What a sad movie.
No one captures vibes like Sofia Coppola.
Really wanted to enjoy this, found it very boring
I felt so many things watching this. It's stunning, it's twisted, it's weird, it's hot. One thing's for sure, it'll be on my mind for quite some time.
3 Thoughts After Watching ‘The Little Mermaid’:
Halle Bailey IS Ariel. She was absolute perfection. From voice to vibe, she captured her essence impeccably. I believe a star has officially been born.
Melissa McCarthy had veryyy gargantuan tentacles to fill. And I think Pat Carroll would’ve been incredibly pleased with what she did with her sea witch.
I thought they built upon the original film’s story in all the right ways. Fleshing it out to make a little more sense. Providing more substance. While not everything was picture perfect, it worked and gave fresh magic to a beloved story.
Bonus Thought: I thought it was a fantastic movie to look at, especially under the sea. Gorgeous colors and visuals. Eye candy all around. And that includes Jonah Hauer-King. :pound_symbol:snack
A movie meant to be fun and silly. It achieves the goal perfectly, an excellent option for when you just want to enjoy something without thinking.
Heard of the 80/20 rule? Okay, let's park that til later then...
Julia Roberts was as big a female star as we'd seen back in 1997. That was her decade. From Pretty Woman to Notting Hill, she was the world's sweetheart. She had some stickers along the way but nobody held them against her. She was untouchable.
The best evidence of that is this film. She plays an absolutely atrocious bitch in it - yet... it's deemed fine because it's her.
Every decade has an actress who tries to out-do Katharine Hepburn. The sparkle of Bringing Up Baby is what the editor of this film is looking to capture. Roberts is gorgeous in that girl-next-door-with-a-million-watt-smile way. And Dermot Mulroney provides that handsome but dumb male lead that all good rom-coms cast.
The problem watching 20 years after the fact is that the character Julia Roberts plays is a grade A bitch. First round draft pick bitch. And it's impossible to forgive her for her actions.she spends 80% of the running time being atrocious and the final 20% is spent accepting her actions and allowing redemption - with completely out of character reactions to her terrible deeds. Believability = zero.
The film has some positive points - a crowd pleasing rendition of Say A Little Prayer (one of life's perfect songs). And the standout high point of the movie by a clear margin, Rupert Everett's portrayal. The saving grace of this film without question.
At its release I loved this film for its witty take on a romcom. Watching now is a tough task.
6/10
I'll start off by saying that I did enjoy this movie, and I'm satisfied with the experience it gave me.
Other than that, I'm a little disappointed in the way the story is told.
the first half of the movie is extremely confusing. The pacing is so fast, it felt like watching the trailer of the movie instead of the actual picture. It was such a bizarre experience, I really was wondering why was it going so incredibly fast, it was super hard to keep up and grasp all the info since I didn't actually know Elvis's story at all before this movie.
Also, the scene where he is walking on the street and Doja cat starts playing, no. Just no. It doesn't mix AT ALL with the rest of the movie, it's so out of place in my opinion. Thank God it was pretty much the only moment when they went modern with the music, the rest was kept in line with Elvis style.
So, first half of the movie, really confusing, most of the info felt like it was thrown at my face instead of told and the cinematography felt really intrusive.
Second half of the movie? It got better, because they actually took their time, focusing on less events and giving them their due screen time. Narrating stuff with more calm and detail, the scenes definitely felt more developed and important, the way the first half of the movie should have been told pretty much.
Overall it's a good movie, the story gives a decent look into Elvis.
The actor for Elvis is insane, he looks precisely like him, he acts and moves like him, I've seen videos after the movie and the amount of detail is insane.
It's a worthy experience, but the first half of the movie should really be slowed down A LOT.
Really great performances, but the movie is pretty messy. It genuinely felt like I was watching a movie trailer that was almost 3 hours long.
The movie isn’t completely useless but it is a disappointment. Not having the rights to Bowie’s music is obviously a problem but the main issue is that the film is quite boring. Flynn is okay as the lead but the script doesn’t let him bring the character of Bowie to life. A better movie about the singer will one day be made... I hope... so you can be forgiven for passing this one by.
Starts very well, the way they handle the death of Boseman is very tastefully done (so many well executed emotional beats) and I like the new conflict that they set up, which is a little more grey and intelligent than the usual blockbuster, like the first movie. The new villain is an interesting character, and I quite liked the creativity that went into the design of his powers and world, but for the love of god, never show me those goofy wing boots again. From the second act onwards, the movie starts to get bogged down by the Marvel machine, i.e. the movie slips out of Coogler’s hands. It’s unfortunately forced to function as a backdoor pilot for Disney + shows and used to drive the corporate machine forward, instead of focussing on the development of its own premise and character arcs. The way it rushes through the arcs of Okoye, Shuri and Namor leaves a lot to be desired. Meanwhile, cutting/writing out Riri, Martin Freeman and Julia Louis Dreyfus would improve the overall cohesion and pacing a lot. What doesn’t help either is that the action and visual effects get increasingly worse and worse as the movie goes on, to the point where we again have an ugly third act on our hands, which includes some of the most hideous looking costumes the MCU has ever put out. Moreover, the soundtrack is kinda bland this time around. It’s not like Kendrick et al. were putting out their best material for the first film, but the music here is just so vanilla and forgettable. Finally, I’m not enitrely sure what the script is trying to communicate on a deeper level, besides being a general statement in favour of diplomacy. If it’s meant to be just that, I don’t think this is anywhere as bold as the first movie. Not that it needs that in order to be good, but it’s another layer stripped away from what made the first movie special. What saves the film ultimately is a lot of its craft: the directing, worldbuilding, acting, score, cinematography, costume and set design (underwater world looked great, much better than Aquaman IMO) are all very well handled and stand out in the blockbuster field. It has those strong foundations in place that make it hard to produce a flat out bad Black Panther film, but man does this movie also show that Marvel is its own worst enemy at this point.
