This is Quentin Tarantino's latest entry in the "I want to make movies that I like and you can go f yourself if you don't like them" collection.
In case you're not familiar with this film, the story involves a group of renegade Nazi hunters in Europe during World War 2. The head of this group is Brad Pitt - he plays a rather gruff southerner with a distaste for Germans.
This is probably one of Tarantino's three best works. The amazing thing is that he took what can be considered a period piece and made it his own. While the backdrop is the war, at times it is laugh out loud funny. In a sense it is a slightly more serious and violent version of "Hogan's Heroes". Even though there are serious topics at play here (after all, there are Nazi hunters chasing self-proclaimed "Jew Hunters") at no point does the movie ever really feel that serious.
Tarantino could have EASILY made this into a rollicking action movie (in a sense, Pitt's character is not unlike captain Jack Sparrow) but he resisted. In fact, after a hilarious scene about 30 minutes into the movie you really don't see a lot of Pitt until the end. The acting in this movie is top-notch (although I do have to admit that seeing Mike Myers play a brit took me out of the film for a minute. It just reminded me too much of Austin Powers).
I highly recommend this movie.
This was a great take on a dark past, bringing comedy and satire to the forefront, and I absolutely loved it! While being comedic, there are many emotional parts to the film, which I was rather surprised to see. One moment you're laughing hard, the next you're on the edge of balling your eyes out. I never would have expected to see a film quite like this done on Nazi Germany, it was very well made.
With this being Roman's first-ever professional acting job, I was incredibly impressed - he is awesome, and I certainly look forward to his next project(s). He was able to capture the rollercoaster of emotions, thoughts and feelings that may be going through a child growing up in Nazi Germany—who is being told who is okay and who is not—with ease. Taika never fails to please me with his work, and Stephen is a very funny actor. The way that Hitler was mocked through Taika really adds into the thought that not everyone is as strong as they are said to be. Thomasin brings in lots of emotion, and Roman just blows the film out of the park.
Seeing it for my 7th time, I think I'd probably upgrade this from one of the best films of 2019 to one of the best films of the decade.
I shall certainly be seeing this several more times, and I definitely recommend it.
Hey, if you don't want spoilers then don't read this. I'm not like giving away major things, but just go see it first. I think you can find somebody to go with you (kind of a big franchise in popularity if you didn't know).
This movie feels a lot like the original trilogy, both in a good way and a bad way. First off, I enjoyed myself quite a bit the whole time. Action was great, camera work, alien design, and even post 3-D work were all great. I really enjoyed the new robot BB-8. They did a great job with small humor here and there throughout, and Oscar Isaac I think is perfect, probably the best new character.
But... I had a lot of issues with how repeat this thing is. I can hit soooo many specific details they do over from the other films that it isn't even funny. And no, I'm not talking about general film plot themes or funny lines done in new ways (although that does happen). No, I'm talking about literally having a new Death Star for the third Goddamn time. I'm talking about a person loading important info into a robot that is found on a desert planet by the new hero who joins up with another less force sensitive person and leaves on the Millennium Falcon, meets up with the good guy team, and goes to blow up the new Death Star while being chased by a dude in a black suit/mask combo.
I could keep going for a long ass time. However, that isn't all that bothers me. A lot of the third act has some problems. Big one is how the bad guy seems to be able to get beaten pretty easily by someone who has picked up a lightsaber for the first time. Yea, you have some jedi stuff in you so you start decent, but shouldn't beat a person who has that too and has been training. If it was simply there to show how amazing the new girl was, fine, but don't expect me to think this Kylo Renn & Stimpy guy to be intimidating anymore.
I'm getting a bit rough on the film I guess, but again I have to admit that overall I still had a good time watching it. It certainly knows how to balance the seriousness and fun. I hope the next one turns better though, since this felt like a lot of setup. Perhaps watching them back to back will make me appreciate this one more. Or maybe it'll suck and I'll be sad, who knows.
Oh, and John Williams' new score is a 5 out of 5.
A live-action remake of the 1991 Disney animation. Emma Watson stars as Belle, Dan Stevens as The Beast and Luke Evans as Gaston.
