Okay, the sex part is legit some Sword of Truth level shit. Christ almighty.
Discuss and Rate the Last Film You Watched
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The Silent World 1956, Jacques Cousteau.
As a documentary it is certainly a product of it's time.
Some "highlights"
Surveying fish species in a section of reef by blowing it up with dynamite, then gathering up the dead fish.
Accidentally running over a baby sperm whale with their boat propeller, harpooning it then shooting it in the head to put it out of it's misery. Then when sharks arrive to eat the carcass, they "avenge" the whale by hauling a load of sharks onboard with boat hooks and killing them with axes.
Collecting coral samples by smashing bits off it with a hammer.
Riding giant tortoises. One on each foot at one point.
Good music.
I rate it 4 exploded fish out of a traumatised tortoise.
As a documentary it is certainly a product of it's time.
Some "highlights"
Surveying fish species in a section of reef by blowing it up with dynamite, then gathering up the dead fish.
Accidentally running over a baby sperm whale with their boat propeller, harpooning it then shooting it in the head to put it out of it's misery. Then when sharks arrive to eat the carcass, they "avenge" the whale by hauling a load of sharks onboard with boat hooks and killing them with axes.
Collecting coral samples by smashing bits off it with a hammer.
Riding giant tortoises. One on each foot at one point.
Good music.
I rate it 4 exploded fish out of a traumatised tortoise.
The grinding mediocrity of superhero movies...
So I had to fly recently, which meant I watched some stuff on the plane. The Marvels, Guardians of the Galaxy 3, and Blue Beetle.
None of these were bad. GotG3 was reasonably good, and I'm going to set that aside. But The Marvels and Blue Beetle are just incredibly ordinary. Let's address Blue Beetle, because it's relatively straightforward. It's in many ways pretty good. Yet it's also in many ways a painful pile of cliches, shit you've seen a million times, unleavened by intelligence or originality. Hero gets superpowers, screams "Waa" "Whoa" "Aah" as the superpowers do their shit. Because other kids that became superheroes did that... (although Jaime Reyes is actually early 20s). Did that villain really say "Your love for your family makes you weak"? Hero refuses to kill people
rolleyes, although I note his family have no such compunctions, gunning down, blowing up and impaling bad guys with merry abandon. I wonder if a fundamental part of it is also that Blue Beetle just doesn't seem very heroic: he has to have his arse saved by everyone else. Not very inspiring hero stuff, is it?
The Marvels is the worst. There are three Marvels and something do with wormhole gateway things and when they use powers they swap location with another one. Unfortunately, the plot is like that, too. Lots of stuff happens. It's not very cohesive. The sense is probably also screwed by the fact that if like me you haven't seen the 28 other interlinking films / TV series, then you're missing a lot of vital context. Tonally, it's just a bit weak. Twice they dash off to save planets and the planets end up destroyed. Not that anyone really seems to notice and care. I want to scream at them "HOLY FUCK GUYS AN ENTIRE PLANET AND CIVILISATION HAVE BEEN ANNIHILATED". And next scene everyone moves on like it was as disturbing as toilet paper stuck to their shoes.
This all seems very regression to the mean. Someone's got to make a stupid superhero flick because that's what the number crunchers at the studio said they needed to, but they're not going to give it to the A-team (in the case of Blue Beetle, if the DC Universe even has an A-team). We're well into the point where executives must be looking at the whole shebang and thinking very carefully about what the next trend is to invest in.
So I had to fly recently, which meant I watched some stuff on the plane. The Marvels, Guardians of the Galaxy 3, and Blue Beetle.
