I'm moving on in the same trend, probably already boring, to complain that I'm definitely not in the best mood for writing. Also when finding about "Soul", the title + description led immediately to the idea of a musical - the only movies area that I'm completely avoiding, with minor exceptions. On top of everything, "soul" is not among my favorite music, so I decided to ignore this. However, after repeatedly hearing that's the best animation of last year, I decided to move it in the minor exceptions category above. The first thing to say about it - "Frozen" fits probably much better with the musical genre than what we have here. And about soul music, that's really secondary behind the concept of a soul in the context of the movie.
In brief, we have a music teacher, who dreams of being part of a jazz band, and when finally the opportunity arises he fells into a manhole and he dies. Well, not really... because we're moving somewhere in an intermediate afterlife space, where the souls either move towards "the great beyond" after living, or towards "the great before" to find a new place on Earth. Well, our guy definitely dislikes the beyond option, and wants to get back to his piano in New York. And the only path seems to be through "the great before". Now, given my writing mood, I guess I said enough about the story.
Obviously the target of the movie is not in the range of PhD students in psychology for analyzing the perspectives of the afterlife concepts. Nevertheless, "Soul" is complex enough to not be labeled "childrens only". Moreover it's fresh - I didn't feel bored by material recycled from other movies (not that the idea of human soul inside of a cat is new, but I said I'm stopping with the spoilers :P). In a word, I'd qualify it as "nice". Maybe even too "nice" in the end, but these days that's actually good.
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.
I had in mind to write an entry on "Nomadland". Before watching the movie. After I did, I changed my plan. There are a couple days since seeing this and I already don't know what I've watched, so I don't have anything to write about. In brief, "Nomadland" is a movie that if you cut in pieces of ~10-20 minute, and watch these in random order you'll probably get pretty much the same thing, whatever that might be. It would be interesting if the experienced critics could do a simple exercise before throwing too much praise on a movie: just to ask themselves what is so memorable about it that they can punctually reference in three years from viewing it. Well, there's some stuff in "Remo Williams" :)...
I shifted 180 degrees with the movie genre - but I really felt the need for a popcorn movie in its more obvious shape as an antidote to the pretentious "artistic" production named above. And not so long ago I've watched "Remo Williams" as part of my '80s detour, and I actually wanted to write a couple words about it but I didn't have the time. Remo Williams is pretty much like a "Commando", but for the super-hero niche, before it became so popular as it is today. Meaning that's funny enough to not be bad, although clearly far from masterpiece level. The main character origin is in some series of pulp novels, being some kind of a super-agent for a super-secret organization, who fights all kinds of super-villains. The movie takes a bit more light the "super" part, our agent being nothing more than a hamburger eating cop, trained in a "Karate Kid" fashion by a Korean master, in order to dismantle the unlawful profits plan of an arms dealer (without other super-powers than money and relations).
What stands out in Remo Williams, to support my claim above, are the script lines: from "Your reflexes are pitiful. The seasons move faster." to "You know why Americans call it fast food? Because it speeds them on the way to the grave.", such stuff makes you remember it as quotes source. It's probably one of the most witty scripts I've seen lately. There are also plenty of action scenes, which for the '80s are comparable with what you can find in "Mission Impossible" - in particular one is filmed on top of the Statue of Liberty and sticks as a reference beyond the poster. Not last about it, the characters, or more precisely the actors, is something you'll probably remember. It was hard for me to imagine Fred Ward as a wannabe super-hero, and such casting is so weird that after seeing the movie, it's still hard to imagine. The most memorable part is though the Korean's master, Chiun (the one delivering the witty lines above), where the actor is... Joel Grey. Without ant Asian genes, it would probably make the movie to be labeled today as non-ethical, stereotypical, even rasist, despite the fact that the acting is so good that at the time got a nomination for a Golden Globe. Objectively I have to admit that I found myself the casting to be a bit unnatural, but again objectively the actor did his job close to perfection.
