In Captain Marvel, I didn’t like the main character, but I thought the movie around her was quite solid.
Black Widow is the exact opposite: I quite liked the two leads, but the movie surrounding them doesn’t really work.
Pros:
- Scarlett Johansson and Florence Pugh are easily the most entertaining part of the film.
- I liked the first act. It feels like Cate Shortland is trying to do an impression of a Jason Bourne movie. It’s fairly humourless, the cinematography is bleak, and the score is intense. It has a tone that no other MCU film has.
- The action (minus the final battle) is fairly well done. As per usual, less editing would’ve made it better, but at least it feels weighty.
Cons:
- The story itself isn’t that interesting. The themes and main mcguffin are oddly similar to Captain Marvel, though it’s not executed as well. The villains also fail to make an impression.
- This movie really loses its identity as it goes along, to the point where it turns more into a generic Marvel movie as it goes on, and eventually a generic action blockbuster by the third act. Everything gets way too big and bloated for its own good.
- Not a fan of the Russian accents, they sound very tacky. Just let everyone speak with a normal American accent, I can look past the fact they’re Russians. Besides, they even had a story based reason to ditch the Russian accents entirely.
- I found David Harbour quite cringeworthy in this.
- The main characters are protected by strong plot armour. Most characters should’ve been killed 3-4 times based on the things that happen during the action scenes. This isn’t even a ‘suspend your disbelief, it’s an action movie’ situation, it gets really ridiculous, to the point where it’s almost Fast and Furious level.
- The pacing is a bit inconsistent, you really feel it slowing down during the second act.
Finally, I want to address that I already find the use of Nirvana songs in movies like these quite distasteful, but the cover that's used during the credits literally sucked all the life out of the song.
4.5/10
Queen & Slim is a road movie that takes its sweet time to get where it's going but that's fine because the time is sweet and if the film wasn't in a hurry, neither was I.
Sure there were some scenes that tried too hard to be poetic and some speeches that reached far too much for meaning and these would've been better left on the cutting room floor. But in the end what mattered is that they did try, and the desire with which they strived is what gives the film its poetry and makes the movie meaningful.
One of the more beautiful aspects of Queen & Slim is that it is very much pro-black without being anti-white, anti-male or even anti-cop. They should've called it Black Book because it's the film Green Book liked to think it was, or African American Honey because its imagery of the sprawling expanse of the United States of Black America made this film the treasure it is.
As for the occasional missteps, the gorgeous soundtrack glosses over the flaws and helps deliver a film of rare raw and polish. I just hope the white privilege (myself included) filling the Parisian cinema I was at heard the message this movie was making.
As I'm reading J. Hoberman's "An Army of Phantoms", it's quite fascinating to see persons that are subject in the book be beatured on the big screen. Albeit a bit fictionalized, it takes place before the events in the book. Back in the day, politics shaped movies way more than they do now. (Although there are examples of this happening to appease certain nations in the world.) Propaganda in movies to shape the public's mind is something only Herman J. Mankiewicz frowns upon in Mank.
It took me longer to watch because I had to keep consulting Google and IMDB for the period correct mentions of events and persons. I left the movie not only better informed about how Citizen Kane came to be written, the impression I now have of the people involved helps me to humanize them. They're no longer just names on a page for me. The magic of the movies.
One has to mention the thorough effort to establish the particular sense of nostalgia for the 80-year old setting. They way it is filmed brings forth the unmitigated sense that this is a passion project. David Fincher did not hold back turning this era-defining story into this skillful product, although I do feel sorry for the actors having to go through multiple takes to reach his defenition of perfection. (Stanley Kubrick-flashbacks anyone?).
However, that leaves us with a picture that has accomplished acting, remeniscant of old Hollywood that is neither glamorous nor dismissive. If you love movies, this is a perfect addition to your "Must Watch"-list.
