It's hard to pick out what makes this movie "what is it". It all feels very grounded and raw no matter how weird and random the plot becomes. It even gets a little too personal at times, where you start to see more of the situation than seems appropriate.
I wrote that first section without getting super far into the movie. I have a correction: It's weird. This is a weird movie. I like the appearance of the cat though, great acting by the cat, 10/10. SPOILER: A dog dies, RIP dog, you will be missed. I understand why the kids act the way that they do, but they also act in a Wes-Anderson-crazy way. He does the thing with his characters where they just do goofy wacky things that don't make sense. An example from another one of his movies is in The French dispatch where the one French kid just kind of dies for the sake of the plot. It's hard to explain, but there is a huge similarity between this movie and his others. Obviously, there is all of the same symmetry in camera shots that you would expect. The music is all very expected as well. They also talk the same way. This may actually be a more Wes Anderson-Wes Anderson movie than The French dispatch. It's almost like he somehow imbued 100% of his direction style into this movie. This movie uses a little bit of sneaky stop motion. It's hard to notice but it's a nice touch. Also the sheer amount of actors, kids especially is astounding. Wes Anderson normally uses the exact same group of actors in all of his movies, so the fact that he uses so many people in this one is a little surprising. I started watching this movie thinking it would be charming, and I guess you could call it that. You could also call it odd and unpredictable. I really don't know the message of this movie, but I would consider it slightly less confusing than the French dispatch. Also, the special effects in this movie are noticeably fake, although I think they are meant to be that way. Time for arbitrary rating! Characters: 7/10 Shot selection: 9/10 score: 7.5/10 Plot: 8/10 Overall enjoyment: 6.5/10 Final rating: 7.6/10
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it's I really don't watch many DC superhero movies, but I got the chance to watch this one and was pleasantly surprised. This movie, in my opinion, is more of an action-packed murder mystery than a superhero movie about a murderer (if that makes any sense). Over the span of (a rather gratuitous) 3 hours, the film follows Batman as he tries to unmask "The Riddler" and uncovers a crazy amount of corruption along the way, including secretive information about his parents. I'll try not to spoil too much, but this one of the movies where even though the villain gets caught in the end, it kind of feels like they won anyways. Batman catches the Riddler, but not before he killed countless people, and killed many more remotely even after he was caught, not to mention the extensive damage he caused to the city. Also, this movie is supposedly only the first in a trilogy, so we might get a new movie with the joker, or possibly other famous DC villains.
There is something that this movie actually does too well. There are so many amazing cinematic action moments, and beautiful camera shots, but they come out too perfect. So much so that they push you out of the movie, making what you are seeing go from believable to "movie magic". There is one scene in particular that almost made me laugh at how insanely "movie perfect" it was. Batman is in a car chase with the penguin, who cuts off two semis, making them crash into each other. OF COURSE one of them is an oil tanker, and OF COURSE the engine of the other semi explodes to light the oil tanker. At the same time, Batman is trapped in-between these two about-to-explode semis and THE LOADING RAMP OF ONE OF THE SEMIS FALLS OFF RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM AND HE JUMPS OVER THE CRASHING SEMIS AS THEY EXPLODE BEHIND HIM. It makes for a very cool slo-mo shot, sure, but it also looks unbelievably fake/unrealistic. I would like to say that this is the only super unrealistic moment but sadly it's just the most glaring one. As you may know, I am a sucker for reoccurring musical themes in movies that make their presence known. This movie does that not only once, but TWICE. Something in the way by Nirvana appears at the begging of the movie, while they show the city before the events of the movie, and then it appears again at the end after the aftermath. It brings you back the the beginning of the movie, and you can kind of see the effects of everything that has happened. The other sound thing in this movie that is super cool is that they play "Ave maria" as foreshadowing when the Riddler is going to strike, or is at work on something. The songs starts off as a non-diegetic, but then it becomes diegetic when the Riddler starts singing it after he gets captured. A very cool use of sound that I don't think I have ever heard in a movie before. About the movie being 3 hours long... it was a little much. It couldn't have been split into 2 smaller movies just because of the sake of the plot fitting together the way it does. It felt like there was almost a little bit of filler in the middle of the movie, and certain scenes felt like they dragged on forever. It might be to set the scene for subsequent movies, but without knowing what's coming they just came off as boring to me. Characters: 8/10 Shot selection: 8.5/10 score: 10/10 Plot: 9/10 Overall enjoyment: 8.5/10 Final rating: 8.8/10 I faintly remember watching this movie as a kid, and I decided to give it a rewatch to see if it was anything like I remembered. First impression: the mom is a really bad driver, so much so that I thought that it was foreshadowing a car crash. (It was actually foreshadowing that bad driving would actually save their lives, a better outcome) Also, even with this being very very much a kid's movie there is a big commentary on nature and humans destroying it. Even with the sea being a huge part of the story, Miyazaki isn't afraid to show an abundance of trash.