None of these were bad. GotG3 was reasonably good, and I'm going to set that aside. But The Marvels and Blue Beetle are just incredibly ordinary. Let's address Blue Beetle, because it's relatively straightforward. It's in many ways pretty good. Yet it's also in many ways a painful pile of cliches, shit you've seen a million times, unleavened by intelligence or originality. Hero gets superpowers, screams "Waa" "Whoa" "Aah" as the superpowers do their shit. Because other kids that became superheroes did that... (although Jaime Reyes is actually early 20s). Did that villain really say "Your love for your family makes you weak"? Hero refuses to kill people
rolleyes, although I note his family have no such compunctions, gunning down, blowing up and impaling bad guys with merry abandon. I wonder if a fundamental part of it is also that Blue Beetle just doesn't seem very heroic: he has to have his arse saved by everyone else. Not very inspiring hero stuff, is it?The Marvels is the worst. There are three Marvels and something do with wormhole gateway things and when they use powers they swap location with another one. Unfortunately, the plot is like that, too. Lots of stuff happens. It's not very cohesive. The sense is probably also screwed by the fact that if like me you haven't seen the 28 other interlinking films / TV series, then you're missing a lot of vital context. Tonally, it's just a bit weak. Twice they dash off to save planets and the planets end up destroyed. Not that anyone really seems to notice and care. I want to scream at them "HOLY FUCK GUYS AN ENTIRE PLANET AND CIVILISATION HAVE BEEN ANNIHILATED". And next scene everyone moves on like it was as disturbing as toilet paper stuck to their shoes.
This all seems very regression to the mean. Someone's got to make a stupid superhero flick because that's what the number crunchers at the studio said they needed to, but they're not going to give it to the A-team (in the case of Blue Beetle, if the DC Universe even has an A-team). We're well into the point where executives must be looking at the whole shebang and thinking very carefully about what the next trend is to invest in.
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I also saw Blue Beetle on a plane, and by the time the plane landed I had forgotten that I'd watched it.Let's address Blue Beetle, because it's relatively straightforward. It's in many ways pretty good. Yet it's also in many ways a painful pile of cliches, shit you've seen a million times, unleavened by intelligence or originality. Hero gets superpowers, screams "Waa" "Whoa" "Aah" as the superpowers do their shit. Because other kids that became superheroes did that... (although Jaime Reyes is actually early 20s). Did that villain really say "Your love for your family makes you weak"? Hero refuses to kill people
To be fair, I was flying for 20 hours, so I watched 7 movies back to back. To be even more fair, half the other movies were various Fast and Furious sequels I hadn't bothered watching previously, and the fact that I remember more about those than I do about Blue Beetle really says something about how bland Blue Beetle was.
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A ★★★½ review of Bride of Chucky (1998)
"Rude fucking doll..." This film did not have many issues with production, unlike the last one in the series. Instead, Don Mancini simply took some time in order to recharge his creative juices. Inspired by the movie Bride of Frankenstein, as well as the shift in horror post-Scream, he came up...
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Birth (dir. Jonathan Glazer, 2004)
Nicole Kidman, donning a pixie Rosemary haircut (uh oh), is a NYC socialite who is about to marry Danny Huston, who always plays oily characters but is ESPECIALLY oily here. A creepy 10 year old kid appears at their apartment one day claiming to be the reincarnation of her husband, dead 10 years ago. They laugh it off but then the kid keeps hounding Nicole and proving his point by answering deeply personal questions at a time when you couldn't just doxx any rando on the planet for every detail of their life. The movie is about the kid slowly wearing Nicole down to the point she believes him, and is willing to elope with him.
The movie is glum and morose and a rare case of a psychological thriller without a horror or criminal angle. It works because it does the Exorcist thing of wearing down reason to the point of getting you in the mindset of the character. And it's a great performance by Nicole Kidman and a whole cast of actors I miss seeing in movies. I'm not sure the story quite sticks the landing but it's an effective ending all the same.
Men (dir. Alex Garland, 2022)
Another woman traumatized by the death of her husband; this one recently killed himself (accidentally, deliberately?) and his widow feels guilty about it. She rents a posh country manor near the town from Hot Fuzz for a nice relaxing vacation but she starts getting harassed by all the MEN. The MEN are all played by Rory Kinnear, who clearly has fun playing all these variations of sexist bile. The MEN are all either emanations from the same Celtic being of punishment (there's a Green Man involved) or figments of her tortured psyche or both. It's an entertaining, perplexing watch that culminates in a batshit readymade-for-cult-classic sequence followed by a rather abrupt ending.
