With the risk of seeming ignorant, I've never had to much interest into Shakespeare, and in particular for the tragedies written in the XVI'th century English. Add to that a very poor opinion about "Nomadland", of an epic boredom IMHO, directed by the same Chloé Zhao as "Hamnet". Therefore, in brief, this seemed like the perfect recipe for a snoring episode at the cinema. Yet again, it seems lower expectations yields high results...
As I was to find out after watching it, the movie is an adaptation of a novel, which I think it explains the consistency it has. It's not something general yet, but for the latest years I noticed a significant drop in the number of original scripts that cross beyond a superficial threshold, even though I'm not near close to watching as many movies as I did like 4-5 years ago, and I'm considerably more selective (maybe that might be the issue...). Moving back, the novel, or in this case the movie, because I didn't read the book, speculates a variant of the Shakespeare's family life, spanning from the marriage of the writer until after the death of one of his children, his only son, Hamnet. The story assumes the well-known play connects to the boy's name and to the impact of the loss, integrating into this assumption the metaphors of "to be or not to be" and others. The idea of the respective association seemed forced to me initially, and as a light spoiler, in a very fine auto-irony, which passes unnoticed over an intense dramatic background, a scene towards the end of the movie suggests the same disbelief. The ghosts from Elsinore and the poisoned intrigues from the Shakespearian Denmark seem to a grieving mother too far from a tragic, but still common family misfortune, given the life expectancy during the time of the plague. At a quick search, the majority of the critics specialised in the literature of W.S. also disagrees with something further than a simple name coincidence, adding to this the unclear circumstances of the child's death, which got lost in time. And still...
Without revealing more, the movie is conducted slowly in a minimalist note, starting with a short lived romance for some initial intensity, brought quickly within a more realistic zone of family problems, and carried through a by-the-book slow burn towards the end. The end which gets you back to the hyperbole of associating Hamnet with Hamlet towards a metaphore that's somehow more credible, maybe also because is supported by exactly who criticised the initial one (paranthesis: the movie deserves watching at least for Jessie Buckley, which delivers an exceptional performance). Maybe it becomes credible again also because you have a construction that's gradually inserting metaphors from a hawk's death that you can relate to some other loss, to a red dress in a greyish environment, which you can relate to whatever you want in the context, from the simple pain to the color brought by a theatre play to folks caught within the daily tedious and worrysome living. But probably credible more than this, because the metaphore is not anymore connected to Hamnet exclusively, but more with what anybody can get from the finale and probably by the desire of the subconscious to give a positive sense to a drama - either by re-connecting two parents when they get that the loss is affecting both of them, either by providing some justification to compromises that sometimes make the life to move forward.
Or another variant :) - the movie may be that dull that makes your brain to create its own story to prevent falling asleep ;) even so, it worked. Or maybe it caught me in the right mood for this, albeit getting over the top in some parts. So, probably a quite subjective...
"Now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart..." is probably the most fitting quote from the eponymous novel that could serve as a motto for the latest screen adaptation of "Frankenstein", authored by Guillermo del Toro — director and screenwriter. There are two things that I'm gonna do for the first time in this entry: 1) revisiting the subject of an older review, "Frankenstein" from ’94, dating back to somewhere close to the beginning of the blog, and not because Alzheimer’s has struck me (not yet), but because we need some justice here; 2) if we don’t count that version as well, I’m closing the year in a nontraditional way with a counter-recommendation. After all, I can’t have only positive reviews.
Now that we’ve set where we are, let’s see why we can't exclaim “it’s alive" for the 2025 version as well.
About 17 years ago I wrote a comparative review between the first screen adaptation of Frankenstein, James Whale’s 1931 film, and Kenneth Branagh’s 1994 version. I won’t do an actual pingback to that entry, because it gave me yet another confirmation on why I don’t reread my old posts, I’d probably delete half due to stylistic issues, or because of opinions that have changed radically (though that happens more rarely). In short, we need the ’94 adaptation because it remains the most faithful reference to Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel. The subject is probably well known. Still, for anyone who isn’t familiar with it and discovers the story through del Toro’s adaptation, they’ll be learning it in a profoundly altered form. The impression left by the latest film is as if the author wanted a copyright over the literary material. No exaggeration. The level of change in the script goes down to the year in which the action opens, something probably no one notices, 1857, placing the story even after the publication of the book, which in comparison uses a discreet “17—”, leaving the reader free to choose whatever they like for the period, nevertheless set a full century earlier. But that’s minor. For what’s more significant, we need a summary of the book.
