Best Snyder movie so far. Sadly it is deeply misunderstood. Movie is way more deeper and complex than it looks like on first glance.
People don't realize Sweet Pea is the protagonist, Babydoll is a figment of Sweet Pea’s imagination. Babydoll does not exist. Babydoll's story is Sweet Pea’s story. Sweet Pea was sexually abused, killed her sister and is in psychiatric hospital in therapy. Babydoll is Sweet Pea's avatar. Way of dealing with grief, with guilt, and way to manage her current situation and overcome it. Babydoll is also Sweet Pea's guardian angel.
Sweet Pea is the only fully rounded character, other girls represent aspects of her psyche. Babydoll represents strength and courage, Amber loyalty, Blondie fear, and Rocket represents guilt. In the third level reality her psyche fights for the things to get her free from her current state. Second guardian angel (the Wise Man) guides her through. To fully recover she needs to get over her guilt (Rocket dies as a symbol), also other girls represent things which she needs to leave behind to fully recover .
Babydoll is one of those things. She is the fifth thing (“The fifth is a mystery. It is the reason. It is the goal. It will be a deep sacrifice and a perfect victory.”). Lobotomy of Babydoll represents Sweet Pea’s mind of taking control. Sweet Pea needs to sacrifice Babydoll to be “cured”. Escape at the end is a symbol of that process of being cured. That’s why the driver is the Wise Man, he guides her further.
Sucker Punch is Sweet Pea’s journey from “madness” to “sanity”. Movie is philosophical / psychological investigation wrapped in a special effects action-fantasy. As the movie changes realities (mostly in the third reality), Snyder uses more fetishized image of the girls. He uses clichés and cluttered iconography (nazi zombies, sexy schoolgirls). It is a way to detached and disconnected characters from second reality. Second reality, the brothel, is the “main” reality. In which everything happens.
Let me start this off by saying that this sequel did not feel outside of what we remember.
Blade Runner 2049 maintains the mood and feel of its predecessor. The visuals, the sound... the dystopian future, it's all there.
| FIRST THOUGHT |
I love writing reviews, it comes somewhat naturally to me after watching something that I learn to feel passionate about.
This movie taught me to be passionate.
But... it's really hard for me to express judgment. And I'm going to explain why:
Actually, it's very simple. This was a 3 hours movie. Of these 3 hours, 2 were simply... air. Now, don't get me wrong, that isn't always negative, like in this case. It was refreshing air, but still... it doesn't (at first glance) hold anything on the plot.
Because of this, the viewer (me at least), is left with a lot of questions, the picture doesn't explain itself. Also; as a side note - you most definitely need to watch the first one. The great majority of the runtime is inexplicably useless.
The longer it goes, the longer it begins to add new stuff, and then some, then it seems somehow related to what's actually going on, but right after it deviates the actual story on an ideal from the characters involved, that at a certain point, evaporates. I'm really conflicted about this because it looks to me like the screenwriters and director wanted to leave all of this to theory and the fans.
Why is this confusing? Because it's a very strange mixture of linear narrative and non-linear narrative. One is focussed on one objective, the other starts a bunch of other objectives and then it simply dies. No explanation was given, no closure was given.
And this is aggravated by the fact that it's a 3 hours movie, of which 1 hour of the actual story is spread and mixed amongst 2 hours of absolutely nothing. VISUALLY IMPRESSIVE NOTHING. A VERY INTERESTING BUNCH OF LITERAL VOID.
This is actually the only thing I did not like about the movie. Which, again, if you are like me and enjoy movies that aren't patently explaining themselves, it's not a bad thing. I just feel like it could've been much more interesting if they explained somehow what happened to all the side characters, or just cut them out.
|STORY & ACTORS |
Aside from what I've mentioned before, the more "linear" part of the story is actually not that bad. It's nothing impressive. A part of what I said earlier connects to the fact that this movie constantly keeps juggling between what is real and what is not. Be it by robots, or actual reality that the characters are living. So it came out pretty obvious that the movie would have a twist at some point, somewhere. I will admit that I did not get it until the very end, so, don't be discouraged.
Ryan Gosling was great, also because he as an actor was perfect for his role. Being so that he has this way of being and looking conflicted, and so it portrayed really well on the protagonist.
Harrison Ford had less value to this movie than he did in the last Star Wars.
Jared Leto's character is a mystery to me, but he did a phenomenal job talking random shit.
All of the other actors, Jared Leto included, were there to push the story forward (or to add random bullshit) and that's it. They did a fantastic job, but unfortunately, as mentioned above, at first glance it looks like they don't mean shit.
| CINEMATOGRAPHY |
The movie is visually pleasing, it's bliss for people with OCD. It's perfectly round and at the same time perfectly square. It keeps smooth lines combining great color combinations in the palette, and utilizing great solid colors at the same time.
As I said before it holds perfectly a spot near its predecessor, the mood and feel are almost identical. (Having watched the first one only an hour before going to the theater to watch this one)
I have to say, this one looks A LOT, like A FUCKING GIGAZILLION LOT more gruesome and splatter than the first one. The fighting scenes are brutal, they do not go into dramatic effects, they just are what they should be. A punch in the face, exploding heads and blood.
There is no doubt that this movie looks fucking amazing.
It sounds amazing as well. It has a collection of deep, pure sounds. There is not a lot of music, but when there is it's powerful and present and it makes you wake up and amaze. Same goes for the special audio effects: I have watched it in ATMOS and I have to admit, they did not utilize it at all, except for one scene later in the movie, but the way it goes from absolute silence to seat trembling sensations it's really amazing. The sounds were so powerful I could literally see the movie screen shake and the subwoofer hit made the whole room shake.
