I remember enjoying it, but that had nothing to do with its qualities as a movie and more as a fascinating historical document. It's almost certainly the oldest movie I've ever watched end-to-end and I thought it was satisfyingly creepy. The version I watched had some sort of discordant electronic soundtrack to it too which sounds like it should have been really incongruous but somehow wasn't and made the whole thing rather menacing.
Follow it up by watching Shadow of the Vampire for an interesting take on the whole thing.
I remember enjoying it, but that had nothing to do with its qualities as a movie and more as a fascinating historical document.
Yeah, any enjoyment I got from it was definitely on an academic level. I kinda want to read more about how it was made, but what little skimming I've done doesn't seem to suggest it was particularly groundbreaking in its techniques. Maybe watching it on the heels of King Kong had me expecting something more substantial.
The version I watched had some sort of discordant electronic soundtrack to it too which sounds like it should have been really incongruous but somehow wasn't and made the whole thing rather menacing.
Mine had a pretty boring silent-movie-by-the-numbers score, but some of the scenes had been very cheaply colourized (basically a flat colour across the whole frame) to indicate the lighting: blue for moonlight/night-time, yellow for day/candlelight, and pink for dawn/dusk. At first I didn't realise and wondered why Nosferatu was wandering about his castle during the day, until I caught the significance.
Space Amoeba (1970) is a late-Showa kaiju eiga by the original Godzilla team – Ichiro Honda directing, with effects by Eiji Tsuburaya and the score from Akira Ifukube. It's even got Haruo Nakajima in the rubber suits, though to be fair I think this kind of performance made up 95% of his career after Godzilla (a character he played until 1975).
It's… fine. It's very much on budgetary par for this era of Toho's monster movies, and while some of the stuff they accomplish on a shoestring is impressive, the whole thing doesn't quite hang together. Tsubaraya's modelmakers are on top form, though as this is right in the middle of the "monsters fighting in uninhabited scrubland" period there's not much for them to really stretch their wings on. There are also a couple of outright laughable shots of "bats" that just shouldn't exist in a studio movie, and so much of the movie is shot on obvious soundstage "jungle" sets.
There's also a highly-questionable-bordering-on-racist portrayal of the fictional island's indigenous polynesian tribe (fake tan applied liberally to extras who do little more than dance or chant in front of a feather-adorned shrine) and the characters at the centre of the film's emotional climax don't have the narrative foundation to sell it.
I can't help feeling like it's ripe for a remake, though.The central premise is solid – a space probe infected with alien spores crashes on an island that's being converted to a resort, the wildlife gets big and aggressive, and a group of humans have to survive and figure out how to prevent the aliens from spreading worldwide. There's a development towards the end that could be fleshed out into a full The Thing-style paranoid horror element, though it would require rewriting one of the characters pretty substantially.
Not sure I'd be able to recommend it to anyone who's not already determined to mine the history of kaiju "classics", but it's an interesting counterpoint to the much more kid-friendly approach that the Godzilla franchise was taking at the same time.
We just watched Tenet. It definitely could have used a better sound mix - I missed about half the dialogue - but I'm pretty sure I mostly followed what was happening, if not necessarily why.
Also on Amazon Prime Video, Pokemon Detective Pikachu - absolute drivel, but entertaining enough depending on your level of Pokemon knowledge. Must be utterly incomprehensible to anyone coming to it fresh.
As someone with little familiarity with Pokémon beyond cultural osmosis - and precisely zero affection for the franchise* - I really enjoyed it.
I struggle to imagine that there's anyone in the world who's so unfamiliar with Pokémon as a concept that they'd be totally lost; certainly no one who'd go so far as to queue it up for a watch.
I just watched Ocean's 11 for the first time and that was a fun movie but what the holy fuck was Don Cheadle's accent all about? Dick Van Dyke come back, your sins are forgiven.
