17 + Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) + blog break

"The unknown future rolls toward us. I face it, for the first time, with a sense of hope. Because if a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life, maybe we can too." This is how "Terminator 2: Judgment Day", ended in 1991, 33 years ago. Now, after these 33 it looks to me that the world is more worried about hypothetical scenarios, either like being wiped out by the AI like in the movie, or getting back to the dark ages when the demographics of a place didn't matter in face of any invaders, or other apocalyptic outcomes. The essence of the last phrase above is sort of lost, given that in the objective reality some die stupidly in overfinanced armed conflicts while others die stupidly in underfinanced hospitals. But when I started this blog, 17 years ago, I didn't do it for politics...

When I started this blog 17 years ago I did it with a personal top 5, and "T2" was just out of it at that time, after watching "The Jacket". I don't have a top 5 anymore, and I'd like to rewatch "The Jacket" because I don't remember it very well. But, by chance, I recently got to see a TV screening of "T2" that somehow came at a moment when I needed it. So, I thought it's the proper time to fix the issue of including this on my blog. I doubt, however, that it does make much sense to discuss the subject of very well known movie, so I'll just stick to a couple of ideas.

I had the privilege to watch "Terminator 2" for the first time in a movie theater, I think in 1992, when in Romania the distribution of made in Hollywood movies just started expanding, with some delay after the official release dates. I was either 9 or 10 years old, and my father decided to take the family out to see a movie, despite the fact that he never was too much into SciFi. The motivation were the visuals, which it was said they're over anything that was released to cinema until then. Re-watching the movie many times, and many years after, I can only say that from this perspective, it sticks to a very select category, maybe together with the first two in the "Alien" series and a few others, where the effects don't show much of their age. The visuals are complemented by one of the two scores (the other being "The Serpent and the Rainbow") that impress through their expressivity considering the specific minimalism of Brad Fiedel, a synth oriented composer, who wasn't used much in the Hollywood mainstream, given that the specific sound lost its trend afer the '80s.

I was saying above that my father was never much into SciFi, but "T2" somehow got to him. And probably it did because the script of "T2" is not one of a deep SciFi, like the "Matrix", which builds up on the same ground idea, but a script that's anchored in a real life context, and besides the credibility factor this creates as well an empathic factor. It's also using the concept of time travel in probably the most direct way, by making an effective journey to the past in order to change the future. But "T2" is not out of nuances, some of which I only see now. For instance, for somebody who watched the first movie in the series in chronological order before "T2" (not my case), at a first watch of this one, excluding spoilers, for a good part of the movie, you couldn't know that Arnold isn't still the evil character and not the positive hero. And there are others too.

Probably what makes "T2" detach from other movies directed by James Cameron, generally lacking depth, is the the contrast it brings at the end on this. A terminator cannot self-terminate, but it can pragmatically decide when it would be the proper time to end its existence, even though it understands the tears of the child who attached to it. In some sense... you could interpret this as not being our right to decide when it's the time to leave, but we could though pragmatically evaluate when it would be most "appropriate" to have an exit from this world, and if that's really the the case, we might get it from -somewhere- ... The problem is that I don't really know who has the right to evalueate this, and maybe sometime it must be considered that a sequel is needed ( "T3" wasn't that bad :) ). Well... it's a way too look at it, a movie is a movie, life is life, and I'm not very objective these days...

It's the first time in the history of this blog when I'm going to close the entries for this year at a number of one digit only, so I'm going to make a wish of "Happy Hollidays!" in advance. I've had blog breaks before, but now I think it's the moment to say stop for longer time. Still, as pragmatic I could see an exit at an anniversary moment, a sequel might be needed someday. So, depending on how -somewhere- it will be decided or on how I will decide, "I'll be back"

Rating: 5 out of 5 ( I said I must fix leaving this out in 2007 ;) )

The woods...

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

(“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, Robert Frost, 1921)

(“Telefon”, 1977, written by: Peter Hyams, Stirling Silliphant, Walter Wager)

Dune: Part Two (2024)

Better late than never.. I know that it's probably not of much use an entry about "Dune: Part Two", now, at almost five months after its release, but this year I didn't have much time for movies, and even less to get to see one in cinema. So, finally reaching a couple of less busy days since a while ago, I'm trying to catch up on what I messed. And I'm trying to be selective.

I think there's not much to be said about the subject. Probably for who doesn't know already what's this about, the best recommendation would be to watch "Dune: Part One", or to go for a cliche line like: before "Game of Thrones"/"Star Wars"/"any other epic SciFi involving an empire and a twisted fight for power between rival factions" there was "Dune". At least since 1965, when the first volume written by Frank Herbert was released. Its latest adaptation is completed in the 2nd part, directed and partly written by Denis Villeneuve. The movie resumes the action from the exile of Paul Atreides joined by his mother in the desert along the indigenous fremens population, hunted by the raids of house Harkonnen, the established ruler of planet Arrakis.

I don't remember what I wrote exactly about the first part, but I think what impressed me most were the visuals and less the rest. The impact of the visuals holds here too. I have a major regret that I didn't manate to see this on big screen. As a complete mix of cinematography + art direction + video editing, it's probably the best SciFi I've seen since "Sunshine" (with a mention for "Inception" in this interval). And I didn't forget about "Avatar" or others, but for any visual appreciation there's a dose of subjectivity. In any case, here the camera work goes more deeply as meaning, as in the references before - it's enough to have a look at the contrast between the visual tone warmth of the desert scenes compared to the monochrome coldness of the fight in the arena under the sight of barron Harkonnen.