I think the movie's problem, and maybe this has something to do with the director's background in scifi, is that it feels like there should be a rhyme and a reason to all the crazy things that happen but the movie never really comes clean with its own logic. It goes off the rails, and the lead actress kinda stops having a "realistic" response to the whole phantasmagoria, to the point you don't care because she doesn't care and you wonder if we're in purely allegorical territory ala Aronofsky's Mother (there's some Christian iconography in there to boot).
Nicole Kidman, donning a pixie Rosemary haircut (uh oh), is a NYC socialite who is about to marry Danny Huston, who always plays oily characters but is ESPECIALLY oily here. A creepy 10 year old kid appears at their apartment one day claiming to be the reincarnation of her husband, dead 10 years ago. They laugh it off but then the kid keeps hounding Nicole and proving his point by answering deeply personal questions at a time when you couldn't just doxx any rando on the planet for every detail of their life. The movie is about the kid slowly wearing Nicole down to the point she believes him, and is willing to elope with him.
The movie is glum and morose and a rare case of a psychological thriller without a horror or criminal angle. It works because it does the Exorcist thing of wearing down reason to the point of getting you in the mindset of the character. And it's a great performance by Nicole Kidman and a whole cast of actors I miss seeing in movies. I'm not sure the story quite sticks the landing but it's an effective ending all the same.
Men (dir. Alex Garland, 2022)
Another woman traumatized by the death of her husband; this one recently killed himself (accidentally, deliberately?) and his widow feels guilty about it. She rents a posh country manor near the town from Hot Fuzz for a nice relaxing vacation but she starts getting harassed by all the MEN. The MEN are all played by Rory Kinnear, who clearly has fun playing all these variations of sexist bile. The MEN are all either emanations from the same Celtic being of punishment (there's a Green Man involved) or figments of her tortured psyche or both. It's an entertaining, perplexing watch that culminates in a batshit readymade-for-cult-classic sequence followed by a rather abrupt ending.
I think the movie's problem, and maybe this has something to do with the director's background in scifi, is that it feels like there should be a rhyme and a reason to all the crazy things that happen but the movie never really comes clean with its own logic. It goes off the rails, and the lead actress kinda stops having a "realistic" response to the whole phantasmagoria, to the point you don't care because she doesn't care and you wonder if we're in purely allegorical territory ala Aronofsky's Mother (there's some Christian iconography in there to boot).
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hanselthecaretaker2
Flask restoration in progress
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Oppenheimer.
The weirdest thing now that I think about it is how it ultimately felt like a 3 hour movie preview. I guess that’s both a boon and a blessing depending on how one looks at it. I also think it was technically a ~98% waste of 70mm film. Are film making techniques still too inefficient to do something with alternate reel swapping so maybe the part that matters for such a thing could happen dynamically during the playback? How cool would it have been if somewhere within all the suspenseful buildup leading into the Trinity test the screen just expanded dynamically and the audiences were like “H-h-hoooly shit what are we in for here?!” I could’ve sworn something like this has been done before…wasn’t it Kill Bill which was made by another fervently pro-film director? Even if they had to work some magic with black bars it’s not exactly going to blaspheme the film format.
Anyways, the movie itself is a very well done reenactment and dramatization of the politics and posturing involved behind the atomic bomb making process, from inception to aftermath. For anything much beyond that, I’m sure there’s plenty of nitty gritty documentaries floating around to satisfy those curiosities. Here the main premise wants to examine to what extent the U.S. government screwed over the titular character, and the answer we are left with depends upon personal interpretation. It’s a movie that seemingly says a lot and nothing at the same time.
So much trivial nuance is dished out with a rather suspenseful score and the occasional visual flourish radiating through it all. Who was Oppenheimer, personally? What were his feelings about am becoming death and how did he handle that kind of emotional, mental and physical burden? Those questions and more remain so. I was hoping to gain a lot more introspection for him as a human being than the movie supplied. Even reading between the lines there is more to ponder once the credits roll.
