J.D. Hansel

JD Hansel

The Big Chill (1983)

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CONTENT WARNING: The film discussed in this episode, The Big Chill, deals with heavy subjects (specifically suicide). Some listeners may wish not to watch it, but worry not: this episode is enjoyable regardless of whether or not the listener has seen the movie.

JD and Nic have a very simple task in this episode: explaining the American political landscape, the Baby Boomer generation, the psychology of suicidal thought, and the many crises that come with life as a young adult. Somehow, this is still one of our shorter episodes.

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Scrooge (1970)

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In their first holiday episode, JD and Nic try to unpack not only the beloved story of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, but the odd legacy of its first major musical adaptation, Scrooge, starring Albert Finney and Alec Guinness. This episode may or may not contain shirtless executioner demons covered in oil.

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Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008)

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It’s Nic’s choice this time, and he’s making JD watch Academy Award-winning auteur Guillermo del Toro’s wacky comic book movie about a demon, a fish, some elves, tooth fairies, and a German gas man. JD tries to convince Nic that this beloved cult favorite is actually not a very good movie.

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Dragonslayer (1981)

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In their first episode, movie nerds JD Hansel and Nicholas Lemon discuss an obscure ’80s Disney fantasy film with animatronic dragons, great British old people, and *gasp* female nudity?! Is this one of Disney’s underrated “Dark Ages” classics, or is it best left in the vault? JD and Nic, as usual, see it very differently.

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The Fellowship of the Ring Review

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It’s entirely possible that I saw this film already, many years ago, but to my memory, I fell asleep the first time I tried to watch it, and I got bored and switched to something else the second time.  My third time, this most recent time, I finally made it all the way to the end.  I didn’t remember the ending, which is why I think I’d never finished the film before (and hence why I’m reviewing it now), but then again, who would?  The film leaves you with the feeling that you just watched a five-hour-long teaser trailer for the second film.  It’s simply a tease – all the great things about this franchise (namely Sméagol and Gollum) come later in the series, whereas this movie offers an introduction to this (fairly bland) fantasy world.  To be honest, I almost fell asleep again this time.

It’s just not my cup of tea.  It’s fine – this isn’t necessarily badly made – but it’s not my preferred kind of fantasy.  I like the colorful and sparkly ’80s fantasy film, which is precisely what Jackson stated he was trying not to do.  He wanted to make a series of films that feel like a grander version of historical fiction, such as Braveheart, but in the history of a fantasy world rather than ours.  That’s not my genre.  I like the kind of fantasy nonsense that he doesn’t like, which is fine.  Beyond that though, I just don’t care enough about the characters, and I don’t like how the story seems to ramble and dilly-dally without clear purpose.

The film has given me an appreciation for some of Tolkien’s writing, but I’m doubtful that Jackson’s way is the best way to adapt the strengths of Tolkien’s work to the big screen.  I love many of the motifs, icons, places, and objects presented in the film – particularly the Ring of Power, which is one of the greatest metaphorical narrative devices in the history of literature – but they’re not organized in a narrative that makes me care enough.  It’s all very Dark Crystal-ish to me.  The film also suffers from predictability, which shouldn’t happen in a film with freaking magic in it.  Again, there’s a lot here that I like, and I wouldn’t mind watching the film again sometime – Jackson seems to be a more than competent filmmaker who certainly has his strengths – but I’d rather skip ahead to the films where more interesting things happen.

Dead Poets Society Review

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A devilish lie lurks here.  Maybe not so much in the film’s message as in the minds of the characters, or at least in the way the audience is bound to interpret the story, but somehow, the lie is here.  As the film presents its separation of creativity, freethinking, and love for the arts from tradition, orthodoxy, and formality, it is assumed that the realm of the logical is on the latter side – the dark side – but this is not the case.

What Hollywood needs to learn to understand is that the logical and the conventional are not one and the same.  In fact, “appeal to tradition” is a logical fallacy.  The characters in this film who represent order, propriety, and convention are on the wrong side of logic with many of their attitudes, concerns, beliefs, and actions.  That being said, once the audience understands this, the film is immensely enjoyable.

This film works through the anxiety that comes with youth better than most other films I’ve seen on the topic.  I think its power in this regard probably comes from the issue I just described: we see young people put in a situation in which they are taught that freethinking is bad thinking and dogma is logical.  We all know that this is wrong, and it is this understanding we have of the devilish lie that fuels the film’s drama.  It is because of this that the film is so gripping, heart-wrenching, frustrating, and sometimes almost terrifying.  While the film is sometimes cheesy, and not all of it dates well (I’m looking at you, scenes with the girl), but it is an intense experience that resonates with me on a special level, and I love that.