Category: Recap

Joker: Folie à Deux Recap

Jamie

It’s possible that Joker is the biggest BMT film of all time. There are Transformers films, sure. There are Jurassic World, Pirates of the Caribbean, and DC Comics proper films. But there is nothing quite like Joker and the immense popularity of the first film. It was a box office smash and in the Oscar race. It was so huge that not only was a sequel obviously going to be made, but Todd Phillips was given a blank check. A blank check that he used to turn it into an uber expensive jukebox musical. It’s almost impossible to think of something even comparable to this catastrophe. So suffice to say I was pretty excited.

To recap, Arthur Fleck is in prison. He is a real saddo and generally treated as a joke. A musically inclined guard, though, decides to convince the higher ups to let him in on music therapy where he meets Harley Quinn. He’s taken by the idea that she is obsessed with his TV movie and his exploits as The Joker. During a film screening she sets a fire and they attempt an escape, which lands him in solitary confinement. Harley meets with him there and helps him have sex with her (yes, what happened is exactly as I wrote it there… it’s very funny). He then goes off for a softball interview to try to help his case that he is mentally unwell, but instead launches into a song that begins to incite people again. As his trial begins, Harley is upset that he isn’t doing more press as The Joker, but Arthur’s lawyer reveals that Harley is a liar and has made up all kinds of lies to get close to him. She admits to that, but also claims to be pregnant with their child. He dismisses his lawyer and begins representing himself. As his defense takes a disastrous route and he and his friends are abused by the guards, Arthur reflects and denounces his Joker persona and is found guilty. At that moment a bomb explodes outside and a group of his supporters help him escape. Eventually he runs from them and finds Harley who is like “nah, no thanks.” He’s taken back to Arkham where he is stabbed to death by the real Joker. THE END. (Or is it?… well yeah, it probably is).

I think I probably like Joker 2 more than most people. The idea that he made the entire thing as a fuck you to fans fo the first one I don’t believe for a second. I think this is always what he wanted to make. For sure making him a hilariously pathetic “villain” was quite a twist for those that held Joker up as some matinee idol. But I wasn’t one of those and there was something nice to how you watch this character and the whole time (even the first film) you’re like “this is the guy who becomes Batman’s archenemy?” Only for that to pay off exactly as that absurd concept should: a second straight year where Joaquin Phoenix wins Funniest Sex Scene of the Year Award (last year he won for Beau is Afraid). His sex scene with Lady Gaga is hilarious and is meant to be so and quite an accomplishment. My big problem is that the film was too small. Even the songs are small. They should have had Joker and Harley escape and then we could have romped through the city. Would have made it more fun. As constructed you sure do spend a lot of time talking away in a courthouse and interviews. As for Rebel Moon: Part 1 & Part 2, is it possible for me to kind of enjoy the daring of a film, but also think it represents the downfall of the medium? This and Carry-on were the two Netflix films I watched this year and boy howdy, what the hell is going on over there? The story structures are like children’s films. Still, some crazy sci-fi settings and kooky alien design? The main villain appears to have a sexual relationship with a squid alien? There are things to point to in Rebel Moon and say, “He tried.” Visually at least.

Hot Take Clam Bake! What if Arthur Fleck was the Joker after all? Sure at the end of this film we see him get stabbed. And sure that guy carves a smile onto his face implying that he becomes the Joker. But you know what we didn’t see? What happens right after that. Arthur ninja flips himself off the ground and karate chops that dude in the throat. He then reveals that he was wearing a bullet proof vest that also is knife proof. He then runs to tell Harley what happened but is shocked to find that his assailant killed her and their unborn child (which was real and definitely not a lie). Then as the guards rush him, Arthur leaps from the window into a vat of chemicals below. He is… The Joker. Hot Take Temperature: Acid Burn.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *Gif of me dancing down some stairs but then I trip and fall all the way down and my face goes directly into a big pile of dogshit, I start crying, and then Lady Gaga walks by and laughs at me* Let’s go!

The Good? Whenever the films get close to actually being a DC film you start to see pieces of what really works. In the first film it is the bits and pieces of seeing how Joker like figure would generate a following, and there are pieces of Bruce Wayne set up that kind of works. Here, all the stuff concerning Two-Face and maybe how that could go is by far the most exciting stuff.

The Bad? Unfortunately the rest of the film is filled with aggressively mediocre Jukebox Musical numbers and/or is just very dull scenes of Joker wandering around a prison, or sitting in a courtroom, or being a big old saddo. It is a truly strange follow-up to an okay film with a great central performance.

The BMT? This movie is just bad. They really hamstring themselves with the singing. Whenever it started to happen I groaned because … they aren’t singing well? What is the point? It makes Joaquin Phoenix look kind of dumb. It is quite unfortunate to behold. And I didn’t even really like the first one that much.

To pair with the glory that is Joker 2 we had to go for the double dip of Netflix slop with Rebel Moon – Part 1: A Child of Fire, and Rebel Moon – Part 2: The Scargiver. Wooooooooof these films are wild stuff. Imagine the most derivative Star Wars garbage you’ve ever seen, but also very stilted and cut up because the production is Netflix weirdness. It was a surreal experience to watch like five hours of quite bad science fiction. The positives? The world building was fun, it is nice sometimes to be dropped into a space opera with interesting aliens and governments and space travel and junk. The negatives? Every time a battle scene came up I would basically lose track of what was happening and fall asleep. It is the anti-James Cameron. Cameron has an eye for action which makes those scene exciting, but the Avatar world is a bit derivative. This is occasionally interesting world building with some of the worst action scenes you’ll ever seen. Can’t wait for Part 3 and 4. C+, something about watching the absolute worst Netflix has to offer every year is fun. Electric State here we come!

Ah, finally, a little test on the batch image processing. What shall we look up? What about movie posters with clowns in them? I used the top 150 films from 1990 and ran it 10 times. The answers were: 10/10 Quick Change, 5/10 Child’s Play 2. The second is interesting. I chose the top 150 from 1990 because I knew Quick Change was in there (at #146). There is a little toy clown in the Child’s Play poster. Why does it only hit 5 out of 10 times? … I don’t know. But I like the correct indexing. In a way, possibly, 5/10 could literally mean the model is only 50% confident that a toy clown counts. I’ll have to explore this more.

You know that his is a Setting as a Character (Where?) for Gotham City baby. And I do think this has a Worst Twist (How?) potential with the reveal that he probably isn’t the actual Joker, but instead is stabbed (probably not to death, I assume the plan for a third would have involved the other Joker taking his mantle and him being a big saddo about it) by the actual Joker in the end. This is a Bad film, although I do admit it gets close to BMT in its weirdness, I just don’t think I would ever watch it again.

Read all about DC villains I guess in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

The Strangers: Chapter 1 Recap

Jamie

What an interesting choice. I’ve become much more of a horror watcher as the years go on. I think part of it is that most of them are just about 90 minutes long. Really hits the sweet spot. So I do have a sense of the horror landscape. So if you were to tell me that a franchise (two films is still a franchise to Franchise Man) was looking to produce a trilogy to put their franchise-ness into hyperspeed and asked me who was the director of such a trilogy, I would immediately presume it was some up-and-comer. Some director who maybe had a low level hit on Shudder that had people wondering what their next project would be. If you said that I was wrong and that the director was in fact Renny Harlin of Cutthroat Island fame, I would say you were a lying liar who lies to me. As I said, what an interesting choice.

