damn, unexpecteded amazing. one of the most impactful watching expereinces of my life. 10/10
some things i loved (full of spoilers):
- the cinematography was wonderful. i dont usually notice this sort of thing but it was pecularly shot and i often found myself considering what i was looking at because of the lingering of the shots. it just looked great.
- The vibes of the movie were incredible. The Italian summer, all the swimming and the dances and older music. them spending a lot fo time on intellectual pursuits with love inbetween. Makes you wish for another life living a small italian town reading books all day and dancing at night.
- one of my favourite scenes is Elio coming out to Oliver. it was incredibly subtle and almost nothing was said out loud, the scene operated purely on intuition and feeling. I usually don't like this sort of thing but it was handled so expertly here through setup and timing that i fell in love with the scene. this was made even better by the fact that when Oliver walks off and Elio hovers around, the camera pans up a random beautiful building near them. This was great cinematography, great vibes, great writing. and then the incredibly long shot of the nature as they cycled away to let you contemplate what happened. loved it.
- the ending made me think of youth and how love can be so temporary. it is lived onced and then it is over and you live the rest of your life having loved and in a way always continuing to. love is often thought of as common but for the people living it it is the most extraordinary thing. it was bittersweet and i really felt it.
criticisms:
- I didn't really love the age/experience difference between the leads was often offputting. For a while i couldnt really shake the pedo vibes and it ruined some of the film. I eventually managed to overcome it a bit, but why does the movie require me to do so to enjoy it in the first place?
- some of the bratty behaviour of Elio was cringy
- the leadup to the relationship and their first moments as a couple were incredibly convincing, but once they got together the portrayal of their relationship was very brief. makes me feel like i didn't really see it except the kissing and sex and stuff and it hinders the emotional impact of the story
"I am a trainer. I literally train swordsmen." — Urokodaki
Something tells me the Japanese word doesn't translate well into English.
This episode is strange because I like it more than the previous two, but it's got some weird flaws holding it back. I'm going to go through them now, but please note that I can criticise something I like; it doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it. Anyway, let's dive right into my first problem.
The first is Sabito's dialogue.
"A man shouldn't whine. It's unseemly. ...No matter how you suffer, bear it in silence... if you're a man. If you call yourself a man. Slow. Weak. Immature. That's not what you call a man."
Now, I don't mean to sound like an SJW, but these kinds of comments (verbal abuse) can be pretty harmful. Especially since this series' target demographic is 12-18-year-olds, who might have a lot going on physically and mentally, lines like, "A man shouldn't whine." and "bear it in silence." are unhelpful. Please, if you're struggling with something, whether that be physically, mentally or both, seek help: talk to your friends, close ones, your family, or seek professional help. I was hesitant to criticise this element at first, but seeing how it got Tanjiro to complete his task, I see this as a ruthless fantasy that will only harm adolescents in the long run. It makes this plot so straightforward, anyway.
The next is a less extreme, but still one that's more of a personal distaste: burn-out. Overworking yourself can kill you. The director of my favourite Ghibli film, Yoshifumi Kondō, died due to overwork.
"Doctors said that the aneurysm had been brought on by overwork." - Wikipedia
His death made it very clear to me that by pushing your body and mind to the brink, you can "work yourself to death". So don't do what Tanjiro did; you may end up doing more harm than good. I'm not saying you should never push yourself, but if you think you should take a break, or find people worried about you, then maybe you should. Again, it makes the plot so straightforward; just work harder, and you can do anything!
The last is a minor nitpick, but it made the episode somewhat unsatisfying for my taste, and this one is the off-screen development. Missing out on Tanjiro's one year of training with Urokodaki was okay because it doesn't tie into his character development. But when he's training with Sabito and Makomo, I want to see how he improved. Otherwise, we're missing out on seeing his growth. Instead, we only see the aftermath. So it's a little unsatisfying when he trains off-screen and challenges Sabito one day and wins straight away. Ever heard the saying, "it's about the journey, not the destination"?
Despite my complaints, this is still my favourite episode so far. It actually tries to get Tanjiro to do something other than walking to a place but shows him taking the time to improve. Although it falls flat for me, that's not to say I didn't enjoy this episode. I'll say that these episodes are getting better, but I've yet to see one that doesn't have issues like these.
TECHNICAL SCORE: 6/10
ENJOYMENT SCORE: 7/10
[7.1/10] Sometimes you just come to something too late to fully appreciate it. Friday the 13th didn’t necessarily start the slasher genre, but it certainly codified it. So coming to the horror movie after seeing films like Scream, which deconstructed and rebuilt the slasher movie tropes (and, incidentally, spoiled this movie for me), or Cabin in the Woods, which remixed them in trippy meta fashion, it’s hard for the 1980 originator to rise above “enjoyable but rote” for a viewer raised on its inheritors.
When you know what the rules are, how the sinful must be punished in a slasher film, how the crazy old guy must give warnings that will never be heeded, right down to who the woman behind the knife is, it’s just hard to be emotionally invested. That’s no fault of the movie. If anything, it’s a sign that Friday the 13th did its job too well, that it become too embedded in our pop cultural DNA that something once innovative retroactively becomes playing it straight, which makes it hard to quicken the pulse of jaded scary movie watchers like me.