5.5/10
.
This was such an "aca-disappointment"!
If you came back for the laughs, the sassy characters, the anti-stereotypes and the music, be prepared to be completely disappointed.
The plot is a mess: you'd think it will actually have anything to do with Pitch Perfect 1 and 2, but it doesn't. Sure, it could be because the Bellas are now graduated working women going near their 30s, but this isn't the reason. The reason is that this movie has very little to do with singing in general, songs (which are now full covers and not cleverly mixed songs) being just a sad garnishment for a plot that doesn't know where the focus should be. Oh, you think the main thing about the movie is a-capella vs instruments? Nope, it isn't. Oh, wait, could it be that this movie is about the Bellas moving on from their a-capella group? Well, it could have been, if only the entire plot wasn't taken over by Fat Amy's evil dad!
Pitch Perfect 3 is full of moments that show the movie is clearly set in an alternate reality where everyone hates a-capella groups (or at least the Bellas), as they are considered worse than a full-instruments band by default. Also what is the point of introducing like three bands that should compete against each other for DJ Khaled's attention (he is considered a good musician in this alt. universe, I know right?!) if you are not gonna show them actually COMPETING?
I'm not trying to say that the whole Fat Amy revealing herself to be the tough daughter of an evil mastermind wasn't funny! It was, and so was that sort of Taken parody fight between Fat Amy and his dad's goons on the yacht, but it felt too much like I was being sidetracked by the main focus (or at least what have should have been) of the movie: the competition!
Oh, and soooo many wtf moments and weird dialogues...
A franchise ruined forever and totally not worth watching!
Feel like the material is really too much for a movie, even it's a 2h40 movie. It would be much better suited for a 6 or 8 episodes limited series. Like American Crime Story: Assassination of Versace. But I guess you can't call it American Crime story since it's happened in Italy.
Even it's a long movie, you can feel many places are kinda rushed.
In general, I enjoyed it, the story itself is fascinating, and the cast is amazing. Gaga is on fire, with her many golden lines. My favorite one was when she consoled Paola and asked her staff to get her out of her place right away. :joy: Savage!!! But i'm also quite disappointed the movie didn't include Patrizia's most famous quote "It's better to cry in Rolls Royce than to be happy on a bicycle."
Can somebody go and check on Jared Leto?
His performance in this is so fucking funny to me, I’d be surprised if this isn’t a shoe-in for a Razzie nomination.
Every artistic choice this guy makes has to be the most overblown and ridiculous thing ever, whether that’s in his acting or his music.
I wonder if he’s still capable of delivering a good performance when he doesn’t get to hide behind make-up and eccentricities.
Not to say that the other actors are faring much better, pretty much everybody sounds like they’re doing a parody of an Italian accent, it sounds ridiculous.
Some sound like they’re trying to imitate Mario, it’s that classic “ah, mamma mia, pizzeria” shtick that everyone does when they make fun of Italians.
The only problem is: this isn’t a parody film, and the only actor that seems to get that to some extent is Adam Driver.
You’d assume that most of these conversations were in Italian in real life, so nobody would care if you’d ditch these accents in an English language film, because it isn’t going to be completely realistic anyway.
I just don’t get creative choices like this, especially from a legend like Ridley Scott, who seemed to understand this idea in his last film, which came out only 2 months ago.
As for the film itself, I’d advise anyone to simply pretend that this is meant to be a campy comedy, because it’s not that good as an Oscar drama.
Just watch Succession if this seems intriguing to you.
7.4/10. Batman Returns is a firm step up from the Batman film that precedes it, but it’s also a firm step away from the character’s source material and toward Burton’s ethos and aesthetic. Batman’s no killing code has been scrapped; his enemies’ backstories and personalities have been changed, and major foils are invented for the film out of whole cloth. But at the same time, Burton creates his own imaginative world from these comic book inputs, one that fits with his penchant for collections of oddballs, gothic imagery, and protagonist and antagonists who are equally fractured in their own ways. It produces an enjoyable and original film, albeit one that is more Burton than Batman, and which can’t sustain its unique energy through the third act.
The film’s greatest success is the relationship it portrays between Batman and Catwoman. True to Burton’s style, both Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle carry their own particular damage, and that makes them attracted to each other, in-costume and out. Returns not only has the decency to take the time to write off Vicki Vale from the last film, but does so in a way that dovetails nicely into why Catwoman makes more sense for Batman as a love interest. Bruce describes the problem with his past relationship as stemming from there being “two truths” to him, with those being hard to reconcile. But though Bruce doesn’t know it, Selina is uniquely positioned to understand that, to be able to reconcile the idea of who he is in the boardroom and on the rooftops of Gotham.
So when the two of them make reciprocal excuses to Alfred for why they have to cut their date short, while attempting to smooth things over out of fear of losing someone electrifying, the point is clear -- these two people are insane, each racing off to confront in The Penguin’s maelstrom of terror, but it’s the same type of insanity, one that makes them enemies in one world and inexorably attracted to one another in the other. The film uses the dramatic irony of the audience knowing Bruce and Selina’s alter egos, while the characters do not, to blur those lines nicely.
The peak of this is the charged moment when Bruce and Selina are dancing together at the masquerade ball, and as is appropriate for such a gathering, the masks start to slip. A line of repeated dialogue changes their sharp-edged flirtation to a revelation of who each of them becomes when the sun goes down. The push-and-pull of that, whether Bruce Wayne can have a real life, a real love, apart from his Dark Knight mission, and whether anyone who would love or understand him would be healthy, or whether it would just further fuel his own issues, is a venerable area to explore with the character. For all that Burton departs from the source, his realization of that idea here gives Returns a complexity and a tragedy that warrants inclusion in the pantheon of examinations of The Bat.
