[8.9/10] A title like The Holdovers has a double meaning. On a basic level, it’s simply the technical term for the three individuals--a teacher, a student, and a kitchen manager--all spending their holiday break on the grounds of the New England boarding school they call home during the year.
But in a broader sense, it refers to people who have been left behind, who remain in some uncertain limbo not just in where they lay their heads, but in their lives as a whole. The nominal goal at the center of the film is for this trio of disregarded remainders to make it to the New Year without wrecking each other or the school. But its broader aim is to give each of them a direction, a connection, and something that jostles each of them from their different flavors of sad stupor and toward a reinvigorated purpose.
The results are, in turn, uproarious, heartbreaking, and ultimately moving. The Holdovers has its antecedents: from the locked-in mischief and camaraderie of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest to the young man struggling with trauma a la Catcher in the Rye, to countless broader flicks about grumbly instructors warming up to rambunctious students. But there’s a greater depth, a clearer sense of open-wounded humanity, a distinctiveness in how its main players are formed and bounced off one another, that makes the film feel unlike any other.
It wouldn’t achieve that success without its triumvirate of great character and even greater performance. Paul Hunham could easily have been little more than a walking trope -- a stuffy and curmudgeonly civics teacher who’s hard on his students but betrays a hidden heart of gold. Instead, writer David Hemingson makes him more complex than that. Hunham is grumpy and hidebound before softening to this charge, yes, but he’s also a depressed drunkard, pessimistic about the world’s prospects for the future, with his dreams whittled down by the same forces that grind the other Holdovers, in various ways. Even that could have been a prestige picture cliche, but Paul Giamatti’s performance gives Hunham such spirit, and so many layers behind each grand pronouncement and reluctant, heartfelt compromise. Together, Hemingson and Giamatii make a broad archetype of a character feel achingly human, which is no small achievement.
Likewise, Angus Tully, the bright but trouble-making student unexpectedly left behind by his mother and inclined to rebel against Hunham’s supervision, could also have been a stock cliche. The recalcitrant but troubled youth who fights back against, but ultimately confides in their mandated caretaker is no less traditional a tale. And yet, again, the script doesn’t leave Tully as a one-note stereotype, but instead, gives him a cleverness, a sense of compassion, and a deep well of pain that makes him more than that outline. At the same time, twenty-year-old Dominic Sessa conveys the anger, hurt, and unassuming innocence of Angus to perfection. He cuts the figure of a young Alan Alda with both his snark and his sadness, and delivers a challenging performance for a young actor without stumbling once.
But it’s Da'Vine Joy Randolph--who plays Mary Lamb, the school’s head cook--that steals the show. Unlike Mr. Hunham and Angus, Mary is not the type of character you see much of in either these scholastic coming-of-age stories or prestige pictures. She is a black woman who works among the downstairs set in contrast to the mostly white, upper crust pupils and professors who reside upstairs. She is a woman bathed in grief, having lost both her husband and her son before they turned twenty-five. And most importantly, she is a full-fledged part of the film’s central trifecta, whose needs and concerns get the same attention and focus as her counterparts who are more often spotlighted in these stories.
Her inner life is potent and conspicuous. The things she’s feeling deeply at all times but never saying come through loud and clear amid Randolph’s powerhouse performance. She delivers the film’s signature scene, a furious, crestfallen, devastating lament in a suburban kitchen about the child and partner both gone too soon, with their absences all the more noticeable and piercing in what should be a season of joy. Like all the characters in the film, Mary is more than her trauma, with moments of kindness, levity, and insight just as memorable, but in a movie full of heart-rending monologues and stellar performances, Randolph takes the prize.
Despite the sense of hurt and alienation at the core of the film, The Holdovers is an unexpectedly hilarious movie. Angus’ antics to entertain himself and/or tweak Mr. Hunham have the shaggy whimsy of teenage rebellion. Mr. Hunham dispenses vulgar insults that tickle the funny bone, like “too dumb to pour piss out of a boot” and “penis cancer in hidden form.” The actors provide bouts of great physical comedy, from Angus’ disobedient gym floor flop, to Hunham’s ridiculous football-flubbing flail. And Mary has a dry wit that singes and can get a big laugh with a reaction shot alone. For a movie as unafraid to explore blunted hearts and lingering traumas, it’s full of humor and vigor that makes it come off like a fulsome view of life’s ups and downs, rather than a shameless tear-jerker or sap dispensary.
