It's rare when it happens that I really want to write a blog entry on a movie but I don't have much idea of what I could write about it. I think that in the history of this blog I had like two-three situations when I felt the need to not let a title move by without pointing something out about it, but struggling to do it, and being aware from start that besides saying the movie's good I don't have much else left. Well, maybe there were more similar cases when I wasn't aware it happens :) What's certain for "Suzume" is that we're in such a situation. So...
What we have here is an anime where the background story is some sort of Japanese fantasy, in which a giant worm symbolizing the earthquakes and other natural disasters, escapes from time to time through some doors meant to be closed by somebody called, well, a "closer". The somebody meets during such a journey with Suzume, a teenager on her way to school, who eventually takes over the closer role. And from here on we step into a semi-fantasy road trip, which in my opinion is, as I said already, just a background story. Or a context to build metaphors, and maybe surprisingly, a very.. abstract one.
Let's move quickly over the technical part where, for an anime, the visual experience definitely deserves a viewing. I'm actually sorry I missed this on big screen. Now, we're getting to the part where I don't really know what else to say. As in other more "classic" anime movies, where obviously Miyazaki comes to mind, there are parts far enough from reality to be hard to get their meaning and even slowing down the movie. Still, these are also part of the metaphores set, and I believe each of these can be understood differently depending on who's watching it, which is probably the most interesting thing in the entire movie build-up - somebody could relate something with his or hers own life in a very different way than somebody else will probably do it. It might sound cryptic what I'm saying, but it's more practical to experiment on your own and see if it checks. Maybe I'm wrong :)
Unfortunately, during latest months I didn't have the time and neither the mood to watch any movie worth writing about. Somehow though, I got to spend my hours before going to sleep with the two prequels mentioned in the title for "Game of Thrones", respectively for "Lord of the Rings", and even though I don't usually write about tv stuff, I said it might be a a good subject for an entry (+ I don't want to let the blog die for good yet). Besides that, being released at about the same time, the two series seemed comparable, therefore, the idea to put them one near the other, although I don't really have the same opinion at the end of the first season.
"House of the Dragon" has a soap-opera-like development bringing dragons as the unique element of fantasy, while "The Rings of Power" is a pure fantasy, or at least that's what it wants to be. This is where my negative bias ends for the first one, and the positive one stops for the second. The new soap (unsurprisingly after the original GoT) is wrapped in a very smart screenwriting, which somehow masks the typical lengths where nothing of much imporance happens, crowning that with an extremely efficient "refresh" in the second part of the season by jumping over some years in the action timeline, telling you basically: look, we didn't try to squeeze out some useless episodes to fill up the season, exactly when this seemed to be what's coming. On the other side, with all the fantasy elements LotR tries to add to its checklist, and despite limiting the first season to just 8 episodes, the script is horribly "economical" in the narrative development. Practically, if you extract some key elements out of three episodes or so (1,6,8) it's most probably enough to jump directly to the second season, whenever that might be released. The rest of it feels like empty filling bringing on top of it a bunch of cliche in the writing, which might be normal for a production, but it's not so normal to be so obvious. You can have some cliche in a script, but you need to alternate that with some more natural dialogue. Here what you get are lengthy sequences, spanning minutes of lines, which lead you to the "classic" question - who's talking like that for real? The lack of experience of the two lead writers is obvious - which you can confirm by a quick check on IMDb and find out that's basically the first production in their carreer.
If the narrative is "the root of all evil", more limited in GoT, and more obvious in LotR, unfortunately the balance between the two is completely messed by the rest of the production elements. If GoT benefits of an exceptional production design for a tv series, LotR is far far away to live up to some titles in the online press referring it at some point as "the most expensive series ever". The comparison is almost moot. You can only look at the CGI in LotR, which is either sloppy or absent, leading to hilarious scenes in terms of amplitude, such as the battle for Southlands between men and orcs limited to something like a handful of people in a small village with a few houses, somewho lucky enough to be found by the reinforcements arrived from across the sea, having a perfect sync to find exactly that place on the Middle-Earth map and land perfectly on time to change the fate of the battle (as I said the script is the "root of all evil"). To pick something ample enough for comparing, you can pick for instance the coronation scene in GoT's 9th episode, where I don't how much is the part of extras and how much is CGI, leaving the dragon aside, but in any case the whole sequence is impecable, not ignoring apparently trivial details such as the size of the place where the action takes place. Besides that, if we got to this, it's one of the two scenes in GoT that creates a powerful emotional impact on the viewer through all it brings along, including the actors and the score. The second scene is the one of the king's entrance in episode 8. Both scenes are very carefully built and could very well stand as a subject of a more complex analysis in something like New York Times' "Anatomy of a Scene". In LotR we don't really have something on par with that, maybe the ending of episode 6, where we basically watch the creation of Mordor, but even that seemed partly failed to me from the directing perspective, wasting some of its potential. To compare yourself (more-or-less), with a strong spoiler alert, I included in the end a capture with what transpired on YouTube from all the above mentioned (although I don't know if it will last long).