Batman Returns is also, somewhat oddly for its genre, a very sexual film. The obvious fulcrum for that quality is Catwoman herself, who slinks around in a skintight outfit, trades innuendos with Batman, and isn’t shy about getting physical in her own feline way. Though Selina Kyle starts out timid and unlucky in love, her trauma and cat-transformation turns her into a confident, powerful, sexual being. It’s hard to tell how much of Catwoman’s persona works as liberation and how much of it is mere titillation, but it’s a distinctive ingredient in the film.
But she’s not alone. Danny Devito’s Penguin is every bit the antithesis to Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman in terms of conventional standards of attractiveness, and yet he too is (at least an attempted) sexual being here. Oswald Cobblepot is a letch, groping supporters, lusting after Catwoman, and turning bitter when his advances are rejected. There’s an undercurrent of sexual desire, even in the comparatively repressed Batman, that’s firmly present throughout.
Even when he’s not making offhand comments about female staffers, Devito’s penguin vamps it up with reckless abandon. Taking a page out of Nicholson’s book from the prior installment of the franchise, Devito goes full ham as the menacing former circus freak, abandoned to the sewers by his parents. There’s a mild tragedy to Penguin, a child of privilege left to neglect by the people who should have cared for him. Despite the loving farewell he receives, there’s little humanity in this version of The Penguin, a character who is instead filled with snarling threats and duplicitous come ons. Occasionally, it’s too much, but for the most part, the performance fits with the outsized world Burton has full control over in this sequel relative to its predecessor.
Penguin is just one of the four main characters of the film who are emblematic of the theme of duality that runs throughout the film. For him, that comes to the fore in his mayoral campaign. The political commentary of Batman Returns is mild and shallow--only stooping so far as to note that politicians may not always be on the up-and-up and that the public can be swayed by propaganda--but it’s in keeping with the motif of the idea that people are different in public than in private.
Penguin is a magnanimous media darling in the papers, but is exposed for being the brutish wretch he truly is, full of resentments and anger at a city he feels is his birthright denied. Max Shreck (Christopher Walken, in his natural habitat) is a generous Gotham magnate when in the public eye, but behind closed doors, he conspires with Penguin and attempts to strongarm the political machine to favor his business interest, even resorting to casual murder when necessary. And both Batman and Catwoman lead double lives, destined to struggle to serve each of them and have some semblance of normalcy in the balance.
All that thematic intrigue, however, falls apart in the third act when Burton, having realized he’s thrown so much into the air, can’t quite figure out how to make everything land properly. Instead, he offers a bizarre climax with rocket-strapped penguins, a thematically appropriate but odd Moses-inspired revenge scheme, all four major characters converging and disappearing at convenient moments, with deaths, fake outs, and explosions that feel straight off the standard Hollywood assembly line. The narrative choices are strange at best, and incoherent at worst, and the whole thing is an unsatisfying capper to a film that otherwise manages to hold the audience’s attention throughout.
It all feels very Burton-y though. The combination of a yuletide setting and a gothic aesthetic would be further realized by Burton and Returns composer Danny Elfman in The Nightmare Before Christmas. The fractured oddities, looking for acceptance or peace in a world that doesn’t quite know what to make of them, is a recurring motif in his work. And even the film’s arch sense of humor, though sometimes cheesy, feels true to his other films. Batman Returns is more of Burton grafting the Batman mythos onto his own sensibilities than the other way around, a choice that both helps and hurts the film, but which makes it unique among superhero movies, offering an off-kilter holiday classic for the mildly deranged child in all of us.
5.7/10. Someday, possibly in the near future, we’re going to get a gritty, documentary-style Batman film about a regular guy who dresses up like a bat and gets into ugly fist fights with criminals. And when that happens, we’ll turn around and laugh at how cheesy and unrealistic the Christopher Nolan Batman films seem now. Today’s cultural sensation is tomorrow’s hokey relic. So it goes.
But until that happens, it behooves us to look at Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman film, which comes off pretty corny and even rudimentary relative to the Dark Knight Trilogy, with some perspective. After the semi-grounded approach to the character in recent years, it seems odd that Burton’s film was praised for its serious approach to the source material. But contemporary critics were comparing it to William Dozer’s Batman ‘66 the overtly comedic, Adam West incarnation of the caped crusader. So while much of what Burton does in Batman feels broader and even goofier than the bat-stories people think of today, it’s important to keep it in the context of the wide spectrum of portrayals of the character and his world, whether on the page or the screen, that have taken place over the last eighty years.
Even with that thought in mind when approaching the film, it’s hard to reconcile it with the gut response to a film made almost three decades ago under very different standards and expectations for superhero films and blockbusters in general.
Some of what dates the film is easily forgivable. The effects are not up to today’s standards – CGI or no – with models or miniatures standing out fairly clearly, and even details as minor as Batman’s costume contribute to the “just playing dress up” vibe. Between the two-piece cowl, or the curtain drapery bit the Dark Knight does with his cape in an attempt to create an intimidating silhouette for the criminals he’s attacking, the entire enterprise feels chintzier than the polished (even overly polished) visuals of today.
And yet, that contributes to the feel of the film. If there’s one thing about the film that feels both entirely appropriate to the source material and yet also makes it harder for a modern day viewer to connect with the film, it’s the overall atmosphere of Batman. Burton embraces the cartoony, four-color roots of the genre in the visuals and overall tenor of the film, even when it includes more intense elements like gangland hits and dead parents.