The opening of Frankenstein has always struck me as especially important because of the framework it creates. The novel begins in an epistolary style, with a set of letters in which a young explorer, Robert Walton, determined to reach the North Pole aboard a ship, informs his sister about the difficulties of the expedition, until an unexpected encounter occurs on the northern ice with Victor Frankenstein, found in a precarious state of health. It’s worth noting that the North Pole was reached more than 100 years after the book was first printed. So at the time, it was still a chimera almost as fantastical as the idea of reanimating a body. Therefore, we have the perspective of a young man trapped among the ice banks, with a crew fed up with quests for glory, who nonetheless stubbornly insists on being the first to bring humanity a snowflake from 90 degrees latitude. In this context, Walton is struck by a story more science-fictional than his own expedition: that of a nearly dead man who reached the same point he did, on a dog-drawn sled, chasing a creature brought to life from corpses, regretted from its very first breath. This intro is then followed by the story itself told from both the perspective of Frankenstein and the creature, divided into three books. In the first, we have the steps leading up to the creation and the abandonment of the result; in the second, we have the creature meeting Frankenstein and recounting a process of self-education, making known its demand to be given a partner, accompanied by a warning delivered through two deaths; and in the third, Frankenstein hesitates and ultimately refuses to repeat the experiment, the consequence being the loss of his best friend, his wife, and his father as a result of the creature’s revenge. In the end, the novel returns to Walton’s final letters. The book, despite a literary style that often slips into a somewhat theatrical romantic hyperbole, remains very subtle in this Walton–Frankenstein relationship. Even though Frankenstein doesn’t give Walton an explicit warning until he finally closes his eyes, and even encourages him at first, young Walton more or less understands, after hearing the story, where the limits lie, and more importantly that he isn’t the only one affected by them. In the end, he puts a timely stop to a disaster that would doom the entire crew by deciding to turn back. Thus, this framework closes the novel in a loop, just as it opened it, keeping it confined in the frozen North to the interaction of the two, delivering a moral woven between the lines as described above. The creature returns as a presence only in a final epilog, where it somewhat tempers, through remorse, the predominantly negative image built throughout the novel, centered especially on its murderous instinct, and ultimately chooses to follow its creator. Now let's see how the two screen adaptations did their job...
In the opening of the '94 version, Kenneth Branagh preserves the novel’s line relatively well. The creature is kept in the background, and we have a young Aidan Quinn in Walton’s role, who, even though he has a short part in the film overall, this is essential and captures very well the nuances of the character and the entire idea of being able to change at the end — essential as a human trait being portrayed. The only downside that persists throughout the film might be a slightly theatrical tone of interpretation, with a hint of overacting, but that ultimately aligns with the narrative style of the novel. In del Toro’s version, the opening quickly delivers the creature’s entrance, Terminator-style, flinging sailors left and right, with bowling-champion ability, i.e., straight into a flaming cauldron (it was surplus decoration anyway). The Terminator is, of course, miraculously resistant to any bullet, being affected only by a rotating multi-barrel blunderbuss, probably standard steampunk equipment on any 19th-century vessel. Even more bizarre is that Walton is no longer Walton, but a Danish captain on the brink of retirement, who seems to have also had the North Pole on his bucket list and who's very open to life lessons for his future reincarnation. Maybe I’m too picky, but the credibility of the whole moral construction I mentioned earlier is badly shaken. On top of that, the entire aura of mystery kept by the literary work, gradually revealing its subject, pretty much goes down the bucket. But it's probably better to just place the two intros side by side; then we can more clearly see what kind of atmosphere each production conveys (the 2025 one in two parts, since I couldn’t find a continuous version).
