I agree, I prefer positive content, and GoT is...not that. It was good in some respects, in the idea of "I can't wait for this/that character to level up some more and come back and save the day" kind of thing which...had limited results. But I really liked Alfie's character. I think he had some of the most dynamic growth in the series. Like, some of his problems were of his own making, some were pressures from other groups on him, and I think Alfie did a fantastic job of conveying that conflict and struggle within his character. Of him trying to figure out what the right course was.
Discuss and Rate the Last Film You Watched
- Thread starter Th3Ch33s3Cak3
- Start date
The movie dos not do much for me anymore. Gangster films in general. I either get bored or depressed. Then again, while curious at times, I was never that enamored in to them like most pre-teen boys, teen boys, or young adults in general.
Where is Sonic playing?
I enjoyed Invisible Man. I may have liked Art of Self-Defense more than you. Very quirky and unusual.
Ad Astra I too have heard it is boring but should give that a shot. Sounds like it might be very pretty with good sound.
I'm half way through Rampage and, for a movie based on a simple arcade game, it is better than expected. Some scenes already surprisingly tense. We'll see if it falls flat in the 2nd half.
Yeah I was never a fan of the gangster film genre. It always kind of amused me, to see how egocentric/arrogant Scorsese would be about other films, and I'm just sitting there like "yeah but, are you physically capable of making a film that ISN'T about glorifying the italian mafia?"
OT: Never Surrender: Galaxy Quest Documentary. Pretty straight forward, it's a documentary about the movie Galaxy Quest. Your typical behind the scenes stuff from the cast and crew and fans. It's very enjoyable, and I suspect even people who aren't fans of Galaxy Quest might enjoy it? I've never met someone like that, but in theory I guess they exist. I mean if you don't like documentaries then it won't be very fun. But yeah, it was great to watch them talk about it, comment on how it came together, the problems, solutions, etc. I was genuinely smiling and laughing at times along with them. It really did capture some of the joy that made the movie so beloved by fans, myself included. Because the people working on it REALLY love what they were doing. They loved the source material being parodied, they loved the script they were working on, all of it. Highly recommend it if you haven't seen it.
When you start going around saying all superhero films are nothing but film park rides and have no meaning, you definitely come off as an arrogant ass. Not every superhero has to be deconstructed and philosophical, but to say all them have no meaning is false and there's nothing more but a nihilistic view. If I remember correctly, he did kind of recant/backpedal on this a bit in another video when talking with other Hollywood actors and directors, but the damage was already done. These films or shows do have an impact. Look at Spider-Verse, Aqua Man, Wonder Woman and Black Panther. To say that these are meaningless shows how shallow and narrow minded his views are. Similar to the situation with Robert Ebert and his view on video games at the time. Claiming them to be not art.
Not everything has to be like superheroes either, and that is true. I want to enjoy films, tvs, and books of all variety. Yes, nobody enjoys epic gangsters as much as they used to, but that's what happens when you have a new generation of people. Hell, my mom couldn't stand The Irish Man and she loves Goodfellas & Raging Bull.
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Sonic is currently on Now TV, which is the only way people in the UK can watch anything on HBO (or as much as is allowed), so I'm not sure whether US citizens can see it there. A quick Google search doesn't show anything other than purchasing from Amazon Prime unfortunately. VPNs might do the trick however.
Hm, maybe I worded myself confusingly, but I did like The Art of Self Defense quite a bit. I just try to imagine how the average person would approach that type of comedy when typing about it, so it may have given the impression of being less impressed.
Agreed with Rampage, it could've been a lot worse for what it is.
Shadow in the Cloud - 7/10
Staring Chloe Grace Moretz trying to deliver a confidential package via a plane during WWII. It's a nice little B-movie mainly about a gremlin (which is basically given away at the start via a little cartoon) sabotaging the plane and Chloe Grace Moretz having to carry basically every scene as she gets confined to one area most of the film and the movie is basically shot from her perspective. Creature design is good, the pacing is good and only runs you about 80 minutes total.