The performances (at least the handful with any considerable screen time) were enjoyable, albeit with a bit more Hollywood veneer than I’d have preferred for this subject matter. The presentation was another notch in Nolan’s belt too, and I suppose it was wise to choose restraint here. Yes, he could’ve gone a much more bombastic route (no pun) which would’ve been a big disservice as a whole. More-so than ~98% of the 70mm film it was recorded to.
The weirdest thing now that I think about it is how it ultimately felt like a 3 hour movie preview. I guess that’s both a boon and a blessing depending on how one looks at it. I also think it was technically a ~98% waste of 70mm film. Are film making techniques still too inefficient to do something with alternate reel swapping so maybe the part that matters for such a thing could happen dynamically during the playback? How cool would it have been if somewhere within all the suspenseful buildup leading into the Trinity test the screen just expanded dynamically and the audiences were like “H-h-hoooly shit what are we in for here?!” I could’ve sworn something like this has been done before…wasn’t it Kill Bill which was made by another fervently pro-film director? Even if they had to work some magic with black bars it’s not exactly going to blaspheme the film format.
Anyways, the movie itself is a very well done reenactment and dramatization of the politics and posturing involved behind the atomic bomb making process, from inception to aftermath. For anything much beyond that, I’m sure there’s plenty of nitty gritty documentaries floating around to satisfy those curiosities. Here the main premise wants to examine to what extent the U.S. government screwed over the titular character, and the answer we are left with depends upon personal interpretation. It’s a movie that seemingly says a lot and nothing at the same time.
So much trivial nuance is dished out with a rather suspenseful score and the occasional visual flourish radiating through it all. Who was Oppenheimer, personally? What were his feelings about am becoming death and how did he handle that kind of emotional, mental and physical burden? Those questions and more remain so. I was hoping to gain a lot more introspection for him as a human being than the movie supplied. Even reading between the lines there is more to ponder once the credits roll.
The performances (at least the handful with any considerable screen time) were enjoyable, albeit with a bit more Hollywood veneer than I’d have preferred for this subject matter. The presentation was another notch in Nolan’s belt too, and I suppose it was wise to choose restraint here. Yes, he could’ve gone a much more bombastic route (no pun) which would’ve been a big disservice as a whole. More-so than ~98% of the 70mm film it was recorded to.
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I think, to it's credit, Blue Beetle has a logical chain of events - "Ok this happens, and then because that happens, this happens, so the hero has to do this." and you at a minimal level, empathize with most of the main cast. It's like getting Olive Garden. Sticks are alright, the pasta is edible, its all ok because Olive Garden was the only food at this exit in Kansas.The grinding mediocrity of superhero movies...
So I had to fly recently, which meant I watched some stuff on the plane. The Marvels, Guardians of the Galaxy 3, and Blue Beetle.
None of these were bad. GotG3 was reasonably good, and I'm going to set that aside. But The Marvels and Blue Beetle are just incredibly ordinary. Let's address Blue Beetle, because it's relatively straightforward. It's in many ways pretty good. Yet it's also in many ways a painful pile of cliches, shit you've seen a million times, unleavened by intelligence or originality. Hero gets superpowers, screams "Waa" "Whoa" "Aah" as the superpowers do their shit. Because other kids that became superheroes did that... (although Jaime Reyes is actually early 20s). Did that villain really say "Your love for your family makes you weak"? Hero refuses to kill people
The Marvels is the worst. There are three Marvels and something do with wormhole gateway things and when they use powers they swap location with another one. Unfortunately, the plot is like that, too. Lots of stuff happens. It's not very cohesive. The sense is probably also screwed by the fact that if like me you haven't seen the 28 other interlinking films / TV series, then you're missing a lot of vital context. Tonally, it's just a bit weak. Twice they dash off to save planets and the planets end up destroyed. Not that anyone really seems to notice and care. I want to scream at them "HOLY FUCK GUYS AN ENTIRE PLANET AND CIVILISATION HAVE BEEN ANNIHILATED". And next scene everyone moves on like it was as disturbing as toilet paper stuck to their shoes.