You could say Mother is not just a murder mystery, but a tragedy mystery, and the way all the character beats and broken pieces of their circumstances come together in the third act is just flawless. It's the other side of the coin for Memories of Murder, deconstructing the assumption that the protagonist in a movie is always Where that film tackled the flawed reality of the police from their brutal methods to their leaps of logic that are just sensible enough to feel intrinsically right in a crime film, this one tackles the vigilante fantasy, of fighting for your loved ones when no one else would, and the assumption that this automatically makes you right, whether logically or morally. It's an intersection of two separate but equally potent tragedies, and ho2 the circumstances of the neglected, abused and marginalized of society can end up harming each other instead of the situations that led them there. Kim Hye-ja holds your attention from the first moment she's on screen and never lets go of it, and together with an exemplary script and some fantastic directing and cinematography (especially the ending, that combines all of these elements into a perfect crescendo), Mother is another outstanding example of Bong Joon-ho's work.
Been occasionally watching this masterpiece since adolescence, each time getting a different impression. Hence, I'll develop clearer on my last one. I consider this movie to represent the tensions in society regarding how crime and societal response should work (and who's responsible for this, with the appearance of symbolic figures as the State, the Church, intellectuals, family), as much for punishment or rehabilitation. Whether a criminal could be rehabilitated, whether society would actually and eventually accept and trust the rehabilitated criminal, re-integrate him after succeeding in his "treatment", and the ethical limits of such a treatment.
First time I watched this movie, I interpreted the Ludovico technique as a dystopian element to precisely make satire to criticize the rehabilitation through personal meaning and choice the jail priest argued for (I'm agnostic). In other words, society gave up trust in rehabilitation through moral development of the individual and overpassed his will through psychological conditioning.
Yet now I consider this technique in a more neutral light, as the utilitarian solution showing itself as more optimal than the moral-ingraing one. This in light of considering poor real life rehabilitation results for the second, which I'd adjudicate in real life not only to individual but social circumstances. Oddly enough, I sensed the movie shows how society rejected the individual in spite of his scientific rehabilitation.
In summary, this movie made me reflect on the diverse set of beliefs regarding crime as a phenomenon tensioned between a deterministic cynicism on human moral development, and a free will idealistic notion that people can rectify themselves by choice. I personally consider a criminal results from the complex interaction of both ends, and in spite of humanity being nowadays particularly close to impressive capacity of societal moral order and control through technology and cultural evolution, we're still by no means attacking the root but the symptoms of crime, which I still advocate for.
Studio Ghibli gets serious in this romanticized take on avionic design at the dawn of the second world war. Engineering might seem a strange subject for animation, and at times it is, but in typical fashion the studio delights in writing their own rules and somehow coming out ahead.
In the same way that recent big-budget live action cinema has been trying to draw inspiration from animation's more fantastical elements, it seems that The Wind Rises borrows its mundane, grounding elements from reality. Detail has always been a calling card for Miyazaki's efforts, and here the old master has again outdone himself. The screen is flooded with life, with even the least remarkable background extra, almost-inanimate object, or stunning, towering cloudscape enjoying an unusual amount of motion and character - notes clearly taken from live action.
There's no shortage of the studio's usual breathtaking flights of fancy and wonder, either, but now they're tempered by that basis in reality. And, in a way, that makes them even more special. Dreams intertwine with lucidity so casually, it's tough to identify the moments of transition. The plot is less rigid than one might expect, too, strolling along at its own pace and lazily floating from one decade to the next. That makes it less gripping than the standard Ghibli effort, but we're invested in different ways.
Gorgeous, poetic, relaxing, inspiring, warm and funny and bittersweet; it's not at all what I expected, and no competition for Totoro or Mononoke or Spirited Away, but it's not trying to be.
"They will never let a black man be Captain America".
