Sharknado and SyFy's Instant Mix

According to urban legend, when Betty Crocker first introduced their instant cake mixes, the kind that only needed water, initial sales were disappointing. The executives were confused at this, since by all reports housewives across America wanted a quicker, less time consuming process for baking cakes. Then, one executive got the idea to take out the powdered egg already in the mix and make the customers add their own fresh eggs to the process. The reasoning behind this was that people wanted to still have the experience of making "homemade" cakes, so by forcing them to add their own egg, they would feel more accomplished and satisfied with the results. It worked, and Betty Crocker became a household name.

The "so-bad-it's-good" movie has been having something of a comeback in recent years, thanks to the Internet and the ability to access almost any movie with a few clicks of your fingertips. Troll 2, The Room, Birdemic: Shock and Terror, and others have found new life as the next evolutionary step to the midnight movies of old, watched by a bunch of friends crowding around a laptop, or shared via YouTube supercuts. The participatory nature of these movies, whether it's giggling at viewing parties or sharing through social media, are essential to their success. We don't just want to watch these misfires, we want to joke and quip about it with others, asking disbelievingly how it's possible this thing got made, or how they possibly missed this and that and the other thing.

But these types of movies are usually the exception, not the rule. It takes a special blend of elements to make a beautiful trainwreck. Yet the SyFy network wants to force this. They recognize the internet's obsession and want nothing more to indulge and cash in on this. These are not people trying to make the best with what they got. This is a cold, calculated, predatory approach to trick profitable demographics into laughing at purposefully bad art. It's appropriate, then, that the channel is so obsessed with sharks, such as their latest attempt at internet mockery, Sharknado. This piece is not a review, because of course Sharknado is terrible. Rather, this is a look at SyFy's attempts to make bad movies on purpose in the hopes of people MST3King it, and how by doing this they are potentially killing the genre.

Iron Man 3 (2013)

SPOILERS FOR IRON MAN AND BASICALLY MOST MARVEL MOVIES

Tony Stark is not a superhero. At least not in the conventional sense. Rewatching the original Iron Man what stood out to me the most was how unheroic he is. When comparing him to, say, Spider-Man, you notice that Tony never really does anything out of altruism. The movie is about him becoming a better person, but he doesn't save anybody or fight crime. The only real heroics he does is when he saves a small village from the 10 Rings, but that's not done because he just wanted to save people. It was done out of revenge and clearing Tony's own conscience (the weapons used in the attack were built by Stark Industries). Spider-Man will sacrifice his scholarship, job, and identity to go save some folks (in Spider-Man 2 he literally does this, taking a detour from delivering pizzas to stop some robbers), but to Iron Man, saving people is an incidental plus to his own goals. The Tony Stark from Iron Man would never sacrifice himself just to help others.

The Avengers, however, is a different story. Tony is probably the primary protagonist of that film and the only hero to be changed by his experiences. He starts out the same as he was in Iron Man, but due to a dead Coulson, a missile, and a wormhole, he discovers his heroic side, the part of him willing to make the ultimate sacrifice. It's an interesting build, as most superhero movies would have established that fact before the end credits of their first outing, while it took 3 movies to do so with Iron Man. As I've mentioned before, major Hollywood franchises are becoming more like television in how they are built. You can really consider all the Marvel movies, starting with Iron Man and going up to The Avengers, as Season 1. They introduce everybody with their own movies before throwing them all together for the big season finale. With this in mind, Iron Man 3 is supposedly the beginning of Season 2.

The problem is that Iron Man 3 clearly doesn't want to be this. It wants to be a stand alone movie, not part of a greater whole. But because the Marvel universe is now established it can't be, it needs to be a component of this world. This may explain why the movie feels so disorienting, and why even though it's certainly not a bad movie by any means it's definitely disappointing.

Dark Tower (1989)

I miss bad, cheap horror movies done with a straight face. It seems like all the horror movies that come out now, assuming they aren't a remake of an earlier movie, are trying so hard to be the next Troll 2, but on purpose. What a lot of these directors fail to understand is you can't make Troll 2 on purpose, the magic of that movie is how it was done in total seriousness. If the filmmakers behind the movie hadn't been trying their hardest to make that movie the best damn picture put on film then the movie would just feel cynical and not worth anybodies time. There's love amidst the rubber masks and poor framing, and it leaks out onto the screen, much to the audience's disbelief and joy.