Nonetheless, there is a thematic undercurrent beneath all that pain and exclusion -- privilege. The recurring motif of The Holdovers is the idea that there are people who manage to wriggle out of the harshest obligations in this world, from schoolwork to plagiarism to war, because of power and position and the dishonesty and dishonor it can cover for. Some people go to Ivy league schools and get safe cushy jobs whether they have the intelligence or character for it, and others die in labor-intensive fields where worker safety is secondary to output quotas. Grades are inflated, service workers are casually demeaned, racism is tolerated, so long as it all comes from a class of people who don’t realize how lucky they have it.
The zenith of this is the Vietnam War, which hangs in the background of this seventies-set film. For all Angus’ legitimate issues, Hunham calms him down when he gets into a snit with a local missing a hand, since the teacher intuits how and why the injury happened. And the grandest injustice in the film is Mary’s son, sent off to fight and die in ‘Nam, when he had the grades, but not the funds, to go to college, denied the student deferment from the draft that would come alongside a university education. This sense of unconscionable disparity between the haves and the have-nots--one group excused from even the most minor of consequences for their actions, and one group forced to suffer the worst of them despite doing everything right--pervades the movie.
But it is also what unites Mary, Angus, and Mr. Hunham. Though thrown together by circumstance, and very different people on the surface, they find solace and understanding in one another, and it’s the most heartening part of the film. That comes through in the elegant cinematography of Eigil Bryld. The visuals of The Holdovers are not flashy, but they are quietly brilliant. Each frame is perfectly composed to convey the character of the grounds, or the ridiculousness of a gag, or the burgeoning intimacy that steadily washes over the main trio.
All three of them are touched by loss and loneliness. Mary still mourns her husband and her son, and is all but spit on by entitled twits who insult her cooking in a job she took to provide for a child who’ll never have the same life or opportunity. Mr. Hunham is, on his account at least, a low-level teacher, scorned by his students and his peers, alone in the wake of a long-since-failed shot at love, isolated and barely able to muster half-a-dream after being kicked out of Harvard for a privileged roommate’s intellectual theft. And Angus is abandoned over the holidays by a mother off to honeymoon with his new stepdad, a reminder of the mentally disturbed father whom he’s forbidden to see, and cursed with a parent in a state of living death -- physically there but mentally gone -- something all the more devastating for a young soul in particular.
So they share drinking problems. They share depression medication. They share flailing grasps for human connection that are reached for then rejected in a state of guilt and self-loathing. And eventually, they share a particular sort of bond that emerges from commiseration and acts of kindness, from recognizing one another’s pain and helping them through it, from seeing how the system works for others and stealing a piece of it for one another.
You can see it in the progression of “what Barton men do.” Angus lies about the cause of his dislocated shoulder to protect Mr. Hunham’s job, a falsehood the teacher accepts with some lecturing about honesty. Only then, Mr. Hunham lies to an old classmate about his career, reasoning that truthful or not, giving his social betters the satisfaction of his comparatively sorry state is not something he owes them.
And in the film’s close, when Angus’ mom and stepdad arrive to excoriate their son and his erstwhile babysitter for daring to let a lonely boy visit his father on Xmas, Mr. Hunham has an out. Angus’ guardians all but invite Mr. Hunham to throw Angus to the wolves, to say that the young man tricked him or “slipped the leash”, which would be half-true. Instead, Mr. Hunham lies in order to take full responsibility; he dissembles to excuse the young man entirely, sacrificing his job and the content-if-stagnant life he’s enjoyed for decades to save Angus’ future.
That is the crux of the film. The key message comes earlier when Hunham reassures Angus that he will not become like his father. Despite his obsession with the classics, he decries the Greek poets’ belief that our path is set and resistance only ensures submission to fate. Your destiny is your own, he implores the young man, and it’s not too late, never too late, to change it.
So Mary will still carry the scars of loved ones taken from her too soon, but she can make space to laugh and reminisce with her sister, and save for her newborn nephew who will carry on the name, and hopefully the spirit of her dearly departed son. So despite the prospect of being kicked out of Barton and forced to attend military school, with the prospect of war and death that comes with it, Angus can remain at Barton and find his way to the sunnier shores all but assured to bright young men in well-regarded centers of learning and the resources to propel them further.
So Mr. Hunham can become the unlikely surrogate father figure Angus is in desperate need of, and change his mind about the prospects of the next generation, at least for one young lad who makes him hopeful, whose success is worth martyring his comfort and security for. And he too can be lodged from his complacency, spurred to go visit the sites of the ancient world he’s studied but never seen, and write that monograph he’s been putting off.
