Sorry folks but this one didn't go well for Marvel. I don't even know where to start. Acting was average, more like below average. Screenplay was as much ordinary as it could be. No surprise here. CGI was OK but it's somehow expected from Marvel. But I totally didn't like the idea of Wakanda. Hidden city in the center of Africa with tons of technology and advanced weapons and systems and so on. But how the hell did they build all of that? No explanation. It just happened. Yes, they have Vibranium, but they don't sell it. In fact they never did and for whole world they are just a bunch of shepherds and farmers. So where did they take all that money to build empire like this? I don't like movies without explanations and this is one of them. Almost nothing has been told about Vibranium whatsoever. Oh yeah, it's some super thing from the universe capable of anything. That's all the explanation you get. There are too many clichés we have already seen too many times. And we have to see them again. One example: I challenge someone for a fight because I want to kill him. And when I have the chance to kill him, what would I do? Kill him or throw him down from the cliff to the water where he can survive? But enough. If you hesitate if to watch this, I can recommend not to waste your time. Wait for the Avangers where you can also see the Black Panther. You won't miss anything if you miss out this movie.
Going into this episode, I thought there was no way it would be satisfying. Turns out Teen Wolf still had one last trick left up its sleeve. I'm actually emotional. Stiles and Derek coming back made it feel like the good old days. There were some genuinely funny moments here thanks to them. I also liked the way this episode was framed as a story that Scott was telling Alec. That was an interesting choice. And Gerard finally got what he deserved, from his own daughter no less. I loved Kate way back when she was Allison's cool aunt, then kind of hated her, now I once again like her for tearing that old asshole to shreds. And Jennifer! I shipped her and Derek so fucking hard in season 3. Before she turned out to be a disgusting old hag, that is. Also, Scott and Malia were CUTE. And that last shot of the pack walking together felt like the perfect ending. Overall, much better than I expected.
Of course, it had its flaws as well: The Anuk-Ite was defeated way too quickly (although I half-expected them to kill it with a fucking mirror, so props to them for, you know, not doing that). And Monroe didn't die, which is a sin. But then again, I kind of like the implication that there are still more battles to fight and that our characters still have a mission that will last beyond the show.
To sum up: as far as series finales go, this wasn't half bad. It was the right moment for Teen Wolf to end. My memories of this show will be pretty good. Sure, they dropped characters like hot potatoes without explanation (anyone remember Isaac? Danny? Cora?), some storylines were weak, the lighting got progressively worse over the years (daylight? What is daylight?), season 4 was mostly forgettable, season 5 was messy as fuck (it seemed to me like they were trying to be super clever and dark and whatnot, but the final product was just incomprehensible and unsatisfying), season 6B was rushed and introduced a plethora of one-dimensional characters no one asked for that took the focus away from our pack. But even those seasons had their moments and for the most part, this show was entertaining with some good humor, suspense, action, a healthy dose of teenage romance and The Feels™, and a lovely cast of talented people whom I wish all the best and hope to see in new successful projects soon.
P.S. To the people who keep complaining about That Gay Shit™: this might be a shock to you, but gay people aren't something Hollywood made up. Gay people are real. We exist, we live our lives, fall in love, pay taxes, buy groceries, watch TV. If two guys kissing offends you so much, just skip the scene. No one's forcing you to watch. But somewhere out there is a teenage boy who will see Mason and Corey or Jackson and Ethan, and he will be thrilled. He will feel validated, he will know that there's nothing wrong with him, that he can have a happy life, no matter what his conservative Christian parents say. Those characters are for him, not for you. Don't worry, you'll still have your bajillion straight male leads. No one's taking them away from you.
I've had an amazing experience watching the movie premiere in Venice, I've been waiting for this movie for a long time and I was not disappointed in the slightest.
It's a gorgeous movie, it's disturbing but moving at the same time, violent at times, but also subtle. It's a different and fresh spin on the character and on the cinecomic genre as a whole and Phoenix delivers an amazing performance portraying a version of the Joker we've never seen before, he's not the villain of someone else's story, he is the hero and villain of HIS own story, and the audience can be orrified by him, but we can't help but feel for him at times.
Without giving anything away I would recommend to go and see the movie not expecting to go and see an action packed, but gritty cinecomic, I suggest going in and watch it pretending that it's not even about a famous comic villain, but simply a movie, I think that people will appreciate it more in that way, not comparing it to the cinecomics we've seen before, but thinking of it as a normal movie.
