shaykelliher Reviews

By Design (1950)

Charming

[7/10 · 24 November 2018]

I saw this short film yesterday when I was at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, it was in their "House of the Future" exhibit and it was really good.

I mean, it's not actually good, but it's got that charm that most 1950's educational videos have. It's just this middle aged man named Arthur who has the mental age of a 5 year old being told shocking information like "if we use our tools and materials properly we can make furniture that is comfortable AND visually appealing."

Genuinely though, the film had some very nice title design which is something that most of these films don't bother with.

If you're ever in the Powerhouse please watch it, it's short and charming

Not that anyone is reading this at all, I mean, just look at the page for this thing, it's an arid wasteland. I have no doubt that only two people have ever been on this page: me, and the person who made it.

10 Things I Hate About You (1999)

A lot better than I expected

[7/10 · 22 September 2018]

I had to study this movie in English class one time and I was honestly dreaded it. I heard "Teenage comedy" and I just accepted that it was going to be one of the worst movie I would ever watch.

Thankfully, I was very wrong. This is an incredibly fun and charming retelling of Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew" with a great cast, great jokes and pretty good cinematography considering the genre.

Definitely would recommend it to anyone who's looking for a fun teenage comedy.

I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore (2017)

As good as I was hoping

[9/10 · 30 August 2018]

I had high hopes for this film going in. The trailer looked really good and the inclusion of Elijah Wood made me even more confident. And I'm proud to say that I was not disappointed in the slightest.

This was a really fun, interesting buddy-comedy movie with some really good emotional moments. The main cast do a great job (Elijah Wood in particular had me dying with laughter) and nearly every joke lands.

Not much more to say on this one other than: watch it!

The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (2004)

Genuinely Amazing

[10/10 · 30 August 2018]

I love Spongebob. There has never been a point in my life were I haven't loved Spongebob. I used to wake up two hours early every morning so I could watch Spongebob before going to school. When I moved overseas as an 8 year old and considered it to be the worst thing that had ever happened to me, I knew that I could always laugh at Spongebob.

Even now when I've had a really bad day and I feel terrible about myself, I can throw on an episode of Spongebob and almost immediately feel better as I roar with laughter.

And I fully believe that this is the best film based on a TV show ever made. This film is near perfection. It's in my top five animated movies of all time.

It is hilarious.

I have seen this movie more times than I have seen any other movie, we're talking twenty/thirty times, and I laugh every single time.

The story is incredibly stupid in that amazing Spongebob way, and it's a perfect size for a movie. It doesn't feel too ambitious, nor does it feel too small of an idea, it just works perfectly with the time limit.

The characters from the show (Spongebob, Patrick, Squidward, Mr Krabs and Plankton) are all hilarious here and this is where some of their best lines come from. The new characters (Neptune, Mindy and Dennis) also work incredibly well and feel like they fit perfectly into the Spongebob universe.

The jokes are of the highest calibre. The Spongebob/Squidward interaction in the shower will always be funny. "I like money" will always be funny. "I've tried every plan from A-Y" will always be funny. "Oh waiter", "BALD", "You don't need a license to drive a sandwich", "Does that take ketchup or mustard?", "Bubble blowing bubble baby", "make mine a chocolate", "now that we're men", "okay Patrick now you're really starting to bum me out", "STALLING" and "Goofy Goober Rock" will never fail to make me laugh.

The movie is a hilarious ride from start to finish with a great emotional core, stellar animation and great voice acting. This film makes me feel like I'm seven years old again, and for that I'll always love it. If I'm ever feeling down, this is the film I reach for.

The Terminal (2004)

Great fun, just don't think about it

[9/10 · 30 August 2018]

I love Tom Hanks. I know it's a cliched thing to say, but Tom Hanks is the greatest person who is currently alive. And this film really cemented my love for him.