I don't know the production back story behind Dark Tower, a movie about a haunted skyscraper that's as dumb as it sounds. I know it stars the always fun Michael Moriarty, no stranger to the bad movie circuit, known for his star turn in Q and the original Troll. I know it was filmed in Spain and as such has several different languages spoken throughout the movie, which is really disorienting. I know it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. But, although I don't know the circumstances under which this movie was made, I do know it has a lot of heart to it. It's like a kindergartner's macaroni art project. It's not really good, but it's charming and kind of enjoyable to watch under the influence of a lot of alcohol.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

...yeah, I'm not going to bother reviewing this one. It's a stone cold classic. On the Wicker Scale it's right at the top. I mean, for Christ's sake, it's fucking Stanley Kubrick! It's one of the most influential movies ever, decades ahead of it's time. Even if you've never seen it you know everything in it. The opening with the monkeys, the monolith, HAL 9000, Also sprach Zarathustra, the starchild, it's all iconic. You don't need some punk kid with a blog to tell you that this is one of the greatest movies ever made. So yeah, this isn't a review or anything. I just wanted to talk about one scene. 

I first saw this movie when I was in high school and of course it was all lost on me. As somebody who, at the time, thought the headiest movie ever made was V for Vendetta it was probably a tall order to expect me to really get such a slow and complex movie. Jump to the present day. I'm in the middle of a Kubrick kick right now so I thought hey, how about giving this one another chance? Let me tell you friend, it blew me away. An absolute masterpiece in every way. Yet I was wondering, besides just being too young to appreciate it, why I flat out didn't like it. I saw a lot of movies before I was able to really get them, like On The Waterfront and The Shining, yet even if I didn't understand what they were trying to say thematically I still appreciated them as movies. 

2001: A Space Odyssey is different though. In a lot of ways, this movie breaks the boundaries of what we expect from a film and even from a story. In fact, if you aren't looking at this movie from a relatively scholarly point of view, it's going to be confusing to see what all the fuss is about. The story not only doesn't have a protagonist in the traditional sense, but also spans over thousands of years with little to no emotional stakes holding it together. The only characters who the audience really gets a feel for are Dave and HAL 9000, the onboard computer. Which is perhaps why his "death" is so heartbreaking.

Doogal (2006)

I honestly can say I don't think I have ever seen a movie like Doogal. In a way I've seen Doogal a million times before even knowing about it's existence because it truly is the defacto representative of a decade's worth of lazy cheap CGI animated movies put into one nice little package. It's a crappy looking movie voiced by actors who clearly lost a bet with Harvey Wienstien at some point. It's not particularly funny, with most of it's humor coming from obvious pop culture references and farting. It's not emotional in any way, in fact it's perhaps one of the most cynically made kids movie out there. It doesn't even really manage to make any sense whatsoever.

And yet, in it's own special way, Doogal is really fascinating. I don't think I've ever seen a movie that could possible give less of a fuck about, well, anything. Even the most blatant and obvious cash-grabs have some sort of effort put in by somebody along the line, but this? Nothing, nothing at all. It's not a so-bad-it's-funny movie. It's barely a movie. It's closer to being Wizard People, Dear Reader then it is a movie. Because I'm not reviewing The Magic Roundabout, the European animated film that was released a year before which just so happened to feature the same visuals as today's movie. No, I'm talking about Doogal, the American dub of said film that is so disconnected from what's on screen that it may as well be Brad Neely narrating it for us.

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (Seasons 3)

As we discussed the other day, the unexpected quality programming of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic can be attributed to it's strong emphasis on character. It's cute and likable cast combined with it's abilities to tell simple, light morality tales helped raise it's status from 22 min toy commercial to critical darling. I really can't overstate how much the clear, strong personalities of not only the main cast but many of the ancillary characters made the show what it is, allowing the audience a chance to look at the different sides of these ponies. It sounds silly to those who haven't watched it, and maybe silly to some who have, but even when you're characters are candy colored horses it's possible to make them rounded, exploring multiple sides of their personalities and create fun scenarios for them to play out.

And then they forgot to do that.

