Summer-Fall 2021 Movie Preview Part 1

I didn't watch any movie for something like three weeks, and I doubt I'll have time during next one. Which already doesn't look good, lacking other "drug" to bring balance to the mind while alternating between a critical deadline + some neverending dental issues. So I told myself to at least deal with the mid-year traditional entries, short format, and check what looks promising for this summer-fall season.

In June, "Monuments" is a release that seems to get a bit out from the box-office summer hits area, where typically we have lots of actions and explosions and the subject is very thin. I'm not really fond of comedies either, especially when there's a romantic angle, but apparently my subconscious won this round...

"The Green Knight" is telling an episode from the Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table saga. It's an episode that in its original version, unlike others, has a less dramatic ending, which makes it somehow less promissing for screen if you stick to the classic story. But, as in many other cases, the movie might change the story a bit... We'll see in July.

I was thinking to let the summer pass without referring to anything in the comics/super-hero area that moved, for a while already, from overrated to hyperrated, or whatever's worse than that. There are though some small exceptions, and the most notable is James Gunn who managed to make "Guardians of the Galaxy" (both 1 and 2) to stand out, comparing with the classic Marvel pattern. It's just something different. Maybe we'll see this in August also for DC Comics in the reboot of "The Suicide Squad".

Lasam toamna pe data viitoare. Cand o fi asta...

Boss Level (2021)

It's been a while since a I posted at such short intervals, but that will compensate a longer pause following this entry. Besides, for some time the interval between watching the movie and writing about it got longer and longer, and I start forgetting what I want to say. "Boss Level" was also too "motivating" too lose it among the messed up neurons and lack of lecithin.

Roy is a guy in his 40s, an ex member of the special forces, with an ex wife working in a super-secret lab for another ex military. A dude who fits very well the arch-villain pattern with a wish for world domination. In all this context we have a phenomenon going on that resembles Groundhog Day = each morning Roy wakes up at the same time, in the same place, and spends his day with an army of assassins chasing him and trying to shorten his suffering of non-stop repeating the same activity. Obviously this happens just for Roy, who struggles to advance in his last 24 hours as much as to be able to understand how the visit he paid his ex wife a day before fits in all this story. And I won't say more about it. The trailer reveals already enough, and I was inspired not to watch it before the movie.

From start I probably had a positive subjective approach on this, knowing from the two lines describing it on IMDb (very underrated there by the way) that's a time travel movie, subgenre on which I have an obvious thing for. In a different context I might've been bothered by the lack of rigor, and I would've looked for loopholes. It's however obvious from the first scene that the movie doesn't take itself too seriously, and you shouldn't to it either. It's built as the title suggests, like it's video game adaptation, although it's not. It's very very fresh though, and the script construction is just simplistic in appearance. Indeed, it won't tell you much about the time technology behind the Osiris spindle that creates the phenomenon and which looks as a new Stargate. But it will take enough time to build a solid puzzle that Roy has to solve in order to reach the "boss level". And the twist there, which you might not feel as a twist, so I'll endulge myself a spoiler, is that the "boss level" it's actually a different one. "The secret level" :-) - for which Roy needs even more repeats to figure it out. Moment where the movie does what I was complaining last time that "Love and Monsters" doesn't - a short exit from the light area more towards drama, but with enough force here to feel it. Or, well, being about passed time, turning points, and what could you do with a time machine, I might be subjective again ;-)

Rating: 4 out of 5

Love and Monsters (2020)

I won't try getting too philosophical and extracting some hidden message from "Love and Monsters" to fit the late context, because I probably wouldn't agree with what message might send. I just simply took the movie as it is - a light SciFi with a consistent comedy part.

We have a dystopian context, where after humanity successfully avoided a cataclismic disaster by bombing an asteroid on its way to Earth, fount itself in a different problem = the radioactive waste landing on the planet created mutations causing various species to dangerously grow overnight. Lots of times I thought that we're lucky that pidgeons aren't 10-15 times bigger, otherwise we would be extinct. That's pretty much the conclusion the movie reaches, although I didn't see any pidgeon there, but we have others - the "monsters" in the title.

In this situation, pretty much everybody retired in various shelters, periodically going out for food. Some kind of "Zombieland", but with mutated creatures instead of zombies. In a group of survivors we find Joel, who after many years finds his former girlfriend, in some other shelter on the seaside at something like seven days of walking - and so we get the "love" in the title. That leads to the main part in the movie - the travel to meet her again. Only that Joel has a small big problem, zero experience in fighting what awaits him outside, or better said a "freeze panic" effect when encountering anything with more legs, tentacles, or other types of members, larger than himself.

Obviously the subject described above has lots of potential. The movie delivers withn an "ok" margin. I guess it could've been better, or better said I felt something missing. Maybe it was just the comic side and the drama exits from that don't have enough force to have the same effect as for example "Guardians of the Galaxy". Maybe there are some action threads that seemed unfinished. Or maybe I did expect too much. Anyway, bottom line, the movie was fun.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5