Some other parts where GoT shines and LotR struggles are the casting and the soundtrack. You can see again here, what's probably the experience of HBO's casting crew. Generally, I don't like expressing opinions about actors because this is subjective, but here the overall difference is obvious. With some exceptions, in LotR we have quite a lot of "flat acting". It's true that again... it the script offers you one cliche after the other, you probably need to struggle to make a believable impression. Concerning the sountrack, even the piece on the main title by Ramin Djawadi recycled from the original GoT has a stronger impact than what Howard Shore did for LotR, apparently brought in especially for that. Besides this, I think that Bear McCreary who has the credit for scoring the episodes content is a good composer, but even in "The Walking Dead" it took something like five seasons to release a pice that fits so well with a scene to stick to your head and make you search it after. For the moment here is completely "forgettable".
I must say that I'm not at all a fan of prequels - it always seemed to me the perfect example to find an opportunity to squeeze the last drop out of an used subject. In a sequel, at least you get a new ending that you wait to discover. In a prequel, you pretty much know the ending, which from my perspective reduces quite a bit the potential of the narrative to catch your attention. Besides that, I somehow had low expectations from "House of the Dragon" after the messed up ending in the original GoT, and I had somehow higher expectations from "The Rings of Power" after the previous experience with an excellent Amazon adaptation for "The Man in the High Castle". This probably contributed at least a bit to a completely reverted effect in my opinion after watching the first season of the two... In any case, my feeling is that LotR doesn't have much chance to grow unless the radically change the production team, and for GoT I think it's hard to keep the current level without getting affected by similar narrative issues, but we'll see.
It looks simple but it's quite complicated to make a wish that you're certain it'll come true. It's close to impossible to get to three wishes. At least that's the message sent by "Three Thousand Years of Longing". Among others...
Alithea is a single woman with a university degree in letters, and more precisely active in the niche of mythology, legends, fantasy in general. During a trip to Istanbul she finds in a bazaar "the magic lamp" (= actually a bottle), holding a djinn who presents her the standard offer of three wishes. What's not so standard is the offer presentation, once that Alithea, having some experience with stories of golden fishes ended badly, has some doubts in placing the first wish. That's where most of the movie's set - finding out from the djinn's three thousand years experience what side effects a too quick decision might yield, and how much entangled are the ways this can generate.
The movies first looks like a "1001 Nights" mixed with Terry Gilliam's Munchausen or "The Fisher King". It's neither. You can feel a bit of the typical chaos you encounter in other movies of George Miller ("Mad Max"), but this is a calm chaos and somehow more... organized, despite the complexity it grows to. The movie advances a lot on the different threads of the djinn's life history and of the wishes he had to fulfill, a bit too far and with too much naration added, although we're carried through it by the stunning visuals of the old oriental world, which compensates a bit. Sometimes the story gets so dense that seems more like a philosophical audio-book. It's ok if you have some years behind you and the right mood to meditate on the various meaning that you can extract and maybe correlate with your life experience. Unfortunately though, it loses points on engaging a less tired viewer, who might get bored. For me, fortunately, or actually.. unfortunately :-) the first category above fits better...
The story of "The Green Knight" is part of the Arthur and the knights of the round table lore. In essence is a typical "quest for glory" fantasy tale, and not a very complex one. That's why I didn't expect much potential for a movie made out of this. After watching it I stick to this opinion, however limiting it to the narrative side. Besides that, "The Green Knight" can be a lesson of what can be achieved visually in a movie, even one with a somewhat simple subject.
I think that the director, David Lowery, was quite happy with the space offered by the vague context of the legends, which gives indeed quite some freedom of expression. On the other hand that's probably exactly what will confuse somebody who doesn't know much about the subject. It's probably one of the few situations where is actually recommended to know the story in advance in order to figure out what the movie wants to say. Pretty much the same as in the case of a known play you see the n-th time, when you'll probably focus mostly on how it's stage, and not on what's about.
A while ago I've read a written version of the legend, and from what I still remember probably mixed up with what the movie reminded me, the story went something like this. "The Green Knight", a mysterious character shows up during the Christmas day before king Arthur's table and proposes a game: he offers to be hit by anyone who wants to do it given that who does it has the guts to receive the same strike after one year. Gawain, the youngest of the knights, and also the one lacking any acts of courage, accepts the challenge, confident that this will be done by beheading his opponent. To everybody's surprise the green knight picks up his head from the bloody floor and leaves not before reminding Gawain that within a year he'll wait for him at the Green Chapel to close the game. The year passes, and Gawain is pressed to honor his word, starting his journey towards the meeting place. When he's about to end it, Gawain stops at some castle where another mysterious knight and his wife offer him shelter for a couple days. This knight proposes another game - for the time of Gawain's stay, his host will go hunting and will provide Gawain with what he's catching given that Gawain gives him whatever he will receive while staying in the castle. From that point on, I don't remember that well how the legend moved on, except the fact that Gawain respects the deal up to the end when the wife of his host trying to seduce Gawain kisses him and offers a sash to protect him from any physical harm. Gawain offers to the master of the castle the kiss back as agreed, but keeps the sash for himself hoping it'll protect him in his final confrontation. It all ends with the showdown, when the green knight just makes a scratch on Gawain's neck, after which he discloses his identity as his former host and the scratch being the punishment for hiding the sash, but also harming him so little as a reward for honoring the rest of the deal.
