I honestly feel like this movie actually delivered on a lot of aspects. It definitely has a vision and a theme, which I appreciate, and it didn’t feel boring at any moment (even if frustrating at times).
My review for We Got This Covered here: https://wegotthiscovered.com/reviews/review-kaley-cuoco-and-pete-davidson-rewrite-the-future-of-rom-coms-in-meet-cute/
I’ve never been too into sci-fi but lately I’ve been enjoying the genre more and more. I loved how good this movie looked, the practical effects and the minimal score. Also, Sigourney Weaver sexy.
Something about this film just felt really homey which is a weird thing to say about a sci-fi thriller about a giant saucer-like monster eating people from the sky, but I think it was just its 80s/90s like quality and references to a time where Hollywood could still do spectacle without being so shallow. The amount of trivia I learned from watching this and googling the different references and nods made me truly geek out and have more fun than I’ve had watching a movie in a minute.
P.S.: I :heart: Daniel Kaluuya
This review may contain spoilers.
Bullet point review cus there’s too much nonsense in this film to even attempt at making a coherent text:
Huge shoutout to Carloto Cotta for building a career on the shoulders of his uncanny resemblance to Cristiano Ronaldo (Diamantino and the Netflix show Elite are arguably his two most famous roles and they’re both Cristiano spoofs that somehow simultaneously nail the absurdity of the footballer’s public image and completely misrepresent and mock who he is as a man). Would absolutely love for the two of them to meet one day, or god forbid, for Cotta to play Cristiano in an actually serious and non-offensive biopic where he could go further than the airhead façade.
Hated the characters of the sisters, they were excessively disgusting and abusive and their scenes made me uncomfortable.
THAT MANUELA MOURA GUEDES SCENE BELONGS IN A MUSEUM. SO. GOOD. my favorite bit in the movie. I cried laughing.
Hated what they did to the queer relationship between Lucia and Aisha. Highkey homophobic.
The political subplot was a bit cringe. I wish it had been less in your face, but still pretty self-aware.
The Portuguese hit show Por do Sol which has been the most unanimously loved portuguese television production since Morangos com Açucar or Aqui não há quem viva shares a lot of the same humor of Diamantino, just with better actors and a little bit more depth. But what is great about both is the Portuguese’s unmatched ability to make fun of themselves and to so completely and thoroughly understand the absurdity of our cultural landmarks (soaps, football, our crusader and colonial past, and the catholic church). I think we’re one of, if not the funniest people on Earth.
Austin Butler is amazing but the film is all style no substance. It’s amazing how you can watch an almost 3 hour long movie about Elvis and come out of it knowing only very basic things about the man’s life. Why the choice to make Colonel Tom Parker the narrator, I don’t know, but the film is weaker for it. Elvis is clearly the more fascinating character of the two, and was almost sidelined in this film. I also haven’t really liked Hanks’ last few performances, he’s becoming increasingly clownish with age.
Honestly, it was not that bad.
Full review on We Got This Covered’s page: https://wegotthiscovered.com/reviews/review-pinocchio-is-a-charming-homage-to-its-predecessor-but-still-not-really-necessary/
Had potential for so much more.
My full review in portuguese for Fio Condutor: https://fiocondutor.com.pt/where-the-crawdads-sing-2022/
First thoughts just fresh from finishing this: this film would have benefited so much from more Nicole Kidman. The scenes where she gets to shine are the undeniable highlights of Eyes Wide Shut and the little glimpses into female visions of sexuality we get when her character is given a voice are the most interesting aspects of the film’s thematics and narrative.
It’s a great movie about sexuality, desire, sex and power. I’m just not a fan of Tom Cruise and all the gratuitous objectification of women. I realise that might be a simplistic read, but there’s no doubt male directors enjoy using their movies to satisfy sexual fantasies, much in the same way those social elites used hoods and masks, a palace, and a Beethoven opera.
Yesterday was my grandma’s 90th birthday and we’re all celebrating it at lunch today. I had no idea what this movie was about but it somehow happened that after having it on my watchlist for months I finally watched it across these two days.
“We live three times as long since man invented movies,” might mean that we get to live other people’s lives through the images on screen, but I think what it actually means is that, through movies, we just learn to live our own life three times as intensely. Happy birthday, grandma :heart:
It’s always fascinating watching movies adapted from stage plays, because a single setting shouldn’t really work as well on screen as it does on a stage, but if the material is good enough, then the film will almost always succeed. That is the case with The Humans, which I believe was elevated by the devices cinema has to offer in terms of creating suspense, deep anxiety and complete immersion.