Part of that comes from the film’s setting, which takes place in an interesting amalgam of the 1940s and the then-contemporary Reagan era. Certain elements of the film – like the cops and robbers motif and the production design as a whole place Batman in an old version of New York City that seemed to only exist on the silver screen in the first place. But things like Vicky Vale’s glasses or the breaks in the action for the Joker and his goons to dance to Prince songs, or even the particular energy of the Alexander Knox character, root the picture squarely in the late-eighties. It’s a blend that serves to make the film very specific, timeless, and dated all at once.
The set design contributes to that sense as well. It feels like Burton literally shot a movie with oversized play sets. Everything in Batman feels larger than life. The world of Gotham is a fantasy land, a theme park, that captures the unreality of Batman’s comic roots while also putting it at a remove from the audience. In effect, these choices make Burton’s Batman feels truest to those roots among the various Batman-related films, even as he departs from standard continuity and characterization. Even though Keaton’s Batman doesn’t feel pulled from the pages of Detective Comics, there’s a real sense of Burton taking the toys out of the toy box, moving them around his elegantly constructed play set, with all the bombast and silliness that goes with it.
The problem, then, is that little of it has any weight. Not every superhero movie needs to be a mediation on hope or morality or vigilantism, but Burton’s Batman comes out feeling like empty calories, with really only The Bat himself the only character who offers any sort of inner life. There’s fun to be had here – giant balloons and cartoony gadgets. But it doesn’t quite capture the pure sense of joy or investment that can come up in the lighter Marvel films of recent vintage. Burton’s Batman, instead, feels appropriately enough like a Saturday morning cartoon come to life, with the same commitment to whiz-bang action but also lack of depth.
The irony is that the actual Saturday morning cartoon inspired by Burton’s work on the screen, Batman: The Animated Series distills the character and his world down to a much more coherent and compelling version of the same ideas present here. It’s rare that the characters in Burton’s Batman feel like real people rather than four-color abstractions and broadly-sketched archetypes.
The peak of this is Jack Nicholson’s Joker. There are hints here and there at a unique conception of the Clown Prince of Crime. The most promising of them is the idea of Joker as a conceptual artist whose medium is homicide. It’s appropriately out there for the character, and accounts for the theatrical flair in his capers. But Burton’s Joker has little true motivation in the film beyond some quickly completed revenge. There’s reason to give Burton the benefit of the doubt, and take his Joker as the result of when someone with little empathy or control to begin with goes insane – unpredictable, almost random cruelty – but the bumpers of the film’s exaggerated atmosphere keep that idea from landing with any force.
That leaves Batman with a semi-incoherent antagonist, with a rushed origin story, and only Jack Nicholson’s charisma to save things. Nicholson doesn’t just chew the scenery here; he gnaws on it like a dog with a bone. That leads to some enjoyable line reads (“where does he get those wonderful toys” is still a nicely arch bit from Nicholson) and some amusing dances from the three-time Oscar winner, but mostly leads to the character feeling as though it lacks an anchor or a purpose beyond dutifully moving the conflict along and giving Nicholson the space to do a handful of off-the-wall, unconnected comic sketches. Nicholson’s Joker is over the top, as he should be, but also rudderless and showy, undercutting any menace or threat he’s supposed to pose.
That extends to the film’s biggest break with the source material – making the Joker, as a young Jack Napier, the one who killed Bruce Wayne’s parents. It creates a certain poetry and connects the hero and the villain in the way that so many stories, superhero or otherwise, like to. (See also: the first season of Netflix’s Luke Cage show.) But it doesn’t amount to much, beyond turning Batman from a crusader for justice into a bog-standard seeker of revenge.
It’s a shame because Keaton’s Batman, while hamstrung by some of the movie’s shortcomings, makes for an intriguing version of the character. He doesn’t brood exactly, but he seems quietly tortured nonetheless. It’s a choice keeps Keaton’s Batman from the taciturn glumness that overly dark modern adaptations have taken too far, but still portrays him as a man who doesn’t quite feels comfortable with who or what he is, shutting people out and working through his problems by skulking through the night and protecting other little boys whose parents wander into the wrong alley. Beyond the “wanna get nuts” interlude, it’s a nicely unshowy take on the character that succeeds in ways even the Nolan films struggled with at times.
It also gives the film its only real bit of emotional weight, especially Bruce/Batman’s relationship with Vicky Vale. Kim Basinger’s Vale is a thin, if noble for the time to put a female lead with some oomph into the narrative. She shows some modicum of cleverness and resourcefulness during the film, but still devolves into standard damsel-in-distress tropes that make her feel more like a prop than a vital part of the story. Still, the film never feels more human and real than in the moments when Bruce and Vicky are flirting, or worrying about one another, or shutting each other out. The film goes back and forth, but in their scenes set in and around Wayne Manor in particular, there’s a chemistry there that buoys the film, and gives another layer to Keaton’s performance as his Batman is only willing to let someone so far into his life.
There are other smaller elements that make the film enjoyable. Danny Elfman’s score is, to borrow the title of the film’s aborted sequel, thrillingly triumphant, with an operatic bombast that perfectly matches the tone of the film. On the other side of the coin, Michael Gough brings warmth and kindness to his portrayal of Bruce’s butler and confidant, Alfred Pennyworth, that helps give the movie what little emotional grounding it has. In between is the film’s palette, which is garish and at times even lurid appropriate to the newsprint origins, balancing the darkness of the setting with an exaggerated color scheme.