Both movie versions take liberties with the main progression of the story, but the ’94 adaptation remains the more faithful to the book. There is no tyrannical father there, nor one who dies prematurely. Frankenstein leaves to study in Ingolstadt, not somewhere in Scotland (the novel is very descriptive when it comes to geographical locations, which del Toro largely ignores). There is no finance supporter of the research who appears out of nowhere with dreams of eternal life, only to end his existence, and his role in the film’s plot, just as abruptly as he began it (I would have expected at least part of the creature’s anatomy to inherit something from him, if this was anyway introduced as a creative angle). There is no laboratory housed in some castle or tower functioning as a production hall. In the ’94 version we have the section from the novel in which the youngest brother is killed by the creature, which then manages to put the blame onto a servant girl, who also dies innocent, a sequence that serves as a warning of what is to come. Henri Clerval, Frankenstein’s best friend and an essential character, is part of the cast in ’94, somehow replaced by one of the brothers in the 2025 version. In Frankenstein ’94, the main female character, Elizabeth, briefly becomes Victor Frankenstein’s wife and not that of another brother, without the whole insipid romance from 2025, where the creature seems instead to be the primary object of romantic interest. Here, however, we also have the main deviation in Branagh’s version: after Elizabeth is killed (by the creature, as in the book, not by Frankenstein), Frankenstein brings her back to life, but for his own interest, not at the creature’s request. Enough ink has been spilled criticizing this change, if I remember correctly from what I’ve read over the years. Let’s analyze it. Unlike the invincibility granted by del Toro to the creature for the entire duration of the film, which feels more like a detour into superhero movies, the resurrected Elizabeth: 1) does not last long, under ten minutes of real time; 2) is not that far from the book, where there is an attempt to create a mate for the creature; and 3) reinforces the romantic thread that is ultimately fundamental both to the film and to the novel, the creature’s principal pain and the cause of all evil being the absence of a partner and the creator’s refusal to provide one. I don’t know what the Terminator-like bullet resistance in the new version reinforces. Maybe advertisements for body armor.
Technically speaking, del Toro’s Frankenstein is too pastel-toned for a Gothic horror, whereas the image in the ’94 version is far more in tune with the atmosphere one would expect. There is color there as well, of course, but it’s used in contrast either with flames, a red cape, or others, typically against a gray-blue palette that is generally maintained as the base tone and aligns well with the kind of feeling the film is meant to convey. I don’t think the new version fares any better in terms of the soundtrack either. Alexandre Desplat may be a good composer and the melodic line perhaps more versatile, but Patrick Doyle in ’94 (from whom I wouldn’t really know what else to recommend) managed to capture a minimalist sequence that begins in the intro and remains memorable as the main theme of the score.
When it comes to actors I usually hold back, since evaluations there are more subjective, but I don’t think there’s anyone — except perhaps Christoph Waltz, who has no counterpart in the ’94 version since his character is invented — who comes off better in the new adaptation. Branagh delivers a far more credible Frankenstein than Oscar Isaac, who seems permanently on a hair trigger. De Niro comes much closer to the creature’s hideousness and to the dark character conveyed by the novel. Helena Bonham Carter, at least has a role to work with, unlike Mia Goth, who unfortunately isn’t given material that allows her to really act.
As an “epilogue”: 17 years ago I hadn’t finished the novel, which again, isn’t the greatest read, given the early 19th-century narrative style. Now I have finished it. Maybe it’s just a fresh impression, but what I can say is that Branagh’s departures in Frankenstein ’94 make it more Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein than the book itself, much closer to the Romantic movement. Frankenstein ’25 is clearly a del Toro’s Frankenstein, whose most obvious association as a literary piece would be with comic books. Beyond that, it depends on taste. I’ll stick with:
Rating: 2 out of 5 Frankenstein '25 (in assortment with the year)
Rating: 5 out of 5 Frankenstein '94 (subjectively assumed)
+ best wishes for a better 2026, more tranquil, and with better movies ;)
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...
Most probably five, ten years ago, or maybe even two or three, I would've been terribly bored by two hours of romance-drama mix set at the end of the 19th century. Now, however, "The Age of Innocence" was... comforting; I guess that's the best one-word decription I could use.
I didn't read the novel, but I was expecting something between "Howards End" and any adaptation based on Jane Austen's works. It didn't thread far from that. The surprising part was to find this to be the most non-Scorsese movie out of all the movies I've watched directed by Scorsese. The cinematography by Michael Ballhaus, even though it's clearly not the single collaboration between the two ("Goodfellas", "The Departed", "Gangs of New York"), it's probably more close to the camera work in Coppola's "Dracula", and has some very peculiar nuances (e.g., without any specific reason, we're treated very often with frequent insertions of... food frames :)). The score by Elmer Bernstein fits perfectly, although if you'd separate the soundtrack from the movie it might seem very old school, more towards the '60s-'70s. Finally, the cast, excepting Daniel Day-Lewis, doesn't seem to have many other names in common with the usual list of actors we see in Scorsese's movie credits. What's certain is that all of the above, under his direction, sums up to a movie that doesn't really fit on a home screen. I didn't have the feeling of watching something so clearly made for cinema for quite some time. And considering my 27 inch screen + headphones, unfortunately the reason for that it's not that I have some cinematic experience conditions at my place and I can't make the difference anymore. It's strictly about how cinematic the movie is ;).