When we’re introduced to the three of them, they are not just hunkering together in those almost unreal, interstitial days that envelop the end of the calendar. They are all in some in-between state, not quite where they started, but not quite able to move forward. When we leave them, Mary if able to make some semblance of peace with her tragedies and rekindle connections to her family; Angus knows someone has faith in him and has the surefootedness and, yes, character, to see his schooling through to the end; and Mr. Hunham, the stymied student-turned-teacher who’s been “held over” longer than anyone, finally finds a reason to break free.
[9.2/10] There are parts of Barbie that aren’t for me. I am a guy. A “Ken” to use the film’s own lingo. I don’t know what it’s like to be a woman. I don't know what it’s like to face those challenges myself. So much of the film is about that experience, both the idealized version that Barbieland represents, and the sometimes harsh reality of it our unwitting doll protagonist crashes into in the real world. I can appreciate some of those things secondhand, and even be compelled by them, but they’re not going to resonate with me the same way they will for someone who’s been through it.
There are parts of Barbie that are very much for me as a guy. As someone whose high school Xanga page used to autoplay “Push” by Matchbox 20, some of the comedic tweaks of masculinity hit a little too close to home. I’ve waxed rhapsodic about The Godfather ad nauseam. I’ve played music “at” girls I liked. And more seriously, in my wayward youth, I treated romantic partners like a solution to my problems rather than ends unto themselves. The film’s playful jabs, and its more serious critiques, are on point, and will resonate even if you’re the target of them.
There are parts of Barbie that are for me as someone who simply appreciates when a film has a distinctive look and feel all its own. Director/co-writer/three-for-three visionary Greta Gerwig and her collaborators construct an incredible world for their title character. Translating a doll’s playspace for the big screen could easily go terribly awry. But their realization of Barbieland is stunning in how vibrant and creative it feels. Everything from the layout of Barbie’s neighborhood, to the movements of the characters, to the texture of the ground give this unique realm a tremendous sense of place. The details big and small are a brilliant example of how to blend the realism of modern film with the bizarre but endearing unreality of such a specific setting.
There are parts of Barbie that are for me as a lover of out there, postmodern camp. WIth that locale comes the wild cosmology of the film: a neat mishmash of a land of imagination crashing into the problems of modern life, of spritely cartoon characters finding unexpected cracks in their paradise, of goofy figures playing their roles to the hilt without a hint of irony, and of a wide-ranging satire that spoofs the gendered elements of society and the peculiar quirks of a toy box world at the same time. Bright colors, wild schemes, beachside battles, song-and-dance numbers, wide-eyed characters, undeniable weirdos, all wrapped in a candy-coated shell. If Barbie hadn't already dominated the box office, it would be destined to be a cult classic.
And as that box office take suggests, here are parts of Barbie that are for anyone. I’d argue they’re the most important parts. I may not know what it’s like to be a woman. But I know what it’s like to grow up. Beyond the gender critiques that swirl around the film, this is, first and foremost, a story about steadily realizing that the world is bigger, more challenging, and more complicated than the ones we perceived and imagined as children.
Through a nigh-magical bond with the young woman who played with her, our protagonist, Stereotypical Barbie, starts to think about death. She starts to feel existential dread. She deals with stress and fear and unease and even (gasp) cellulite. The most piercing aspect of Gerwig’s third feature is how it uses the doll’s awakening conceit to analogize both the humbling, terrifying broadening of perspective we get as we grow up, and the generational motion sickness we get from looking back at what enchanted us, what inspired us, when we were younger.
In that, Barbie is insightful. It is hilarious. It is delightful. It is inventive as all hell. And it is deeply profound.
What’s doubly impressive about all this is that the call is coming from inside the house. If Gerwig, for example, made a thinly-veiled “Malibu Stacy” movie, we’d praise it as subversive. Somehow, though, this is an official branded release that deconstructs and reconstructs the gender politics that Barbie reinforced and then evolved with, that satirizes the Mattel Corporation itself (headed here by one of Will Ferrell’s trademark manchildren characters), takes square aim at the patriarchy, and uses the existence of genitalia to symbolize self-actualization. To convince the powers that be to cosign such a transgressive take on a beloved icon is an achievement beyond the art itself.