Still, Burton’s Batman can’t help but feel like a half-measure to the modern eye. Halfway between the tongue-in-cheek cheekiness of Dozier’s Batman ‘66 and the pot-boiling grit of Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy, Burton’s Batman can’t quite manage the balance of weight and whimsy that the animated series he inadvertently spawned nearly perfected. Instead, the film is a muddle of Batman’s sensibilities and Burton’s, presenting yet another one of Burton’s troubled loners, amid the painted cardboard world and cartoony figures, that leave the sense of a fingers-crossed adventure where everyone’s just playacting.
Batman is not quite a lark, not quite a thrill, and not quite an achievement. It’s a curiosity, an evolutionary step for the caped crusader on the silver screen, having not fully shed its previous form, and not yet worked out what the character might be. The film is a toy box come to life, with all the good and all the bad that the description conjures.
My nostalgia wants me to rate this movie higher but I couldn't honestly do it
"Will they kill me, do you think?"
Don't go into 'Spencer' expecting an ordinary little biopic about Princess Diana. Nope, this is a straight up psychological art house horror thriller. 'Spencer' brilliantly captures the feeling of dread in an isolated foreign space surround by strangers. The royal family themselves are freaking creepy, always watching, always judging.
I must be honest, I wasn't a big fan of Kristen Stewart's recent work, as it never wowed me, and I wasn't convinced that she's improved since Twilight. But man, she's fantastic in this movie and it's one of her best performances to date. Stewart manages to portray Princess Diana in a new light that we haven't really seen before. In my opinion, her other movies failed to show her versatility as an actor, where I fully believe this movie did her justice. I'm just glad this movie won me over.
On the other hand, Timothy Spall is excellent in this movie, and another stand out performance. If you are aware of Spall as an actor, then this isn't surprising news, but I feel it needs repeating. I found him very eerie and overbearing. He plays a man with an eagle eye; he watches everything and everyone in the royal family at Sandringham House.
The major thing that this movie made me realise is that in Diana's life it's the people that kept her mentally and emotionally grounded. Her two sons, her assistant (Sally Hawkins, who is very good in the small scenes she has), and the chef played by Sean Harris, who is someone you would not think of being important.
Sean Harris is a very underrated actor that I wished people talked about more. Harris is known for playing sinister roles, but here I thought he was really sweet and shows a softer side. He's got an interesting sounding voice as well. Jack Farthing as Prince Charles does a great job playing a slimy over-privileged **** Stella Gonet as the Queen who I found really unsettling, especially her dagger eyes.
There's one scene at the dinner table with the other royal family that is one of the most intense things ever. It was anxiety level stress that made my heart racing. All thanks to Pablo Larraín claustrophobic and unique directing. Complimented by Johnny Greenwood's atmospheric, free flowing and tense score.
While I know that certain elements of the movie are fiction, but then again, the movie begins with a title card "based on a tragic fable" and I feel like the movie is playing into the nightmarish fair tale of an iconic figure in history. Diana's life in royalty was no fairy tale, but a Brothers Grimm tale.
Overall rating: The movie has metaphors to ghost, ghost of the past, ghost of old tradition. People who follow tradition isn't too kind to rarity. Great movie.
[5.8/10] In the climax of Pirates at the Caribbean: At World’s End, a maelstrom erupts. Ships swirl around one another in the massive vortex. Indistinct combinations of pirates, British soldiers, and assorted mermen leap from one ship to another and cross swords. The combination of rain and cannonfire and whirling destruction makes it nigh-impossible to distinguish friend from foe or hold your bearings amid the supernatural skirmish.
It is an exhausting set piece: cacophonous, muddy, and endlessly busy without ever really finding a clear throughline for the action. Instead, it becomes a torrent of undifferentiated gray goop, flying across the screen with little point or purpose. That is, sadly, a microcosm of the movie itself.
At World’s End does contain good stories and good ideas. Jack Sparrow having a taste of the afterlife and wanting to avoid a repeat engagement at all costs is a good motivation. Will Turner being forced to test his loyalty to his fiancee against his loyalty to his father is a good moral dilemma. Elizabeth Swan seeking revenge for her father’s murder is a good driving impulse. Commodore Norrington trying to earn his redemption after his earlier betrayal is a good character beat. Davy Jones and Calypso as supernatural jilted lovers is a good concept. The fall of piracy and rise of commerce on the open seas is a good animating theme for the picture.
But by god, you just cannot do them all at once or, at the very least, you cannot do them all justice, even in the span of a bloated, nearly three-hour movie. Despite that overextended runtime, and all of that ground to cover, At World’s End still can’t justify its length. For a movie where there is constantly something happening, usually something that’s theoretically important, it is a remarkably boring film.
That’s largely because with so many plots and schemes and shifting alliances, the film still lacks the time or the real estate to really explore any of those ideas in depth, let alone find inventive ways to blend them with one another. Everything has to be done in shorthand. Major plot developments happen in a few quick scenes before it's onto the next thing, leaving each event feeling weightless. There’s plenty of incidents in the movie -- it hardly takes a moment to catch a breath -- but each feels more airy and threadbare than the last.
The one saving grace in the thing is Geoffrey Rush as Captain Barbosa. Liberated from the burden of having to play the villain, he’s free to chew scenery with abandon. As a comic side character an ally, Barbosa is just too much fun, leaning into the pirate speak and faux-grandiosity with aplomb and livening every scene he occupies.
Were that the same could be said for Jack Sparrow. If you thought the character was overexposed after the last movie, just wait until there’s literally a dozen of him on screen at the same time. Depp’s tic-filled performance was a breath of fresh air when the first movie came out, but here he’s a reminder that not all side dishes should be the main course. There’s something to the idea of him being extra mad after his stop in Davy Jones’s Locker, and his anxiety-ridden quest for immortality has some juice, but after nearly eight hours of movie, his act soon starts to grow tiresome.