Black Bear - Interesting/10
I'm not sure if the entire movie gives you a complete solid experience but Aubrey Plaza is always a joy to watch and there's plenty that's entertaining but I'm not sure if it forms a cohesive whole. I enjoyed Part 1 quite a bit more than Part 2 and Part 2 was the longer of the two. Maybe if there was a Part 3 with a shortening of Part 2 it could've been a complete experience.
Staring Chloe Grace Moretz trying to deliver a confidential package via a plane during WWII. It's a nice little B-movie mainly about a gremlin (which is basically given away at the start via a little cartoon) sabotaging the plane and Chloe Grace Moretz having to carry basically every scene as she gets confined to one area most of the film and the movie is basically shot from her perspective. Creature design is good, the pacing is good and only runs you about 80 minutes total.
Black Bear - Interesting/10
I'm not sure if the entire movie gives you a complete solid experience but Aubrey Plaza is always a joy to watch and there's plenty that's entertaining but I'm not sure if it forms a cohesive whole. I enjoyed Part 1 quite a bit more than Part 2 and Part 2 was the longer of the two. Maybe if there was a Part 3 with a shortening of Part 2 it could've been a complete experience.
The Poison Rose
Straight-to-VOD garbage starring John Travolta and a bunch of has-beens who either owed him a favor or needed to pay off the mansion. It's an impressive payroll: Morgan Freeman, Robert Patrick, Peter Stormare, Famke Janssen and holy shit, Brendan Fraser. The story is boilerplate noir and barely worth recounting. The whole thing feels flimsy - the staging and the editing are very amateurish. The scenes aren't set up at all and there's a general feeling of having just turned the TV on. We always open on characters in the middle of something, and then every scene fades without a proper conclusion.
The acting sucks, for the most part. Freeman is the only one who more or less gets away with it, though the character might as well not be there. And Brendan Fraser is having some fun with a ridiculous character, I think. Janssen looks like a botoxed-up blow-up doll, which sucks. And Travolta's daughter turns up, making Sofia Coppola look like Winona Ryder. Anyway, movie's supposed to take place in Texas but most of it was shot in Italy, and boy does it show in places. I dunno, the whole thing just looks like a money making scam. Like an Adam Sandler movie, only trying to be super portentous like a legit noir and failing miserably.
Straight-to-VOD garbage starring John Travolta and a bunch of has-beens who either owed him a favor or needed to pay off the mansion. It's an impressive payroll: Morgan Freeman, Robert Patrick, Peter Stormare, Famke Janssen and holy shit, Brendan Fraser. The story is boilerplate noir and barely worth recounting. The whole thing feels flimsy - the staging and the editing are very amateurish. The scenes aren't set up at all and there's a general feeling of having just turned the TV on. We always open on characters in the middle of something, and then every scene fades without a proper conclusion.
The acting sucks, for the most part. Freeman is the only one who more or less gets away with it, though the character might as well not be there. And Brendan Fraser is having some fun with a ridiculous character, I think. Janssen looks like a botoxed-up blow-up doll, which sucks. And Travolta's daughter turns up, making Sofia Coppola look like Winona Ryder. Anyway, movie's supposed to take place in Texas but most of it was shot in Italy, and boy does it show in places. I dunno, the whole thing just looks like a money making scam. Like an Adam Sandler movie, only trying to be super portentous like a legit noir and failing miserably.
Rewatching X-Men: First Class. Bit of a mixed bag, notably lacking diversity in its characters, which is an issue when it keeps blathering on about diversity. Should have just kept to CGI -ing, if you can't stick to your message don't have one.
Also, some bits I just didn't buy. Terrorists attack an important US facility, and the guards don't really try to keep them out or...hmmm. And there's a lot of blathering on about how you shouldn't be mean to the Nazi who wants to get lots of US citizens killed...hmmm.
Less flippantly, Magneto goes evil, which you can tell because he suddenly gets an Irish accent. They couldn't redo that scene?
Also, some bits I just didn't buy. Terrorists attack an important US facility, and the guards don't really try to keep them out or...hmmm. And there's a lot of blathering on about how you shouldn't be mean to the Nazi who wants to get lots of US citizens killed...hmmm.