One of the big things I instantly noticed about this movie was the score. The instrumentals are all really good and do a lot to enhance scenes. It's all composed by Joe Hisashi as well, which makes sense because he is a great composer. Animation-wise, this movie is basically on par with most Ghibli films. There are a few ocean scenes where there are hundreds of fish and they just can't animate all of them on the budget, but that's not to say that those scenes detract from the movie at all. Otherwise, all of the animation is great. The color of water is used really well in the movie as well, darker when it's stormy, bright when it is close to light, it also changes briefly into other thing and the colors move really smoothly, its hard to explain. The voice actors and foley are really noticeable in this move for some reason. It's not like it sounds off or anything, but more like it was created to be noticed. Some sounds are extenuated way more than they should be for the sake of making them more noticeable, or maybe to notice something the character is doing that's new or different. There's a scene that isn't supposed to be funny but is hilarious. This lady is like "my baby likes you" and you would expect them to make a funny face at it and it laughs or something, but no. The baby just stares at them expressionlessly for what feels like almost a minute, and then the scene just goes back to normal like nothing happened. A super necessary scene overall: 10/10. This movie was nothing like how I remembered it. It was better than I thought though. Not sure how this movie fits into my Miyazaki movie tier list yet, but it might be up there. Rating time Characters: 8/10 Shot selection: 8.5/10 score: 9/10 Plot: 8.5/10 Overall enjoyment: 8.5/10 Final rating: 8.5/10 This is basically an average Pixar movie. Slightly more cringey bits than usual, but I guess it makes sense for the kind of movie it is. I kinda see similarities between this movie and Onward, they both share the same kind of fantasy coming of age story. The only huge difference is in gender. I described that really badly, but I noticed odd similarities between the two movies.
The animation is pretty normal for modern Pixar. The fur physics for the panda are pretty accurate, nothing super crazy throughout the whole movie. They do that cool funny kids movie thing where in an r rated movie a bunch of people would have died in an action scene, but everyone walks off without a scratch in this one. This is also one of the only movies where they do the thing where they shove the soundtrack in your face, but in this movie it kind of... sucks? The instrumental music is fine, good even, but anything with lyrics is kind of bad. The traditional music especially is good, just used too little. Overall, not a bad movie, just another meh Pixar movie. still waiting for another Wall-E or UP if I'm being completely honest. The ending was good, at least it wasn't another good dinosaur. I hope the class makes this into another Encanto love/hate debate. I just want to be the person who can see both sides and disagree with them both. Really don't know what else to say about this movie, It was just not noteworthy. oh yeah, some of the characters are super annoying, that's what I forgot Characters: 6/10 Shot selection: 6/10 score: 3/10 Plot: 7/10 Overall enjoyment: 5/10 Final rating: 5.4/10 This movie really didn't feel like your average Marvel movie. I think it had a little more drama than usual, with less fighting scenes. And although this movie was really good, I just left the theater with a bad taste in my mouth. SPOILERS: Its annoying how Peter Parker is basically responsible for all of the bad incidents that go on throughout the movie, but by the end of the movie he still kind of ends up as the "good all along" hero. Even though he was basically responsible for the deaths of some very close friends. I get why he was trying to fix all of the people from different spiderman timelines, but then again it really was not his problem. I know its like super nice to "fix" all of the villains, but then again they are STILL GOING TO DIE in their own universes eventually. Good for you for saving them, but was it really worth the consequences in your own universe. Say Peter hadn't made a stupid decision to mess with time at the begging of the movie NONE OF IT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED. This is a prime example of "just because you have a good motive does not mean what you actually do is good". Yeah this movie kind of felt like the sequel where they have to force the characters forward in the plot just for the sake of the overall story.