Watching season 3 of MLP:FiM is like watching somebody who's going through an identity crisis. At some point in time the show's staff must have gotten this letter saying "MAKE THIS MORE EPIC" because good lord it's trying too hard to do so. With a 13 episode order, this season is the shortest one the show has done yet, and trust me that's a good thing. There must have been something going on behind the scenes. I don't know if it was creative problems, (Creator Lauren Faust had left the show halfway through season 2, so I'm not sure who took over the reigns after that,) a lack of time, pressure from Hasbro, pressure from a very vocal fanbase, or all of the above. The only thing I do know is that this season is definitely the most inconsistent that the show has done to this point.

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (Seasons 1 & 2)

Children's entertainment is graded on a different curve from adult media, for obvious reasons. For parents the main criteria of a "good" kids show is something along the lines of "will my kid like this"? It makes sense that when evaluating a movie or TV show aimed at a very specific demographic the first and foremost characteristic to look out for is at such a basic level. That's why for years people considered kids media to be critic proof. Who cares what some dusty old critic thinks about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Care Bears? It's for kids and, therefore, out of sight and mind for adults.

This dynamic has been changing in recent years. Now, a kids show doesn't have to be seen purely on the most superficial indicator of quality out there. These pieces of entertainment can cross the generational gap, both entertaining children and engaging adults. Movies like the Toy Story trilogy, Wreck-It Ralph, and Coraline are not only blockbusters for the younger set but also beloved by adults. TV shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender, Adventure Time, and Gravity Falls show that a kids show doesn't just have to shut up the tykes for half an hour, but can even go deeper then that, blurring the lines between the typical "good vs. evil" struggle present in most mass media and touching onto humanism themes.

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is right in between the older and newer views on kids entertainment. It's not a deep show by any means. Pretty much everything it has to say is right there on the surface, a chipper optimistic little cartoon about getting along with your friends. Yet the first two seasons of the show did manage to be engaging to those beyond it's immediate target audience of preschool girls. It does this being cute without being cloying, mixing solid character development with fun, if simple, animation and positive themes for an often overlooked demographic in this kind of new, smarter kids programming; girls.

Wizard People, Dear Reader (2004)

Ragtime Roast Beefy O'Weefy

Art knows no copyright. This isn't an advocacy for pirating or anything like that, because at the end of the day the guy who made your movie has to eat. But how much it costs to purchase a piece of media has nothing to do with the end result. The films of Kenneth Anger, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, and this year's Sundance hit Escape From Tomorrow (which holy cow I want to see so badly) don't have their artistic value stripped away from them simply because they didn't pay for the rights of a song or show Mickey Mouse without asking Disney first.

This is probably a strange tangent to take before discussing what's basically a guy talking over Harry Potter with a funny voice. Calling Wizard People, Dear Reader art is a stretch in of itself. In it's own way, though, Brad Neely's alternative audio track to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is a pretty good example of remix art. By presenting his own take on this major Hollywood entity, Neely transforms Chris Columbus' bland paint-by-numbers entity into a separate creature, a tale of a hard drinking, hard fighting 11 year old who, with his companions Ronnie the Bear and the Wreched Harmony, battle against his Dracula father. It's also possibly the funniest thing to ever come out of the internet.

Where The Wild Things Are (2009)

There must be no harder job in screenwriting then writing for children. When adults write about children they tend to project themselves onto them. We don't see children as people, really. This is especially true in movies, where children are typically either depicted as mini adults or these naive semi-petlike waifs. They are these idealized versions of what we remember of our own childhoods. When looking through those rose-tinted glasses they become very fake. They don't talk like any kid really does. The two children in Jurassic Park are a good example of this, ("It's a UNIX system! I know this!") as are the various Home Alone moppets through the years.

The second hardest job in screenwriting is probably an adaptation. (Something the director of this movie knows quite a bit about.) Though great for producers, who know they have a built in audience, it must be hell for whatever writer is tasked with not only making the story fit into a film structure but at the same time not make fans of the original work come after them for any changes they might make. At the same time, they need to change stuff too in order to make the movie not be a paint-by-numbers retelling of the book. If you do that, you get Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. It gets even harder when the book they ask you to adapt is a picture book, less then 30 pages sometimes. So you're expected to make a movie that's at least an hour and a half long on something that can literally be told within 10 minutes while not changing anything too egregiously lest people who read the book complain. What a nightmare.

