Tag Archives: Music Video

Movie Review – Anima (2019)

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TL;DR – A 15-minute musical experiment that smashes the music of  Thom Yorke with the sensibilities of Paul Thomas Anderson   

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene

Anima (2019). Image Credit: Netflix.

Review –

This has been the year of the experimental music video/film hybrid, we have gotten the narrative version with Guava Island, the absurd with Bash Brothers, and the documentary hybrid with HΘMΣCΘMING. Well, today we continue this genre with a collaboration between director Paul Thomas Anderson noted for more visually stylistic films like Phantom Thread and Thom Yorke one of the main voices behind Radiohead. If you are a fan of Thom or Paul then I assume that combination instantly got your attention, and if you are not this is only 15 minutes so check it out anyway.

So to set the scene, we are on a train and a lady (Dajana Roncione) leaves her lunchbox behind and a man (Thom Yorke) takes it for himself only for things to get weird. Well, that is about it, as it is only 15 minutes there is not a whole lot more to say other than it is quite a ride.

The first thing I want to talk about is the choreography from Damien Jalet which is one of the three core things that makes this one of the most interesting things I have seen so far this year. There is a flow to the movement, but also a precision that is a really interesting blend. There is a lot of group performances that gives this an organic feel, but also the sharp movements are also otherworldly. Which does sort of fit the theme as anima is referring to the soul. To be honest, I am also always a sucker for the movement that lines up with the beat of the music.

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Movie Review – The Lonely Island Presents: The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience

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TL;DR – If you ever wanted a visual representation of the descent into madness brought on by parental sports obsession and copious amounts of steroids, then this would be it.     

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene

The Lonely Island Presents: The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience. Image Credit: Netflix.

Review –

Have you ever opened up a piece of media and have 100% no idea about what you are about to watch and then also a pretty good idea about what you are about to watch. It is an odd juxtaposition that I have never felt before, well that is before today. For you see, today we are exploring the fever dream of 1980s baseball culture by way of cocaine that is The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience, the latest thing from The Lonely Island.

So to set the scene, it is the late 1980s, an era of big hair, Madonna, and baseball. We open in on the titular Bash Brothers, Jose Canseco (Andy Samberg) and Mark McGwire (Akiva Schaffer). They were two of baseball’s greatest players, but they have a deep secret that no one knows about, they both did a rap video.

This is such an odd piece of media, that I was not actually sure how to classify it, I eventually went with movie just because that is where I put Guava Island from earlier in the year. I bring up Guava Island because structurally there are a lot of similarities even if they are both widely different in style and tone. What we have is a number of songs from The Lonely Island which have been brought together and strung together with a narrative. Though The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience is less on the revolutionary takedown of capitalist forms of oppression and more a drug fever dream about the pressures to take steroids.   

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