I honestly think that without Tom Hanks I would have hated this movie. It's a stupid, stupid idea. It makes no sense and is really contrived. BUT (and this is the biggest 'but' of all time) it works because Tom Hanks is so unbelievably charming.

He owns this role, after a while you almost forget that this is Tom Hanks just wandering around an airport for two hours. And it's important to remember that this is just Tom Hanks walking around an airport for two hours, BUT IT WORKS SO WELL.

And because Tom Hanks is so great, you really connect with the other characters and feel the emotional weight of all the scenes. You want these people to achieve their goals, even if they are incredibly stupid.

Stanley Tucci serves as a great comedic antagonist. He's the villain you love to hate and he adds so much character to what could have easily been a one-note villain.

If you're in the mood for a fun, heartwarming movie, then I couldn't recommend this enough.

Number 17 (1932)

Great first half

[4/10 · 29 August 2018]

So I decided to check out this early Hitchcock film one night, and thirty minutes in I felt like I had found a real hidden gem. To me, Hitchcock's best films are the ones that deal with characters stuck in confined places, and this seemed like the precursor to films like "Lifeboat" and "Rope".

The first half of the film is really atmospheric and sets up a cast of really interesting and fun characters, as well as a pretty solid mystery.

However then the characters break out of the house they're stuck in and it becomes a pretty boring train/bus chase that has an unsatisfying conclusion. It's a shame that this is the case, because it was shaping up to be a really enjoyable mystery movie that served as a great example of early Hitchcock, but instead it tailed off halfway through.

Would recommend it to other Hitchcock fans though!

New York Nights (1929)

I watched this by accident

[4/10 · 29 August 2018]

I wanted to watch "The Lights of New York", searched it up on YouTube, clicked on the first thing that came up (which was this movie), realised thirty minutes in and then decided to finish it anyway.

It was okay? Well, a little less than okay. I was into it for a while but then when I realised that it wasn't what I had wanted to watch I kind of lost interest for a bit. The story was pretty standard but none of the dialogue really popped out and the acting was pretty good for the most part.

I still haven't seen "The Lights of New York".

How to Murder Your Wife (1965)

Isn't Hating Women Funny?

[3/10 · 29 August 2018]

Yeah so I was really excited to watch this (Jack Lemmon is one of my favourite actors of all time) and unfortunately it was a MASSIVE letdown. I was at least expecting some sort of passable comedy that we be pulled together by the talent of Jack Lemmon, but alas that was not the case.

The story is really nonsensical. A cartoonist who makes a strip about a detective acts out all the crimes that take place in his story before drawing them. He then gets drunk and marries a beautiful Italian woman who can't speak a word of English. She supposedly ruins his life and then he drugs her, fakes her death (with a mannequin) and is then arrested for killing her. He then gets acquitted because all the men in the jury would also kill their wives if they were given the chance.

So yeah, the story makes no sense, is terribly unfunny and also painfully misogynistic. I get that it's a joke and that I am simply a "triggered SJW" but none of these jokes are funny. The joke of all of them is "Haha, don't women suck?" which isn't very funny... like, at all.

The first five minutes of this movie were really interesting to me, but then it all fell apart after a while. Even Jack Lemmon (who I love dearly) couldn't save this mess of a movie. However the charm that he constantly exudes does make a lot of the dialogue easier to listen to.

Ultimately it's an unfunny, contrived mess of a film with a really charming lead actor and maybe one or two salvageable jokes.

The Saphead (1920)

Pleasantly Surprised

[6/10 · 29 August 2018]

Before I watched "The Saphead" I was under the impression that it was a Buster Keaton comedy, rather than a straight drama that starred Buster Keaton. For the first twenty minutes or so I was rather confused by the lack of jokes but then after a quick Google search I figured out what was happening.

After I realised what the nature of the film was, I found it pretty enjoyable. It's nothing special but it also isn't totally forgettable. The story may not be totally original but it did have some interesting beats in it that I wasn't expecting.