The movie deviates a bit towards the end, but anyway the differences aren't that far from the above version. Initially I was surprised by the turn it took, just to understand where it wanted to get at the final scene. But to figure it out you probably need to know the story from start. The adaptation has anyway lots of symbolism integrated in it, but unfortunately I didn't have patience to properly digest that. I couldn't say it did bore me, but clearly, it's not a movie with a typical action development. The main attraction remain its visuals. In brief, "The Green Knight" really deserves a watch for that only. The rest depends on your mood.
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 :)
Unfortunately, struggling somewhere between Ketorol and Nurofen for some dental issues that seem to contest my incapacitation record dating from my ankle fracture two and a half years ago, I'm not in the best mood for writing. Therefore, I'll move quickly over "WolfWalkers", although it probably deserves more.
The animation we're talking about is made by the same Irish team as "The Secret of Kells" and "Song of the Sea", reason why I didn't expect much from it. Not that the above aren't good (I guess), but... it's just a matter of taste - in brief, each of the previous movies seemed to me as a sort of Miyazaki made in Europe = lots of senses way too hidden that get lost in an Irish fantasy instead of a Japanese one, and which had the effect of a sleeping pill on me when I've seen it. We have here too an idea that probably has its origin in the local folklore - a variant of the werewolf myth, with the difference from the above that "WolfWalkers" is much more coherent in its narrative, and didn't get me bored. Everything starts with a hunter's daughter, who gets bit by another girl of about the same age, but having a wolf shape. Worse, a wolf leading a pack in the nearby forrest, considered a great danger for the town where our action is settled. The result, the hunter's daughter gets, as in any "werewolf story", the same transformation capabilities, stuff that completely incompatible with her father's job taked by the ruthless lord protector to erradicate the menace in the woods.
The way this whole story complicates can be seen in the movie. What I can say is that despite its lack of twists, what we see here is sufficiently complex to worth the time, and somehow the mix between myth, folklore and the relatively alert action, succeeds this time = it's neither too pretentios in its meanings to put the age target too high, neither too childish to make it too low.
"Raya and the Last Dragon" is a Disney movie, like most of the late Disney movies, and that says all about it = don't expect something to challenge your IQ here. Yup, I didn't forget we're talking about an animation where the main target is below 15 years old, but somehow I was expecting more. At least it runs decently: short and not boring.
The subject is a story set somewhere in a imaginary land on the Asian continent, divided in 5 regions, and brought to a dystopian state by a sort of demon resembling a purple tornado turning into stone every living creature it touches. 500 years ago the demon was banished by a dragon who produced a magic globe to keep the evil away. All nice and well, but unfortunately one piece magic globe doesn't divide equally to 5, and the rulers of 4 of the 5 regions grew envious of the one possessing the artifact, where the water seemed more clear, the grass greener, and so on. Like that, predictable enough, we reach a moment when the globe shatters exactly in 5 pieces (what a coincidence), the purple tornado rises again, and the grass loses it's green shade almost everywhere. Fast-forward a couple years, when we find each piece of the globe in possession of each region ruler, struggling to keep away the demon, just as much to not turn all the inhabitants into a giant terracotta army. Except Raya, the daughter of the former owner of the globe, who's trying what her father failed to do - to unite everybody. But for that she also needs to awake the dragon...
I've already told pretty much everything that takes place during the first 15 minutes, so let's stop the spoilers here. As I was saying, the advantage of the movie is its relatively alert action, moving you across the whole fantasy world in search of the globe pieces. So, the movie is not that bad, but unfortunately is utterly predictible and filled with cliche sequences. Probably it's ok for the age it targets, all the story being nothing more than a easy to understand allegory. At the end of 2016 I wrote an entry about "Kubo and the Two Strings". Also an animation, also a fairytale, also set in Asia, also a quest on gathering more pieces, also an allegory. One with much more depth than what we have here. But well, it wasn't also Disney...
I didn't like "The Little Prince" when I was a kid, and I heard it repeatedly as a radio play on a vinyl. It was one of the stories where the ending seemed too sad. I don't recall if I read the book or not at that time, but even if I did it didn't change anything. A couple years ago, when I heard about a new animated version for "The Little Prince", I told myself it might be good to check if my perspective on it changed, but I kept postponing it. Well, I did it now. Verdict: 1. This is not a children's story, despite its animated character. 2. Don't try this alone at home, late at night when you have too many thoughts that don't let you fall asleep - a horror might be a better option :P
I won't start telling the story now. It's the most popular book by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, not very lengthy, and probably well-known. For who doesn't know it, it's probably better to give it a read and what's to understand of it will be up to the personal interpretation of each reader. In any case, to explain point 1 above, the text is full of metaphors, some maybe understandable at a young age, but requiring a level of maturity to see their depth. There's simple stuff like "think outside the box" in the first chapters up to not look at an end as the end, in the final part of the book. Which explains (partially :) ) point 2 above, as well as the director's view of this in the 2015 movie. Or to be more precise, I couldn't resist without figuring out why the story doesn't end where I remembered ending, and at about 3 AM I started reading the last chapters of the book to see if I'm prone to an early Alzheimer or not.