I sort of skipped the subject this time. Maybe because 'til the end of the movie what's above was more significant to me, and "the story" was left behind. Briefly, this is about a love triangle in the New York's pre-1900 high society - and all the context seems somehow supperficial. Upt to a point, where, suddenly, and again surprisingly, the development takes a very mature turn as reflection on life & relationships. But, probably that's where the movie's importance falls short, and the book prevails, which as I mentioned, I haven't read. A good extra reason to stick to my spoilers free policy and end this here ;)
I kept thinking if I should or shouldn't write a blog entry this month, not really knowing what movie to pick for it. "1917" was a good fit for the current times - not that much given its context, but more for what's expressing. But 1. I already wrote about it in another entry, a couple years ago and 2. I doubt anyway that my blog's audience intersects with whom I was saying there that should have it on their mandatory watch list. On the other hand maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea for more people to watch it or re-watch it. Although, again, it's debatable if the movie's not either too deep for some to get the actual sense in it, or too depressing for who relates too closely to an armed conflict context. So, I got to "Licorice Pizza" - or the first hippie alternative I could think of.
I don't intend to write a long review. Actually, I don't intend to write an actual review. "Licorice Pizza" is some sort of weird romance with lots of comic nuances set in the 70's California, and a much betted movie I'd say than "Inherent Vice", which takes place during the same time and was written and directed by the same Paul Thomas Anderson (more known probably for "There Will Be Blood"). There's a perfect chemistry between the actors, the writing is excellent and the story... not so important.
More important is that "Licorice Pizza" is what we could call a "comfort movie" as an analogy to a "comfort food". Something you really need from time to time. If not for something else, at least to find out if you didn't know that in 1973 (and a couple times after) there were periods of "oil crisis". And most probably that's something you can survive ;) - at least as long as the rest doesn't get much more close to "1917".
As it seems, I'm back to old movies not having a better subject. "The Morning After" is not the best of the '80s, but it has some certain charm (+ obviously I've watched it more recently than the '80s so I can still remember what I've seen).
An alcoholic actress, beyond her prime, wakes up one morning, somewhere in a penthouse, near a dead body with a knife in his chest. Completely amnesic and with no recollection of meeting the late fellow, she decides to run away. Where running = flying out of town, but the whole thing happens to coincide with Thanksgiving so the plan fails due to lack of room in scheduled flights. So, having also her car picked up by the police, the only escape she finds seems to be a guy who struggles to start his wreck's engine in the airport parking lot and who's nice enough to offer her a ride back to the city. Leaving out the details, "the plot thickens" the second morning after another drinking night, when the dead body gets mysteriously teleported in the shower of her own house. Fortunately, the guy she met earlier, who we find out to be a former cop, offers to help the apparent murderer to find out how dead men can walk.
Probably half the movie's charm is given by the acting of Jane Fonda and Jeff Bridges in the lead roles, and the totally atypical romance story. For the rest, you can feel the direction of Sidney Lumet building up the suspense, even though it's not really among his best. Also, we don't actually have a perfect crime novel resolution, the last part becoming predictable enough about the solution of the mystery. Even so, the script with the comic nuances it has it's nice, and makes a watchable movie despite the age it shows sometimes.
I've had enough "red flags" for "Reminiscence" to skip it, but I didn't do it. 46 on Metascore, 37 on RT and a puny 6.0 on IMDb didn't convince me. I thought that it couldn't be that bad with such a promising trailer. A SciFi packed with time travel, as it looked like, it already scored some winning points from start. But, finally yes, it is that bad...
First, we don't have any time travel. In a future that seems a prequel for "Waterworld" (we can add an extra red flag) = in a semi-flooded Miami sem, an advanced tech (pretty much the only advanced tech actually) allows re-living memories while some stasis is induced to the body. Nick Bannister (Hugh Jackman) is a private contractor that offers this kind of service, offering his experience accumulated during the latest war, when the memory machine was used for interogations. One day, Mae - "la femme fatale" - enters his shop as a client needing to figure out where she lost her keys, and from that point we also enter into a deeply entangled neo-noir romance, with even more deep plot holes. It's a waste of time to write more about it...