In 2009, writer Dave Eggers and director Spike Jonze were asked to do both of these things when they were approached to create a film based off of Maurice Sendak's classic children's book Where The Wild Things Are. Somehow they managed to not only pull this off, but did it incredibly well, taking the skeleton of the story and making it a moody film that manages to be introspective while still feeling kenetic and exciting. It captures both the hyper energetic part of childhood we all vividly remember, yet it also sheds light on the other, less mentioned part of being a kid. That fear of the world around you and that all this might not be around forever.

Cabin Boy (1994)

To paraphrase Oscar Levant, there's a fine line between genius and idiocy. This is especially true in comedy. If you look at a lot of brilliant comedy movies it's so easy to see how they would have failed if something had been juuuuuuuust a little different. If Bill Murray wasn't in Ghostbusters, it would have bombed. If Wet Hot American Summer wasn't played so straight, it wouldn't be nearly as good. It's a tricky line to distinguish sometimes, and it became nearly impossible to track in the 90s and early aughts. For every Wayne's World, you had a Night At The Roxbury. For every Office Space, a Me Myself and Irene.

In their attempts to find that next alt aesthetic to resonate with a mainstream audience, studios basically gave comedy writers a wide berth when it came to their projects. The results were really truly weird. As in "how the hell did anybody green light this" weird. Movies like Pootie Tang, Freddy Got Fingered, and Run Ronnie Run were all made under a variation of this model, and all probably rank up there with the strangest movies Hollywood has ever made. (Tellingly, Pootie Tang and Run Ronnie Run both suffered a lot from studio interference during their editing, showing that the studios got cold feet on this approach to comedy. All three bombed too, which is why you don't really see this stuff anymore.)

Walt Disney, under their Touchstone distribution wing, threw their own hats into the ring on this kind of comedy. The result was Cabin Boy, and it's...distinct. Originally a Tim Burton vehicle intended to be a tribute to Ray Harryhausen epics like Clash of the Titans & Jason and the Argonauts, the movie instead passed on to Adam Resnick and Chris Eliot once Burton left to direct Ed Wood. The Tim Burton connection is important because in a lot of ways the movie is similar to Mars Attacks!, another Burton movie. Both are clearly meant to be cult movies right out of the gate, and both tackle a genre long sedate by the time of their release. But while Mars Attacks! connection to sci-fi B movies is clear, Cabin Boy's is a bit more tangential.

Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

The other day a friend of mine and I were talking about the most recent work of Quentin Tarantino, Django Unchained. Unlike most people and critics, I really didn't like the movie that much. I thought it was good, and there were a lot of performances I liked, but I found it kind of boring. Since Kill Bill onward, Tarantino's movies have had one major theme running through them; the oppressed (women, Jews, African slaves) taking revenge on their oppressors (men, Nazis, southern plantation owners). There's nothing wrong with that theme, in fact it's one that can make a hell of an interesting movie. The problem is he attacks it from the same angle every time, with a bloody-as-hell, guns ablazing comeuppance at the end. The most interesting parts of his recent output for me was when he strayed away from that to try other stuff (Shoshanna's plot during Inglourious Basterds being the best example), but at the end, it goes back into the same stylized violence.

My friend pointed out, very smartly, that the same criticisms could be made about Wes Anderson, a filmmaker who's most recent movie, Moonrise Kingdom, was one of my favorite movies last year. That's somewhat true, in so far as that he has a very distinct style that he doesn't deviate too far from. The difference, however, is the material he tackles using said style. Unlike Tarantino (who, for the record, is responsible for some of my favorite movies), Anderson's movies continue to be similar stylistically but differ far more in their material then Quentin's. Tarantino is painting the same bowl of fruit in several different styles while Anderson is painting different objects the same way.

Anderson, as a filmmaker, is very much like a painter. Meticulous and detail oriented, he stages his movies in a way that goes against the typical realist style. His characters often look directly into the camera, as if they are speaking directly to the audience. He often employs a narrator, almost like a placard next to a work in a museum. He acknowledges the fourth wall, but doesn't necessarily break it. Sometimes this style doesn't work, and can make his stories seem cold and calculated. But at his best, like in The Royal Tenebaums, it can make the audience connect in an incredibly strong way. If I had to hold up a film that presents itself as the best example of Anderson's style and how it works, I think I'd choose Moonrise Kingdom.

