeah Well, I mean, Seattle's like close enough. It's like two and a half hour drive if you don't hit traffic. But I'm glad I saw it in the theater. I just mean in the sense that like Vancouver is like a cinema hub. So it's like, what? Yeah, but we're also a Australian film.

I know. And the, like it wasn't playing in theaters in the UK either, was it? No. Exactly. Isn't that stupid? I missed it at BFO. Yeah, I didn't get it. Yeah, they really, um, I think Madman was distributing.

it. So what the fuck? Madman. Yeah, I, uh, if I was able to see this movie earlier, I would have been pimping it out earlier, you know, I'd be talking about it. Yeah, but it's, it doesn't, it's not had a very big run though. Like, it's just disappearing and has these limited screenings that are sold out instantly. So yeah, I think they've got like, underestimated the potential audience for this. For sure, which seems insane because the director has made one other movie and it's on the top 250 on IMDB right now. Yeah. And wasn't it like Oscar? I can't remember if it won the Oscar. It was definitely no one. It definitely did not win an Oscar. He won an Oscar for his short film Harvey Crumpet, I think.

And Marian Max, I don't think was big when it came out by any means. But just over time, just word of mouth, like people connected with it so much. And everybody was like, hey, this movie's great. And everybody loved it. It's difficult to find someone who doesn't enjoy Marion Max, who doesn't think is a good movie or didn't connect with it in any way. It's one of those where you can show it to almost anyone and they'll find a new movie that they enjoy. Yeah, 191,000 ratings on IMDB. So a lot of people have seen it. And so word of mouth over time from 2009, you'd think that would help with distribution of like a new. new project. Especially, there's so many

similarities between this and Mary and Max. Like, it's very much the same voice. Has a lot of the same ideas even. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I don't know what I think. I think a similar response is going to happen that word of mouth is going to spread once people actually

have access to it. You know, it's just, I don't get it. Especially when we're in a time with these kind of streaming platforms where access and word of mouth can spread faster than ever. I don't know why you'd want to just capitalize on that to get as many eyes on it as possible.

Because this is my favorite movie of the year so far. Nice. Favorite movie of the year so far. Oh my God, I sound ridiculous. You always have. This was, yeah, true. Man, I was in bits. I wasn't expecting it to hit me this hard,

but I was like sore after watching it. with how just like emotionally ensnared I was by it. It's so disarming this style of film where the approach of it is the stop-motion animation, is kind of these ugly characters, this drab look to it, and it's full of these comedic beats and these like random idiosyncrasies that seem random at first. But as the film progresses and goes along, certain layers of it are revealed and there's more kind of meticulous design plotted all around it.

And the way it unravels and the way it rips your heart and puts it back in by the end is, man, it's so emotionally honest. These characters, they're so, like, goofy and there's a lot of silly, fun, humor in it. But it's just one of my favorite tones. It can be silly and have this,

and it's so, like, loose with the comedy and it does have, you know, really, really, few jokes like the opening potato gag and stuff like that that just seem random or whatever at first. But yeah, going back to the disarming thing, it does just make these really endearing characters and it gets so deep. It gets like quite philosophical actually and the amount it explores in this 90 minute runtime.

Well this kind of central theme of like loneliness and isolation that it explores and delving into the myriad different ways people deal with these kind of emotions. Well, yeah, and the grief side of it too. Yeah, coping through like religion or swinging or gardening or whatever it may be. There's a lot of different subjects explored and these characters are just so lovable and real, especially this, the lead character of Grace Puddle, voiced by Sarah Snook, who's, an awesome job, a nice sensitive kind of quiet performance that would fit that character. The succession kids are really been on fire this year.

But yeah, of course, the stop motion animation aimed at adults too in a way that's like, yeah, you're getting the, it doesn't feel sanded off. It's got actually extremely rough edges to a point where maybe an hour into the film I was questioning, like, man, I love like this adult animation and when it takes itself seriously, but is this getting like too dark in the story? Is this like, are we delving into

puddles here that are like too deep that we can't come out of? Paddles. Ah yes. That wasn't even intentional. But yeah, it's a,

like an appreciation of life aspect it manages to get you to the, this ongoing theme of cages and like the cages you make for yourself and all of these. these deep ideas about like how to find meaning in your life and just this this packaging the stop motion is beautiful the character designs are so much fun even with their like

kind of crudeness and this this the the juxtaposition I guess of like the the the comedy and the like ugliness of these characters and the the the true honest misery that it's exploring it's just it's such a unique tone and it's it's it is similar to the Mary and Max kind of style, but the narration in comparison I feel like was a lot more effective for me with how it was mostly Sarah Snook's narration. And there are a couple of switches throughout it. And of course, that, I guess, helps with a lot of the animation because they don't have to constantly be lip-thinking, which is obviously so time-consuming. But it's not like they shy away from flexing their animation skills. It's so varied and meticulously sort of

storyboarded and put together so many different locations and site gags and detail and even just down to like the opening credits and the way that was staged and shot was just cool and interesting camera movements. Yeah, it's just so so creative. And the dialogue too. There's this I mentioned it was an Australian film. Sarah Snook's like doing her, I suppose, a real accent. Australians, like the Brits, have awesome sense of humor when it's captured, right? And I feel like, yeah, those idiosyncrasies, that style of dialogue, the honesty to it, just the way things are phrased and talked about are so charming and likable.

Yeah, I don't want to go into like spoilers or whatever, but what about you? I think that this this film is like a perfect blend of like something cute and endearing and tugging on your heartstrings in a way that a lot of animated films for children try to do but with the blend of that also encompassing really dark ideas and a lot of like really sad depressing ideas I love the balance of those things because you know for one

the dark and depressing ideas help me to get into the like cute endearing sort of like tugging on your heartstrings aspects. But but in the inverse or you know the other way around, I feel as though the levity of the humor prevents this from feeling something that is just like so dreary and manipulative. I'm trying to remember the title. It was like, there's some there's some fucking shitty black and white pretentious movie that got released like five years ago or something that you know some critics were raving over and it was like like the boy and the crow or I don't remember what it was called but it was just like the entire point of that movie was just to be nothing but misery porn

and there was like it was like there was no point to it it was literally just like, here's a montage of this boy being, like, abused throughout his life, and that's the whole movie. And, like, there was barely any connection to between stories. It went on forever. This movie, I like that even during the serious scenes of which they are very effective in their seriousness, you still get, like, you know, not only the animation style being humorous and cute and having personality, but, you know,

also get, you know, things that you mention like the visual gags. You know, there's a scene where two characters are like being separated. And in the context of the story, it's obviously very emotional and sad. And, you know, the music is reflecting this as well. But then, you know, you see that the greyhound text on the bus and it says, bringing people together. And it's like, okay, that's a funny justice. Yeah. And then a couple shots later, it zooms out. And then if you look closer, you can see on the license plate, the license plate reads, why are you dash sad? Which is even funnier. And so they don't shy away from having these, you know, kind of unsurious jokey moments even

within serious scenes. And also, no matter how depressing things get for any given character, there's always like some sliver of hope. There's always some tiny amount of comfort that exoner. exists in the main character's life, even when so much is taken away from her, there's always like one thing to keep her going. And I like that they never, that they always had some consistent, like, reason not to give up sort of thing.

Like, oh, there's something to look forward to. Maybe, like, not all is hopeless. Like, it easily could have been a film that felt like hopeless and just, like, absolutely depressing. And even though much of it is depressing, I like that it didn't feel like misery. porn. It was almost inching towards that in some scenarios and some concepts and some

scenes, but it never had that issue completely, I guess. Yeah, it manages to avoid it and there's a bit of a like a roller coaster motif that's mentioned a few times in the movie and it's very much like how the movie emotionally affects you. And but

importantly by the end it does feel like a complete package. It doesn't feel like a one note. Oh, this one. just misery porn and I just great I guess you ruin my day like that's fine for some movies like a but I don't know I don't think that really would have worked for this style of film but what you're saying with like these these sight gags and visual gags that it's it's detailed it's so like detail oriented and it's not just the like obvious stuff with the visuals it's it's in that writing too there's so much like

packed into that narration and these like characters that might not even be on screen for that long, but you're really fleshed out. And it's real like the level of detail they put into just these little things that just remind you of like your, maybe not yours, but just the way you think about things or these little random observations you might have on someone, like one that really set out to me was when the main character is talking about her dad. Um, and she's, she describes how he's obsessed with these black jelly beans and always has anisead breath and like just these little details about like his, the favorite color of those people

being beige and the coffee animas and just like random stuff like that where it's like, oh yeah, these are these are like funny ideas and it's humorous in the moment, but it's also like building into this whole world that feels really believable despite the absurdity of how it might look on face value if you show someone a frame from this and be like, look, this film destroyed me, it made me cry. I don't know if like people would believe you without watching it themselves, but it really is that emotionally effective. Yeah. I, uh, One of the, like, detail observations that the character makes has a lot of similarities to Marion Max.

I think Adam Elliott just likes doing this. He'll write into his films a description of smell. And I always find that funny. Yeah. And interesting, too. And it adds, like, a layer of, like, texture to the scenery. Just saying how, like, a character smelled or how a room smelled. Yeah, yeah.

It's an interesting observation. There's loads of kind of deep observations throughout the whole movie, actually, where we're talking about that humor, but it's not normally at the expense. It's not like obvious, like, Adam Sandler humor in that way. There's, I don't know, they seem to understand the kind of human condition in quite a, like, detailed way. Like, there's a, there's a scene. I really don't want to spoil anything, so I'm just kind of dancing. around how to describe some of these things. Let's just say there's a drunk driver, like, that's just mentioned.

And the way it's described in the narration is that a character is made an alcoholic, just like the guy who was driving the car that caused him to become an alcoholic, and just mentioning this cyclical thing and just this idea that, like, these things don't just happen for a reason, well, they don't happen for no reason, there's often, I know, complex. People are complex, and the human condition is a way. the human condition is a difficult thing and it's like the whole through line of the movie. It's like how do people deal with this?

And all these different characters have a different way of dealing with it and that all of the like, it's just pointing at the absurdity of, of the trueness of it just with this goofy packaging. And yeah, just exploring these things like addiction, like hoarding, like kleptomania, even just like the idea of going back to the cage thing and like this, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the. cages you make for yourself and the ways you you just deal with the bullshit of life. There's this ongoing thing of all these characters reading books and that's even addressed at a certain point where it's like using narratives to escape the grayness or the misery of life. And it's like, wow, this is such a wide range of emotions and concepts that are being explored. It's honestly beautiful. Yeah, it's a, it's a film that I think everybody would enjoy, much like,

Marion Max, just like nobody has seen it. Or it's not on many people's radar, you know? Yeah, because access. I'm sure more people would see it if it was given a chance or whatever. I would love for this to get a nomination to get more eyes on it at the Oscars this year. I don't know what the chances of that are. Yeah, hopefully. I mean, we'll set up against Inside Out 2, I guess, is going to win.