What is even more astonishing is the way it doesn't improve AT ALL in the following films. It was nice to hear Peter Capaldi delivering a similar performance in the latest Suicide Squad film.
Yep, that looks like a Matrix movie. I'm not quite sure why everyone's so excited about it though given that they've done three and two of them were dogshit.
I think most people are excited because it's probably going to be a massive fuck you to MRAs and the incels who appropriated the first film for their shite hot takes on society.
If anyone enjoyed Senna and wanted more of that, even all this time later, don't bother with Schumacher, it doesn't really do much with anything, it brushes over the controversies, doesn't really go into why his achievements were so big, gives you no idea of the intensity of the man nor the intensity of the battles he had with Senna, Hill, Villeneuve and Hakkinen whilst Montoya, Raikkonen and Alonso don't even get mentioned.
The Green Knight is on Amazon Prime, and the trailers for it looked very striking, so we watched that last night.
It's… fine? Visually stunning, for sure, a definite sense of supernatural unease pervading the whole thing, and some great moments. But it didn't keep up the energy of the first 40 minutes or so, and because it's set up as, basically, a series of vignettes for Gawain to stumble though on the way to the actual quest, it never felt like it was building towards something - exacerbated by the fact that most of these asides don't really mean anything.
Dev Patel is very good in it, though he's hampered slightly by the fact that Gawain is kind of an idiot, and more than a little cowardly; and as seems the habit with visually-striking, arthouse-inflected "cinematic poetry" (to borrow a phrase from Mark Kermode), it seems more interested in being thought-provoking than telling a coherent story.
I really enjoyed this, mostly because I missed the last few (which had me more lost than I would have thought, but entirely my own fault) and I was enjoying James Bond doing James Bond things, the pre-bond opening with Bond himself was great, like I said, just Bond being an absolute madlad and pretty swish motorbike stunts.
But it is in all honesty, a pretty mid tier film. I like Rami Malek but he's a really weak villain here. Nothing is as impressive as the pre-opening sequence imo. Still, I want to go back to watch the last few films now, really like Craig as Bond. Also really want to play IO's Bond game too….
Spoiler - click to showWhat the fuck at that ending though, how are they going to continue now that Bond is dead? Maybe my brain is limited but they've written themselves into a corner now, right? At least continuity wise…
Watched Chaos Walking, the Holland/Ridley scifi thing based off books I've never heard of. It's actually a reasonable scifi premise, executed fairly well. Holland is good, Ridley I'm never convinced of in any role, but she's likeable enough. Secondary cast is decent (e.g. Mads Mickleson) and while the "twists" are hardly that, it sort of plays out fairly well. I did wonder why the reviews were so low and it's because of three incidents. One of which is very unpleasant, and will stick with you. Overall I have watched far worse scifi films, and if you're willing to brave the bad bit then I'd recommend it.
An interesting film we also ended up watching was the Robin Williams film Final Cut. I'd never heard of it. It's basically a 2004 version of the future and has strong Black Mirror vibes. I absolutely loved it - for all its shaky bits it's very, very on the nose in many areas and the slightly off kilter vibe across the entire thing is slightly unsettling. Williams, as ever, is far better in drama than comedy and I thought the payoff was great. My partner hated it and she's a huge Robin Williams fan, so YMMV.
I'm hopefully going to get to see it next week – currently at my folks', and the only place remotely nearby thats showing it is an hour's drive away. I'm very looking forward to it, though.
Yep, Dune is excellent – the quality and variety of production design alone is worth the price of entry – but it badly needs to be much, much longer.
The film sprints through all the complicated political setup in the first half, with barely more than a couple of lines to establish the web of rivalries and loyalties between the Houses, the Emperor and the Bene Gesserit; anyone who hasn't read the book and isn't paying 100% attention isn't going to know why anybody's doing anything.
The final hour slows things down to a much better pace, giving the characters and the world room to breathe, but it's also got a lot less stuff going on – it's mostly aftermath and a little bit of sequel setup. It would have been good to have some if that calm before the storm, too.