The most frustrating part is that the story in "Reminiscence" has potential. But it's ruined by the directing and the writing. It might look like something between "Inception" and "Blade Runner" but it doesn't get close to any of these two. Probably a more appropriate comparison would be with "Strange Days", an older, less known movie, but much much better than what we have here. The actors are struggling, but you can't do much with cliche lines or ridiculous parts of talking with yourself to tell the viewer what can be seen already on the screen. Besides this, the whole plot is bound weirdly as a whole - my feeling was of some series episodes that are shortened and just edited together to rush out a two hour movie without much polishing. Add to that also a sound mixing that normally doesn't stand out, or if it does it's in a positive way. Rarely it happened to watch a movie that catched my ear for how bad the tracks are mixed together, even if it happened in one or two scenes. The only part that's ok-ish are the visuals... and the trailer. Too bad for what it promised.
Rating: 1.75 out of 5 (with a reminiscence of 0.25 for what could've been)
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...
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 :)
Out of everything John Carpenter directed, I didn't think I had anything left that's worth watching. With the mention that I don't know about anything "worth watching" to be directed by him since the '90s. What I knew about "Starman" was limited to a synopsis I read somewhere telling that the movie is about some romance between an alien and a woman on Earth. Because I generally avoid love stories, I obviously ignored the movie for some time. Luckily enough there's not much new to watch these days...
The synopsis I mentioned doesn't lie, but what we have here has Carpenter written all over it, enough to get the result more towards the type of romance we have in the same year's "Terminator", and not what you might think when reading the taglines of the movie. Indeed, we have an alien entity crashing nearby a farm in Wisonsin inhabited by a young widow, the alien taking the form of the late husband. What follows though, before getting into the romance part, is a road-trip, more like a road-thriller, where "the starman" forces the woman to drive him to Arizona in no less than three days, where he has a scheduled ride back to space. All this time we also have the US government following them with a table ready for dissection.
So, the romance actually gets its screen time towards the end. What Carpenter manages to accomplish is not to drop the movie into the cheesy zone you might expect it, creating altogether a pretty good mix between the action and the soft parts tempering frequently the tensed run we're watching. What Carpenter doesn't accomplish (so to speak) is to make the visuals durable enough. The age of the movie is obvious, especially comparing it with others around the same time that are much better on the VFX side. It compensates, however, with the cast. Even though Jeff Bridges got an Oscar nod for his role, I think "the starman" is literally eclipsed by Karen Allen, making a much better role here than in the first Indiana Jones (I don't remember seeing her in another place). Above all, even the parts where it somewhat fails, the movie is a decent production with a strong '80s feeling reminding me of "Firestarter", so if you have a weakness for that decade it's definitely worth watching.
"The Two Faces of January" felt like a deja vu from the first 10 minutes, and it didn't take long to figure out the reason behind that is "The Talented Mr. Ripley". After all, both movies are based on novels written by the same Patricia Highsmith. I didn't read any of the two, but the character construction seemed similar, as well as the type of action, the time setting, even the chosen locations although in one we're set in Greece and in the other in Italy - both cases are of sunny areas on the Mediterranean shore.
Since "The Talented Mr. Ripley" is not exactly among my favorite movies, neither "The Two Faces of January" felt much better. All the action revolves around a couple visiting Greece, Chester and Colette, where he's an ex broker from New York who fled with his investors money. Found by a private investigator, who dies following a short quarrel, Chester is forced to find an escape route and employs a young American guide to help him with that, Rydal, who's nothing but a small crook. So, we have sort of love triangle forming, where you know from start that the story won't end very well.
I have to admit that I don't remember very well "The Talented Mr. Ripley", but as I said the deja-vu feeling was there. Still, at the moment I watched that, it felt more credible than what we have here, which looks more like a B version of the same genre. The only part that I remember quite clearly in "The Talented Mr. Ripley" was the sudden unexpected stop after the final scene. For this I have to give credit to the current movie which has a decent closure. That's pretty much all about it.
When "Ex Machina" (2014) was announced, it looked to me like a copy of "The Machine" (2013). Finally, it proved to have a different story, although both featured an AI named Ava. Another common part was that neither of the two movies impressed me enough to allocate time for a blog entry. That's why I wasn't expecting much from "Archive" either, which again, at a first sight seemed to be an "Ex Machina" v2.0. Only at the first sight...
