Reel Rumble

What makes camp, camp? What is the best campy musical? In part one of this two part series, Jazeen and Stuart try really, really hard to answer these questions so some success maybe, sort of? They watched Rocky Horror Picture Show and Little Shop of Horrors for this rumble and chatted about things like Steve Martin's ability to act like a total butt, they're love of Tim Curry, and how practical effects are just better.

Which one of these movies is more fun and why? Stuart and Jazeen get ranty, they get mad, they cannot believe one of these things got made.

Clue, based on the board game, focuses on a mysterious dinner party full of mysterious guests in a mysterious mansion. All being blackmailed, the dinner guests are given a weapon, a candlestick, a knife, a gun, and so forth. They’re faced with a choice — kill the butler, leave quietly and remain the victims of blackmail with their secrets intact or kill the blackmailer and all of their informants. When people start dropping like flies, the dinner guests split up and search the house for the murderer before the police arrive. 

In Murder by Death, a group of world-famous detectives, the best of the best, are invited to the large house of a very rich and powerful man and are challenged to solve a murder. The winner gets a million dollars. When the wrong person is murdered instead, the plot thickens and the detectives must solve the case before time is up.

Stuart and Jazeen talk about how stories should have a central question that gets us invested, why having a symbol in a movie isn’t enough to make Stuart care, how to make Pulse 10% better (there's no saving Dark Water) and how Jazeen went from a lover of J Horror to not.

Pulse centres around three disconnected storylines trying to figure out why in the heck people in Toyko keep disappearing. Apparently, the internet has become a breeding ground of malevolent spirits that just want a friend. They’re lonely. Super lonely. Even the living are super lonely. We all lonely. 

In Dark Water, newly divorced and unstable Yoshimi must fight for the custody and care of her daughter while trying to piece her life back together. Her and her daughter move into an apartment building with some really bad water leakage problems and are quickly haunted by the ghost of a little girl. 

Stuart and Jazeen talk about the charisma and talent and skill of Philip Seymour Hoffman. FAN GIRLZ! They talk the wacky film editing choices made in the early 2000s, Marisa Tomei's addiction to biting her lip, Stuart's hatred of title cards, Jazeen's hatred of musical mofits that are so on the nose they're annoying and Stuart's hatred of directors who think they're clever and want you to know they're clever.

In Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, a well constructed melodrama, Andy (Hoffman) is a debt-ridden broker. He needs some cash to escape to Brazil with his wife. He ropes his younger brother, Hank (Ethan Hawke), into robbing their parent’s jewelry store. When the robbery ends in devastation, Andy’s father takes justice into his own hands and hunts down the killers. 

In Punch Drunk Love, timid and shy Barry played by Adam Sandler is prone to violent outbursts and is leading a rather lonely life under the berating of his seven sisters. Then, he falls in love. That love is threatened by extortionists, who’s gang is led by Dean The Mattress Man, played by Hoffman. 

Stuart and Jazeen chat about up and coming director Jane Shoenbrun's only existing films (to date). Unnerving, fresh and very pink and purple, "We're All Going to the World's Fair" and "I Saw the TV Glow" are two films to watch if you love Lynch, Cronenberg, themes of isolation, media, and coming-of-age.

We talk about how there are maybe too many endings but we're not mad about it, how these films get creepy with relationships to screens and holy shit those dad characters are scary.