Keaton does a really good job in this role, and he even gets some moments to show off his comedic talents to the audience (the most notable being the stock market scene, which gets some decent laughs).

So yeah, overall it's nothing special but it's a decent watch and the feature film debut of a comedy legend.

Pardners (1956)

A pretty disappointing film all things considered

[4/10 · 29 August 2018]

I'd heard a lot of great things about the comedy pairing of Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. I'd seen Jerry Lewis in some other films before this (such as "The Nutty Professor" and "Rock-A-Bye-Baby") where he didn't really stand out as being a comedy legend, if anything he just seemed really annoying at points.

However I wasn't going to let that get in the way of enjoying what I had heard was a great double act.

But... this movie kind of sucked.

The most important thing that a comedy needs is to be funny, and unfortunately this doesn't quite hit the right mark. Jerry Lewis screaming and whining in that voice of his gets irritating after a while, and pairing him with the rather subdued and (in my opinion anyway) boring Dean Martin doesn't help as there's no one around to rein him in.

The story of this film feels like it was thought up five minuted before shooting began. It's the standard "there's a new sheriff in town and some criminals are trying to get rid of him" state of affairs that we've all seen about one hundred times before. However I will give the writers some credit as they did try to add a little twist to it, but ultimately it doesn't work because you don't really care about what's happening.

There's also this weird thing about an inter-generational family war which means that Dean Martin's character (a cowboy) and Jerry Lewis' character (a spoiled socialite who has always dreamed of being a cowboy) have to team up to stop the bad guys who are... doing something bad.

However this just means that it takes about 40 minutes for the two main characters to team up which means the rest of the movie feels incredibly rushed, so I wish they'd structured the movie better in that regard.

Oh yeah, also it's a musical? That was something I only figured out about 30 minutes in, which is when the first musical number appears. I can't actually remember any other songs after that though, so maybe there was only one? Either way, it was unnecessary and pointless and only served to waste time.

Overall, this movie was a pretty big disappointment, but it wasn't completely awful. Hopefully my future attempts to watch some Lewis and Martin will yield greater results.

The Best of Everything (1959)

Great ideas with some iffy execution

[7/10 · 29 August 2018]

"The Best of Everything" is a film I had never even heard of until the day I watched it, which honestly is kind of a shame. This is a really solid movie which is held back by some certain problems.

The three different stories that effect the three main characters of the film are all incredibly interesting in their own rights, and are all grounds for amazing films on their own. However the film is doing a constant juggling act with these three stories and thus the tone of the film is all over the place. In one scene it's a haunting psychological horror with an interesting use of camera angles and shadow, the next it's a melodrama about a careless lover and after that it's a cosy office comedy. It's a bit jarring at times, all the scenes work on their own but when they're put together it has some less-than-excellent results.

Other than that this is a really good movie with a knockout cast. It's just the tonal problems that stop it from being something really special.

Freddy Got Fingered (2001)

The Worst Movie Ever Made?

[1/10 · 25 August 2018]

Answer: yes.

This movie is, hands down, the worst piece of GARBAGE I have ever seen. Manos, Troll 2, the three animated Titanic movies, both Birdemics, the Room; they all pale in comparison to this steaming pile of hot garbage.

I know that comedy is incredibly subjective but I refuse to believe that there is anyone who finds Tom Green and his style of humour to be funny. Tom Green comes from the Jerry Lewis school of comedy, which is "LOOK HOW LOUD I CAN SCREAM, ISN'T IT FUNNY GUYS???" only, unlike Jerry Lewis, there is absolutely no semblance of charm or talent at all.

Somehow Tom Green managed to make a movie which he directed, starred in and wrote the screenplay for. Truly a modern day Charlie Chaplin. Unfortunately instead of the magic of the Oceana Roll dance, we get Tom Green wearing a turban dowsing his father in elephant sperm.

