Half in the Bag: Synchronic, Promising Young Woman, and Psycho Goreman

half in the back get out of my living room [Music] hey jay what's that what did army hammer say when his girlfriend left him what i want my baby back baby back baby back i want my baby back baby back baby back i thought of that joke yesterday all on my own someone out there in the internet may have also thought of the same joke it would have to be a boomer it was probably a boomer and uh no younger people don't get that reference that's true so that narrows down the amount of people that may have come up with that joke i did not steal it i may have originated it so i'm thinking of trying to sell jokes to the tonight show starring jimmy fallon that's about the level caliber maybe maybe lesser that's i'd say that your jokes a little bit above that you know what's unfortunate though jay is now that the packers aren't going to be playing in this the big game what are we going to watch yeah i mean what do we have to look forward to now that the packers aren't going to be playing in the the big game well maybe we could watch some movies we got all those streaming channels what about that black widow movie moved from may 11 2020 to november 6 2020 to march 7th 2022. you mean i have to wait that long to not care about a movie well what about ghostbusters afterlife now that one i'm looking forward to move from july 5th 2020 to march 5th 2021 to april 5th 2023 it'll now be out november 11th 2025. well what about all these other movies that are done and supposedly coming out what about shazam too delayed thor love and thunder starring natalie portman as thor delayed top gun crackpot i mean maverick delayed indefinitely the candyman reboot cancelled the new halloween re-re-re-remake shelved a quiet place too delayed then cancelled then delayed again well that's not some good news well what about avatar two delay or avatar three played avatar flayed and delayed well what about the doctor strange sequel the world's been clamoring for lost in the multiverse i mean delayed what about the batman starring robert patton batman the cancelled jurassic world dominion it's been delayed five times it's now scheduled to come out july 39th 2047. what about ben affleck's dunkin donuts order bungled well [ __ ] since we can't look forward to any of the new hollywood blockbusters i guess we're gonna have to deep dive some movies on streaming sure i'll uh i'll set the remote to random mode come on come on no whammies no whammies big bucks big bucks snow whammies and stop it's and chronic what the hell is that a movie about truck stop boner pills well i guess there's only one way to find out jay hit play let's watch synchronic this isn't the most comfortable seating position to watch a film on no we're good we're good here we go i mean now i just see the back of your head am i in your way you're completely in my way oh cry in marvel studios action-packed spy thriller synchronic natasha romanov aka synchronic confronts the darker parts of her ledger when a dangerous conspiracy with ties to her past arises pursued by a force that will stop at nothing to bring her down natasha must deal with her history as a spy and the broken relationships left in her wake long before she became a synchronic so mike what did you think of synchronics uh i kind of liked it i didn't love it uh it was a little all over the place and the script was a little uh patchy and uh okay at times it had some interesting concepts but then it failed in interpersonal dialogue and characters and jay you have a little bit of a backstory synchronic which is why uh you were very happy when it appeared randomly i was so excited when it randomly uh arrived on this film because it's directed by a duo of filmmakers justin benson and aaron morehead and i don't think they've ever come up on our show ever but i've been a big fan of their movies their previous movies they're all very very very small scale movies very low budgets very character driven and this one i guess is like their biggest budget movie they have real names in it anthony mackey and james duhan of course from the 50 shades of grey films uh yeah so tell us more about um uh justin royal and daenerys well this is it you've seen one other thing that they've done i have they they famously did an episode of the new twilight zone and by famously i mean nobody's seen it except us right it figured out that somehow during this operation there were to occur a mutation or sabotage of genetic material and this same gene is manipulated for octopus sea life could rise out of the ocean and stop life on land it would do what evolution did it 700 million years ago put an end to the human species they didn't write it and they've written all their movies the i think the twilight zone episode was just a director for hire kind of thing you want to exploit the neurological properties of this octopus species gene into a human egg giving human beings the best traits of vertebrates and zephobots so if you bile engineered this gene you would create a new species of humans our eyes and skin would have the ability to taste and see and react without reporting to a centralized brain yeah and so this feels in the same vein as their previous movies just but as a fan of their previous movies i thought it was disappointing um it felt i don't know if they were intentionally trying to make something more mainstream but it felt like instead of things being left kind of vague and open they explain exactly what's happening uh mainly through anthony mackey doing his he has he's like doing a video diary and he's explaining i guess spoilers but it turns out like when the movie starts you're seeing like all this trippy imagery and people are on this drug called synchronic and you don't really know what's happening and it turns out that it's just a drug that can make you travel through time which is weird and simplistic and kind of dumb yeah well the premise is uh human beings have a pineal gland yes though it's the the second film in motion picture history to have the plot hinge on the pineal gland the first being uh from beyond where jeffrey combs pineal gland pops out of the front of his forehead please crawford it won't hurt i promise [Music] um yeah so the pineal gland when you're young it's there when you get older it calcifies and the pineal gland is responsible for your brain's interpretation of time and in this film's logic messing with the pineal gland literally changes time because i think they say somewhere in the movie like the theory of scientists the physicists say the time doesn't exist time is is is is all around us it's it's like the rings on a tree you know it's christopher nolan s gobbledygook to try and justify the story yes it's it's it's a very loosely justified story and in most cases that's fine as long as it's backed up with really really solid characters that you really are rooting for and this is where the movie falls short for me me too um but then we meet our two characters our two protagonists it's uh they're two ambulance workers emts right the very opening scene like kind of hooked me they go into like this run down nasty house the movie takes place in new orleans um and there's this weird girl and she's like like tripping out and saying there's a male victim on the floor he has a knife wound that comes out of his back so they're