Toot toot.

Elemental — 3/5

It feels like the perfect mixture of low-art Pixar (Cars) and high-art Pixar (the other things). It's got substance, it's got layers; it's got so much fucking wordplay. It's that 'Cars' feeling of 'every word that has meaning to you in one context now has uber-meaning to them because it's their entire world.' It's entertaining, with a tiresome quality. There's an over-"isn't that cute?' to it, an over-"look at me, aren't I clever?" to it. The feelings feel like nothing more than double entendres. The metaphors feel like puns. And then it just layers too many things on top of it. Xenophobia, foreigners who feel out of place, the sacrifice required to build a better life, a star-crossed love story, lower-class/upper-class dynamics, a citywide disaster, and a dream to do something other than what her father wants from her. (The last of which kind of breaks me, honestly, because the first half of the movie is her insisting that she wants it. It does not feel like she is being untrue to herself until love forces some idea of special-ness on her.) It's not confident enough in itself to be a smaller movie. But it's fun! It's shallow, but fun. It's simplistic, but fun. It's cute; it just doesn't know how to dial down the cuteness. It does not choose its words wisely.

A couple is kind of a chaos.

Anatomy of a Fall — 3.5/5

I think Godzilla Minus One has re-wired my brain a bit. I think every year, I'm searching for what's great, what's beautiful, what's eternal, to the extent that the search becomes a little desperate. And what Godzilla has done for me is remind me that when shit hits, it hits hard. I wanted to call up everyone and tell them about that movie. When something's great, you don't have to rationalize it, you don't have to make allowances for it; you know it's great. 'Anatomy of a Fall' is a movie I very much enjoyed... but not to that extent. So, had I reviewed this a month earlier as I should have, I may have given it a better score. Sorry!! For me, the movie feels like 'Doubt' or 'Gone Girl,' other movies I very much enjoyed, as both revolve around a subject I very much enjoy—once you introduce an idea, it's difficult to remove it from the table. It's litigating a single unknown moment of our lives through the lens of things we do know. "I heard them fighting." "Well, they did lie about that one thing. What else are they hiding?" Relationships between two people are hard enough, and suddenly you invite everyone else in. If two people can't understand each other, what demon will group-think summon? Throughout, the movie does a great job of placing Sandra on a teeter-totter—needing to stay perfectly composed lest one side of their body place too much weight and send her tumbling.

Nobody else can think of them.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang — 2.5/5

On my Dick Van Dyke shit, so I have rewatched this, though I only actually have memories of the final scene, so perhaps this is the first time I'm actually seeing it. Here, Dick plays a harder character (snicker). It feels like he took the Mary Poppins accent criticism to heart and refused to even try a British accent, which I think hurts the character. He'd just feel lighter with a little cheerio. But even so, warmth shines through his at times gruff exterior. The kids bring it out in him, and they're great, they feel real, and you sense love between them. (Not with Truly Scrumptious though, horribly miscast in this role.) The movie's first half is actually really good; it's a real world with touches of living in the clouds, but the movie loses me completely when it loses any sense of reality. It goes full cloud, with no proper preparation. It, like Poppins, is "An Excuse For Stuff To Happen" movie, precariously throwing out reasons to dance and act silly, but without any grounding or any illusions of real plot or character growth. This and Mary Poppins are both flights of fancy but Mary Poppins always floats back down to Earth. This movie left and never came back. Which is unfortunate, because it was heading somewhere before getting completely sidetracked. I think there's the possibility of a good remake here, just bring more to the fore the idea of a man who has trouble holding onto reality. Make it a little more 'Life Is Beautiful.'

I forbid you to die.

Godzilla Minus One — 4.5/5

Godzilla as a symbol of shame?

 

 

Homina fucking homina. Holy shit, I love this movie. My personal narrative of this film is that the atomic bombs had nothing to do with the development of this gigantic sea beast with tiny little arms. It was borne out of one man's shame; small at first, and then gaining size and speed as that shame is multiplied by the shame of an entire nation. The dishonorable fight; the dishonorable way they asked them to fight. In this movie, America didn't need to drop those two bombs; the atomic bombs were the breath of Godzilla. Japan's destruction was the result of their own disgrace coming back to bite. And the only way to fight it, is to become better people. Not to hang their head in shame but to raise them higher than before. Volunteering for a worthy cause, where the hope isn't that they die, but that they live. This single just-above two hour movie is the equivalent of ten years worth of Marvel movies resulting in Endgame. It's a big movie about big thoughts, with all the heroes we've met so far—regular people, these—finding port and purpose in coming together to save the day. No one is wasted. And the true beauty of it, is that you didn't need to see any Godzilla movie before it to understand. You understand this world immediately, without holding on to previous context. Here is destruction; and here is how you save the world, standing with the people next to you. Not fighting for a flag, but fighting for the people you love. This movie is full of hope.