Some good things about the movie: the action scenes and VFX are basically perfect, as should be expected from a high budget Marvel movie. SPOILER: when Peter from the regular universe interacts with the 2 others their chemistry is really cool. Also, Willem Dafoe's acting as green goblin was really good, all of the villain's performances were good as well. I really don't know how they can make another Spider-man movie after this one, I know I said that this movie felt like the set up for something bigger earlier, but I still can't see what that bigger thing could be. Where could the plot even go after this movie? Who Knows. I feel like I don't even notice music in movies unless it is really good, and this was one of the movies where I literally didn't notice any music. Thats probably a good thing because it means it fits together really well, but i like when the music shows up and makes you notice it. Characters: 8/10 Shot selection: 8/10 score: 5/10 Plot: 8/10 Overall enjoyment: 6.5/10 Final rating: 7.1/10 Not sure why I watched this movie, but it was way better than I remembered it the first few times. The best thing about this movie is the extremely sophisticated plot. It all starts with the penguins being kidnapped by the octopus Dave, who wants to get revenge on them for... being too cute? The penguins eventually get wrapped up in the secret animal organization "the north wind" who is also trying to foil Dave's plot. This creates all sorts of conflict, leading to the eventual kidnap of Private the penguin. The north wind and penguins come together to try to rescue Private, but get captured and he ends up saving them in the end. Very wholesome.
Being completely honest, everything in this movie is on-par with the average DreamWorks movie, except for the comedy. This movie has no reason to be as funny as it is. Even when a scene isn't supposed to be funny, something stupid gets thrown into the background to make it funny. Its also very fun to pause the movie at certain parts because the way the frame by frame animation works makes for some really weird looking shots if you time it right. Even the post credits scene is hilarious. I don't know what is is about animated bird movies (Angry bird movie, angry birds movie 2, penguins of Madagascar, rio) but they always exceed my expectations. Maybe a more serious review next week? anyways Characters: 8/10 Shot selection: 5/10 score: 6/10 Plot: 5/10 Overall enjoyment: 9.5/10 Final rating: 6.7/10 Although this movie was undoubtedly well made, it is also pretty confusing. There is not really one overarching plot but more like 3 or 4 big sub plots in the form of recounting articles written by the French dispatch. I think that this is probably the most Wes Anderson, Wes Anderson movie. Almost every shot can be identified as one that he would choose, all the the articles stray back to themes in his previous movie, and he reuses most actors from his previous movies. This movie would be a gold mine for anyone doing an auteur theory project.
This movie was really kind of difficult to follow, it might just be that I was not paying close enough attention, but because of the way the story goes, its just really hard to follow so many different storylines after it throws you into them one after another. The individual subplots are very entertaining though, however confusing/abstract. The best part of this movie is the way that it was filmed. There is a very cool symmetry to the entire movie, and the movie itself is displayed in a more squarish shape instead of widescreen like usual. The film constantly switches between color and black and white, seemingly at random times, but it somehow still works. Also, there are random times where it switches to cartoon/comic animation when a scene would be too high budget/destructive/unable to be filmed in the Wes Anderson style. This is definitely the most experimental film of his that I have ever seen. I really don't know what to say about this movie. I can easily say that it was well made, but I'm not totally sure how much I enjoyed it. It will be interesting to see if Wes Anderson's next movie is more like this one, or more like his past films. Characters: 7/10 Shot selection: 10/10 score: 6/10 Plot: 7/10 Overall enjoyment: 6/10 Final rating: 7.2/10 I'm not sure what got me to watch this movie, and I didn't know what I was expecting going into it, but I was not disappointed. This is a very funny movie, for all of the wrong reasons.