Less flippantly, Magneto goes evil, which you can tell because he suddenly gets an Irish accent. They couldn't redo that scene?
Mulan (2020)
Now to get it out of the way, I'd say that on the whole the film is serviceable and I respect the fact that (unlike some other live action remakes I could name) it actually tries to be its own thing rather than simply being content to live in the shadow of its animated counterpart. With that being said, hoo boy do I disagree with the directorial choices. For starters: Wuxia...why??? It's so stupid here. While I'll be the first to admit that - if anything - the animated adaptation nerfed Mulan compared to her folkloric counterpart by having her start at zero training, in this movie she's pulling House of Flying Daggers feats in her childhood introductory scene. This is kinda exemplified in a moment where the tiles on the rooftop she'd ended up on crumble and make her fall...maybe three stories. She immediately and effortlessly recovers by jamming her pole into a crevice just in time to land gracefully and give the pole a flourish to further show her confidence. ...That is not a trick you give a character at the start of their journey. That's the trick you give a mentor to foreshadow the returns the protagonist can get from proper training, or which you give to the protagonist post-training to show how much stronger they've become.
This happens again during the scene with the matchmaker - which this time she ends up inexplicably failing due to her arachnophobic sister having a panic attack and Mulan not quite sticking the landing after again effortlessly intercepting all of the chinaware that had gone flying, and kinda sets the tone from there on out. In the folklore and in the animated film, Mulan is damn good, but in this one she's explicitly superhuman. Multiple characters, including her father, the general, the shapeshifting warrior witch aiding the Rouran armies point out that she has exceptionally strong Qi, with the witch explicitly saying that Mulan is more or less a dead ringer for herself when she was younger. Moreover, she only ever struggles when she's explicitly holding back, whether it be hiding her prodigious Qi and the abilities it grants her, or disguising herself as a man (which the aforementioned warrior witch explicitly tells her is a deception that weakens her, the truth of which Mulan then demonstrates by almost singlehandedly routing the enemy army in hand to hand combat after dropping the pretense). I think there was actually more tension in the fight scenes of the Matrix Reloaded!
And on a more general note, I'm going to echo a certain frustration I have with the people doing these remakes. They keep on doing these small beat repeats from the animated film they're remaking, but they fall flat because they don't ever seem to understand why those original scenes worked in the first place. I remember a great example on this with Aladdin, which echoes my opinions rather neatly. In the original we get our introduction to him with the One Jump number, in which seemingly all the guards in Agrabah are chasing him across the city and trying to kill him for stealing a loaf of bread to eat. While he does keep ahead of them with practiced ease there are still several near misses that show that this is still a life or death chase. At the end of the number, he finally gives them the slip and drops down to chow down, only to see a pair of much younger starving kids who are apparently even worse off than he is and less capable. After a long moment of indecision he sighs, puts on a brave face and decides they should have the bread instead. Contrast with the live action adaptation where he steals a necklace from someone who tries to steal from him, and has to do little more than jump around the corner to juke his pursuers. He pawns it for a bag of dates and after much less hesitation, gives the dates to a kid he sees around the corner. It's not nearly as impactful both because of an inferior buildup and less internal conflict in the key moment. We don't see the same resignation of sacrificing what might be his only meal for a while as we do in the animated version.
Bringing it back to the topic at hand though, the moment I liken that to in Mulan is the destroyed village scene. In the live action Mulan, the Imperial Army ends up in the burning remnants of a village sacked by the Rourans. And it really is as abrupt to that. You see the remnants of buildings burning, and piles of the bodies of Imperial Soldiers on the ground. And that's about as much as there is to say about it. There's not even much of a change in emotional beat because the state the movie defaults to is sombre. As best I can tell, the scene only really exists because it existed in the animated predecessor. But it misses the point spectacularly in doing so.