To recap, Maya and Ryan are two lovers just loving being lovers. But oh no! Maya is moving across the country and Ryan is a saddo! They stop in a small town to have lunch where some of the locals look at them creepy. But could it be more than that? Maybe, because suddenly their car is having engine trouble and a couple of the creepsters say it’s gonna be a while. The waitress recommends an Airbnb in the woods and soon they are loving being lovers in a lovely cabin in the woods. Ryan takes a motorcycle into town to get his inhaler and while away Maya is stalked by Dollface, Pin-up Girl and Masky or whatever. Ryan returns and says it was all a hallucination caused by smoking the reefer (tight) but soon they are both being attacked. Stranger! They evade and elude their tormentors and get a gun (he’s got a gun!) which they promptly use to kill the owner of the cabin by mistake. Oops! (Oh, and Stranger!) They try to take the dead guy’s truck but Masky smashes it up and Maya escapes into the woods and calls the police. Eventually they are both tracked down and brought back to the cabin where they are tortured. Ryan is killed and Maya is stabbed just for being there, but then the Strangers have to flee as the police are approaching. Ultimately, Maya survives. THE END (or is it? (You kidding?))

Ha! Now we’re talking. This movie sucks. I can’t believe they filmed a new trilogy concurrently. The second will definitely come out. That’s for sure. The third… I’m sensing the possibility of a straight-to-Shudder backroom deal. That’s if the trend continues. The trend of these movies totally sucking. It’s just a cheap version of the original with less interesting and more annoying main characters. They also jettisoned the drama aspect. Now The Strangers are like… part of a community that feeds people to The Strangers by luring them to a cabin? That’s terrible. At the very least when you have a franchise like this you have to double down on what people like. Like I see the structure as: a family or couple are having some drama, as a result they end up somewhere they usually wouldn’t be, The Strangers strike for no reason other than to kill! This breaks that. Kind of like that dumb Friday the 13th movie where some rando was the killer. Dumb.

Hot Take Clam Bake! What if… what if it isn’t just because Maya and Ryan were there. Yeah. What if Masky is Maya’s brother. He’s insane and mad because the family abandoned him in an asylum. Oh, and Dollface’s mask resembles Maya because she was a woman in the asylum with Masky and he forced her to play as her sister. Yeah, yeah! And she’s angry because she’s in love with Masky so she has to kill Maya to be with him. Yeah, hell yeah! And Pin-up Girl is Dollface’s sister who pretends to also hate Maya, but really is trying from the inside to save her sister from the Cult of Masky. She knows if she can kill Maya then maybe the spell will be broken. Lore! Lore, baby! Hot Take Temperature: Lore.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *Gif of me in a totally spooky mask and creeping around the woods and … wait, is this a prequel or a remake of my other gif?* Let’s go!

The Good? Hmmmmmmmm … nothing? It is weird to say it, but it feels like they took the first two movies, jammed them together, declared it as “not a remake”, and then were flabbergasted that people didn’t accept this.

The Bad? This movie is like the first but worse because the main characters are somehow even more unappealing. And the movie is like the second but worse because the setting seems like it should be cool, but pales in comparison to the trailer park from the second. The fact that they trot out “The Man in the Mask” / “Scarecrow” and the two ladies in all three films as if I care about those characters specifically is nuts. The film is almost certainly better if they started to mix that up a bit. Am I going crazy or is it undoubtedly better if there are a bunch of masks and it is made clear this is some strange multi-state conspiracy to get away with mass murders or something? Why are these same characters in Oregon now? They were in Ohio before, and prior to that I assume somewhere else. Why are they wandering around? Again, the biggest condemnation of the franchise is that while I ask these questions I genuinely do not give a shit about the answer.

The BMT? Hell naw. We’ll see how the rest of the trilogy works out (the films do make money, I would be surprised if they don’t get all three out eventually), but like what I expect with The Purge series these are made for a particular type of fan and tend to be focused on kills and rarely end up being fun in a real capacity.

Heyooooo. The saga of the image batch processing with Google AI Studio is complete. Well, there is at least something that seems to work and is worth checking out on a larger scale. Ultimately, by placing the stub (e.g. tt0085750 for Jaws 3-D) at the top it avoids issues with the model trying to figure out the indexing:

There were no issues of throwing errors or missing out or shifting stubs or anything. So really, this should set up for a good test on something like the top 100 posters from a year. I guess stay tuned.

I’m going to give Crap Boyfriend (Who?) to this goober in the film, he could not possibly be a bigger sourpuss the entire time. A Setting as a Character (Where?) for Oregon. I do like the MacGuffin (Why?) as to the inhaler specifically which goes from vital to worthless several times during the film for no good reason. And Worst Twist (How?) for the reveal that the main girl lived to the end, but is now going to be haunted by baghead or whatever. This film is Bad, it isn’t scary and in general, like the rest of the series, is dumb.

Read all about bags and junk I assume in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

The Strangers: Prey at Night Recap

Jamie

For some reason in my head the second Strangers movie was very well received, while the first one was kind of a squandered opportunity. So I had no idea I would actually be recapping and reviewing this film. Wasn’t this a well received film? No. In fact it is perfectly at our threshold for qualification. So perhaps one day we’ll look back on this film and chuckle about what a waste of time it was to recap the film as it so clearly does not qualify having achieved 50 good reviews out of 125… that’s just one more good review, BTW. And, spoiler alert, if I had it my way and BMT was a nationally recognized contributor to RottenTomatoes, then, indeed, this would not qualify any longer.

To recap, Cindy and Mike are struggling with their daughter Kinsey. She’s a girl on the wrong track and they are sending her to boarding school. Or are they? Not so fast, because once they arrive in Cindy’s uncle’s semi-abandoned trailer park they are in The Strangers’ world. Dollface, Pin-up Girl and Masky or whatever are going to kill them… and that’s basically what happens. Kinsey and her brother Luke go off on a walk and discover the aunt and uncle murdered. They’re totally grossed out and get their dad. Luke and Mike go off to figure out what’s going on and Cindy and Kinsey are attacked. Cindy helps Kinsey get out of there and is murdered. Strangers! Luke and Mike escape Masky and find Cindy dead. While searching for Kinsey they are attacked and Luke gets away while Mike is murdered. Strangers! Luke and Kinsey are now on their own and run to the general store where they try to call 911. Luke is badly injured, but the kids are starting to kill some of the Strangers too. Strangers! The police arrive but are killed. Strangers! Kinsey kills one of them. Strangers! Masky is basically Michael Myers and won’t be killed. Not yet Strangers! But then he’s killed. Strangers! Kinsey and Luke live and the stranger die (or do they? (don’t ask me)). THE END

I thought this was a fun movie. The climactic pool scene in particular I found to be very visually engaging (you taking notes, Night Swim?). What a whirlwind it was watching these two movies. I didn’t even really like the first (and best reviewed, it turns out) The Strangers film. I can see why actors found it interesting. It starts like a drama and then dives into the horror and you’re thinking “oh wow, does this have to do with that drama?” The answer is obviously “no” dummy. The movie is called The STRANGERS. The point ends up being that they are doing it for funsies. But I guess that’s where I kind of throw my hands up. So the drama is meaningless and the kills are also meaningless. So it’s all just a trumped up regular slasher film? Anyway, I didn’t much care for it, although I got some chills from it. The sequel, though, as I said, was much more polished. I thought it looked great and I do think it smoothed a bit more of the theme of the films. People with drama aren’t thinking clearly and get themselves into weird situations. These situations are where The Strangers strike because all it takes is for you to be alone. No other reason. I liked it.