Borat and his good friend Azamat take a journey to America to report on the "great culture of America". They end up driving across the country to try and kidnap a girl that Borat takes a fancy to. This movie does a great job of illustrating exactly what would happen if a foreigner with too much money/time, no boundaries, and terrible social skill went on a trip to America. Every scene is very funny, especially when something that we consider normal here is grossly misunderstood by Borat, which usually ends in disaster. I kind of wonder which scenes are actors and which ones are just real people and a camera. It definitely can't be some of them, because they are illegal and would definitely lead to some arrests, but in a lot of the scenes the reactions to Borat are so genuine that I couldn't imagine an actor reacting that way. Maybe they hired actors who had no idea what was about to happen and then just let the scene play out? I'll look it up later. I really don't know what else to say about this movie, it was really funny and that's about it. Nothing crazy or noteworthy in the land of film criticism right now. Maybe I'll watch the sequel sometime because it came out recently. Rating time Characters: 10/10 Shot selection: 5/10 score: 5/10 Plot: 8/10 Overall enjoyment: 10/10 Final rating: 7.6/10 So I watched this movie quite a while ago, but John convinced me to write a review now because of all of the fun drama going on about this movie. Here is my honest review of Perfect Blue, John is not keeping me hostage, I am writing this on my own free will.
MR H BEFORE YOU READ THIS WATCH THE MOVIE I DONT WANT TO SPOIL IT This movie is probably one of the most confusing I have ever seen. The Movie does take place in chronological order, but the way that scenes line up make it seem like time has skipped, or certain thing have happened already or haven't happened. Its a trip. There is the main storyline of Mima trying to make a career out of being an actress, but also a side story of her stalker, and the murder of people around her. The thing that really makes this movie hit hard is the twist at the end that puts everything into context. I watched this movie after seeing Last Night in Soho, and the similarities are scary. I think Last night in Soho had to have taken at least some inspiration because there are even scenes that look like straight rips from this movie Alright, on to the animation. It was meh. I was not expecting anything crazy because it was made in the late 90's, but then even when you compare it to other animation made at the same time it just looks a little lackluster. Some characters are animated (I'm pretty sure on purpose) to look ugly/disfigured, and I kind of like that choice. It makes everything just a little more unsettling and completes the feeling of going crazy that the film is going for. Music was not super memorable, but also not bad enough to notice. I think it works well that the only real song in the film comes at the end of Mima's singing career, and then you don't hear anything like it from that point on. P.S. I just talked to John and he said that the soundtrack is actually golden, so you will just have to watch it and see for yourself. also shot selection and score are now separate because John wanted it that way. Characters: 9/10 Shot selection: 8/10 score: 5/10 Plot: 9/10 Overall enjoyment: 6.5/10 Final rating: 7.5/10 I decided to watch this because I just wanted to watch a braindead movie. This one was supposed to be especially bad. I was not disappointed. They say it themselves at the very beginning, "getting basketball players to act in movies normally ends badly". Lebron James is a great basketball player, not a great actor. A lot of things in this movie seem blatantly out of place, plot and acting wise. It kind of feels like they tried to add in pop culture references like the emoji movie tried to add in advertisements and sponsorships. The comedy never really hits and ends up being more cringeworthy than funny. Another thing with the plot, there is almost an hour of movie before the game, and AN HOUR OF GAME. Although the game is somewhat entertaining, its totally not an hour of movie entertaining. For some reason a lot of the sound effects in this movie sound like they came straight off of imovie sound effects library or royaltyfreemusic.net. I swore I heard at least one fake laughing/cheering sitcom sound effect. They also lose an excessive amount of slo-mo and special "video game" effects. I know the movie is supposed to be in an internet type setting, but still. the sheer amount of times they use special effects is a LOT over the top. Like its cool for one or two baskets to be in slo-mo but not EVERY SINGLE ONE. Also if the game is supposed to be super important, why use a montage to skip through most of it.
I think the 150 Million dollar budget of this movie could have gone towards sooo many better things, like maybe towards the environment, or towards people in poverty, or towards cancer research, or towards building back up the reputation of the poor real actors who chose to be in this movie. My last thoughts on this movie are that it really did not need to exist, its way too good of production quality to turn out so bad. I'm honestly just annoyed that I wasted so much of my time watching this. I reallllly hope they don't make another sequel/spinoff in another decade or two because the novelty wore off on the original space jam movie in my opinion. I would call this movie a cashgrab, but it actually lost a lot of money. more last thoughts: there was not one good song throughout the entire movie bad movie, don't watch Characters: 1/10 Shot selection/score: 2/10 Plot: 1/10 Overall enjoyment 0/10 Final rating: 1/10 |
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October 2021
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