But I feel what's to happen all happened before.

Mary Poppins (rewatch) — 3.5/5

I'm conflicted on this movie because when Poppins is poppin,' man, what a movie. Extreme highs. And then there are long stretches where I'm just ready for it to move along to the next scene. It's a type of movie that's just an excuse for things to happen. It mostly doesn't care about using scenes and lyrics to further plot or progress character. It just wants to be a good time. What about a dance on the rooftops with chimbley sweeps? What if everyone laughed so much they floated? A dance with penguins? Sure, why not, let's explore that. There's fun in that, for sure, but it leaves me feeling like it's a great album with some songs you definitely skip; almost closer to 'Fantasia' than most other Disney movies. I'm also watching this again because of a sudden fascination with Dick Van Dyke, his immediate likeability (and subsequent lack of a strong resume). He's all slapstick and stretchy face—and he can dance! He's Buster Keaton and Fred Astaire, in a combination that both feels dated, and doesn't. Mary Poppins is likeable, but unknowable. Bert—every much the equal to her in terms of screen time—is welcoming. She is Mystery Incarnate, and everything he is is written on his face. He's the linchpin to this world, connecting the lower parts to the upper parts, the base with the lofty. Mary Poppins uses magic to float above the others; he uses magic to enjoy life down on the ground. She's magic; he's a believer. And the hatred for his accent is a sin I'll put on par with Audrey Hepburn being shit on for My Fair Lady. He's a living cartoon. He's not real. He lives in our heads, and that's how y'all fuckers sound up there.

Just mad that we're here again, innit?

Top Boy S4 — 2/5

Season 4 is its second season 2 and boy oh boy, does this show have a problem with season 2s. It does a great job of building (and re-building) worlds, but it doesn't seem to know how where to go from there. It builds unnecessary branching pathways for side characters who don't need to be more interesting than they are. Shelley's got a mysterious past; useless. Jaq's sister Lauryn is having trouble with her baby's father; who gives a shit. There's problems in Spain, Morocco; uh okay. And the two at the center are just fish flapping on the shore. Sully's in, he's out, he's in, he's out. But at least he's got complexity compared to Dushane, who is single-minded and who the fuck knows to what purpose. He has no interiority. He serves one god, Ambition. At the end of the final episode, Shelley says she understands Dushane: he just wants to protect his family. And the happy montage of life-as-usual that follows tells me that it's not delivered ironically. It's such utter horseshit that goes against every decision he's made throughout this show. This whole world is built on people who do for themselves and think they're doing for others. Jamie's family stands apart from that; they seem to genuinely care for each other. The show, at its best, has built its heart around young characters on the verge of entering this life, and Stef, though older, though diminished by what he's been through, is a character I want to follow—and by extension his brothers. There's one season left, and the only reason I'm excited for is to see what happens to him because, right now, I couldn't care less what happens to anyone else. You can't just build a show around assholes.

From my perspective, you're getting a little sloppy.

Hit Man — 2.5/5

Man, what a weird movie. Netflix-ass aesthetic aside, it's based on a genuinely fun true story, and builds on top of that an excuse to talk about identity and who we want to be, and how we may have to fake that until we become that. And then you add genuine chemistry between the two leads and hey, ho, let's go. These are the things great movies are made of. It's got ideas. It's got charm. And then it just goes completely off the fucking rails. It's a dark comedy that forgets to layer in the darkness as we go. We like her, until suddenly she's a bad person. We like him (in spite of his lie), until suddenly he's an unforgivable person. And we're just supposed to be cool with it! Okay, sure—but you've got to convince us of that. You can't just assume we'll accept it.

Get over here!