There are two things in common: we have again a female AI and a robotics engineer somewhere in a secluded lab. That's where the resemblance ends. The story in "Archive" goes like this: year 2048 - George Almore is sent alone to a ultra-secured facility in Japan's forest by his company, in order to conduct some ultra-secret research in the area of robotics. This comes after escaping a car accident. Unfortunately not also the case of his wife, Jules, but fortunately in this future we have Archive. Archive is another company dealing with immediately saving the conscience of those close to clinical death, keeping up some limited means of communicating with them. The problem is that it's not a definitive save, each call getting it closer to the moment when Jules will be lost forever. Reason why, instead of dealing with what the company wants from him, George starts his own private project: the android model J-01, followed by model J-02, and the movie finds us at model J-03. Guess what's J for in these? ;)
"Archive" is slow-paced, and some might find it boring. For me it gave a sort of.. "serenity" feeling I'd say. I found the rhythm perfect - helped a lot by the technical part, which is flawless: both the sound, but mostly the visuals, meaning everything that gets into set decoration + VFX + cinematography + editing, where we have a frequent change between the lab setting and the natural environment. I've seen "Moon" more than 10 years ago, but I still remember enough to spot some similarity. Gavin Rothery - director and writer here was part of the art department ad "head of graphic design" there. And the visuals aren't the only resemblance, if we look at the whole idea of a SciFi movie with slow pacing, one actor, talking AI, and a final twist.
More than what's in common with "Moon", a core element from "Archive" comes clearly from some other place. The idea of "archive" as presented here is not new. I don't know for sure where this originates, but what we see in the movie is terribly close to the concept of "moratorium" in "Ubik". "Ubik" is a novel written by Philip K. Dick that appeared in 1969 - IMHO, or at least for my taste, the best SciFi novel ever written. The real significance of the word which is suspending something until a deadline was translated there pretty much as we have it here - a "moratorium" was a sort of a private bank keeping the conscience of the dead in cold-storage, available for communication until becoming exhausted with time. We don't have more from "Ubik" here ( although... but better no spoilers ;) ). The context is completely different, but since other movies (best example "Inception") took some stuff from there, it was hard to move over without noticing it. And it's not something bad, but I still hope to see an actual "Ubik" movie sometime :) Until then, small pieces are fine too...
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 (maybe I'm a bit subjective, but I find the movie underrated - it's definitely better than "Ex Machina" at least)
I think I wrote before that if you've seen a movie by Woody Allen, you've seen them all, or to not sound that mean, at least a part of each of them. So, that's why I've never liked much Woody Allen = it just seemed boring. There are just two categories - romantic comedies or dramas with some hint of romance. But either my taste got "softened" by my age, or I started finding also some which have a slightly different nuance in the extremely prolific repertoire of the aforementioned (after all, at one movie per year it's actually hard I guess to find variation). "Magic in the Moonlight" is one of these more fortunate case, or at least this is what the trailer suggests...
Sometime in the 1920s: Stanley is a well-known magician, going with Wei Ling Soo as stage name, who besides the artistic career also formed a reputation of debunking fake mediums. So, he cannot resist the invitation of a fellow magician, old childhood friend, who asks him to investigate Sophie, a young lady posing as able to talk to spirits, who infiltrated into a rich family somewhere in South of France, making them believe she's the only way to contact the late head of the house. That's the starting point, and it doesn't sound bad at all.
The movie's part of the comedy area of Woody Allen, and it obviously keeps a lot of the specific elements = the characters construction, dialogues, etc. However, the context that's slightly more exotic and the location elements that add to the general feeling making it look a bit more like something by Alexander Payne ("Sideways", "Descendants"), give the movie some originality, enough to make it look different than just another episode of an anthology series. It's not something to stir strong laughs, but it has its humor, and even though it doesn't try to rival with Agatha Christie on keeping the mystery = you get quite quickly the answer on "who's the killer" in the story, it still doesn't lose you. That's because you have something left - to see how the romance evolves in all the context (even though that's predictable too). Probably this is also the disappointing part, in the sense that you'll probably expect something more elaborate, not just the simplistic solution you're offered. But after all, it's a light movie, relaxing, and not trying more than that. Something for a vacation :) Just the opportunity to end my 2019 chapter with a: Happy Holidays! & hopefully a better new year to come ;)
It took me 5 sessions to watch "Be With You". It's not longer than two hours but that's how hectic my schedule was this week. To be fair, the first attempt didn't last longer than 10 minutes before starting to fall asleep, so I had to re-watch almost all of it. And the ending in the last turn intrigued me a bit, enough to move back to re-watch some other few minutes. So, after all, the movie isn't probably as boring as might seem initially... However, beware the drama...