This is a particularly clumsy and lifeless entry into the live-action-retelling catalogue. It’s colourful but devoid of intrigue or emotion. The set design reflects this; they clearly spent some real money in getting this film to look great yet somehow the feeling of being on a sound stage is more prominent than ever. It’s more Disneyland than Disney film.
Emma Watson acts like she’s in a 6th form stage play written by her dad, and there’s no real spark between her and Stevens’ CGI beast. The supporting cast hold it together but the charming animated objects you know and love are now merely soulless CG pastiches of the originals.
There’s also something weird about how this has been edited together. The camera sweeps and swoops around the cool set yet there’s little attention to detail or continuity. People teleport around with every cut, Belle goes round the same corner six times and objects seem to magically shift around. I’m not one to pick up on these usually but at some points you get bombarded with scenes that make no sense.
The obvious question with all of these recent remakes is ‘why?’ but just remember that this cost $160m to make and it took over $1.2b at the box office. When you’re making that much cash, wasting everybody’s time is a small price to pay.
http://benoliver999.com/film/2017/07/21/beautyandthebeast/
Not bad, but definitely a step-down from the original. The humor is still more hit than miss, though the ratio is down from the first. The story is serviceable. I was actually pretty happy with things until the last act when the CGI budget spiked and my interest cratered. It makes the classic sequel mistake of assuming bigger equals better. Unfortunately, much of the increased scope ends up feeling half baked and/or obligatory. For example, the movie really lost me with the random mythological creatures getting birthed from the tree. It feels like the movie just needed a lower level threat for non-super powered characters to face off against so that they have something to do. It's completely superfluous and I would have preferred to just not see those characters for a while. Black Adam did something very similar in its finale, with zombies/skeletons randomly popping out of the ground. Not sure which is worse. In this case, the issue culminates in the unicorn sequence, which got a big fat eye roll from me. I'd also criticize the pacing of the finale, as certain sequences seemed to drag way longer than necessary (e.g. waiting for the lightning staff to blow up). All in all, way better than Ant-Man Quantummania.
This is considered one of the greatest films ever made for a reason. I honestly don't think I can add that much to the discussion, but here goes. I start watching it and always think I'm not going to like it as much as I remember. I'm not crazy about the opening due to the pace, but I feel like it is perfect once you progress further. Getting to know the different samurai and watching them interact is just really entertaining. Each is so distinct and relatable in a different way. Frankly, the story is wonderful and I love when they did it again in the American west.
Then there is the technical side of things. This does not feel like it belongs in the 50s at all to me. The film is shot so distinct and beautifully. I really love the way the rain battle looks in the end. The dark color of the water on the ground just looks so great to me, like a chalk drawing or something. And the theme music makes me think it is something I listen to in my car all the time, even though I hadn't heard it in a few years since my last watch. It immediately becomes a classic tune to me.
So yea, this is up there for a reason, and I say you should certainly see this before you die. Just remember to set aside a good 3 1/2 hours before you start.
[8.4/10] The hardest thing for a movie to do isn’t to convey an idea or to convey a feeling; it’s to do both at once. There’s the rational part of our minds that ferrets out plot and theme, and there’s a more instinctive side that connects more closely to the feel of a given moment or story writ large. The two bleed into one another, and influence one another, but it’s hard to blend them together without losing something in the mix.
Akira achieves that blend with an impressive force. It seems odd to say given how opaque and liminal the film is at times, but it combines palpable notions of the costs of unrestrained progress and scientific advancement, with more primal and societal anxieties about overwhelming power and dalliances with self destruction.
It calls to mind two other works that wade through the same waters: 2001: A Space Odyssey and Twin Peaks: The Return. It shares the former’s concern with man dabbling with forces it can neither control nor comprehend and its ties to the creation, destruction, and transcendence of our species. It shares the latter’s nuclear fears and sense of a people still reeling from the demonstration of the devastation we are capable of, mixed with a more personal disorientation and loss. And it shares both’s trippy and elliptical sensibilities, where impressionistic sequences convey the things which cannot be articulated in dialogue alone.
