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IF (2024)
Condescending AF (see what I did there?)
There is a saying writers have: show, don't tell. However, I am sure you're been in the situation of being shown something so bluntly, with the accompanying soundtrack that tells you EXACTLY how you're supposed to feel, with the talented actors making amazing emoting faces that take enormous skill and yet look like a clown trying to please a three year old, that you understand there is showing and then there's showing. IF is a mechanical thing, lacking anything that might make it beautiful or artistic, except perhaps the special effects. Personally, though, I feel that without a story and true characterization SFX don't amount to anything.
Unfortunately, IF assumes that this film will be watched by brain dead kids who will just enjoy whatever the computer generates for them. It's the expensive version of that YouTube video of creepy colorful blobby thing with big eyes singing a repetitive song that keeps children under 5 in check at restaurant tables. It doesn't need a good actor as the lead, it can feature whatever it wants, because the soundtrack is going to tell you how to feel and the pastel imaginary creatures (that somehow still manage to come off condescending) are going to be cute. And their hapless parents are going to pay for this IQ lowering exercise because, well, they don't have a choice.
This is the story of [character played by (Cailey Fleming who played in the millionth Walking Dead spinoff and some Star Wars) who sees the forgotten imaginary friends of children who grew up and, helped by Ryan Reynolds, tries to match them up with other kids. This fails, only on a level that the writers probably never noticed it was ironic as hell: if new kids would somehow adopt the imaginary friends of previous kids, then there would be less new imaginary friends. It would be just an endless recycling of old content without any creativity. How is that for unintentionally funny? Also inconsistent, because the film says every kid has an IF (ugh!) so trying to match all the forgotten ones with the psychotic kids that never had one would have been pointless to begin with.
Then there is a twist, but one that makes little sense, and an ending that makes even less sense.
Bottom line: Condescending to the point of being insulting, using great talent for atrocious work, a downright bad movie that wouldn't be funny even when drunk or stoned. And one that I am sure will be a hit. Because parents don't need their imaginary friends back, they need a choice in the matter.
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (2024)
A solid block of nostalgia
I was actually thinking of a comedy routine involving the Beverly Hills Cop theme song and wondering if any of the people in the audience would even know what I am talking about. Next week, bam! I find out that a new Beverly Hills Cop movie came out. Is it good? It's not bad. And it hits the right spot for 80's nostalgia, while also looking like another cash grab using the last ounce of recognizability of washed out actors.
The original cast is made out of people over 60, with John Ashton being 76. Add in two young-er people and Kevin Bacon (to cut out the middlemen) and hit all the chords of the original and you've got yourself a movie. Someone probably fleshed out the script in 30 minutes while sitting on the toilet. Soundtrack? Check. Original cast? Check. Same jokes, slightly updated? Check. Beverly Hills rich weirdos and mansions? Check. Police car chasing big trucks that smash everything but hit no one? Double check.
While it is not a bad movie, it is pretty much a by the numbers script, lacking any sort of original thought or attempt at innovation or evolution. The characters are doing the same things and saying and acting the same as 40 years ago, which is enjoyable for us old farts, but a pretty sad state of affairs for the characters and their actors. Can you imagine just getting older while never changing in any other meaningful way? Ugh.
Bottom line: a meaningless yet pleasant stroll on memory lane.
It Follows (2014)
Nice idea, but totally overhyped
It Follows is about an it that follows. Someone thought sexualizing and weaponizing a childhood game was a good idea. Well, not bad, but the problem with this film is that this idea is the only thing going for it. Inspired by 80's horror movies, but very low budget, it features the usual ragtag group of teens who would never be believed by adults while fighting a supernatural evil. This terrible thing is sexually transmitted and all it does (until the end of the film) is walk. Really really slowly. While the kids are really really dumb.