P.S.: People will of course compare Phoenix to Ledger, I don't think it's possible, they give a totally different percormance because they portray totally different versions of the character, and I think it's going to be hard to compare them, you either prefere Ledger's version or Phoenix's but only based on the character, the actor's performances cannot be judged by comparison, they're both great. Just enjoy the movie
All in all I enjoyed this show much more than I thought I would. I just started watching it because I was looking for a new show and my expectations were really low. The show is cheesy, a bit over the top and there are quite a few stereotypes, but at the same time it has a certain charm. I'm actually excited for a new season :)
[9.6/10] “Theodicy” is the fancy term for the problem of evil -- why would an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving deity create a world where evil is allowed to exist? It’s one of the fundamental questions that Western theology grapples with, and it raises subsidiary questions that can be just as significant and thorny. Why choose to be good when it seems as though evil is not always punished and good is not always rewarded? What does the goodness or badness of our actions matter in the mind-boggling vastness of the universe and in the incomprehensible length of eons between its beginning and its end?
The Tree of Life addresses these questions head on, but does so through the filter of a young boy trying different moral stances on for size. Terrence Mallick delivers a sumptuous, naturalistic picture, that grounds some of the most pressing and intractable issues in moral philosophy in the day-to-day struggles and growth of a young man coming of age in Waco, Texas. As gorgeous at the cinematography of the film is, what stands out about the film is how it takes such a provincial, prosaic struggle to figure out how to be in the confines of your family and small town, and turns into a universal meditation on the struggle and questioning of what it means to be good.
The film centers on Jack, a prepubescent boy who’s part of a nuclear family and figuring out the way of the world. He has an angel and a devil on his shoulders, each in their own way pushing him to take a particular path. His mother (Jessica Chastain) is a devout woman, full of grace and forgiveness who tells Jack and his two brothers to love everyone. She is a bastion of empathy, one who’s constantly shown taking delight in the joys of her children, in playing with them, teaching them, bringing them through the world. She is the image of radiance, and the beacon that calls her sons to the path of kindness and caring.
On the other side sits Jack’s father (Brad Pitt), a harder man who teaches his sons that the good are taken advantage of. He teaches them strength, discipline, the notion that corners have to be cut, rules broken, spines stiffened in order to get ahead in this world and have a decent life. It would be so easy for Jack’s father to be a pure villain, and he certainly casts a shadow over his children in this film, but The Tree of Life makes things more complicated than that.
It makes Mr. O’Brien someone who feels stepped on by life. He had aspirations to be a great musician that were crushed and never to be realized. He struggles to write patents and secure a financial future for his wife and children and feels the fruits of his labor are stolen by men who shake hands and smile with the judge. He is harsh with his family, taking his frustrations out on them in unfair and unfortunate ways, but the film takes time to make him comprehensible, even as it paints him as a cross to be borne. He loves his children as much as Mrs. O’Brien does, demanding their affection but earnestly wanting it, wanting them to have a better life than he has, trying in so human a fashion to make them better at this race than he is.
In the valley between those two major figures, Jack questions how he should act, what he should be. His father does what he judges to be terrible things, hypocritical things, ungodly things, and yet he seems to exist unscathed and unchallenged. His mother, so kind and so decent and so loving, loses one of her sons when he’s only nineteen, asking her own questions about why an equally loving God would allow such a terrible thing to happen. It’s in this environment that Jack tests his boundaries, that he begins to wonder where the divine is, where justice could lie, in such a world, in such a life.
Mallick and legendary director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki trace the contours of both that world and that life, tying the two together. Unusually for a film so small in scope, The Tree of Life depicts the creation of the universe, the expanse of stars and galaxies stretching across millennia and light years of space. The film puts on a beautiful cosmic ballet, with swirling colors and swooshes of light and form that blur the line between breathtaking spacescapes and Renaissance art.
Lubezki’s camera follows the formation of the universe with the emergence of life on this lonely planet, from primordial ooze to undulating fish to dinosaurs capable of showing mercy and indifference. It’s then that the film follows Jack’s own growth, shown as momentous and lovingly as the creation of the whole world. The image of his little foot in his father’s hands graces the film’s poster, and Mallick uses a light touch as the curious little boy begins to experience the vastness and wonder of the world around him.
By connecting the cosmologically large with the tiniest and most ordinary of human lives, Mallick brings the two in sync, communicating the depth and breadth of the questions Jack is answering in an immense thunderous universe that makes any life, any choices, seem so small and insignificant, and yet metonym for what for those miniscule lives to be a part of so great a whole.
