Author Archives: jeremywilkinson97

Fifty Shades Of Pink

Watching the screening this week of Pink Flamingos, I was just thinking about how strange the film was and how stupid the plot was as a whole. During the course of the movie I kept thinking of the movie franchise Fifty Shades of Grey, and the reasoning for that will be explored later on. But back to the screening, another thing that kept coming to my mind while watching this movie was that I couldn’t believe how awful this movie was. It was a bad film, but it wasn’t as bad as Maniac was, at least this film was enjoyable to watch.

Now you would think that I would be surprised by what was in the movie as a whole, but in actuality I wasn’t surprised at all. I mean I was surprised by the stuff, but I wasn’t surprised that the stuff that was in the movie was in the movie. There are so many movies nowadays that have weird stuff in it, and there are plenty of movies that come to my mind. One movie is The Hangover Part 2 and that is because the movie mentions that one of the main characters had sex with a transgender woman and he doesn’t remember it at all and we see this in the credits of the film with photos of their adventure being shown. Another movie that comes to my mind is The Human Centipede and I haven’t watched that movie ever, but I have heard how gross and disturbing that movie is to watch as a whole. I thought of these two films because they each feature something that is a highlight of the movie as a whole. Pink Flamingos features a transgender woman flashing one of the characters, while the other film features a guy having sex with a transgender woman. A main aspect of Pink Flamingos is the filthiest person alive and I thought of The Human Centipede because that film’s ideas that it presents is gross to think about and if you start to think about the film too much, you realise how gross the film actually is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm4xaUE8AlE

Now for why I thought of the Fifty Shades of Grey franchise. This franchise was able to gross over one billion dollars at the box office over the course of three movies. Now I thought of this film because the whole franchise is based on the idea that it is porn for people with weird abusive fetishes and it is. A little fact about the books and the films is that the books are actually a fanfiction of the Twilight franchise. The movies are basically advertised as porn, and I haven’t seen the movies because I have heard how bad the franchise is and that the plot really doesn’t make any sense at all. I am comparing these two because I saw this film as a porn for people with weird fetishes and that is also how I see the Fifty Shades franchise, I see them both as a porn for people with weird fetishes. Now I mentioned that the Fifty Shades franchise was able to gross over one billion dollars over the course of three movies and this is because there was a lot of fans of the books, but also because there has never been a film franchise like Fifty Shades where the films use the idea of a abusive sexual relationship to carry the plot, just like how Pink Flamingos relies on the idea of filthiest person alive.

So I compared many films in this to Pink Flamingos, but I think the Fifty Shades franchise is the best comparison I can think of to compare to Pink Flamingos. Both films rely on weird fetishes people can have and use this to market to people and try to gain a profit. So, I wasn’t really surprised a film like Pink Flamingos exists because there are a lot of people out in the world that have weird fetishes and there are people out there that have marketed off of it.

Is It Possible To Obtain A Soul?

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I have never heard of Carnival Of Souls, but watching the movie it felt like I have watched it before. I knew how the movie was going to end and it just felt like I had watched the movie before. Other than that, I enjoyed the movie as a whole and for its budget, the movie was really good. The one thing that really caught my attention was the soul aspect of the film because it reminded me a bit of a horror movie that came out in 2019. I was expecting this to be a mediocre or a bad horror film, but was surprised by how good it actually was.

In one of the readings that we read this week, a section from the Welch Everman really caught my attention and that section was about how a cult horror film cannot be a classic and I completely disagree with that statement. There are many classic horror films that have a cult following. A few that come to the top of my head are The Shining, The Exorcist, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, and there are so many more that I could continue to mention. Some of the horror movies I have mentioned I have watched, but others I haven’t watched but I have heard so many good things about it from people and how much they love that film and that I should watch it. Now I know these aren’t the horror movies that were mentioned in the reading, but these are considered classic horror movies now and definitely have a cult following of some sort.

Now, I mentioned how the soul aspect of the film reminded me of a horror movie that came out in 2019 and that film is Jordan Peele’s Us. The reason I am reminded of Us is because in Carnival Of Souls the main character, Mary, was supposed to die in the river, but she comes crawling out of the river and acts differently afterwards. I figured that the reasoning for this was because she no longer has a soul and a human body without a soul isn’t even human, hence why she doesn’t like to interact with people and also why she fades in and out of existence.

In order for me to discuss why I thought of Us when I was watching this movie, I will have to discuss some major spoilers for the film, you have been warned.

So a main part of Us is that the United States government decided to clone the U.S. population, but they weren’t exactly the same as the regular population because they lacked a soul. We later learn that the main character of the film is one of these clones that forcibly replaced herself with the real version at a younger age. Now this makes the audience wonder if it is possible to obtain a soul during the course of a life or if you are born with a soul.

This scene describes the soul aspect of the clones.

Both films play with the idea of a soul differently, one says that if you cheat death, then you cannot have a soul. While the other film states that you can obtain a soul as you grow older and that you don’t have to be born with a soul, or in this case, created with a soul. I really enjoyed this film and after watching this film, I love Us even more because of what both films did with the idea of a soul. So, to answer the question I had, I believe it is possible to obtain a soul as you grow older, but you can also lose that soul as well.