That’s almost impressive in a movie with far too many characters for any one to really command the screen or the script. Beckett is nominally the film’s big bad and gets an implausible but artsy demise, but it doesn’t mean anything since all he’s done for two movies is spout villain clichés rather than become a full-fledged character. Calypso and Davy Jones’s romance is one of the few compelling romantic angles in these films, but it ends with minimal closure as the former essentially just disappears and the latter dies after about a half-second of crying over her precipitation. Even Will is sidelined for much of the picture, more passenger than driver in the third chapter of what was once a trilogy.
Maybe there would be more time for trifling things like character development if there weren’t so much damn plot and additional lore. While there’s something to be said for engaging in some additional worldbuilding for the age of pirates, halfway through movie #3 is a little late in the day for a historical exposition dump. Who’s secretly in league with whom, and who’s working on a hidden agenda, and who’s about to dramatically change sides leaves the narrative here even more convoluted than the one in Dead Man’s Chest, robbing the story of any force and smothering the movie’s charms in byzantine plot.
Some of this might be more tolerable if the damn thing were just more fun. But no, this is Serious Business:tm: now and must be treated as the epic it’s intended to be. Every once in a while, the irreverence and swashbuckling joie de vivre of the original peaks through (see: the mid-fight marriage), but this is largely a slog. Even the action set pieces, a highlight in Curse of the Black Pearl, are overblown and less-engaging this time around, as the combination of familiarity and overreliance on the usual CGI hodgepodge renders most of the big moments all but inert.
That absolutely extends to the film’s climactic final fight, where every major character is scrambled together in a wash of cutlasses and cannonballs. It’s nigh-impossible to follow the action from moment-to-moment, trace cause and effect, or maintain that type of energy for a half-hour of indiscriminate explosions.
But by god, At World’s End tries, not just in that overdone closing battle, but in the movie as a whole, which succumbs to the same problems on a larger scale. If it could be broken into its constituent parts and provide each with enough time and space to be developed, there’s at least three or four solid flicks that could be wrung from all Gore Verbinski try to pack in here. Instead, we get an ungainly film that loads far too much onto what was once a sleek, zippy ship, until it can do nothing else but sink.
[6.1/10] The glory of the original Pirates of the Caribbean movie is that it took itself just seriously enough, without taking itself too seriously. There was enough action and drama for there to be stakes, but also enough humor and levity to make it a fun romp of a film. It left room for more stories, but it also worked as its own thing, with scenes and motivations that built on one another.
Dead Man’s Chest throws all of that out the porthole. Suddenly, the Pirates franchise now has epic lore involving souped up versions of the antagonists from the last movie, with grave implications for every new development. The humor is reduced to the broadest of shtick and takes a backseat to tedious speechifying about destiny and the “true nature” of this or that character. And the movie is a fifteen-car-pileup of plots and callbacks and character beats, stopping not because the film’s reached any kind of natural endpoint or even intermission, but because that’s just where director Gore Verbinski and his team happened to hit the pause button.
About the only good element that survives from Curse of the Black Pearl into Dead Man’s Chest is the production design and effects. Say what you will about the movie’s contrived reasons for sending our heroes dotting across the map, but it at least finds some scenic locales to shoot them in. Likewise, Davy Jones, while showing a bit of age as an effect, is still a marvel of on-screen wizardry, able to move with weight and have distinctive expressions as he interacts with the flesh and blood characters. His ship shares the same realness and creativity of design, a waterlogged battleship that looks appropriately worn by both time and the sea.
And yet, even there, the visuals are hit or miss. While Jones himself is convincing and Bootstrap Bill has a distinctive look, the rest of the crew of the Flying Dutchmen feature unique designs but dodgy looking CGI realizations. The famed kraken is poorly composited into the live action sequences, making our heroes appear as though they’re fighting a big cartoon character rather than a threatening piece of calamari. What’s more, in places like the waterwheel fight or Jack’s own standoff with the kraken, the green screen effects are painfully obvious, breaking immersion.
All of that could be forgivable, especially for 2006, if trifling things like plot and character and motivation were better than “mildly passable.” In contrast to the thrill-heavy clarity of Curse of the Black Pearl, this sequel is convoluted and overstuffed. Nowhere is that more evident than in how many MacGuffins there are in a single two-and-a-half hour film.
There’s Davy Jones’s heart. Then there’s the chest that holds Davy Jones’s heart. Then there’s the key that opens the chest that holds Davy Jones’s heart. Then there’s the drawing of the key that opens the chest that holds Davy Jones heart. And that’s before you get to the jar of dirt that might hide Davy Jones heart, or the compass that might lead you to Davy Jones’s heart, or the letters of mark that you might be able to bargain for Davy Jones’s heart. This film has no shortage of random, mostly uninteresting objects that various characters are after in various combinations, with only clumsy throughlines for how one leads to another.
That extends to the characters’ wants and goals here. Again, in the original film, each major character had a fairly straightforward but nevertheless strong motivation. Dead Man’s Chest, by contrast, makes an utter hash of it. Beyond just the endless quest for the various MacGuffins, who’s trying to rescue whom or sell off somebody to somebody else, or get back into a random third party’s good graces becomes bewildering at some point.
Even for a bloated, two-movie narrative, there’s just too many characters with too many objectives here. Will Turner wants to save Elizabeth Swann again, except he gets sidetracked with a promise to his dad. Former Commodore Norrington is back despite not really having a place in the story, and is gunning for redemption or at least a chit he can use to regain his former stature. Two new villains, and their seconds, and Will’s dad, and Elizabeth’s dad, and the old pirate crew, and the voodoo priestess, and more familiar faces still each have to get their moment in the sun with jumbled up schemes and wishes. Even Jack, the last film’s agent of chaos, is torn between trying to hold off Davy Jones’s claim on his soul and pursuing Elizabeth himself.