Confronted with the seeming injustice of the world, Jack forswears grace. He stops struggling to be good, to not give into his baser desires. He rebukes his mother; he breaks windows; he’s even cruel to a small amphibian with the misfortune to cross paths with young boys playing. He crosses each line and waits for divine retribution, to find the biblical bulwark for his bad behavior that never seems to come.
But then he pushes further, trying to goad his brother into fights, taunts him into jamming his finger into lamp sockets, and test the limits of his baser impulses. Finally he has his brother put his finger over a B.B. gun, pulls the trigger, and hurts his sibling. It’s then that Jack feels remorse for his actions and reaches a turning point. He seeks forgiveness. He seeks offers himself up as repentance. He understands the existence of other lives and others’ pain and the personal cost of extracting it from innocent people.
The film is opaque about whether Jack finds his connection to the divine again, but he feels the pull of goodness from his simply acts of empathy. From loving his mom, from understanding his dad, from placing a hand on the shoulder of a burned fellow boy whom he recoiled from previously. That is his answer to the problem of evil, to the indifference of the world. There is goodness for goodness sake, whether or not he can feel the imprimatur of God, and Jack embraces it.
He grows up to be a man in a great glass tower (Sean Penn), seemingly the success his father wanted him to be, but again feels the pull of that. The film contrasts the constructed beauty of downtown Dallas with the gorgeous naturalism of the countryside. Trees grow, outside the O’Brien home to mark the time from the children’s youth to their adulthood, in the spaces between the concrete in the city, serving as a reminder of where Jack came from. Even in this tamed world, there is life that pokes through, that cannot be repressed or forgotten.
The film’s end is impressionistic, but it suggests Heaven, it suggests reward, that for all Jack’s uncertainty and the doubt his parents express over the course of the film, they and all whom they love are to be reunited. Whether it’s meant to be real or just in Jack’s head or some combination of the two, there is catharsis in all this wondering, all this doubting, all this struggle leading to a place of reunion and love. Whatever they flaws and falters, Jack feels that, receives that, the chance to renew his affections with the people he cares about. It’s a powerful finish to a powerful film.
There is next-to-no exposition in The Tree of Life. There is barely a plot, more a series of moments built around a theme, piece of this life sewn together to make a greater whole. It is not a movie in the way we think of movies, depicting the beginning of time before delving into the mundane but meaningful lives of its subjects and drifting back again into the majesty of the great unknown and beyond. But that is also its source of power, creating something affecting and visceral from the truth of it, whether that truth emerges from the sweep of the cosmos or the embrace between mother and child. It is an everything movie, one that reaches from the beginning to the end, that speaks about one thing and yet speaks to all things. It is beauty. It is grace. Captured on celluloid, but transcending the mores of form and convention and the grammar of film, it is life.
The one 16 year old girl says she's supposed to be "this great detective", the other 16 year old girl buys a bar and trades it for a diner and the third 16 year old gets crowned king of the Serpents. I don't think the writers even remember their ages at this point.
I'm not happy with the way this whole Black Hood season ended. It really feels like the writers had no idea who they wanted to put under the hood and halfway through the season they heard the theory of Hal being the Black Hood and they decided to roll with it like two episodes before the finale. For once there are no subtle hints for it to be him before episode 20 and on the other hand the whole reasoning and execution at the end felt hollow and cheap, especially the part about THE DARKNESS™. I thought at least one of the adults would finally address this as mental illness, but nope. Don't think we'll ever get to see any of them in therapy either.
Three things that I'm curious about - Chic, Alice's dead son and Polly.
Chic just disappeared and we still don't know anything. Was there even a point to begin with? I thought his creepiness would be relevant somehow, but nothing happened. I'm wondering if he'll come back next season.
Then there's Alice's dead son. I was actually thinking he's not dead because we really didn't get to see anything about him. It felt really tragic to know that Alice saw him and closed the door in his face, but I thought it would connect more with the overall story or with Chic.
And then there's Polly who definitely had something going on. I wonder if we know this mysterious guy who helped her or if her mother will get dragged into a weird cult. And I actually find this much more interesting than the cliffhanger that Archie is arrested (I was sure there would be some bloodshed after Jug's weird announcement) and Hiram is still planning to deal drugs on the New Southside. I was actually hoping for him to leave Riverdale or go to prison at the end of the season, but apparently his cheap mobster story will continue.
And even after all these complaints every week I'm still excited to watch new episodes and do enjoy it. It's over the top and crazy but at the same time I find it so entertaining :D