The moment in the animated version is so much more poignant because it's not not just about seeing the Huns had destroyed a village and the army occupying it. The scene had been immediately preceded with Mulan's division boisterously singing about their would-be love lives, the girls that they'd love to be matched with. It's a lighthearted and optimistic number full of hope for the future and dreams of a happy, peaceful and quiet life, because goddamn it, nothing motivates you like dreams of romance with a sweetheart back home, "a girl worth fighting for", so to speak. And then it comes screeching to a halt mid-note as they round the corner and are horrified at the devastation. That contrast, that whiplash in the mood is a driving force for the scene's impact. We get a further personal connection with the revelation that the general, Shang's father, was found among the dead, making the loss more personal to the central characters and therefore to us in the audience. However, this only comes to its emotional head and brings everything full circle when Mulan finds a small doll. The toy of a little girl from that same village, who we must infer was not spared in the slaughter. In this moment, we see the actual girl worth fighting for: a child who could not hope to defend herself against the invaders and was cut down for it. It's heartwrenching when you realize what you're seeing. And you can't match that by just giving us a shot of dead soldiers in the remnants of a village. While that might help in establishing threat, it does not convey the same tragedy. ...Which is a very verbose way of saying that I"m pissed that the current crop of directors don't seem to understand nuance or the fundamentals of playing the damn heartstrings.
With all that being said, I would reemphasize that the live action Mulan is still a serviceable movie, but I wouldn't call it an especially good one and for all its effort it cannot escape the shadow of its animated counterpart. Props to it for actually trying, but between questionable decisions about the direction to take the film and what I'd characterize as amateurish execution in a shallow attempt at recreating story beats they evidently didn't understand...the animated version remains superior.
Now to get it out of the way, I'd say that on the whole the film is serviceable and I respect the fact that (unlike some other live action remakes I could name) it actually tries to be its own thing rather than simply being content to live in the shadow of its animated counterpart. With that being said, hoo boy do I disagree with the directorial choices. For starters: Wuxia...why??? It's so stupid here. While I'll be the first to admit that - if anything - the animated adaptation nerfed Mulan compared to her folkloric counterpart by having her start at zero training, in this movie she's pulling House of Flying Daggers feats in her childhood introductory scene. This is kinda exemplified in a moment where the tiles on the rooftop she'd ended up on crumble and make her fall...maybe three stories. She immediately and effortlessly recovers by jamming her pole into a crevice just in time to land gracefully and give the pole a flourish to further show her confidence. ...That is not a trick you give a character at the start of their journey. That's the trick you give a mentor to foreshadow the returns the protagonist can get from proper training, or which you give to the protagonist post-training to show how much stronger they've become.
This happens again during the scene with the matchmaker - which this time she ends up inexplicably failing due to her arachnophobic sister having a panic attack and Mulan not quite sticking the landing after again effortlessly intercepting all of the chinaware that had gone flying, and kinda sets the tone from there on out. In the folklore and in the animated film, Mulan is damn good, but in this one she's explicitly superhuman. Multiple characters, including her father, the general, the shapeshifting warrior witch aiding the Rouran armies point out that she has exceptionally strong Qi, with the witch explicitly saying that Mulan is more or less a dead ringer for herself when she was younger. Moreover, she only ever struggles when she's explicitly holding back, whether it be hiding her prodigious Qi and the abilities it grants her, or disguising herself as a man (which the aforementioned warrior witch explicitly tells her is a deception that weakens her, the truth of which Mulan then demonstrates by almost singlehandedly routing the enemy army in hand to hand combat after dropping the pretense). I think there was actually more tension in the fight scenes of the Matrix Reloaded!
And on a more general note, I'm going to echo a certain frustration I have with the people doing these remakes. They keep on doing these small beat repeats from the animated film they're remaking, but they fall flat because they don't ever seem to understand why those original scenes worked in the first place. I remember a great example on this with Aladdin, which echoes my opinions rather neatly. In the original we get our introduction to him with the One Jump number, in which seemingly all the guards in Agrabah are chasing him across the city and trying to kill him for stealing a loaf of bread to eat. While he does keep ahead of them with practiced ease there are still several near misses that show that this is still a life or death chase. At the end of the number, he finally gives them the slip and drops down to chow down, only to see a pair of much younger starving kids who are apparently even worse off than he is and less capable. After a long moment of indecision he sighs, puts on a brave face and decides they should have the bread instead. Contrast with the live action adaptation where he steals a necklace from someone who tries to steal from him, and has to do little more than jump around the corner to juke his pursuers. He pawns it for a bag of dates and after much less hesitation, gives the dates to a kid he sees around the corner. It's not nearly as impactful both because of an inferior buildup and less internal conflict in the key moment. We don't see the same resignation of sacrificing what might be his only meal for a while as we do in the animated version.