Long story short: it's a popcorn movie. A bit old, but enough funny and with more substance than what we have in today's Marvel productions.
I wanted to write this entry immediately after watching "Promising Young Woman", about a week ago, but unfortunately I didn't have enough time. Not that I have now... But probably if I postpone more I'll forget everything I had in mind. There's not much left anyway...
First of all, I avoided for a while to add the movie in my "to watch list" for two reasons: 1) I don't like Carey Mulligan (and I still believe that her act in "Drive" was a big minus for that movie, although after watching the current one my opinion on her acting skills changed dramatically) and 2) I'm fed up with movies carrying a tag related to some social issue, social movement, whatever, no matter what that might be, and I'm literally struggling lately to avoid productions that don't miss the chance to touch such issues. I'ts hard in such cases to make an objective comment that doesn't get twisted by the context. I said it before - when I watch a movie I want something to get me out of the "current real life", or if not, at least to get my attention for its cinematic value. For everything else there are news, documentaries, and other stuff. Fortunately, despite it's labeling in many reviews with a feminist bias - on which I won't comment, "Promising Young Woman" really has a cinematic value. And that's the main reason to watch it for.
The subject is a "revenge story". And as any "revenge story", since Monte Cristo or even older, it's catchy. Casey is a lonely young woman spending her days at a coffee counter, after dropping out of college years before and giving up to a medical carrer. The reason - an incident where the victim was a good friend, on which incident we don't get precise details in the movie (and that's a nuance we'll get back to). However, you can easily assume a rape during a party that went out of control. The result - the perpetrators getting away with it and the girl committing suicide. The trauma however moves forward, and we get to the present day, when the main nocturnal activity of Casey is playing a role of a vulnerable drunk bait, visiting the city's night clubs, up to the moment when somebody trying to take advantage out of her gets to far and is hit by the shock of dealing with a very lucid woman. Again, we don't get an explicit ending to some scenes like that (the same fine nuance), but you can easily assume that the revenge is soft, keeping it at the level of making the potential aggressors to consider carefully any future attempt like that. The context of the action becomes more complicated when Casey meets a former colleague. The way it complicates, you'll see in the movie...
As I said, I probably forgot most of what I wanted to write when this was fresh in my head. To finish the idea started above, the script is excellent as well as the directing - the fine nuance I mentioned is that throughout the whole movie you might get an uneasy feeling that some Tarantinoesque violence will burst out, but this doesn't happen. There is one exception, for which the contrast makes is very hard to watch (and probably that's the whole point), but despite you might expect, all the rest you'll see is a revenge story that's completely non-violent from start to finish, which stands out in the genre and actually makes it memorable. Carey Mulligan is perfect in her character, or better said she's way different from other bland acts I've seen her in - as I mentioned in the beginning, this completely changed my view on her acting skills. Technically, the movie scores on two accounts - editing, it's been a while since I watched something this good (true, there wasn't much to watch lately) and on soundtrack - I don't refer only to the score, but mostly to the songs/covers selection and the way these are used. There are movies (many by Tarantino, "Drive", "Baby Driver", "Atomic Blonde", "A Simple Favor", and other) where this parts counts at least as 10% of the final feeling. "Promising Young Woman" fits perfectly in the same list.
I'll end up with a spoiler (sort of). The ending here is probably comparable shock-wise with the one in "Uncut Gems" (the difference here being that it gives you a bit of time to digest it - because the story is not over). Unfortunately, as in "Uncut Gems", it's quite bitter - much more bitter actually. In some sense it turns the whole thing into an anti-revenge movie, because in the end you can see it like that. On the other hand an outcome of "let it go" would have cancelled the subject, and something more like "John Wick" style would have been totally unrealistic. I remember though that last year I wrote about "A Good Woman Is Hard to Find", so it's possible to have something in between, but I guess the actual intention is explicitly for an ending bitter enough to not forget it. And a criteria for a good movie, is that you'll remember it :) ...
"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...
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