The scene between Isaiah Bradley and Sam Wilson is quite possibly one of the MCU's best scenes they've ever done, and an easy contender for one of the best scenes in any superhero property. It hits hard in a way that's timely considering events over the past couple of years, and even then the words he says ring uncomfortably true. Things HAVEN'T changed and that's the saddening thing about it all. So it's all the more inspiring when Sam does go to take up the mantle once and for all, albeit probably under different circumstances.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg here in terms of the good stuff. John Walker is a hell of a villain, and the opening fight is brutal, bloody, and one of Marvel's most raw fistfights in terms of pure visceral action, and it's fantastic. Bucky's development reaches a new direction with the idea that he is more then simply a vessel for killing, and his talk with Sam showcases Stan and Mackie's great chemistry. And of course, in a surprise role, Julia Louis-Dreyfus steals her scene with ease - though considering her talents that was to be expected. The best episode of the show yet, and with one more left to go I'm excited to see how they stick the landing here.
I will tell the truth: if I had not known that the story of the two main characters is taken (partly) by the story of Pawlikowski's parents (in fact the movie is dedicated to them), I would have been slightly disappointed. But knowing that, everything appears to me in a different light. It is clear from the outset that the director does a little construction of the characters: it is as if he knew them too well and had no interest in forcing descriptions and dialogues and in highlighting their personalities. This leads the viewer to witness a story of unconvincing love: platonic, but often fleeting; strong, but fragile. But there's simply no time to become attached to the two. And one can also see this in the film's duration of only 80 minutes. Passion is not an easy feeling to cultivate, and distance is a double-edged sword.
The strength of this movie is the tenderness of this love story: mystical, silky, ordered even if impossible. To lose oneself, to find oneself again, to lose oneself again and find oneself again: it's the circle of love.
The black and white technique contributes to weave the plot. One thing however needs to be noticed more than the B&W: the editing is just stunning. There are some black frames just perfectly included between two sequences, also with the sounds, giving the impression that the earliest sequence is not over yet, but it is. The moments of silence of this movie are among the best you can find in contemporary cinema.
Stalinist Poland is a background that adds mystery and difficulty, but comes out in the end in all its cruelty when the male protagonist (a pianist) is sentenced to fifteen years of forced labor that forever destroy his hands, forcing him to not play ever again (music is a strong part of the movie: Wiktor is a pianist and a composer, Zula is a wonderful singer and dancer, and they met the first time during an artistic audition).
In the end, their love is crowned, but in the only possible way: fleeing from the world and rising. The last seconds show a field crossed by the wind, a force of nature, nature that constantly fights against entropy, like the two characters.
7/10
9.5/10. There are times when I feel jaded as a viewer. When it seems like despite the breadth of films out there, that I know most of the tricks, to where while I can appreciate a film's achievements in sort of a detached way, when I can even be engaged and invested in something, it doesn't necessarily reach me in the way that movies did when I first started watching them. The scope of appreciation has widened, but the emotional resonance feels muted, because I can't help but see the strings.
And then a film like Room comes along.
And Jack sees the expanse of sky for the first time. And Joy hugs her parents after not seeing them for seven years. And Robert can't even look at his grandson. And Nancy tells her daughter that she's not the only one whose life was destroyed. And Joy tells her mother that if she hadn't been taught to be nice, she might never have gone with Nick. And there's a supreme, heartbreaking look of guilt on her face when a reporter asks if she should have given her son up while in captivity. And Jack walks in on his mother's suicide attempt. And Nancy hears her grandson say "I love you." And Jack sees a real live dog, and makes a real live friend, and cuts his hair to give his mother his strength.
And I wince and I laugh and I cry and I gasp at this beautiful, devastating, intimate, life-affirming film. This is why we make movies. I love popcorn films, with the fights and flashes and epic feel, and I love the big dramas, with their scope and their sense of grandness and the talent on display, and I love those classic film comedies that mix the absurd and the irreverent and the memorable into a single hilarious package. But the films like Room simultaneously so small and so personal, yet so powerful and affecting, have a special place. These are, as Robert Ebert once put it, the empathy machine that is film working at peak efficiency, taking us into the lives of people who have suffered and been unfathomably wronged, and carries us with them as they carve out a way forward.
