switchtrinity654

So I'm going to give everyone a full disclosure with this - I am not really into superhero movies. I don't generally dislike them, however what I dislike about the majority is it's either Joss Whedon style cracks at the expense of a sincere take on the story OR Zack Snyder style "I WANNA BE DARK!" edgy that it goes beyond the point of seriousness. The thing is I don't think it's so hard to tell a story that both can be a serious take on the characters AND ridiculous enough to be a fun ride. Also both are full of characters that are homework assignments for people who don't know who these people are and...the idea of "follow the brand that made the movie" ALWAYS sounds like the most boring way to actually engage with the way a movie is made.

This movie...is NOT a serious take on the story or characters. More it's a parody movie which kind of sort of retells the story of Joker (2019) but with a transfemale protagonist and director. There is a lot that gets reshaped to fit the needs of what that premise means for the story but if you want a "general gist" - that's it.

Now there are a lot of comic book references in this movie but I don't think it's impossible for someone to like this movie who has no idea who half the characters or scenes being parodied are. I do find that one scene that I recognized as being parodied and was objectively better here is the scene in Joker (2019) where he dances down the stairs. In this movie that scene is recreated but they replace Gary Glitter with a parody of the Prince song that played in the museum scene in the '89 Batman movie (insert "I did see these movies as a kid" disclaimer here). Cultural erasure of Gary Glitter will never be a bad thing to me.

Now a lot of what I've seen online in relation to this movie is people going in expecting this to be AS polished as the Hollywood stuff and getting disappointed (also slurs and people simping over companies keeping IP rights from the public forever, but I want to keep on track). You will not get that. The visuals rely on character identities getting swapped out a lot (people become 2D drawings, dolls, some characters are 3D animations that are uncanny valley). The amount of work that goes into animation like that suggests to me that the visual style of this movie being so disjointed is very deliberate.

So, if I don't like the genre and admit this movie can be pretty visually disjointed, why am I giving this movie a pass? Honestly because this movie isn't REALLY about comic book characters. It uses that as coding. "This person was a villain" "this person was a hero" and...deconstructing the idea of both. The movie outright dismisses the idea that any one person is a complete hero or a total villain. It's more a story of what we bring to it. Now that might not be very deep to some but my experience of comic book movies is they almost never bring that up. So it was nice to see that and I think it's worth a point for "just because I've heard it doesn't mean everyone else has or that people don't need to hear this."

Now I've talked serious for a bit, what about the "parody" aspect? I'll be honest in that it did get a few decent laughs out of me here and there. Now that's not going to be a sell for everyone as humour is very subjective and my sense of humour is NOT the kind that's applicable to everyone. So the best I can do is try to deconstruct some of the jokes but I don't really want to explain "Why did the clown jump into a vat of feminizing hormones at a chemical storage plant? Because gender health is inaccessible, even in comic book movies" Just...that made me laugh.

So, yeah. I know not everyone seemed to enjoy this but I think it's a cool little film.

Barber Westchester is a movie by filmmaker Jonni Peppers about a boy who lives in a cult, gets a job at NASA and what he finds there means spending the last hour of the movie getting to the meat of the premise "what do you do when 'the story ends?'"

What I mean by that is this movie is very obsessed with conspiracy theories - to a point that there are multiple in this one movie that never really come together. More just stumble and crash away from or into the plot like Chekov's guns that are shown but not fired or ones fired from offscreen but never established (I hope that makes sense). This, in a movie about someone trying to work on themselves, actually works in it's favour for a narrative. It makes you feel like the titular character is a part of a larger world - like how people are when they have to work on themselves. So plot wise, this feels like it's trying to be anything but the standard narrative. It ends happy enough but it's never traditional in it's messaging or tone.

The animation also jumps from style to style - it reminds me of a Newgrounds collab in that it feels like amateurs with a true love of what they're doing making a cohesive whole in theme but not quite style. If you're not used to the modern indie animation scene, I'd ease myself into this one. However it's not the worst culprit.

Honestly, maybe it's because of my own life and the idea of the "narrative of life" but I love that this movie acknowledges the work of self development. It's definitely a strange film but if you let it take you, it's a ride worth going on.

I'll be honest about this in that it's been years since I've seen this movie and I am a bit biased but I want to talk about this movie from my childhood that no one seems to remember so that's what I'm going to do.

YouTube in the mid to late 00s was a very different place to what it is today. It was less about information designed to divide and conquer politics and more the sort of stuff that would be called "charming amateur with a camcorder" vibes today. For what many can say of YouTube channels that have survived until now (in memory or they just ARE still uploading) Evil Iguana was the YouTube channel that got me into YouTube.

Their videos were comedic in nature (my favourite being their trilogy of Christmas specials), however what they did the most often and really well was trailer spoofs. They were most well known for satirizing The Dark Knight and Twilight series when they came out. This movie was an attempt to go full circle and make a movie parody of the show 24.

I need to give that context because even as a fan, I want to say that if you're looking for a movie which prioritizes cinematic storytelling and introspection, this isn't your movie. Do you want to see a group of online dweebs (a term I'm using with affection) being VERY silly for an hour and a half and just do what they can to make you laugh (by the standards of 2010 internet humor), this is the movie for you. This is a movie where terrorists target Burger Kings for the sake of being stiffed 15 cents. It's that kind of silly.

If you're questioning why I haven't seen this movie in years it's that it's no longer on YouTube anymore and I can't find an archive of it. This is just my attempts at documenting this movie how I remember it. I give it 7 because, while at the time I saw it I would've probably given 10 or 9, I can't be sure how well it's aged. That and I acknowledge that the entertainment value for this movie might not be what it was all those years ago.

If you can somehow find a copy, check it out if anything I've said interests you.