Performances are strong but not especially surprising across the board; the sound mix is occasionally dreadful, as is the standard for big budget auteur movies these days (I'm looking at you, Chris Nolan, though I can't hear a fucking word you're saying); and Hans Zimmer is working his percussion section overtime on a score that's fairly similar to his work on Blade Runner 2049 (ie, loud and cool but probably not something you'll listen to on its own).
I've got my fingers crossed that the reported 6-hour assembly cut makes it into a home video release, and also very much hoping the sequel actually gets made, if for no other reason than to reward the incredibly optimistic/ballsy inclusion of "Part One" on the title card.
We saw it this afternoon, and it's definitely just about the best adaptation of the material I think it's possible to make (minor production-design preferences aside). I do think it's as long as it needs to be, though; about two-thirds of the way through, I found myself idly wishing the project had been conceived as a trilogy.
I'm not generally much of a fan of Villeneuve, though I have a ton of respect for him - he definitely gets what he wants on screen up there. He's very visuals-oriented, which certainly makes his work very striking, but he's also what I think of as an "ideas guy" - he's much more concerned with the idea of the story than any of the people in it, which can end up feeling a bit cold and detached. That's not too offputting in Blade Runner 2049 (or Dune, for that matter), but I felt like it hurt Arrival and Sicario, which I thought could have done with being more character-focused.
One thing I didn't expect - it's made me want to give the book another shot; I forced myself through it a few years ago, thinking it was a dense slog, but I wonder if this will have animated the material a little in my brain.
That's not too offputting in Blade Runner 2049 (or Dune, for that matter), but I felt like it hurt Arrival and Sicario, which I thought could have done with being more character-focused.
Odd, this. I like Villeneuve's work, but I'm almost the opposite end of the spectrum here. I thought that Blade Runner 2049 needed to be much more personal given the story it was trying to tell and suffered because it felt very conceptual. Sicario was involving enough, I thought; and Arrival absolutely tore me apart emotionally (but that probably has more to do with me holding my then 2 month-old daughter while she slept just as you realise what's happening in the film).
Definitely interested in seeing Dune, but I'm a long way from venturing into a cinema right now.
but I felt like it hurt Arrival and Sicario, which I thought could have done with being more character-focused.
I'm with Prole here, this is absolute crazy talk. Arrival tore me to shreds too. It's all character focused.
I'd rate Villeneuve as one of, (if not) the best directors working today. Sicario, 2049, Arrival and Dune over a 5-6 year period is an incredible run of films. I'd be hard pushed to name someone who has done better.
Sicario shredded me. I keep meaning to rewatch it (and fellow paranoia-a-thon A Most Wanted Man), but it's gonna need a particular starting mindset that I've not been able to find lately.
Arrival is great but reduced somewhat for me by the changes made from the short story.
Spoiler - click to showIn the book, the daughter dies in a climbing accident, a random event that in most circumstances would be unforseeable, sudden and shocking but avoidable. Turning it into a genetic disorder(?) changed the tone of it in a way I just couldn't quite get along with.
2049 walked a tightrope that I didn't think was possible, building and expanding on the original, and even tieing into it, without feeling like a retread or Abrams Star Wars-style fanservice. It could have done without the last couple of shots – ending with K on the steps, instead of following REDACTED inside, which kind of makes it REDACTED's story – but I loved it.
At some point I should probably go back to his earlier movies, Enemy and Prisoner, as well…
I agree, Arrival was one of the best films I've seen. In other hands it could have been a "look how clever I am" type thing, but it genuinely affected me. And managed it with Jeremy Renner front and centre too, which is no mean feat.
2049 I thought was good, and I liked the switch to REDACTED at the end - the shift in perspective really made me reconsider everything I'd seen before, opened it up. The presence of Leto nearly capsized it for me though, such a unnecessary and hammy distraction.