I would have rated it high if the group of friends would have tried various obvious methods to determine the limitations and weaknesses of the evil entity, failed, thus making it truly terrifying. But they did not. Even when clues were coming towards them accidentally, they ignored them in favor of a much more effective running scared crying. Thus, the entity remains just a poor metaphor and a mostly mysterious thing, giving the viewer no resolution, but also no real terror.
There was so much hype about this film, probably because it made so much more money than went into it, a new Blair Witch thing, perhaps. And obviously there will be a sequel. Let's see if more money and attention will make this a better film, because the original is not really good.
Bottom line: the only thing slower than the walking entity is the pacing of the film. An idea that gets explained in 10 minutes of exposition from a random character we then almost never see again is stretched into an hour and a half of people not even trying to understand the deadly threat following them. The more I think about it the lower I rate it, so I'd better stop here.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)
I can find no fault with it
This is an action movie, and it's filled with action. This is a Mad Max movie, and it has the style of the original Mad Max movies as well as a dash of Fury Road. It is a prequel to Fury Road, and its ending fits right in the beginning of that film. The cast is great. The story is great. The acting is great. It is female lead, not that it matters, but it's still very very good. I am trying to find some fault with this film and I cannot.
I liked Anya Taylor-Joy in this film a lot as I liked her in many of her other movies, she is a wonderful actress and perfect for the role, but the crown has to go to Chris Hemsworth. He was a completely different person, like a mash between Guy Pearce and John Travolta, but in a deliciously good way. He stole the stage. He was just amazing! When I first saw Tom Burke I thought he didn't fit the movie; instead he shone bright, which is hard for his style of acting. Even the actors for the little roles did great.
The story seamlessly combines its own style, with more story and less action - although there's plenty of it, with the beginning of Mad Max: Fury Road. No wonder, since Miller actually wrote the plot as a background story to Fury Road when he made the film. The guy had almost ten years to think this through and make it perfect and it shows. What a difference between this and the conveyor belt scripts cocaine addled hacks bring forth these days.
I just watched the film and I am still a little bit in shock. I hardly expected a great movie, but I got one. And it felt like the people working on this had FUN! I don't know, do you have to be Australian to bring this energy to the screens?
Anyway, watch it. Even my wife loved it. She didn't get it, but she loved it.
Yakusoku no Neverland (2020)
What the hell were those wigs?! :D
After watching the anime, I can say that the film is pretty much scene for scene taken from the first season. Some details were slightly changed, some scenes removed, which kind of takes away from the smartness of the story, but what can you do in just two hours. And it feels like it was actually adapted from the anime, not the manga, even if it adds some elements that are relevant only to the rest of the story.
That being said, what the hell were those wigs?! All the "children" were wearing wigs that just looked plastered on their heads. You could have just used normal hair, ffs! There is nothing wrong with "recasting" the hair.
Bottom line: same story, but a bit lackluster. I recommend just watching the first season of the anime and stop there.
Persona (1966)
Women are crazy, but trying to review this is crazier
The second experimental psychological film I see in as many days, both intentionally obtuse and letting the viewer "come with their own interpretation", but this one felt good. The sharpness, the closeups, the acting, the Jungian symbolism... you just know that, even if it is hopeless trying to determine what the film is about, at least it's a good one. Bergman said as much, when he said he wants the film to be felt rather than understood. There is something in the quality of the film that makes you feel something ineffable, something that is not just pure confusion. I did not have the impression that the director had nothing in particular to say, as with the other one.
That being said, WTF?! At the end of the film you don't even know which of the characters of this play-like movie even existed! The tension and attraction between the two main characters can be interpreted as absolutely anything. Conflict between base personality and mask? Check. People going nuts when not provided with feedback and only treated with obscure symbolism and vague facial expressions? Double check: one for the audience. The unravelling of one's identity in isolation? Check. The unravelling of one's identity when juxtaposed with a vastly stronger personality. Check again. Schizophrenia? Why not?
People have been scrambling their brains to come up with a definitive analysis of this film, to no avail. Two months of filming and then 60 years of disappointingly unhelpful analysis. This beats the fool throwing a stone in the lake and 100 wise men not being able to get it out.