It seems not, because the ending of the book is where I knew it was, but still doesn't seem anymore as sad it did. Because the movie moves on as I was saying. It takes a sort of "Neverending Story" approach, another writing with lots of metaphors, where the universe is infinite and alive as long as "there are hopes and dreams", or well... that's at least the way I see now "The Little Prince", because at the time when I was listening to the vinyl I didn't know about "Neverending Story", and there was no "neverending" on the vinyl cover :). Well, it's obviously debatable the version of the director relative to how it goes on from where the book stops, which might seem too Hollywoodish. Even more debatable is the omission of some big parts in the original story. However, I'd say that overall it draws attention on the end of the written story, and does that by pointing out the uncertainty of it. Or to put it differently, an end is just a form and there might be always something after as long as you keep room for questions ;)
"Here, then, is a great mystery. For you who also love the little prince, and for me, nothing in the universe can be the same if somewhere, we do not know where, a sheep that we never saw has −− yes or no? −− eaten a rose... Look up at the sky. Ask yourselves: is it yes or no? Has the sheep eaten the flower? And you will see how everything changes... And no grown−up will ever understand that this is a matter of so much importance!" (Antoine de Saint-Exupery - "Le Petit Prince" - English translation)
I lost tracks on how many times I've put "The Kid Who Would Be King" on pause until finishing it. I guess it's a personal record of something like 6-7 times over 5 days. The funny part is that the first half of the movie, which I had to fragment a lot seemed much better than the second half. Long story short: we have a re-telling of the knights of the round table, where the role of Arthur is given to a boy in London who finds Excalibur in a stone forgotten near some construction yard, and from that moment is doomed to save the country. The threat: Morgana + a hord of undead who will take over at the next total eclipse = in 4 days.
The movie is somewhere between Narnia and Harry Potter. Meaning that the target audience is between 10-15 years old, but it's not that light, it works for older people too. I decided to watch it despite not having high hopes since it's been quite a while since I've seen a decent fantasy. In some parts I'd say it's actually more promising than the examples referenced before. The problem is that you feel that something's coming: either a part which is too much for kids, either on the border of getting ridiculous. And it comes indeed... and it goes away... and it comes again. Anyway... on the plus side:
- it's more fantasy than what the trailer suggests
- it has a top notch production design (really, I was surprised), decent VFX and some cool camera work
- the score has a fine touch of synth, barely present there, but still enough to make it count
- Patrick Stewart as the old Merlin
Unfortunately, those parts on the border of getting ridiculous are a bit too... cringe. But it might be a matter of taste = for all the rest it deserves a chance. And definitely for the age of 10-15 is quite ok.
Rating: 2.5 out of 5 ( seen from the 30+ perspective ;) )
"The Shape of Water" is a "Beauty and the Beast" in the view of Guillermo del Toro. If you've seen anything made by him before - "Pan's Labyrinth", "Hellboy" or even "Pacific Rim" in a totally different niche, or even more the disaster that was "Crimson Peak", it's impossible not to notice the same directing style, and more particularly the influence in the visuals & production design. That part brings a lot here, but the big plus comes from somewhere else.
The action is set sometime in the '50s-'60s, in the middle of the Cold War, in a research lab in US, where a secret delivery is done. The contents: a human shaped creature fished out of Amazon, manifesting survival capabilities both under water and out of it. The clear resemblance reminded me of Abe Sapian, the merman in "Hellboy", especially given that we also have del Toro there, but in the end it seems there's no direct link between the two. So, moving back to the lab, "the Beast" is repeatedly tortured by an evil security chief (Michael Shannon). But as in any institution, we have the auxiliary personnel, and as part of this we have "the Beauty" (Sally Hawkins) - here a simple cleaning lady. Who shares a sort of similar communication problem with the blueish aquaman = she's mute. And like that an "impossible romance" begins, entangling within it also a Russian conspiracy (Cold War context, remember...), but let's leave some stuff to find out from the movie.
The big plus I was referring to comes from the actors side. Michael Shannon is playing a totally detestable negative character, but the one who steals the screen is clearly Sally Hawkins. The acting is exceptional, especially given that we're not talking about a mute actress, and also we don't have here something in the range of "The Artist". The part is a very natural one. Besides the actors we have the rest mentioned in the start, and I don't want to get into more technical details - everything leads to the feeling it creates, one that gets you there, you're in some gloomy '60s where somehow some color emerges from somewhere. Normally, out of more or less subjective reasons, I'm not really fond of romances, but this was nice :) If just the ending that's a bit forced wouldn't make "the incredible romance" indeed incredible...
Without any connection to the seasonal holidays, I somehow finally managed to see "Night Watch", the first part of a Russian "trilogy" (that's what the poster says) that as far as I know stopped eventually after two movies. The film is directed by Timur Bekmambetov, more known after some visits to Hollywood for "Wanted", "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" and the latest "Ben Hur". Actually it seems these came after the success he had with this production, which for me is part of very narrow niche of movies that don't make much sense, but somehow managed to keep me watching till the end.