like oh my god he got impaled by his sword there's another girl unrelated to synchronic is i think she's just there odd on heroin so they give her narcan which reverses the effects of opioids but so it's kind of this intriguing uh little scene and it's kind of done like one take situation yeah yeah that's like i was saying about their style it's very kind of loose yeah following along yeah weird loose and it has this like kind of like um ambient creepy soundtrack that makes you uncomfortable the whole time and so i was into it yeah even when he's because what happens is jamie dornan's daughter disappears she's taken the drugs and chronic and she's vanished and they're trying to figure out what happened to her so there's a mystery angle um and and uh anthony mackey is jamie dornan's best friends and i kind of liked the idea of their relationship it's a different sort of like two-guy relationship than you see in a lot of movies yeah in the very beginning of the film anthony mackie is wearing a like a sports jersey because his uniform got glitter on it right because i guess he's an avid strip club addict slash sleep arounder i don't want to say womanizer i guess that's a kind of a negative term he treats his ladies with respect sure he says i got to go to work lock the door yeah it's fine he doesn't say get out right he's not awful let's see i'm picturing like the michael bay version of these characters relationships like the bad boys movies and that kind of stuff he is um kind of his life jamie dornan's got his life together he has an 18 year old daughter and a baby on the way uh and then anthony mackie is like polar opposite he's he's a bachelor he doesn't know what he's doing with his life he drinks a lot he sleeps around and so that that kind of dynamic comes into play because they have conversations about that and to me like that's the meat of the movie the heart is those two characters and a lot of their dialogue and conversational moments seem kind of uh underwritten or the writers writing out of his pay grade where he doesn't quite it comes off as like like an 18 year old trying to write 40 year olds he's like man my wife man when i first met her i was in love doubts man they never go away you know you think the wedding day is gonna dissolve that and it is profound but you know the doubts they never did i get it bro you're a guy in a relationship i think my marriage is um i think i'm getting a divorce and he's like but now i don't care because i'm doing it like i got the white picket fence and all and and i come home and from work and she makes me dinner or whatever but i i don't know if i want more or whatever man and i'm like no no no no no no yeah we don't see each other anymore you know she wasn't any good in bed she was beautiful but we had too many arguments that's too bad my lisa is great when i can get it oh man i just can't figure women out sometimes they're just too smart sometimes it's flat out stupid other times they're just evil it seems to me like you're an expert mark no definitely not an expert johnny what's bothering you mark nothing man do you do you have some secret forget it why don't you try it i'm i'm paraphrasing to say the least sure to say the very least it's not that bad their first movie resolution is almost exclusively two guys in a cabin together and they're old friends one of them is kind of like a party guy he's gone off the wagon and they're trying to to get him sober so they're staying at this cabin all weekend so the whole movie is those two guys it hinges on those two guys and they're really great together in the movie um and then their other movies too are like that where they're they're very focused on just a couple of characters uh in previous movies they've always been younger characters like they did a movie spring and it's a guy whose mother dies and he decides to go on like a backpack journey through rome you know young young guy things yeah and this they're talking about yeah like having a wife and a daughter and it feels like i don't know anything about the director's writer's personal lives i don't know if that comes from there but it feels like writing something that you're not overly familiar with right right yeah how was work today oh pretty good we got a new client at the bank will make a lot of money what client i cannot tell you it's confidential oh come on why not no i can't anyway how is your sex life if that's our our thing that we're supposed to cling on to it's it's a little it's a little weak it's a lot on thin ice yeah and then our our premise is also on thin ice i'm willing to accept an outrageously unbelievable premise because uh popping some kind of pill that messes with a gland in your head won't literally send you back in time it would be fine if their hallucinations made it seem like they were back in time like maybe those maybe the stoners were just like watching a program i think they did something like that they showed the tv screen and they're watching some kind of like history channel show or they're in the opening scene yeah yeah and and i thought okay they're what they're see what they saw on tv is kind of like what's in their head yeah after they feel like reality drop the acid they that's what that's what comes to them yeah but no that's that's why i was disappointed when it was just oh they're literally traveling through time yeah yeah and yeah but yeah the concept is uh it's younger people their pineal gland is still soft so it's more susceptible when you take the drug anthony mackey because of his tumor his pineal gland is soft so even as an older person he's able to travel through time right and he uh has only a handful of pills left they're not out available anymore he bought them all up from one store and he's going to uh try and figure out the mechanics of how this time travel works so he can travel to the time period where jamie dornan's daughter disappeared to and rescue her so that's another problem is that you have no connection to the daughter character either she's in a couple of scenes yeah she's just kind of generic daughter and he is trying to find jamie dornan's daughter because because they're best friends johnny's my best friend even though the premise is a little goofy if the character's really strong and you cared about him saving her it would help a lot we need we needed more scenes with the daughter yeah and we needed her to call him um i don't know what's his character's name i don't know it's anthony it's like it's like john and dave so she's like uncle dave hey you know come on over and like he's he and then he has to drop her off at school and while he's taking her to school he's like so you're gonna go to college you know okay you know maybe i'll think about it like he takes her under his wing they have a special relationship i don't think he has a scene with her uh except for when she's sitting on the paper mache rock yes that's the same as paper mache rock yeah they go to a family a party i think it's a baby shower uh for the wife's baby and um she's sitting on the paper mache rock she's doing the teenager thing i'm ah this is all lame man whatever and he comes over and just sort of like hey hey what's up yeah yeah well uh you having a cigarette yeah okay bye while it wasn't eat there is a sequence where anthony mackie goes through and it's like a montage sequence almost where