I didn't know I wanted a film that feels like a cross between Oldboy, Life Is Beautiful, and Boyhood, and yet the elements Room shares with each--the sense of isolation, the loving way in which a parent tries to distract their child from a continuing tragedy, the slice-of-life, impressionistic depiction of a young boy's innocence--come together to form something absolutely tremendous.
That last facet of the film, the fact that it filters the entire experience through young Jack's eyes, is a stroke of brilliance. There's a matter of factness, a certain directness or even blitheness to the way children experience the world. Using Jack as the lens through which Room tells its story renders those events not only realer, but plainer, imbuing them with the unvarnished perception of childhood. The way the film is able to get into Jack's head, to allow the audience to view these horrors and steps to recovery through his eyes, is its greatest strength and most impressive achievement.
By the same token, Brie Larson as Joy deserves all the accolades she's received for her performance here. While still a prisoner, she carries herself with such an air of both utter resignation and quiet resolve, someone who's been beaten into submission but carries on with whatever she has left. And once she returns home, the guilt that consumes her, the anger that she has for the world that kept turning without her, are palpable in every moment without fading into overwroughtness.
The film can essentially be divided into those two halves. The first is the story of Jack and Joy in Room, of the way that Joy makes unbearable circumstances livable for her son, the way that she copes and shields Jack from the horror around him, and how Jack strains and struggles to understand the idea of the world beyond those four walls, to where he can, eventually, help the two of them escape. The second half is far less intense, but still endlessly intriguing and affecting. It's a quiet domestic story about how people recover from that sort of trauma, both Joy who feels the opposite of survivor's guilt and second guesses herself, and Jack who is exposed to a big scary world, the depth and breadth of which is entirely alien to him.
But throughout both halves, there is such a pure emotional truth in each moment, from the simple joys that Jack enjoys within the home he doesn't realize is a prison, to his anger and resistance at having that fantasy shattered, to Joy's dispirited but resolute attempts to keep him happy and healthy, to the realistic, painful difficulties parents and children face when rebuilding a family seven years after a tragedy, to the wonder and fear a small boy has for what lies beyond the garden gate, and the unmitigated joy at every step taken toward some cobbled-together normalcy. Room is a beautiful, heart-wrenching, intensely personal film, that takes an unflinching yet uplifting look at how people cope and come back from the worst that our world has to offer.
[7.9/10] It’s hard to think of a film more timely than The Trial of the Chicago 7. The film covers the legal definition of the incitement of a riot, internecine conflicts within movements and communities that pit pragmatism against principle, the threat of police violence especially against people of color, governmental bodies in a time of transition, and the ability of our institutions both legal and cultural to respond to the crises of the moment.
It’s also a piece of slick Hollywood entertainment. Whatever the thorny issues at play in the trial of the eight (eventually, as the title promises, seven) demonstrators at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, this film packages them neatly and digestibly for a popular audience.
That’s not a knock, by the way. If you’ve seen other Awards-friendly historical dramas, particularly ones set in and around a courtroom, then The Trial of the Chicago 7 will look pretty familiar. It dutifully sets up the societal tumult of the 1960s, dramatizes the conflicts of the time through historical figures made larger than life and impossibly articulate, and finagles plenty of opportunities for camera-ready drama. There’s nothing the movie does that’s especially new.
But what it does, it does well. It’s well-acted, well-written, and all-around well-made. What’s more, it’s funny. Maybe that’s why I’m more willing to cut it a little slack over similarly traditional Oscar movies. As much as The Trial of the Chicago 7 hits the usual beats of adapting a historical event and Making an Important Statement:tm:, it’s not afraid to throw in some levity to help the medicine go down and take itself a little less seriously than it might. That means smart remarks, real life disruptive but humorous antics, and the occasional moment of self-aware absurdity about the whole thing.