Bringing it back to the topic at hand though, the moment I liken that to in Mulan is the destroyed village scene. In the live action Mulan, the Imperial Army ends up in the burning remnants of a village sacked by the Rourans. And it really is as abrupt to that. You see the remnants of buildings burning, and piles of the bodies of Imperial Soldiers on the ground. And that's about as much as there is to say about it. There's not even much of a change in emotional beat because the state the movie defaults to is sombre. As best I can tell, the scene only really exists because it existed in the animated predecessor. But it misses the point spectacularly in doing so.
The moment in the animated version is so much more poignant because it's not not just about seeing the Huns had destroyed a village and the army occupying it. The scene had been immediately preceded with Mulan's division boisterously singing about their would-be love lives, the girls that they'd love to be matched with. It's a lighthearted and optimistic number full of hope for the future and dreams of a happy, peaceful and quiet life, because goddamn it, nothing motivates you like dreams of romance with a sweetheart back home, "a girl worth fighting for", so to speak. And then it comes screeching to a halt mid-note as they round the corner and are horrified at the devastation. That contrast, that whiplash in the mood is a driving force for the scene's impact. We get a further personal connection with the revelation that the general, Shang's father, was found among the dead, making the loss more personal to the central characters and therefore to us in the audience. However, this only comes to its emotional head and brings everything full circle when Mulan finds a small doll. The toy of a little girl from that same village, who we must infer was not spared in the slaughter. In this moment, we see the actual girl worth fighting for: a child who could not hope to defend herself against the invaders and was cut down for it. It's heartwrenching when you realize what you're seeing. And you can't match that by just giving us a shot of dead soldiers in the remnants of a village. While that might help in establishing threat, it does not convey the same tragedy. ...Which is a very verbose way of saying that I"m pissed that the current crop of directors don't seem to understand nuance or the fundamentals of playing the damn heartstrings.
With all that being said, I would reemphasize that the live action Mulan is still a serviceable movie, but I wouldn't call it an especially good one and for all its effort it cannot escape the shadow of its animated counterpart. Props to it for actually trying, but between questionable decisions about the direction to take the film and what I'd characterize as amateurish execution in a shallow attempt at recreating story beats they evidently didn't understand...the animated version remains superior.
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The Assistant
A day in the life of a female 'assistant'. She works at a film studio but it might as well be any office job, it's mostly e-mails and memos for her. She'd like to produce some day but right now the closest she gets to movies is peeking at the scripts she's Xeroxing and scrubbing semen off the casting couch. The movie is largely plotless and depersonalized and might as well be a documentary about any such day in any such life. The whole thing is very slow, very quiet and very demure but for all the mundanity there's an underlying tension about her not being liked, wanted or appreciated at the workplace. A tension that reaches its climax in a great scene with who I think is supposed to be an HR guy (nobody is ever named or introduced) when the assistant confronts him about a possible #MeToo scenario. It's all quite engrossing and the fact that the drama is forcibly subdued makes it even more horrifying.
A day in the life of a female 'assistant'. She works at a film studio but it might as well be any office job, it's mostly e-mails and memos for her. She'd like to produce some day but right now the closest she gets to movies is peeking at the scripts she's Xeroxing and scrubbing semen off the casting couch. The movie is largely plotless and depersonalized and might as well be a documentary about any such day in any such life. The whole thing is very slow, very quiet and very demure but for all the mundanity there's an underlying tension about her not being liked, wanted or appreciated at the workplace. A tension that reaches its climax in a great scene with who I think is supposed to be an HR guy (nobody is ever named or introduced) when the assistant confronts him about a possible #MeToo scenario. It's all quite engrossing and the fact that the drama is forcibly subdued makes it even more horrifying.