This all seems very regression to the mean. Someone's got to make a stupid superhero flick because that's what the number crunchers at the studio said they needed to, but they're not going to give it to the A-team (in the case of Blue Beetle, if the DC Universe even has an A-team). We're well into the point where executives must be looking at the whole shebang and thinking very carefully about what the next trend is to invest in.
Marvels, I actually....never finished. I've never done that with a superhero movie. I just sat back and realized I had no desire to see the rest of the film. It's hard to really articulate why cause even WW84 I engaged in enough to say I wanna know where it's going. Thor Love & Thunder was bad but very watchable.
I feel like, outside of Kamala, I just didn't feel any empathy for the characters and just could not care less about the story. Like I was watching it and got up to go refill the dishwasher. I'd rather clean than watch it.
Argylle - 5/10
This movie was weird for me, I was really digging it for about the 1st hour. At first I really thought the movie was going to be a deconstruction of spy tropes like Cabin in the Woods to horror as the opening scene (that is visualization of a fictional spy book) is so over-the-top and hilarious, every single line was so purposefully a one-liner. Then, we cut to a book signing seen where we see that Bryce Dallas Howard is the author of a super popular series of spy novels. I kinda thought at that point the movie was going to be a sorta American Fiction in the sense that another author was going to upset about her spy novels being so successful and so crappy. But then it's revealed that the basic premise is that Bryce Dallas Howard just so happens to unknowingly be writing about the actual happenings of the real spy world and now spies are after her. I'm almost positive that's in the trailer, I just forgot about it. The movie goes onto to be a very played straight Matthew Vaughn-y spy movie akin to Kingsman, though cranked up not to 11, but 12 in the ridiculousness factor. There's a freaking twist for everything, even the main character starts off loving cats, then it's a twist that she actually doesn't like cats, but then she likes cats again. Yeah... I think the cat stuff perfectly describes what the movie is and what you're in for.
This movie was weird for me, I was really digging it for about the 1st hour. At first I really thought the movie was going to be a deconstruction of spy tropes like Cabin in the Woods to horror as the opening scene (that is visualization of a fictional spy book) is so over-the-top and hilarious, every single line was so purposefully a one-liner. Then, we cut to a book signing seen where we see that Bryce Dallas Howard is the author of a super popular series of spy novels. I kinda thought at that point the movie was going to be a sorta American Fiction in the sense that another author was going to upset about her spy novels being so successful and so crappy. But then it's revealed that the basic premise is that Bryce Dallas Howard just so happens to unknowingly be writing about the actual happenings of the real spy world and now spies are after her. I'm almost positive that's in the trailer, I just forgot about it. The movie goes onto to be a very played straight Matthew Vaughn-y spy movie akin to Kingsman, though cranked up not to 11, but 12 in the ridiculousness factor. There's a freaking twist for everything, even the main character starts off loving cats, then it's a twist that she actually doesn't like cats, but then she likes cats again. Yeah... I think the cat stuff perfectly describes what the movie is and what you're in for.
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A ★★★ review of Tremors 4: The Legend Begins (2004)
“I feel I have not been privy to critical, most needful information.” The plot of this film follows the great grandfather of Burt Gummer, Hiram Gummer (Michael Gross). Coming to the town of Rejection after being unable to reach the foreman at the mine he owns, he is surprised to hear that the...
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So, i finally watched it too so i now have an opinion: While i found Dune (The Books) to have been a huge influence on me, it has been quite a while since i read them and my memory is a bit hazy.
First off: The Movie was good. I would say a bit better than the first one. Now, some things had to be stricken because of length. (The Worldbuilding is a bit extreme in the books), but Dune 1 cut a few things i REALLY missed:
An explanation what a Mentat is, does and that Paul does have Mentat-Training - Also how much more refined, (better?) some of humanity is. (That even an ID-driven Monster like the Baron Harkonnen would be able to out-calculate the old thinking machines of the past. as explained by Piter)
Paul crying for Jamis - I feel that was an important point of Paul's character which got ignored.