Aku wa sonzai shinai (2023)
An intriguing start with a pretentious and disappointing finale
This film was supposed to be a 30 minute cinematic accompaniment to a score that the director's friend made, only that during the collection of video material Hamaguchi had this story idea and made a full feature film instead. The story starts off intriguing: a small Japanese community in the mountains is slightly challenged by the arrival of a company that wants to build a camping resort in their area without any knowledge of or interest in local issues or the damage they would do. There is even a long town hall discussion between the company representatives and the townsfolk which was truly inspiring. I mean, I can't imagine a European or American community reacting in such a measured, well mannered, well thought out and informed manner.
But this is where the movie veers into the absurd. People make life changing decisions in seconds, without being challenged by the ones around them - kind of like Hamaguchi's decision to finish the film the way he did, musical score and nature scenes take the place of plot and then it's one of those WTF endings. Presumably, the author wanted us to make our own mind about what the movie is about. Well, director-sama, that's the same thing as having nothing in particular to say.
The cinematography was good, the music excellent, the interactions between people natural, authentic, deep. The story was absolute rubbish.
Bottom line: in the end, a short cinematic companion to a music score became a very long and obtuse cinematic companion to a music score. Top marks for the music!
Oppenheimer (2023)
Formulaic to the extreme
This is a film that you've already seen. I don't know exactly when, but it was an American movie about a historical figure, presented almost as a documentary, but with very dramatic scenes, played by a plethora of immensely talented actors which play even simple 5 minute roles, carefully curated so that the good characters look good and the bad nasty, with an extreme certainty in every scene, played seriously and reverently so that you instantly believe that is the actual truth, Wikipedia be damned. Tell me you have not seen this movie before! I will call your lie.
Every time the story nears a part of the history of science, some special effects or visual metaphors are inserted, voices fade into inspiring music, Albert Einstein pops up or Niels Bohr and they all talk in riddles and similes and generic language that anyone can understand. Every little thing is enhanced with personal emotion and/or very smart dialogue that has nothing to do with real life. People look at a piece of paper with some calculations and immediately understand it without needing explanations or thinking too much about it, then emote about it before sharing a serious opinion.
But it's Nolan! You will scream. Yes. It doesn't change one thing. Every scene is crafted to perfection, but you already knew this, because that's what a good director does, but also what happens in these kinds of movies. I have no complaint about the direction, acting, sets, budget, special effects. They were all spot on. Was it a good movie? Hell no. It was such an obvious construction that it felt mechanical, not artistic. There was no soul in it, not because actors didn't pour theirs in the film, not because the director wasn't careful with its making, I don't even know why, it was just bland and formulaic and predictable, even if you didn't know Oppenheimer's story.
Bottom line: I liked watching it, but I knew where it was going from the very start. It was brilliant in the way a highway is brilliant because it saves time and it's so smooth, not because it takes you anywhere interesting. And it was three hours of this.
Nekrotronic (2018)
I am a fan of low budget, gory and surprisingly funny movies. This ain't one.
I am a fan of wacky Kiwi or Aussie films, I don't care about the budget, sometimes not even the quality of acting, but I do expect the thing to be original in some way and, above all, entertaining. I really hoped Nekrotonic was like that, but unfortunately it was not. Derivative ideas, predictable plot, not one moment when I thought tables were going to turn one way or another. The acting was decent, I liked the main guy and the girls, but the script was just plain... plain. It wasn't even awful, it was just the same thing I've seen several times before, asking myself every time why would anyone do that film.
Also, Monica freaking Bellucci?! She was never a great actress or anything, but she was bloody awful in this one.
Bottom line: boring and uninspiring.
Memorîzu (1995)
Scifi three story anthology
So there are three stories: Magnetic Rose, Stink Bomb and Cannon Fodder.