How could the suits say no to talent like that though. With her Oscar-nominated pedigree, Gerwig brings the same reimagining virtuosity and millennial vanguard she showed off in Little Women. Margot Robbie simply is Barbie, embodying the blithely joyous icon, and then nailing the subtle and shattering changes that came as she slowly feels the weight of the world beyond her shores. Ryan Gosling nearly steals the show with his committedly weird, blithely blinkered, and yet somehow pathos-ridden take on Ken. Comedy vets like Kate McKinnon and Michael Cera bring wry laughs in perfect casting as “Weird Barbie” and just plain “Alan” respectively. And the diversity of the denizens in Barbie’s world is plus that aids in the sense that damn near everyone here is perfectly cast, no matter how big or small the role.
Despite its incredible successes, the film is not perfect. In places, it feels unfocused. Barbie strives to cover a lot of thematic ground in less than two hours. As a result, even though it remains stellar on a scene-to-scene basis, sometimes it comes off disjointed as a whole. While many of its criticisms are right on target, some feel like the male equivalent of “bitches be shoppin’”-style observations. That sense of caricature in some sequences fits the heightened tone of the film, but can seem comparatively shallow to the movie’s more incisive critiques and observations. Late in the film, those critiques and observations start arriving in what amounts to a few blunt spoken essays, rather than arising organically from the situation.
And yet, this is a film of great nuance. Despite the sense of Ken as a blithe, patriarchy promoting dope, the script has genuine sympathy for him, and even uses him to explore gendered marginalization in the context of Barbieland. It plays in the space of motherhood, examining the challenges and expectations that can drive parents and children apart but also the beauty and understanding that brings them back together. It manages to encompass nearly every part of the conversation around Barbie, while also internalizing them to one person’s journey of self-discovering in a way that feels surprisingly natural.
That comes from the sheer boldness and ambition of the story. A doll “malfunctioning” from her owner’s existential quandaries, barging into the real world and coming back shaken by it, with layers of meta commentary and Charlie Kaufman-esque recursive self-reflection, is a hell of a thing to try, let alone pull off with flying (mostly pink) colors the way Gerwig does.
What holds it all together is the way this story comes down to Barbie herself as a protagonist. After psychological tugs and troubles that are a metaphor for the growing, scary understanding we all develop over time, Barbie breaks down. She’s ready to give up in the face of it. She’s lifted up by someone who gives voice to the challenges and contradictions, but in the end, after this enlightenment, isn’t sure what she wants.
The conceit of making her creator a godlike figure, there to bless her and open doors for her, is one of the film’s canniest choices. In Rhea Perlman’s pitch perfect rendition of Barbie inventor Ruth Handler, Barbie has a mother, one who symbolizes the goal not just of feminism, but for all parents -- to try to make the lives of their children a little safer, a little kinder, a little better than theirs were.
So Ruth gives her child the gift of vision, a chance to see and feel the breadth of experiences that await her if she leaves the safety of Barbieland and a safe childhood view of the world, and trades it for the world of adulthood, with all of its terrors and pitfalls, but also a waterfall of joys, fellowship, and wonders. That closing sequence, set to Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?”, is the bravura crescendo of the film that surprised and moved me.
It is a cinematic showpiece to capture, well, life, and beyond that, the sublime, terrifying choice to embrace that complex array of experiences, good and bad, that await you. To accept that, to countenance the overwhelming scope of existence, knowing that it will overtake you and that it will end, is an act of profound courage, and a gobsmacking thing to successfully convey on the silver screen.
No matter who you are, you feel that plight. You feel that awe. You feel the spiritual catharsis of a doll who knowingly becomes a person, and scarier yet, a grown-up, with all that comes with both. You feel the hardship and hope of choosing to live in a messy and imperfect world and to be messy and imperfect. And that part of Barbie is for everyone.
"I do worry sometimes I might just be entertaining myself while staving off the inevitable."
The Banshees of Inisherin is one of the saddest breakup movies since Marriage Story. Well...in the film, they are not a romantic couple, but Padraic (Colin Farrell) and Colm (Brendan Gleeson) were good friends, until one day their friendship ends abruptly, just because Colm decides that despite there being no bad blood between them, he does not like him anymore. The reason is: you are dull. In some ways, friendships are like relationships; it starts with the strong bonds you form with each other until that feeling towards them is not the same, and you no longer like/love them anymore.
I mean, everything was fine yesterday.
A strange occurrence that is not explainable but does happen. I believe it starts when one person changes while the other doesn’t. In the movie, Colm is a wise and articulated older man with an artistic ambition that he never acted on and never stopped to think about getting older. Living on a small remote island off the west coast of Ireland, where everybody is freaking boring and gossiping little bitches who love to stick their noses in other people's business and drama, because there is nothing else to do on the island. The movie does a fantastic job of giving you the impression that living on this rock slowly kills you on the inside. While being a supporting character, this is the dilemma with Colm. He does the same thing every day with his ex-friend, going to the pub at two pm and talking endlessly about meaningless crap and nonsense, and who knows what else happens the rest of the day, which is not that interesting, I assume.