Now in the second (Or missing in the first) The point that Paul had to take responsibility and technically marry the widow of Jamis. Also a good "lesson" for Paul.
Back to the second Dune Movie:
Yeah, missing Alia is missing. I don't know if it is really NEEDED... but like you guys said it would help establishing her for further movies (And would add more weirdness, which this movie was a bit lacking.)
Also: The Emperor was too "normal". Getting Christopher Walken and then have him be subdued, normal, boring and very silent seems like a waste. I needed more gold, large shoulder pads, more "power" and gravitas (And yes he ist afraid or the Landsraad and being bullied by the guild... but still, you know: Sardaukar and their worship)
We also are missing the political and underhandedness of the war. (As i remember one thing is: Through the spice-smugglers the Fremen are paying the guild for not having full satellite observation of the south, concealing their Sietches and movements - in the movie it ist just "Eh, in the south no one can live, let's not search there")
It seems a bit ashamed of some very unscientific or "weird" points of the book. The "genetic" memory in particular. The thing of the "Water of life unlocks your access to old information is still there, but very vague. I find it strange that Villeneuve didn't go "full strange" with this, since for example in "Arrival" he had "Knowledge" - The way of thinking and "speaking" the alien language be enough to transcend information flow through time" which would be... well the same level of absurd, in my opinion. Also: Showing a Guild-Navigator, like in the old movie would have been awesome.
We needed at least one REAL scene with Jessica not just telling: We have to manipulate the unbelievers, but REALLY showing HOW good she is with that. So, Well we needed at least 1-2 more Jessica scenes i would say. (Also why did she throw up?. She is a Bene Gesserit and a really good one - perfect body-control, man... Don't make her weaker for no reason)
I had other people say that the relationship between Chani and Paul wasn't that good, and that both actors were a bit bad, but it was pretty ok for me. The movie can't have much time for a love-story. What was there was total ok. Timothee's acting was totally acceptable sometimes good, and Zendaya was ok. I found nothing bad with them.
Overall: If i didn't read the books this would be a great film, so i am left wanting a bit, but i understand that you can't bring this 1:1 to a movie. It had some quite nice epic scenes and a taste of the old sci-fi-fantasy- space opera of the sixties through a bit subdued modern lense and quite expert filmmaking, budget, talent and will to make a good movie.
We got good villains, good acting. partially great visuals and designs. Cool action and fights and a tiny bit of the explorations of some cool ideas (But not in-depth enough for me there)
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Days of Thunder (1990) on Bluray: can be viewed on Paramount + in the US.
I worry about young kids and the culture that Hollywood movie makers are trying to impose upon us. But sometimes, (like in this 1990 movie) one realizes they may be on to something today.
In the west, we aren't having kids to even replacement level. On top of that concern, I think it simply healthy and life affirming to have good sexual loving relationships. I enjoy even simply looking at beautiful women. I admire in male heroes positive masculine traits.
Today, you have movements pushing for women characters to act like men and not be particularly attractive. Men are often the comic relief side kicks in their own movies when not the out-right villains. Supposedly kids want to see less romance in movies.
And then I see a movie like Days of Thunder (1990) and things become less straight forward.
Tom Cruise plays a kid out of nowhere with the makings of a great stock car racer. For 1990, I enjoyed the technical aspects of this Tony Scott directed film far more than the earlier, "Top Gun". Top Gun Maverick, technically, buries its prequel. I can't even watch that one anymore. But the racing scenes in Days stand up to those we see in modern movies and are very enjoyable.
But story wise?
The "crew" play a "joke" on Cruise, having a, not sure.. stripper or hooker, pretend to be a cop and act sexually toward him. Today the scene is just, ick. Do they have sex off screen? Is this fun or an assault. Later, Cruise thinks they are playing the same "joke" on him with Nicole Kidman acting as his doctor. Criminal charges would apply today. The whole relationship between them from there on out feels like one long sexual harassment campaign. There is no chemistry, it doesn't advance the story, and comes across again as icky. Cringe.
