The Endless (2017)

No subject. I'll finish with "The Endless" in inverse proportional time with what the title means. Actually... if I'm thinking on it, this might mean an "endless" in the opposite direction... depends on how convoluted is your reasoning - let's simplify: I'll finish quick.

What we have here is an attempt to a SciFi with social and psychological implications, meaning of life, etc. In brief: two brothers who ran out from Camp Arcadia = "a UFO death cult" to quote a tagline, decide to pay a visit after some years to the respective community. Which they find much more open and friendly that what that tagline was saying, and where the bio tomatoes in the daily salad seem to have a magic effect - nobody looks changed. Until they decide to leave or to stay, we figure out that what we have there is a sort of twilight zone where some temporal loops, geographically set one near the other, keep their inhabitants trapped. Except the two...

If some other time I was saying that you'll find out more in the movie, now it's not really the case. Although there are some valid ideas there, overall is too cryptic to get a decent story out of it. Add on top of that a very small budget, which wouldn't be a problem unless it would be so obvious. The only part that maybe is above average is the slight tendency towards horror - you keep feeling that it's transforming into something like that, but it doesn't get there - which maintains a certain tension that fits with the whole context. What's less appropriate is the lack of tension relief... Wow, I'm already moving towards the opposite direction "endless". Too much. Let's stop.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Vice (2018)

"Vice" is written and directed by Adam McKay, who three years ago did the same thing in "The Big Short", has at least two actors from "The Big Short", has a subject as real as in "The Big Short", it's worked in pretty much the same manner as "The Big Short", and has a happy ending as positive as in "The Big Short", so there's not much left to say.

Rating: ..

Well, not yet :) But I couldn't help it. You'll get it when you'll see the movie ;) The truth is that I don't have much left to say, and what's above is valid. It's a sort of biopic of Dick Cheney, former VP in the Bush administration, brought to screen without his support or consent. So, mostly based on common knowledge, packing enough satire - within the limits you could have that in the context of the latest Irak war. Somehow unexpectedly, the movie, in its depth, is not completely one-sided. Although the story might seem clear, there's a fine dose of objectivity that should be appreciated, suggesting that in the end life is not black & white, but very, very, very gray... - more or less between the lines there's an idea suggesting that from someone's perspective, his own actions might seem fair, which puts a question mark over a guilt on coming not of bad intentions but out of sheer incompetence. Which is not the same. But let's take a break on philosophy...

Moving back to "The Big Short" :)... As it was there, here the editing is also exceptional, and practically that's what makes the whole movie. Obviously it won't work without the way the script is structured. Probably it's the best approache for a subject of this type - you're somewhere between a drama and a comedy, "dramatically" alternating between both. On the other hand, the result seemed a bit better in "The Big Short" - but maybe it's the subject, which has more "movie potential" there :) I'd really like to see an adaptation brought to screen by the same team for "Flash Boys" (same book author as "The Big Short" - the story behind high-frequency trading ~10-15 years ago)... but I doubt there are chances for that to happen soon, although I heard some rumors. Maybe the subject is yet too hot :P...

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

The Favourite (2018)

"My life is like a maze I continually think I have gotten out of, only to find another corner right in front of me." ... it got me at this one ;) despite the context... let's say a bit "strange" of associating this line in the movie :)) No spoilers - just that "The Favourite" is not really a drama in the strict sense, contrary of what looks like.

Queen Anne ruled ove the United Kingdom sometime at the beginning of the 1700s. The exact date is less relevant. More relevant are the intrigues, the political clashes, the war seen more or less as a board game, etc., which either 100 years before or 100 after (or more..) probably won't show much difference. What we have in the movie is an episode with lots of satire in it set in this environment, where a duchess and her less noble cousin end up fighting for the status of a "favourite" at the court of a queen plagued with diseases, anger and solitude. And contrary to the relaxed tone it starts from, this conflict evolves towards hardly predictable Machiavellian proportions.

Let's take a slight detour to the more technical side, otherwise I'll lose some ideas, and I'll move back to the story in the end. We have some camera angles resulting in a very interesting cinematography, and a score based on a classic line, but bringing a series of intermezzos simple but very effective, mostly in underlining the tensed moments. The three actresses in the main parts - Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz, and especially Emma Stone, are brilliant in their acting. I've been recommended at some point to watch "The Lobster" directed by the same Yorgos Lanthimos, but I got scared by the perspective of an acute depression when I saw a tagline saying something like "single people obliged to find a romantic partner in forty-five days or are transformed into beasts", so I skipped that. I don't know what this guy did there, but what we have here looks like a lighter "royalized" and "anglicized" Tarantino :) I'm exaggerating a bit, but the movie is structured in the same episodic style, in which every segment comes with a "punch" that changes a bit your perspective over the story.