The last one is a very direct and slap over the head story about a nation that runs for the only purpose of loading a cannon and firing at an enemy nation that supposedly does the same. Magnetic Rose is a pure sci-fi story in a space setting about the power of memories, pretty well animated and with terrific atmosphere. I would argue that, as annoying as the characters were, Stink Bomb was the best one, deliciously satirizing the Japanese social, political and military structure as a hapless idiot tries to escape the terrifying cloud of gas that he is unwittingly generating.
All in all, a wonderful and entertaining retreat into real storytelling and animation art.
Ultraman: Rising (2024)
A decent story and animation featuring cute Kaijus
I am not really familiar with the Ultraman lore. I know he's a guy who can grow to the size of a monster and often fights against kaijus. There is some sort of Kaiju Defense Force that also fights kaijus. Somehow, this film becomes the story of Ultraman defending a kaiju baby from the KDF, which is ironic, but kind of fun.
However, the true strength (and weakness) of the movie is not in the monster battles, but in the story of a young man trying to juggle career, family, child raising and personal life at the same time. Did I want this in a Kaiju movie? Maybe not, but at the same time it was what gave the characters depth and the story emotional power.
Also, this is a kiddie film, designed to appeal to small children and their parents who, probably, try to juggle a lot of things too, so technically it was good product.
Spaceman (2024)
A surprisingly good psychological movie (not science fiction)
In Romanian the word "disappointment" literally translates to "un-deceive". I think it explains the phenomenon better than the English etymology. People see a movie starring Adam Sandler and called Spaceman and they expect a comedy, a scifi movie or both. However, you have been deceived. Instead this is a very slow, contemplative, serious movie about exploring inwards as well as outwards. The spaceship, the Chandra cloud, the alien, the weird geopolitical situation where Czechia competes in space with South Korea, all the great actors in the cast that only have a few scenes, all of these are at best tools and at worse red herrings.
I swore a long time ago that I would not watch a silly Sandler movie ever again, but I suspected this might not be as silly, and so I am glad to have watched it. It's especially telling that I liked the movie even when using the trope I may hate most in film: space missions as metaphors for alienation and apparent science fiction as a tool to explore human psychology.
The plot is this guy alone in space, while his pregnant wife goes haywire alone back on Earth. He realizes what he refused to see in himself was as important as exploring the unknowns of outer space. People might be first put off by their expectations and then by the really slow, atmospheric approach. While using extremely beautiful imagery, the story is essentially a conversation with a psychologist while on LSD. If you look at it through this perspective, it's an efficient and effective psychological movie.
Wild Eyed and Wicked (2023)
Slow paced symbolic and psychological movie, sabotaged by its own poster
I think most people wanted to see a hot girl sword fighting in armor in medieval forests. That's all the poster's fault. As much as I hate formulas, movie posters are not art, they are templates designed to tell the viewer at a glance what kind of film you are giving them. In that regard, the poster was atrocious.
Instead you get a slow paced thriller about a young woman traumatized by her mother's suicide when she was a child and the subsequent estrangement of her father. The film brings in a demonic force, but it's nothing more than a symbol of the past one must overcome in order to move forward and not a horror element. The actresses are beautiful and actors (all seven of them, perhaps with the exception of the child, but you know.., child actors) do a good job. The mood is appropriate and the sets well done. The film is rich in psychological symbols and I think for someone living similar (but non supernatural) situations, this could actually be therapeutic.
All in all, for the type of movie it is, it's a pretty good movie. I agree that it could have packed more in less time, but sometimes, if you are in the mood, you can get into the atmosphere of a slow burning film and this is exactly that kind of film. If you are impatient to see sweaty chicks grunting while wielding heavy metal swords you will, of course, be disappointed. However, people that would identify with the main characters would actually benefit from the gradual exposure to possible triggers.
Another aspect of the film that unfortunately took something from the overall experience was the fight scenes in the dark. You could barely understand what was going on. It's a small point, but also a relevant one.