Inside Out to the Wild Robert. Oh, yeah. And then there's too many good animated movies this year, like, outside of those two, that something has to be snubbed. Yeah. Something has to be snubbed. But when you were earlier talking about the, like, misery porn animated film, you couldn't remember precisely. It wasn't even animated. Oh, oh, right.

Just the misery born then. The inverse of that, not to rag on the wild robot, is kind of like the over cuteness thing, which I feel like is a crutch for a lot of animated movies because it just gives it default, broad appeal and it makes everyone feel warm and nice or whatever. But it, you know, it does shave off the rough edges. Whereas this manages to have all of it. It does have the cuteness. The whole like snail thing is definitely cute.

The like designs of the snails. But it's not just like a flushed away look. It's the cute thing we want to mark it around. It's like, no, the snail is an ongoing visual theme of the movie. It plays into the main character's whole identity as a person and affects the dialogue. And every little detail of the movie kind of comes back around to that snail aesthetic. It's just so thoughtful with that kind of stuff. A cut above

I remembered the movie Oh yeah The painted bird Painted bird It was bad Okay We can talk spoilers So everybody go see it

First of all It's on digital right now You have no excuse not to Yeah especially if you enjoyed Mary Max It's like More of that goodness It doesn't feel like Exploring the same thing

In the same way either It does feel different under touchment. Yeah. It's not like a complete rehash or anything. Yeah, exactly. But it is offering, you know, that blend of styles and tones and emotions that are similar to Mary and Max, but like you can't find anywhere else.

Yeah. Like this is truly animation for adults and not in a way of like Fritz the cat where it's like, you know, being edgy. It's not it's not sausage party, right? This is, this is an adult story for adults, not pornography for children, which is what sausage party. Yeah. Uh-huh.

And it's not like, they're saying fuck every other word as well, because it's like, look, we can do that with this. Isn't that adult and awesome? Yeah. It's not the happy time murders or whatever. We're just like, when you Google like adult anime, it's like family guy that comes up you know so that that's like the expectation thank you Brian yeah that's such a yeah I feel like we just said time and time again like the potential of animation and what can be achieved when it is let loose like

this and this is another example like Mars Express as well that was yeah verbally jerking off earlier this year as well like it it really is just prime for storytelling. And I kind of love that simple narrative structure it has, where it is like the main character reminiscing, just describing to a snail, like, about her life, but the complexity comes from, like, the devil in those details. And I guess I can say, if we're in the spoiler section,

like, the point where I was like, is this, is this, like, getting too dark? the whole she finds a husband at a certain point as you said like the oh that's like a nice bit of hope she's got this this man

and then he turns out to be like a feeder have like a feeder fetish and has this like scrapbook of all this creepy documentation of all these various women that he's got into this feeding thing and gets to her so she obviously breaks it off with him

and it's like man this is after the point where the whole twin dynamic has been like torn apart as well with that insanely dark I guess B plot with the the whole religious family the like preacher on the apple yeah farm um which is a funny joke in and of itself the fact that they have the apple tree like uh the farming apples and the all the brothers and all the visual gags that come from that the one reading the book upside down and all that stuff there, but man, does that get dark too?

With the, all the little details are set up so well. Like the whole way that concludes with the fire at the church, but the whole fire angle and the, I'm blanking on the word for when you're like obsessed with fire. Pyromaniac? Pyrocyndical. Yeah, pyromaniac. Yeah, when you have a bit of a pyrocynical going on, That's like established because it starts the narration starts when they're young kids and they delve into that the main character's twin brother does have this obsession with fire and it kind of builds up to that.

And a little detail on the fire that I loved. There's a shot where when they're establishing that he's a pyrocynical, he's putting all these matches in the ground. And the way they animate the fire spreading is so simple and effective, just these like kind of little cut out. 2D flames that they kind of were like placing on top of it and it's just and it beautifully done a really strong art style throughout but yeah that did you agree with that sort of point of the movie where it gets uh man is this misery porn territory like the twin is dead the husband's gone like and then there's the Alzheimer's and it's like oh my god I mean yeah like there there were a few points in the movie where it was just like oh my god

Are we pushing it? It was kind of pushing it. But it never went completely overboard. During the part where it's like, oh, we saved up enough money, my brother can come to our wedding. And then she gets the note. I was like, oh, damn, really? And, you know, the scene that shows, I guess what happened through the narration of that crazy preacher mom character.

Scary character. Oh, yeah. Near the beginning of that, I was kind of like feeling a little detached in the sense of like, okay, I'm not sure I'm getting like the full emotional weight of this happening and mostly just because it just felt like kind of out of nowhere. But then as the scene went on and it went into more detail showing like the series of events and... Like what really happened.

Yeah. And as it became more of like a incredibly malicious thing and seeing her close the door on him too, I was like, oh my God, no. And I was really feeling the emotions. And I felt such like dread and anger. And... Yeah, it makes you mad. What is special about this film is that that scene can happen.

And I can actually believe that the film would do that. And so, you know, we're in spoiler territory. By the end of the film, there's a reveal that it turns out he didn't die. But I didn't see that reveal coming because I wasn't expecting the movie to be like, oh, yeah, they would never do that sort of thing, right? Because there's a lot in this movie that they do show that is super dark. Characters die, right? Like, there's a lot of genuine misery and darkness. And so there was never any point where I was, like, questioning the legitimacy of what they had the balls to show.

And I fully believe, like, this is a film that could do that. I'm glad that it ended the way it did because, A, I didn't expect it. And B, it is a nice way to end the film. Like, it gives you a bit more of, you know, hope and a bit more of, a bit more of, uh, a nice note to end on. And, you know, the emotional payoff of that is pretty powerful. It's really powerful. But I'm just, that type of scene, any other fucking animated movie, because most of them

are for children. And even a lot of the ones that pretend not to be are fucking, like, most live action films are fucking cowards when it comes to killing characters, especially children. You just think, no, you're not doing that. Obviously, he survived, right? That's that 99% of other movies, I would just be thinking that in my head because they don't show anything real. And there's no expectation that they're showing anything real because they hadn't, you know? Whereas this director and this film up until that point especially as well, it already showed that it had the balls to do depressing, dark, real shit.

So that in that sense, it was a very effective twist. I was never questioning it and I was just so happy to experience a film where something like that could be pulled off successfully Yeah, I completely agree with that The first time it got me With that sort of emotional darkness

Was the death of their father Who I mentioned kind of He was the French man, the French performer Who was injured in a car accident And he's an alcoholic and there's that dark humor of he's got sleep apnea and they're like clapping there and that funny visual of them doing that like trying to wake him up when he's asleep and then it gets to the point where you no longer wakes up and that's when it first kind of surprised me with like oh wow this is like really emotionally affecting me the way this has been presented and the way I have been kind of disarmed by this presentation and yeah as you say it like builds on itself and you buy into the stakes of the world because there is there is there's like there's know there is something like real and scary about it yeah actual consequence yeah exactly and the way they do uplift you with i think that pinky character is amazing what a great like fleshed-out

character because it's like a whole ongoing gag with her where she's lived this this insane life um and she's had all these various husbands that have also all died and each each one is uh kind of crescendo's with this little funny joke of her going oh bugger every time like in this really really a nonchalant way, which is awesome. But there's another kind of emotional sledgehammer that that character winds up kind of bringing to the main character at one of her lowest points where they kind of swap roles and there's the reincorporation of the potato thing

and the reveal of that letter in there that she wrote when she was of her better mind. And just the, I thought the way they switched around the narrators was really effective for like the biggest emotional impact. Like for and it still feeds like back into the the grace lead character. But man, it's just it's so unpredictable the way that those emotional moments hit you. And just the way it's structured like that. I was never really bugged by it.

It never seemed obvious as you're saying like that death. It doesn't seem like a traditional like paint by number. but structure, it just, yeah, it felt really meticulously but together in that way, just like that stop motion animation, which is also kind of built into the story where it's like Grace's dream and kind of building that as a like a way she wants to artistically express herself and her pain and she even acknowledges that her film isn't very good. And then that being the diving board to the brother, like reveal that he's still alive. It's just like, oh my God. So, so effective.

There's a great reveal. Like, it knows, it knows how to deliver, like, emotional punches. It's very effective. Yeah. And I thought the, the use of an orchestra really aided with that. Yeah. I really dug that orchestra. Compared to Marion Max especially.

Yeah, remind me what the music was like in that. It's been a while. I've only seen it at once. Marion Max had good music, but they played one song. about 800 times. And it's like good, but like it definitely, you know, kind of overstated.

It's welcome. That's like probably my biggest criticism of that film. But yeah, I think the score in this one was great. I also really like that, you know, with the dad character having like these two like passions.

I like that each of his children kind of fulfilled one of the two. And it was like, you know, that solidified their connection. Like, they're two pieces of a greater part. And it also, you know, makes it more sad that they're separated. And especially when you believe, like, one of them is, like, literally dead for significant portion of the film. Yeah. Yeah, it is a very sad dynamic, like, from the get-go. Like there's no mother in the situation.

She died in childbirth. Then he has the whole alcoholic physical injury side of it. But he's, uh, I don't know, it avoids those tropes of like, yeah, he's the angry alcoholic who's horrible. He's actually like a great dad and they like love him, which like hurts even more when he's gone. And so, yeah, it's about like the way that someone might deal with this level of misery or just the huge. the human condition and going into like these random characters like the swingers and the yeah the judge that was like jerking it in the gooning court and stuff like gooning and court the court the court if there was um i guess the tiniest of nitpicks that was the only reincorporation

that seemed a bit more like okay that's that's more of a stretch compared to the other ones i guess with the judge coming back. Yeah, the movie wouldn't have been that different without it, I guess, but I wasn't offended by it being there for sure. Yeah, me too. I'd only bring that up just as, I guess, one nitpick I could think of. Yeah. And like, it wasn't so consequential anyway.

Like, I don't know exactly what are, like, would she have done community service? Like, I don't know. Yeah, exactly. It was just kind of like a nice callback in a way. Yeah. Yeah, I just didn't need this. I brought this up in, I think it was the substance discussion.

It's just a pet peeve of mine whenever a scene is just shown again, as if I don't remember that it happened, like in the last hour. Where it's like, yeah. But again, nitpick, everything else about it, I utterly adore. Yeah, I just wasn't expecting it to sort of explore this idea of loneliness and disqualiness. loneliness and despair in such a like artful funny way yeah so it really has left me like thinking about these ideas and um man the some of those lines they get out uh in the dialogue about the i've noted it down where is it um that life can only be understood backwards but you have to live it forwards and snails don't go back over their trails what an awesome awesome line that is and it's just

full of stuff like that. And yeah, it avoids just reveling in the, in the darkness of it, which everyone is going to have some darkness in their life. It's unavoidable. And just that, that kind of deep philosophy of like, yeah, you have to have that balance of looking back, but moving forward. And just, yeah, a lot of my favorite films kind of explore these ideas, and this is a new one. I'll definitely be revisiting regularly. I think I like this more than Mary and Max personally. I did love that a lot, too, but I didn't have quite a strong as an emotional reaction as I did to this one. Yeah, I'm going to be thinking about this for a long time.