Synecdoche, New York (2008)

I'm going to start this a little pretentiously, but considering the film we're talking about today, I think that's appropriate. The original reasoning behind the Wicker Scale's grading method (which, I want to reiterate, is dumb) was to avoid having to give movies a grade. I hate grading movies because I feel as if it's kind of derivative and makes the conversation switch from "You gave that a B+??? It was totally an A-!!!" to actual discussion. I still felt like I needed some simple way of differentiating movies I liked and didn't though, so I came up with the scale.

The problem with it, besides everything, is that it still puts it on a binary. Every movie has to be "good" or "bad" overall. Some movies don't really fall into one of those two categories, like Synecdoche, New York. To be fair, I'm giving my opinion on this movie after only watching it once and this is a movie that just begs to be watched multiple times so every frame can be analyzed, so I may be missing a lot of the nuances that would definitively put the movie into the "good" or "bad" camp. But while watching this I couldn't decide if what I was watching was a brilliant, postmodern, surrealist take on death and our attempts to give life meaning or if it was nothing but self indulgent bloat too far up it's own ass to see the point.

Pitch Perfect (2012)

About halfway through the 2012 comedy musical Pitch Perfect, the female lead Beca, played by Anna Kendrick, is talking to her love interest Jesse, played by Skylar Astin. Jesse wants to be a film composer/arranger and is trying to tell Beca why this means so much and the power music in film can have. Beca rolls her eyes, saying she doesn't really like movies because they are so predictable and she never seems to get to the end. It's a pretty clever, self aware moment in the movie, basically telling the audience to expect the happy ending forthcoming. There's not going to be any tricks, you all know it's going to end with a smile and a trophy, but that doesn't mean you can't enjoy the ride.

Unfortunately, pointing this out doesn't help if the rest of the movie is willing to stand up to scrutiny. It's one thing for a film to acknowledge it's cliches, but another entirely for it to transcend them. Telling us the labored nature of the setup only works if the punchline kills. Pitch Perfect, while a fun movie that would be perfect for catching on cable Saturday afternoon, isn't able to get there, though it does find itself awfully close at times.

Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

One of the most satisfying feelings in the world is when somebody receives a well deserved comeuppance. It's the basis of our legal system, the idea that when somebody does a bad thing, they deserve to be punished accordingly for it. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. As a result, it's one of the most common themes in media. We're taught it from an early age, with every Disney movie we watch where the bad guy falls to their death for their fight against the forces of good. It surrounds us every day, the idea of karmic punishment, the belief that bad things will happen to bad people. Look at Django Unchained, or Jack Reacher. The most popular movie of last year was called The Avengers. There is a show on TV right now literally called Revenge. It's a comfortable feeling, knowing that at the end of all things, those responsible for bad deeds will get punished. It feels right.

But what does it change? When a person is punished does it take back the bad things they've done? Does it make it all better, wiping the slate clean? That's what Zero Dark Thirty, Katherine Bigelow and Mark Boal's follow up to 2009's The Hurt Locker, is asking. It's hard to talk about this movie or go into it without some sort of opinion already formed because it's been picked apart endlessly for months now. It it pro-torture? Is it responsible to make a movie like this after the whole thing in Libya? How much of a partisan bias does the movie have?

If you do want to see this movie, however, I would really recommend disregarding all of that beforehand. Because this is not just about Osama bin Laden's hunt. It's about an angry country. A country so blinded by anger that they are willing to do whatever it takes to get that revenge, the karmic balance it's been promised has to exist. It's about the cost of that promise, if it was worth the damage it did on our souls. The brilliance of the movie is that it asks us this without giving us an answer.

The Great Mouse Detective (1986)

The other day we talked a little about the monotony of motion picture animation. This was especially true in the mid 1980s, when animation was a far more riskier enterprise than today. The golden age of Disney was over. The company hadn't had a real hit since 1967's The Jungle Book, their latest release, The Black Cauldron, was a box office bomb, and for the first time the company had real competition. Recently fired Disney animator Don Bluth had released The Secret of NIHM a couple years earlier to general acclaim and had just partnered with megaproducer Stephen Spielberg for his next movie, An American Tail. The company was in turmoil both inside and out.

What the company needed was a hit, a movie to restore confidence in it's animation department and bring in their next run of critical and commercial hits. Instead they got The Great Mouse Detective.