Addressing the lesbian elephant in the room, it was by no means woke, and it wove naturally into the plot. Did the film linger a bit too much on the personal relationships of the lead character so that absolutely nothing really happens in the first 45 minutes? Yes. But that has nothing to do with gender politics.
All in all, I think the people that would have enjoyed the film were thrown off by the poster just as the people who would not have enjoyed were lured in by it. It is a good movie that I don't regret seeing, even if it wasn't really entertaining. Good acting and directing.
American Fiction (2023)
If only they would have done the third act right...
This movie is a bit meta, in the sense that it's about a writer who writes a book under a pseudonym as a joke and gets a lot of serious recognition, including film rights which in the end they turn into this movie, or something similar. I think that's the biggest problem with this story. The third act is trying too hard to be smart. My wife stopped watching way before that, because she thought it was too far fetched. Probably the sanest reaction to a film that evokes the same reactions ridiculed in it!
You already know the gist of the story, what you don't know is that most of it is not about the societal satire we've been promised but about the personal life of the main character. His family, his girlfriend, his housekeeper, and so on. The ending, therefore, leans a lot into being meta and going all into the declared story of the film. But it just feels grating, fake, something done for the millions of White watchers that expected something down that line. Wait... is my review meta, too?! NOOOO!
The point is, Jeffrey Wright was great as the main character and all the actors get kudos from me because they were really well chosen and played very well. Unfortunately, the story was too all over the place. It's unsatisfying as a societal satire, because that's way too little, even while whatever is there is pretty good stuff. It's unsatisfying as a personal drama, because to be honest, the character is not that well fleshed out. He's a Black writer. That's about all we know about him and the interactions with his family that are supposed to make him relatable feel actually more like fillers. I have no motivation to relate to him, other than the role that the description of the film assigns to him and then the movie fails to fill in.
Bottom line: I fear that without Jeffrey Wright's acting, this film would have just been meh! Something trying to hard to do too many things at once. That extra star is for casting and acting. I liked the underlying idea, too, but I feel the implementation was lacking.
To the Wonder (2012)
Beautiful cinematography, but no story
This is an "experimental film", meaning you will not get it. Sorry to be blunt, but in a film in which each scene feels imbued with deeper meaning, this movie leaves you with no meaning whatsoever. If you subscribe to the theory that life is a string of consequential events separated by insignificant pauses, To the Wonder seems to try to remove the pauses and just construct a narrative from the meaningful moments, the emotional ones, not what was said, but what was felt, how the world felt and looked and maybe smelled. It is an interesting technique, but it ultimately leads nowhere. Some people derived satisfaction from watching the film mostly because they felt some reflection in characters of the movie, but it could only have been that, because the film provides almost no narrative structure, just a string of pearls from which you can understand anything.
Olga Kurylenko looked absolutely smashing in this, but the obsession of the film to show her playfully running, dancing, laughing while being drenched from a water hose, lying in the grass and lasciviously stretching like a cat in the sun felt like a tired cliché. And when Rachel McAdams' character did the same it really became one.
Bottom line: it was a decent try, but an ultimately unsatisfying one. There was almost no benefit from having celebrity actors playing in this, since there is almost no dialogue. It's a "bring your own meaning" kind of thing.
Atlas (2024)
What a dumpster fire
This is like a direct mix of Shang-Chi and the Humans series. Someone blended them together and then just threw that onto an empty canvas and called it modern art. The good parts in those shows missed the canvas completely. The result is bad in almost every aspect: the story, the details, the characters, their names, the acting, the logic. AIs would have never written this script because they have their dignity.
To understand how badly this film misses the mark, it starts with a woman - named Atlas by her own mother - who plays chess with a computer in the future. The computer checks her, so she makes a magical move that checkmates the computer, then the computer displays that she has won 71 times in a row. If this doesn't scream: run away! I don't know what will. And it gets worse from there.
I have no idea who comes up with these things, then convinces other people to give them money for them. They must be checkmating from a check position chess geniuses, because in every other industry if you come with a stupid idea, people throw you out into the street.