Therein lies arguably the worst element of the film. Depp’s Sparrow was an entertaining side dish in the first movie, but here, after so much fanfare and adoration over his performance, he becomes not only the main course, but a romantic lead. Not only does his shtick wear much thinner when it’s the focus rather than one piece among many, but Verbinski and the writers feel compelled to inject a needless love triangle to ensnare Jack, Elizabeth, and Will, despite it adding nothing to the proceedings.
Needless addition is the unofficial theme of Dead Man’s Chest: more plots, more characters, more power plays, and more overextended (and sometimes shockingly racist) action sequences, which lack the prior film’s thrills and panache. Only the big second act set piece manages to channel the energy that drove Curse of the Black Pearl, including enough wry jokes and swashbuckling fun to keep things light yet exciting. That’s a rare moment though, and even it gives way to the film’s “too much, too quickly” pacing problems eventually.
If that weren’t enough, the film is awash in callbacks to the first film, constantly elbowing the audience in the ribs and trying to see if it remembers the franchise’s earlier, better effort. There’s a Star Wars prequel level of embarrassingly on-the-nose references to the prior movie here, and at least there, the franchise went sixteen years between releases, rather than three, before it started eating its own tail.
The real problem is that the original Pirates of the Caribbean was built to be a breezy, exciting lark of a film, not a franchise-starter. So when Disney and Verbinski try to reverse engineer their way into a grand tale with enough mythos and high drama to turn Pirates into some epic quest, the effort looks like so many boats in these movies -- creaky, haphazardly built, and full of holes. Trying to force Jack Sparrow and his cohort into that mold leaves Dead Man’s Chest feeling like just another disappointing, overblown blockbuster, losing the spark and glimmer of the movie that accidentally started this series, like so much sunken treasure.
Still holds up as such a classic, feel good comedy. Murphy plays the fish-out-of-water story earnestly, rather than the typical, oblivious goofball. It's probably Eddie Murphy's best movie.
Although Titanic is seen to be the biggest cliche, and there's a nonsense stigma around that you're not a 'true' movie lover if you call Titanic you're favourite film, here's my take on it...
This film was waaay before it's time, the visuals, the directing, the casting, the production.. All of it is immensely professional and well thought out for the era it was filmed in, heck, you struggle to find something that flows so well, 20 years later. I don't know another 3 and a half hour movie that joins together, is constantly surpising and dramatic yet hopeful in the way that Titanic is.
Need I mention how amazing Leonardo and Kate are? Still some of the best acting I have seen to date.
It's unfair to just see this film as 'Titanic' something that everybody knows... This film is a masterpiece. The attention to small detail, the character development, the fiction within non-fiction, the way it takes over your emotions and pulls on your heartstrings, leaving you broken yet hopeful.
I truly appreciate this film for everything it is and cannot fault it. Although I must say (THERE WAS ROOM FOR TWO!!!)
It's a good romantic movie. It's an even better disaster movie. Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet are just perfect together. My Heart will go on is a great song too and I still get chills from it.
I feel like I am gaining more of an appreciation for this movie as James Cameron does genuinely care about this event and the last 30 minutes of this film is cinematic history in my opinion. Also, I understand why they needed the romance as it helps to introduce you to the real people who were in this event and though I find the romance very boring I find it unharmful and it does help to make the movie more emotionally impactful if you don't know much about the event.
But this film is way too long for what it is and it wastes so much time with the love story, I have to say visually it is still amazing and though I class it as one of James Camerons worst films it would be classed as a lot of directors best films. For sure give it a watch but I feel like you should research the event a little before you do, also watch the documentary that James Cameron did on this event on Disney+ / National Geographic.
One of those movies I don't mind watching when it's on TV. I like the story and the relationship Melanie has with everyone in her hometown.
Not as funny as it could have been perhaps, and the script needed a little work in parts. Still, Ferrell brings his all to the part, and so does McAdams as his sist...singing partner. I had a smile on my face most of the way through, so I happily recommend it to fans of Ferrell and the actual Eurovision contest alike.
Probably should have just made it a Disney Plus series. Movies try to fit too many books into one film.
Though, you’re better off just listening to the Richard Roeper review. This movie really isn’t deserving of only 14% good reviews.
It is nice to get a Summer movie at home. Artemis Fowl isn’t as magical as a Harry Potter movie. It is a nice present to enjoy at home. When you can’t go to theaters though.
I can’t say Artemis Fowl is bad or as bad as a movie that has gotten 14% good reviews. There’s more story than a Bayforners film.
If you think about it, what classic Fantasy from the 80’s did critics actually like ? So why listen to people who hated the Labyrinth, Return to Oz, Willow, The Neverending Story....
Artemis isn’t as memorable as any movie I just mentioned. However it has some charm and better than a weaker Disney Fantasy, A Wrinkle in Time.
Performances wise. Josh Gad and
Lara McDonnell are the only ones who stand out. Well, not just because Gad borrowed Hagrid’s look. Lara McDonnell makes a charming fairy.
Ferdia Shaw is the least interesting and he is Artemis. Since I wasn’t sure if he was actually trying or not. He also doesn’t really get much to do.
[8.8/10] There’s a funny thing about these updated, transmogrified Shakespeare adaptations like 10 Things I Hate About You. If you didn’t know better, you could call the plots convoluted. There is a complicated web of relationships and deceptions, to the point that you practically need a diagram to explain it properly.