And coming back to that... I have the unfortunate habit (due to losing time + filling my head with cu useless stuff) to do sometimes a "fact check" when a I watch a movie based on real stuff. And here you get a bit intrigued by the evolution of a character, who you wouldn't believe at scene two how far could get. What you see though in "The Favourite" seems way more romanticized compared to the historical truth. Including the not so orthodox relationship between the three main characters that gets a lot of attention in the movie, about which there doesn't seem to be any solid proof. But in the end, it doesn't write either anywhere that William Wallace cried "Freedooooom!" before the axe fell down, or that he had any affair with the future queen of England. But how would've been "Braveheart" without these? :) Honestly... I'd even say that I regret that "The Favourite" has the ending it does, which might leave you a bit disappointed waiting for a more... balanced closure of the "war". But going so far to re-write who won the fight probably won't work... or?... :P just referenced Tarantino, "Inglorious Basterds" anyone?...

Rating: 4 out of 5

Green Book (2018)

I don't really like jazz. So I had no idea until watching "Green Book" who was Don Shirley. And until the end of the movie I had no clue that what I'm seeing is also a real story... Fortunately, because the perspective of a biopic with a hint of musical would've kept me away. Like that, until the end titles I just felt I'm seeing a "road movie". A good one.

Tony "Lip" Vallelonga is an Italian guy working as a bouncer in the New York clubs during the '60s. Since feeding the family + paying the rent aren't really possible to ignore when he's forced to take a vacation while the club is renovated, Tony accepts a temporary job offer as a driver for Dr. Shirley. A black piano player, who studied at the Leningrad conservatory, and who's planning a tour of the southern states right during the segregation times. And like that we're getting to our "road movie" with a pretty odd pair both as interaction between them, as well as with the areas they're passing by: a highly educated black guy with two PhDs having a white thug as his limo driver.

I wouldn't really get into the discrimination part and the rest of social drama, because generally I avoid discussing real life issues on the blog, but it's obvious that this is the central topic of the movie, starting with the title = the green book of the places where the colored population was accepted in the south of the U.S. during that time - o touristic brochure for a "safe trip". Let's just say that the problem of the racism is handled with a fine touch, sometimes with humor, and I'd say in a much more decent and efficient manner as the message it sends than in other movies. Besides that, we have the road movie part, which has the feeling of a film by Alexander Payne - "Sideways", "Descendants", "Nebraska", take a pick (I know that not all of these are "road movies", but if you've seen them, you should know what I mean). It doesn't have the same charm, or the same intensity - where you feel effectively the place in the script - possibly also because the whole perspective is more negative towards the South US here, but we're close to Payne's style anyway. In the end you have pretty much the same feeling of a calm after the storm, no matter of where that happens and its context, everything somehow finds its place ;)

Rating: 4 out of 5

Under the Silver Lake (2018)

If David Lynch would have made a hippie movie... it would've probably been called "Under the Silver Lake". Or maybe David Lynch made a hippie movie, but I can't really remember any right now (a really hippie one). What we have here is written and directed by David Robert Mitchell, whose "It Follows" I counted a couple years ago in the probably best horrors ever made. Not the case here. Not a horror... neither a best ever made..

A jobless guy without much of a perspective, outside being evicted due to late rent, finds something to kill his time by solving the puzzle of Silver Lake - an area in East L.A. apparently known for its hipster trend (at least Google says that). The enigma starts with a blonde girl living across the door who disappears over night. The chain of investigations gets us through various locations, with even more various characters - from a dog killer, to a paranoid graphic novels author obsessed of the urban legend of a killer nymph with an owl head, an eccentric millionaire disappeared in strange conditions and (spoiler) found in even more suspicious conditions, a composer who since a century ago embeds subliminal messages into all hits released on this planet, and others.

There are many parts in the movie that don't make any sense. At least not an obvious one, and not raising to a level that could intrigue you enough to search for one. I think I've seen some comments somewhere telling that it doesn't seem to have an end. I think it has, at least for the intrigue where it starts from. I don't know how satisfactory that might seem for some, but for me it was ok. What's after is just an epilogue. The reason though to watch the movie is, by far, the way it's visually composed. It's so good that the subject fades away. I don't even know how to describe it from that perspective. The trailer isn't really the best indicator. Let's just say it's very divers as camera work. Which anyway, you should see, not read about... ;)

Rating: 3.5 out of 5