A Quiet Place Part II (2020)

The first thing to say after watching "A Quiet Place Part II" is that you need the first "A Quiet Place" to understand everything. You're offered some sort of a prequel intro, which is probably the minimum required to get the context: a totaly unfriendly alien invasion of some creatures relying exclusively on their hearing to decimate the human race. However, I don't think this minimum helps much somebody who would prefer skipping the first movie. I obviously didn't have time to re-watch it, but fortunately I still remembered enough of it to make sense of some references. And also to say that I think I like the sequel better.

The movie is quite short, especially if we're also cutting the intro I was mentioning. Basically, it follows where we were left with the four surviving Abbott's - a mother with three children (including a newborn), and presents us their path after abandoning the former shelter. We first get a scene where we're reminded the essential of the last movie = the hearing device of the older daughter is the ultimate weapon (and pretty much the only one) against the monsters, after which we're stopping at an abandoned factory where we meet Emmett, apparently a former neighbour from before the apocalypse. Then, the group splits. The girl runs away towards an island where she thinks there might be survivors being followed by Emmett sent to get her back, while the rest tries to resist somewhere in a basement providing some level of acoustic insulation. I think it's best to stop here with the details, otherwise there won't be much left to discover from the story.

The narrative is as it seems - very simple. What's to appreciate in the movie is how this narrative is "dressed". In brief, the production level is very good, both at technical level, and as well as the directing and the acting. I'll just detail more on the editing. We have two brief parts where the tension is on a growing path, one sometime at two thirds of the movie, and one at the ending. I won't spoil more besides that in both we have a critical development in each of the two locations - on the path to the island, respectively at the abandoned factory. For me it seems very hard to make a paralel cut such that you'll get a simultaneous development towards the climax - in each of the two places, without one of the sequences to "lose" in front of the other. I think I've seen attempts like that, which didn't end well - that's why I don't remember one in particular. Well, here it works - twice, with the "advantage" let's say that the second time, the climactic point is a common one ending the movie, but that makes it even better. Besides this, to finally give some light spoiler :), I can say that the ending leaves again plenty of room for a "Part III", but now we don't have so much to remember, so you don't need to wait for it ;)

Rating: 4 out of 5

The Invisible (2007)

I don't remember exactly when I've seen "The Invisible" for the first time, but it probably was more than 13 years ago, before writing my first blog entry. At that moment I liked it a lot. My memory is not so good though to write based on that impression, but I've refound it on TV recently, by chance. What I can say after my 2nd watch is that either my standards went up a lot, or it's harder for me to get impressed by drama, but even so I still find a movie a bit underrated.

What we have here is a mix-up between a teen romance and a thriller, with drama accents that you can feel (spoiler) in not the most happy ending ever. Nick Powell is a fresh high-school graduate, coming from a wealthy family, aspiring towards a career as a writer, and willing to escape from his mother's close watch to continue his studies in London. At the same school, Annie Newton has the complete opposite profile: poor disfunctional family, a bunch of unorthodox activities in order to make some money: from loan sharking to stealing cars and others, and a future that most likely looks to lead behind bars. The paths of the two intersect after Annie is denounced by her boyfriend pissed of being cut off from the spoils of a jewelery robbery, but somehow Nick ends up as the one suspected of informing the police. So, Annie decides to pay the "bill" helped by her partners in crime, and Nick ends up in a coma, thrown at the bottom of a sewer and becoming "the invisible". Precisely, he's trapped somewhere between life and death, giving him the opportunity to walk among the living and to observe what he left behind, until he becomes aware that he's still alive. After that we're getting in a race to save his life, where, predictable enough, the role of who brought him to this state shifts completely.

The movie is a remake of a Swedish production, which I didn't see and it might be better. Here, the target is clearly set somewhere similar to "Twilight", released during the same years. Probably this age range contributed also to why I liked it better when I've seen it first, despite being already older than this target. Indeed, I can't deny now that are many parts where the story is at least hardly believable. Besides that, the approach for the SciFi part is very... "economic" let's call it, in the sense that pretty much all Nick's interactions with the environment in his "ectoplasmic" state are presented as effectively taking place, with a sort of flashback succession where nothing really happened. Given the potential confusion degree of the approach, I'd say that the movie is very well edited. Still, you can't deny that some VFX might have been more.. natural in this context. Probably all these lead to the low rating it has on pretty much all the movie sites it's indexed on. However, the movie has something in how it's put together so that if you can ignore the above, it builds up an emotional load that grows on you until the end. It's either that, or the fact that when I've watched it for the first time I had an instant crush for Margarita Levieva who has the leading part of Annie :), or it just has a nostalgia effect for years with less stress, but for me it's still something like a...

Rating: 4 out of 5

The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)

I didn't see a movie for about three weeks. And three weeks ago I've chosen a short one - recommended somewhere as the most non-Woody Allen movie by Woody Allen: "The Purple Rose of Cairo". I've said a couple times already that I was never very attracted by Allen's typical genre of light comedy alternatic with drama and romance, but I've also had surprises from time to time. And this was on my list since long ago... but there was something telling me that's not as non-Woody Allen as advertised.