What we have here is a Japanese adaptation of a novel (if I didn't manage to move away from the Asian cinema neither for this week, I decided to at least move a bit out of the continental part), which starts with something close to "Love Story"'s ending = she dies young, and from there it somehow moves back but forward. In brief, we have a bit of sci-fi/fantasy in the movie, part in which she keeps a promise to return for a while, during the rainy season in Japan's weather. Time that allows us to figure out the couple's background. And... that's pretty much it... + about 15-20 minutes of an epilogue, which surprisingly cuts a bit short the feeling of "I know how this goes on...".
I was convinced to watch this movie by its categorization as fantasy on IMDb (didn't see the trailer), and I can say that I feel a bit cheated from that perspective. It's 100% romance, so that's what you should expect and nothing else, but fortunately it's one that's relatively fine. It probably depends on the mood too. There are some parts that can be truly heartbreaking, but unlike other movies it has a sort of calmness tempering it, and moreover helping to avoid getting into a cheap tear jerking area. I suppose that some of the credit for this goes to the written material. Which apparently was re-booted last year in a Korean remake. I'm fine with the original for now.
I don't do reviews of romantic comedies because I don't really watch romantic comedies = they're either too depressing or too bad (I have a deja vu that I wrote this before...). I keep a list of "to watch" movie since long ago in which I periodically add stuff that seems worth watching but I don't have time for it at the moment. I don't know how "The Five-Year Engagement" got there (except of Emily Blunt being in it I can't explain it), and I don't know what got into me to pick it now... The movie is not bad, and maybe it wouldn't have been too depressing either if it wouldn't have had some weird sync with some family problems. Which gave me some food for thought, and cut ( again :) ... ) my mood for writing... Anyway, since I don't have time to watch anything else this week, let's quickly get into the subject.
Tom and Violet meet at a new year's party somewhere in San Francisco, they like each other, and within one year he offers her the engagement ring. She says yes and they start the wedding plans. Until Violet receives a confirmation for an academic position that she really wants (trying not to get into debates on academia jobs here...), but unfortunately located somewhere far in Michigan. It's temporary though, and both decide to relocate. However, that's enough to postpone the wedding. And, somehow predictable, also a reason that after moving to start having issues in their relationship. From future chef in a fancy restaurant Tom ends up as a fast food cook, and Violet slowly gets to be a bit too liked by her new boss. Obviously everything turns into a happy end, which without extra spoilers since the title says it already, takes five years to happen.
Even though the story is relatively linear and without many twists & turns, the movie is quite funny, and more important not dumb. Not that I'm much of a consumer of romantic comedies, but comparing with whatever else I've seen... Still, from a personal perspective, as I was saying it didn't come at the best moment, but that's subjective ...
... or where can lead a failed attempt to see the latest "Halloween", for which the management of the local cinema considers allocating large projection rooms only at late hours. Call me picky, but if I move my bones up to a cinema I want a big screen. Consequently, I preferred "A Star is Born", despite my worries towards the lethal combination for my taste in film: musical + romance. But considering that while getting older I discovered liking also movies with a simpler subject and let's say more... calmness (check out last week), considering that the latest similar experience - "La La Land" - was surprisingly original, and considering also that most reviews for this one are over the top, I said... ok, fine. But it wasn't really fine.
What we have here is the third remake (this means four movies, just to make it clear) having the same title as the original released in 1937. I don't know how much the subject varied through the years, but for what I saw I imagine it can't be much. The originality is close to zero. Jack, an alcoholic soft-rock singer meets Ally, an anonymous singer in a bar, they like each other, they marry, her career goes up, his carrer goes down, and even though towards the end we catch a glimpse of balancing the odds, all goes away melodramatically with a garage, a beam, a belt, and a song for the one who passed away. Sorry for the "spoiler", but the movie is so one-sided that it gets annoying. And I don't want to start debating now what I mean by "one-sided".
The only part that was sort of good, for a musical, is that it's not extremely boring. The songs are ok-ish, but again reminded me that I can't really like a movie in this genre - it's a matter of taste. I can watch a concert, I can listen to a soundtrack - but I don't really need a shallow script to wrap it up. About the romance, I can't even say that this was depressing as usual... You want a romance, re-watch "Jerry Maguire", we have there too a guy with a career going down... or "Stardust", might be a bit cheesy, but it's not cliche + we really have a star ;). This one was just... bland.
