Month: July 2014

‘How To Train Your Dragon 2’: Two Good Acts, Followed By A Bad One

bludvist

How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014)
Written & Directed by Dean DeBlois
102 min.

Mild spoilers ahead.

This film is a joyride right from the start, soaring us over cloudscapes and real-looking ice formations—all accompanied by Sigur Rós. And compared to the first film, the world, and its inhabitants, are fleshed out more. In one short and refreshingly natural conversation, Astrid actually becomes a real character, her relationship with Hiccup finally more than her being his reward for completing the first film’s plot. This scene sets the bar high, and the film meets it with richly developed characters, psychological complexity, and a few scenes which use silence and subtle body language in ways not often seen in an animated kids’ movie. Meets it until the end of the third act, that is. The third act jolted me out of the film, and proceeded to collapse, or outright ignore, everything that had been so meticulously built.

Continue reading ‘How To Train Your Dragon 2’: Two Good Acts, Followed By A Bad One

‘Transformers’ and the Power of Existentialism

unicron
Spoilers of Transformers: The Movie ahead.

The animated show Transformers functions as a protection from the outside world. Life is a scary thing, and being a kid on planet Earth is often incomprehensible, so a television show where even cars are out to protect the Earth, and every episode the day is saved and status quo is restored, is a tremendous comfort. It would be easy to dismiss its concept as stupid, but in a world as dark and violent and painful as ours, taking refuge in a place of color and imagination is perhaps the best possible thing a young person can do.

Let me tell you about a man named Friedrich Nietzsche who also understood this.

Continue reading ‘Transformers’ and the Power of Existentialism

‘Turkles’: A Movie That Looks Amazing

I stumbled on this movie while browsing my local library’s new releases online. The title piqued my interest, so I Googled it and found the trailer above.

I need to see this movie.

Greg DeLiso and and I are always on the hunt for the next great unintentional comedies for us to fall in love with and quote incessantly to each other. We’ve delved far beyond famous ones like The Room, Troll 2, and Birdemic: Shock and Terror—our favorites include lesser-known gems such as My Streets, Little Marines 1 & 2, and Breakout: Batteries Not Included. Few have ever heard of them, but they offer as much, if not more laughs than better-known so-bad-it’s-good fare.

It appears nobody has discovered Turkles yet, as is so often the case with a lot of these movies. It’s an untapped genre that people assume consists of only a handful, but really there are tons that are hilarious.

Here’s a video with more weird clips from Turkles. The person who put it together clearly didn’t do so because they saw humor—I think it’s just a highlight reel for one of the actresses—but it plays like a greatest hits of awkward Turkles moments:
Continue reading ‘Turkles’: A Movie That Looks Amazing