I've never seen Sicario, guessing I should do based on the comments above.
The best thing about Arrival is how the female scientist is allowed to wear trainers and cargo pants, rather than heels and a business suit. And the actual representation of what science is and how it operates is also great more generally.
I loved the emotional reveal and how there was an element of misdirection and playing with expected tropes. Not a lot makes me cry, but the moment in Arrival did.
Sicario was brutal and brilliant. It's a great point that actors like Renner, Gosling and Blunt who I find fairly meh in nearly everything they do are absolutely elevated in Villeneuve's films and very watchable.
I don't know what it was about Arrival that it didn't engage me the same way; maybe it was that I worked out the "twist" fairly early on, maybe it had just been built up too much, but I didn't have "the moment" with it.
Arrival is great but reduced somewhat for me by the changes made from the short story.
I'm not familiar with the original and had no idea about this difference at all, but now I know about it I think it's actually a smart decision.
Spoiler - click to show The fact that her daughter's death is inevitable and she goes into the relationship with Renner's character knowing that the relationship will fail and their daughter will die but all that pain is still worth all the love gained anyway is what brought me to tears when watching the film. If the premise had been that she could still, maybe (somehow) use her foreknowledge to perhaps save her daughter's life then it would have lessened the emotional impact. (For me, anyway.)
Spoiler - click to showI can't really put my finger on exactly why I feel they're different, or even how they're different. With a disease, the sense of of "we did everything we could" in the aftermath (or even "there's nothing we could have done better") absolves some of the guilt, maybe? Even going through it and knowing the outcome, there's room for hope that maybe the future can change. Whereas with an accident, there's a feeling of "could I have stopped it?", or "if only I'd known", and no time to think the outcome might change. For Louise, of course, both are equally inevitable – she can already remember everything that's going to happen for the rest of her life, so the effect on her isn't significantly different either way.
Spoiler - click to show I guess it's down to interpretation, or emphasis. Sure, Louise knows that the outcome is pre-ordained anyway, but would it still stop someone from trying to change the outcome with so much at stake? For me, 'accident' means preventable with the benefit of hindsight (or perfect foresight, in this case). 'Genetic condition' is quite the opposite. It is inevitable and to go through it means surrendering to it and everything that it entails
This is the crux of the film, for me. I went into the film thinking, "Oooh! A bit first-contacty; some languagey puzzly stuff thrown in; reactionary human elements threatening the entire process and maybe triggering an intergalactic war? I'm in!" Then it became a story about love and the perfection of unconditional love for those experiencing it, albeit with a slight metaphysical twist. If you centred the metaphysical what-if-Louise-could-use her-new-perception-to-affect-the-future angle it becomes a metaphysical conundrum with some human drama elements. This would be interesting enough but, for me, nowhere near as effective in delivering the emotional payload that the film packs as it is.
But that's just me. As I said, my interpretation might have been coloured by the very tiny baby I was holding for most of the film.
Spoiler - click to show
If in the story she can’t stop the accident because the future is already set, then she surely has no capacity to choose not to have a family.
In the film though she chooses to go through with it because because having a child for fifteen (ish) years is worth the heartbreak.
The existence of free will meant that we couldn’t know the future. And we knew free will existed because we had direct experience of it. Volition was an intrinsic part of consciousness.
Or was it? What if the experience of knowing the future changed a person? What if it evoked a sense of urgency, a sense of obligation to act precisely as she knew she would?
Spoiler - click to showI also disagree with the idea that movie Louise has any more of a choice than book Louise. Once she can remember the future, she has no option but to go along with it, because it's already happened.
Yeah, it sounds like the short story is bit more of a philosophical conundrum where the film is not. Story reaction would be "Hmmm [scratches chin / stares into middle distance]"; film was solid "Waah I can't see because of all the water coming from my eye parts! GODDAMN YOU, NEWLY RAW EMOTIONS I DIDN'T KNOW I HAD!".