Mortal Kombat (rewatch) — 4/5

This movie was made by a boy. I'm honestly not sure if any other movie so effectively captured the 14 year old id. It's like Paul W. S. Anderson graduated from junior high and said 'I'm going to be a film director' and, with no additional training, no practice, kicked the football through the field goal and won the state championship. It's the product of a singular mind! Every decision is made because it looks cool, it sounds cool. It isn't, but it believes it. It's the ineffable tone that I bring up in every other movie review. It's poorly made, but it all fits together. It's a child's papier-mâché construction that randomly, miraculously, when looked at at the right angle, looks like something. I fucking love this shit.

This is our home. We're living howe we dreamed we would.

Zone of Interest – 2.5/5

I think the whole movie is in the premise. "A family lives peacefully next to a concentration camp." I'm not sure how much it adds on top of that. To be fair, it's a powerful premise. I do see myself reflected in that, in this. I do see America. It's not even the banality of evil; it's too intentional, too obvious. It's allowing things to be taken from others for the sake of not losing what you have. Something has to be sacrificed; just not us. This is why we need college kids to rise up; they are our in-betweeners. They don't yet have a nice job, with a nice salary, in a nice home. (Who do you know that is willing to give up their life of comfort?) Or they're not weighted yet by the debt they don't realize they're accumulating, which forces you to only ever work to live, and that focus on survival leaving no room to focus on others. They don't know the cost of their opinions. The rest of us, we have accumulated. We have nice things. We have debt. The mass protest can only go so long because we have a job to report to on Monday morning. There's a lie that we can only see history in retrospect. It's not true. We see it, and we choose to ignore it, because we are not willing to pay the cost. "The life we enjoy is very much worth the sacrifice."

 "I knew right away that America's noisy worshiping of success, it's mania for ratings and rankings, the compulsive celebration of perfection in everything served only as a facade. Behind the optimistic veneer there lies an extraordinary fear of failure: the horror of going down and going under, of losing face and respectability, of exclusion and marginalization. It's not success but failure—the savage fear of it—that lies at the heart of the American Dream." — Costica Bradatan

Do you have it in you to make it epic?

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga — 3.5/5

So you're telling me I just wrote a whole-ass blogger.com post about how the joy of these movies are the loose application of continuity, and so then you build a movie entirely out of connected parts? Who am I even speaking to? Do I not control the tides and waves with my words? Am I not gravity? Sigh. I thought these reviews might reach someone in power; alas. Even so, I enjoyed it!! In many ways, I like it more than Fury Road; namely, I am an unfortunate traditionalist and like a nice character backstory and an A to B to C plot. Furiosa is a set character, in opposition to Mad Max who, despite his backstory, is now become just Mythological Man. Furiosa meanwhile feels positioned in a final world state for George Miller to explore. No more leaps in time and look and feel; this is the final resting place for these doomed people (and these doomed movies?). And then, in many ways, it is worse. Worse, or less interesting. I, perhaps unfairly, hold these movies to some standard of realism, and this movie is largely a CGI-fest. All movies use CGI, I understand, but in this one, it is used poorly. It stands out; it stands apart. And then its final commitment to rushing to a pre-existing conclusion; ending exactly where the previous one begins feels like an unnecessary Lego block clicking into place. It closes a newly opened door. There are certainly twenty years of eternal history and non-history that could have happened between this one and that one. It also, unfortunately, retreads through imagery. Here, again, are War Boys. Here, again, are Bullet Town and Gas Town. Here, again, is Immortan Joe, in look alone, completely divorced from the absolute power, the absolute wildness of Hugh Keays-Byrne. Here, introduced, very intentionally, is Scrotus, who has no ultimate use and is weirdly missing between this one and that one. But also, within that—the flying motorcycle octopus man, and the chariot of bikes, and Dementus is familiar but new enough (though short of iconic). A wild idiot. Worse than the existing world in his way. Proof that there's nothing you could have that someone else doesn't want to make worse. He's the only one of them who seems to be clearly having fun, which is a nice break from the only-ever-serious Furiosa (fantastic as a child and a mute adult, but who loses something powerful when she speaks). Though serious, she carries a knowledge that there is a better world, which Mad Max does not carry. He is the hope without hope. She is simply hope. Which I, again, am an unfortunate sucker for. I feel as though I am only mostly saying negative things but, despite the things I don't like, despite my reluctance to accept this world as the final world—it is still a wonderful world, one that I'm glad to keep revisiting. It is an excuse for characters and visuals and words and names and bombast. And my boy and yours, George Miller, knows how to film an action sequence, hoo-ha. I'm sorry that we may lose more in the near-term, but I hope we get that even newer world twenty years from now.