Neafcy's Youtube Movie Deal Tag, by Captain Raptor

Neafcy's Youtube Movie Deal Tag, by Jake Boyle

My good friend and even better YouTuber Teddy Woolgrove (www.youtube.com/user/EdwardisnotmynamE) recently challenged me to take on the following set of questions, asked to all by another great YouTuber Neafcy (www.youtube.com/user/neafcy). This suits me very well, having not seen anything to review this week (I'll start acting like a professional when y'all start paying me).

What is the first film you remember seeing?

Much to my chagrin, it's The Phantom Menace. Not exactly the greatest start to my career as a film enthusiast, but I'm pretty sure that I enjoyed it at the time. 

Is it possible to have a favourite film and, if so, what is yours?

I'm a habitual ranker and list-maker, especially when it comes to popular culture, but even putting that aside I certainly think it's possible to have a favourite film. I don't think it's necessarily quantifiable (hence my aversion despite polite suggestion to include a numerical rating at the end of my reviews) but I find it easy to think about the impact a film has on me and how excited I feel about and deduce from my reaction to it which is my favourite - The Dark Knight. Briefly explained, I think it's a precisely-executed masterpiece that manages to exist on every level of enjoyment - able to stun you visually with beautiful cinematography and action sequences precisely made to get the heart racing without ever straying into ridiculousness, but also able to provoke thought about serious issues and give some real emotional depth to a story and setting that takes a fanciful concept and makes it as grim and intense as possible. And of course, it goes without saying that Heath Ledger's sensational, irreplaceable performance is a huge factor.

What film(s) make you cry?

Oh, Lord. Serenity, Kick-Ass, Juno, Schindler's List, The Shawshank Redemption, The Fault In Our Stars, 12 Years A Slave, The Perks Of Being A Wallflower, The Breakfast Club, Toy Story 3, The Lion King... The list goes on. I am very much a crier. Additionally, 'The Big Lebowski', but I'm assuming the question doesn't also incorporate crying with laughter.

What film would you magically like to climb inside the world of?

Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, definitely. A world were everybody is so hipster alt-cool is tempting enough for me as it is, but the inconsistency of the laws of physics and reality, coupled with an existence that seems to be equal parts anarchic excitement and generally slacking off sounds like an ideal life to me. That's the dream.

What movie characters do you wish you were more like?

Juno Macguff, aside from being the wittiest individual in history, has a self-confidence, boldness and honesty that I envy quite strongly. Captain Malcolm Reynolds has integrity and conviction that I can only dream of (plus he is a dashing, smirking, gunslinging, space-exploring big damn hero). And just to satisfy the rule of three, to a lesser extent I wish I had the inner calm and simple wisdom of The Dude (or El Duderino, if you're not into the whole brevity thing).

How have films influenced you on YouTube or elsewhere in your life?

The limit to which films have influenced my life is so large that it's inextricable from my life. Film has been important to me from a young age, and as such my sense of humour, who I made friends with and my goals and aspirations were all pretty much determined by what movies I was watching. These are pretty substantially influential factors on a developing personality, and I don't really have any conception of who I'd be if I had a different taste in films.

What film(s) do you hate and why?

There is only one film (and I hasten to use the word) that I've seen that I've found so displeasing that I would go so far to say I hate it - Disaster Movie. I've seen others that have given me comparably awful experiences in pure content (Funny People, Monsters, and My Father The Hero spring to my mind) but Disaster Movie is so uniquely depressing in its idea of what qualifies as humour and entertainment. Aside from the sheer crassness and laziness of the humour (there are so many stretches of the film where three or four minutes will be spent doing the same poor joke ad nauseum), the film attempts to make a virtue of not just insulting better films (which I would be more or less fine with, the world not moving to the beat of just one drum and all that), but inexplicably demonizing these films for attempting to be something vaguely meaningful or individual. The humour itself is bad enough (incoherent, poorly developed and poorly delivered as it is) but the attitude behind it is so smug without a single justifiable reason that it makes me want to punch something, or angrily blog about it and take it far more seriously than anybody making it presumably did.

So, there we have it folks. Hopefully next week will see a return to your usually scheduled reviewing content, but I hope this is equally entertaining and interesting to read and gives you more of an understanding of the critical perspective I write from.