It’s funny that this film is shot like a horror, yet there’s no serial killers, or ghosts, or monsters, just reality, human fears and human heartbreak, and a very old apartment with severe health hazards which probably takes away two thirds of your income every month. Stephen Karam is absolutely right, there’s nothing scarier than that.
These movies are actually a lot of fun, I won’t lie. It annoyed me how short each scene was, though, the pacing was so frenetic it barely allowed one thing to register before we were onto the next one. It was a bit too loud and excessive for my taste but the humour is really good.
I don’t know how to put it but I feel at home in this franchise. I didnt really have a Hunger Games phase back when it first was a thing but going back and reading the books and rewatching the movies now has made this universe very personal to me. I love Katniss :two_hearts:
Almodovar has to be one of the best directors at reproducing the anxiety of an identity crisis onto the screen. This movie was more on the “uglier” side of his filmography, in the vibes of “what have i done to deserve this”. it made me feel uneasy as i finished it, and like i needed a breather. the meta storytelling is a really great concept and gael garcia bernal is incredible.
There’s nothing more beautiful in film than a simple story about life’s most important emotions told in the most sincere, stripped back, reflective way, where you can tell each shot was intentional and well thought out and the visuals stunning but still quiet.
Very uninspired third act ruins what was building up to be a rather decent and reflective story with striking visuals to match. The end reduced it to another soulless action flick with a generic bad guy with daddy issues, a himbo and his lady friend who barely gets her time in the sun (literally). Disappointing.
Considering I’m not the biggest fan of sci-fi, this is one of the more interesting films I’ve seen in the genre. It’s a tad bit too slow, and it did take me two turns to finish it, but its themes and hypotheses for the future are really fascinating and food for thought.
My favourite aspect of the film is maybe its conception of a post-racial world, cultural heritage and what it means to grow up in a family composed of people of a different race than yours. It’s not the film’s most futuristic theme, but its approach and “solution” to it, is. Otherwise, the themes of human (dis)connection, relationship with tech, and the humanising of tech are all very interesting and super pertinent.
Kogonada’s directing is marvellous and intentional. I especially liked the way he cinematically translates the process of “remembering”. Beautiful and poignant visuals throughout with a minimalistic score that compliments them perfectly.
A Hitchcock film was the last place where I would think to find such a hard-hitting reflection and exercise on the toxicity of the male gaze and men’s deep rooted and perverted need to control and mold women to their liking. A quick search on Hitchcock’s intentions with this film shows that he himself is most likely aware of his own perverse way of perceiving and fetishising specific women. I don’t know if that makes him more or less likeable as a man, but it certainly makes him even more fascinating as an artist.
Just heartbreaking. Somber and dark, but necessary.
This was very dramatised and often sensationalist but there were some incredibly hard-hitting gritty scenes that spoke for the film’s core as a commentary on oppressive regimes. Definitely worth the watch and Song Kang-Ho has to be one of the greatest actors living today.
There is definitely some worth in this investigation and it would be hypocritical of me to be bothered by its voyeuristic nature when I’ve watched so many other true crime documentaries before (with the major difference being that Marilyn was famous and those other subjects weren’t).
However, I don’t think this film did justice to Marilyn. It was wildly reductive in the way they portrayed as a person - as fetishised and pitied as she’s always been by the public. There were tidbits that clearly showed that she was much more than the tortured sex symbol and that’s an alternative take on Marilyn that I would love to see further explored.
Deliciously entertaining, marvellously acted, surprisingly self-aware and just so so funny and wonderful. Oh and those outfits…… my god! I’m so happy I watched this!
I watched this movie in bits and intercalated it with Netflix’s Heartstopper and it really is heartwarming to see the progress that’s been made regarding queer rep for children and/or young teens. Growing up, I had access to queer media but most felt illegal for me to be watching because of how often violent and pornographic it could get. Yet, it was either that or Glee which well… Did the best it could at its time and I’ll be forever thankful. But Crush and Heartstopper are by far a much welcomed upgrade and even though I sadly didn’t have them during my teens, I’m so happy people do now.
This was… interesting. I felt like it missed the mark a couple of times, even though the premise was widely promising and engaging. It had me hooked for sure, from start to finish, which is a feat for 3 hour long films, but I felt myself cringe more times that I hoped for. At first, I thought the humour was a nice touch, but then it just turned strange - I mean the jamaican accent? what the hell was that?