Later, Cruise engages in at least two actions that I think are supposed to make him look like a masculine testosterone fueled wild man who can't be tamed by your rules. 35 year old spoilers: pissed that someone beat him (they seem to suggest he was wronged by the winner but in context, I don't see how) and he deliberately crashes his car into the winner. Sounds like attempted murder to me. Later, with Kidman in the car, he psychotically whips his car around a parking lot as she screams for her life wanting to be let out of the car. Oh my dear how many different criminal charges should apply.
I don't come to admire his character. I want him in prison. But the film makers of that time seem to think this course of conduct makes his character endearing and admirable.
This film should be mandatory study material in social studies courses. Yikes.
Socially? There's got to be a happy medium out there. As Yahtzee might grade it, disgustasty. Greawful. Some great stuff (technical), some horrible stuff (characters).
I worry about young kids and the culture that Hollywood movie makers are trying to impose upon us. But sometimes, (like in this 1990 movie) one realizes they may be on to something today.
In the west, we aren't having kids to even replacement level. On top of that concern, I think it simply healthy and life affirming to have good sexual loving relationships. I enjoy even simply looking at beautiful women. I admire in male heroes positive masculine traits.
Today, you have movements pushing for women characters to act like men and not be particularly attractive. Men are often the comic relief side kicks in their own movies when not the out-right villains. Supposedly kids want to see less romance in movies.
And then I see a movie like Days of Thunder (1990) and things become less straight forward.
Tom Cruise plays a kid out of nowhere with the makings of a great stock car racer. For 1990, I enjoyed the technical aspects of this Tony Scott directed film far more than the earlier, "Top Gun". Top Gun Maverick, technically, buries its prequel. I can't even watch that one anymore. But the racing scenes in Days stand up to those we see in modern movies and are very enjoyable.
But story wise?
The "crew" play a "joke" on Cruise, having a, not sure.. stripper or hooker, pretend to be a cop and act sexually toward him. Today the scene is just, ick. Do they have sex off screen? Is this fun or an assault. Later, Cruise thinks they are playing the same "joke" on him with Nicole Kidman acting as his doctor. Criminal charges would apply today. The whole relationship between them from there on out feels like one long sexual harassment campaign. There is no chemistry, it doesn't advance the story, and comes across again as icky. Cringe.
Later, Cruise engages in at least two actions that I think are supposed to make him look like a masculine testosterone fueled wild man who can't be tamed by your rules. 35 year old spoilers: pissed that someone beat him (they seem to suggest he was wronged by the winner but in context, I don't see how) and he deliberately crashes his car into the winner. Sounds like attempted murder to me. Later, with Kidman in the car, he psychotically whips his car around a parking lot as she screams for her life wanting to be let out of the car. Oh my dear how many different criminal charges should apply.
I don't come to admire his character. I want him in prison. But the film makers of that time seem to think this course of conduct makes his character endearing and admirable.
This film should be mandatory study material in social studies courses. Yikes.
Socially? There's got to be a happy medium out there. As Yahtzee might grade it, disgustasty. Greawful. Some great stuff (technical), some horrible stuff (characters).
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Genetic memory wasn't a significant part of the books until Children of Dune, and a Guild Navigator isn't physically described until Dune Messiah. I think it's fine to leave those things on the back burner until later movies.
The Boy and the Heron, or rather How do you live? for a second time, dropped to a 5/10 from 6/10.
I was hoping this movie would somehow open up on a second watch when you know what it's actually like, but it did the opposite for me. I could make neither heads nor tails of this movie. It's so completely incoherent and lacking any sort of consistent throughline that I was genuinely bored for far too significant chunks of it for a Miyazaki film. Stunning animation, beautiful music and boundless creativity can only carry a movie so far when it's this messy, the main character is an emotionless, inscrutable brick and the movie seems so lost in its subtext that it forgets to have text for something to be sub to.