There's a story that puts the light and darkness forces in conflict since ages, having momentarily a sort of truce with some not very clear rules (there's nothing very clear in this movie).
We have some human agents on the light side who can see other invisible agents who, again it's not very clear if they're human or not, but in brief they are responsible with enforcing this order. Anton, a guy recruited by the good side, gets involved in a rescue operation for a plane heading towards a potential crash over Moscow, unless a curse on a blonde woman living in a tower doesn't get removed. Meanwhile, Anton should also take care that his son who is not his son doesn't become food for vampires. If all this summary seems already between too entangled and semi-absurd, trust me is way clearer than the way the action unfolds in the movie. We have a sort of surrealism a la "Fisher King" by Gilliam combined with a tint of "apocalypse is coming" that looks like a mix between "End of Days", "Omen" and "Warlock II: The Armageddon" (maybe the latter is too obscure, but has its place on this list).
The movie is very good on visuals and audio. Considering how well the end of the world touch is blended into what's a normal evening in Moscow, I think you can forgive the way too obvious Nescafe advertising. No pun intended, probably that's what kept me awake to see it until the end. Even so, I have some doubts I'll have the patience also for "Day Watch" (the second part) that should bring closure.
Still recycling summer movies... or more precisely "Snatch" meets "GoT" = "King Arthur"... or even more precisely that was the wishful thinking, but unfortunately was neither of the two...
When I heard that there's a new release of Camelot related stuff directed by Guy Ritchie my hopes went high. After watching the movie (or actually while watching it) I realized that the fantasy ground is not that easily mergeable with his style of directing and even worse for the screenwriting, at least compared to the ground line of a classic crime story as was "Sherlock Holmes". It just doesn't work. The context doesn't get well along with the specific short witty lines, the London ghetto feeling, the alert editing filled with short cuts and frequent flashbacks and there are also others. The story itself is ok. Arthur loses his parents at a very young age following the eternal battle for the crown and gets to be raised in a London brothel. In peace and harmony. Until he reaches the age where he can be a problem for his evil uncle (a Jude Law who doesn't seem to age ... probably the dark magic effect). The rest is more or less like a soap opera, but I don't want to give extra spoilers.
It's obviously far from the original writings, but in the end is ok as an adaptation, a quite dark one and which wants to be more settled in the real world. At least it is comparing with John Boorman's "Excalibur", which probably remains the main reference in the "knights of the round table" niche. The problem is with the mise en scene as I was saying, which is bit too chaotic and looses a lot on impact due to this. You don't get to sympathize or to hate any character. There's not enough for this. I won't get to the absurd scenes or to the fighting that bypasses the limits of a swordfighting marathon. I'll stick to my own reference.. which is not "Excalibur" (too metaphorical, completely opposed to this actually), but the TV mini-series "Merlin" starring Sam Neill. The last 10 minutes in that worth watching more than all we have here...
"Your magic is growing stronger. You need to learn control. But when we grow stronger the world grows more dangerous."... is an advice given in "Kubo and the Two Strings". An animation which seems initially to be addressed mostly to a younger target range. I don't know if it's hard or I'm really too lazy to unfold every piece of tale we have here, but one thing is certain: This is not a children's movie. Looks deceive. It's an allegory from start to end, which requires a lot and sometimes in-depth analysis to understand...
Kubo is a boy missing one eye living in a Japanese village, without a father and whose mother struggles somewhere between dementia and Alzheimer as days go by... One day, Kubo forgets to obey the rule of coming home before the night sets. So the fantastic threats saying that his relatives on the mother's side = 2 aunts and The Moon King - an evil grandpa from another world will come to take his last eye left become real. With a final appearance his mother saves him sending Kubo on his father's path, a great samurai, to search for a legendary armor made out of three pieces, which will solve the problem. The search or the armor?... That's one of the many questions left after the ending. Where you probably should become aware that everything you've seen it's probably a symbolic dream of the main character, and the effective reality in the movie is in a very tiny amount. Well, if you're in the mood for a bit of analysis :)...
Starting with the title, where it's relatively easy to infer that "the two strings" are the parents, and that the third string of the Kubo's shamisen is actually Kubo, the first line in the movie - "If you must blink, do it now." that initially might look like a bad cliche, but when it gets repeated seems to catch a meaning, and up to the ending with a short break on a black screen finished with a "The End" said before a really nice cover of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" by Beatles, this whole movie is cryptic... So cryptic that at some point you get lost. I guess that not even the screenwriters could give a cohesive interpretation of everything it's there, some parts having maybe a different meaning independent of others. I could say that the result is quite close to Miyazaki's animes, where behind the childish facade lie often meanings that are much more mature.
As I said in the beginning, it's hard, both subjectively and objectively, to give an interpretation of what I've seen in "Kubo". I actually think there's a bit of room for a personal meaning to be found by everybody, the common element being: family. Maybe just a warning, and that's if you have issues in this area... think again before watching this, or expect some tears...