I think this is kind of easily my favorite film I've seen of this year so far. Nice. And it's been a good-ass year. I've seen a lot of stuff I've loved this year. But this one is like a cut above for me. Yeah, it has been a pretty good year for movies. Yeah, it's Lousy, Christa. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, it's, uh, watching this film, kind of makes me wonder how much trauma Adam Elliott went through in his life as if it wasn't already apparent from like the other things he's made but like holy shit you know at least you're able to express it in an artistic way

and get it out there yeah uh huh is it's it's uh he's really good at making uh traumatic comfort movies for autistic people is how I'd describe Adam Ellie. And, yeah, finding humor in that darkness, too. Just like, stuff like Pinky's Pitty Pit, where, like, she winds up being buried. It's like, really funny and interesting like that.

But, man, yeah, I'm still recovering from watching it. Everybody watch this movie. It's fantastic. Love it. Excellent example of animation for adults and real animation for adults and not porn for children like Sausage Party. I was giving it a high eight out of the theater. I think after this discussion, I'm bumping it up to a nine.

And I'd love to see it again. I'll have to think about how it compares to Marion Max as I've only seen this once. But I was genuinely tempted to just watch it again last night. I actually got sent a screener copy, but it was just like, I had already had plans to see it in the theater by this point. And it was like, okay, well, it's only in the theater for like one more day. I'm going to be in Seattle. Let's do this. Yeah.

And it was kind of interesting seeing it in the theater because, like, I could hear people crying. Yeah. There were people just like fucking, fucking losing it. Yeah, I was kind of happy that I didn't get a ticket for the BFI screening for that reason because I'd be like, oh my God. Yeah. This is, I don't know if I could ever live that down. Yeah.

But yeah, I'm right there with you except I think I liked it. Excuse me. Slightly more. I love that there's just no caveats that you've got to put for this like animation label. It's similar to what I was saying about. Mars Express or whatever. Yeah, I absolutely love this. This is a perfect five star 10 out of 10 for me. It's exactly what I want from animation. But that's not to say that like the every other technical element is exactly what I want to see in film as well. As far as that

writing, the music, it's just, it's just meticulous. And you can tell the time and honesty is just unparalleled to me. So please watch this. Yeah, please watch this. And please anybody working with Adam Elliott, send me his next film when it's new because I'm probably going to love it. Yeah. You know, there's few things you have to worry about by sending me a screener copy early. I would have loved to have seen it at TIF. There was only one screening and it was for distributors only.

It was like an industry. Like, I couldn't even get in his press. It was like, ah, shit. Oh, wow. Maybe they didn't have any other screenings and then wasn't playing at many festivals. Yeah, why are they making it so red? It's a distributor thing. Like, it's all about the distribution.

beaters they make those decisions so madman yo hit me up next time I'm assuming you'll probably be related to his next film that gets made in another 15 years but hopefully sooner I don't know yeah if they're this good I'll wait yeah awesome movie we also saw the Smilers yeah I've been calling it Smilers Smilers part two I guess yeah wasn't very good it was yeah I was I was intrigued by this because no one was really that hype on Smilers 1 from what I remember but Smilers 2 comes out and everyone's like no they did it they fixed Smilers like it's awesome now and I'm like oh shit cool I'm going to check out Smilers now I didn't believe anybody I start watching it but I start watching

it and I'm like wait maybe they're right this opening scene rocks like it's got the the dude from dinner in America which I recently watched and really enjoyed the punk guy from it yeah Kyle Kyle Gowner and I thought that was quite a frenetic, like, cool one-o they had going in there. I was like, wow, this is, I don't remember this energy in that first movie. If we can keep this up, maybe I'll be there with everybody else. And then that like, like, scene ends. Then it's like, oh, it's like a sequel to Smilers.

Yeah, it's the movie again. Yeah. Where you're supposed to be scared that people are doing the Kubrick stare, the Adam shower smile. Yeah, I read a really kind of a, uh, uh, cringy article. about that smile thing, where it was like the director talking about, like, how he was teaching his actors to do the smile,

from the smilers smile. Yeah. I admit that like this conceptually just isn't a freaky thing to me. I guess I'm in the minority for that where like this clearly does connect with a lot of people and a lot of people find this concept scary. And it's like, I think the film's like fairly well made except for the fact that, like,

like the concept is just not interesting to me. Like it's actually at a certain point, it starts becoming like funny to me. When there's like hundreds of people in the room like smiling, crawling around, it's like, it's not scary to me. And it starts,

once it falls into that repetitive structure of like, oh, something's happening. Is it real? Is there a smiler? And then the smiler smiles. And it's like, you're just waiting for the smiler,

I guess, to be tricked by the smiler. My little creature. And it's just another one of those bullshit movies where it's like, okay, the concept is that there's something paranormal happening. They want to kill you. But they're not, if they do, they're not going to do it until the end of the movie. And they're just kind of going to troll you for two hours first.

And so it's like, okay, well, I'm not really feeling any tension because I, what are you going to do? Introduce a new character. That would be cool. Just kill this character and have it not expected. Introduce a new one. do something I expected. Yeah.

But this movie, like, these types of movies just exist to be predictable, right? At least in, at least in like the ring, there was like a mystery being unraveled, right? At least in the ring there were like good characters to follow and like interesting dynamics and like great presentation and score. And sure, I'll agree that there is a lot of production value to this film. Like, that you can definitely see that there was money spent. And you can also definitely see that the director is trying. to do something. He does have some sort of like vision for what he wants. The problem is that that vision is just so relentlessly recycled and uninspired, just like the first film. It just,

it's trying so hard to be other existing things without offering anything new. And it's so irritating and frustrating that things like these are getting funded. Like this is a nice medium budget film. It was like what? Let's see, $28 million. That's a, good amount of money for a horror movie. I would love to see more $30 million horror movies where it's not, it doesn't have to be $100 million and it doesn't have to be Blumhouse 3 million or whatever, right? A good $30 million budget horror movie. Just give it to someone with an actual vision who has new ideas to communicate and new things they want to share. I would love to see that. It's paramount, not Blumhouse, right? So they were able to do it. Yeah.

And it made money. This was successful. So we might, we'll probably get a smile three, a smileers three a smil three if you will this is there's probably the strongest thing about it um outside of how it's like kind of put together is like it just has that marketing advantage of the smiling thing where like that yeah that's just really effective i think just to get people's butts in seats like oh the scary smiling that's the only reason people saw truth or dare it's because like the promotional image like the trailer thumbnails was just like uh Photoshop smile face it's so creepy Yeah, and they like send out people to baseball games or whatever and have them smile in the crowd or whatever. It's like, okay.

Viral marketing. Yeah, exactly. But you mentioned the ring and it's, man, you can't ignore the fucking ring. I love when horror movies do it honestly is have like the rules to the way the creature or the entity or whatever you want to call it like spreads. And the ring that the videotape is actually scary for a start. Yeah. Like, it's a horrifying, like, well-edited, well-made, like montage of scary, uneasy images. The girl crawling out of the TV is horrifying imagery, which the smiling thing doesn't really have.

Yeah. But then, like, it follows as well. It's like another thing similar to the ring and it's got the rules, but it has the whole kind of sexual thing, the way that's being passed along. And that also has, like, the music and everything else going for it. It's like, what part of this is it? that I'm supposed to be, because this is a long-ass film, too. I was really feeling it by a certain point. Uh-huh.

It goes past the two-hour mark. And it's like, you're not really, they start, I was like, okay, there are some, a few angles they could take this that I would find interesting, because I remember the end, it was the only thing I remember from Smilers One is that kind of, when you see the entity at the end, and it's like this big monster thing. I was like, oh, that's kind of fun. I wish we saw more of that. And I thought, oh, maybe that's what they do with Smilers too.

They get like maybe a bit more goofy with it, a bit more Sam Ramey with it or whatever, and, like, have fun with this. entity thing and it's like, oh, it's like the first movie again, you get like the one scene at the end and it's like, oh, that's cool. I wish we could get more of that puppetry and whatever, because that's a fun idea. But like the whole idea of this lead character, this pop star, and how seriously it's taken and how serious that performance is and how like they're trying to explore these ideas of like what it means to be that famous and all the kind of baggage that comes with it. It just doesn't work with the smiling thing to me. Like it,

it doesn't enhance it to me whereas like I mean we have the substance this year that's kind of these sort of ideas explored in a way that I connect with where it has that bombastic over the top tone but it's self-aware and comedic in the way it's presenting it

and the yeah it kind of builds itself in a way that I don't know isn't clashing yeah there's a thematic purpose to the horror genre that it's exploring too like body horror body image right like it connects the piece is fit you have something to express, right? Versus the Smilers too, which is, wouldn't it be scary if they looked at you?

Yeah. And I thought maybe another angle they could take was like, okay, you mentioned the ring and the whole, the loved one in that film when they start like trying to explore, like, what is this? Like, how do we explain this or whatever? And the research that the main character goes into. I thought they were going to do a bit more of that, like explore the Smilers' Law. And they kind of trick you. They're like, yeah, we're going to do that.

Like the halfway point, they introduced this character who's like, had a brother who was affected by the Smilers. But it's just kind of put down again. So, man, why is this so long then? I just wish this was more focused on one of these things. Yeah. Because if it was this production but was like 90 minutes long, you had like the ending scene, maybe I'd enjoy this. bit more but it just it's so repetitive with those jump scares and that that kind of structure to the way the horror is built up to these jump scares and it's like oh I

guess just this again with the smiler guy whoa smile it's a very bullshity type film yeah and the yeah like the consequence of it just takes so long for it to actually sort of like manifest into something that by the time it does I'm kind of like this wasn't really worth the wait for me no like I'd might rather watch a ring it follows the substance. I was even thinking about trapped. Um, or trap, sorry. Yeah, not the band. With the, with the, with the, with the pop star angle, obviously with the, um, I was thinking, man, at least that was like, kind of, kind of funny. There was some similarities. Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk spoilers because there's something that just

is absolutely pissing me off about this film. It's like, first of all, there are no rules, right? So unlike something like the ring or it follows, like, there's, no time limit, right? The ring, every time you see the title card of like the day of the week, it adds a new layer of tension. True, yeah. Yeah. It's not like a ticking time element. Yeah. And the horrific things happening to the character and the things that she discovers, they get elevated over the course of the film. It's a building slow burn kind of, not even that slow. It's It's a building culmination of tension and fear. Anxiety increases over the course of the film.