The end of their friendship is hard to watch because it leaves the audience with everlasting pain. Brendan Gleeson is remarkable as the desperate and often cold Colm.
Despite what film Twitter tries to tell you, Martin McDonagh has yet to make a bad movie. In the same vein as Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino, whenever McDonagh makes a new movie, I am 100% there. Every movie this guy has made has been brilliant, and Banshees is no different. A dark comedy at its finest cause you know when things go so wrong to the point it gets funny. Well, Martin McDonagh's movies are like that.
The writing is superb and has plenty of dry humour. The film-making is not anything grand or flashy; some comment on how stagy it is, but I do not feel it needs to be a technical marvel. With that said, there are some beautiful shots of the landscape of Ireland.
Comparing his work in The Batman early this year and this movie proves that Colin Farrell is one of the finest working actors. His character Pádraic Súilleabháin is a dim-minded, polite man who, unlike Colm, has found peace and happiness in his daily life. Farrell brings a child-like vulnerability to the character, where everything he does or says can be funny and depressing. His character arc is incredibly heart-rending.
Pádraic sister, played by Kerry Cordon, another standout performance, and some of her line delivery has implanted itself in my head. Her character Siobhan is trying to find the ultimate purpose in her life, echoing the problems that Colm is facing, which the two get along like a house on fire.
Barry Keoghan plays Dominic, and out of all the characters in the story, he lives the worst life under his abusive father. Keoghan continues to be an excellent actor who is on a winning streak. The character of Dominic is a playful and childish man, but the tragedy of the character is that he is lost in this life and has nowhere to call home, often appearing at the most random of places during odd times.
The score from Carter Burwell immerses you in this story and contributes to the stunning visuals.
Overall rating: On paper, a simple concept of a friendship breaking up, but its approach to mental illness, kindness, art, masculinity, and our inevitable death was strikingly profound. At times, it felt like Shakespeare mixed with the Brothers Grim tale.
It is one of the best movies of 2022.
Like gravedigging, you have to dig deep if you want to get the payoff.
Alex Garland's film about the abuse of women succeeds thanks to its rich tapestry of jarring images. While fans of traditional horror may feel disappointed by its lack of jump scares, those who appreciate the more cerebral psychology of neo-horror (à la Hereditary) will find what they are looking for here.
The film is largely a success thanks to its strong cast and rampant symbolism, though Garland's choice to focus more on the women as victims rather than the titular men as aggressors means the movie misses its mark when it comes to demanding receipts.
My interpretation of the symbolism:
:rotating_light::construction::octagonal_sign::warning:MAJOR SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT:warning::octagonal_sign::construction::rotating_light:
The film, obviously, is on a mission to portray women (or at least one woman) as a victim to the male gender. That the director wants to paint all men with this broad stroke is evident in the choice to have the same actor (Rory Kinnear) play all of the aggressors, saying, in essence, that deep down all men are the same man: a being that's driven to hurt women.
Of course, her abusive husband, James, isn’t played by Rory Kinnear. Does this mean he’s somehow different than the other men who appear later in the film? Absolutely not, and proof of that is Jame’s injuries. After he falls / jumps from the building, we see that a gate post splits his right arm from his elbow to his hand, and that his left ankle is broken. Later on in the film, all of the men in the town who besiege Harper are shown to share these exact same injuries, illustrating that they are the same man as the abusive estranged husband.
This point is also reinforced by the presence of 'the naked man'. 'The naked man' is the personification of "The Green Man" (who is also symbolized in the stone carving on the church altar). According to Wikipedia, “The Green Man is a legendary being primarily interpreted as a symbol of rebirth, representing the cycle of new growth that occurs every spring,” which indicates that, as violence breeds violence, the cycle of violent men will continue with no end in sight. This is also what’s meant by the endless cycle of men birthing men that we witness in the film’s climax.
A quick glance at the film’s characters shows us several types of abusers that exist in society.
First, her husband, who starts off emotionally abusing his wife -- “If you leave me, I’ll kill myself” -- before graduating to physical abuse.
Then there’s Geoffrey, the man who rents her the mansion. He represents the “nice guy” who imposes his generosity on women and, when he’s later rebuffed, hurls insults at the women who aren’t interested in him.