Ghost Mine

We all know ghosts don't really exist. Okay, maybe you are one of the people who do honestly and truly think they do, but at the very least we can agree that if ghosts do exist, it probably won't be proven on a cable reality show. The same goes for bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, and any other paranormal phenomena. These are discoveries that, if found, would cause quite the ruckus. If the existence of ghosts, and therefore an afterlife, was ever shown without a shadow of a doubt it would basically mean so much that we assume in science is probably wrong. It would literally change the world.

Ghost Mine on SyFy isn't going to do that, but it might change some half-drunken late nights while channel surfing. To start off with, it's a show called Ghost Mine, and it's about a haunted mine. Even though we live in a golden age for TV, we also live in an age where reality programming is a thing. Ghost Mine is a mashup between two distinct reality subgenres; shows following hard working blue collar workers doing their thing (Deadliest Catch, Ice Road Truckers) and shows about ghost hunting (Ghost Hunters, Most Haunted). It doesn't do a great job meshing these two halves together either, making it feel like you're occasionally watching two different shows with two far different thesis, which is assuming Ghost Mine has a thesis to begin with, which is probably giving it far too much credit.

The Secret of Kells (2009)

In Disney's 1959 adaptation of Sleeping Beauty, a large emphasis was put on the art direction of the movie. The movie differed from the typical Disney house style, instead taking great inspiration from medieval art and tapestries. It was far more stylized, with a much sharper look when compared to, say, Cinderella. The movie is considered to be a classic of animation today, but at the time of the film's release it was a commercial failure. Disney wouldn't go back to making fairy tales for the big screen until The Little Mermaid.

Ever since then, American theatrical animation has looked kinda samey. Almost across the board animated features have roughly the same art style as everything that came before it. They don't look bad or anything, but it can sometimes be difficult to differentiate movies from studio to studio. There's a reason you grandma thinks every computer animated movie comes from Pixar; it's because nobody wants to deviate too far from the norm. Studios know that audiences expect their movies to look a certain way and straying from that path risks alienating them.

The Secret of Kells, a 2009 Irish-French-Belgian co-production, has much more in common with Sleeping Beauty then it does with most modern animated features. It's also kind of it's antithesis. Where Sleeping Beauty focuses on the more ornate aspects of medieval times (castles, princes and princesses, gigantic feasts), The Secret of Kells is much more interested in the natural, with a rather bitter view on the towers and walls Sleeping Beauty fetishized.

Wet Hot American Summer (2001)

I never went to a sleepaway camp as a kid. When I was little I went to our town's camp for a couple weeks every summer, and in middle school I would go to a theater camp I eventually would be a counselor for in high school, but those were all day camps. The only experience with an overnight camp that I have is second-hand stories from my cousins and my sister. But you don't need to go to camp to appreciate Wet Hot American Summer, though a familiarity with summer camp movies probably helps.

Along with Pootie Tang, which was released in the same year and is way better than it's reputation, Wet Hot American Summer is probably one of the weirdest comedies to get to theaters in the 2000's. A parody of movies like Meatballs and Indian Summer, Wet Hot follows the teen counselors, played by a cast clearly far older then the characters, as they navigate through their last day at Camp Firewood. The movie had a fizzling 30 theater run, where it made little money and was released to overwhelmingly negative reviews, but became a cult classic based on it's considerable pedigree. Much of the cast and writers come from the amazing MTV sketch comedy show The State, as well as appearances by lots of future comedy stars, including Paul Rudd, Amy Poehler, Bradley Cooper, Elizabeth Banks, Ken Marino, H. Jon Benjamin, and Christopher Meloni, who's not really a comedy star unless you think Law and Order: SVU is a wacky farce.

Director David Wain, who would later co-create Children's Hospital on adult swim, is in full alt-comedy mode here. Wet Hot American Summer was part of a wave in absurdest comedy films, movies with a heavy parody elements very willing to break from reality in service to the jokes. Austin Powers, Anchorman, and the Scary Movie series are all examples of this type of film, and it would be the prevalent form of Hollywood comedy until Judd Apatow and The 40 Year Old Virgin changed that. These movies tend to follow the Mel Brooks and Zuckers Bros. mode of comedy, where you throw everything at the wall and hope what sticks is stronger then what doesn't. They don't have an internal logic to them, everything is done with a wink and a smile. When done wrong, it's one of the worst type of movie out there, and if you don't believe me go watch Epic Movie. But when done just right the results are sublime, and Wet Hot is a great example of this.

