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Clawboy1
Reviews
Kitchen Nightmares: Amy's Baking Company (2013)
The Best Reality TV Has to Offer
I don't watch reality television often; actually, I pretty much never watch. However, my friend showed me this episode after telling me it was one of the greatest episodes of television he'd ever seen. He was not overstating it! What an episode! The level of awfulness and the personalities involved made this legendary. See it!
Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966)
A Must See for Every Filmmaker
We do not learn from our successes; we learn from our mistakes, and surely, there is no greater cinematic mistake than Manos: The Hands of Fate.
Manos is almost assuredly the worst film ever made and it will likely remain that way until the end of time. For this very reason, you must see it.
Yes, you will laugh, but this is not "The Room." Wiseau's film garners most of its insanity from how badly it wants to use cliche lines, sequences, stories, etc. But doesn't have a clue what to do with any of them (among other things like horrible acting and strangely bad green screen and sets). You see what Wiseau was going for in any one scene, how badly he missed, and how inevitable that miss always was.
Manos, however, is something else. It's nonsense that believes in itself! It lies somewhere between insanity and boredom. There It's a plot based film without any plot. There are characters with no traits at all. There are story elements that seem to appear and disappear with wind. Is it a thriller? A drama? Fantasy? It's all three but at different times for the wrong reasons. It is the worst B-movie script ever written yet it has the pacing of a Terrance Malick movie. The pacing is so slow that, when it's over, you can barely tell that the story has even taken place anc yet it has, you just didn't know it. Or, if you did, you don't know what you saw. The cinematography is actively disgusting - I don't mean gross! It is deranged. Shots and cuts either happen or they don't and there can be no explaining any of them. The compositions are so horrible, it belies belief.
The acting is likely the most inexplicable I've ever seen. Far from the cringy, melodramatic performances of bad actors we are accustomed to in the B-movie, here, it seems the actors simply don't know what they're performing at all though, clearly they must. There is so little emotion or affect in the on-screen actors' movements or from the voices of the handful of people that dub every character (they don't exactly do character voices either) is genuinely shocking. How could someone, who works as an insurance salesman, raise $19,000 (about.$160,000 as of 2022) and care so little about anything going on?! It staggers the mind.
I'm not going to talk much about the technical d problems because, frankly, though they are bad, some of them are excusable for a no budget movie made by a salesman in El Paso.
However, I would be remiss if I did not leave you by discussing the opening. Our main couple is driving down a road in Texas and is lost. And they're lost. And they're lost. And they're lost. For over 9 minutes, we just see them drive aimlessly in the Southwest while adlibbing lines about how lost they are. There was clearly supposed to be titles here but there's not. He just forgot. He could have cut this scene out or down significantly. He put work in to make it run that long. Why?!
Why?! Why?! Why to it all!!!
Defunctland (2017)
The Greatest Historical Channel on YouTube.
What started out as a fun educational channel with a dose of nostalgia has become a fascinating channel. It's creator consistently outdoes himself. He tells stories uniquely and has become increasingly ambitious. His humor never feels like "YouTuber humor," but instead seems genuine and earned.
Bravo, Kevin!
Home Town: Termite Terror (2020)
Utter Incompetence
I have never seen such incompetence on an HGTV show. The foundation was CV destroyed, the wood was in ruins. All that they (and I say "they" because don't know exactly whose fault this is) had to do was do a basic home inspection. This house shouldNEVER have been purchased. It's home buying 101. And the homeowner really isn't at fault; she probably assumed that HGTV had done that most basic work. Unbelievable!!!
Bo Burnham: Inside (2021)
An Astounding, Terrifying, and Hilarious Year's Worth of Psychotherapy
Regardless of whether or not you've ever heard the name 'Bo Burnham' before, you should watch his new musical comedy special "Inside" on Netflix. Burnham's prior film, "Eighth Grade", was my favorite film of 2018 and possibly the most accurate look at adolescence I've ever seen. Whether Inside is better or not, I don't know. It's very different, of course.
Burnham managed to write, direct, compose, shoot, and edit this 87 minute special by himself in a single room with no crew. The end product is nothing short of a masterpiece. It captures the emotional turmoil of the pandemic and of our times better than most anything I've seen, literally showing it's creator supposedly loosing his mind (the line between reality and fiction here is very blurry). Yet, he manages to find a difficult balance between high concept humor, cinematic experimentation, and a faux-vérité depression. The music is impeccably produced.
The production/light design is remarkable. The humor all works. But that's not why you should watch this special; you should watch it because to experience the emotional rollercoaster you'll ride. This special will stab you in the heart while giving you a hug. It felt like a year's worth of psychotherapy. I've never said that about anything else.
WARNING: The special addresses mental health issues including depression, panic attics, and even suicidal thoughts so effectively, it is almost (but not quite) reckless.