Many scenes in Smile 2 could have easily just been, you know, like, swapped, right? Interchanged. Didn't really have a sense of build. It didn't have a time limit. There were no clear rules. And even once they pretended to establish rules, by the end of the movie, they're like, actually nothing happened. Yeah. That was the twist.

Nothing actually happened. This entire movie. It was all a dream. Which is the horror trope everyone rags on about for being lame, where it's like, oh, that scared didn't happen. None of it. None of it happened. And what's so funny is, like, from the beginning of the movie, they introduced her as like a pop star. I'm like, okay, well, obviously they're just going to do a thing at the end of the movie where she smiles on stage.

And then the end of the movie is supposed to be like, isn't this more scary knowing that she's infecting more than one person? Like, I said, obviously that. going to happen and then it's coming closer to the end of the movie she's like nowhere near the stage I'm like I still believe it's gonna happen and then and then it's just she wakes up on stage and the demons like actually nothing happened for the last 90 minutes maybe maybe longer and you're on stage now and that's scary and it's like okay well didn't they do they basically did that in like Blumhouse's truth or dare which obviously this is you know ripping

off a lot from even in the first movie it was. You know, at the end of, I forget which one of them, the first or say, was there more than one truth or dare movie? I don't know. At the end of a truth or dare movie, if there's more than one. You know, the thing is uploaded to the internet. And then that's supposed to be more scary because there's more people being infected.

I hate this fake fucking bullshit trope that like if you insist, if you insist a larger sense of scale that it's supposed to have more impact. It's like, it's like all these sequels that are like, oh, we're going to do the same fight scene, but there's more people in the fight scene. Or like, this is a bigger one. Like everything is just this like surface level idea of how to communicate an emotion or how to get someone to feel something. You can't just imply something is larger or there's more of something.

And then it's suddenly more effective. You don't get scared more by like xenomorphs when there's 800 of them. If you're not doing anything artistically to instill a sense of fear, you can't just say, oh, there's more of them. Isn't that crazier now? This is the same shit. And so like... Yeah, it's coasting on it's one thing.

It's my life. If that twist is being made for the purpose of us being more scared that it's like, oh, that she's on stage and now it's going to get more people. It's bullshit. Like, it's not worth the twist. The twist, the twist is that nothing happened the entire time. It's not worth it. Yeah. It wasn't even scary. They would, that would feel like, if that happened at like the 19 minute point and then you saw the consequence, like, immediately and it was like insane, like over the top or something. It would have to be a comedy. And did, and did feel like an escalate. Well, yeah, that's the thing. That's the only way this is like, it works to me as a concept, though.

Like, the smiling thing. I guess, um, I guess. Yeah, people just find it scary if you find that smiling thing scary I guess it's gonna work for you on some level like for a horror film to work like I guess you have to find it scary on some level but like going back to like the narrative consequence of the like repetitive smile thing The first time I actually felt like it was an escalation for the main character in a way that was like oh this could be like fun to watch the consequence of this was when she kills her mother she's like tricked to kill her mother by the smiler It's like oh this feels like something there's actually something happening here. But then it kind of veers off to the character I mentioned earlier, the law guy who's like, yeah, if we just freeze you and do a surgery on you, then we could deal

with this, this smiler once and for all. But yeah, it doesn't really, it doesn't really deliver anything. No. It's the whole, like, that whole thing with her friend and that, like, reveal, the Joker 2019, like, tear reveal. Yeah. She was never real all along. So, am I supposed, Like, is that, am I supposed to be scared by that? That reveal doesn't matter because it's within a larger reveal that even, none of that even happened anyway. Yeah. So, like, there's only one reveal that matters and it's the ending and it doesn't matter. Like, it's just such bullshit.

Like, what? Who cares? Who cares about any of this? Yeah. I... Voss Water cares, though. Who? Voss Water.

You know, that's that product placement. It was egregious. Every scene she was drinking Voss water So somebody Like asked about that And the director said that they weren't even It wasn't even an official thing Really?

Yeah So I don't know if I believe that Or it just seems silly not to have some kind of a deal It seemed like it was getting a lot of attention Yeah The Voss was According to the director It's incidental

Okay Right Yeah Well it was memorable for that For the Voss Yeah. Makes me want to drink water out of a glass bottle. So I did a really bad note for this movie that I'm hoping you can like remind me what it means. Sure.

I just noted down smile dog jump scare parentheses with sound. Was there like a smile dog in this at some point? Maybe you mistyped car. car. Because remember she's like on the bed and her friends on the bed and then she's like smiling because it's so scary. And then it cuts and there's like her eyes turn into headlights and she beeps. Oh yeah, I remember that one. It's something to do with a dog though. I don't know why I would have put smile dog. Jumpskin. I don't remember a smiling dog or maybe you thought it would have been a great idea to have a dog look at her and smile because I think that's a cool.

If you make Smil 3, I think Smilthrigan, if you make that, you could have her go to the zoo and then all. Oh, smiling giraffe. All the animals will have this smile. That would be fun. Smiling bird. Yeah. She looks up in a tree and a pigeon's mazzar. Some of the CG in this movie was fucking atrocious.

Like when they did the big eyes, like Tim Burton's big eyes. That was funny. Yeah. Holy shit. Yeah. Most of, the overwhelming majority of scares in this movie were just funny. And I've said, I've said from the beginning of Smile 1, I mean, not the beginning runtime, but since that movie was released, I've always said that movie would make a perfect

horror comedy parody film, right? And I've been itching for something like that, you know, the scary movie was fun. It doesn't have to be like complete airplane level. randomness or anything. But the first movie already exists as an unintentional parody of other horror films because it's borrowing and ripping and ripping off

of so much and so clearly that every time it does something I'm like oh you're just doing this, you're doing the ring, you're doing it follows, you're doing Blumhouse Truth or Dare, you're doing blah blah blah blah every single fucking scene is one of those and I'm like damn if you just had some self-awareness and you were like making comment

about those films, or you just had like a horror comedy tone, you know, more of like a Sam Ramey type thing. I think that A, the directing style would have worked better for the film. And B, like, there's literally a scene in the first smile movie that if you remove it from that film and place it in a horror comedy parody and don't change anything, it works great. The birthday party scene where the kid opens the present and it's a dead cat, and then she cries and then falls on a table and it breaks like fucking slapstick. Like, that's a great scene.

I was laughing. That was a hilarious scene. I love that scene. Yeah, I found the first smiler pretty funny. And not just the fact that, um, saucy bacon was the main character. That's a cruel name. What was Kevin thinking with that? Why have you done that to your daughter?

Yeah, they could have had the best of both worlds with that, you know? Like, if it was written with that kind of finesse where they know, most people are going to find the smiling thing scary so you could get both audiences in there you know exactly the actual horror fans who love the smiling and are all into that but then like the Sam Ramey-ish kind of fans that like the wink wink nudge nudge like stuff going on too but instead of yeah it's not really not for me

that's for damn sure smile dog jumps go with sound saucy bacon isn't that cruel that is fun I don't know if in Canada they call sausages sausages as much as they do over here or like in Australia, but I've always known them with sausages. Are you on a saucy? Like, uh, so I just think that's cruel. Socky bacon and the double pork name.

Yeah. It's too far. I, even if we don't go with sausages, like, it's like, S-A-U-C-Y is how it sounds. Like there's a lot of sauce on that thing. Oh, right. Yeah, true. I didn't even think about that. double entendre of a food.

Yeah. Yeah, the first movie was funnier also because, like, it was a little more rough around the edges. Like, a lot of the performances were pretty bad in that movie. And so I guess there's an improvement in terms of, like, the production value of Smilers, too. The performances, there's a lot more effort and talent. But, you know, in the greater picture of it, it makes the movie.

more boring for me because it's just not as funny. Like, there's few things that worked for me about Smile 1. One of them was the unintentional humor aspect, right? And there was just much less of that in this film. I wish it didn't take itself so fucking seriously. I wish it was a horror comedy. Yeah, I agree. And, yeah, now this director is going to be remaking possession.

Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah. Oh, no. Isn't that the worst? That's more scary than anything that happened in either these films Scenario concept, that's for sure Oh no Existential horror

Why though? It's not even a film that has like It's not like remaking Halloween or something It's not got their name recognition It's like a film person movie Isn't it? It's not a movie that you could improve also And that Yeah

There's like literally no point to a remake And for this story For the, like, what are we going to get? We're going to get, like, are you going to just load it with shitty jump scares? Are you going to load it with, like, a bunch of uninspired nonsense that's just clearly borrowed from other movies? Like, what are you going to fucking do with it, dude? Like, come on. Oh, dude.

Like, at best, it'll be fine. Right? That's a horrible idea, yeah. It's a terrible idea. I only really trust Luca nowadays if I hear there's something being remade. Yeah. I'd be interested in that. But, no, not this one.

Yeah. It's horrifying. Yeah, smile, too. I didn't even look at my notes just because I'm, it's such an annoying movie. Yeah, a lot of stupid-ass jump scares, some peaking audio, awful CG at points for sure. Oh, yeah, here's something that kind of piss me off. So where there's in quick succession, within like, five minutes there's like two different scenes one of them is her I guess reliving the

memory one of the scenes of her reliving the memory of her car accident and you clearly see her leg injury and the bone poking out and then within five minutes of that she's doing the dance rehearsal she falls over and then the bone's sticking out and it's the exact same way but if they just swapped the order of those two scenes, then I wouldn't be thinking, oh, this is a fake thing that didn't happen because the bone injury is the exact same as what we just saw. Yeah. Like, do it the other way around?

Why do you want it to be more stupid? Why do you want anybody who's seen more than one movie in their lifetime to be able to tell exactly what's going to happen, right? Why would you want someone to not be affected by this supposed scare that's happening? Like, by the end of it, it turned out none of it was real anyway. But like you didn't want anyone to believe anything for like even a second, right? Not even this like tiny moment. There was such a clash with that stuff because actually in a vacuum,

I kind of like those scenes with this like pop star dealing with this trauma of like a car crash. But then it's just like I could just watch like Black Swan or something like this if I wanted to deal with. Yeah. Like a performer having this kind of internal struggle. And it, yeah, there's some good presentation, I guess, with like the way that. car crash is down and I think her performance is solid for the most part but it's it's just not in service of something I care about like it and it doesn't escalate in a way that I can really get attached to anything that's happening either it just kind of gets more humorous to me

um so yeah I don't get more entity I don't really get this lead character or the scares or the the atmosphere that I'm just I'm just left kind of bored by the end of it yeah and now you know my prediction so this is successful enough to make a smil three smil thirers wait smil threers um

they're gonna have to retcon the ending of this one because they're not going to start from oh there's thousands of people with it like that's not going to be the starting point the only way these movies can get made is if you're focusing on like one or two characters right

like otherwise what the fuck are you going to do it's going to be as disappointing thing is Jurassic World Dominion. Because I was like, you know, the way that they ended the fucking second one, I forget the name of it. The way that they ended that, I'm like, how are they going to write themselves out of this one? And then they just barely showed it. In Dominion, it was just like, oh, we're... They didn't do anything with that.