he's learning about how to use the socratic drug and how it works and i've i've detailed it in my notes and it takes quite a while but that's one part of the movie that's interesting but that's the strongest part i like that the trial and error aspect yeah but that takes away from the character building with the daughter that could have strengthened the end sure because we have that and then we also uh have the the racism element which was introduced and never paid off yeah that's what i wanted to talk about because it the climax of the movie it ends up being a big part of that but it feels so unrelated to the overall point of the movie [Music] and there we go what did you do hey come here i think you busted her back racist baby woven throughout the film there is a theme of racism that it doesn't feel like they knew what to do with it they didn't know what to do with it it wasn't warranted and it wasn't paid off because yeah the setup is anthony mackey you know they they go to their their call at that house with the sword victim and stuff and anthony mackie's not wearing his uniform cops show up they pull a gun on anthony mackie they call him tupac and so there's like undercurrent of modern day racism yes um and then there's a couple but then that kind of goes away after that and then there's a couple parts when he's traveling through time the one thing we learn is that there is no racism in the ice age that's true first trip uh the first time he drops the syncrotic um he ends up in a swamp and he's confronted by a spanish conquistador uh he tries to kill him okay i don't know if that's racism or just hey what's that yeah who are you i'm gonna kill you weird clothes yeah um the second trip is the ice age which was my favorite part um because he meets you know like a crow magnum man who's walking and then he sees a woolly mammoth and it's like hey this is cool okay so he went all the way back to the ice age neat so now he's established that taking the drug in this same spot will bring you back to the exact same spot which of course comes into play later so it goes back to the 20s ish um and then there's like old-timey racists kkk guys were like what are you doing here and um and that's the first reminder of that there's supposed to be any sort of theme of race another racist theme but that works as its own scene where it's like well yeah that would be [ __ ] scary for anthony maggie in this situation yes he doesn't know what time period he's going to go to and what sort of situation he'll find himself right um so it's like if that's an isolated scene that's its own thing and that's fine but now at this point this is after the opening tupac scene and then when we get to the ending which we'll get to where it's like okay i guess this is supposed to be a reoccurring theme stuck in the rocking 50. it [ __ ] back to the future pass was hey he does he does bring up racism again when he's drunk in the bar and he's he's kind of talking to the bartender who's not listening to him and he's like he's like if he had the same wacky adventure that marty mcfly did the results for him would be much different so that's a comment on racism yeah okay okay i'll get to tim i just need to know if there's somebody else that might need some help rihanna uh they discovered on one of their calls earlier that she had vanished from a house party and so a drunk girl says that's the last time i saw her was sitting in that chair then he discovers that the girl wasn't sitting in the chair she may have wandered off so all bets are off so then he says maybe she went over to her favorite paper mache rock because there's a carving on carved always misspelled into the rock uh so then the final trip is uh on on the the the banks of what i assume is the louisiana river maybe it's the mississippi is that where the mississippi ends down in louisiana might be the mississippi river i don't know there's a civil war battle going on and that's our final spot and that's where he finds the daughter yes so he travels back to the civil war um midst of a big battle yes and that's that's a weird note to end the movie on this is supposed to be the emotional climax of the film him saving the dog sacrificing himself to save the daughter the whole racism angle feels really underdeveloped and disconnected from the main point of the story where it's like that's such a it feels like it's supposed to be an uplifting ending like oh he did it he saved his friend's daughter but it's so horrible like that that's his fate it didn't feel like it was intentionally supposed to be that horrible that's just how it comes across right well he is a man uh who is dying anyways and you add that mix into the mix yeah they should have had a scene like right before he decides to go back to save the daughter he gets a call from this doctor the the brain tumor isn't is not terminal and he still chooses to still choose to save the daughter out of selfless selfish sacrifice yeah i don't know which makes it more disappointing when it because i kind of like the middle the best part of the movie is that middle chunk where he's doing like the trial and error stuff it's kind of fun we're seeing his his uh you know camcorder footage and him trying all these different things and but then by the time they get to the end it reminded me a bit speaking of christopher nolan again it reminded me of like interstellar where it starts is kind of like a more straightforward sci-fi film and then by the end it devolves into schmaltzy mellow drama and this is similar yeah for for an alternate uh comparison um uh and i probably maybe four people out there listening will get this but if you watch amazing stories there is an episode of amazing stories which is very similar to this the new amazing story new amazing oh that's the one episode i watched i think with the the girl from blind manners right yes the house the the the annoying millennial with the phone uh who's repairing an old house and in the basement during a storm there's a barometer which magically transports him back in time and then you know he falls in love with the woman and they bounce around through time he goes to the future trying to find lost love and yeah and you end up like kind of caring about those characters and then in the end it all gets wrapped up nicely in a much more confined condensed period of time than synchronic yeah and it works better on an emotional level than security does and again the perfect example because why the [ __ ] does a barometer in the basement during a lightning storm caused someone to travel through time yeah no reason it doesn't matter that's your setup two ley lines intersect there yeah you just come up with some [ __ ] i mean that's a lot of science fiction it's just it's [ __ ] and but as long as you like the characters you know doc doc brown's flux capacitor we don't need to know how it works that needs a bolt of lightning to charge it up and it can travel through time somehow we don't care but marty mcfly's adventures and him trying to save himself from being erased from existence and all that that's that's magic this movie not so much [Music] well that was synchronic um let's see what else we got on that i get to do it now oh my god okay do you know how to use the remote is there a menu button okay oh i found it okay here we go random mode random and go come on come on no