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Reviews
Eric Andre: Legalize Everything (2020)
Disappointed fan
I like Eric Andre and so far enjoyed everything I've seen from him...but what the hell was this supposed to be? If all the "hey guys, weed is awesome, amirite???" crowd work was meant to be an ironic take on douche-bro spring-break stand-up, it was lost on me.
Maybe it was the room? The audience did look and feel very young, drunk, and rowdy, and quite low-brow, so maybe Eric had to adjust his style for the night, but then why did he use this footage for his Netflix special?
But the earnest, laboured low-brow-comedy wasn't the worst part - that was when Eric decided to do some scripted / staged FaceTime call to someone's mum who was surprisingly unsurprised and played along a little too "yes-and-y" to be believable. It was clearly a scripted bit which Eric tried to sell as unscripted - which in itself is a thing Eric has satirised and mocked on his show over and over again.
To see him become something that I thought he'd reject and dislike based on his earlier work was almost a bit shocking.
Let's hope this was a one-time slip-up.
Jon Glaser Loves Gear (2016)
What the hell?
I don't know what the other reviewers were popping before writing their "reviews", and I use that word in the loosest possible sense, because they hardly fit even the most basic criteria to qualify as reviews.
Anyway. This show was by far the funniest show of 2016 and it is a shame that it
a) flew by under the radar and b) undeservedly is being bashed by these so-called IMDb reviewers, adding insult to injury!
This is easily Jon Glasers best work since Delocated, because his character is similar to "Jon" from Delocated, just without the mask and without the voice modulator. I truly enjoy this insufferable douche testing gear, getting cOoL sHoTs and annoying everybody around him in the process.
The "Surfing" episode stands out.
Here's to a hopefully long life of "Jon Glaser Loves Gear", we need at least one more season of this. Thank you.
99-nen no ai: Japanese Americans (2010)
A sob story with no artistic merit, only interesting to get a glimpse of the skewed Japanese view of history
This show is such a ridiculously obvious attempt at painting the Japanese immigrants to the US as noble, superior people who work harder and are all-around better than their American hosts.
Of course it disregards the facts known about the actual internment camps and practically stylises them as Nazi death camps.
All Americans in this drama are stereotypically sinister and racist people, while the Japanese are hard-working victims with no flaws whatsoever.
As this drama has been made for Japanese audiences, of course it is dumbed to the point that it becomes nothing but a fairytale for children, and the Japanese makers of this probably had a very good reason to not release it in the US.
Der rote Punkt (2008)
A long road ahead for this filmmaker
I understand this movie was made by a student of the Munich academy of film, so obviously it cannot be measured by the same standard as if it was made by an experienced team. But anyway the amount of logical and cultural mishaps was still too big even for a film student. After all, this movie got a theatrical release, and was not shown at a "student film festival" or the likes. The actress playing Aki (the lead) was excruciatingly overwhelmed by the job, while most actors in the supporting roles did a solid job, with the Japanese actors in the Tokio setting being the best (because they were proper, experienced actors).
There were a lot of easy errors in this movie - for instance, the when the main character goes to Germany (for the first time), right after she arrives she is seen carrying a huge rucksack by the "Jack Wolfskin" brand. Unfortunately, this brand is not available to buy in Japan. So, we are required to believe that she brought her travel belongings in a Japanese brand rucksack, then, first thing in Germany bought a huge backpack by Jack Wolfskin (unlikely as she seems to not have brought a lot of money *and* was never shown being anywhere near an area where there are outdoor equipment stores). The other, more annoying thing was that there was no stringent, believable concept of how well the lead actor speaks and understand the German language. While she could barely say more than "yes" and "no" in German and throughout the movie was pictured as to not understand even basic question like "where do you want to go", towards the end of the movie, she suddenly, magically, understands very complicated descriptions given by the father about what happened on the night of the accident.
Apart from these flaws that are really too annoying for a theatrical release, the real problem of the movie is the questionable "message" it tries to transport.
In the beginning, we are introduced to Aki's life in Japan. She seems to just have finished University and is now looking for a job. Only that she's not really interested in finding a job but much more in sitting around and giving a meaningful stare. She meets her boyfriend, who is a "normal person", eager to find a highly paid job. This seems to not be good enough for his "elitist" girlfriend Aki. For example, when he says "I want to get a job with good pay, like a manager", she asks him in a very arrogant, condescending way "...so, you want to become just like your boring father?"
Here lies the main problem of the movie - while we are supposed to like Aki, she comes across as just another pretentious, self-important, westernized brat (she grew up in Japan, mind you). Now, you just do not meet this kind of people in Japan. The decadent world-view that people who are looking to get a good job are "unimaginative and boring" and people who are "doing everything right" are somehow less worthy human beings than dreamy-eyed, confused 20-something spoiled brats, is a purely western one. It later is confirmed by a dialog between Aki and the daughter of the German family - when Aki is asked if she has a boyfriend, she says "hmm, I don't know really", and then she is asked "is there a problem between you and your boyfriend", she says "he does everything right".
Now, I don't know what kind of people the Japanese director of this movie met in Germany, but it all sounds a bit too much that she has assimilated that dangerous, backwards, far-left world view of the German "68er" generation that holds a tight grip over German culture since 5 decades now. Which would be fine if the director didn't just take a supposedly Japanese character like Aki hostage and plastered this cheap and clichéd world-view on her. This is where the movie is really sloppy.
I was fully expecting the movie to end with Aki falling in love with the "do-no-good" son of the German family" who we are supposed to see as "not doing everyhting right and therefore being a very very interesting person, unlike that Japanese idiot capitalist boyfriend".
Basically, this movie portrays a very very western, very very German, very very far-left standpoint on capitalism - if you want to get a good job, you are a boring person, if you are spending your days speeding up and down the German countryside on your motorbike and give your parents trouble, you're super-romantic, highly interesting person.
Now, we have plenty of far-left, fatuous filmmakers in the Western world already, so there is no need for more film students coming to Europe to try to imitate this decadent bunch and their poor efforts, especially when they make so many easy-to-spot mistakes like I described in the beginning of the movie.
Very very poor movie making (which can be excused by the directors' age) and a clichéd, too overly simplistic message which may have been interesting in 1968, but surely not today.