Rosemary's Baby (1968)

Okay, here's your word of warning: it's almost impossible to discuss Rosemary's Baby and Roman Polanski without talking about rape. Now last year we all learned this topic is a big trigger for people so if you maybe don't want to read a big fat essay about rape from somebody who's thankfully never had an experience with that and think I'm in way over my head then here's your chance to turn back. 

Roman Polanski has got to be one of the most controversial figures in film history. A Polish man born in France, he's without a doubt an accomplished and skilled director. Chinatown is a stone cold classic and I'd argue his Macbeth that he made for Playboy is one of the best filmed Shakespeare adaptations out there. Of course, his infamy in the pop culture landscape is due to different, darker reasons. In 1969 his eight month pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, was killed by Charles Manson's cult in one of the most high profile murder cases of all time. Nearly 10 years later, in 1977, Polanski allegedly drugged and definitely raped a 13 year old girl during a photo shoot. After pleading guilty, he fled to Europe where he's been living in exile ever since. He's still directing, and he's still pretty great at it, even winning an Oscar for The Pianist in 2002.

As a result of this, Polanski's been a figure whose work is incredibly hard to discuss without it eventually dovetailing into arguments on that case. Some allege that the girl was consenting and it was merely statutory. Others say that enough time has passed for him to be "forgiven" and allowed to come back to the United States. Myself, I don't claim to be an expert on the case or anything, besides what I've read here and there, but the fact remains that he definitely unlawfully and forcibly pushed himself onto this girl and then ran away before he could be convicted. Is bringing him back to the US and locking him up the solution? I don't know, I don't know if it's possible for there to be a solution to something like this. 

Despite his moral misgivings, and they are sizable, you really cannot deny that the man isn't a master filmmaker. His directing style is meticulous and detail oriented, so not a single frame of his films is ever wasted. The films he makes often have a psychological bent to them, and you can see that he clearly understands his characters intimately. Rosemary's Baby, his Hollywood debut and arguably his best film, is no exception to this. It's a masterpiece, beautifully acted and shot in a way that, although it has no jump scares, has an unsettling horror to it that lingers with you for hours, if not days, after watching. Part of the reason it does this because it taps into a very human fear, a fear that Polanski himself would exploit a decade later: the loss of control.

Freaks and Geeks

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR A 13 YEAR OLD TV SHOW
A lot of plot threats in the last episode of the 1999 cult TV show Freaks and Geeks don’t feel quite resolved, like Nick's feelings for Lindsay still hanging in the air and the future of Daniel and Kim's relationship. Hell, the last we see of Ken is him being thrown out of a disco. All fine for a season finale, but a little lacking for the cap to the whole damn show. The very last scene, on the other hand, is the perfect end to the series that I can imagine. Lindsay Weir is just about to leave for an exclusive academic summit she has been nominated for by her school. It’s an incredible boost to her transcript for college and a once in a lifetime opportunity, but she’s been ambivalent about attending. Her teachers and her parents have been telling her how great and important this summit is for her over the course of the episode. As she gets on the bus she looks back at her family.

“Hey Mom?” she says.

“Yes sweetie?” her mother replies, beaming.

Lindsay pauses for a moment before putting on a little smile. “I’ll see you soon.”

“Okay honey,” her mom says through tears.

Of course Lindsay never goes to the academic summit. She never even planned to. As “Ripple” by the Grateful Dead plays, she gets on the bus only to get out a couple stops away, where she meets up with her friend Kim and a minibus full of Deadheads. We’re not worried about her, we know she’s going to be fine. She’s a smart kid, and she’s about to have one of the best summers of her life, following the Dead on tour. She’s made her choice, finally thrown off the shackles and pressures she’s been feeling grow heavier and heavier on her. Her exchange with her mother so wonderfully captures a moment everybody has gone through with their parents. Lindsay knows she’s going to break her mom’s heart by doing this, and she wants to apologize, try to explain to them why the summit is wrong for her and why she has to do this, that she’s not the perfect little girl whose in the mathletes. She’s changed, or perhaps she’s been this way the whole time but hasn’t been able to throw off that label till now.