The priest represents the patriarchy of religion and the structure put in place to perpetuate male domination and abuse.
Samuel is the young man 'frat bro' who feels he’s entitled to his ‘bit of fun’ and rebukes women who dare refuse him what he considers to be his due.
The police officer represents authority because, when he arrives at Harper’s rental property the night of the home invasion, he stands in her front yard yet neither says nor does anything. He’s as useless and impotent as the police and other authorities women might turn to when they seek assistance.
All of this is not to say that Jessie doesn’t have her allies. There is her best friend Riley (Gayle Rankin) who provides moral support throughout the film, and the kind policewoman who speaks with Harper when the police initially arrest the naked man. Garland’s point here is that the best place for a woman to get the support and assistance she needs is with other women.
This concept is driven home by the second figure etched into the altar (on the opposite face of The Green Man), that of the sheela na gig. The sheela na gig is a carving of a woman with an exaggerated vulva and is used to symbolize fertility and protection against evil.
That’s a brief rundown of the symbolism in Men, and also serves to illustrate what I appreciate about the film: it’s not because it’s horror that I have to turn off my brain. [/spoiler]
Denis Villeneuve is the man!
There’s only one word that came into my mind after watching it: finally.
Finally, a blockbuster that isn’t afraid to be primarily driven by drama and tension, and doesn’t undercut its own tone by throwing in a joke every 30 seconds.
Finally, a blockbuster that puts actual effort in its cinematography, and doesn’t have a bland or calculated colour palette.
Finally, a blockbuster with a story that has actual substance and themes, and doesn’t rely on intertextual references or nostalgia to create a fake sheen of depth.
Finally, a blockbuster that doesn’t pander to China by having big, loud and overblown action sequences, but relies on practical and grounded spectacle instead (it has big sand worms, you really don’t need to throw anything at the screen besides that).
Finally, a blockbuster that actually feels big, because it isn’t primarily shot in close ups, or on a sound stage.
And of course: finally, a blockbuster that isn’t a fucking prequel, sequel, or connected to an already established IP somehow.
(Yeah, I know Tenet did those things as well, but I couldn’t get into that because the characters were so flat and uninteresting).
This just checks all the boxes. An engaging story with subtext, very well set up characters, great acting (like James Gunn, Villeneuve's great at accentuating the strengths of limited actors like Dave Bautista and Jason Momoa), spectecular visuals and art design (desaturated but not in an ugly washed out way), pacing (slow but it never drags), directing, one of Hans Zimmer’s best scores: it’s all here.
I only have one real criticism: there’s too much exposition, especially in the first half.
It can occasionally hold your hand by referencing things that have already been established previously, and some scenes of characters explaining stuff to each other could’ve been conveyed more visually.
Other than that, it’s easily one of the best films of the year.
I’ve seen some people critiquing it for being incomplete, which is true, but this isn’t just a set up for a future film.
It feels like a whole meal, there are pay offs in this, and the characters progress (even if, yes, their arcs are still incomplete).
8.5/10
Before explaining why I liked this movie, I'd like to point out that the main idea of the movie is NOT that you need find your purpose to have a happy life. It's the exact opposite! I'm not saying this just to be a professor, but because it's really important and that's why I loved the film so much. You don't need to be fixated about something to find a meaning in your life. You need to savour it and learn to enjoy the little moments instead of waiting for something big to happen to reach happiness. It's so profound and refreshing. A movie just about a guy waiting for his big moment and feeling fulfilled after having reached it would have been dull, boring, trite and most of all wrong, like pretty much all "self-help" advices.
Instead the opposite idea is presented and if you just pay attention to the dialogues -and the story, really- you'll understand what I mean and most importantly what you might apply to make your everyday life better.
But back to the movie I've got to say I almost cried as the end was approaching as much as I was going to turn off the tv when the movie started. The whole initial setting reminded me too much of Inside Out, a film I quite disliked, so I was worried it was a copy of it (it kind of is in the beginning). But luckily the second half steered away from it and developed in one of the most moving film I've seen in a long time. Undoubtedly one of Pixar's best.
This movie was released soon after my father had passed away in a similar situation, but in an FPSO ship, and for that reason, it took me so long to be able to watch it and I still don't want my mother to do so.
My father died saving his crew and I can tell you from experience that there's no justice in this world, nor even for big things like this.
I can only feel empathy for the families of those who died in the Deepwater Horizon, the deep damage the incident caused to them... it's sad to think they probably didn't get any real support from those companies afterward, just like we didn't get any as well from the big Norwegian company my father worked to.