Yeah, this is happening elsewhere and we're not going to show it on screen. Dinosaurs are like hanging around, but we're just going to like hint at it in like a couple shots and that it doesn't matter, actually. That thing that we used at the end of the movie to imply like a greater sense of scale or tension and make you want to buy a ticket for the third one, that's actually not happening. And that's it going to happen with this one. No, they could do like a, I also call it Amores Peros, like all these different characters that overlap with the smilers. Here you go, that would be cool. They should do a Roshaman. Yeah, but I think you're probably right.

It probably will boil down to like one, maybe a detective again or something. That's like, well, all these people are being smiled across the world. And how are we going to solve this one? Is the smiler virus gone mad? Smiler virus. You got a mascot. Are they going to swap the E for a three? They have to.

Title and turn it. It's an obligation. It'll be on at least one poster. It might not be the official title, but it'll be on at least one poster. marketing material. That's my prediction. And you could build in the like, you know, the asky, like, cat smile with a three. Ooh.

Build that into it, you know what? Have a cat be a smiler? Sorry, I meant to say, ooh-woo. I think that would sell. That would, that's a new angle to take. Hmm, the pathoogyn. I think that if somebody gets word of auditions happening for Smile 3, let me know I'll fly to LA and I'll do my fucking smile okay and they will hire me

as a side character or a background character because they'll see that fucking smile they'll be like gotta have it and hopefully they don't know who I am and I can just get into like one scene would you be willing to be one of the naked smilers hell yeah they do in the part two yeah of course I can work hell yeah oh yeah that's how I'll show up to my audition Yeah, you don't even, they don't even ask you. Yeah. Naked smile.

I can't take this smiling. That's what the title should be, naked smiler. That was the only part. I was kind of like, oh, this atmosphere is nearly getting me with this naked smiler. This was kind of built up in a semi-interesting way. But it's like all of the tensions just evaporated the second, like, I see it properly. And like walking towards the camera with the smile. I really can't take it seriously.

I think it's what's sad about that scene in particular is that like if you were to believe it as something that was actually happening, it would almost be scary. Like conceptually, the idea of like a super crazed fan breaking into your fucking house. Yeah. That's why it kind of worked better for me. You know, like you can't even rationalize with because they're just fucking insane. That's conceptually scary. But then, you know, based on it being the movie that it is, you know, it's not happening.

And it's just a hallucination and she's fine. So who cares? Yeah. Who gives a shit? I don't know. I guess I just don't like this type of horror where the entity or the creature thing just kind of messes with you. Just a little trolling. In this.

Yeah, that's a good way of boom. That's what they do. It does kind of troll you. It's just blueballing the entire movie and then maybe something happens at the end. Until it makes you kill your mom, I guess. Fuck. It's so annoying. What do people get out of this shit?

But like, is, did I miss like a law explanation of why it like messes with you? Is it like... No! It's because other movies do that. That's why. It's because other movies do it. Yeah. Yeah.

They don't really indulge in it or, uh, present it in a way that feels cool or new or fresh like, like that it follows one or whatever. Yeah. Give us some like rules at any point. Uh-huh. Yeah. Well, switching up protagonist would be cool. Um, even though I know everyone loves this character here. I don't know, lots of good ideas, but it just doesn't come together to me.

It's like bloated and just goofy by a certain point. Lots of good ideas from other movies. Done worse than every other movie that it's ripping off except truth or dare. That's the exception. That's the one movie it rips off that it's not worse than. Was the, this kind of motif it has of turning the camera upside down for these like upside down, establishing shots and stuff like this. Was that like supposed to be a

turn your frown upside down thing? But with the visuals? It's just other movies have done it so he's going to do it. That's, it's really that simple. I guess. I guess. I don't know. I've just,

the concept is just so weak to me. I feel like this director may be, I guess we'll see with possession, how that comes together, but uh yeah this was a no for me i think it was a lot better than that first one uh but this would only be like a two star for me there were points where it was slightly higher but as it was going on i just i couldn't get on with this i'm giving this one a two out of ten this is worse than the first one for me production values much higher but like i'm if i were to re-watch one of

those films it would be the first one there's no point in seeing this one ever again oh yeah absolutely useless yeah I don't know I don't know if I could watch that first one again I think I probably would watch the second one over it but I hear what you're saying the birthday scenes on YouTube that was how I recapped it

I just searched like the Smiler entity part one I was like oh yeah that was like the one bit I enjoyed I'm all caught up now yeah cool and there's not much to it you wouldn't really be confused if you hadn't seen the first film.

No. Although you might want that saucy bacon, uh, recap. Yeah. Yeah. I'm hungry. Terrible. Yeah, a little bit, a little bit stinky. Yeah.

Certainly didn't make me smile. Hey. There's a film recommendation. I recommended Iron Man. Tetsuo, the Iron Man. Tony Stark? Yeah.

It was a weird it was a weird start to the MCU but they found their footing. This is a Japanese film directed by Shinya Tsukamoto from 1989. There's apparently sequels. I didn't really feel like watching the sequels.

This is the type of movie where I feel like like, you know what? This works as its own thing. I don't know what you would do with a sequel. Maybe I'd be curious about it at some point. It is black and white, probably for budgetary reasons, as you do in 1989, making a very low budget film. Apparently it was between $100,000 to $130,000. It is very unconventional and very extreme and

I had a really good time with it honestly I really enjoyed this one very wacky very crazy very visceral it's definitely crazy yeah

what do you think yeah I there was a lot appreciated about it I think it's a cult, one of those cult films through a reason. But my actual experience with it was headache inducing. Maybe that was made worse from this cold I have right now.

But how did I know it now? It feels like being put inside a washing machine with a bunch of loose metal. Yeah, that was it. And I feel like this is going to be one of those ones where a lot of my critiques of it will be exactly what you love about it. Yeah, probably. But yeah, by, I had to take a phone call about 36 minutes into the film. That's why I have that time code so specifically in my head. But after that phone call was over, I was like, oh man, really?

Like 36 minutes. I was kind of happy of like what I'd experienced so far. And I was like, that's about all I need of this kind of, this tone, this atmosphere. Sure, it does escalate from that point to even more craziness. but I don't know, I'm a narrative guy, I'm a character's guy. I like going to raise it now and again, I guess, with a... But man, I find a certain point, I can best illustrate it with... I've got a prop right here.

Once you have like this... Yeah! Like, for... By that 40-minute point, I'm kind of just like, I've had enough. I think the prosthetics are really cool and the design of it is awesome but the screaming and the abstract nature of it I get it

it's cool as creative I like the stop motion in the and the wackiness of it but it feels like it's so kind of aggressive and extremist I found it exhausting honestly by a certain point

and yeah I was kind of of weirdly reminded of like Segler of all things where another film I don't really like but appreciate it as an artistic piece more than like I actually like watching it where I feel like it is exploring these ideas quite well and there's this this kind of sexual element to it which I very horny defined kind of very horny more drilly I would say and there but it was kind of hitting me more in more of a community which I'm not sure is fully intentional with the when the the drill dick is coming out and the the kind of I was reading about the the style of of acting the director was intentionally asking them to deliver an overacting style which to me was exhausting is the word for it I was just getting like sick of that kind of yeah I like what you're presenting in as like a for a scene maybe but like it's the it's the it's this one kind of emotion for like an hour and ten minutes for me. So I'm just getting so,

and without there being characters and it being so like abstract, I mean, there are characters, but like a more traditional narrative, say, I found it quite difficult at a certain point to get much out of it beyond a pure appreciation of like, well, you really took this to its extreme, I guess. But even then, I feel like it's inspirations, I just, I would much rather watch be it a videodrome or whatever. I mentioned the substance again. It's kind of like, that's kind of more what I'm looking for,

or the obvious kind of comparison is like to taint, which has, you know, sort of a direct overlap with the kind of metal combination. But I feel like I got way more of a thought-provoking experience from a film like that, and that's more what I'm personally looking for from an artistic exploration of the same thing.

kind of aesthetic and yeah that sort of thing yeah I mean sure I do agree that you know there's more to get out of a film that has you know more deeper meanings for sure and more of like a narrative exploration but I what I do like about this film is that even though it it has clear inspirations it is very inspired by other films and you know I can think of other films while I'm watching it. It doesn't feel completely useless in the sense that it doesn't, uh, it doesn't become devoid of its own personality. I really admire that this film just kind of does whatever it wants. It's almost like a really long like shitposty YouTube video in a way. Um, especially with those like stop motion elements and like just. Where they're like flowing through the city. Yeah. Like the,

the movement of characters across the street. just kind of like frame jumping. I do think that the comedic angle is, it has to be somewhat intentional, right? I think that especially with Sam Ramey being, you know, a clear inspiration in there, I think that this would have to have some level of self-awareness, at least to the ridiculousness of what it's showing. And especially, you know, if they're telling the actors to overact, I think that that's kind of a giveaway too, right?

Yeah, and like the dialogue that the big monstrosity at the end is like saying, it's so over the top. We can mutate this whole world into metal. We can rust the world into dust of the universe. We can destroy this whole fucking world. That's like verbatim, like what it is saying. But like that's, in describing that, that sounds like something I should enjoy. So what is it about the way this is put together that I found just kind of exhausting? And I guess it is just that kind of, you know, that I do like the industrial sound at first.

It is funny going through my notes for this. Like at first, I'm like, oh, that's like a really cool decision. That's like an interesting. I love in this atmosphere, this is like dirty and gross. And it's like chaotic and aggressive. But, yeah, as it goes on, I'm just kind of like more and more tired by it. And by the time it gets to like that chase scene when they are like flying through Tokyo. Um, in the stop motion style, I'm just like, I could have done with this being like a half an hour exploration of these ideas.

Cause I feel like that, I feel like it was actually explored quite well within that time. Um, for me, for what I'm looking for from something this kind of scatter shot and chaotic. Yeah. This is a movie that I feel like I could put on for a bunch of drunk people. And it would go well. Yeah. Yeah. I think, yeah, with the hour, if you could have, like, conversations and stuff and, uh, go in and out the room and, you know, mingle like that, that would be my ideal way to see this again.