It’s the images in that vein that are going to linger with me the most. I will remember the nightmarish childhood playthings garishly reconstructed from a mass of swirling detritus, looming over Testuo’s hospital bed. I will remember the bulging grotesqueries as Testuo’s organs swell and expand, creating some ungodly fetal creature consuming and destroying everything in its path. I will remember the scenes of citywide destruction -- practically a currency in modern day blockbusters -- made all the most ghastly and visceral in context and with the films impossibly great visuals.
Akira can lay claim to being one of, if not the, most stunningly animated features of all time. There’s a fluidity and realism amid such a heightened atmosphere, made manifest in the artwork and aesthetic that suffuses the film. While some of the individual character designs are a little too odd or caricatured, the lighting, framing, movement, and use of color throughout this film are all magnificent. The grit and grime of Neo Tokyo, the visceral unrest as a city unravels before it explodes, the neon lights in dingy industrial hovels come together to catch the eye at every turn. Even for those who understandably have trouble connecting with Akira’s somewhat opaque narrative, the visuals alone are worth the price of admission.
Those visuals convey the sense of an abject, unnameable sort of fear. I’ll admit to getting lost in moments where the film’s characters discuss essential energies and memories coded in the fabric of the universe, with a human’s powers being imbibed by an amoeba. But particularly in the turbulent year 2020, it’s not hard to connect with and relate to a persistent sense of a people on the brink of something beyond their control, half hoping for some kind of salvation and another half ready to wipe the slate clean. There’s a simmering anxiety beneath everything that happens in Akira whether you’re girding for war or trying to tear it all down. That comes through loud and clear.
It is not, however, an aimless fear. I can’t claim to have an intimate knowledge of Japanese culture or history, but it’s hard not see the lingering scars in the national psyche left by Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Akira. That’s easiest to see in the imagery of mushroom clouds and boundless destruction. But it also comes through in the combination of awe and terror over “Akira” and what his power represents over the course of the film, and the steps various individuals take to contain, unleash, or understand that power.
It also connects to the notions of science and its pursuit going too far, leading to a pushing of limits that threatens to rend humanity itself in twain. The heroes and villains of Akira are hardly clear cut, with almost all of them having understandable motivations and flaws. (Some, like Kameda, are actually flat out annoying.) And yet the film seems to pin some particular blame on not just broken institutions, but on the quest for academic and scientific knowledge for its own sake with destructive ends and consequences left ignored. I’m apt to grouse about the anti-intellectual fervor that reflects, but it’s churlish to complain about that perspective for a film produced in a country who were the “beneficiaries” of some of the greatest scientific minds devoting themselves to the Manhattan Project.
In that vein, Akira does not skimp on the violence. Its plainest point is that there is a cost to this sort of power. The energies, the kind at the core of life which Kei waxes rhapsodic about, harken to the atom itself, and with it, the decimation when it was split. With that spirit in mind, the film does not shy away from bullet-ridden revolutionaries or bystanders taken apart with a mere thought. It is startling and graphic, but not gratuitous. The concept of collateral damage, lives lost in the wake of such forces, are endemic to the movie's themes and its choice not to flinch from such violence grounds the idea.
Nevertheless, for as haunting and disturbing as the imagery of loss and devastation here are, and as potent as the film’s themes of pre- and post-nuclear annihilation are, its ending is strangely hopeful. Despite the massive casualties, it closes on a sense of renewal, redemption, and most of all transcendence. I couldn’t begin to explain that ending to anyone, or account for the cosmic mechanisms and rebirth that it suggests. But I can tell you how it feels, to see a friendship vindicated amid horrors of both body and mind, to see self-sacrifice by child-like gods to demigods protect the innocent, and to see the chance to move on from the end of the world. For a movie so rooted in terror and destruction, it feels strangely but movingly optimistic.
"Memento" proved that a competent director, a revolutionary idea, and a decent cast could sometimes be enough to make a groundbreaking film. The film is essentially a neo-noir thriller played backward. Leonard is looking for the man who raped and killed his wife, but the traumatic events caused him short-term amnesia. Unable to store memories for more than a few minutes, he leaves clues for him to find, like scribbles, tattoos, and polaroid pictures. Every time Leonard loses his memories, he has to guess how things happened by looking through the clues he has.