I would also like to add that in the Italian version, you can clearly see that they used "incorrect" words grammatically, they used a lot of anglicisms, I guess they've done that to express how language is evolving? It's actually current of our generation, I see a lot of people adapting English words in Italian, so I was very impressed by that.
| FINAL THOUGHT |
I feel like everyone needs to understand, before watching this movie, that you need a time, a mood and a place perfectly fit to sit for a 3 hours movie that it's going to feel like a 6-hour long journey into colors, shapes, and absolute "living" silence.
This is NOT a Marvel movie, there is action, well-done action, but it's not about action. You need to sit, relax and don't think about time, because, trust me, it's going to fuck you.
Please like my comment if you enjoyed my review, it makes me really happy.
Note that all of this is driven by my personal opinion. If you think I wasn't objective in some of the parts of what I've written, you're welcome to make me notice where.
On Twitter, I review the entire world -> @WiseMMO
Two major components to this review: structure and impact. I will use inline spoiler tags, but note that I do not consider facts about the true events to be spoilers. It's a biopic—we know what happened. But if you don't, be warned that I will "spoil the ending", as it were, and stop reading now.
Now, then.
This is an important story. We all know what happened to the plane, and we all know what usually happens to aircraft whose pilots attempt to do what Sully pulled off. The story of the cra— I mean, forced water landing, itself is amazing. The whole process is so incredible, and this movie captures everything from the initial bird strike through the last boats carrying passengers to shore. I thought the story of the landing itself was done very, very well. This movie is worth watching on the strength of that portrayal alone.
I did have some major objections to the structure, though. They're probably not unlike @LuckyNumber78's complaints…though I'm not coming at this from the perspective of a screenwriter, just as a viewer.
Specifically, the most insulting sequence in the entire film to me was the beginning, which seems like it's throwing us right into the narrative, but turns out to be a just a dream (if it wasn't given away already by the aircraft trying to fly through Manhattan, grazing skyscrapers on its way to a fiery crash). That put me in a pretty skeptical mood for the rest of the film, and for good reason—lots of sequences turn out to be Sully's daydreams/hallucinations/imagination. They were not managed well, in my opinion. That's not to say I object to their use; just that they weren't done well in this film.
The whole temporal flow of the film is pretty unhinged, actually. Though it technically follows a single event from start to finish (the NTSB investigation), even that continuity is disrupted in places. The film retreads certain events, and includes a few others, for no discernible dramatic purpose. And even when it does buckle down and get on with settling the NTSB investigation once and for all, the climax reeks of half-assed attempts to make it "Hollywood suspenseful" that just fall flat. (I mean most of the final NTSB hearing, if you're wondering, where evidence like the report on the left engine shows up at the last minute.)
To be quite honest, I waffled between a 5 and a 6 on this one, not because I didn't find the film compelling, but because it doesn't work structurally. I get that there's an element of metaphor in how the film is laid out, and I appreciate it, but for a film like this it's really not in the story's best interest to keep the audience guessing at what's real. I finally decided on a 6, but only because the true story deserves more than a 5.
Come on son! Amy Pond, Sarah Connor, Spy Kids Mom, Tina Turner, and Emperor Georgiou, take on the menfolk ala "Shoot Em' Up, and "Smoking Aces" having a baybay. Not meant to be cerebral and over analyzed, but a manifest celebration of feminine badassery. Yes the bad guys were inept, as the only casualty on the female side was clearly the result of a lucky shot, (and a surprising lack of body armor in an otherwise awesomely stocked armory), But, then, even Bruce Lee's opponents surrounded him in a circle and came at him one at a time. Honorable, yes, but madly inefficient.
In any case, this was a fun, entertaining watch, and, Chloe Coleman is a delight as "8 and 3/4" year old Emily, the flashpoint of all this chaos and conflict. Nothing that hasn't been done before, but, still, a nice take on the genre. They could possibly get a sequel out of it if they really wanted to, and, I'd be down for that one also.
@Callum - To paraphrase Dr. Raymond Stantz, "...You never studied"..., Those who are comparing "Gunpowder Milkshake" to the "John Wick" trilogy aren't saying it's a shot for shot comparison, or even a stylistic doppelganger, but, they ARE similar in world building, in that BOTH movies feature an underworld organization, with a hierarchy, rules, and regulations, which if violated, will earn one a visit from one (or in this case several dozen) highly trained, variously skilled, assassins, who will "balance the ledger" with your blood, bowels, and/or a bullet to the dome. What GM did that JW didn't, is to juxtapose the Peckinpah-esque (that's slo-mo, for those in Rio Linda) carnage and bloodletting, with a wry bit of levity, and to break up the somber situations with comedic beats on occasion.
Thus you have bits like the "Rag Doll" sequence, which was IMO hilariously done, yet JUST plausible enough that it could work. (no, stainless steel medical trays won't stop bullets any better than a car door, but that hasn't stopped countless hero's from hiding behind them in EVERY gun driven movie, EVER) But it was FUN, as was the Bowling Alley sequence, or the laundry room escape. In fact, if you look at most of the positive comments, they include the word "FUN".
You see, with what at times feels like the majority of the world being "woke", seemingly pissed off at anyone and everyone not affiliated with their particular "tribe", or insisting that YOU should be equally pissed off, socially stagnated, and intolerant, not to mention the unchecked romper stompering by feral humanoids that has infected cities nationwide like the T-Virus on steroids, sometimes, the remedy (at least for me) is a couple of hours of diversion in the form of some cinematic FUN. There of course is always a place for the cerebral and analytical, but that's not what this movie was going for. With age comes wisdom, and I have wisely learned that just because something does not fit my particular tastes or expectations, doesn't necessarily make it "bad", just not for me.
Watching a movie for the soundtrack is like going to see "Cats" because you're a veterinarian... Just sayin....