Hot Take Clam Bake! Splurge for a Holiday Inn, dummies. I know you want to see your uncle in his creepy abandoned trailer park, but also… continental breakfast? Ever heard of it? In fact, why doesn’t your uncle make a day of it? Date night at the Holiday Inn. Money’s tight, I get it. You have the unexpected cost of sending your problem child to boarding school. You know what’s financially prudent? A Holiday Inn. Do you know what’s not? Getting killed in an abandoned trailer park. Hot Take Temperature: Full Body Burn.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *Gif of me in a totally spooky mask and creeping around the woods.* Let’s go!

Fun fact: We didn’t realize this qualified until after we watched it. So now I’m begrudgingly writing about a movie I didn’t really plan on having to remember stuff about.

The Good? Out of the three movies I think this one had the most interesting stuff in it. The first had issues where I just thought they acted dumb and in general they were kind of unpleasant. This one had a few good set pieces (like the swimming pool) and in general I think the final girl ended up being much better. I don’t particularly like horror in general, but this was on the okay side.

The Bad? Franchises like this I think are just lame. They have three bad guys from the first one and then don’t really add anything? In a way they dare the viewer to wonder if any of them will be killed (they are). But still, unlike Freddy, they really don’t have a personality. In fact, the series draws some of its eeriness from the explicit face that they _don’t_ have personality despite intriguing masks. It doesn’t really work beyond the first movie, they should have had totally different bad guys in my opinion.

The BMT? I don’t think any of the franchise really transcends what it is, which is a mostly brainless series of jumpscares.

I had two additional idea on how to pull out images from a batch process accurately. The first was last time (just a number, seemed to work). My second idea was a hash. Well that also worked:

The issue is that it couldn’t quite translate the hashes properly (in that it would mix up the letters). I have a feeling it would also be a problem with using imdb stubs (the next test) or large indices, but that would need to be for a larger test.

Dumb Bad Guy Names (Who?) goes to Pin-up Girl and Doll Face, just terrible horror film villain names. According to Wikipedia this is a Setting as a Character (Where?) for somewhere in Ohio. And a Worst Twist (How?) for the final scene which (much like the third film) teases that she is going to be attacked again in the hospital, but that doesn’t seem like it is going to be resolved. The film is Bad I think, but a lot of that is just that I don’t like horror films, so it has to be very BMT or very Good to get my vote for that.

I guess we’ll probably learn about dumb masks or something in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

The American Society of Magical Negroes Recap

Jamie

The American Society of Magical [Shut your mouth!]. You could see this movie coming a mile away. It feels a lot like a Black List script. These are scripts that circulate Hollywood and get high marks but for whatever reason don’t get produced. They used to have a podcast where they would act them out and I have to say… it was usually pretty clear why they didn’t get made. As I recall one of them prominently featured Tom Cruise playing himself in a kind of Nic Cage style action-comedy (note: can we use Nic Cage instead?). Another was a rude-crude comedy that seemed like it was written when Porky’s was all the rage (note: do you have a time machine?). Another was a lesbian romance set in the Hasidic Jewish community of NYC (note: how good are you at marketing?). This… well, I think you can see why I might think that would fit the mold.

To recap, Aren is an artist. More specifically he is a struggling artist. He’s struggling with his voice and standing up for his art. Roger, a bartender at one of his shows, takes a liking to him and lets him in on a little secret. He’s part of the American Society of Magical Negroes. Like the trope from film they are tasked with saving the world from sad white people. Sad white people do terrible things and make terrible mistakes. The happier the white people are, the safer the world is. Ultimately, Aren takes on the task of making Jason, a tech bro, happy by helping him get together with his work crush, Lizzie. Easier said than done when Aren realizes that Lizzie is pretty cool and maybe he kind of likes her. Also Jason, while affable and well-meaning, is also selfish and self-centered. He idolizes the idiotic boss of their tech company and is prone to taking credit for things that he didn’t do. It becomes harder and harder for Aren to justify helping this dope get with this super cool, smart and talented girl of his dreams. However, Aren is reminded that they are saving the world. But when Aren is invited to co-present a new diversity program with Jason, an off-hand offensive remark by Jason emboldens him to set the record straight on their companies bad policies. Before he is kicked out of the Society, he ends up revealing the secret to Lizzie by using his powers to teleport her. Ultimately, after Lizzie is able to return to LA following the teleportation, they get together and smooch hard… also she’s part of her own society or whatever. THE END.

I actually think this movie is better than fine. It’s bordering on good, even. I read a lot of reviews that were like “really pulled the punch. Should have gone further.” I mean, I guess if you mean it should have been 100% biting satire and not be a romantic comedy. Sure… but I liked the two leads well enough and as a rom com it was perfectly serviceable. I don’t know. I was unexpectedly taken with this film and actually thought they went pretty far with the idea. I mean, their meter for whether they are doing a good job measures white tears. It’s a bit of a fluffy movie. Definitely feels like a streaming movie. But I actually thought it was fun enough, the acting was fine, and they took the concept where it needed to go. My primary critique would be that the girl almost certainly should have been part of the American Society for Manic Pixie Dream Girls. If there was one pulled punch, I think it might be that. It’s so obvious and the character fits the stereotype. But given how the term has fallen out of favor it feels like it was  abandoned for something else that made no sense. So why even do it?

Hot Take Clam Bake! So like… now the guy he was supposed to help becomes a mass murderer or something? He failed, right? The dude is super sad because he was called a racist on a public live stream… fine, he wasn’t exactly called racist, but it was implied. The white tears were a-flowin. That’s not good. Or at least that’s what I was led to believe. So pretty sad movie in the end. Hot Take Temperature: Warm wool sweater art.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *Gif of me definitely, totally watching this film. I definitely totally watched it* Let’s go!

Fun fact: I didn’t watch this movie until March 2025. For real. Just never really felt like or of felt the need to as we ended up very far behind on the emails. So there it sat, burned onto my phone, waiting for me to watch it.

The Good? I mean, the movie? It is wild that this is considered (by most metrics) one of the worst films of the year. It’s fun. I suppose it depends a bit on how much mileage you get out of all the Justice Smith of it all, but for real: the movie is fun and kind of good. If you are up for it and go into it with a clear mind.

The Bad? The movie isn’t funny per se. It is a comedy that is clever. It makes you go “that’s funny.” Or maybe smirk a bit and think “that’s funny.” And even those moments are few and far between. The two main characters I think are very good though and I think both are going to end up doing things in the future. Well, Justice Smith already is, he’s quietly one of the biggest young movie stars we got.

The BMT? Hell naw. I’m never watching this film again. I’m never thinking about this film again. This film was a checkbox for 2024 and that is all. Good luck to everyone involved. Personally I think your movie was pretty funny and good.