That comes with the style of writer-director Aaron Sorkin, of The West Wing and The Social Network fame. The movie carries the strengths and weaknesses and tics of his signature style. The characters all speak in a showy but sharp patter, with lots of back-and-forth, multi-player conversations that allow the writer to pack in plenty of clever jibes, pointed recriminations, and faux-profound statements that sound just good enough to pass muster.
That’s the thing about Sorkin. He’s a deeply cheesy (and sometimes trite) storyteller, but he’s so good at the form, particularly on a scene-to-scene basis, that he makes you forget or ignore that. It’s a hell of a trick, one The Trial of the Chicago Seven uses to full advantage. Sorkin and company assemble a who’s who of talented actors, load them up with witty repartee, and let the film roll merrily along on the strength of those two elements alone.
But the movie also reflects his usual blind spots and favorite tropes as well. For one thing, there’s few female characters in the piece; they have drastically less to do than their male counterparts, and the moments they do get hinge on their sexuality in some way shape or form. It is also, true to Sorkin’s predilections, a movie centered on how taking a moral stand is both the right and effective thing to do, with that stand almost always taking the form of delivering some bit of stirring oratory, occasionally paired with a dramatic gesture.
Again, I’m not knocking the latter part of that. It’s a simplistic view of politics and life, but also crowd-pleasing and easy for audiences to process in a story for cinema. At times, you can see the strings, feeling how history’s bent to serve the needs of the good guys scrapping with one another but coming to appreciate each other’s passions or talent, or the opposing prosecutor turning out to be a man of principle as well just doing his job, or how the racial dimension of all of this is firmly present and yet made to fit familiar narratives. But all of this does the job Sorkin intends to do in crafting an accessible, if didactic, piece of prestige filmmaking.
The resulting film contends, in talk-y splendor, that those protestors were railroaded by a Nixon-appointed Attorney General with a personal axe to grind and a power-tripping judge riddled with bias. It maintains that they were standing up for a just cause and were unfairly antagonized by law enforcement and authority figures writ large. While the main figures dicker about tactics and respectability, the film suggests that their efforts to end the Vietnam War, to effect change and justice and equality in this country, were noble, regardless of polite society’s view of them as little more than an unruly threat culminating in a riot in a Chicago park.
The smartest move Sorkin makes in dramatizing that riot is a structural one. He dances around the key events of the film until it’s time for them to be dramatically experienced in the third act. He jumps between the incipient lead-up and the aftermath of those riots, creating a sense of anticipation for the unseen center of gravity between them. In plenty of scenes, editor Alam Baumgarten cuts between trial testimony and stand-up comedy and flashbacks that help put these events into context and guide the audience through the emotions and intensity of a given sequence.
It’s slick filmmaking and screenwriting, adopting a non-linear approach and frame story that let’s Sorkin parcel out the important details of these events when he needs them dramatically. There’s times when this feels like his version of 12 Angry Men, but the stylistic flourishes and cross-cutting story structure give it some additional flair beyond Sorkin’s usual bubbly banter.
That banter is more in favor of revealing character than giving his characters arcs, or otherwise put in service of major players announcing the point rather than letting it arrive organically. But whether through stylistic embellishment or ping-ponging chatter, The Trial of the Chicago 7 holds your attention throughout, provides plenty of actors their Oscar reels, and imparts its message of mutual understanding, righteous causes, and injustice allowed to reign.
The timing of it is fortuitous, but the slick presentation is deliberate. It’s the latter that’s likely to land the film plenty of awards attention, but the latter that’s going to give the film value once this moment of extreme salience has passed. I don’t know how close Sorkin’s film hews to history; I suspect not terribly closely. I don’t know how faithful or deep his morals are here; I suspect not very. But I do know how, taken solely as a piece of filmmaking, The Trial of the Chicago 7 hits its marks better than the usual Awards season historical drama, and that’s worth recognizing too.
