Let's Talk About "Black Mirror's" "Bandersnatch"

So 5 Years ago I released a little Youtube video on my channel talking about the next phase of cinematic innovation and that was Choose Your Own Adventure Movies, here's the video;

This was before Netflix, before "Until Dawn" and "Detroit: Becoming Human" and before "The Stanley Parable". Fast-Forward to now and my prediction has come to fruition in Charlie Brooker's innovative series "Black Mirror" with a surprise feature film called "Bandersnatch" that is a choose your own adventure movie. This isn't going to be a review but if your curious and wanna know what I think of the movie, IT'S FREAKIN' AMAZING! It's very innovative and for a movie to have such a gimmick you'd think the gimmick would overshadow the story. It doesn't. To say anything more would be a spoiler but you just have to experience it for yourself. Anyways, I'm about to dive into some spoilers so if you don't care dive in further if you do GO WATCH "BANDERSNATCH" and then come back, the choice is yours.

This Week In WTF?!: Kevin Spacey

INTRO EDIT: I had no clue Kevin Spacey was currently under investigation for other allegations aside from Anthony Rapp...geez what's wrong with this man?

I don't want to write this, I don't want to write this because I could be possibly entertaining an alleged child predator and I wanna keep that kind of drama off this blog. For those of you who don't know, Kevin Spacey was outed as sexual harassing Anthony Rapp who was then a minor (14 years old) many years ago. The allegation surfaced and Kevin Spacey outed himself and gay, stated he had no memory of the incident but apologized anyway and then was booted from "House Of Cards" resulting in Robin Wright's non-interesting character Claire taking the helm as lead actress on the show and basically transforming a pretty awesome political drama into an incoherent mess. Well, its not even the New Year and we're closing this year with some WHAT THE F*CKERY from Mr. Spacey himself via a cryptic, slightly insane Youtube video (that no doubt caused both his lawyers and agent to have a brain aneurysm) titled "Let Me Be Frank" (a nod to his character on "House Of Cards") that features Mr. Spacey in the guise of his Frank Underwood character possibly discussing the allegations against him (Kevin Spacey) or possibly hinting at another Season Of "House Of Cards"...here's where it gets messy. Strap on your tinfoil hats ya'll, I'm about to offer several theories of what I think is going on here. Let's dive in.

STRANGE LOG: He's The Only One With Rhythm

Yes, yes, another Strange Log (before the end of the year no doubt) and yet here we are, no proper articles (except for a measly review of "House Of Cards" Season 6). Anyways, let's dive in shall we?

Let's Talk About "House Of Cards" Season 6...

Let's get "House Of Cards" out of the way because this is probably the most pressing bit of business I need to discuss. Man what a sh*tshow this was and I'm not saying that because Robin Wright is a bad actress or anything, I'm saying this because the writing sucked this season. Granted their backs were up against a wall due to Kevin Spacey's indiscretions but that really isn't an excuse for what was presented to us this Season. To summarize my issues and then go in depth a little bit, the season was disjointed, boring and difficult to track with, character motivations were difficult to gauge, things were foreshadowed that had no pay off and there were leaps and bounds in logic that were simply stunning and of course there was the obvious virtue signaling. The show butchered a lot of characters and did exactly what I expected it'd do and I that was Claire gets away with everything. Now let's dive in to this nonsense.

STRANGE LOG: From The Kool-Aid Tree With Love

Yeah, yeah another Strange Log yes, I know these are becoming more frequent than actual articles. Strange Logs are much easier to write than actual articles as I have less to write and think about. So here we go.

Let's talk about "Hereditary"

If you've read my Strange Log then you know I've been waiting to watch this movie for a good while. I've heard nothing but praise for this movie from various viewers I respect (Chris Stuckmann, Jeremy Jahns & ATZShow) and praise from others as well. The hype machine has gone ga-ga over this movie and this had me intrigued. Many were calling it the horror movie of the decade, best horror movie ever, etc. etc. and this just set my curiosity ablaze. I decided this was gonna be a movie I was gonna go in as cold as possible, so cold that I didn't see a trailer for it, didn't read a plot synopsis or anything, I wanted to know as little as possible going into the movie so I could be shocked, surprised and terrified as much as I possibly could. When the day came, I finally picked it up and blu-ray and watched it yesterday (as of the writing of this article 9-10-2018) and now after having seen it, I have much to say. This will require a preamble and SPOILERS. Let's begin.

PREAMBLE: Before I begin with the article proper I need to address a few things, the elitism of the people who liked this movie vs those who did not. Before we go any further let me say firmly that I did NOT like this movie at all. It was well acted, well directed, well shot and well written for what it was. But this movie presented its self as a horror movie a movie in which its intentions are to scare its viewer and I was not scared. I judge scared based on whether or not I'm capable of sleeping calmly at night and while I didn't sleep calmly, that was mostly due to my son getting up every 15 minutes as opposed to any psychological distressed the film attempted to inflict upon me.

The reason I'm stating all of this here in this preamble is because it seems those who liked this movie believe their tastes in horror films are better while others who did not like this movie are merely looking for cheap scares (jump scares, slashers, torture porn and the like)...ya know bottom barrel stuff, and that those who didn't like this movie are merely teenagers who don't know good horror or they just didn't understand the movie. Let me refute those in my case: I hate jump scares because they're not scary they're an activation of your fight or flight mechanism in your brain, that doesn't invoke fear it just means you were startled, surprised, caught off guard. I've ALWAYS hated slasher movies, Freddy Kruger, Jason, Chucky, Michael Myers, they're all bad jokes to me and they're all goofy to me. I can't take any of them seriously, even as a kid those films never scared me. Freddy made WAY too many jokes, Chucky's scream always made me laugh and Jason just looked too damn cool to for me to be afraid of him. Torture porn, I'll admit it, I enjoy the "Saw" films, not because they're scary but I love the traps and eventually the filmmakers caught onto that as well. But films like "Hostel" and all the others similar...no...watching someone get tortured for 2 hours doesn't sound appealing to me at all.

Lastly, I did understand the film completely, I have no misunderstandings about what I just watched, and I'll prove that not only when I discuss the film with spoilers but when I offer a critique on what I think would have improved the film, in my opinion. In conclusion, if you enjoyed this film, that's wonderful! I'm so glad you did. This film has found its audience and you can say that's you. I did not and that doesn't give you the ability to belittle anyone's opinion by assuming things about them. Horror is an EXTREMELY difficult genre to write and I applaud Ari Aster in writing something that many people enjoyed. That being said I did not and if you'd like to know why I'm gonna tell you.  But bear in mind, opinions are subjective and I'm going to explain why this movie didn't work for me. Spoilers abound, enjoy.

STRANGE LOG: Shredder Pops A Molly

Yes, yes, I know another Strange Log and no real articles DESPITE the constant movie news and what nots going on in various media. Forgive me, I'm having a hard time balancing being a father and working and finding time for my blog. But nonetheless here's what's going on in my life and what has my interest as of late. Let's dive in!