I, Daniel Blake, 10/10
This is a british drama from 2016 about a widower who's forced to wrestle with the bureaucracy of social benefits after having suffered a heart attack. He befriends a single mother and her two children who are dealing with similar issues, and stuff follows from there.
It. Is. Bleak. It's one of those movies that's so understated, so grounded and so down to earth that every scene of frustration, misery and injustice hits with 110% accuracy. Despite fortunately not having had to deal with these issues in a long time, it still hit home since I was unemployed for about a year and a half in 2019-2020. For most of the movie there's zero music, the camerawork is deliberately held back and the showiest moment in the movie is someone painting a graffiti on a wall. It puts story and characters to the absolute forefront and to its benefit. These characters are so relatable and so well acted that you basically forget you're even watching a movie. You feel like this story could be unfolding in the house right next to you, and like you're passing these characters every day on the street.
I initially rated this an 8/10, but then I started thinking: can I really find anything to criticize in this movie? And the answer is really no. It achieves everything it sets out to do with laser precision. It's never unengaging or boring, it's the exact length it needs to be, the acting's basically perfect, and the dialogue's airtight. It's far from the most exciting watch, in fact quite the opposite because it's so uncomfortable in its deliberate dreariness. In a movie this stripped down and small scale there's little you even can point at to criticize, and there's basically none in this. Good job, I Daniel Blake. Now I don't ever have to watch you again.
Godzilla (1954), 6/10
You all know what this is.
This is kind of a two-way thing. It's a landmark film in so many respects: kaiju cinema, special effects, japanese cinema in itself. And I'm tempted to say that the movies that followed this turned into a total bastardization of the original, which is a very somber, serious and even upsetting look at Japan's post -WW2 trauma. Yet at the same time I kind of understand why the sequels decided to ditch the somber angle and just turned into Monster Mash. Because the movie outside of that just isn't that interesting for a large part of it. In the first half instead of there being drama because there is a giant monster, it's more like there's drama and there's a giant monster. See Godzilla Minus One for an example of this balance done right: from the very outset the main character has a personal and immediate connection to Godzilla, and that is the main thrust of the character drama in the film. In the original it feels pretty incidental.
That's not to say it's all completely uninteresting outside the scenes where stuff gets smashed. The second half finally picks up on the human side, and there is some genuinely engaging drama there. It's nothing special (and might seem interesting purely by virtue of comparison), but it's interesting enough. The scenes where shit blows up are quite fun to this day: due to a lot of it being miniatures it has a sort of playful energy to it these days. The movie's not subtle about its message: in the final scene the character might as well be talking to the camera. But in a movie that feels this raw, like it's being directed by pure id, I'm willing to let that kind of thing slide.
Mad God, jury's out/10
This is a stop-motion live-action hybrid film by visual effects legend Phil Tippett. It was his passion project that was over thirty years in the making alongside other projects. I would try to say what it's about, but I honestly have no idea. It starts with a WW1-soldier looking dude being lowered in what looks like a diving bell into a strange nightmare world in search of something. What then follows is a truly bizarre and nightmarish journey through an alien world, and somewhere in there there's a point to it. Everything about this film is deliberately as offputting and alienating as can be: there's zero spoken dialogue, named characters, and least of all any explanation for anything you're seeing. Visually it's utterly repulsive: the world consists mostly of biomechanical contraptions and body horror creatures that make The Substance look tame in comparison. Everything is caked in filth, grime and excretions of all kinds, and it's extremely gory. Alongside Hard to be a God this is one of the most inaccessible and impenetrable films I've ever seen. Unlike abstract cinema like Lynch where you're expected to draw your own conclusions and interpretations, Mad God makes everything explicit, yet utterly befuddling in a way you can't help but respect. I have to watch it again, because the first time genuinely felt like a fever dream.
However, all of the above is not to say I didn't enjoy myself. The fact that it's so completely uncompromised in its vision and so committed to its style lends it a respectability all by itself. The visuals, despite their repulsiveness, are just brimming with creativity of the most demented kind. I'd never had to ask "are those supposed to be boobs or testicles?" before, but Mad God managed it. The Dark Soulsian storytelling invokes curiosity in the exact right way where you want to peel back the layers to understand more.
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