Upstream Color: Medium Difficulty and When Creators Do Bad Things

Upstream Color: Medium Difficulty and When Creators Do Bad Things

A commentary on of my favorite movies, Upstream Color.  I discuss how my view of this movie has changed over time, as well as what makes a story "medium difficulty" and possible interpretations of the story.

The Transformers: The Movie

Released in 1986, a terrible movie from a toy company would attempt to shove a message down its audience's throat that they couldn't accept.  Join us as we discuss how this movie's failures predicted the failures of modern Hollywood storytelling and should have served as a warning to studios of the dangers of putting their desired message ahead of entertainment.

The Five-Year Engagement (2012) and Negative Quality

The Five-Year Engagement is a movie that has huge appeal to us in every way but one:  it's really bad.  In this commentary we use the The Five-Year Engagement to explain the various ways a story can force you to disbelieve it and ruin your experience, no matter how much you want to enjoy it.

Frozen (2013) and High Quality Storytelling

We comment on Disney's Frozen and why we regard it as an example of high quality storytelling despite the fact that neither Chris or I particularly like.  In particular, Frozen presents it characters with interesting dilemmas and flaws while it also carefully sets up its twists so that when they occur they are surprising without triggering disbelief.

Sideways (2004) and the Dimension of Appeal

The Intensely Casual Method uses three dimensions to evaluate whether a story will be worth your time and money.  All of us at Intensely Casual love the movie Sideways, and it's Logan's favorite movie.  That makes it an ideal subject for us to discuss the element of appeal, the dimension that considers the emotions stories generate in us, positive and negative.  People generally choose to experience stories based on appeal, but as we discuss in the commentary strongly liking or disliking a story can leave you blind to its actual merits or faults.