And I'd be like, okay, I've had enough of this for now. I'm just going to go, like, have a cigarette or something. I'll come back for, come and get me when the, uh, the big motorbike, cock drill monster is back. I mean, like, yeah, so even though, sure, there's a lot of, like, tonal repetition, I think that, like, design-wise, there is, like, a building elevation of what it's showing. I think that it does get wackier and crazier over the course of the film, and so much of the, not just the design choices, but also just how they're implemented and the execution of a lot of, like, practical effects. I'm just so impressed by and a lot of the action is cheated very well

a lot of the gore is like really convincing and especially considering it's like a super low budget thing you can really see where their passions lie you can really see just how much they cared to execute the film in this way

and you know it is shitposty and it is it is very unserious in ways but I just I really adore that it was just doing exactly what I wanted to do. And it was like, you know, fuck it. There's no rules. We don't need to tell a real story.

You know, it was just, it was like, let's just make something fun. And that's it. And there's no baggage. There's no expectation. There's no demand for you to analyze it in any way. And I think that that has, there's space for that kind of thing. And I enjoy that. Do you think the fan base of this film, uh,

uh, agrees with that, though, as far as like, uh, the lack to analyze? I feel like it's one of those that, I was reading some stuff like people comparing it to like a race ahead and having

all these like theories and, uh, I mean, ideas of what the metal fetishist means and, uh, what it's saying with the drill dick and, uh, this sort of stuff.

Uh, I mean, you can analyze it. It's just not demanding you do. right it's not it's not it's not insisting upon itself lois yeah i wouldn't say it's insisting upon itself either i i actually love the look and style of it i just i just don't care about anything that happens within it like i'm just a sort of emotionally static throughout it outside of the odd like well that was put together really well i'm really appreciating this for that budget and like how much of a nightmare

this must have been to like make and especially edit, I guess, um, with that shoestring budget and like that reading about the the casting crew, like just people leaving and them having to improvise like all these little things and like actors having to switch in for fake shams. Furnaces. And yeah. So I love that kind of stuff about it. But then I'm kind of talking more about the, the meta story of the movie than my actual experience with watching it. And I'm thinking like, Would I want to watch this again? I don't know.

Maybe like the last 15 minutes I would enjoy watching again, but then at that point I'm watching it as a short instead of a full kind of like a narrative film. And despite how short it is, it's only what, like an hour or 10 minutes or so? Yeah. I was feeling it for, yeah, which I guess ain't good for me for how short that is. Yeah, I mean, I think that if it were any, longer I would have felt it for sure. I just think that like the culmination of like what it was showing and how it just it escalated every single time, you know, we, I was being shown new

things over the course of the runtime I feel. And even though it was, you know, a lot of the similar tone and similar presentation in ways, the visual concepts like the, um, the soldering or soldering like kind of you know melting metal welding kind of scenes like that was like a really cool execution and you know the fucking cat

the cat turning into metal and like you know some of the imagery is just like still in my head after seeing it like the incredible stop motion with the like the skull like that was a really cool image that was a great shot yeah and the the like wires moving

around and the sound design is good for that as well. Mm-hmm. Like whipping sounds and those industrial sounds that were getting out. Yeah, that was cool for me. Yeah, it's like so extreme in terms of like the conceptual cringe that it's offering. Like cringe in a good way. Like teeth on metal is like a lot of it. And then like the guy's fingernails on the grate and just like the sound design working

in synchronicity with that. It's showing me something that's extreme. And I like being shown extreme things. I like having an actual emotional reaction to something. And sure, I'm not, you know, thinking about a story. And I'm not really thinking about the characters. It's almost kind of like a tech demo art piece kind of like montage in a way. But I really enjoy it for what it is in that sense.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with like the practical effects and everything and the, that was put together and especially like the the detail of having like I noted down in some of the shots with the the big prosthetic on his arm and this like kind of steam coming off it and this kind of kind of steam punky type thing going on there was making me think of like alien with the weirder combination of organic and I just like the idea of the metal fetishist like that

being a starting point is like that's a crazy idea like I want to see where that goes and I've seen like mixed reports on the other movies. that you mentioned in the intro. I just, I love the name of the sequel, Body Hammer. I think that's a cool, ass name. But I think it's supposedly a bit more of a traditional narrative. And I put it on for like five minutes, but I was just so kind of tired from this first movie that I wasn't in the mood or headspace.

So maybe that one would connect a bit more of me if it has a bit more of like a traditional narrative alongside some of the craziness of the visuals and more of a budget. But it seems like it's diminishing returns with the trilogy, though. Like no one really says to watch the third one. And I don't really know much of this director outside of it. But yeah, it's just one of those times like Saylor, where it's like this is a classic, everyone's saying, how important it is and how influential it is.

And I can see that through that kind of historical lens, but I'm just, my experience is limited by what I'm actually seeing, frame by frame, as a whole. I feel like I like the concept more than what I'm actually watching in the end. And sure, there are images and ideas I will be plucking from it and are memorable. But in the same way that, you know, I went to the tape modern recently and there was a bunch of, I had a bunch of similar experiences with a lot of the video art on the, on the installations there,

where it's like, these are cool ideas. And man, this is like slow and lingering in a way that's like, So abstract and not really getting an emotional reaction out of me outside of that frustration or Bombardment which I don't know that's art. That's that's that's part of it like and that like aggression is definitely part of it. So I don't know he might consider that a Successful happy response as like an artistic piece, which is funny. Some people on the subreddit were like freaking out and my rating I gave it as if it's like, oh, you like movies, so you should like it by default. Um, it's like, uh, well,

what do you want me to do? You want me to just lie? Yes. Oh, yeah, I loved it. You should watch this. Even though I was pulling my hair out when I was actually watching it. Uh, yeah, it's definitely an appreciate more than actually like, like for me. Yeah, this,

this to me is like kind of like the inverse of jean d'ilment you know like both both could belong in like an art house museum both both could operate occupy separate spaces in terms of like you know just being played on a tv in a museum and just talking about like yeah how it affected culture but they're both going for like exact opposite like tones yeah and it's both like an intentional artistic statement in that way. It's like this is, yeah, one hour, it's frenetic, it's crazy, it's sporadic, and then the de omen slow plodding, making its point through the frustration of its runtime and repetition.

Yeah. There were parts of this that reminded me of that Ronald McDonald insanity YouTube video. Oh yeah. Wow. I haven't thought about that a while. Classic. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe I was just in like a bad mood or something. I think so. Because I hear what you're saying.

But yeah. Maybe watching with a crowd would be more fun or something. It would be a good midnight madness. Yeah, I'd watch this for a midnight madness. But like putting this on just for fun, the fun of the game. Maybe to show somebody certain scenes from it. But even then I don't know if I could hack, sitting through the whole thing again. I just think that like the presentation of this film was so expressive. A lot of like extreme camera movements and tilted angles and like close ups and the editing worked really well for me. Like I'm a huge fan of films that show like when you're cutting between different scenes or different shots, especially like frequently within a scene. I like when the audio design is synced with the cuts.

It kind of adds this like really jumpy and uneasy feeling to the film where it shows a much more clear intent with the editing when it's synchronized in that way. You know, visceral, I've already used that word, but it is a really visceral experience, you know, even ignoring the practical effects and body horror. just the way that it's using the the language of filmmaking to communicate a tone, I just, I really connect with. I'm a huge fan of that type of thing. Yeah. Yeah, there are cool shots I know down like the, there was an ongoing visual motif with like faces being framed, like perfectly in half. There was that cool shot with the phone call where the camera's kind of swinging left, swinging right. It is frenetic. It's crazy. Also shout out to, the when it does get to the big monstrosity at the end and there's like a big kind of like the

substance like big creature thing and that the the face of it kind of stretches out and this long neck comes out and it's like this big model yeah which i thought was that was cool um he's going for that tree star yeah yeah i um love the soundtrack very industrial you know I'm assuming nine inch, when did nine inch nails start making music? I think in the 80s, right? I'm wondering what kind of. Late 80s, wasn't it? I wonder.

I'm pretty sure they made a song for the third one, even. Oh, yeah? That makes sense. I was reading. Or something like this. Yeah, kind of like Silent Hill, Akiri Yamaoka vibes, although that obviously came after. Yeah, it's very, very unhinged.

Yeah, it's unhinged. I love the, the, the, baby, the face in the TV where there's this weird baby laugh for like two seconds and it comes back to it every once in a while. That was fun. I love, I love how infrequent the dialogue is. And when it shows up, it is funny. You want a taste of my sewage pipe. It's funny. That's a good one. Your future is metal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Over the course of the film, you know, like it, to me, it was just kind of like so amusing as it started out for sure. But over the course of it,

I felt like it was growing on me and kind of differentiating itself from just purely a shitpost to a legitimate work of art. I think that, you know, you could have the same concept executed by somebody else and it would have turned out entirely differently.

There are, you know, genuinely disturbing, horrifying concepts and imagery and execution. And so, you know, even as a horror movie, even though I'm not taking it completely seriously, there's definitely like aspects and elements within this film that do successfully create like a horror movie vibe, like a good horror movie for me within it. Even if the whole thing, I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't put it on to like scare people. I put it on to like laugh with.

Yeah, something campy about it. Yeah, but those elements definitely exist. And they're really well executed. There's a lot of talent going into it. Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely creative and unique. I'm just not watching it again. And, you know, I do think it is a legitimate work about it.

It's just that it doesn't speak to me, really. Mm-hmm. I'm just way more into what it inspired. You're not into the vacuum penis, woman? Well, yeah, that was also. but I prefer drill dick Alex I'm dying to ask you this question do you know what Sandy Cheeks cock-vore is

I don't but I can kind of intuit it I thought you would have known Sandy Cheeks cock-vore yeah there's a sub-reddit for it like Oh well sign me up

it's like one of those things where it's like there's enough images of it or maybe just maybe just the first image was just like so funny that every image after that point

was like half ironic or it's just one guy with a very specific fetish commissioning a lot of artists which has happened before wow it's got lots of members it's the same reason why there's so much

Falco and Star Fox macro pornography of them destroying cities it's literally just one guy with a lot of money commissioning A lot of artists for one specific thing. Man.

What was the fetish angle that made those connections to the Sandy Cheeks cock vore? Well, I mean, I saw a woman with a vacuum penis and I was like, oh, Sandy Cheeks Cock4. I wonder if Alex knows about this. And so I needed to ask you. Well, I do know. Oh, thank you. I've introduced Alex to Sandy Cheeks Cockwar.

Hot posts eight days ago. She's addicted to the destruction. And she's like, naked Sandian. indeed barreling through a city. So that's like a really specific fetish, like destroying cities. Yeah. Like Godzilla style. Yeah.

It's called, I mean, if they're like larger than the city, it's called like like macro, if they're like really big. And so a lot of like Kaiju fans are like that. Dude. Not my thing, but you know. I filtered by top. the whole time, this is, this is crazy. Okay, fuck.

I mean, yeah, cool. Hell yeah. I'm gonna have to, I'm just gonna look at Top. Okay, now I'm on the same time. I'm seeing what you see. This is, this is wild. I think there was like one image that started at all sort of thing. Let's see, Top.