In the end, you can read all the accident reports you can find, with their "consequences" for the accidents sites, but you won't find one that includes the consequences for the families of the deceased ones and the trauma of the survivors.
There should be so much more movies about these "accidents"... maybe it'd raise awareness of how dangerous and risky this work is and why it should be better and heavily regulated and supervised - but not by the companies operating them, but by neutrals affiliated to the Navy, who won't cover up the wrong things in the name of profit. If there was more serious supervision, many of these accidents could be avoided, for the good of the sailors, crew and the sea.
Hardly any words can describe the emotional punch and moral divide this film gives you when watching. It, like it's predecessor, has trumped the movie that came before. With even more maturity built into the story than before. It shows the targeted audience extremely important lessons, displayed with animation that outshines some modern CGI in big blockbusters.
The scenery is gorgeous and the cinematography is outstanding. Not trying to outdo the previous films with the "look what we can do with the camera" gimmick. But improves the stability and grounds the viewer within the world. Vivid imagery that adds to the story and the style, this movie has many points other studios need to take a note from.
At first, the villain seemed typical and unneeded after the second film. But the wit and backstory they gave him, don't make us feel for him. Only adding to Hiccup's story and his choices throughout the film. Toothless is way more "himself" here. Seeming that Dean Deblois wanted to focus on him letting loose. It really pays attention to how this voiceless dragon, needs to have a compelling arc as well as his rider. This does lead to my one gripe about the film, the Light Fury. She represents a very important aspect in the film. Her introduction, however, didn't feel right and could have been a bit more coherent to how she acts throughout the rest of the film. Although, it all adds up to the end. For this really is the final movie in this amazing trilogy.
With this marking the end of these stunning and surprising films. They capture the story of a boy, who trudges through hard times to find life's hardest challenges and truths. And they ended it extremely wholesomely. It feels, complete. As if it always should have been this way.
9.5/10
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!
Jimmy Hoffa: “I heard you paint houses.”
Frank Sheeran: “Yes, I do.”
It’s a great day when you get to see a new Martin Scorsese movie, but a new gangster movie staring some of one of the greatest actors that have ever bless cinema, now that’s killing two birds with one bullet. I’ve said this many times before, but whenever Scorsese releases a new movie - I’m there, as I have 100% faith he will deliver something so crafted in style where his passion to create a fresh new experience for audience to slip right back into loving movies. And Scorsese has made another masterpiece.
‘The Irishman’ is an old school masterpiece. A sweeping epic that’s so rich and timely through it’s presentation that I was reminded of the likes of Coppola and Leone. Everything from the razor sharp back and forward conversations with characters, long takes, and the fantastic use of music that helps create the setting and time period.
Now let me talk about the visual effects in the movie - something that everyone including Scorsese himself was worried about. While at first it was a bit uncanny to see fresh faces from De Niro, Pacino and Pesci. The movie has a difficult task, because the entire runtime takes place in the past and occasionally it will cut back to a present day/older De Niro, aka what he looks like now, so it’s so easy to judge on the cgi wizardry. I can safely say you really get use to it after awhile and doesn’t distract from the amazing performances, as I could still feel the emotion from their faces. I bought into it and the evolution of the technical is absolutely astonishment.
Robert De Niro plays a cold, yet charismatic gangster, Frank Sheeran - a friend of Jimmy Hoffa. He follows orders to kill and dose it without a sweat. His children are afraid of him and have seen both sides of him, which would later hit him harder than a million ton of bricks. He doesn’t need to say or do anything to express the characters thoughts and feelings. Fantastic as usual.
Al Pacino plays a loud month Jimmy Hoffa that’s a huge ball of energy and reeks of desperation, which Pacino portrays beautifully. From ‘Dog Day Afternoon’, to this, it’s amazing how Pacino never lost that fiery energy that makes him so captivating to watch. The fact he’s never been in a Scorsese movie baffles me, but am loving his comeback recently.
Joe Pesci plays Russell Bufalino, a silent and collective man who sniffs out trouble and takes care of “business”. If you expect to see the nut job Pesci, then think again. He’s brilliant in the movie. It’s great seeing Pesci back after disappearing from the spotlight for a couple of years, and it’s almost like he never left at all.
