The Creator (2023)

Since I lowered my frequency of blog entries, I'm trying for the few I'm posting to close these with a rating above average. This means finding a movie that deserves recommending. And this is the reason why I was very close this time to turn back again to a South-Korean title from the 2000's, but finally the "payback" urge for two hours lost with "The Creator" won. So...

What we have here is a SciFi set in a future where the Western world banned AI, apparently guilty for a nuclear blast that swiped Los Angeles. The Eastern World doesn't really agree with the general opinion that AI is bad, the result being some sort of war targeting an android population made in Asia, persecuted by the US army through incursions within the enemy territory. In all this context we have a romance between an US sergeant and the daughter of the main mysterious AI architect. Long story short (and it is short, because there's not much else), she dies in an attack, he gets back home, and after some years he's sent back to get "the weapon" - some device developed by the AI camp, which would be capable to disable the entire armed power of the West. As we find out from the trailers, the weapon is a child, and from here onwards we have a couple of predictable mini-twists, which I'll leave aside to keep something left for watching.

The humanity vs AI conflict is a SciFi theme since the notion of AI emerged, meaning decades. In cinema this theme catched traction mostly by positioning AI on the negative side: Terminator, Matrix, etc which is probably the simpler perspective = it's more natural for the average person watching a movie to empathize with the man than with the machine. "The Creator" wants the opposite, and probably attempts to build up on the ongoing trend where we have AI everywhere. I'm not saying that good AI vs bad people is something to be excluded, having elements of this kind in SciFis like "Blade Runner" or "I, Robot", or more precisely in the classic writings which these are based on, by P.K. Dick and Asimov, respectively. But there the story is much, much more nuanced than what we get here. What we receive in this movie is just some pale recycling of bits like the robotic laws where the android is not capable to commit murder, but that's something quite selective which we find out in the end. What we really do get in the movie is the Hollywood standard from the last years thrown over this shallow base of SciFi, transforming everything in a very politically correct class fight, where the AI become an actual social category ostracized by others and demanding its rights. Everything is one-side and black and white. It's probably enough for a public used to not bother anymore with thinking about the grey nuances in a story, preferring to get some shooting and explosions VFX instead. But well... maybe you can't expect from Gareth Edwards (director + screenwriter), who started from VFX in his career, to be an Asimov.

Probably someone could argue against the above, saying that we have the main character who's the good human, capable to understand that AI is not evil. Well, the problem is, if I would compare John David Washington with Arnold Schwarzenegger from the 30 years old Terminator 2, I don't think there's any doubt who of the two characters brings more balance. The acting doesn't help at all, and I really don't want to comment on what could be the reason behind the casting, but after all the script is still the root of all evil. The rigidity of T-800 that changes slowly over the course of Terminator 2 gives a much more human and credible side to the killing machine there, than the hysterical sergeant who moves here suddenly from extremes of threatening with a "shut down" to others with scenes drowned in tears. Add to this a terrible dosage of comic relief that's limited to the start of the movie followed by a continuous, totally opposed, tragedy feeling towards the end. The clip I added besides the trailer is relevant, despite the praising regarding the director's capacity of empathic infusion (didn't catch for me, sorry). All this is garnished with an editing including some flashbacks that are breaking the developing action thread and could've very well be placed in the normal chronological order. The only part that saves a bit what we get here are the visuals and the production desing, which indeed give a feeling alternating between a dystopic setting a la "Blade Runner" and bits of "Star Wars". Moreover, this looks like somehow trying to tell you, despite everything else, that if you had a different script and directing, the movie could've been actually good. But it's not.

Rating: 2 out of 5

A Dirty Carnival (2006)

Considering that I'm in a writer's block on technical writing = what I should do right now, and noticing that I reached the last day of the month without a blog entry, I decided for a quick context switch. However, I don't have anything recent as a subject, so I'll just pick an older movie which I've watched during the summer. As a side note, 2006 keeps coming back to my attention periodically, and I think it probably was one of the best years for cinema in this century - a look over this list (the entire one, not just the box-office) confirming that the yearly average quality of today's movies is far below of what it was, if we just count the titles that move you enough to remember after more than a decade. Anyway, "A Dirty Carnival" is not on that list, being a South Korean production. Also, it's probably not a movie I'd like to remember, although it will be...

If I'd have to look for an Asian equivalent of "Goodfellas" or "Casino", "A Dirty Carnival" would come up as a main contender. The story is pretty much in line with "Goodfellas", following the ascension of a small gangster up to nearly reaching the position of a partner in the businesses of the crime boss. The brutality is closer to "Casino", where it's probably better to skip the details, leaving this as a warning. You shouldn't forget that we have a Korean movie here, where when there's violence it doesn't really have a rating barrier, and the context is after all different from the romanced stories of the italo-american mafia. Unfortunately, it's a context that seems much more grounded into reality, which is emphasized by a side story care converging with the main thread. A young director, former school mate of the main character, decides to ask him for advise on a gangster movie, in return arraging him to reconnect with a girl he was friend of during school years. The context switch between the "peaceful" interactions in which the main character wants to show up as somebody who's living a normal life, adding the attempt on a romantic relationship, it makes even more hard to digest the episodes from the other life. The ending that gets quite predictable, is not a happy one, and it's hard to not leave you with a bitter taste.