At the beginning of the film, Leonard already found the killer, but cannot remember how. We are then progressively taken back in time and shown the events that lead to each piece of evidence. As the viewer only knows what would happen, but not how it happened, it's easy to feel in Leonard's shoes. Each episode starts where the following scene would end, and despite the fragmented storytelling, everything flows coherently. There is also a parallel timeline (shot in black and white) that proceeds forward in time to converge with the backward timeline in the end.
As the story progresses (or I should say, regresses), our view of Leonard and the other characters drastically changes, until we lose our trust in memory and reality. Facts and evidence are the foundations of truth and the only things that lead Leonard's search, but they cannot be reliable as they are subject to the influence of the individual who processed and recorded them. Leonard is so sure about the absolute value of facts and the impermanence of memories, but in the end, memories are the only things that help us define our reality. Wrong assumptions and fabricated evidence are enough to lead his search on the wrong path.
The success of "Memento" turned Christophe Nolan into one of the most prestigious directors in Hollywood, but at the same time caused his self-pressure to create increasingly revolutionary and conceptually complicated films, mostly with forced and incoherent results.
[7.6/10] It’s a shame that Pixar has become more and more of a sequel factory. While the likes of say, Toy Story 3, suggest that the studio can still maintain a high level of quality while repurposing familiar characters, the Pixar brand name itself had become so good that it was one of the few locales within tentpole filmmaking that executives would take chances on original properties with the understanding that the studio’s name alone would give folks reason to come to the theater. The quality of the output hasn’t necessarily diminished, but there’s a loss of the new, as fellow critic Anton Ego might put it, that is regrettable.
Enter Incredibles 2, an energetic, perfectly enjoyable, well-made sequel that is ultimately good enough but forgettable. Arriving in theaters fourteen years after the original, it takes place just months after the events of the first movie. A block-busting fight with the Underminer leads to the government’s super-relocation program to end, and causes the Incredibles (and Frozone) to accept some help from DEVTECH, a private company led by slick salesman and Incredibles fanboy Winston, and his more down-to-earth, genius inventor Evelyn.
The DEVTECH campaign selects Elastigirl as its vanguard, which means she has to be away from home, and Mr. Incredible has to look after the kids. In the process, Bob Parr has to adjust to being out of the limelight and the trials and travails of domestic life, while Helen has to handle her anxieties about being separated from her family while tracking down the villainous Screenslayer, who commandeers the local airwaves to hypnotize everyone within eyeshot.
The film works as a character drama. Bob’s exhausted adventures trying to deal with a daughter whose love life he inadvertently throttled, a son whom he can’t help in school, and a baby with unpredictable and uncontrollable powers are endearing and relatable, even when framed within the superhero guise. At the same time, his only barely-restrained jealousy that his new benefactors think Elastigirl can do the hero thing better than he can is an interesting wrinkle, one that allows the movie to deftly explore the growing pains of changing times flipping the traditional gender roles with work and family.
At the same time, the film reserves some good character stories for Helen Parr. While occasionally Incredibles 2 gets Elastigirl lost in its fairly standard conspiracy plot, there’s rich material to be mined from Helen having to be apart from her kids in the hopes of opening doors for them in the future, while worrying about how they’re doing without her. And while given less time by comparison, the kids’ smaller concerns and squabbles are briefer but nicely crafted as well.
The best element of Incredibles 2 is the same thing that stood out in its predecessor -- the way that the dialogue and conversations about these ideas, the superheroic turned into a family matter, feel layered and real despite the outsized setting. When Bob and Helen chat on the phone or express their anxieties and admit their jealousies before bed, there’s a truth to the complicated issues bound up in this change of lifestyle for both of them, and their whole family, that helps the emotional conflict hit home.
By the same token, while the first Incredibles movie was nothing to sneeze at in terms of its visuals, Incredibles 2 is a giant leap forward. Between a rave-like battle between hero and villain that finds artistry (and, fair warning, audience members with epilepsy) in its flickering black and white, and a tête-à-tête between Violet’s force-field projections and a rival’s portal-creating powers that shows boundless relational creativity, the movie has all manner of impressive sequences.
But more importantly, in a medium that tends toward the fantastical, there is something unbelievably expressive about the characters in the film. Subtle changes in body language or facial expressions or just the barely noticeable tilt of the head make the Parrs feel so much more alive when they’re hashing out their concerns and/or hypnotic suggestions. Beyond the flashy set pieces, the advances in animation and particular choices made in the film do a great deal to make the Incredibles seem like real people and not just supers on the screen.