The movie follows Gordy, an unemployed man-child who dreams of being a cartoonist. His dream garners disapproval from his father, who's rocky relationship with Gordy serves as a major plot point throughout, something which only encourages Gordy to go out into the world and prove that he has what it takes to make it.

It sounds like a pretty forgettable underdog story about sticking it to "the man" that the late 90s and early 00s are rife with (complete with gnarly scene where Gordy radically rides his skateboard around inside a shopping mall).

However the true horror of this movie comes with the "jokes" that Tom Green has conjured up in his sick, twisted, painfully unfunny mind. As far as I can remember the first joke of the movie involves a horse's penis and a large Subway sandwich, and from that point on it's wall to wall... laughs?

Whether it be bestiality, licking open wounds, rape, incest or paedophilia, Tom Green's "razor sharp wit" is ready to skewer any topic that isn't funny at all.

I don't even know how to do this review, where am I supposed to start? Which parts should I leave out? I can't leave out any of it, it all needs to be talked about. But at the same time, I can't talk about it all, I just don't have the energy. So what to do?

Look, to make a long story short, I've seen a lot of terrible films in my time. I actively seek them out. So when I heard "this is one of the worst films ever made", I thought "bring it on, I'm immune to this sort of thing". How wrong I was. I am yet to see a movie that instils the same amount of rage in me as "Freddy Got Fingered". This is the first time a movie has made me feel nauseous.

I don't care how many people flock to defend this movie as being "an absurdist take down on the studio-comedy" or how it's "purposefully trolling the studios who funded it". It doesn't matter if Tom Green intended to make a terrible movie. If someone takes a dump in your bowl of cereal and then forces you to eat it, and then tells you that it was to "screw with the system", it doesn't matter, because you just ate a bowl of faeces. That's what this movie is, a bowl of faeces. And just like a bowl of faeces, it ruins your day and makes you feel sick.

So no, Tom Green is not the Jean Luc Godard of comedy. He's just a pathetic, unfunny man-child who made a movie so bad, so painfully awful that it made me question why I even like films in the first place.

Terrible story, terrible jokes, terrible acting, terrible direction, terrible shot composition, terrible music, terrible lighting, terrible sound design, terrible continuity and far, far too much bestiality.

And at the centre of all of this is Tom Green. A man who lacks any creative talent. A man with an ego so large that it has its own gravitational pull. A man who was given the opportunity that many work all their lives for without getting. And he squandered it.

Tom Green doesn't deserve to call himself a filmmaker. He doesn't deserve to call himself a director. He doesn't deserve to be in the same room as a camera ever again. Tom Green does not deserve to hear human laughter in response to something he is responsible for.

Tom, on the rare chance that you're reading this, I want to address you directly. I hate you Tom, I hate you and your terrible, terrible movie. You are the worst person I know, you are a no-talent hack who doesn't even deserve to be a footnote in history. I hope everything you try to do fails. I hope that you never get a job in the film industry ever again. I hope that no other poor soul ever has to watch your movie ever again. And I hope that now I have gotten all this off my chest, your disgusting, distorted face will stop haunting my nightmares.

And no, I would not like some sausages.

Hobgoblins (1988)

Amazingly Terrible

[1/10 · 23 August 2018]

There is no denying that this movie is terrible in every sense. The only good thing to ever come out of this movie was the MST3K episode, which had me in stitches the whole time. Also Darren Norris.

Who could forget such iconic cinematic sequences as the five minute long garden tool joust? Or the intense battle against the Hobgoblins at the world famous "Club Scum"? Not me, that's for sure.

Honestly I've seen worse, and this film certainly isn't offensive or anger inducing. It's just a low budget, so-bad-it's-good masterpiece which I'm sure will bring more laughs on a re-watch, but only if Mike, Crow and Servo are there.