The interesting thing is that while, by that standard, Friday the 13th feels a bit quaint, it never reaches the levels of cheesiness or hokiness that, for instance, its future franchise combatant Freddy Krueger does in Nightmare on Elm Street. As silly as some scenarios like a game of “strip monopoly” are, and as shopworn as the slasher beats seem to the modern eye, the film never gets cartoony, which makes it easier to appreciate on a craft level even it doesn’t quite move or scare you.
Part of that comes from the tone and style of the film, which is an interesting blend of stylistic flourishes but also a cinema verite feel. As banal as some of the interactions between the steadily mowed-down counselors are, there’s definitely a sense of director Sean S. Cunningham just pointing his camera at a pack of teenagers at a summer camp and watching them go. Portions of the dialogue get hammy, but everything from horsing around by the lake to a collective flip out over a snake in a cabin feel true to the way unsupervised young adults act around one another.
And that ties into the movie’s theme, such as it is, with Mrs. Voorhees as an instrument of karmic punishment for the way such adolescent indiscretions can lead to neglect or, in this extreme case, tragedy. It’s hard to take the psychotic revenge tale told in the film too seriously given its outsized bent, but there is a sense that Friday the 13th is, like much of great horror, reflecting the anxieties of its teenage audience back at them. The notion that the carefree and exhibitionist vibe of youth is not, in fact, weightless, and that the ignored authority figures are right and a day is going to come when you’ll face consequences for your actions builds some social subtext into the undercarriage of the film’s scares that give them a bit more weight than they might have otherwise.
But much of that is a small layer of extra meaning given to the various kill and chase sequences that make up the main focus of the film. And these are where the film feels like a well-done blend of tones, as the realness of the kids’ interactions gives way to any number of stylistic flourishes meant to heighten the horror and suspense of each gory scene. Images like a close-up of a hand grasping flesh, or a cadaver strung up in horrifying detail evince an intention to use the movie’s cinematography to convey the film’s pleasure and pain motifs in an artistic way.
The peak of this is the way Friday the 13th uses point-of-view shots to obscure who the killer is until the big reveal. While the “ch-ch-ch, ah-ah-ah” is so hardwired into the horror genre that it’s hard to take it seriously, and while Halloween used the same trick earlier and better, putting the viewer behind the killer’s eyes serves both to allow us to see the killer’s deeds without knowing her identity, and to make us distantly complicity in the grisly acts put up on the screen.
The twist itself -- that Mrs. Vorhees is out for revenge on the sorts of teenagers who let her beloved son die nearly 25 years prior -- is neat enough. The fake out and explanation is a little Twilight Zone in its tidiness, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Knowing the twist lessened its impact, but there’s still something laudable about how Mrs. Voorhees shows up to the camp and seems to be the savior, only to turn around and unveil that she is, in fact, the cause of all this murder and mayhem. Her schizophrenic orders from “Jason” himself come off more corny than scary, and she has the “thought I killed you already” fake out that a modern viewer is inured to, but she makes for a solid antagonist to anchor the last act of the film.
That’s the worst you can say about Friday the 13th. In 2017, its tricks have become old hat, and it’s incapable of spooking or scaring a horror fan coming to it so late in the game. But it’s still a solid, well-made picture, with just enough thematic material to make it interesting, and enough cinematic touches to make it an interesting study in how to use images and editing to create satisfying horror set pieces.
It may not carry the same oomph it once did, with thousands of (mostly pale) imitators sapping the power of its tropes and beats, but it’s still hard not to admire the film in an academic sense if nothing else. Friday the 13th is a sturdily-built little horror machine, one that manages to feel both real and outsized in turn, and delivers its kills and twists with aplomb, even if they can’t quite keep you on the edge of your seat anymore.
game of thrones season 8 episode 3 review: what a great episode for the new game of thrones. new game of thrones you ask? by that i mean that this is absolutely not the same show it was before the books were done being covered. Barely anyone died in this episode, i didnt cry over a death once and i cry at most things. I gotta say Jorah Mormont and Theon were the important good guy deaths and they matter but this is supposed to be the finale, the battle we've been waiting for. all the characters had crazy plot armor and were always last minute saved and people like jaime and brienne being literally squashed between a wall of rock and a wall of dead. how the hell are they still alive i dont understand. this never wouldve happened in the early season. the tactics were also pretty nonsensical. why did the dothraki (who had least killing power) charge first. to give the enemy more troops? why did noone shoot at the dead when they were all nicely lined up. why did they keep retrating but then un-retreating. so much confusion (although i realise the last example might be the correct way to do things but i definatley didnt understand why that would be.) This is a bit of an anti-climactic conclusion tot he wight arc, I was expecting the night king to win and then to be beat next time. I thought bran was a gonner. However on the other hand god fucking damn what a good episode. it was so well made and the tension was insanely high. even when i conciously thought "theyre delaying the events to build tension this is so slow" they still got me. i cried in relief when arya took out the night king. i genuinely believed at points that dany or jon were fucking dead. this episode was one hell of a ride. although i wouldnt put this into the same category as i would earlier game of thrones, i still got got by the fact that i love all these characters and production was amazing