Indeed, the subject leaves a bit the space of the typical group of family/friends/relations/discussions mostly central in Woody Allen's work. We have a "SciFi" element - a character from a '30s movie reacts unexpectedly when he gets a crush for a woman in the attendance, who, unhappily married, finds repeatedly refuge at the cinema - precisely, he steps out from the screen with a clear intention to spend the rest of his life near his new found love. Which leads to a surreal situation advancing in cascade, the studio starts getting trouble with the movie also in other cinemas, the rest of the characters are annoyed by not advancing with the action in the movie, the real actor in the role finds his career endangered, and so on.

I won't say where this goes - all I can tell is that we're moving back evetually to a sort of triangle of relations with a typical script by Woody Allen, and with an ending that drags us out from the SciFi, turning the tide to the cold reality. This is less disconcerting though. My main disappointment was that up to some point, the movie actually creates a context original enough to have potential for much more than it finally offers. But, as I said... it's short :)

Rating: 3 out of 5

Star Trek: Picard

About four years ago, I was quite happy to hear about a new Star Trek series: Discovery, after a 10+ year break from the former, Enterprise. However, I turned unhappy only after 5 episodes - that's the amount I beared watching, given the senseless development and the bunch of cliches typical to the latest years trend to turn pretty much each production into a manifest for current social issues (but it mainly was the lack of sense). That's why I didn't expect much last year from the release of Star Trek: Picard. Now, I finally decided to give it a chance...

I'll try to be brief - the first season is too after all. You can feel the same trend as above, but here is kept within some decent limits in comparison to the SciFi contents, which is probably the main reason to choose watching Star Trek (unlike for instance the latest nominees list for Oscar best picture). The subject revolves around a secret plot of exterminating an entire "race" of androids, starting from a pair of twins seemingly spawned from the "genes" of Data, a familiar character for anybody old enough to know about "The Next Generation", or the Star Trek movies of the 90s. Actually the current series seems to be a tribute for the TNG fans, bringing back to screen many of the original crew members on that Enterprise, besides obviously Patrick Steward, acting again as Picard, ready to come back from retirement for a last mission. Add to that also Seven-of-Nine from Star Trek Voyager, and we have a clear homage to the ST period before year 2000.

To move also a bit beyond the above, what ST: Picard tries, is probably to make the chronological step to the next Next Generation. We have a new crew, this time with a longer mission, about 10 episodes time, but, spoiler alert - apparently ready to take new steps to "where no one has gone before" in the next season. Somehow this blending between the old and new formula works this time, mostly because the new cast, or actually the characters seem much more... "Star Trek" then the Discovery attempt (just looking at the new ship captain, a guy with multiple virtual clones as crew members it's already enough to catch your attention). Another good point about ST: Picard is that the writers of the first season seemed to know from start how the whole thing should end, which brings a certain coherence in the action development, not like other cases where it's obvious that the script struggles to move on by adding new random stuff from episode to episode, just to make it somehow to the end. Anyway, there are parts here too that are far fetched, but still safely far from ridiculous. In any case, after watching "The Expanse" it became quite hard for me to accept the attention (or lack of it) given to details in other SciFi series, so probably I'm not objective enough.

Overall, ST: Picard is not a masterpiece, but it's quite refreshing in the Star Trek universe, despite the contradiction with recycling old characters. As production value, it has enough budget to satisfy the most exigent expectations. And also the nicest score I've heard in a series for quite a while (not that I'm watching too many). Hopefully it won't go bad during season 2... Fingers crossed.

Summer-Fall 2021 Movie Preview Part 2

I avoided last time to mention future box-office hits, favoring some titles that seemed more entitled to steal a couple of hours from the viewer's life. Lately, at least for me, it became harder to allocate time for watching a movie, so I care more if it's worth doing it. Therefore, despite the "classic" preview split = part 1 - summer, part 2 - fall, I decided to ignore what's currently announced for September = "Shang-Chi" (yet another Marvel movie), "Venom" the second (still featuring Marvel in its credits) and "No Time to Die" aka Bond the 25th, and instead to move back to August. Because, since my last entry, there's a new trailer out for this month - "Reminiscence" - which looks more promising than all the three above (and yep, I know I'm biased :P).

Risking to contradict the initial idea above, in October we have "Dune". Honestly, most of the cast seems miscasted to me, and my feel is that this won't surpass my preference for the mini-series produced in 2000 + mostly its sequel in 2003, which completes that adaptation so well that any other version limited to the first part only probably won't feel complete. I couldn't skip though mentioning one of the biggest "SciFi" events of the year. Besides that, Denis Villeneuve as director might count in this equation, although both "Arrival" and "Blade Runner 2049" were below my expectations.

"Ghostbusters: Afterlife" is scheduled for a November release. I've never been to fond of this series, and I skipped the latest reboot. The trailer here, however, has a more retro feeling, which resembles a bit the feel of "Super 8", another production that can make you nostalgic of the '80s. Besides that, it's probably interesting from the direction perspective - Jason Reitman, the son of Ivan Reitman, who was behind the original "Ghostbusters".

With that I'm closing the series of titles that seem worthy of attention for the next half of the year (at least what has a trailer out). I'd say it already looks better than the previous half ;)