So if you are following the recaps you’ll know the saga of the batch image processing. Well, I’m almost there … maybe, kind of. Anyways, the current issue is that the models don’t seem to be able to accurately bring back indices. So let’s help them along:

Besides the one instance where it was probably like “I’m busy” or something, this worked flawlessly. As in the example, all I did was add the index to the top of the posters. There is a slight concern still (what if the title is quite near the top and also has a number?), but that feels quite fixable (which I’ll explore next). I am quite close to getting this to work.

In a way there is Product Placement (What?) for VR stuff in general, so I’m going to count it. A very Setting as a Character (Where?) L.A. film. I do think the whole movie has a MacGuffin (Why?) of the dream girl in general, which they play off of in the end. And in the vein I liked the twist actually, I thought it was clever, although it was a bit too little too late. The movie is Good, don’t at me.

Read all about uh … secret societies? Probably, in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Back to Black Recap

Jamie

What is there to say about Back to Black? Nothing, that’s what.

To recap, Amy Winehouse is not yet a star. She’s just a girl that loves singing. Loves playing guitar. Loves her grandma. And yes, she loves drinking. When her demo ends up at Island Records she begins her road to stardom and releases her debut album. But then? Not as much as should happen. They want her to be more pop. She wants to be Amy Winehouse. In an ensuing break she meets Blake at a bar. They start a torrid, messy, on-again, off-again love affair. After things get particularly messy, Blake leaves and Amy is left heartbroken. This is exacerbated by the grief of finding out her grandma is dying of cancer. She channels all this into her second smash hit album Back to Black. In the wake of this success, she gets back together with Blake and they elope. Ultimately this turns tragic when Blake is arrested for assault and Amy is left to deal with her demons on her own. A series of messy, drunken performances ensue. By the time Blake gets out of prison, Amy is a drug addict and he is in recovery and so he asks for a divorce. She spirals even further and eventually admits that she needs to go to rehab. She battles recovery for several years while Blake moves on. Eventually she loses the battle and passes away. THE END.

Before commenting on the actual quality of this film, I think it should be made clear that I am not a particular fan of Amy Winehouse. I have no special connection to her music. It’s good. I remember hearing it when it came out and there were some bops. I also never saw the documentary. I don’t know much about her life and death. I don’t know much about her husband or her dad. Alright… this film is fine. I don’t see what the big hubbub was about. Perfectly middle of the road movie. Some good music. I thought the acting was better than fine. A tragic story. I think everyone comes off poorly, which is mildly amusing as I believe the controversy surrounding it was that it’s too closely connected to the family and so lets them off the hook… so… this is letting them off the hook? Eeesh. Anyway, It’s not particularly good, but there are good things about it. One particularly bad thing about it is that it forces me to take recapping and talking about the film very seriously when this whole enterprise is meant to be a joke. And I don’t like that. I prefer to have a larf.

Hot Take Clam Bake! Oh man, I got a white hot take. But it would be in bad taste, right? Like this is a heat seeking missile. An absolute sizzler. A complete Uno Pizzeria & Grill. If I dropped this scorcher you would think you were in the Scorch Trials. You would take one look at my take and ask where Dante was because you done found yourself in the Inferno. It’s the full body burn of takes. And everyone knows that if you are going to have a full body burn in your movie you may as well have two (you already got the full body burn guy on set). Well guess what? This is the equivalent of a film with three full body burns. I can’t drop it though. Bad taste and all. But if I did… oh ho… watch out! You’d be burnt. Hot Take Temperature: theoretically intense. 

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *Gif of me singing my little heart out and just loving bad boys, you know?* Let’s go!

The Good? The singing is quite good. And as a person who has never seen the documentary Amy this was a good excuse to wiki a bunch of stuff about her and get to know something about someone I really didn’t know much about before.

The Bad? Arguably this film is propaganda. I’m not saying it is either way, but it does feel like the involvement of the family, as usual, throws into question the objective nature of the film. And given the ultimate conclusion of the story that feels a bit gross. The film is pretty long and everything but the singing is either bland or sad. I don’t like that. People who know me always say there are two things Patrick doesn’t like: things that are bland, and things that are sad. (Editor’s Note: that’s true, that’s what I always say)

The BMT? Hell to the no. Why would I ever watch this film again? Why did I watch this film at all? I wonder if in the future we’ll have to replace the Romance category like we replaced the Sci Fi category long ago and very explicitly call it the Romance/Drama category. I do think it is much more likely we could find good Dramas in the end, at least those are more likely to be bad because they are weird instead of dull.

I said I had some thoughts on how to get indexing done in the last Recap … but that isn’t for today. Instead, I just wanted to look and see if using smaller images would do anything drastic. Why smaller? Well, there are two paths according to the documentation, one for images of size <300ish pixels, and one for larger. I, by default, tend to use 280×420 as my poster size when saving stuff. But I did wonder whether that was contributing to the indexing problems. So I decided to test it with 140×210 posters instead:

Nope. Didn’t help. Onwards and upwards.

Obvs this is basically a Where’s Where or Setting as a Character (Where?) for bits and bobs of London. I recognized a ton of places, mainly because Camden Town is quite a good vegan neighborhood in London. I’ll leave it at that though. This film is Bad, in that it is boring, but it is closer to good than BMT in the end regardless because at least the singing is pretty good.

Read all about dark things I assume in the Quiz,

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Tarot Recap

Jamie

The funny story about Tarot really has more to do with Night Swim… and even that has more to do with that terrible horror film Fear… and even that has more to do, maybe, with the fact that I’m watching way more contemporary horror films than ever before. Certainly part of my dive into the genre is experiencing the wide range of films in “horror”. Some don’t even really feel like horror films, like I Saw the TV Glow, and yet touch on ideas or themes associated with the genre and so they are part of the ever growing horror miasma. Also part of that is the lengths to which these films often go to explore important themes. Like Night Swim spending a large portion of its film concerned with the loss of purpose felt by a baseball player forced into early retirement. Cool stuff, Night Swim. Actually interesting… but also you’re about a haunted pool and I would have loved a bit more about that part, actually. Oh, Fear? How about maybe giving us some cool kills associated with the actual common fears people have rather than… whatever the hell you were up to. Ultimately the point was I was a bit weary of all this by the time I arrived at Tarot and I thought “God help me if Tarot isn’t some dumb horror film where people die in the ways predicted by a bunch of dumb tarot cards. Don’t you dare try to be important, Tarot. Be dumb!”