This Blog Will Not Talk About Detour, Instead Let’s Talk About Terminator 2.

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For the second week of class we watched Detour and I had low expectations for this movie. When the film was over, I was surprised by how good it was. It is definitely better than Maniac because there was an actual plot to follow and there was nothing that was just left unresolved at the end of the movie. I liked how the reading was able to better explain some of the stuff that was happening in the movie.

My favorite part of this film was the unreliable narrator portion of the film. I have always enjoyed a film that has an unreliable narrator in it. My favorite film that has an unreliable narrator in it is Memento and the reasoning is because you can’t trust the main character throughout the entire film because he suffers from short term memory loss. Detour uses the unreliable narrator throughout the entire film to make the audience constantly question whether or not Al Roberts was telling us the truth. The reason why we are wondering if he was telling the truth is because he is trying to justify his actions that he has done. Some of the film seemed like it could be true, but there is no way that so much bad stuff could happen to one guy. The one thing that stood out to me about how unreliable he is when he is hitchhiking, the cars would change what side the driver was on and also what side of the road they were driving on as well. According to the little documentary after the film, they didn’t know if this was done on purpose or if it was just an accident. No matter what, I believe that they did this on purpose when making the film because it adds to the idea that the narrator is not very reliable.

Another portion of this film that stuck out to me was the idea of fate and I know exactly why this happened to me. The reasoning is because I was thinking of the film Terminator 2: Judgement Day. The reason I thought of this film is because at the beginning of the film, the characters believe that they all have a certain fate that will happen to them and that there is nothing that can change the fate of these characters. You are led to believe that there is nothing that can prevent Judgement day, but this turns out to be false. By the end of the film the characters are able to prevent the creation of Skynet, and save the future, and change their fates. This is the opposite of Detour where Al thinks he has no choice but to accept fate and that fate is constantly making bad things happen to him. Both films approach fate differently, in one film the characters realise that their fate can be changed, while in the other film, the main character believes that he can’t change his fate.

Al Roberts accepts his faith in *Detour.*

The main characters in *Terminator 2: Judgement Day* don’t accept their fate and decide to change the future.

I really enjoyed Detour as a whole for many different reasons. I would actually recommend for someone to watch this film if they really enjoy movies and if they enjoy noir films. I really enjoyed the unreliable narrator part of the film and an unreliable narrator keeps the viewer entertained because the viewer can’t tell what is real and what is untrue. I mean, my fake title probably caught your attention and made you read this and in the first sentence you realize I was lying, but you kept on reading to see if it was just the first sentence and now you wonder if you could truly trust me. That is what an unreliable narrator does, it makes you keep watching or reading to figure out if the narrator ever tells the truth or if they continue to lie. So, am I an unreliable narrator because I lied about the title?

What Have I Gotten Myself Into?

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For the longest time I always thought that The Room was one of the worst movies I have ever seen, after the viewing of Maniac, I was completely wrong about that statement. After watching Maniac, I realize how bad a film can truly can be. There was barely a plot to Maniac and the only time I figured out what the plot of the film was was after I read the article The Prince of Exploitation, and this allowed me to better understand the film as a whole. Although the article helped me to better understand the film, it did not make the film better, the film is still awful and there is nothing that could help to improve the film in the way it was edited and also the way it was filmed. There are so many cuts in this film and sometimes there is just random shots that make no sense at all. The second screening of American Grindhouse allowed me to better understand a different side of film that I have never seen before. I didn’t know about Grindhouse part of film that much, so this documentary opened my eyes to a new portion of film history that I had never known about.

Before watching American Grindhouse, I never knew how many different kinds of exploitation films there was. There was so many exploitation films that I wrote down in my notes that I don’t even think I got them all during the course of the documentary. The fact that there was this many of these films surprises me. I would think that the reason why this surprises me is because of how much our society has changed, today our society hates to see anything sexual in public and even in film anything that has sex or nudity in it is usually looked down upon. Before the Motion Picture Content Rating System, it seems like studios could have gotten away with so much more in film and wouldn’t have seen a negative reaction. But today, it seems like films that are rated NC-17 or R are usually compared differently to a PG-13 film. There is barely any NC-17 films released nowadays and that is because NC-17 is mostly porn or extreme violence. R rated films are getting way more attention nowadays and some of these films remind me a bit of these grindhouse films, controversial and meant to appease a certain audience. The reason for this lack of type of grindhouse film mostly would have to come down to the fact that Hollywood tries to make PG-13 movies to appease the mainstream audience and to avoid putting anything controversial in these films to make everyone mad at them. Although this seems to be changing a bit and we appear to be getting more films that could cause controversy and appease to adults more than the general public.

The rating system that has changed Hollywood.

American Grindhouse made me realize that there was a time when a time when some people in Hollywood tried to exploitate a large portion of the general public to just get a quick buck. This has mostly gone away, but every so often it seems like there is a film that brings back this exploitation and attempt to make some quick money. Maniac was one of the first films mentioned in the documentary and after watching the whole documentary I understand why it was placed there. It was placed there because it is one of the first grindhouse films and attempts to make a quick buck through exploitation.