With the run time of 3 hours and 29 minutes, not a single frame felt pointless. At times the length was felt, but I was never bored. Thelma Schoonmaker, the editor of Scorsese movies is a legend and needs no introduction. Without spoiling anything, but there’s an incredible scene involving a woman terrified to turn the car engine on as the camera lingers on a shot of keys hanging in the ignition waiting to be turned. When she dose there’s a sharp cut to an exploding vehicle (not hers) with the engine roaring as the sound affect. The most tense scene in the entire movie.
And the cinematography by Rodrigo Prieto was excellent with the use of color that made it visually striking.
Martin Scorsese, the man who revived the gangster genre for what it is and now he’s the one to bury it. The shot outs are often unexpected and messy - basically violence in general. Almost similar to ‘Once Upon a Time In Hollywood’, because there’s an underlining message of age and the modern generation slipping through as the old ways ain't the same anymore. You are taken through a journey of a mobster from youth to old age.
Overall rating: Cinema at its finest. I’m just in awe of the thought we got a movie like this where no other studio wouldn’t dare to touch it for some reason. What an experience.
Three words: I. LOVED. IT.
Listen, I'm a simple bitch, okay? Let's establish that right out of the gate. I can make fun of tropes all day long (especially the romantic ones) but in the end, I will eat that shit right up and walk out of the theater with the biggest grin on my face. Arthur and Mera accidentally hold hands and suddenly I turn into your 80-year-old grandma Gladys clutching her pearls and going "oh my". Jason Momoa and Amber Heard are DCEU's new dynamite duo (as much as I love Gal Gadot and Chris Pine, they've been knocked off the top spot for me). Their chemistry makes my skin tingle. Was the romance cliche? Hell yeah it was! And I adored every second of it!
Of course some stuff besides the romance also happens (but who cares about that? Not Gladys, that's for sure). The main plotline of finding the Trident does feel kinda like a treasure hunt with Arthur and Mera hopping from place to place, but because their chemistry and dynamic is just THAT good, it's all very fun and watchable. The villain is... well, he certainly is, eh? Actually there's two of them, but neither really made me feel anything. Still better than Steppenwolf, I guess? Although that's not saying much. The jokes hit more often than they miss and the movie did get a few good laughs out of me. But the more serious moments hit home for me as well, whether it's Arthur's reunion with his mother or his admission that he knows he doesn't deserve the Trident but it's his only hope of saving the people he loves. The tone feels pretty consistent and the transitions between the dramatic and comedic moments don't seem as jarring as in some other DCEU installments. The fight scenes are awesome. Especially the one in Sicily really made me feel pumped.
My favorite scene was by far Mera really experiencing the life on land for the first time. Her wide-eyed wonder (no pun intended, I guess) not only reminded me of Diana arriving in London, but it also had something wonderfully Little Mermaid-like (and not just because of the hair) about it. It was soft. It was pure. It made me feel warm inside. Mera eating the roses and Arthur immediately doing the same? Nobody's ever gonna ride for me this hard. Those are the kind of scenes that ground these huge superhero movies, that make them feel relatable to me and allow me to take a breath and really connect with the characters. And when 20 minutes later Mera goes full Bad Bitch In Charge on those soldiers and kills them with deadly wine spikes? Oh, I just about lost my mind. I want her to murder me. But aside from that entire sequence, there were plenty of other moments that really got my attention: little Arthur at the aquarium, Arthur and Mera's escape from Atlantis (such a fun chase!), our favorite power couple emerging from the ocean looking like they're on Baywatch (it was great, don't @ me), every time Mera used her powers (the glowing eyes!), the list goes on.
The visuals are absolutely stunning. Gone are the dreary grays of some lesser DCEU movies. Instead we get beautiful colors (Atlantis is beyond gorgeous), some great shots (Arthur and Mera swimming with the flare while surrounded by thousands of Trench people is breathtaking) and of course incredible CGI. It's a very aesthetically pleasing movie. And the music! I loved the music. This is one of the soundtracks I'm definitely gonna need to listen to at some point. And it takes some big balls to put a cover of Toto's Africa in your movie. I appreciate that. Some people are definitely gonna cringe when they hear it, but I had the biggest grin on my face.
Overall, this was a very enjoyable ride. It's quite long, but it didn't drag. I was invested in Arthur's journey. I thought the casting was perfect (and gosh darn do Jason Momoa and Amber Heard look good together! That has to be one of the most visually stunning pairings to have ever graced the big screen). And I just... felt super happy afterwards. I still can't stop smiling. It's a good movie not just by DCEU standards, but in general. I'd love to see it again and I'll definitely try to do so over the holidays. I honestly didn't expect to like it as much as I did. What a great surprise.