The crossover with the Magic School Bus. Oh my god. Sandy's enormous, uh, peeing. Vacuuming. The magic school bus. Please let this be a normal field trip. Oh, that's so funny. Yeah, so that's the, not with the school bus in it, but that I think that's the image

that started at all. Is there just something funny about a vacuum penis? Yeah, that is an interesting concept for sure. Yeah. Hopefully, uh, hopefully this director can, uh, Maybe for the fourth one. You know, Tetsuo, Tetsuo Sandy Cheeks, Cockball. Oh my God.

Cross over. That'd be cool. AI. Yeah. It's time. Oh, my God. 18,000 members. Fuck me.

I mean, it's a pretty funny subreddit. I'm not subscribed to it. I just know it exists. Oh, there's a 9-11 one. Great. Oh, Christ. It always is. Well, now you know.

You're welcome. House is unhinged as this goddamn movie. Well, I mean, that's a good reason why I was reminded of it. Oh, yeah, Sandy Cheeks Cockpore. Eight out of ten for Sandy Cheeks Cockpore. Also the movie, Tetsuo the accent. I would give the... Sandy subreddit a nine out of ten

but I would give Tetsu the Ironman I think I gave this a right down the middle two and a half stars five out of ten appreciate it when I like it it's creative and unique and I think all the things I dislike about it are exactly what the people who love it love about it so hell yeah go for it

question time just going to blow my nose then I'll question you need a vacuum for that nose Christ Someone please don't draw that Oh my god Oh my god Right let's do some questions then

From the Sardonicust community Head over to the suggestion thread Over on the subreddit If you want to leave something for a future episode Just like shadow conspiracy did Has any movie caused you to actually get sick Or even nauseous After watching Terror 53

Was just reading some reviews And people were saying How sick they got Same for Terrify too, but can honestly say has never happened to me. Love the show, boys. Stoke to hear you'll talk about Nosferatu soon. Yeah, I can't wait for that as well. I have a couple answers.

Yes. One I mentioned, I think, around the time I watched it, Pinkfamingo. Nice. Has something that genuinely made me like, oh my God, am I, like, going to be sick of my mouth right now? The licking the whole house scene. There's something about that was like, ooh, that's like, Oh, that's like creatively gross.

Mm-hmm. Don't like that. That is making me kind of feel nauseous. That's not even like the number one most disgusting thing in the film. No, it's not. But for some reason, that was the one where it's like, oh, that's really like, because normally it's not really something that happens to me. Yeah.

Outside of like another example I can think of is like some of the violence in martyrs specifically, like blades being scraped across skin and things like this, like rusty, blades and that kind of thing. So it doesn't really make me nauseous, but it makes me like tense up. I feel extremely uncomfortable. But Pinkfamingo takes the cake for nausea. That's for damn sure.

Yeah, I don't, uh, I don't get nauseous at films. Maybe like the Lion King 2019 made me want to vomit, but. Yeah, I get, I get like a good cringe reaction out of things, like a visceral. like, I like when I you know,

sometimes I like jump back or I like my arms move up I get like a physical reaction out of seeing something you know

some of those things in martyrs you know some of those things in Tetsuo the Iron Man yeah yeah the fork in the mouth and stuff like that

it's pretty pretty cringe but not really nausea inducing yeah yeah I don't I don't really get

stomach sick from like art i don't think yeah i hadn't until pink flamingo it's i mean it's a crazy movie i'd recommend film fans watch it but be prepared speaking and liking thank you um bucking beasts has this to say hey guys so it looks like the top 10 highest grossing films for 2024 are unfortunately sequels. We've seen the online space beg for more original films, but we hardly see those films get a big financial return. It looks like Hollywood might just focus on sequels slash spinoffs on already popular franchises. I was wondering, what are your takes on this situation?

Is the audience to blame for enabling this type of creativity, or is there something else that hasn't been taken into account? I appreciate the podcast, and I hope you guys are having a wonderful day. The audience is entirely to blame, yes. Yeah, explain. I'm looking at the top 10 right now. I saw Dune Part 2 in theaters. Yeah. I did not see any of the other ones in theaters. I'm going to get the list up.

Inside Out 2. Deadpool and Wolverine. Despicable Me 4. Dune Part 2. Godzilla X. Kong. The New Empire. Kung Fu Panda 4. Venom the last dance.

Beetlejuice. Beatlejuice. Bad boys, ride or die. Kingdom of the planet of the apes. Kung Fu pandas on there? And then it keeps going. Twisters. Alien Romulus.

I've seen about half of those. And then you have to get to like number 13 before what is it ends with us what the fuck is that? Oh yeah. Sony pictures based on a book. The Wild Robots based on a book. Quiet Place Day 1 is a sequel. Garfield movies of preexisting IP. Gladiator 2, Joker 2.

Jesus, if is on the fucking hell. If is based off of a book, right? No. Is that the first? I think so, yeah. Actually, I'll have to look this out. I don't know. It might be Krasinski's original idea.

It's not Harold in the Purple Cray. on which I can fuse it with often. Yeah, the purple thing. It's easy to get them mixed up. Wow, yeah, that's bleak. Yeah, wow. I think, yeah, that, okay, so the, you have to get to number 20

to find the first, like, actually original IP, and it was considered a box office bomb because the budget was so high. The full guy. 21 is the fall guy Wow yeah That was based off of something right Oh was it

What was the original one then Let's find out Loosely based on the 1980s TV series So loosely based I guess Wow Okay But previously existing IP Yeah

The audience is to fucking blame And uh You know as much as we all agree That within our audience especially, we would be watching things like Mars Express or memoir of a snail if they had had a proper release. There's not enough of us to really institute that much of a change. We can try to spread our ideas, the pathogen, so that hopefully other people figure shit out and support original ideas. Like, I just, I don't know.

People are gonna watch the Minecraft movie. Nobody's even expecting that to be good, but people are gonna see it. Adults are gonna see it. Oh yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's probably gonna make a billion, Billy easy. Mm-hmm. I'm just looking at like out of these top ten, I can make a case for maybe one.

That was stand the test of time and be like, yeah, that's a great film. It's gonna be revisited and be part of something. And that's doom part two. Mm-hmm. Uh, that's like the only one, I think. It's like, man. At least when like the old other Kung Fu Pandas were in the top ten, it was like, there were good movies.

It was like atrocious that film. That was a scam type film. It was horrendous. Yeah. We rewarded it. Yeah, there was something domery about that, I guess. And yeah, I saw it inside out too, but I don't remember anything about it. I remember the anxiety character.

That was kind of fun. Seems like one of those. Yeah. So it's... How far do we have to go down to see like an indie movie that I like? Terrifyer 3 is in the top 40. Challenger's 37. Long legs?

I didn't like that one. I didn't really either, but it worked as far as I'm making a bunch of money. Furiosa. I suppose this is. sequel. Civil War. It's there. That's kind of red one. Right underneath Joker. I forgot that even came out this year. Nice. Red one might overtake Joker. It genuinely might. Is it purely the audience or is it like being trained? Like where does it lie? It's like a chicken or egg thing? Well, I mean, yeah, it's purely the audience in the same sense that like the results of a

election or purely the voters. Sure, there's propaganda. Temple Wolverine propaganda. Yeah, I mean, that's what it is. We can try to explain why someone voted the way that they did. We can try to explain why someone voted with their wallet the way that they did based on what information they're being exposed to. But if people are going to, you know, view movies as more than just like a way to kill time and pretend to want something more out of a theater experience.

If there's enough people complaining about sequels, which there's a huge amount, right? That's a pretty popular sentiment. Like, oh, all the sequels, all the remakes, you got to not say that and then go watch Deadpool and Wolverine and the Minecraft. You can't do both.

Right? But it's all anyone cares about. Yeah. is debaul and wolverine and uh sequels and franchise IP and does it simply stem from like an economic incentive where it's like movies are getting more and more expensive to make it's just a safer bet on the money if you are making a twisters sequel or a debil wolverine or inside out thing yeah i don't know what's funny is like it almost seemed like we were getting to the point of this fatigue, especially with like everybody getting sick of like Star Wars and shit.

It almost seemed like that would play a part into like a sequel remake sort of fatigue. You know, a lot of Disney flops that were remakes as well. Yeah. But the lesson learned was not let's fund original new ideas. The lesson learned was let's tweak our sequels and remakes into a way that people will get more hyped for them. And you put in more references and you go, dude. Deadpool Yeah, you just got to combine the right characters

I can't believe Godzilla X Kong is in there Actually, I can't believe it People liked Alien Romulus Alien Romulus is like maybe the most egregious example Out of all of these in terms of like Not making a new movie and just doing member berries And people liked it So

I actually think Kung Fu Panda 4 is worse for that And it made more money Kung Fu Panda 4 was barely a movie. Yeah, that shit's embarrassing. I didn't even see that Ghostbusters. I forgot that even came out. There is a real disconnect, I feel, between, like, what an average person wants to go to the cinema to see

and, like, what's someone who loves the art medium of film. And, like, but then having Dune in there does, like, It can be done, I guess. I feel like it's a, I don't know, it's a real film. It doesn't feel like a product. Like,

despicable me for or whatever. Doesn't feel like shit out. Yeah, it's an artist with a vision. Yeah, but people really loved it. But it didn't get funded because it was an artist with a vision.

Although, it kind of did, didn't it? Veil Nev could. Yeah, Veil Nev could do it, yeah. Vilnev has, has enough pull at this point.

He could be a new Nolan. so I hope he goes back to like not Dune eventually I think he's got one more in the tank which I'm fine with is trilogy if it's to that same quality it's going to be curious what they call it

they're definitely gonna Dune three Dune three I can't remember what the next novel's called but uh yeah that's but only really Nolan this has been an issue for like a long time it's not like this is the first year where this has happened it's like just now and again like Christopher Nolan releases a movie

I guess that gets in there as well it's like the only one um it is kind of funny whenever you see like something begin to break out like an original idea that gets a lot of like mainstream attention and accolades and does pretty well like poor things even though that wasn't like a huge huge movie, you know, like, it was definitely a success. It's funny that oftentimes we see, like, genuine artists do something like that. And then their next project is like, okay, I can do whatever I want. I'm going to make something so inaccessible. Right. So, like, he's just, he's like, I'm going to kinds of kindness now. It's like, oh, it's great for art house crowd, but like, no, it's not going to have the same legs. You know, fucking, uh, Cohen brothers did that with,

uh, right after no country, they did a serious man. They're like, yeah, we can just, We'll make a movie. Yeah. Great film there. I love that movie, yeah. Yeah, you're right. I don't know. It's their problem to solve.

