I'm confused

Myrmidon

About why people like so many bad things!

Komodin

Define "bad".

snowbull

I'm confused about why you use broken images.

Khwarizmi

Site doesn't allow embedding.

Ah, Confused Matthew.  I'm confused as to why people get so worked up about him.  He has very narrow criteria for what makes a good film, which make his videos extremely variable in usefulness.  He has no patience with anything that doesn't try to tell a conventional, linear narrative according to the traditions of mainstream Western cinema.

Myrmidon

Personally. I love him. He reminds of Maddox a bit, and I love troll opinions. And by "troll opinions", I mean well written contrarian arguments that go against the norm. In fact, he sort of retreads Maddox a bit given his reviews of Titanic, The Matrix, and the Star Wars prequels. Of course, he does a better job on reviewing them in my opinion, because Maddox was never big on "depth" and usually just complained about things because there wasn't any "Lesbians" or "children getting murdered" or "hippies getting their shit ruined." Ironically, Maddox loved Spirited Away. Must have been because it was anime. Funny how some anime fans are as biased as the people they claim to be biased.

I've been following Matthew ever since he started with his early youtube reviews.

Here's a couple of my early favorites as I consider them his best:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bw7uLyAzSXs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCJEMZREqxI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfkQ8ZaHrsY

I will admit though, he is not very funny, but he is extremely insightful. The problem with his comedy is his lack of timing. Even he admits that he's tried making every frame of his reviews funny. However I do find humor in his confused "poor little me" logo, because I imagine some angry galoot wanting to punch it when looking at it and hearing about how his favorite summer masturbatory slug fest was bad.

One thing I especially admire is his honesty and "anti-fluff" motif that he shares with Maddox. This motif I'm talking about ties into their use of minimalistic formats, namely the reason why Maddox's page is all plain, and Matthew uses a slide-show format and only expresses himself as single frame. You see, Matthew desires a movie's "content" over anything else, namely the story and the characters. If the characters aren't well defined, and the world isn't well defined, and the plot of events amounted to nothing, than can you honestly say that your piece was good?

A lot of movies these days tend to hide their terrible writing by "fluffing" them up with either fantastic special FX, beautiful sound tracks, fluid animation, great acting, and other forms of audience pandering. The whole process is akin to polishing a turd. You can strip away all these elements that are just bought with money and you would be left with a shitty script. A turd.

I loved his Minority Report review, especially considering that I bought into the hype, and enjoyed Minority report. Matthew's criticisms were spot on all about; all the movie really was, was a spruced up chase sequence of a guy running into each problem stupidly, and the movie lies to you saying that it is a profound piece of Sci-fi that makes you think. He also made a good point about Steven Spielberg and Roger Ebert, saying that we shouldn't blame the writers of this film, nor the director, but the producer, who allows movies like this to exist, and the film critics, who endorse this shit. He also made a humorous Godwin's law joke, comparing Speilberg and Ebert to Paul Von Hindenberg, who actually allowed the Nazi party to take administration. And he was self aware of that joke, saying "...And yes, I'm comparing this movie to Hitler."

Sometimes, I actually look up at him as a super critic, a critic who has surpassed all other critics like Roger Ebert in regards to reviews.

Sometimes I feel Roger Ebert, is indeed, actually a sell out with biases himself.

I mean compare his review of Team America: World Police, a film with an actual, important message that speaks true about the world, and society and people:http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041014/REVIEWS/40921007/1023

...To his review of Ponyo, a typical Miyazaki film with beautiful animation, but lacking in regards to story, to characters, to message. The important things.http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090812/REVIEWS/908129989

GLORIOUSLeader

Are you playing, Myrm? Because I still have no idea why he liked 2010 more than 2001.

Khwarizmi

^ [1]

I don't think he's a bad guy.  Obviously he's opinionated, but that's kind of necessary for a reviewer, especially since he's going kind of for the Caustic Critic thing which means he has to be entertaining rather than merely informative.

He's not going to be a lot of use if you want to know if Spirited Away or 2001: A Space Odyssey is a good film, because he dislikes anime and he firmly believes that the primary aim of a movie should be to tell a story (which isn't really what 2001 aims to do).

DonZabu

>I love troll opinions. And by "troll opinions", I mean well written contrarian arguments that go against the norm.

Goes against the norm =/= good or worth listening to.

GLORIOUSLeader

He's not going to be a lot of use if you want to know if Spirited Away or 2001: A Space Odyssey is a good film, because he dislikes anime and he firmly believes that the primary aim of a movie should be to tell a story (which isn't really what 2001 aims to do).

That makes sense. Of course, the primary aim of movies it not always to tell a story, so really, that's where I disagree with him. And besides, he could just read the book if he wanted everything explained to him.