whammies no whammies and stop what the [ __ ] is this promising young woman [Music] is this a rom-com no some girl works at a coffee shop is this like a like one of those drew barrymore movies from the 90s that's what it looks like well i hope the film is promising let's give it a watch we've got nothing else to do and play am i still in your way no not anymore i found a good position i'm just going to try to hold this position yeah i have to i have to put my armor on the back of the chair so i stay in the right spot i'm gonna try to hold the pistol i hope this movie's pretty short oh my god promising young woman and her grandpa used to be very close but when grandpa jack moves in with the family promising young woman is forced to give up her most prized possession her bedroom promising young woman will stop at nothing to get her room back scheming with friends to devise a series of pranks to drive him out however grandpa doesn't give up easily and it turns into an all-out war between the two well that was promising young woman uh film starring carrie mulligan from drive from drive and other things and this was a movie i had seen the trailer for many many many many months ago i think this was a pre-pandemic movie that got postponed yeah and it was i think it had a lot of buzz behind it i don't know if it was from playing at film festivals or something but people were looking forward to this movie and i knew almost nothing about it yeah the trailer was intriguing um you know it's a what genre i don't even know if it's a genre but a rape revenge film yeah i may have loved it if if it was doing what i hoped it was doing okay i guess we'll get into it i i liked it quite a bit too i wasn't sure what i thought about it at the beginning i wouldn't say i hated it you said you hate it at the start in the middle in the middle okay because yeah it started it felt a little like oh like it's hitting you over the heads messagey um but then it starts to get very intentionally kind of muddled with its morality and what it was trying to do and what it was trying to say and i appreciated that it was a dark comedy because that helped a lot yeah because otherwise it would be so nihilistic i mean it is kind of nihilistic but um sanders right that's the word um but that that dose of black comedy and the energy of the direction really helped carry it along right in a way that kept you intrigued yeah you gotta kind of walk on eggshells with a topic like this and i kind of at first i thought that's why it had such high ratings right because the movie is about the the the overly masculine rapey culture of of frat guys and the denial of a woman claiming she was assaulted and they bring up all those different like they all those different like cliches or excuses that that uh come up after something like that happens it's particularly pronounced in the scene with connie britton oh and she's the dean of the college and um carrie mulligan goes back and she's like i'm going to come back to medical school and she's like okay she has a very hard time after her sexual assault and i think at some point she died and i it's implied it was a suicide but i don't think it's ever specifically said but then she's like i get i get cases like like this like 15 a day uh and boys will be boys uh people don't want to confront it they want to write it yeah yeah and then it's a movie that's very much like it plays so much different it's about like what's happening now and how people are looking at situations like that so much differently now than they were even like 10 years ago and that's exactly what this is is about 10 to 15 years ago you know we get accusations like this all the time it was years ago what would you say i am a nice guy every guy's worst nightmare getting accused like that we were kids if i hear that one more time i have to give him the benefit of a doubt ruin a young man's life [Music] and our our heroine cassie played by carrie mulligan was in med school her best friend this happened to her it kind of messed her up as well so she dropped out of med school and kind of now she's just a layabout um lives with her parents dad is clancy brown which is great because he's just a nice guy i was waiting for him to pull out a sword and try and chop someone's head off and he didn't do that right um but but anyway i was saying so with this with this like subject matter it's like well you better give this a good review yeah or else and so i see like 99 around tomato score and i'm like is it because of the message more so than the quality of the movie exactly and then you watch the movie and tonally it's bizarre and and it's in a good way in a way that works no it has a very kind of like poppy aesthetic which is a nice contrast to how dark the subject matter is it reminded me a lot of heathers the christian slater uh winona ryder movie yeah that that sort of balance of dealing with this really dark subject matter in a darkly comedic way it's the the contrast of like at the end when she's going up to the house and there's like this this creepy slow version of britney spears toxic and things like that and her character is very like sarcastic and uh it has this weird vibe of like it kind of feels like it's doing like an empowerment thing like she's going to get revenge on all these people but it's morally ambiguous because she's so [ __ ] up and she's doing bad things too i think it's supposed to be like an outsider's perspective of of her situation we don't ever because inside her head things are much darker and we get the we get the the poppy fun uh early 2000s rom-com look at it yeah fro from the audience perspective and and i think that's where it just throws me for a loop because i'm not quite sure exactly how to take what they were doing or if they were attempting something else and failing miserably at it or if it was done with surgical precision i really don't know i mean it all feels intentional to me i guess we'll get into spoilers because i'm curious what you're talking about we'll get into sports so like you said she lives with her parents still she doesn't care about progressing in life she's very very stunted by these events in college and she's she holds lots of anger and carrie mulligan and it all kind of comes back to the surface because people related to this event start to come back into her life yes and that's that's the trigger point is when bo burnham comes into the coffee shop and he's like hey you know you're so and so we went to med school together and i'm just kind of stunned and he's he's really trying hard he's he's set up to be the nice guy and there's a couple of earlier scenes where there's some cat collars the the construction guys i did like that moment because that's such a cliche concept the the cat calling construction worker guys and the fact that she just like stands there and stares at them and they start to make less comments and then they just get horribly creeped out and leave yeah they start calling her names yeah that worked for me in a way that some of the other bits because her thing is she'll go out on weekends and at first you don't know what she's doing because she has like a diary where she's keeping tabs and like is she killing these people but yeah she pretends to be drunk uh so men will will try to take advantage of her take her back to their apartments or whatever and then