Anyway, Anthony Hopkins was my favourite part about it, even if I couldn’t take my eyes off Claire Forlani. Brad Pitt was only okay, but that is more down to the way the character was written than his acting per se (the peanut butter bit was my favourite and I thought he was really cute with it. I also loved “Joe” and Susan’s meet-cute at the café and wish we had had more of them like that).
All in all, definitely happy I watched this. It added to my day, not the other way around.
This film to me is more of an exercise on the ethical limits of documentary filmmaking than anything else.
Is it a fantastic, piercing, impactful piece of cinema? Absolutely.
Is it technically original and attempts to bring something new (or at least less overly done) to the table? Also true.
What is its message? One gets the sense that it is criticising its subject matter, mostly because it takes the perspective of the cow. But in reality, its objective observational style of filmmaking is mostly non-dogmatic, and each will take from it what best aligns with what they already mostly believed in before watching it. That is - animals lovers will think the film uncovers the dairy industry’s horrors; radical animal rights activists will revolt at the filmmaker’s inertia and lack of intervention to save the cow it follows; spectators which are neutral to the cause will mostly assume a “it is what it is” stance; and of course, anti-vegans won’t see anything wrong with what is shown (after all, look -they’re even letting the cows roam free for a little bit!).
If you’re a film fan or scholar you can have any of the above opinions on the subject matter, but you will also leave Cow with additional intelectual contemplation on what exactly the role of a documentarian is supposed to be. Is it okay for the director not to intervene for the sake of objective/neutral filmmaking or is it exploitive and self-serving to :asterisk_symbol:spoiler:asterisk_symbol: just stand by and do nothing as you watch a cow get shot in the head in the name of art?
My mum is a huge Murakami fan so rewatching this with her felt super special. I’ve only read one of his books (fastest read of my life, finished it in three days), but if this film is anything to go by I can’t wait to dive into Murakami’s world.
Drive My Car has everything I love in a story, it’s incredibly introspective, character-driven, layered and riddled with double meaning and metaphor. It’s slow paced and the action is minimal, so some could argue it works better as a book, but some of the visual motifs and signs throughout almost make it feel like it was always meant to be a film. Striking cinematography and subliminal acting and directing. The length is very demanding of the spectator but once you’ve finished, you understand that difficult emotions need time and care to be properly tackled. And, besides, rushing these actors would be an absolute crime - their growing performances with each minute are a treat to experience.
you can’t make the villain team a bunch of hotties and then expect me to root for two no-lipped white dudes EVEN if one of them is Tom Holland.
((also merging mediterranean coastlines with asian coastlines and expecting us to think they’re from the same location… that was dumb :woman_facepalming: ))
((also the mispronunciation of Magalhães sent every time))
I love when contemporary movies bring back classical storytelling, reinventing it to fit current themes, in this case fascism. The ending really sold this movie for me - a esperança é a última a morrer.
This is an incredibly hard film to review, simply because it truly puts into perspective just how useless any criticism against it is. The point of this movie is not to be a cinematic masterpiece, but to shock. And shock it does.
It succeeds for almost the entirety of its runtime in showing, through the use of non-professional actors and a social-realism directing style, the hardest truths about our rotten world. It fails, however, in the target it directs its social commentary at, often feeling indecisive or lost regarding what message it is trying to convey.
Labaki’s premise was the exploration of the lack of value a child’s life has in an environment like the one her film portrays, which does ultimately come through in the final product.
Despite a shaky finish where most of its faults are exposed, the large majority of the film is of mandatory viewing. In the end, reviewing it is meaningless because most of us will not be fit to judge it in the slightest, and could come off as unbearably out-of-touch if we try.
This was too normal for a Studio Ghibli film. It was beautiful and had an important message just like they all do, but it fell somewhat flat for me, personally. Still, it was great to watch a biopic in the animated format, it’s not a very common pursuit.
Genetics and blood relation are a wonderful, creepy thing. We are our parents just as they are us. Their story is our story, and any story we create is a continuation of theirs. Céline Sciamma’s Petite Maman is a time capsule film that weaves past and present together as if they were concurrent, which ultimately they are.
Film’s ability to warp linear time is particularly satisfying because it comes closer to representing how humans experience time in real life than any other medium can.
Sciamma does a great job at capturing that singular childhood experience of really seeing your mother for the first time, when you realise she had an entire life before you, that she is more than just a mother but a person and a child too. Nelly pictures her mum’s life at her age, and her relationship with her own mother, which allows her to better understand and empathise with the pain her mother is going through in the present.
The house (full and empty) and the woods as the bridge between the two add a powerful symbolism for the experience of growing up.
Beautiful!