Bottom line: regardless of your personal feelings towards J-Lo, AI, movie making or truth and reality, this film is simply very boring. It's entertainment value can only be perceived while truly inebriated and perhaps not even then. Here's to Planty the plant!
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (2024)
A boring stream of cliché and a waste of good talent
This is the third Guy Ritchie thing I am watching in the last two weeks and the worst by far. It's not that the actors played any badly or that the production values weren't good, but everything about this movie has been already done to death and so it brings absolutely nothing new to the table. It doesn't even feel like a Ritchie film.
This is what you get: Sadistic Nazis, check. Legions of them dying stupidly like NPCs, check. Quippy and cocky protagonists complaining about the death of their loved ones by Nazi hands, then killing as many Germans as possible in an as brutal a manner as possible, check. Team of specialized weirdos making plans that never work as expected, but then adapting like pros, check. The handpicking of "the team", even if most of them haven't received any meaningful screen time, check. Arrogant and uber-sadistic Nazi officer that gets tricked by beautiful woman who is also Jewish, check. A handpicked cast of actors that would bring people in theaters, but that barely use their personal attributes in the film, check. Unescapable situations from which every hero escapes really easily, check. Doing things "undercover" because their own country wouldn't approve of their actions, check (also completely made up).
And look at the cast: The first eleven listed there are people I easily recognize from movies and series as serious actors. And what do they do with them? Nothing. It's all basically a heist movie, in its most derivative form, that uses none of the actors even close to their full potential. And for what? The story has the slightest semblance to the actual operation, but it's complete fiction. It has more in common with Ocean's Eleven. It's the difference between strawberry flavored water and a strawberry! And Kinnear's Churchill was abysmal! I love the man, I know he can act, but in this movie he was awful. And it's not even his fault, he should never have been cast in such an incompatible role.
What makes it even worse is that there was a perfectly good template for the type of film this should have been: SAS Rogue Heroes, which is a lot better, it's a series, it's also based on real people and it's really really fun. No way can you watch that and then enjoy ... I am not going to try to type its name, it's stupid.
Bottom line: The title should have been "Ocean's 1942", it misused its cast, it misrepresented real historical facts, it was bland, it was needlessly nasty, it was boring, it was derivative, it was bad. I think the only good stuff Guy Ritchie does is when Vinnie Jones is in it. Whenever Ritchie gets stupid ideas, Jones slaps him across the head back to reality. What other explanation is there?
The Fall Guy (2024)
A bit of everything, held together by Gosling's charisma
This film is a meta-rom-com-action-thriller movie. That says it all.
Seriously now, how can you go wrong with Ryan Gosling and Emma Blunt's first collaboration in a story about a lowly stuntman who goes through several very intense days in order to achieve his ultimate goal: a coffee?
Even more serious now: this film celebrates the lowly stuntman by putting one in front of the camera: Ryan Gosling! Never really appreciated because of famous people like Aaron Taylor-Johnson taking all the spotlight.
OK, for real now, it's an entertaining movie, set in the world of movie making, focusing on a stuntman, a little bit of romantic tension and love interest going on, a mystery, a lot of action, some comedy, a lot of meta nods to the film industry and references and the like. A little bit of everything, but made with a lot of taste and the little foreshadowing followed by the reveal done in a way that shows someone thought the scenario through before starting to make the movie. I really appreciated that.
But it's not ideal. The film is overly long, I imagine a lot of people skipping it because it's two hours long and they have an hour and a half time budget. Also it didn't need to be that long, the last act is really dragging and it also feels like people weren't that much into it. Emily Blunt is not as ravishing as before and I didn't really feel she was enjoying the production that much. I know it's harsh to start criticizing women just over 40 for not looking rugged and handsome like their male counterpart, but it was also the attitude. Perhaps she was upset for getting so little screentime.