I can see the attractions of both. I'm glad I saw the film effectively unspoiled, though.
I can't imagine how the film would work at all if you knew what was coming. I went in completely cold (didn't even watch a trailer) and it was all the better for it.
Indeed, I think the bit I loved most in retrospect is how the first phases of the film rely really heavily on the viewer just assuming Amy Adams is a typical female lead trope. A woman broken by loss, who will go on a fun journey with some aliens and find companionship again with Jeremy Renner who will teach her that she can love again if she just opens her heart like she does to the space octopi. I know you always get people who go I GuEsSed ThE PloT AfTer 5 MiNutEs but I didn't. And the switch reveal was emotionally devastating. Not only because of the philosophical questions ("would you, if you knew?") but the whipping the carpet out from under your feet and exposing the fact you'd been letting your brain autopilot to assumptions.
I've seen people whip themselves into a frenzy dissecting scifi aspects of the plot and just want to shake them and reinforce how important this movie is. It's a first contact, dry, scientific movie but it also has the emotional power to make you blub. How many movies are there like that? How many movies have even attempted that? Contact, perhaps, but it's nowhere near as good and the payoff is fluffed. Arrival is the peak of what scifi can, and could, be. I'd hope it would be aspirational for a lot of directors, as while I don't mind Avengers 34, occasional high concept beautifully executed scifi movies like this (in the non-indie scene) one are few and far between and I just hope there are other directors inspired by this to attempt something similar.
We've watched Encanto twice now, you can definitely tell it's Lin Manuel Miranda, but it's still a really nice movie and "Two Oruguitas" has had me crying both times we've seen it
Flicking through Netflix in a semi-stupor on a very-ill-probably-not-Covid-but-not-entirely-certain kind of afternoon, I settled on Baby Driver which I'm sure someone here recommended. Was it aniki? Really enjoyed it, even if all the gunfights synced to music made the whole thing feel like Rayman Origins.
I have a UK cinema quad poster of Baby Driver on the wall of my office – so yes, it was probably me.
Personally I don't think it ever gets better than the opening number/chase, and Edgar Wright's scripts never have quite the same spark when he's working without Simon Pegg, but it's a pretty fun time if you can ignore the various allegations made about its two top-billed stars.
Turning Red - new Pixar thingy, maybe it's me but they seem to be a bit more varied in their approach and animation style these days than they used to be, it makes their movies a bit more hit and miss but also more interesting I think.
Anyway, this is about a girl who turns into a giant red panda when she gets emotional - it's really just an elongated metaphor for puberty but it works on multiple levels, isn't too saccharine and is actually very good fun. My son's at just the right age to relate to this stuff (younger kids will enjoy the slapstick panda antics just fine too). Also with my wife's family being Chinese a lot of the cultural stuff in this really resonated - I may have laughed a little too hard when all the Chinese aunties showed up. Thoroughly recommended and tied with Soul as my favourite recent-ish animation.
No Time To Die - Newly arrived on Amazon Prime Video.Spoiler - click to showI saw the end coming as soon as they announced the title, but despite that - not to mention its length and weirdly sci-fi villainous scheme - I really quite enjoyed that. It feels the most comfortably Bond of Craig's whole run, not least thanks to a return to some of the gadgets, quips, and general levity that the franchise had let atrophy recently. Craig looks like he's enjoying himself enormously throughout.
Random Thoughts:
There's a great oner gunfight up a staircase towards the end, a bit reminiscent of Atomic Blonde (or maybe Daredevil). Malek is a good, creepy villain without being overblown, though I never really got a sense of why he's doing… anything? There are probably too many supporting characters, especially in MI6; I get why, but Tanner's role is mainly to worriedly describe who he's on the phone to. I cheered a little bit at the return of Dalton's Aston Martin V8 from The Living Daylights.