Incredibles 2 has something of a muddled message about those screen-based supers. In keeping with the first film’s “villain who has a point that takes things way out of proportion”, the Screenslayer laments the world’s adulation for and dependence on superheroes. While in-universe, the baddie is referring to actual caped crusaders, the bad guy’s manifesto serves as a thinly-veiled metaphor for the omnipresence of superhero media in American culture.
With the villain’s focus on hypnotizing anyone with a screen, writer-director Brad Bird bakes in a criticism of people using superheroes as escapism, as an excuse not to live their lives or take action to make the world a better place, and instead rely on our fictional better selves within those screens for comfort and anesthesia. There’s not really a firm rebuttal, except for the fact that the good guys in the film do, in fact, fight the good fight, and expose the Screenslayer as malicious rather than crusading. It’s an interesting idea to play with, even if Incredibles 2 never really nails it down beyond the first layer.
Even with all that going for it, Incredibles 2 is merely quite good. It’s an enjoyable two hours at the cinema, with a solidly built movie that features earned family drama, some exciting battles, and the endearing comedy that comes from the interactions between a returning Edna Mode and the ever-mercurial Jack Jack. That is more than enough for any film, especially one trying to recapture the magic nearly a decade and a half after its predecessor made its debut.
But Pixar has, or at least had, set a standard to where “quite good” can only be a disappointment. There’s nothing wrong, or at least nothing bad about Incredibles 2, but it rarely, if ever, grazes greatness when dusting off these characters from 2004, and you can’t help but the resources and creativity used to make it being taken away from some original movie that might otherwise have broken new ground for the studio and for animated movies more generally.
It’s churish to slate a film for what it isn’t, let alone for the opportunity cost of whatever movie might have taken its place. If you enjoyed the first Incredibles movie, you will undoubtedly enjoy this one as well, which expands on the first and finds new ways to explore the idea of superheroes and family and the two intertwined. But if you’re waiting for the next Pixar movie to knock your socks off, and remind you how irrepressibly creative and daring all ages movie-making can be, then you’ll walk out of Incredibles 2 thinking the studio is still trying to find its supersuit once again.
This is the Unforgiven of superhero movies, a brutal yet tender portrayal of former heroes growing old. Logan is tired and world weary, waiting for death to take away his pain. Charles is 90, riddled with drugs to mute his mind, his "super weapon." Despite their friendship their relationship is fractured. Into their lives comes a new mutant and a road trip begins.
I don't want to say much more, having given away a little of the premise already explored in the films trailers. This is a tough, violent and sad film with few moments of humour. There is action but not of the blockbuster kind, one key car chase is like something from a 70's thriller.
This is the swan song of Logan and Charles, both actors giving it their all in their final performances as these characters. To bring them back after this film would undermine their work and the story here.
The film is brilliant and I can't recommend it enough - don't expect a traditional X-Men movie and you will be blown away. If the film itself were a mutant I would say its genes had been spliced with Mad Max and Shane, with a little bit of Children of the Corn (and I mean that in a good way). Excelsior!
As high-concept ideas for television shows go, The Good Place seems like it's on to a winner: Eleanor Shellstrop finds herself waking up in 'The Good Place', roughly analogous to heaven, only to realise that she has seemingly been placed there by mistake. There are all sorts of places the writers can take the concept, particularly in a light-hearted way, and there's a deft touch throughout with the humour. It never felt too much, and I liked the approach to integrating philosophical concepts. The characters all seem affable enough, and there's clearly been fun had in placing them into difficult situations from the off. Avoiding predictability shouldn't be an issue here. The rest of the cast do a good job and the comic timing is good—Manny Jacinto's silent monk was a nice touch.
What will be interesting will be how easily the concept is stretched and taken onwards; the problem with these sort of concepts is that they can quickly run out of steam if enough care isn't taken. Anchoring the show around Eleanor seems a smart idea, and whether she's able to become a 'good' person is as good a reason as any to keep watching, but the strong aesthetic and intriguing set-up bolsters it nicely.