Sharkwater Extinction
Basically, proving once again the shittier side of humanity is the world’s greatest threat to other species, including ourselves. Wish it went into more detail as to what specific brands are laced with toxic shark meat, but perhaps that is still largely unknown.
Speaking of, actually the last movie I watched was Unknown, but I’ve seen it before. It was one of Liam Neeson’s more engaging action thrillers, which tonally seemed to be a precursor of Taken as pretty much all of his movies are in some way. I liked how a bump on the head seemed to indirectly reset his conscience as well as his memory. There were a couple unexpected surprises to keep it interesting too. It did what it set out to do pretty well and good.
Ratings?
4 out of 5 shark fins for the former
3.5 out of 5 gruff voices full of danger and urgency for the latter
Basically, proving once again the shittier side of humanity is the world’s greatest threat to other species, including ourselves. Wish it went into more detail as to what specific brands are laced with toxic shark meat, but perhaps that is still largely unknown.
Speaking of, actually the last movie I watched was Unknown, but I’ve seen it before. It was one of Liam Neeson’s more engaging action thrillers, which tonally seemed to be a precursor of Taken as pretty much all of his movies are in some way. I liked how a bump on the head seemed to indirectly reset his conscience as well as his memory. There were a couple unexpected surprises to keep it interesting too. It did what it set out to do pretty well and good.
Ratings?
4 out of 5 shark fins for the former
3.5 out of 5 gruff voices full of danger and urgency for the latter
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The last film I watched was Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan. A Vietnam War movie from the perspective of Australian soldiers. It's a good, well crafted war film.
Soul
Pixar's most recent outing. They had a movie called Onward earlier last year, one that I felt was pretty enjoyable, if a bit unambitious and by the numbers. Soul was most definitely their big prestige project and it definitely feels like it.
Soul is a movie about part time music teacher and jazz musician Joe Gardner, a middle aged black man from Brooklyn, dreaming of making it big with his music. Before getting his big opportunity to play with a popular ensemble, he suffers an accident, yet instead of moving on to the afterlife he ends in the beforelife, a plain of existence for newly created souls where they're being prepared to go to Earth. There Joe pretends to be a mentor to Soul 22, one of those souls, who's reluctant to going to earth, hoping to find a way to get back to his body. Through a series of hijinks, Soul 22 ends up in Joe's body, he ends up in a cats body, and they have to get the whole mess sorted out before his big performance starts.
Soul is, for all intents and purposes, probably Pixar's most mature movie. Quite possibly to the point that many children will find it hard to relate to. The protagonist is a man in his thirties and the struggle he faces is that of someone who feels like he hasn't really had a chance at life yet. He wants to be a professional musician, but he's stuck teaching part time in a high school, he's not in a relationship and he doesn't seem to have many close friends. Maybe Soul 22 is meant to be the viewpoint character for younger viewers, but her dismissive attitude towards starting her life and leaving the Great Before invokes that of an older teenager more than that of a child. And to add to that, the concept itself seems a bit abstract for an actual kid to wrap their mind around. That aside, watching it as a man in my late 20s, it did manage to hit home for me quite a bit. Let's be honest here, invoking the intended emotions is something that Pixar has down to a science. Much like an experienced instrumentalist, they know which notes to hit and when. This never ceases to be impressive, but the underlying pattern of emotional buildup and payoff is also a very transparent one.
It's not about those emotional notes, it's about the space between and around them. One may be able to predict the setups and payoffs with pinpoint accuracy, and perhaps take them for granted, but that doesn't detract from the undeniable creativity of its premise and the visuals used to bring ot to life, nor from the relatability and emotional resonance of its themes and morals. These morals are not terribly deep or complicated, mind you, in the end it really ist just about appreciating life for what it is and being able to focus on the things you enjoy, rather than on your long term goals, but that simplicity is part of the charm.
Soul is warm, comfortable and almost universally relatable. It's funny and cute. It may very well be the artistic peak of Pixar as a studio, most definitely it is the closest to what I imagine is the platonic ideal of a Pixar movie. Its commitment to life affirming joy provides, if nothing else, a generous helping of escapism and I doubt it aspires to do much else. You may detect a hint of bitterness in that evaluation and I can't deny it's there. I'm a cynic and I've grown some resentment towards things that feel to comfortable. That's all on me though, mind you. Soul does what it does in an excellent way, it tastes sweet and goes down smooth. It's almost frustratingly hard to dislike. And I don't. If you have Disney+, go ahead and see it. What the hell else are you gonna watch?
Pixar's most recent outing. They had a movie called Onward earlier last year, one that I felt was pretty enjoyable, if a bit unambitious and by the numbers. Soul was most definitely their big prestige project and it definitely feels like it.
Soul is a movie about part time music teacher and jazz musician Joe Gardner, a middle aged black man from Brooklyn, dreaming of making it big with his music. Before getting his big opportunity to play with a popular ensemble, he suffers an accident, yet instead of moving on to the afterlife he ends in the beforelife, a plain of existence for newly created souls where they're being prepared to go to Earth. There Joe pretends to be a mentor to Soul 22, one of those souls, who's reluctant to going to earth, hoping to find a way to get back to his body. Through a series of hijinks, Soul 22 ends up in Joe's body, he ends up in a cats body, and they have to get the whole mess sorted out before his big performance starts.
Soul is, for all intents and purposes, probably Pixar's most mature movie. Quite possibly to the point that many children will find it hard to relate to. The protagonist is a man in his thirties and the struggle he faces is that of someone who feels like he hasn't really had a chance at life yet. He wants to be a professional musician, but he's stuck teaching part time in a high school, he's not in a relationship and he doesn't seem to have many close friends. Maybe Soul 22 is meant to be the viewpoint character for younger viewers, but her dismissive attitude towards starting her life and leaving the Great Before invokes that of an older teenager more than that of a child. And to add to that, the concept itself seems a bit abstract for an actual kid to wrap their mind around. That aside, watching it as a man in my late 20s, it did manage to hit home for me quite a bit. Let's be honest here, invoking the intended emotions is something that Pixar has down to a science. Much like an experienced instrumentalist, they know which notes to hit and when. This never ceases to be impressive, but the underlying pattern of emotional buildup and payoff is also a very transparent one.
It's not about those emotional notes, it's about the space between and around them. One may be able to predict the setups and payoffs with pinpoint accuracy, and perhaps take them for granted, but that doesn't detract from the undeniable creativity of its premise and the visuals used to bring ot to life, nor from the relatability and emotional resonance of its themes and morals. These morals are not terribly deep or complicated, mind you, in the end it really ist just about appreciating life for what it is and being able to focus on the things you enjoy, rather than on your long term goals, but that simplicity is part of the charm.
Soul is warm, comfortable and almost universally relatable. It's funny and cute. It may very well be the artistic peak of Pixar as a studio, most definitely it is the closest to what I imagine is the platonic ideal of a Pixar movie. Its commitment to life affirming joy provides, if nothing else, a generous helping of escapism and I doubt it aspires to do much else. You may detect a hint of bitterness in that evaluation and I can't deny it's there. I'm a cynic and I've grown some resentment towards things that feel to comfortable. That's all on me though, mind you. Soul does what it does in an excellent way, it tastes sweet and goes down smooth. It's almost frustratingly hard to dislike. And I don't. If you have Disney+, go ahead and see it. What the hell else are you gonna watch?
The Professor And The Madman
Mel Gibson signs on as the editor of the new Oxford dictionary and receives help from Sean Penn, a schizophrenic in a mental institution. As dry as that premise sounds, it was actually a very enjoyable film. Penn acts his ASS off; he acts everyone's asses off.
Mel Gibson signs on as the editor of the new Oxford dictionary and receives help from Sean Penn, a schizophrenic in a mental institution. As dry as that premise sounds, it was actually a very enjoyable film. Penn acts his ASS off; he acts everyone's asses off.
Yeah I really liked that film, it was a nice change to the werewolf story. Kind of shook it up a bit. And The Tick fan in me just loved that the hero was named Spoon.