Usually romance movies are full of cliche, pretty boring, and besides that as time goes by I'm getting more and more depressed when watching something like this = generally, I avoid it. But sometimes I feel the need for one... although "The One I Love" is quite outside of the classic pattern. Actually, it's more close to a soft "Triangle" what we have here :) as a follow-up on the previous entry, bringing up again the idea of meeting your copy in a more "peaceful" manner, without an axe and without any clear reference to time travel. In brief: less explanation, more speculation. But it works ;)
Ethan and Sophie are a couple whose marriage doesn't work anymore, and they decide to get some counseling on that. Let's call them pair 1. The recommended therapy: a weekend in some vacation house, somewhere in a green area, with an orange garden... but quite secluded. The catch: the vacation house has some special annex... a guest house. Where Ethan meets another, but the same Sophie, and Sophie meets another, but the same Ethan: pair 2. We also have a sort of "meeting protocol" = the rules of the game = Ethan and Sophie in pair 2 take turns with their presence, depending on the other person in pair 1 who steps in; the doors block when somebody in pair 1 enters the house - so you're not allowed to meet your own copy; pair 2 apparently is not permitted to leave the premises. After a romantic night and morning with "the other one" not realizing yet what happens, when they finally do, the first reaction of pair 1: obviously, jump in the car & run away! But they don't get far... because, the meeting worked, "re-discovering" the other one worked, and curiosity for what follows is too big. Decision: turn around, and let's see how this works out...
The bad part of "The One I Love" is that the twist or twists, how many they'd be intended there towards the end of the movie, are predictable. I didn't have any surprise, not even in the last scene of the movie, but I won't say more. Leaving that aside, the idea is original, despite the logic gaps that are even deeper than in "Triangle" (since I was mentioning this) - but if you have enough time to meditate on it you probably can find some explanations (parallel universe theory or whatever else). Overall, what I watched, looked pretty much alike a "Black Mirror" episode, a decent one ;)...
"Adrift" is a yet another lost in the ocean movie. But it's neither "Life of Pi", nor "All Is Lost"... it's probably somewhere in between, as story, philosophy, feeling, etc. As a movie, well... probably quite far from the first, and probably also below the second. Still, not something to ignore completely...
We have a story (based on a real case) that starts somewhere in the Pacific, after a class 5 hurricane that almost breaks apart a medium sized yacht. Almost... = the boat is left without masts, with lots of water aboard, with even more (food, equipment, etc) lost overboard, with some cracks, but still floating. Out of the pair who was aboard, Richard and Tami, only she seems initially to have survived. However, after exploring the surroundings she finds her fiance more dead than alive, with an open broken leg and some shattered ribs, floating closely hanging on the lifeboat. From this point, the narration splits in two, with flashbacks since the two have met up to the moment of the hurricane, and from the moment of the hurricane onward. It's almost like having two movies interwoven into one: a romance that gets a bit corny sometimes, and a survival movie.
It's quite tough to get enough material for an entire movie out of such subject. What's there to fill 90 minutes (or more)? Here, the background story does the job. Besides the fact that helps defining the characters, however, this piece is nothing more than a pretty bland love story: girl meets guy, they fall in love, they go sailing. Maybe I'm a bit subjective, but the interesting part is by far the other "film". Not that we have something extraordinary original here, but at least it tries... Now well, we have a real case on which is based, but the movie moves a bit forward. There's an attempt for a mega-twist at some point, which you don't really see coming, and to be honest is a bit too forced. Nevertheless, the idea can be appreciated. Since I started with "Life of Pi", was the tiger real? :) No more spoilers...
I'll keep it short, to compensate... "Phantom Thread" is a slow movie that appears long (although if we count the minutes it's not really). The problem is that the development is too thin to fill two hours. Daniel Day-Lewis gives a last performance (the guy's retiring, if it's not some sort of marketing strategy) as a London based fashion designer during the '50s, who finds his muse, a model and future wife in a simple waitress. The movie's built mostly from details, long static shots, slow dialogues, and tension. Actually, I think that Paul Thomas Anderson is probably the best writer/director at the moment when it comes to creating tension in dialogues (way beyond Tarantino). What's here resembles much "There Will Be Blood", especially in respect to this, but it's not the same thing. The exceptional performance of the title role is comparable, but it's lacking content. And the so called final twist, which you don't know if to take as "happy" or "sick" doesn't really compensate. I guess it's still making the movie a "better" Valentine's day option than 50 Shades of Whatever (irony included).
Rating: 3 out of 5 (probably deserves more, but I'm subjective)
"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...
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