I don't see it changing anytime soon. Yeah. A lot of people creating art for art aren't going to, like, ride the wave of success as much as they could, because they're not in it for the money. But I guess that kind of raises the question, like,

does Hollywood output even need to be good for films to be a worthwhile, like hobby or something to enjoy. And I think the answer is obvious, right? Like we say this, I feel like we ring this bell constantly. Like, sure, I guess you can have the attitude that films suck. If all you watch is what is in this top 20, then that would probably be my conclusion as well. But like, there's heaps saying other of how many good interesting films are released. And I feel like that hasn't particularly slowed down. I feel like some of the avenues for the indie mid-budget movies are actually kind of bigger than ever but there's more options I feel like yeah it's one of those things because a lot of the movies we love like even

if they were seen by a lot of people it probably just have this you know like weird hatred for it because there would be a lot of people going like why is this popular like there's enough of that already with the substance being a movie that like enough people are talking about And everything everywhere that happened with. Yeah. There's like just a huge chunk of people that are like, this was pretentious. And like not even engaging with what it's trying to go for.

Like it wasn't scary. I'm like, I'm not sure if it was trying to be that horror movie that you're expecting. Mm-hmm. But I guess, yeah, that goes back to like our Smilers review. It's like, I think that's what general audiences are looking for. Yeah. People like it.

Ned, they're embarrassed to admit it. That people just want fucking slop. They want the same familiar thing over and over again. They want something that, like, they see the trailer, and they already know exactly how the entire movie is going to go. They want a familiar experience. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know.

I don't know. Me, fuck audiences. Sorry. F them. Yeah, Pelican 1-22 is this to say. Alex, you rated Deadpool and Wool Wolverine, speaking of, a four out of ten, understandably. Adam said he would never see it, and is dodging a bullet.

But Alex, do you think there's anything about the movie Adam would actually enjoy and appreciate? No. I apologize for this exercise in Miserable Slop. I guess that brings me to the good... Was there anything you liked about those first two Deadpool movies? I can't remember what you said about them. No. Well, you know, I kind of liked the occasional gore.

That was about it. But what about the humor? Did you like any of the humor? No. Not a single joke. No. Yeah, I don't think you'd get much out of the humor in double Wolverine. Do you care about Hugh Jackman's Wolverine at all?

Do you have anything going on with that one? Christ, yeah, there'd be very little in it for you then. Did you get anything out of it? I got a couple of things out of it. There were a couple okay scenes. I thought Channing Tatum was quite funny in it. Oh shit, is that a spoiler? Who cares?

Everyone in the world is seen it. Everybody who wants to see it has seen it. Everyone has seen Deppal Wolverine. It was, yeah, I don't know. It was mostly kind of annoying to me because I just am so over Ryan Reynolds. And I just feel like you're just told you're supposed to like him. And that's always been his, he's kind of like the rock in that way. I think that's...

Yeah. Him, Kevin Hart and the Rock of the trilogy to me of like, why are you in so many movies? You suck. But yeah. I actually can't think of anything you'd like about it, to be honest. Yeah, same. Yeah.

So, Soz. Yeah, I don't have anything on that one. Hmm. Right, how about we wrap up on this one? from I roast you like a pig. If you had to speed run a game, which one would you pick? And no, Adam, you can't pick, life is strange.

You're too familiar and in love with it. Although that normally is a prerequisite for speed running a game. You normally do have to love it enough to be able to replay it again and again and again. Is the goal to like break a record? Have you ever seen like the games done quick? GDQ. Yeah. You're a crinch fan.

You must have seen like the cringe compilations. Of course, yes. Yeah. I, I, like, maybe once a year I'll remember about GDP and, like, have a look at the list of what has been ran that year. And I'll check a few out. I watched just a couple the other day of, like, an insane Mario 64 blindfolded speed run. That was wild. A mass effect two one was quite fun.

It was like the Halo ones. But as far as a game, I'd want to run. Man, I just, they get so technical is my thing. Like the Halo ones, you've got to do this like, watch me do this grenade jump at this particular angle, and then I swap to the sword, and then I do this like glitch on this old version of the game, and then I fly across the map, and it's like, oh my God,

like, I don't know if I have the ability to even do that, but maybe something like Ori in the Blind Forest. That would be my kind of thing. I've got an infinity for that game. It's like the game feel of it so much. I could play that again and again, and you can finish it in like half an hour if you're good enough. So that might be a good one.

If I had the skills, like an Eldon ring or something, would be good. But like the Souls fans, like, I'm not letting them see me play one of those games. Yeah. Well, I guess I got a couple different answers. So like if the goal is just to do something like really easy, you know, like, I don't know, facade. This as fast as possible. Yeah, and it's like, what's the ending? Do I beat it if they kick me out?

I can just type Mellon, right? Then another answer would be something like, there's this really good indie game called, fuck, what was it called? Do I have to open up my steam? I'm going to open up my steam. I'm just remembering that you accidentally speed ran gone home. Oh, yeah.

But I don't know if that can. ounce if that's one people would be tuning in for like an elder ring or whatever. There was a really fun indie game called Antichamber, and I'm aware that there's a way to like get to the ending right at the beginning sort of thing. You're not supposed to necessarily. There's like, yeah, anti-chamber. There's like, uh, fucking, what was that one where the guys in the office and then you're just being talked to the whole time? Stanley Parable.

Oh, the, uh, the Stanley Parable, yeah. Yeah. So those would be the easy speed runs. And then other answers, if I was to not do something easy, I love Super Meat Boy. Ooh, that'd be a good one. And I feel like the game is kind of designed very well for speed runners. Because a lot of what happens in the game, like, it doesn't have a lot of RNG because everything starts at the exact frame every time you come back. Yeah.

So if you're moving at max speed, then you have like a consistent. way of interacting with things in the environment in like almost the exact same way every time. Yeah, it loads instantly. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good choice. And then other answer for just like a fun one I would do would be Halo C.E. Halo 1. Because like a lot of those fucking glitchy tricks I've already done.

Okay? Because I like that game a lot. And one of the achievements on the Master Chief Collection, was to like speed run each level. Now, it allowed me to do them individually so I could like restart a level and, you know, it was the overall time, like legendary under three hours or something. Yeah.

And I was able to do that. I think I got that one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the Halo speed runs are really fun. Some are just harder than others. I just enjoy Halo so much that like if there's something I had to grind at over and over and over again to like perfect, I mean, sure, I wouldn't.

That's the one. I wouldn't have the top record. But, you know, if I was asked to speed run. Have you seen they're remaking it? Halo. Halo 1. What? Halo.

You don't know about this? Halo Studios. I don't think it's an official announcement, but they've heavily implied that they are remaking Halo 1 in Unreal Engine. That's the implication? Yeah. What? I think that's what most people think's going to happen.

Yeah. Really? What are they supposed to do after Infinite? What are they actually supposed to do? Give up? If they have to, yeah, that's what I would say is like just stop, but they're not going to. So, yeah. I don't know if that's what they're doing, but.

I'm willing to put money down. I think they're going to do it. Literally all I saw was, we're using Unreal Engine now. Like, that's all I got out of it. They didn't say anything about it. Yeah, and they picked all these Halo 1 locations. Did they? I think they're going to do it.

I generally think. I really think they're going to do it. Is that like their next project? Should we make a bet? Yeah. Yeah, I bet you. That's going to be their next thing. Because it's safer for them.

They might do, you know, it's like they're Resident Evil. They're looking at the industry. Like the Silent Hill remake just went down good. It's like, oh, we've tried making our own thing, and it sucks. Let's just start remaking. You know, we can, and then people will like us again. I think they're really going to do it. What do we wager?

50 bucks. 50 bucks they're remake in Hela 1 how about instead of 50 bucks one of us has to say something silly at the beginning of one of their videos

and not explain it like what kind of thing like hello I I am the number one biggest fan of Sandy Cheeks Cockbore this is not a joke fuck you know I'm confident enough

I'll take that bit oh okay so like main channel hello I am the number one fan of Sandy Cheeks cock for this is not a joke is um is that's the quote is cock allowed to be filtered out

because that's like I'll get the video flagged instantly weren't it I don't know if you like open it on that I wonder if the word cock is something you have to get rid of it. Well, yeah, sure. We can censor the word cock. Okay. And you have to also say this is not a joke. Yes, that's a part of the full question. Ooh, this is, this is high stakes. No one's going to, no one's going to bat an eye if I say it. So the stakes are low for me.

Okay. Fine, I'm confident though. I think they're doing that. So, uh, so, uh, it's a deal. Okay. Somebody remind us. And that, the, the, the specific, The specific bet is that it's their next thing that they release, Halo Studio. Like, the next game. The next game, not like putting the Master Chief Collection on PS5 or whatever. Like, the next game, the first game Halo Studios make. Oh, it can't be a port. Okay.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'd be happy to lose that bet. Okay. So Remind us everybody Remind us everybody

Remind us the full quote Oh shit That is goat You can't even You can't say it sarcastically I can't Well for me no one can tell the difference

So I'm just I'm adding more layers to Yeah Uh huh I'm trying to make it worse for you No, I'm confident. I'm safe, I think. Yeah. Yeah.

So we'll see on that one. What if you get more clicks? Because you say that. What if it's a hit video? I might, yeah. I might signal boost that subreddit in dangerous ways. Oh, oh. All right, you got a recommendation or what?

I do have one. Just one. I was torn between two, but I think I'm going to go with a 2003 film that I believe somehow neither of us have seen. And that's Sophia Coppola's Lost in Translation. We're both big fans of her, and there's a connection with these movies, which we can get into when we talk about it. But yeah, I think a good combo could come from this. We're both big fans of Sophia Coppola? Her, sorry.

Oh, her. The movie, her. Yeah. Oh, sorry. Yeah, yeah, of course. I didn't realize this. My one issue with that damn movie is like... Spike Jones is her.

Yeah, Spike Jones is her. Okay. Those who know, know the link there. But save that for when we actually talk about it. Yeah. Cool. I think that it could be cool. I think...

I think that I saw this a long time ago when I was younger, but I'm not sure. Yeah, it sits there with me as well. But it's on my watch list for me feeling like I would need to revisit it to have an opinion on it anyway. Yeah, yeah. So I think I'm aware of some things that happen in it, but I'm not sure. All right. Cool. Kiel.

If you don't want to be spoiled for Lost in Translation directed by Sophia Coppola, watch it before the next episode. These episodes come out every two weeks. You can listen early. by going to sardonicast.com slash premium or go to patreon.com slash sardonicast or click the join button on YouTube. You get them early.

Join. Betch. So do that and also subscribe to the Sardonicast highlights channel and do that, bitch. Do that. Yeah. Bitch. Bitch. All right, have a, thanks for listening, everybody.

Have a happy Sandy Cheeks cockpour. Oh, don't. But she looks happy. Too happy. Unhinged. All right. Bye, everybody. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.