I've tried in the latest days to close the year, as usual, with an entry that's really worth watching - that's why the frequent posting :). I think I finally found it, so I'll allow myself to wish a Happy New Year! for a hopefully better 2017 & Happy Holidays! for what's left of this season ;)
Rating: 4 out of 5
P.S.: I don't know if somebody really went that far to think this on purpose, but there's a third verse in the final cover which says something like "I look at the world and I notice it's turning / While my guitar gently weeps / With every mistake we must surely be learning / Still my guitar gently weeps". Well, the same verse, in an older, demo version, sounds a bit different ... "I look from the wings at the play you are staging, / While my guitar gently weeps. / As I'm sitting here, doing nothing but ageing, / Still, my guitar gently weeps.". Now, figure out, which and where fits in this story ;) ...
Since a while ago I'm trying to get a bit more selective with the movies I'm watching due to the lack of time. And that sort of excludes from my "to watch" list the range of movies where the main attendance target is age <15. For "The BFG" I made an exception because long long long ago I've read the book by Roald Dahl, which at the time I liked a lot. Unlike other books by the same author though, as "The Witches" or "Matilda" that I've also seen on scree, or "Fantastic Mr. Fox" where even though I can't compare with the written material the video version was excellent, I always found "The BFG" hard to get into a movie. And I guess I was right...
The context puts face to face Sophie, a girl in a London orphanage and The Big Friendly Giant aka The BFG, who being discovered decides to take her to the giants land, a location probably somewhere close to the British coast and inhabited by other large humanoid creatiures, however less friendly and more hungry. Let's jump to the moment when the girl decides that action should be taken against an oversized cannibal threat, and what's a better solution than the help of her Majesty - the Queen of England. There are more details (in particular a connection between the BFG and Sandman), but let's stick to the essentials...
The reason why I thought "The BFG" hard to get on screen is not that much the difficulty of a realist integration of a giant in the real world, which is actually quite ok in the movie. Technically the production is gorgeous, and Mark Rylance "plays" the BFG part flawlessly. The issues is that the written tale somehow convinces the reader (well, at least a young one...) that the Queen, woken up in a normal sunny day, could have an official meeting with a fairytale creature + other stuff like that. In writing there's a way that this sense of "believable", within the limits of a fantasy, is kept. In the movie this mixture of real and imaginary a bit too forced... Something doesn't seem to work, but I have to keep in mind that we're talking after all about a children's movie, and I'm a bit older (around 20+ years) now than when I've read the book...
No time, short entry ... "Doctor Strange" = "Diablo" meets "Inception" - for who played the Blizzard game I guess it's impossible not to see a link (from the colors to relics/artifacts, everything's there), and about Nolan's movie, well ... we don't have dreams, but we have an alternate dimension + time + others are there. What's not part of the sum above is the context/subject where everything is set. More precisely another Marvel super-hero, an ex brilliant surgeon, who irreparably damages his hands in an accidents and finds again his life somewhere in Tibet. But not as a doctor .. as a wizard/sorcerer who must get the world rid of dangers coming from other realms. That's the story. About the movie ...
It alternates between brilliant moments and abysmal scenes (somewhere at the intersection of cliche, childish and out of place = ex. "the comic relief" is way off way too often). Unfortunately the last category is dense enough to bring down the movie, but fortunately the first category is sometimes so good that keeps it above average. It's either bits of the script like thoughts on the end-of-life or more deep conclusions like - controlling time beats having an eternity in your hands. And still ... it could've been more. Or my usual issue with Marvel, too much box-office oriented :) ...
I wished to like "The Book of Life". I was expecting more. When I've seen the trailer long ago, I remember that for a second I had the same feeling I got ofter "How to Train Your Dragon" = the promo was hiding much more than the first impression it left me. I thought here will be the same ... Well, it was not.
The story starts with Manolo and Joaquin, two boys in a village in Mexico who both like Maria. Well, the story actually starts with a group of spoiled children visiting a museum, but let's leave the context of the context aside and let's get back to the context ... La Muerte and Xibalba, the two "gods" of the Mexican underworlds make a bet: who's gonna put the wedding ring on Maria's finger? The ruling of the realms beyond depends on the result. Just that until the wedding there's still some time left (really, like half the movie) ... Maria is sent to study in Europe and we move onward X years until she's back in the village. Meanwhile Manolo strives to continue the family tradition as a bull fighter despite his pro-life beliefs regarding the bulls, and Joaquin receiving a hidden support from his protective "god" made a career as a soldier who defends the town against El Chakal (= a big, evil and mean "bandido" who wants to pillage everything). Again backed up by his protective "god" Joaquin seems to win the bet ... by absence = like in a Shakespearean tragedy Manolo lets himself poisoned to follow Maria who passed out after a snake bite. The problem is that he doesn't find here in the other realm = two snake bites - Manolo's dose - are apparently more lethal than one snake bite - Maria's dose. So, she's coming back to life, and without a choice left she's getting ready to say "yes" to Joaquin ...
Ok, I've told already what's going on for half the movie. But that's the intro. The main story starts after. I didn't get into the Mexican mythology details because I don't want to spoile everything, but what can I say more is that what follows was disappointing. The premises are good and open up the room for a really nice story. But the room's left empty. The way things are solved is rushed, chaotic, exaggerated (not that I was expecting something realistic, but when in the end suddenly everybody gets along with everybody ...). It sort of gives the impression that after stretching the length as much as possible up to the middle, who wrote the script found out that there's a time limit to wrap up ... What a loss.