she immediately she's not drunk at all she immediately sobers up and makes them feel horribly uncomfortable about what they're trying to do with varying degrees of how bad what they're doing is to her it's all the same and it doesn't matter right um but but we don't know at first if she's killing people or something because she has a little diary she's keeping tabs she's keeping a tally you know like is she killing these people it turns out it's not that severe no the diary the the the check marks are color coded too so it might be like red is more intense yeah what their actual attempt at rape and then there's like the scene with mclovin yeah and he's just like i don't know what he does he's just kind of being pushy and and so that i think he's just trying to kiss her or something yeah that might get like a like a light blue you know so she's yeah she's doing that to what end i don't know maybe just to shame them yeah i think that's it she's just trying to to [ __ ] with these people so they don't do this to other people well from the perspective of like to call this a rape revenge movie i mean that's a whole sub-genre in like the 70s 80s grindhouse kind of circuit the most famous being i spit on your grave but the point being like all those movies were made by men and they are all like all the male characters are just monsters in it so this is kind of a play on those type of movies but it's directed by a female written by a female so it has that different angle which i think again lends to the sort of dark comedy satirical angle of it yeah it is a different look at those kinds of movies because um she meets bo burnham who i believe is a comedian yeah slash actor and director he directed a movie called yeah and so he shows up and for all accounts he's the nice guy there is an embarrassing montage sequence that oh very much so plays tongue-in-cheek and i'm hoping that oh it feels like a romantic comedy sequence yes it's it's if it's tongue-in-cheek they're dancing around the uh the farm pharmacy through a paris hilton song like ironically dancing to a paris hilton song they're singing and they keep cutting to that and then they keep cutting them like like having breakfast in bed and doing like everything's great and yeah and it's it's really in your face and i'm like if this is real um i'm cringed out but if this is this if this is tongue-in-cheek and self-aware it's brilliant because of course then later on that's when the movie gets darker yes yeah uh we discover spoilers did we say spoilers we already said spoilers um there uh is a secret video given to her by her friend allison brie actually her ultimate goal is to get alice and bri to cheat on her husband with a handsome man at the bar well to make it doesn't breathe i think she got raped that's the thing this is what he keeps right in that line of like is she gonna cross over into being just as awful as these people that she's you know uh obsessed with not obsessed with but still feeling trauma from she wants to put people it's like i don't know um god what is like i know what you did last summer something in that vein where an event from the past an event from the past comes back to haunt and she's the she's the guy in the raincoat with the hook who's making them all like kind of be forced to relive this event so allison bree knew what happened but she's like oh so long ago that was like 10 years ago everybody's just trying to forget about it everyone's trying to forget you know they don't the same with connie britton they don't want to to confront how awful it is yeah but she has an old old-timey cell phone that has a video of the event yeah which thankfully they don't show no of course that makes it more impactful and uh so they they watch the video and you hear the sounds it's like party dude frat dudes like laughing and you know so and she has a horrified look on her face later on we realize what the actual horrified look on our face is is because a good guy all around good guy beau burnham was there egging it on he is now also a bad guy and um that's when she goes off the deep end that's when she goes off the deep end and that's when the movie gets fun fun in a very dark horrible way and it turns into a a wacky 90s 2000s rom-com with this undercurrent of a horrible event with with a dark sinister twist to it and i think that's that's that's where i was like on board cause the the middle was like oh my god what is the tone here and then it's like the parents and she lives at home with the parents and it's all set up like a wacky rom-com with that that disturbing backstory um so then the end of the film they have a douchey bachelor party they think she shows up in a clown wig and a sexy nurse outfit yeah they think she's a stripper um but she's there she's there to uh really give it to the guy the guy is i forget his character's name but he he's poised now to have a a great successful life he's he's now a doctor he's about to get married uh blah blah blah again everybody wants to just forget about this event they've moved on with their lives she wants them to pay for it so yeah i guess at this point we won't discuss the ending because to me that was the most shocking part uh it was the most hard right turn i've seen in a film in a while because you you expect it to go a certain way and it goes a very dark way yeah and um but still has a satisfying final moment final conclusion yeah definitely it's it's it's all very satisfying and um the inclusion of max greenfield in the film what the doctor's here you don't know him he's uh he plays schmidt on new girl he's more of a comedic actor he's done some dramatic roles but oh he's the like best friend he's the best friend who helps coming up when there's a moment when he realizes something and he and he's yeah and it's like oh my god it's schmidt and i feel like i'm watching a new girl episode and it's just like what's going on schmitz you it's either a disastrous attempt to make a rape revenge film or a very genius execution of a rape revenge film done as a play on a dark comedy version of the early 2000s rom-com that i to me that seemed if it's exactly like what they were doing if it's the latter i wholeheartedly recommend it yeah yeah no i i would recommend it too i thought it i mean i love dark comedy and you don't see a lot of them anymore um i think because it is so hard to ride that line of of having to be serious but still have the humor work in a way that isn't a detriment to the the series undertone yeah a movie like this can easily have the opposite effect if you make a movie about you know getting back at the guy the guy or guys in college that had a drunken rape thing happen and you just it's just dirty and dark and you gotta get them and it could leave you with just like just feeling gross feeling gross i mean obviously some movies that's the intention this movie perfectly executes its message in in kind of a dark and and strange and and fun way yeah to where to me it's more impactful i wanted to be a doctor my whole life [Music] lately i've been feeling like i might want to get back into it should we go again yeah third time's the charm all right maybe we'll get something a little more uplifting this time yeah all right and random i'm not gonna look okay i'm not gonna look okay and stop what is it stop psycho gore man what the [ __ ] is that it's psycho gore man