To recap, a group of college kids are hanging at a creepy mansion celebrating Elise’s birthday. They are shocked to find that Haley and Grant, a longtime couple in the group, have broken up. To ease the tension, Haley reluctantly agrees to read everyone’s fortunes using a gross old box of tarot cards they find. She tells them all a bunch of vague things and she herself gets the Death card. Everyone laughs it off and soon they are heading back to school. Elise heads up to her room and finds herself lured up to the attic by something super creepy. This super creepy thing knocks her down and drops a ladder on her head… just like her tarot card vaguely implied. Everyone is shocked. Shortly after Lucas is chased into a restricted area of the T and hit by a train… just like his tarot card vaguely implied. Everyone is still extremely shocked. The police also start to take interest in this friend group. Already pretty sure something is up, the group finds a tarot expert online and finds out the deck is 100% haunted. No doubt. The solution: destroy the deck. They start to head back to the mansion, but their car breaks down. Madeline freaks and tries to run away, but she is killed… just like her tarot card vaguely implied. Paxton is like “fuck this” and decides to give up and head back to campus. We see him killed… just like his tarot card vaguely implied. Haley, Grant and Paige keep going to the mansion but can’t burn the cards. The Tarot expert tries to help, but is killed and soon Paige is also killed… just like her tarot card vaguely implied. Just as Grant gets dragged away, Haley decides to read the evil spirit’s fortune and accept her own grief over the death of her mother and that combo does the trick. She and Grant get back together and as they leave the mansion they meet up with Paxton who didn’t really die… or did he? (He didn’t, it’s just a joke). THE END.

I mean, yeah, this did the trick. This is a dumb ol’ box o’ rocks movie. Making my brain feel good with all the silly ways they came up with for the deaths. They find a tarot expert online like we’re living in a 2000’s horror film. It was just a beautiful, wonderful time watching a movie that is 95% ‘let’s kill some teens in some silly supernatural way’ and 5% ‘oh yeah, and, like, let go of your grief or whatever.’ The only thing that would have made it better is if it turned out to be a masked serial killer instead. Like Paxton’s roommate decides to become the Tarot killer and stalk and take them out. That would have been even more fun. Just a perfect 90’s/2000’s teen horror film with a dumb masked killer. Boy, that would have been great. As it was, this is still a perfectly bad movie. Recommend if you’re looking for it.

Hot Take Clam Bake! I don’t buy Paxton’s story. I think he was actually the masked Tarot killer. Sure we see him and the killer spirit, but I think that was all a ruse. Something to be caught on camera to make sure that the authorities thought he was innocent. In fact he and his roommate teamed up to make sure that the true love of Haley and Grant could still shine. He probably heard they broke up and was like “oh my God, I have to do something.” Then they did Tarot readings and he was like “Perfect. What makes the heart grow fonder than surviving a tragedy.” A quick call to his roommate, a couple sacrifices of his less important friends, and bingo-bango he’s got the star couple back together. Phew. Crisis averted. Hot Take Temperature: Suit of Wands.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *Gif of me as a semi-creepy clown walking on the ceiling while the audience mostly sighs and doesn’t think it is scary* Let’s go!

The Good? I’ve started to enjoy this specific type of horror film. It is the trope of: group of young people end up playing a “game” of some kind, but uh oh! It isn’t a game at all, but life or death, bah bah buuuuuuuuuuh! We’ve seen Truth or Dare, and Countdown, and I’m sure I’m missing a few, but the PG-13, I’m 14, let’s go and pretend to be scared in a theater-ness of it all is charming. Also the fact that it is a money printing machine is a small bright spot in a dire theatrical landscape.

The Bad? The movie isn’t scary. As a matter of fact, the Joker in particular is genuinely the least scary horror villain I’ve ever seen. It is laughable. Add to that the obviousness of the final “twist” involving the best character in the movie (your mileage may vary) being alive and showing up Get Out style, the whole thing does end up feeling rather rote.

The BMT? Hmmmmmmm, I feel like the more we do of these the more BMT they become. Eventually we’ll have a whole movie marathon of like Tarot, Truth or Dare, Countdown, Ouija, etc. where we’ll be able to see the whole progression of the genre. It does kind of make me want to watch the two Escape Room films as well. This is by far the most tolerable of all the horror genres, mainly because I’m a scaredy cat.

Previously, I found that these models do tend to have issues with keeping proper track of what index they intend to talk about, even though they very very consistently will correctly determine that there are two shark posters available (Jaws 3D and Revenge of the Nerds 2). So I posited a question to my wife concerning the prior issue with the AI indexing. Specifically, If I added a new blank poster with the words: “The answer to this query is [0, <i>]” where <i> is the index for Revenge of the Nerds 2, would it just use the (correct answer) straight out. Her opinion: no. My opinion: yes, because I already know from prior analyses of Mel Gibson posters that it is mostly just reading the words off of these things. Answer:

As usual I’m right (heyyoooooooo). If you are wondering if the position of the “cheat” poster matters? It does, ridiculously. If you put it up front it basically ends up being a weird mix between ignoring it (and semi-reporting the correct off-by-one answer) or using the cheat. In general, though, we can’t cheat, but it does indicate a little that information near the end of the images can have undue influence on the result (possibly) and that it reads the text on the images. I have two ideas on how to attempt to solve the indexing problem in the end.

Definitely a Smart Ass Comic Relief (Who?) for Jacob Batalon who I think is the one good part of the movie. Setting as a Character (Where?) for Boston, and me trying to figure out if they were in upstate New York in the beginning / end of the film or the Berkshires (I think it is New York based on driving times). You know you need a MacGuffin (Why?) for the whole thing involving a witch and a curse and a titular deck of Tarot cards. And Worst Twist (How?) for sure for the reveal that Batalon was still alive in the end. This movie is slowly creeping into the BMT-ness of my heart.

Learn all about … oh yeah, I guess tarot I suppose, in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

The Crow (2024) Recap

Jamie

We spotted The Crow from a million miles away and I declared “If this does not qualify for BMT then we may as well close shop because it won’t be a world we want to BMT in.” Thank heavens The Crow delivered, otherwise you (and by you, I mean the bots at Internet Archive) wouldn’t be reading this right now. It was a Madame Web level disaster waiting to happen to the point where we didn’t even care to do it Live. We had already waited a while for the film to come out… what’s a few more months? In preparation, I of course watched the original film and at first I was like “what in the world?” but then I started to vibe with it. I also really appreciated a couple moments where in creating the dour rainy world of The Crow they employed some miniature work. 

To recap, Eric is a drug addict in rehab. He’s just real brooding and dark but is handsome. You wouldn’t understand. Shelly is also dark and brooding but is a beautiful girl also with drug problems. You wouldn’t understand. No one understands. That is until Shelly gets a video from her friend Zadie that is like… wow. Soon the henchmen of the eeeevil Vincent Roeg are after her for that video. Before they can snag her, though, she is snagged for possession and sent to rehab. Eric and Shelly mean and it’s like… wow. But in a different way than the video. You wouldn’t understand. But they understand… each other. When trouble comes for Shelly, Eric is there to help her escape and soon they are in looooooovveee. They are just a couple of young people having fun while sticking their middle finger up at the world. Wooooo. But then they get murdered. Sad. Eric ends up in purgatory where he is offered a deal: kill Roeg, who actually works for the devil, and he can be with Shelly. He immediately agrees. He becomes… The Crow. He goes around killing people because he’s invincible, slowly working his way up the chain towards Roeg. But then he finds the video. It shows Roeg forcing Shelly to kill a woman. He’s shocked (shocked!). He’s not so sure he loves Shelly. Without the power of love he is able to be killed and only by promising to exchange his soul for Shelly’s is he given a second chance. This time he don’t miss. He slays everyone with super dark and cool moves. Roeg attempts to steal his powers in a climactic battle, but Eric is able to trick him and kill him and save Shelly. Ultimately he sacrifices himself for Shelly… for love. THE END

I have to give this movie a lot of credit. They could have just remade the original film. Swap out the music, but otherwise just keep it more or less the same. Or they could have made it even more like the original source. But they did neither. They basically went their own way with the idea of The Crow. So I can see why they might be excited about it. But this really isn’t it. It’s quite bad. The characters are unlikeable pretty much from top to bottom. The additional supernatural element of the bad guy is kind of dumb (but you also need it because how else is Danny Huston going to be your bad guy?). And worst of all… it kind of comes off lame. I got a deep waft of lameness off this guy. But they tried.