I stick to my opinion that both Paul Atreides as well as Chani didn't get benefit of the best character casting, and the previous "Dune" versions nailed this better. The rest of the cast compensates this, and I believe it delivers for all the new introduced characters this time. The part that surprised me most in a positive way though, is that the whole tone of the adaptation deviates less from the line I knew from the original "Dune". There are still elements that seem to be changed for no particular purpose, like the execution of baron Harkonnen, which made me to Google search to confirm which is the written version. But it's not something that changes that much a general feeling, like it was somehow expected after the first part. Maybe Denis Villeneuve heard some criticism about it and changed the course towards a more conservative approach concerning the original material. But besides that there's also a perfect way to handle the "mise en scene" of the written stuff. I think it's extremely difficult to find an optimal way to handle the complexity of "Dune" that doesn't seem too stretched or too brief. Here, in thi "Part Two", I think we can see the optimal way.

Maybe I'm either too old or nostalgic, but for me the most impactful overall adaptation of the "Dune" universe remains the "Children of Dune" mini-series, with all its liberties taken from the written part. From what I remember, there they tried compacting more than what's in the volumes corresponding to the title. The series is, however, the sequel for what we have in this movie, and the story has its role in the impact. So, it remains to be seen how "Dune: Messiah" will turn out, which seems to follow. For now, leaving aside the technical part that cannot be compared, what I can say is that among the adaptations of the original novel, Villeneuve managed with "Dune: Part Two" to provide the best, overcoming clearly the previous two versions. And what we have here it's probably going to stick as a reference SciFi for many years to come.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Summer-Fall 2024 Movie Preview

With some delay for this year, I'm trying, however to get through a lightning fast preview of some titles announced for this summer-fall season. So, without further ado, what caught my eye is in the list that follows.

With a change in the cast, in June we have a prequel, "A Quiet Place: Day One", which is actually the third part of one of the few horrors that I found to be ok during the latest years. John Krasinski keeps his writer role for this, and as director we have Sarnoski, whose previous activity includes mainly "Pig", again ok-ish. Maybe we get something at least ok-ish here too.

"The Convert" was produced during last year, but its mainstream release date got set to this July. And since it's something different than the typical summer blockbusters...

In August we have the release of "Alien: Romulus", a new iteration of the series, without Ridley Scott as director. Fede Alvarez, replacing him, has more background on classic horrors than on SciFi ("Evil Dead", "Don't Breathe"), and the trailer seems to drag into that area. But, we'll see..

Probably the headline for September is "Wolfs", starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt, in a thriller with a promising trailer.

Unlike the other sequels/prequels above, "Joker: Folie a Deux" to be released in October, keeps Todd Phillips as director. Therefore, I'd say it's not to be missed.

I'd close this entry for November with "Gladiator 2", even more considering that I was complaining that we lost Ridley Scott from directing "Alien", but we don't have a trailer yet. And I think the expectations for this are higher than for a SciFi, which pretty much everything that could be told was told in the previous episodes. So, let's wait a bit more for this one.

Gojira -1.0 (2023)

"We'll need a miracle to make it work." "Doing nothing won't cause a miracle, either." - That's an exchange of lines in "Gojira -1.0", which somehow catches the essence of this monster movie, in some way like a metaphor, in the sense that I wouldn't have expected that some Godzilla iteration to be so different, positively speaking, from the rest. In any case, we shouldn't forget that what we have here is not the typical made in Hollywood. Even so, I don't remember hearing a lot about the drama depth of the Japanese series. Because, if we draw a line, what we got here is much more drama than monster movie.

The subject is set at the end of WW2, in a disintegrated Japan, where in the beginning of the movie a deserting kamikaze pilot lands on an island hosting a maintenance post for planes, which during that evening is wiped out by a creature risen from the ocean. But our guy survives, together with the chief mechanic, who accuses him of cowardness on confronting the monster, and blames him for the death of the others. What follows is the more consistent drama part, where guilt follows the pilot when returning back to Tokyo, where he tries to find a meaning to live in the ruins left after the war, together with a woman and an adopted child who lost their parents in some enemy raids as he did. When thing look like beginning to settle somehow, Gojira returns, bringing back the memories about what happened on the island. And from here, the movie starts to resemble more a Hollywood monster movie, but still what follows doesn't lose the much more complex drama tone built up to that moment.

"Gojira -1.0" does not have the standard VFX of a summer box-office, where if you take some scene with explosions and shrapnels, you have good changes to interchange it with a some other from a different movie. It's much more particular what we have here, because first of all it moves onwards from a visual experience that seems more real precisely due to lack of exaggeration in what you can see. We don't have all the possible colors splashed over the screen when something blows up. Besides that, I didn't watch the last Hollywood encounters between Godzilla and Kong, but here the monster looks more like extracted from the old Japanese stop-motions and brought into the modern VFX age. You finally get more "blueish" effects when Godzilla starts using its weapons, but even so what's on screen keeps a much more credible look than what you get in many other movies.

To conclude, the movie deserves watching for the story, out of which I didn't reveal much, and which has a decent density, for its visuals and audio, but mostly for the very good intertwinning between drama and action, and for its continuous metaphor that favors life, which comes in a strong contrast with an idea of exaggerated sacrifice oftenly met in the Japanese culture.

Rating: 4 out of 5