James Acaster: Repertoire (2018)

What it lacks in Cabadging it makes up for with everything else

[10/10 · 28 March 2018]

James Acaster is my favourite comedian of all time. I've seen every TV appearance he's made, all his live clips online, listened to all of his classic scrapes and read his book. I LOVE this man, he has the ability to make me no matter what. So when I heard that 4 hours worth of his material was going to be put on Netflix, I was ecstatic to say the least.

Every part of this four-part comedic masterpiece is hilarious. The show is made up of new and old material. The old stuff still lands as well as it did the first time I heard it and the new stuff was amazing to see.

Each episode has James (colour coordinated with the stage background) seemingly rambling about unconnected topics for 55 minutes at a time, but by the end you realise that you've seen an perfectly plotted show that managed to somehow get a very strange plot across.

Gags like James playing us his comedy podcast, talking about jury duty, massages, pictures-you-put-your-head-in, folding boxes, Google logos, Dr Pepper, conga lines, Mexican restaurant cutlery and how to break the ice sound like they don't connect but by the end of all four you're aware you've seen something special.

The final episode especially manages to tie in in-jokes from all three other episodes as well as some more new material that manages to cap off the whole show and make you feel like you've seen one 4-hour set rather than four unrelated shows.

It's unlikely, but I hope that more of Acaster's work makes it to Netflix as more people need to be exposed to his genius. If you love Acaster like I do, this will be the highlight of your year so far. If you've never heard of him then do yourself a favour and check this out, you'll love it.

Scooby-Doo! Shaggy's Showdown (2017 Video)

It's fun for what it is

[5/10 · 18 March 2018]

Let's be real for a second, Scooby-Doo movies are not high art, and that's perfectly okay. Thankfully the people over at Warner Brothers are aware of this and have never taken the franchise too seriously.

I've not seen many of these movies but this one was pretty okay. The animation looked like classic Scooby-Doo which I'm sure would please die hard Scoob fans, but it didn't really do much for me.

The plot is the standard Scooby-Doo affair, you can more or less figure out what's going on in the first half an hour. The main stand out of this film however is the humour. Velma's anger at a website font choice, Fred debating which net to use to catch the ghost, a 12 year old YouTube rapper doing a concert at a rodeo in a ghost town? Hilarious. It doesn't sound funny but goddamn most of the jokes land really well.

Unfortunately they try to cram too much into this movie, there were a bunch of throwaway gags and characters that served no real purpose and overall the story and animation were pretty bland.

So if you want a funny Scooby-Doo movie that you can watch with your brain turned off, go for it. If you're looking for something with an engaging western story, go watch High Noon.

Eadweard (2015)

A fascinating look at the man who started it all

[8/10 · 3 November 2017]

I already knew a fair bit about Eadweard Muybridge before I went into this movie and I don't know whether or not that may have given me a slight bias, but this movie was incredible. The film revolves around Eadweard Muybridge (as the title would suggest) the incredibly eccentric "father" of cinema who or more less invented motion pictures. The story was incredibly interesting (to me anyway), seeing them reenact these immortal moments in much the same way that Eadweard would have done was amazing and the story involving the relationship between Eadweard and his wife was also incredibly well done. The film does have a few pacing issues at the beginning, showing us five years of Eadweard's life in as many minutes was fairly jarring but after that, it flowed at a consistent pace. The acting was fairly good for the most part (the worst performance coming from a woman who seemed to be Irish-Australian?) but the show-stealing performance thankfully comes from our lead star, Michael Eklund. The only other thing I've seen Eklund in is Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and despite not having a large role in it he's very entertaining to watch. I only wish he had more to do in that show because he was phenomenal in this movie. He felt so much like a real person, putting so much effort into making the eccentricities of the character feel realistic. My personal favourite thing about the film was the soundtrack. An interesting use of accordion, washboard, violin and vibraphone gives the entire film a unique feel. The film is a tribute to the man who started it all and I wish more people were aware of it as it deserves much more praise than it's been getting… especially Michael Eklund who was really, really good.