psycho gorman has left active service his piece is short-lived when felix lighter an old friend from the cia turns up asking for help leading psycho gorman on the trail of a mysterious villain armed with a dangerous new technology wow um well that was certainly different that was the strangest take on a rape revenge film i've ever seen this is a little bit of tonal whiplash from uh following up promising young woman with that promising young space monster named psycho gorman from the guys behind astron 6. one of them the guy behind astron 6 the the canadian movie making company that has produced such hit films as the editor and man borg and divorced dad the web series which i don't know if you can watch that anywhere i know there's a blu-ray of it but it's not on youtube i don't think i haven't seen any of this oh no i saw some divorce dad we watched one episode i've seen the whole thing it's amazing if you can find divorce dad watch it well i guess we should say right up right off the bat then full disclosure uh we do have a very very tiny connection to this film our friend and lover rich evans has a very brief uh voice cameo in the film he does the rumors are true yeah he's in the end credits but the rumors are true rich voices uh i don't know the character has a name which is nice uh but he's he plays a character that is just a giant metal bucket filled with human body parts and blood and he just shoot has two cannons for arms that just shoot blood out yeah but uh yeah he has a couple lines and he even gets a a patented rich evans oh my god in there it squeezes it in that's pretty great but that's the only connection we have in the film that's the only connection nobody involved with it has reached out to us to promote it or review it or anything but jay what did you think of cycle gorman i loved psycho gorman uh i thought it was hilarious i thought it was i don't want to say clever but it's very like a lot of astron six's stuff it's very uh what it's kind of paying homage to or spoofing or referencing is such a niche kind of sub genre that's always the case with their stuff the editor is a movie i like that is it's a spoof of italian jallo films and it would be incomprehensible to someone that is unfamiliar with those type of movies uh this is a little broader it's very like 80s 90s uh kind of like amblin type movies there's a bit of that but i thought it was very creative with all the creatures it was much more ambitious than i was expecting because you hear the premise it's called pg which is funny title because it's an r-rated violent movie but pg is a takeoff of vt and it's like oh what if the kids from e.t befriended this this giant monster that destroys planets because he's just pure evil but alas they are not the kids from e.t no which i think is a sticking point for a lot of people mainly me no i think that's the thing is it's it's sort of the the it's a brother and sister older brother younger sister and uh because i i helped rich record his voiceover for his sequence and so i saw one scene from the movie the scene that riches in while i was helping him record the voice they sent us a digital file of it and uh when i saw the little girls acting my initial reaction was kind of like oh pg are these silly little guys your friends why don't you introduce us don't look very friendly this is our main character this is going to get uh annoying after a while but in the context of the movie i actually thought she was hilarious and i know other people have said they found her incredibly annoying but she's just this like selfish weirdo that i thought was very funny in like a cartman way where carmen's like an annoying little [ __ ] but he's funny yeah to me i think that element and the the weird kind of humor brought about from the parents i don't know this i like this movie a lot i i particularly like the costumes of course yes that's the big standout is the amazing amazing costumes and creativity and and the wonderful little back stories of all the the time psycho gorman has destroyed worlds a lot of world building and mythology and what is ultimately a really stupid comedy which which elevates it it's yeah all that stuff is super creative and fun yeah um and i like the idea of uh little kids on earth befriending a violent monstrous alien because they they take it to the limit he has no redeeming qualities his backstory kind of gives you a little bit of understanding of him yeah he was uh like a slave and uh he broke free and yeah but but he's just basically pure evil he just goes from planet to planet and and destroys everyone he's like a thanos kind of yeah yeah although thanos is more of an agenda yeah he's the skin of evil from the tasha yar death episode we believe everything in the universe has a right to exist notion which i do not share i won't even bother explaining it um but yeah he is uh just an awful awful monster and the dialogue is so great and the his voice altering yeah the costume the look of the costume is great i saw a tweet from patton oswalt our our dear friend pat oswalt who actually will be returning for another episode of best of the worst he had such a great time before any other any slumming celebrities like i'm going to be real i'm going to connect with the youtube generation i'm going to go on this [ __ ] no this is a [ __ ] nightmare holy doing but uh he he tweeted that you're either gonna love or loathe it and i think i'm probably in the small minority of people that are in the middle to where i i kind of i kind of get that humor it's stuff that we've done before because i i have a particular taste of bizarre stretched out jokes awkward comedy anti-humor yeah we put plenty of it in our film space cop we talked about this before the scene where space cop opens his refrigerator lock [Music] [Music] and it's like a 900 digit combination and he does it for 10 minutes that's where everybody says oh this is going to be the movie well i think i think the problem with that in space cup is that's a long stretched out non-joke like it just keeps going on but that comes right after speaking of patton it comes after the patent scene which is also a scene that goes on way too long oh man that never gets old that never gets old you have two of them back to back it's almost like you have to do one or the other yeah and we went and did both because we're insane and indulgent but in this movie i think they knew which moments to extend which moments to to have kind of that that non-sequitur anti-humor and which ones to keep the story moving forward right certain jokes fell very flat to me mainly i think with the dad i get his arc was that he was he was like lazy and he gave bad advice the scene where he gives the bad advice is pretty funny well that's that that's right out of something we would do yeah because it's taking the whole movie is taking these kind of 80s and 90s movie tropes very like conventional story beats and just turning it up to absurdity right right um and so i liked some of that stuff but then there's certain things that just stood out like him eating the chicken overcooking the chicken well he just cooks the chicken in the microwave yeah everyone's like it's kind of tough right and so like i don't know and then it's like awkward silence [Music] there's one particular scene that i was really expecting them to to drag out and i probably would have