Hot Take Clam Bake! I think Eric probably should have killed Roeg for his own life in the end. He barely knew Shelly. She killed someone! What else has she done? He doesn’t know… because he barely knows her. And as we all know, you can’t love Shelly the way she deserves until you love yourself. And if you love yourself then isn’t that the real true love (awww). And if that’s the true love then maybe that’s what gave him his dope Crow powers. Thus… keep it for yourself, bro. Treat yourself. Hot Take Temperature: Sweet guitar licks.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *Gif of me looking extremely confused and distressed watching this film* Let’s go!

The Good? I’ll say this, I guess I can understand why someone would look at this and think to themselves, this is unique, this is creative, this is interesting, this is what film should be. Taking chances means not all of the chances are going to work out right? I can see why someone would say that.

The Bad? Literally everything about this movie. It is a slap in the face. It is a slap in the face to fans of The Crow, and it is a slap in the face to someone like me who merely appreciates the idea of Squalor Porn films like The Crow. This takes that concept, and then flushed it down the toilet. As I told Jamie: “Imagine The Crow, but now the movie is filled with the worst people you’ve ever met.” The entire first half of this film is, arguably, mentally ill young adults hanging around and being self-destructive and we are supposed to understand this as the pinnacle of love somehow? The back half of the film gets closer to what The Crow seems to actually be about (a rad goth guy who through the power of love becomes an invincible revenge demon?), but by that point I so distrusted the makers of this film it was all for naught. This is the worst film of 2024. Bar none, it is the film I would say encapsulates the 2024 class of bad movies.

The BMT? I think so. Out of all of the films of 2024 if we were to re-watch one I think it would ultimately be this one because it is just so weird. IT also helps that The Crow as a series has several quite notable potential friends floating around, so once we do those as flotsam in the future we’ll also have a few other weird ones to draw from as bad movie Crow-adjacent cinema.

Batch image processing! Now this is what I call flawless AI classification. Right? … Right? WRONG. Well, it is better. The exact same experiment from last time but using batch image processing:

So now when Revenge of the Nerds 2 (position 1 in experiment #1) is right next to Jaws 3D (always position 0) it still gets it. The thing that is a bit mind bending is the shifting. For whatever reason it just cannot seem to get the index straight. I’ll spare you the other graphs but things I’ve tried: (1) Giving it the number of elements and the range of possible indices (helps with errors for sure, it will no longer go off the end of the array, but it didn’t fix the shifting). (2) Inverting it, i.e. putting Revenge of the Nerds 2 first and moving Jaws 3D (no change). (3) Adding more posters, positing that it was the end of the array that was causing issues (just makes the end more fuzzy).

The main complaint I would have here is that there is really very little recourse in getting it to give consistent indexing back, and without consistent indexing batch processing is incredibly difficult. I’m sure there is some giant query that will help, but this is already a tiny bit discouraging since it isn’t that it is just missing out on films occasionally. Rather it is identifying the poster correctly and then just returning an off-by-one index with no indication of when the error is occurring (Experiment #10).

I literally am at a loss to think of any superlatives this fits into in the end. Not even a twist or even really a MacGuffin. The film is an amorphous blob operating as IP-driven non-IP. It is wild. This film is BMT, it is a weird view into what 2024 means as a film year.

Learn all about corvids I would guess in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

The Garfield Movie Recap

Jamie

There is a selfish desire on my part to have this or any other Chris Pratt film include a submarine. A submarine opens the film Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (although I feel like at times I was promised more… like a dino on a sub). The Tomorrow War suggests the possibility and then I could have sworn that The Electric State, the tragic Russo Brother’s Netflix film, had one, although the evidence appears to be scrubbed from the internet. I was slowly nurturing a beautiful Chris Pratt Submarine Trilogy and there is a real possibility that both The Tomorrow War and The Electric State don’t have one! In any case, given Chris Pratt’s career it would be nice if one of the submarine films came from his animated efforts. So The Garfield Movie? Are you going to have one? Don’t worry if you don’t. It probably won’t change my opinion of you. Besides, I’m guessing one of the Mario sequels will have one. Everyone loves submarines.

To recap, Garfield is a little kitten on the streetz. His daddio, a gruff street cat, tells him to stay put while he finds food, but the little kitten gets scared and wanders off to an Italian restaurant. There he befriends Jon Arbuckle. Flash forward to Garfield and Odie having a great life with Jon. That is until they are abducted as part of an elaborate plot to entrap Garfield’s dad, Vic, and force him to steal a large quantity of milk for the eeeevil Jinx. They agree and head to Lactose Farms. When they get there they agree to help free the girlfriend of Otto the bull, the former mascot of the farm, in exchange for help in getting into the farm. While they train for the big heist Garfield comes to learn that Vic actually did care for him. In fact it’s why Jinx knew that stealing Garfield would help trap Vic. When they enter the farm, Jinx double crosses them and calls in the fuzz. Turns out it was a double trap. Garfield and Odie help get the milk out and are shocked when Vic leaves them behind to deliver the milk to Jinx in hopes that it will mean she will leave Garfield alone. Nope! Jinx captures Vic and plans on killing him. Meanwhile, Garfield and Odie are picked up at the pound by Jon. At home Garfield finds evidence that Vic really did care for him and heads out to save him. In a big climactic scene Garfield saves the day, Jinx’s plan is foiled, and Vic is integrated into their family with Jon. THE END.

If you will allow me a comparison to another Chris Pratt animated film, I am someone who enjoyed The Super Mario Bros. Movie. I thought it was fun to look at and set up the quest in a way that was consistent with a lot of what I loved about the characters. It also had moments that I thought were genuinely funny. As I said, I enjoyed it. This is kind of the opposite. It’s pleasant enough and I do think it is nice to look at, but what in the world does this have to do with Garfield? This actually has a lot more in common with Heathcliff than anything that happens to Garfield. Just a baffling decision on the entire plot of this movie and introduction of Garfield’s dad, Vic… literally decades and decades of Garfield strips to pull from and you choose to make up a bunch of nondescript new ones? It smacks a bit of this being a not-Garfield script that got turned into a Garfield script. May as well also mention that this animated film is rife with product placements… which is kind of odd for an animated film not named Foodfight!

Hot Take Clam Bake! We are gearing up for the big reveal that Vic’s son was not Garfield after all. He was adopted by Jon but eventually returns from whence he came: the junkyard. In the sequel the real Garfield will return, take his rightful place (with his rightful voice: Bill Murray) while the old Chris Pratt Garfield will take back his original name: Heathcliff. He’s then look at the camera and say “you mothers really thought that was a Garfield movie. You are a bunch of dummies. Grow up.” Hot Take Temperature: piping hot lasagna.

Patrick? 