In short, Michael helps his friend Cameron woo Bianca by convincing Joey to pay Patrick to date Kat, because Bianca, per her father Mr. Stratford, cannot date until Kat does. With me? Well then, it turns out that Kat dated Joey, and after Bianca picks Cameron over Joey, Joey picks Bianca’s friend Chastity, while Michael pursues Kat’s friend Mandella, as Kat and Patrick’s tempestuous relationship takes root.
It’s a little dizzying, and yet the complex string of friends and enemies and relationships that tow the line between put-ons and genuine affection track nigh-perfectly into the high school setting. Despite the dense qualities of that big ball of string’s worth of plot threads, the complicated social structures and intersecting circles of high school make for the perfect way to realizes The Bard’s comedies in the modern day.
But 10 things is more than just a transmogrified version of The Taming of the Shrew. It also a charming tale that captures the heart and hazards of adolescence at the same time it exaggerates them for comic effect. What’s most impressive about the film is how it has its cake and eats it too on that front. There are goofy beats and subplots that only happen in teen movies, like unexpected party scenes and famous bands showing up to play contemporary (hopefully) chart-topping hits for the soundtrack.
But amid that broader material, there is a real examination of what it is to play up or down to expectation, a theme present in the work that inspired 10 Things, but which is given new life in the guise of the teenagers who are at that point in the fraught process of growing up where they’re deciding who and what they want to be, in love and in life. The gross wager that turns into real love is a hoary trope (see also: fellow 1990s borrower She’s All That) but by rooting the romance at the core of the film in two people who embrace a thorny image and find the hidden depths behind the prickers in one another, the film does justice to its source material and resonates with a target audience trying to figure out which parts of who they are malleable, which parts are non-negotiable, and which parts are fit to be broadcast to the rest of the world (or at least, the relevant social circles)>
It is also just damn charming. The film is full of quotable lines and crackerjack exchanges between characters. The cutting aside is wielded well and often, and side characters like teachers (including the great Allison Janney) and parents (Larry Miller, who nails both comedy and emotion as Mr. Stratford) provide a backdrop of colorful characters for the main story to flourish in. The writing stands out in 10 Things not just for the amusing lines which liven some otherwise familiar teen material, but for the way it allows the film to, in true Shakespeare form, shift tones into more serious material when it needs to.
The same goes for the characters. Kat shoots off the best zingers in the movie, and with her rebellious attitude and literary bent, it would be easy to turn her into a one-dimensional avatar rather than a character. Instead, the film roots her perspective and demeanor in an experience with Joey that gives form to her concerns of Bianca following in her footsteps, and gives just enough context to her mom leaving to make the crisis of conscience and turning point understandable.
By the same token, Bianca could easily be a generic popular girl, and in fairness, at certain points of the film, she is. But she too has a simple but meaningful arc of playing to expectations only to realize that she doesn’t necessarily like what that gets her, and it allows the two sisters to grow in their understanding of one another in strong scenes that deepen their relationship.
The objects of their affection receive a bit of shading as well. The reveal that Patrick, who puts on a gruff exterior and bears the reputation derived from many humorous urban legends about him, is not as wild as he seems is, perhaps, a predictable one. But he gains strength from the way that he and Kat see bits of themselves in one another, Cameron is a bit flatter, learning a trite if endearingly-put lesson about not accepting the notion that he doesn’t deserve what he wants, but there’s enough there to give ballast to the enjoyable-if-disposable teen romp elements.
Even Mr. Stratford, who is arguably the most outsized major character in the film, gets a bit of shading. While he spits out awkward-sounding nineties slang and is comically overprotective and paranoid of his daughters getting pregnant, the film balances that with a subtext to his insecurities about Kat leaving for Sarah Lawrence. There is a Daria-like quality to the film’s ability to poke fun at the parent-child relationship, but also find the sweetness and sincerity in it.
That’s what makes 10 Things more than the sum of its byzantine bets and love triangles. Some twists are convenient, some gestures a little too big to work anywhere but on the silver screen, and some bits of forgiveness come a little too easy. Still, the film keeps its plot, humor, and drama working in sync, where one scene can make you chuckle, the next will let you get to know a character a little better, and the one after will tug at your heartstrings, just a little bit.
The oh-so-nineties soundtrack immediately places in the film at a specific moment in time, but it speaks to the relatable qualities of that quest to figure out both who you are, and who’ll accept you for who you are, that feel like life and death for all seventeen-year-olds. 10 Things is a touchstone for those who grew up with it, both for the quips and clever asides that let the film crackle, and for the notion of young men and women, cutting through pretension and presentation, and finding something true beneath it, in themselves and in the people they love.
Occasionally goofy but cute and fun. DC still can’t do CGI for monsters though. The Seven Deadly Sins look like something from a Scooby-Doo movie.
So they need to work on CGI still. Since Doomsday and Stephanwolf. Either way the charm and heart is what makes Shazam good. It was perfectly cast as well.
Maybe something inferior to the first, but just as entertaining and Angelina Jolie continues to do just as well.
A shark is coming and Lara gives her a punch, very realistic :-)
A historical romance set in pre and postwar Japan.
Memoirs of a Geisha is a beautifully made film, well deserving of its Oscars for Art Direction, Cinematography and (especially) Costume Design.
It’s a shame that it’s wasted on a story so cliched and bland that it might bore you to tears. At two and a half hours the film simply feels like it’s never going to end. What starts out as a foreign and exotic setting quickly becomes dull and pedestrian as the narrative simply repeats over and over.
The love story holding the film together is poorly handled, since the two leads barely seem to share a connection even when they are finally allowed to express their longing for one another.
This is cynical Hollywood awards-bait at the expense of the audience, and probably Japanese culture as a whole. Best avoided unless you like really nice Kimonos.
benoliver999.com/film/2017/01/08/memoirsofageisha/