laughed was the scene where psycho gorman realizes the sister is awful and he he feels like he can align himself with the brother oh yeah the the cemetery dreams yeah the the only way he could talk to the brother is in his nightmares which there's zombies there because why not the kid's having a nightmare and his bed is in a graveyard and they're zombies oh this is the only place i could talk to you and so the kid turns down his offer to betray the sister and give him the gem that controls him um that they dig up in their backyard yeah and then um he's like so what happens now he said we have to wait till your dream is over do you wake up one two cut yeah i was really surprised that didn't get dragged out just cut to that wide shot for an extended period of time with these zombies moaning right and then you just just leave it yeah you just leave that camera on and i love stuff like that and then i also love bait and switches or double reverse bait and switches i'm okay with the uh there's a scene where uh psycho gorman kills the paladins the his old team yeah and one of them is like a witch doctor like a sorcerer and she gets her head cut off but the head is like rolling down the street and it's still alive and it's like i'm i may have nobody but i can start over with my head and then here comes the pickup truck perfect setup for a bait and switch and they didn't do it yeah that was a miss i mean it's i mean humor more than anything else is so subjective especially a movie like this where there's so many different types of humor it's hard to it's hard to like pinpoint what works and what doesn't because it's going to be different for everybody yeah most of it worked for me there's a couple moments like that didn't work but a lot of it did yeah and we've also also talked a lot about what we've dubbed the chad vader effect we haven't yet come up with a better term for it there's an old web series called chad vader which i think was made in wisconsin yeah madison yeah um and so the joke is that there's a guy named chad vader who looks and sounds just like darth vader and he does wacky things he works in a grocery store weak-minded fool your powers are nothing compared to anything later dial 5 for vomit cleanup chad to aisle 5 for vomit so so the the concept is when you take a dark imposing figure and you do wacky things it's instantly funny right um similar to fish out of water humor when someone's taken out of their element uh and put in some a different element where they don't understand it instant funny so lots of instant funnies with psycho gorman um he mostly sticks to a serious character though which helps a lot yeah they don't push him too far into the goofy stuff there's one moment that works perfectly because they don't do it a whole lot which is when the the little girl mimi is her name and she they're just like they're having him stay at this warehouse because they don't know what to do with them and she's just giving him things to like give them like a tv stuff to do so he's not bored she gives him a magazine and there's a like a shirtless dude in it and just this light of like i don't care for hunky boys and then he starts to question his sexuality that low angle shot when he looks down yeah yeah do i that's perfect because they don't do too many moments like that yeah i do not care for hunky boys most of the time he's dark and imposing and the humor comes more from the contrast between him and the kids he's telling these long elaborate stories about his his journeys throughout the galaxy and they just couldn't give a [ __ ] they're bored they're at a diner at one point he starts to tell the story we start to go into the flashback and they just completely cut him off yeah and that stuff's fun i think the the formula of the the dark imposing figure being controlled by kids who are relatively oblivious to his powers is great um like uh i think a lot of people out there the the problem comes in with the little girl and this is where you tread lightly because the little girl is a real person who's in a movie who probably sees lots of comments about how she's terrible it's not her fault she did her best it's the direction and the writing so yeah you don't want to dog on the little kid but that's where that's that was the sticking point for me is i didn't find her endearing or funny i found her grating and annoying and it's a tricky thing like i thought she was hilarious but it's a tricky thing where like you can say that and i can counter it with well that's the point and it's like well is that enough to justify it for me it did i like the con because i think you would like it if they were more just straight good kids throughout the whole thing right well you have to it's a yin yang kind of thing it has to balance out and when you tip the scale like if the parent you don't want it to be dull but it the parents are eccentric and weird and the kids are also eccentric and weird and then you contrast them with the dark imposing monster like you know you're we're thinking like movies there's a lot of movies like this where a thing harry and the hendersons you know your ets um i guess mac and me i've never seen it have you seen e.t i've seen anything seen mac and me although i should point out there's a much darker alternate ending to this film that was not seen in u.s theaters and we're going to show a clip from it right now they don't know how to drive anyway yeah so if mimi was more of a gertie where she like really liked to dress up psycho gorman in a costume i mean there's a scene in et where e.t wears a lady's clothes a little tea party she has a tea party with e.t there's a 90s changing clothes montage in this movie there is a a montage which is pretty fun i mean that's fair to me it worked because you have the older first of all i like that it's the older brother and the younger sister is the one that's kind of the the alpha between the two she's the one bossing him around which is a nice little twist but i i think that that he's the one that balances that out where he's just super normal kid to the point where cycle gorman can never remember his name which is a funny running gag that's funny but the the idea that this this i i liked her delivery i liked how bratty she was because she's just such a like selfish weirdo and she's like the worst kid that could possibly take control of psycho gorman and so i think that adds like i think if it was played more straight where the two kids are just normal like amblin kids i i think the movie would run out of steam and i think the way it is it kind of keeps the story from getting dull or from the joke from running out because it could easily become a one joke movie and if i if i did have my biggest complaint about the movie is the third act takes place almost entirely in that warehouse which is a boring location and it wears out its welcome because it's like the last half hour we're stuck in that place i just think i think the movie excelled in nerdy creativity but lagged behind in the art and artistry of properly balancing the joke i think as far as it being a very accessible comedy it is very cultish and very niche oh yeah i think the reason that is the case is because um [Music] of the the inability to make it accessible to all audiences in in the premise yeah um and it wasn't as like horrifically gory and over the top as i was expecting no there's some stuff early on he rips off some people's heads there's the guy that he basically frees he doesn't kill him he makes him just like live in constant agony where his eyes are rolling around in his head i think the most disturbing thing was uh when they plucked a random human from earth and put her in the cube oh yeah yeah weird stuff like that that's where the movie excels yeah but that delicate balance between how your human characters could act versus the interaction with the the spacey science fictiony parts is is a very very careful balancing act and i think they were a little too indulgent and let's make the dad say weird things let's make the mom do this let's make the little girl crazy we also have just playing off of conventions and then yeah which is a that's why like it reminded me a lot of like which is which is a form of parody yeah i suppose uh but like like the david wayne what had american summer where it's like if you if you don't get specifically the type of like tropes that they're kind of poking fun at then it completely falls apart and this this is similar to me to something like a wet out american summer where it's like you really have to be dialed in to what they're doing or it just comes across completely nonsensical sure definitely the what hot american summer test uh that's of course a movie that i love that i laugh one of the funniest movies ever made um like the we're going into town [Laughter] they binge on heroin and things go out of control and they come back an hour later and everything's fine the guys stand stand-up routine at the end um yeah so killed me [ __ ] jesus christ was my camp counselor you laughed so hard i couldn't breathe i went to camp so long ago that [ __ ] jesus christ was my counselor and my best friend hadn't fully evolved yet there were two epidemics when i went to camp head lice and the plague the bubonic plague but that's a case where i don't know what you would call that because it's not what he's saying that's funny it's the fact that it's the fact that it's not funny and it just keeps going on and everybody's laughing hysterically this is a form of anti-human it's a yeah it's a play on conventions right um anti-humor i love yeah um have you watched tim heidecker's stand-up we saw tim heideker stand up no no there's a new special that's on youtube oh no i don't know what it's called when we saw him he's playing like an angry coked up comic which was funny um but he has a new new stand-up that's virtually all um anti-humor and um he's he's playing more like forgetful and awkward and just bad at being a stand-up like like the opening is him coming out and uh like like doing the comedic thing hey everybody how are you doing and then he knocks over the microphone and then for like maybe a good five minutes it's him futzing around trying to fix the microphone and then getting so mad that he storms off stage um and so you know there i am laughing hysterically at that um so i love anti-humor i love strange humor but it's it's one of those weird things that can't specifically be defined sure your case you found the little girl hilarious me i found it grating and out of place and annoying sure and then some of the things towards the end we always talk about setups and payoffs for example the hunky guy yes hunky guy magazine or i don't care about hunky guys or do i funny then later during the battle somebody rips accidentally rips the hunky guy magazine and he said not my hunky guy didn't work what are you doing there it works as a one-off it works as a one-up yeah and then um uh i guess bringing up the song they play that rock song yeah and then at the end she starts singing it a slow version of that rock song it's supposed to be like a a joke i'm like an emotional even though everything is completely nonsensical this song is stupid it was it was a that was a play on what is a cliche in those kinds of movies but for me i was like that rock song was so long ago i don't even remember so my brain was like what is she singing best yeah yeah yeah freak all the rest yeah yeah yeah and now if if uh the first act of the movie was the little kids trying to win the battle of the bands at their junior high school and they practiced this song a lot and they all worked on it together psycho gorman was giving them advice on lyrics how about the next verse goes slaughter those who are weaker than you no no no psycho gorman let's change it and we really worked on that song then you bring that song up at the end and then it perks psycho gorman's attention they remember that moment but really it happened in a montage as a joke it felt like a one-off joke because then it's brought up at the end as an emotional arc i mean you could really like you could analyze this film in terms of comedy and why things work and why they don't and and and they could work for some people not for the others so i think what we're saying is if you actually liked space cop you'll probably like this film and if you didn't like space cop you'll probably like this film yes jay this is a a noteworthy day the first film we've reviewed that has had one of our own in it kind of kind of yeah kind of very very small part but rich did do a voice and if i were a true sleazy dirtbag ass kisser i would probably say this film's great everybody check it out but i didn't give my honest opinion i liked a lot of it uh some stuff was was cringy and didn't work um but i certainly enjoyed all of the the creativity and all that kind of stuff put into it and old school miniatures and stop motion yeah every every trick in the book yeah which visually has its charm it doesn't look real it's not like slick effects but they look great for what they're supposed to be all that stuff that that you and i uh have done before that really we both really like like that really kind of dark twisted humor just for some reason a good chunk of it didn't quite work for me but a lot of it did so yeah i probably recommend it mainly because our audience kind of shares the same humorous humor style that we do yeah also um it is a movie that uh i haven't seen anything like it that's yeah that's the final positive for me is that it's just completely original and different yeah there's a new garden town and his name psycho gorman it was nice meeting you it would be nicer if you were dead all right bye [Music] so [Music] [Music] do [Music] is the phone ringing [Music] [Music] foreign hello it's me this is mr plinkin i i went to the packers [ __ ] ears game i took the senior bus that left from the library those [ __ ] left without me hello hello i asked a youth how to use an uber but but that that that prick stole my phone i'm calling out a burger phone that i used to buy viagra illegally from china hello [Music] hello with this goddamn phone ain't got no apps on it i push the screen it just leaves fingerprints hello hello hello hello now if you and jay want to take a wacky road trip up the lambeau field pick me up well then i'm sure we'll all have a fantabulous adventure [Music] hello what's that you want my wallet [Music] so

Channel: RedLetterMedia

Views: 1,116,215

Keywords: redlettermedia, red letter media, red, letter, media, plinkett, half in the bag, mike stoklasa, jay bauman, rich evans

Id: OXyZeqb1aj8

Length: 72min 9sec (4329 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 07 2021