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *Gif of me watching some television, hating Mondays, and eating some lasagna (which I call ‘sagna for short)* Let’s go!

The Good? … Well … I mean, if I was a child I guess it would be acceptable? I really don’t get this film. Let’s just skip to the next section.

The Bad? What is this movie? Like why is this film? I do not understand how you end up with a Garfield film about Garfield being reunited with his father which is basically invented whole cloth for this movie. Why? Why is this the thing that people would ever want to see? Here’s the thing. I just want to see Garfield stories. Make it about Jon going on a date with the vet and Garfield trying to sabotage it initially until he realizes he loves Jon and so then the mission changes: to make this date a success! Make it about Garfield dealing with Nermal. Or Odie. Or whatever. The plot of this film is absurd. Wait … wait a second. I know perfectly how to describe this film: a slap in the face to fans. It really is like a puppet dancing like a Garfield film, but is actually not at all a Garfield film. It’s straight weird.

The BMT? I mean … could it be? No, I refuse. I refuse to accept that this film I will never ever ever ever watch again could be BMT. I refuse. This film is bad. Man … starting with three Bads in a row. Not a great year 2024. 

Yeah, I spent an inordinate amount of time working through some of the issues with video as batch image processing idea. Some highlights: (1) The frames leak (obviously) so having something like Jaws 3-D next to Revenge of the Nerds 2 and asking if they have a shark in them, it is much less likely to correctly mark out Revenge of the Nerds 2. I would presume this is because it is now primed (in context) to look for a big ol’ shark face instead of a fin. (2) The timestamp determination is incredibly fuzzy, almost to the point of being useless. (3) You can figure out the frame is taken from between 0.25-0.5 in each second which I suppose is amusing. I’ll leave you with one graphic:

As I said, it is a little crazy just how unlikely it is to identify Revenge of the Nerds 2 (in position 1 in Experiment #1 for example) when it is close to Jaws 3D (always position 0). The kicker? Batch image processing actually exists, so this was all kind of just a thought experiment in the end anyways.

Obviously a Planchet (Who?) with Odie, look in your heart, you know it to be true. Some Product Placement (What?) with things like Catflix, a play off of Netflix. And I’m just going to leave it with saying the film is Bad.

Learn about cats in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Night Swim Recap

Jamie

It feels like we have gotten back to a place where films like the haunted swimming pool movie aren’t getting unacceptably high RT scores. In 2024 we had a plethora of horror films to choose from. Night Swim was a major horror release too and still critics didn’t lean on the “well this isn’t for me, but if it’s for you then maybe you’ll like it,” kind of review. Perhaps because now there are more critics that would say horror is actually for them. Not sure. Regardless, it feels good that I can look at the trailer for a horror film and go ‘that looks like trash,’ and then a month later it comes out and gets the trash reviews it needs for me to watch it. BMT life.

To recap, Ray and Eve are just trying to navigate the end of Ray’s baseball career due to MS, while also taking care of their children, Izzy and Elliot. While out in MN looking for a handicap accessible home to move to, they stumble upon an older house with a swimming pool. Ray, who isn’t quite ready to totally call it quits, is drawn to it. In particular the pool, which he uses to convince Eve that they should buy that house instead. As they clean up the pool, Ray scratches his hand. The pool maintenance man also reveals that it’s a special pool hooked directly to a natural spring. As a result of the scratch, Ray begins to spend more and more time in the pool and his illness seems to recede. He even begins to send out videos to scouts showing what he can do. Meanwhile things are going to shit for everyone else. The kids are attacked. The cat disappears. At a pool party they throw, Ray ends up almost drowning the child of a friend of theirs (as happens). Even begins to investigate the pool and tracks down a previous owner who is pretty willing to offer up the fact that she used the pool to save her son. All she had to do was sacrifice her daughter. No biggie. Even thinks this is a real biggie, actually, and realizes that the pool will kill one of their children in exchange for healing Ray. When she gets back home shit has really hit the fan. Ray is trying to kill everyone. So is the pool. Elliot gets sucked into the water and Eve has to dive and save him. The real Ray is able to realize what is happening and sacrifices himself in order to avoid the sacrifice they fear. Eve then has the pool filled in with concrete to avoid any chance at a sequel. THE END.

I actually really disliked this film. It’s not that I think it’s too silly or poorly made. Really it’s just that when I sit down to watch a movie called Night Swim I don’t really want to watch a drama about a dude navigating this end of his professional baseball career. If the film was called Sad Baseball Dad, then yeah, I’d be picking up what they were putting down. As it is, this is simply a really, really bad horror film that spends far too much of the film messing around and far too little time scaring you or doing fun, spooky things with the haunted pool. Sigh. Why can’t they just give us The Faculty or I Know What You Did Last Summer or even, like, House of Wax? This is just not for me. But maybe you’ll like this sad baseball dad movie. As for Revolution, I can certainly see why they took one look at this film and thought “goo!” and shelved it. It’s boring, the acting is bad, it’s chopped to shit and that’s still not the worst part. It’s unpatriotic! You think maybe an American audience might not take kindly to an “actually, the American army and British army were both pretty terrible” take on the gritty realities of war? What a blunder. I’m actually offended by it. Booooo, Revolution.

Hot Take Clam Bake! Oh, that pool’s coming back. Straight-to-VOD Night Swim 2: The Deep End is going to be made despite that pool getting filled in with concrete. They’re going to find out that they just filled in their own pool with concrete and didn’t do any more digging (literally or figuratively). Two blocks over we’ll find that there is another pool, fed from the same spring. Spooky ghost girl will be back to haunt (and help?) again. Really the best turn they could do with the franchise would be to pull a Friday the 13th and just change the bad guy to be a slasher eeeevil pool guy. Night Swim 7: Jacob the Pool Guy in Manhattan here we come. Hot Take Temperature: Hollywood hut tub.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *Gif of me with super bloodshot eyes slapping a phone out of Jamie’s hand while screaming “STOP THAT”* Let’s go!

The Good? Well, I liked the setting. I used to live in Minnesota, and that plus the random stuff about baseball was just kind of fun. The film isn’t scary, but I’m a spooky scaredy cat, so I do like relaxing horror films and this is at least somewhat relaxing. I thought the daughter in particular was very good, and the two leads (the parents) were also pretty decent.

The Bad? Not scary! The film has to be a little scary. Horror films are supposed to be a little scary. This isn’t scary. The film feels like it is entirely predicated on the idea of “haunted swimming pool” being an interesting concept. By all accounts it is a concept that can hold up in a short … a feature length film less so.

The BMT? I mean, we are starting off strong for 2024, but I still think this is a Bad film. Horror films kind of have to be laughable in the end, this is merely not scary and in the end uninteresting.

I think I mentioned this in a prior Recap, but my boss told me the other day that AI will be a new programming language except “stochastic and a black box”. I’m okay with the first part, but not so with the second … except it does tickle that one part of my brain which is like “wait, is this a puzzle?” Part one in further exploring the poster analysis is trying to formalize a few things and then determining a benchmark.