RedEyedAbyss

"Goes against the norm =/= good or worth listening to."

Poe's Law.

Myrmidon

You just hate us because we're beautiful.

Myrmidon

I like how you don't even consider the idea that he might have liked it because it's a good movie.

I like how you imply that I haven't read his entire archives of his article. Let me give you a run down on Matthew's and Maddox's criteria.

Maddox: I don't like a movie, unless it kicks ass!

Matthew: I don't like a movie, unless it has heart, that heart being a good story, a believable world, and fleshed out characters.

Now if you read Maddox's earlier articles, you'd notice he hates Animaniacs, Tiny Toons, and the entire Disney Afternoon, especially Darkwing Duck (He's biased against Disney). I can say, that those cartoons all had great animation that harkens back to the golden age. I also note that they had great characterization, Darkwing Duck and Gargoyles especially, but as Maddox would say, "it's DISNEY!" Kinda funny because Maddox loved every single 80's action figure cartoon out there like Transformers and GI Joe. He even loved the Rambo cartoon. The Rambo cartoon! Yet he dared call Animaniacs "sugar coated." Now Maddox also loved anime, his name actually is derived from an anime called "Madox-01". I've seen that anime, and personally, its just a typical shoot em up mecha anime. It lacks characterization and motivations for anything happening in the plot, but hey! ACTION! Detailed and crisp animation! Masturbatory. (Personally, I enjoyed it, but I'm a glutton for fluff.)

Check out these "classic reviews" here from his 13 best movies list:

11. Doomed Megalopolis Vol. 1 -The other volumes in the series aren't as good as the first. In the first Doomed Megalopolis (the fall of tokyo I believe) has this war going on between the good guys & the bad guys. It's really cool. (S++)

"It has this war between good guys and bad guys." Pfffft, so what else? Every other movie usually has that! Braveheart had that and so did Star Wars, and you hated those! Why do you love this—"It's really cool." Oh! I know! Because it's anime! And it has action and detailed scenery! It has some girl getting her shit ruined by a penis monster! The logic here is "it's anime, therefore it kicks ass."

2. Ninja Scroll -This movie's about some ninja guy (Jubei) that goes around killing demons & school children (well.. not really, but it'd be cooler if he killed a few school children every once in a while). Make it a priority to see this movie. (S+++)

Number. Freaking. 2. Because it's anime, and that there's some dude going around killing demons. Note this movie is akin to a "slice & dice" slaughter house action film like Kill Bill. Masturbatory. Personally I enjoyed it, but I also enjoyed Kill Bill, and that film is on Matthew's "To Do" list, and as usual, he will make a very good point to me on why the film is bad. Personally, I think it's going to be because it is masturbatory in the way it is devoted to pure action rather than "characters and story". The heart of film making. Besides, "meaningful conflict" is the soul of storytelling. So some Bride wants revenge on the people who tried to kill her, big deal. Two wrongs don't make a right.

13. Akira -Some weird Japanese cartoon about.. er.. some guy.. I forgot. It's a good movie, trust me. I just can't remember what happened in it. I'll have to watch it again to remember. Perhaps that's why it was moved to #13? (S+)

Once again. It's anime. With people getting their shit ruined. Rendered in breathtaking animation. But that's fluff. That's what you use to polish a turd. They, the filmakers, polish the turd with special Fx and music, and we the public eat it all up. Soon, all movie makers have to do, is put a little jewel in front of our eyes, and we'd stare at it for hours. Pure cinematic masturbation... On our faces.

But the kicker is, is his reason for liking Akira, is:

"Some weird Japanese cartoon about.. er.. some guy.. I forgot. It's a good movie, trust me. I just can't remember what happened in it."

That is the reason of every person I know, including me, had for enjoying Akira. Somehow, the media paints this movie as a Science Fiction classic, but nobody can tell you what it is about! How is that possible? True Art is Incomprehensible. "It's confusing, therefore it's good!" True Art is Foreign. "It's anime. Fuck american kiddie kartoonz! Anime is teh hardcore!!!!11"

Here is a review from Spoony that blows Maddox's review out of the water:

http://spoonyexperiment.com/akira/

Crushing.

Btw, someone requested Matthew to do "Ghost in the Shell"... Then made him pull it back at the last moment, right before it was going to reviewed, which was right after his positive review of "Batman: Mask of the Phantasm." Looks like someone didn't want their "critically acclaimed anime" insulted. Truth hurts. Funny being that Ghost in the Shell is another one of those movies that people herald as a science fiction classic... Yet can't remember what it was about.

Komodin

^ What are you trying to say, mon?

Trash_Vortex

If you keep quoting people, SA are going to think it's you who actually said it.

GLORIOUSLeader

At least italicize it or something.