I tried to approach this as a spiritual successor to Spirited Away, but that comparison only served to highlight this movie's failures where Spirited Away succeeded:
I compared this to Howl's Moving Castle on my first watch the most, because that movie's also an incoherent mess. But it at least has an incredibly vibrant and memorable cast, outstanding visuals supported by emotional stakes and some of the best music in a Ghibli movie ever. So if HMC is a 6/10 for me, HDYL is a 5/10. IMO Spiderverse got snubbed in favor of this.
I was hoping this movie would somehow open up on a second watch when you know what it's actually like, but it did the opposite for me. I could make neither heads nor tails of this movie. It's so completely incoherent and lacking any sort of consistent throughline that I was genuinely bored for far too significant chunks of it for a Miyazaki film. Stunning animation, beautiful music and boundless creativity can only carry a movie so far when it's this messy, the main character is an emotionless, inscrutable brick and the movie seems so lost in its subtext that it forgets to have text for something to be sub to.
I tried to approach this as a spiritual successor to Spirited Away, but that comparison only served to highlight this movie's failures where Spirited Away succeeded:
- In SAway the opening goes by very quickly and wastes no time in getting to the spirit world. I think it takes like 10, 15 minutes at most. HDYL takes the best part of 40 minutes to do the same, and that time's definitely not spent on character development or establishing any vital plot elements. We just bum around the house, watch Mahito stone-facedly mope and build a bow and arrow, which initially seems like it might serve a vital plot purpose, but then that's also dropped completely. When you know where it's going you're just left waiting for the shoe to drop, and there's not even some visuals or parallels that get reincorporated later so you'd go "oooooooh, so that's what that meant". The first act might as well be its own movie for how much it connects to the rest of the plot.
- Mahito as a protagonist is just a fucking bore, I'm not sorry. Chihiro is also a sullen preteen who feels she doesn't fit in and can't really connect with her parents, so the parallels with Mahito are unavoidable. The difference between them is that Chihiro has an arc, motivations and a personality. We neither know nor learn next to anything about Mahito over the course of the film besides that he's sad that his mom died. He just placid-facedly accepts everything that's thrown at him and goes wherever the plot points him. We never learn what motivates him so to get his new stepmom back, nor why he's so willing to just go along with the crazy shit he's exposed to. Chihiro at least reacts to all the crazy stuff she sees: terror, curiosity, empathy and defiance to name a few. Mahito doesn't. And due to this movie's ending basically just slamming into a brick wall, we don't even get much of an idea of how the events of the movie have affected him.
- The worldbuilding, which I already mentioned on my first watch. SA's is definitely not bulletproof, there's some skirting the deus ex machina border in it. But in that movie we establish things like scale, geography and important locations, so you have a firm sense of place. In HDYL everything just shows up and is explained on the spot - if at all. So where those elements are explained, all you can do is go "okay, I guess that's a thing now". And where they aren't, you're just left filling those gaps yourself.
I compared this to Howl's Moving Castle on my first watch the most, because that movie's also an incoherent mess. But it at least has an incredibly vibrant and memorable cast, outstanding visuals supported by emotional stakes and some of the best music in a Ghibli movie ever. So if HMC is a 6/10 for me, HDYL is a 5/10. IMO Spiderverse got snubbed in favor of this.
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I'm guessing Miyazaki likely not having another movie in him is what clinched it.
*knocks on wood*
We'll see. Miyazaki seems like one of those guys who'll live to like 98 out of pure spite. Lord knows he's enough of a grumpy old man to do it. He'll die next to his drawing board, and instead of rigor mortis his body will keep drawing on its own for a good 2 weeks afterwards.
I've been rereading Dune the last week or two and it kinda struck be that Dune, in a lot of ways is "high-fantasy", but in space. If I will give Denis Villeneuve credit for anything it'd be removing all the scenes of Gurney Halleck rhyming, singing, and playing a fucking lute or whatever it is. OMG Frank we get it, you love LOTR, but get that shit out of here.
Stilgar also is much more foppish in the books which explains why Patrick Stewart is the way he is in Dune 1984.
Stilgar also is much more foppish in the books which explains why Patrick Stewart is the way he is in Dune 1984.