An initial benchmark is that I took the top 100 films from 1990 (according to IMDb popularity), and noted that three of them feature Mel Gibson prominently (Air America, Bird on a Wire, and Hamlet). I then compiled these 100 into a video and asked the simple query “This video is a series of movie posters. Give me timestamps for whenever Mel Gibson appears.” I asked this 10 times in a row. It was, impressively, 10/10 for all three. I then took the Hamlet poster and created three new posters, one where I blocked out Gibson’s face, one where I blocked off his name at the top of the poster, and one where I blocked off both. The results are here:

Basically: initially I was getting a little impressed it was still getting Mel Gibson pretty well, but once I got to Experiment #3 I realized what was happening. By keeping the original Hamlet in the set it was just using that context to answer the same as the original poster (kind of impressive … also kind of concerning since it means the context is influencing its response as it consumes the images, so it is a little different than batch image processing, but good for video analysis I suppose). The last three experiments are testing this and yeah … it is fairly clear it is probably just using the name to determine if Mel Gibson is in the Hamlet poster. It must be able to do facial recognition in some capacity because it can recognize Emilio Estevez in Mighty Ducks movie clips. There are no words in those clips, so it can’t be cheating. But with posters, I would guess it is going to be woeful for anyone not incredibly famous or without their name on the poster. More analysis to come.

As part of this final “friend” cycle film we watched the Al Pacino classic Revolution. Uh … what the hell is this film? First, Al Pacino appears to be doing a half accent which maybe is supposed to be a mix between colonial American and French Canadian, it is very hard to place. Second, meanwhile, Nastassja Kinski appears to have simply kept her accent. Third, this film seems to want to make a realistic look at the Revolutionary War, but instead seems to have made a very boring look at the Revolutionary War. I do appreciate that they made the British just mustache twirling villains in this. Not a single redeeming quality in the bunch. A bunch of snivelling assholes throughout. Just very funny. A little like how the British are sometimes depicted in Indian period films like RRR. C-, too boring to be good, but too interesting to be truly worthless. Very weird though.

Obviously Setting as a Character (Where?) for Minnesota, which I do love, he is definitely getting treated at the Mayo Clinic, or at least that must be the indication in some way. A new category, The Haunted Blank (Why?) for the core of a movie being a ridiculous Haunted Swimming Pool. You know what? I like the twist that there is nothing to be done, the father has to sacrifice himself to appease the pool. The film, as I said, is Bad though, not scary, not fun.

Learn all about … Swimming pools? In the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Transylvania 6-5000 Recap

Jamie

We are killing ourselves with bonuses here, but fortunately we are really hitting some big time BMT films with them. Like *checks notes* Transylvania 6-5000? Weird. Did you know the title of this is based on a song Pennsylvania 6-5000 from 1940? It’s such a disastrously misguided title that I have to twist myself into pretzels to even justify it. Really the only justification is that Dow Chemical funded the film as a way to convert their Yugoslav dinar into American dollars. Otherwise that money had to stay in Yugoslavia. I can just imagine the ancient executives at Dow Chemical being like “just one note… call the movie Transylvania 6-5000. The kids love that swing music and jazz cigarettes.” 

To recap, Jeff Goldblum and Ed Begley Jr. are two reporters for a tabloid. Goldblum aspires to bigger and better things, so is particularly dismayed when a grainy homemade video suggesting the existence of a Frankenstein’s monster gets them assigned to the wild goose chase. Off they go to Transylvania where Goldblum assumes they will find nothing. Jokes on him because Frankenstein is real. Not according to the townspeople, though… or the police… or anyone, really, and Begley Jr. is laughed at whenever he inquires. Goldblum is more fascinated by a lovely tourist, Elizabeth, but slowly also gets a feeling that the town itself is not what it seems. As they begin to have run-ins with several other monsters, such as a vampiress and a wolfman, they grow suspicious of a local mad scientist. Things start to really get out of control when Elizabeth’s daughter appears to be kidnapped by the Frankenstein’s monster. This culminates with them finding the laboratory of the mad scientist, who appears to have created all of the monsters they have run into. But they eventually also learn the truth, that the mad scientist is trying to help them. They reveal this to the town, who eventually welcomes the monsters with open arms. This enables Goldblum and Begley Jr. to get a crazy story out of it all and the publicity of their dreams. THE END.

This is barely a movie. Mel Brooks must have had so much sway back then to get this and Silence of the Hams made simply because someone remotely connected to him (but not Mel Brooks himself) was involved. It’s like a one note SNL sketch stretched out for ages as people scramble around. I guess one positive note about it is that I thought it got better as the film went on (and on and on) and we get some early Michael Richards doing a bunch of crazy shit, which is always a bit fun. But when I say they are scrambling, I really do mean they just kinda bop around doing bullshit for 90% of the film. Not even funny bullshit mostly. But… it’s better than Silence of the Hams (raves Bad Movie Twins).

Hot Take Clam Bake! Keeping the Mel Brooks connections going, are we sure this isn’t riffing on The Elephant Man? Hear me out. We have that hot Brooks connection. We have a doctor taking “freaks” under his care to try to help them be more accepted by society, which he ultimately succeeds in doing. They were shopping the film for five years. It’s a 1985 film. What was five years before that? The Elephant Man. Is it a sequel? Is it a prequel? Is it a reboot? I think it’s a reboot. You heard it here first: Transylvania 6-5000 is a reboot of The Elephant Man franchise (“and it’s better than the original!” – Patrick). Woah! Now, Patrick… that really is a hot take. I don’t think I’d go that far. But you do you. Hot Take Temperature: John Hurt.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *Gif of me manically running around a hotel while a young Michael Richards chases me* Let’s go!

The Good? Oooooooof. I mean, some of the jokes I guess. We’ve watched a few spoof films in the past few months. This, I didn’t really expect to be a spoof film, but in many ways it is a spoof film, spoofing the classic Universal Monster Films. And there are little kernels here and there that I can appreciate. The trick on getting into and out of the insane asylum. The monsters all being people looking for medical treatment. Some of Michael Richards gags. As over the top as it often is there are on occasion small funny bits.

The Bad? The film is very unfunny, it very weird, feels interminable, looks like shit, and is basically just two actors playing right into their schtick. I like both of their schticks, but it is just not enough to sustain the whole thing. It is unbelievable this is a wide release film. It looks soooooo bad. It is such a weird film. It is really just a much smaller step up from Silence of the Hams than you would expect.

The BMT? I don’t think so. The film just is too bad and not funny. Same with Silence of the Hams. I would be embarrassed to show this film to someone and that pretty much precludes it from being a true BMT film.

I had to try out this image batch operation on some posters. So I scraped the top 200 posters for 1985 off of IMDb and asked the very scientific query: “Give me all the posters which feature Jeff Goldblum”. The results were: Silverado, Into the Night, Transylvania 6-5000. Those three are correct. In that those are the three major films Jeff Goldblum was in in 1985. The only quibble is that it can’t really differentiate between the name being on the poster and the person appearing on the poster. I don’t think he’s on the Silverado poster, but his name is there. Still, fun.

A real Setting as a Character (Where?) for Transylvania, which, this could be the best Romania film we’ve ever seen. There is a MacGuffin (Why?) in that they are chasing a story about the real deal Frankenstein (and they get more than they bargain for). And again, I liked the twist (that all the monsters are just regular people getting medical treatment), so there. The film is Bad, straight up, not funny and scattershot.

Learn all about monsters I guess in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs