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This is the second half of a 3.5 hour-long audio rant about 90+ movies that I watched for an upcoming video project.

Listen to the first hour and a half of audio reviews and see the full explanation for this project here! https://www.patreon.com/posts/68354533 

TIMESTAMPS (ORGANIZED BY YEAR):

2016 - 0:00
2017 - 9:48
2018 - 21:29
2019 - 27:53
2020 - 46:53
2021 - 1:08:01
2022 - 1:25:40
Extras - 1:54:37

Check out the full list of movies and their ratings here (unless you want to guess which movie the kids and I liked best while listening, it can be more fun to be surprised! Some of the kids' picks are... baffling, to say the least.)


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Comments

Anonymous

I have to say, I agree with almost all of your commentary. I find your insights interesting and valuable due to your experience both just in the industry but also in terms of media literacy, and your ability to pick and choose your fights. (I.e., leaving some stuff aside since it's a dumb kid's movie but criticizing essential plot issues-you give things the benefit of the doubt up to a point). Here's the problem: I find myself constantly distracted by how much I start dying with laughter each time you rant about animated poop jokes. I agree with you 100%; it's never funny, and gross at best. (AT BEST, mind you). It's just...I can't listen to you get pissed over a rabbit shitting fully on screen in Secret Life of Pets without literally busting up laughing. So at the very least, know these are quite valuable insights into creativity (especially all your mentions of healthy relationships), yet they're also fucking hysterical to some bozo like me who's humor is completely broken.

Anonymous

I did not mind the length of these, honestly I could listen to you talk about media for hours

Anonymous

Ok so like, I COMPLETELY agree with the fact that family is not everything, and that notion being present in a lot of western media is very harmful, and I absolutely believe in cutting off toxic people, not even just relatives, and it would be cool to see that in more media aimed at kids. I’m definitely not a family person, the only blood relative I have any close relationship to is my mom (kinda my cousins too but we see each other like once in a blue moon). But with Encanto, I, and a lot of other people, didn’t read it that way. Alma (the grandma) is the antagonist, but not a villain. I saw a lot of other people say that the grandma was “forgiven too quickly” (i even saw some people say the dad from MVTM was toxic which is kinda a stretch imo) but the “Dos Oruguitas” scene shows She is the one who promises to fix things and she’s the one who approaches Mirabel and apologizes, she even denies Mirabel apologizing because it wasn’t her fault, and while she does explain her trauma she doesn’t use it as an excuse. Like I said, I agree with media teaching kids to cut ties with toxic people, but just because that wasn’t what Encanto was going for doesn’t mean it’s necessarily saying “it’s ok the abusive parent said they were sorry and it’s all ok now🙂”. If anything that’s a very simplified version of how it went The theme of generational trauma in this film and Turning Red/in ethnic families is also kinda more complex but other people have explained it better than I personally could. And I never thought the rest of the family were assholes to Mirabel either, there’s even a scene where the dad stands up for her and everyone else is perfectly amicable to her, like the only one who was antagonistic towards her was Isabela but besides the the whole golden child stress thing that’s kinda just how sisters are lol. And I feel like the way you described how Turning Red should’ve ended, wouldn’t really have worked? Like at the climax the mother’s panda coming out/wrecking the concert, which was brought on by Mei disobeying her and her relatives chastising her for it, I feel like kinda showed the grandmother what kind of influence her parenting had in her kid.The mom was also super regretful of scarring her mother with her panda as a teenager so that also ties into her being terrified of her

jelloapocalypse

Definitely some good points in here, but I'm going to reiterate some things I've said elsewhere: A) Encanto's biggest crime is that it should've been a TV show made for Disney+ and it needed at least three times the runtime it was given as a film. There's just too many characters and too many themes left 90% unexplored because it's a movie. That being said: B) With the exception of her parents and Antonio, the Madrigals are absolutely awful to Mirabel. It's in the little ways they treat her. They never give her the time of day, never listen to her, never answer any of her (very basic) questions. What's more, in a family with a MAGIC SHAPESHIFTING HOUSE and siblings who can literally lift entire buildings, they never gave Mirabel her own room? She sleeps in the small, dimly lit nursery with her little cousin. Even if Casita didn't bestow a gift on her, don't you think the Madrigals could've taken literally like a week of their time and built her an adjoining room somewhere in the house? Or somewhere else on the grounds? They do that sort of thing for the townsfolk constantly. There's also that scene where they all take a family photo together to commemorate the new gift their youngest family member got... and they *don't have Mirabel in it*. She's standing off to the side like she wasn't invited. What the fuck? C) In regards to Turning Red (a movie I like MUCH more than Encanto), my issue lies mostly in characterization. If you show me a character (in these movies it's always the Grandma) who has spent the last several decades of her life enforcing a very strict regimen on her family, then I think that having her do a complete 180 after being confronted once is, frankly, inconsistent characterization. If I'm allowed to get mad at a dinky movie like "Land Before Time 25: It's Raining Dinosaurs" for having a character suddenly change the way they act to fit the narrative, then I don't see why I should give a pass to a well-made movie like Turning Red for showing me the effects of 40 years of a person's worldview and actions and then having them completely change how they treat other people at the end for the sake of wrapping things up. It works okay in something like a ten-page fairy tale where your suspension of disbelief is already expecting a bit of unreality in how the characters act. I believe that the Grinch's heart can grow 3 sizes and he can flip on his worldview because the Grinch's story is silly and lighthearted. It exists in a space of goofy, Christmas-y unreality, so it's fine. When stories start trying to tackle very serious issues like Generational Trauma, I do not feel that way. ESPECIALLY when a story like Turning Red depicts it so accurately for 85% of the movie and then decides people need to turn on a dime so everything is wrapped up nicely. I would still give Turning Red a 9/10, it's almost perfect, but after you show me that Ming Lee is terrified of her mom to the point of running and hiding when she calls her on the phone... and THEN showing me that the grandmother is willing to fly cross-country without permission to perform a ritual on her daughter? That's nuts. Those are moments of characterization that SAY something about a person, and frankly I think it's taking the easy way out to throw that out the window and wrap things up nicely at the end as though the rest of the movie didn't show me how unlikely that would be. The big moment like that in Encanto for me is Bruno, who has been *living in the walls for like a decade subsisting on scraps* and is just absolutely broken. This guy is so codependent on the idea of his family that he's been living in squalor trying to help them and pretending to be a part of the family dinners all so he can help Mirabel. He is visible fucked up by this experience. And then at the end (because they don't have time to do anything else) Abuela just hugs him like "Oh hey man how's it going" and they barely exchange any more dialogue. I know family is important in Columbian culture I get that I'm not a part of the culture, but I don't think you should need to be a part of a culture to point at something awful and go "Yo, hey guys, the way they're treating him SUCKS."

jelloapocalypse

Oh, and for what it's worth, after the initial wave of good-natured "Yay, Latino representation in mainstream media!" posts that came out after this movie's release I remember seeing a ton of Latino people saying things like "I really liked Encanto, but let's be honest, Abuela would've smacked Mirabel with a sandal" and "Encanto is magical realism, in that some things are realistic, like the family issues, and somethings are magical, like an Abuela ever apologizing for anything" So clearly I am not the only one who reads it this way, lol.

Anonymous

With how the family treats Mirabel (namely the photo scene), the way I see it, due to how much Alma cares about the family’s image everyone is so hyper focused on their gifts and their ability to “be of service”, which we see has taken a pretty big emotional toil on most of them, Mirabel, who’s gift less and doesn’t have to worry about helping the village/being useful/looking good for the family (like Luisa having to do literally all the heavy lifting for the village/Isabela having to marry a man she doesn’t love and everyone making sure that goes smoothly) kinda gets lost in the shuffle/gets ignored, especially since in that moment they were celebrating Antonio’s new gift. They’re all just kinda Stepford smilers and their actions are kinda more innocently insensitive, like not in a “you’re not magical and we’re better than you” more like “we have so much shit going on between ourselves so just leave everything to us cause you wouldn’t understand” (The room situation tho I actually genuinely don’t know why they couldn’t have built her a room. Maybe cause ✨magic reasons✨ or something idk.) Yea I actually remember people saying the most unrealistic thing about Encanto/Turning Red was that the parent/matriarch apologized lol. (Part of me even agrees based on personal experience) But then again I also saw POC happy they had films with representation/happy endings, so idk I guess it’s ✨subjective✨ I do wish Bruno reuniting with the family was touched on more too, I’ll agree on that. But Who knows with how popular it is maybe we will get a TV series/sequel fleshing everyone out more, Tangled and Big Hero Six did.

Anonymous

You should score the kids based on HOW wrong they were. Like give em 5 points if they got it right, 4 if it was 2nd best, 0 if they completely fucked up etc. (Jello saying he'll try to wrap this up soon with like 90 minutes to go is my favorite running gag on this patreon)

Noah Goodman

Well, this got me to up my subscription to $5 to hear the rest. Well done.

Anonymous

Do you really like pepper enough to keep at your desk full time? Or was it just something you thought would be good to stim with?

Anonymous

I remember watching Secret Life of Pets with you and one of the first scenes was the main dog finding his green ball. And I was really expecting there to be a joke like "I love my ball! Its round, it's bouncy, it's red, probably!" and then they couldn't even offer a joke of that quality and it was like a harbinger of what the rest of the movie was gonna be

Candaru Driemor

Gotta say, I was really interested to hear your longer thoughts on Soul since it's one of my favorite animated movies, but you do a good job breaking down what bothered you about it. I'd absolutely be interested in watching the alternate movie you proposed (about Joe realizing his passion for teaching and mentoring young souls).

Candaru Driemor

HUGE agree with the generational trauma thing as well. Cannot WAIT for Prison of Plastic to come out.

Psycho

Listening to you slowly lose your mind and composure is definitely worth the $5

Anonymous

Question where do you set up casting calls?

Anonymous

i think movies where the shit parental figure wakes up a better person is a wish fulfilment story for the writers. cause uh its not gonna happen irl ever!