It was fun, the credits scenes show actual stuntmen doing the stunts that Gosling's character was supposed to do, so at one time there is a scene with three people who look almost identical and are dressed the same. The very last scene was fun, too. I wonder if actors are just as disdained in real life on set like implied by this movie. That would kind of suck for everybody. I hope it's not that bad.
Bottom line: Ryan Gosling really inhabited the role very well and infused the film with a lot of charm. Without him, this would have been an average situational comedy. But I see how it would be a great start for the blockbuster season.
Gojira -1.0 (2023)
Flawed, but a lot better than recent Godzilla films
After it started as a clear metaphor for atomic warfare, which the terms of their defeat precluded the Japanese from openly discussing, Godzilla got translated into a few dozen rubber suit monster battles, then crossed the ocean to become American entertainment. I had lost all hope that it could become anything else than meaningless monster bashing. Yet 2016's Shin Godzilla showed that, no, the big guy can still serve as a symbol, in that case one of the insane human belligerence, and you don't need billions of dollars to do it. And now Gojira -1 (because Godzilla 38 didn't have the same dramatic effect) kind of does the same.
Yet this is a different beast. The largest part of the film is about a young man who feels very modern, a guy to whom things happen, lacking the maniacal nationalist courage expected of a kamikaze pilot, lacking agency and manliness. He is just a nice guy who wants to live, during and after the end of WWII. Even his girlfriend and his child are things that just happen to him, without his control. But he can't remain like that, because Godzilla keeps popping up in his life, like a crazy ex. In this film, Godzilla is a symbol of the crushing weight of life, survivor guilt, powerlessness, insignificance. Not a good giant protecting the planet against invented other monsters, but something overwhelming, terrible, indomitable, that yet needs to be defeated.
It's not a film without flaws, though. It's overly long and some of the acting, as far as I am concerned, felt like a tribute to the original Godzilla. In fact there were a lot of scenes that hinted at that original film. It is saying "hey, we know who Godzilla is, let's do it justice". Yet in 2024, Godzilla is no longer Japanese, it's international, like a weathered actor falling out of fame in Hollywood, it returns to the stage to try to find meaning again. It focuses on people, not special effects, on national dramas that got swept under the rug at the original film's release. Did I like it? Yes, but it also dragged along too slowly.
Bottom line: This is a great film just in comparison with all the crap they recently made about the subject, otherwise it's a rather decent reboot of the original Japanese Godzilla.
The Gentlemen (2019)
I bit pompous, but I liked it a lot
Typical Guy Ritchie thing: London gangsters, outrageous dialogs, flamboyant cast, randomness messing up everybody's well laid plans, a broad and cynical view of the criminal underpinnings of our "polite society". I would love him to make a political thriller, with just the darkest humor possible sprinkled in.
Anyway, even if Matthew McConaughey was great and Charlie Hunnam was very charismatic and sympathetic as the loyal right hand man and Colin Farrell is sprinkled in for good measure, and even if they do most of the work in the film, it's of course Hugh Grant that steals the show. The man just can't help it. He strolls onto a set, says some lines over five days and then, when an army of people finally finish up the movie and you watch it, all you remember from it is his charming mug.
So what happens to Hugh Grant's character? You don't need that. What you need is a sequel! Well, I hope he will be part of the new TV show The Gentlemen, which I was planning to watch, but had to watch the film first.
Bottom line: it was really fun. In fact, it felt... polished. Everyone remembers Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, but this film felt smoother, more refined, without losing anything of the entertainment. I see Ritchie veered into war movies. I will have to watch those too, now.
The Magnificent Seven (1960)
A good remake
Six year after the black and white Kurosawa movie, the Americans give it a go. The cast is stellar, the production quality is a lot better, the script is trimmed and changed to fit American sensibilities, but the result is quite good. The few additions to the plot, like the confessed vulnerability of Vaughn's character, improve the story - well, most of them. Frankly I think Calvera was foreshadowing when he said no good deed goes unpunished. In Seven Samurai, even if you kind of guessed where people were coming from, there was almost no character development. TM7 (as it would be named if remade today - OK, I am being naughty, I know there was a decently named remake made in 2016, but I haven't seen it) has a lot more character development. Yet the Japanese film still is better in many ways.