Recyclin' recyclin' ... again I'm writing my weekly entry before an early flight in a couple hours, so indulge me being short with something picked from my degrading brain memory cells, not the oldest ones, but still enough to not remember everything ... A reason is that "Il Racconto dei Racconti" = "Tale of Tales" as international title is a mix. The way it develops first made me think on "Cloud Atlas". Strictly for switching the focus from one story to another, not the whole thing (different times, etc). More precise we have three stories going on in parallel. Where story = an actual fairytale. What connects them is probably just the human selfishness analyzed through three different perspective by looking at the fate of three city rulers, each of them advancing towards a more/less bitter end. The stories shock sometimes. I realized again actually how atrocious the fairy tales for children can be, and the interesting fact that you don't realize that when you're a kid.
There's no happy end here ... Although it might look like in one of them. In any case: - not recommended for sweet dreams :)
... or to make it quick: how "good" looses lamely against "evil" in the last two classic Perrault/Grimm adaptations. Even though the critics' result is the opposite. Not for me. Why? Well, let's see ...
I've always thought that "Cinderella" and "Sleeping Beauty" are the most boring stories in the "damsel in distress" set (at least in Snow White we have a poisonous apple and dwarfs, in Red Riding Hood a disguised wolf, and in Rapunzel we can study the hair thread toughness in domestic constructions - e.g., ladders). So, I didn't expect much neither from "Maleficent", nor from "Cinderella". The surprise came, however, from where I wasn't expecting anything at all. After all in Cinderella we still have something: the glass shoe search, but in Sleeping Beauty... : a curse, the damsel falls asleep, the prince arrives, the magic kiss, end of story. Nothing to create at least some fake suspense before the expected happy-end. Well, no .. in "Maleficent" the tale is a bit more complicated. The script takes quite a distance from the classic story. As main action thread we're following the life of the evil fairy godmother who drops the curse on the little princess, (spoiler:) and after gets to regret it, and after ... well, after it's written in the book :) (not really). Let's say just that the ending .. or better said the story climax is surprising. Probably so surprising that the critics pretty much bashed "Maleficent"... Not the same thing for "Cinderella", which seems to be relatively well received by now. Why not? We have a classic tale, told in the finest detail, with little digression. So that children will still enjoy their dreams after. No nightmare potential here.
I can't say that "Cinderella" is a bad movie. Kenneth Branagh managed to get the max out of a story by keeping it as it is: light. For bedtime. With a relaxed tone, a good casting, a decent script, cool effects, everything in its place. I would've liked more than that. I did not expect to see the unwritten side as in "Maleficent", knowing that Branagh doesn't cross much the borders of the book, but I did hope for something ... I don't know ... More evilish evil characters, more tension when looking for the girl with the right foot ... Something that I've seen around 20 years ago, when this guy was trashed by critics for what I consider still to be the best "Frankenstein" (yup, the one with DeNiro). Way too much drama, intensity and depth they said it was there. That's what's missing in "Cinderella".
The conclusion is that if you want a pure bedtime story, you're probably in the apparently larger target group of viewers for who the critics recommend "Cinderella". If you're open minded enough to accept a cinematic approach that's more complex than the literary piece (completely opposite to the usual book-to-screen simplification) then ... choose the "dark" side ;)
Human beings make life so interesting. Do you know, that in a universe so full of wonders, they have managed to invent boredom.
Somehow I've barely managed to finish watching "Hogfather", still in due time for a "season entry". Which I'm gonna try to make it short, short ;) since I don't think there's anybody in the mood for long reads these days :)
We're talking about a two-part mini-series based on Terry Pratchett's Discworld universe. A parallel world, relatively similar to Earth as inhabiting population, placed somewhere in space, on which life is mostly concentrated in the Ankh-Morpork metropolis, a sort of city-state bearing some scent of a Victorian London. We don't have Christmas on Discworld, but we have something very similar called Hogwatch, the equivalent of Santa being Hogfather, who leads a sleigh carried by wild hogs instead reindeer. During a certain eve of the event a problem rises. Somebody hires an assassin to murder the mythical Hogfather, contract which is accepted despite the apparent impossibility of locating the victim, who even in Discworld it's supposed to be an imaginary being. And like that we get into a story that involves also the Tooth Fairy or even Death (yup, the one with the scythe and a black cloak), who eventually has to take the job of delivering presents given the crisis situation. And by chance Death has a granddaughter, half-human, having the advantage to be present in both worlds, so also able to try solving the ongoing catastrophe which seems to have potential apocalyptic consequences. What are these and how they're dealt with, in the movie ;) ...
