I think the original comment demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the roles of both scholarship and criticism. Oddly enough, although it’s coming from the other direction, it’s the same misunderstanding that leads to people losing their shit whenever a critic doesn’t rave about the latest Disney…

“I now recognize that Chadwick’s face is a triggering reminder of his death rather than his life”

I feel like you missed the point: He was having a midlife crisis, which is the whitest of all male crises, and by harassing the octopus, he learned how to not just continue on his predestined path of greatness, but also how he could stop hating his son.

To be fair, two really great actors did what they could with what was essentially a live-action Wikipedia article to carry it into the Oscars, so that kind of counts as supporting, at least in the literal sense.  

“Details” don’t matter, as the contemporary trend of shitting on anything highly acclaimed has finally caught up with Pixar. Pixar films sucked, they always sucked, no one ever liked them. They’ve been forced upon us like a shit slurry in order to keep the gears of the Los Angeleno animation industry grinding.

Hi parents and other guardians against CHILD TRAFFICKUNG. Please be aware that as the logo shows, the website is not “Frank,” but rather “F RANK,” which is well known child trafficking lingo for the system of ranking attractiveness and value of abductees amongst traffickers. As indicated by the speech bubble around…

Sorry, but That’s so Bacon is already taken by my line of anti-plant-based meat products. It’s two slices of bacon from two different pigs glued together using a proprietary glue made from a third pig. It’s so bacon. 

I didn’t not enjoy that documentary—because octopuses are cool—but I cannot remember the last documentary I watched that felt as mannered and at times staged to the point that it was a distraction. 

I was thinking bald Bea Arthur. 

“we have a counterpoint: Nobody remembers Real Steel, so nobody will notice or care if this is the exact same movie.”

Representing “freedom from the single-aisle ‘ethnic’ section,”

For me, it isn’t so much as a Joel versus Mike thing as it is preferring a particular host with a particular film thing. 70s–90s, I prefer Mike (and basically anything from the 90s is instant gold), but the 60s a mostly a wash, and anything earlier I’d rather have Joel.

I don’t even think Manos is that bad.  Despite the fact that it was precipitated by a bet, it manages to be so much more sincere than the average “Kids these days like monsters/beach parties/He-Man” types of movies.  Torgo alone basically raises it to the level of art brut.

I don’t mind the polish (although I did love the “figure out what piece of crap from Goodwill this thing is made out of” aesthetic of the earlier episodes.  For me, the only thing I really didn’t like much about Mike’s episodes is when the host segments became more serialized.  It’s obviously aged really bad now, when…

Totally agreed.  Something like Moon Zero Two just works perfectly with Joel, because it’s goofy and dumb, but also kind of interesting in a way that makes it impossible to hate.

Yeah, that occurred to me too.  I think the best option would have been a feature-length educational film along the lines of I Accuse My Parents.  People would have at least understood the concept (if only from Troy McClure), and the moralizing would make it a much better target than an earnest sci-fi film.

Ugh, yeah.  I’m really not a fan of that sort of humor.  Coincidentally, that’s why I don’t regularly read Nabin’s writing any more.  He always made those sorts of jokes, but now it’s like he has a pathological need to call someone ugly at least once in everything he writes.  

Everything else aside, This Island Earth just wasn’t a great choice, because Mike era comedy—especially during the Sci-Fi run—just didn’t work so well with earnest, well-intentioned 1950s movies. Mike period humor just got progressively meaner as the show went on and worked best with hateful shit* like Merlin or…

Angourie Rice sounds like a menu item at a very white Cajun chain restaurant. 

Futurama always tops my list of the best of the best series finales. I will never not be impressed that they managed such a perfect ending in a single 22-minute episode, especially with that specific plot, which would probably have sucked if it were anything but the last episode.