A good remake, I found it instructive to watch Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven back to back.
Hundreds of Beavers (2022)
BRAVO! This was entertaining, fun, smart, and brought joy into my life
Imagine if someone were to make the Roadrunner cartoons live action, but in the style of black and white silent movies, with references to everything from Laurel and Hardy to Star Wars and with strong Canadian vibes. I had so much fun with this film! Watch it. It's a joy. And obviously people making the film also had a lot of fun, which is something I value in a production.
It's not just the idea, though. Everything not human was done with puppets and people dressed in animals and Papier-mâché. There is a lot of creativity and effort in this. Almost two hours of pure joy. I really recommend it. Best film I've seen in months.
Yume (1990)
This is what happens when you let a famous director do whatever they want
My wife somehow liked this, but I can't understand why. It's a bunch of small stories that either have a strong moralistic idea or don't have a story at all. Some of them have scenes that shake (unintentionally) and some actors (like the child actor) are really really bad. Honestly, I couldn't wait for it to be over. I had watched Seven Samurai just before and I liked it a lot. This is what the same guy does 46 years later? I don't get it.
Also, the concept is that Kurosawa dreamed these and then put them on film. However none of the stories have the structure of a dream. Instead they feel processed, like "I had this dream where I met a demon", then he makes an entire piece about other demons and a long discussion and some reference to nuclear weapons in a devastated land. Not only was it boring, but it felt really pretentious.
What I think happened is the old "let the master work". Sometimes this produces amazing masterpieces. This was not it.
I think the Van Gogh one was probably the best fragment and it actually felt like a dream sequence. The fact that Martin Scorsese played in that one was a hint on how and why this film was made. If you know the right people and have the right reputation, you're allowed to do anything.
Mad God (2021)
Beautiful grotesquery with no story, just an overwhelming sense of dread and disgust
Was it worth it? Working for three decades so that jaded 2022 people go into a collective WTF? I would say no.
The stop motion animation that goes on for almost an hour and a half doesn't have a story. You might imagine there is a story, but there is none. A story has structure, characters, goals, development. This is just stuff happening while a guy walks through this world of horrors. I don't even know if the Leviticus quote at the beginning explains something or was just something that the film maker added as a whim after everything was edited.
The work was great, the art is beautiful and disgusting and exhilaratingly grotesque. A lot of effort went into this, but in the end it just feels like one of those YouTube videos that people string up from horror game cinematics.
I wanted to like it, but without a narrative structure and characters I could relate to, the whole artistic thing bored me to tears. Imagine a painting made out of plastic, meat, excrement, pipes, wires and blades, one of those avantgarde art installations. And it also moves. And you sit there and watch it for more than an hour. That's Mad God.
Shichinin no samurai (1954)
Trailblazer
Just a few days ago I was watching the latest film inspired by Seven Samurai: Rebel Moon. What a difference in class! Seventy years later, a decade for each samurai, the characters are cardboard, the plot automatic and the only working things are the special effects and production budget. Yet the original film, with no color, a low budget and many production mistakes (see the guy hit by the horse, ouch!) is so much better. It shows that someone put a lot of effort into the story, the characters, each scene. And this in a time where probably film was expensive as hell and the only way to edit anything was by actually cutting and using paste to put things together.
It is pointless to talk about the story. We all know it. Not only it is a classic, but it was remade and reimagined so many times that it has become part of our global identity. What shines through is the dedication, not only the director or the main characters, but also the supporting cast. People that look so much like peasants or samurai or tragic buffoons are so different in other movies. I guess one could call the movie part of the "golden era" of something, but it's not. It's just art in which people have put their hearts and souls. And it worked.
One of the movies that is still watchable and enjoyable and awesome after 70 years, I recommend it highly.