I haven't read anything by Terry Pratchett. As a reference, after watching the movie, if it's of some help I could say he's somewhere between Roald Dahl and Neil Gaiman, with a consistent extra-dose of dark humor. The story itself gets slightly chaotic, and maybe a bit hard to follow at some points (especially if you're struck by a cold and continuously sleepy). Not to say that, ironically, the "boredom" part in the start quote can be successfully applied on certain parts. Overall, the movie could be easily classified as a children Christmas tale. However, the dialogue sort of contradicts this frequently, and probably that's the best part in it. From funny references to the socioeconomic implications of giving presents compared to the expressed wishes, up to a philosophy on the impact of belief in fairy tales towards moral values (which despite the light-spoiler, I've chosen below instead of a trailer, that I couldn't find anyway), there's a wide range of "food for thought" in this movie. Clearly more than what you would expect from a kids story, which far from perfect, it's still probably the most interesting "Christmas production" I've seen by now ;) Happy holidays to everybody !
My expectations for the second part of "The Hobbit" were so low that I actually thought on and found an interesting alternative for this time of year (which I still hope it will get a blog entry), but I didn't manage to find the time to watch it. Therefore it seems I got stuck with Tolkien for this week's entry, and surprisingly for me it's not that bad in the end.
I still think that this is an apex of cinema industry cash-in opportunism which tries to squeeze three movies out of a book shorter than any of the volumes composing LotR. I have to admit though a significant improvement over the endless scenes of dwarfen-orcish kickboxing in the first part. I don't want to reveal much from the story in case it's not already known. The group of dwarfs+Bilbo+Gandalf continue their travel towards the Lonely Mountain, where they're supposed to face Smaug, the Dragon. Obviously, the path is still long, twisted and filled with dangers as it was up to the point where the first part left it. Following that, we keep getting some preposterous stunts, or cliche lines which are so "epic" that might cause you muscle strains due to eye-rolling. And still ... I think it's the first Peter Jackson movie since "Fellowship of the Ring" (= LotR 1) which .. how to put it shortly: doesn't drag. It's way less superficial than the previous part, and has fewer lengths than any of the last three movies set in the Tolkien universe. Probably the story helps a bit, because it gets on the closure path (a bit too much I would say = I'm afraid that the last part might get again overfilled with testing blacksmith products on the Middle-Earth inhabitants' skins). The script though is a good adaptation of the book (ignoring the cliche lines), sufficiently well done to give even more depth to a kids story than I remember it has in the original material. Unfortunately, for me at least, the directing brings down the production level ...
That's something that I noticed since quite a while on Peter Jackson, more precisely from "Return of the King" onward, confirmed in "King Kong", in the first part of "The Hobbit", etc. The parts in the script which have the max on the emotional impact are sort of handled no different from the rest, or, even worse, given excessive length. I don't know why. Probably considering that longer scenes make the feelings more intense .. Not true. The perfect example is the ending in LotR which lasts more than half an hour after the ring gets melted, enough that all the impression the movie built up on you until that point to suffer the same meltdown and vanishing faith. Well, sometimes he manages to get it right, and the current "Hobbit" is more or less the case. Ironically, probably because we don't have something of major impact in this part of the story. It's just a preparation for the ending, and it's decently built up in that sense. Only decently and not more than that since we still have enough exaggerations. It's been a long time since I've read "The Hobbit" and I needed a quick look on Wikipedia to remember some stuff. (light spoiler) For instance, in the book there's indeed an escape in barrels carried by a river. No problem with that, but I doubt we also have an elf there to try something close to Van Damme's Volvo split on two barrels, and simultaneously to shoot arrows into the orcish horde on the shore. And the examples can continue. However, some quite stupid perfect syncs, as in a start action sequence, let you know relatively early that you have to quickly adjust your tolerance standards.
As I said, the script (the same Fran Walsh & Philippa Boyens as main authors) is ok though, with all the additions I was mocking not so long ago in a preview entry. Indeed, placing Legolas among the elfs in the story is quite unnecessary. Anyway, since he's coming as a composed elf package including also .. Tauriel (who I don't even know to be part of any Tolkien book), I won't complain anymore. And it's not because I prefer Evangeline Lilly to Liv Tyler (although .. :P), but it adds a sort of romance thread to the tale. No, I'm definitely not into love stories which I usually avoid. However, although the addition might look artificially to some, given the "complexity" of "The Hobbit" material, any extra decent subplot is actually helping. And even leaving apart what's extra, the original material is better treated than it was by now. Especially the character modelling in two cases(spoiler free): Thorin, the dwarf leader for whom we're given discrete signs of what's coming, and Bard, a human on which I can't tell much more but who's excellently introduced by the script through his friendly and then antagonistic relation with Thorin.
I don't want to get too long on the technical side which seems very good, as for the rest of the movies in the series. Especially the cinematography. I really liked for instance the traversing of Mirkwood (minor spoiler) despite my arachnophobia. We have a very nice alternation between cold filters on gray/blue with some very warm used for a sunset, alternation that implicitly connects to the "nuances" of the ongoing action.
I've been asking myself if I'm not overrating (again) the movie based on my low expectancy and the difference I encountered. But if I think again, I had the same low expectancy for the first part too, unfortunately confirmed, so I guess this time I'm relatively objective on it. I'll stubbornly stick to the opinion that "The Hobbit" can't get to the LotR level, but if the third part manages to be at least at the level of the current one, we have good chances for an excellent fantasy, and forget the first "Hobbit" as a sort of "Phantom Menace" accident (= worst Star Wars) in the Tolkienish world.
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