"A Dirty Carnival" is part of a select category of movies, about which I can't say I enjoyed or I'd like to watch again someday, but I can definitely say it's a good movie. Starting from the perfect acting, up to the script that introduces in some places notes of sad humor, which are very particular, the impact the movie has on the viewer is clearly above average of today's Hollywood productions.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 (subjectively, objectively would be probably higher)

(better quality, but no subs)

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)

It's probably a bit late for this review, but I'm not used anymore to jump up to watch a box-office title in its first day of release. Actually, for a few years already, I'm more like avoiding these. "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" was an exception, but one still far from exceptional. The perfect artificial rejuvenation of Harisson Ford in the beginning of the movie is pretty much the single memorable thing about it. Besides that, you can still appreciate that it's a bit above the common superficiality found in most summer movies. But not with much.

The above appreciation stems from the story the movie offers. Not spectacular, but it's pretty consistent. The object of the quest this time, is a mechanism, Antikythera, fictitiously conceived in the movie by Archimedes and capable to predict temporal fissures. The reality about the artifact is obviously a different one, but let's move over it (you can Google it). The nice part in the movie, especially if you didn't have much of a vacation, is that it gets you through a classic quest moving between various touristic locations, until the tangled puzzle is completed. After which, finally (spoiler) we also have a brief travel back in time to the ancient Greece.

Initially the movie seems catchy, throwing at you familiar facts and faces from the Indiana Jones universe, the end of WW2 introducing the villain - a nazi physicist, the return of Sallah (John Rhys-Davies) - migrated from the first movie's Egypt to New York, the tour of an exotic location - Morroco in this case, the well-known melodic line by John Williams, and others. But slowly, this starts to drag, and the action becomes somehow dull. What saves it, more or less, is the time travel element in the end, but the fact you know from the start where the quest goes, doesn't make it a surprise anymore. Unlike, for instance, "Raiders of the Lost Ark", where you have no clue up to the end what exactly happens when the ark will open. Here, the final feeling, after more than two hours of movie, is somehow similar to the main character who being at the age of retirement complains that he doesn't fit anymore in such a story - the movie's sort of meeting the base expectations through its background elements, but seems a bit too "tired" to deliver enough impact. Even so, compared with the precedent exaggeration atempted by Spielberg in 2008 for reviving the character, what we got here seemed to me more in tone with the Indiana Jones I remember from when I was a kid.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Suzume (2022)

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 :)

Rating: 4 out of 5

Oppenheimer (2023)

There's a while already since I'm not going to cinema as often as I used to, but there are exceptions. "Oppenheimer" is one of these. Reasone: top 250 IMDb, Nolan and a feeling that it deserves a big screen viewing. TL;DR: I think its place in top 250 is justified, it's not Nolan's best - but it's probably among the top half, about the big screen.. I wouldn't call it a "must see", but it's true I didn't watch it in IMAX.

Who read my blog knows that I'm not really fond of biopics. Besides that, Oppenheimer's life is not the most offering subject movie-wise, despite his importance in the context of WW2 and his major contribution in the development of the first atomic bomb. That's why the best part of this production is to squeeze out a script that wouldn't probably be easy to top with anything else covering the same subject. The story builds up on three temporal lines, started simultaneously. The main one is the "classic" type, following the biography of the main character since his student years up to his involvement as a chief physicist in the Manhattan project and to the detonation of the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This timeline merges afterwards with a second one, probably less familiar, covering "the trial". In brief, after WW2, Oppenheimer's activity became much more politically oriented than scientifical, implicitly drawing enemies and culminating with a closed hearing meant to revoke his security credentials, but which discredited him publicly. A third timeline, suggestively nuanced in black and white follows the reversal of that episode, happened a couple of years afterwards, when the principal political adversary behind Oppenheimer's hearing gets his own "trial" when attempting to occupy a secretary of state position.

"Oppenheimer" has perfect screenplay construction. A review that I read before watching it was saying something about the long length it has, where the third hour, coming ofter the nuclear explosions, is dilluting the effect and the movie should stop before it. I believe that's precisely the third our that makes it worth watching it. Even if in its beginning we have some dialogues that are a bit supperficial, the ending is filled with much more fine and mature nuances, some of them quite deep. From aspects that relate to form, like using the first person plural - a natural thing for a researcher given the typical writing customs - in complete opposition with an attorney's perception that interprets that as a lack of responsibility, to the fundamental idea that is built as a warning: mix science with politics and the last will bury you. There are some details, which I believe are more evident for who had some experience in research, and in particular in technical research. There's a point when somebody working in this area will most certainly have some opinions or even get forced by circumstances like management or other collateral activities, to take a position concerning more.. "humane" matters than the scientific niche. However, who's getting drawn too much into this direction will involuntarily end up sacrificing the other, which in an optimistic scenario will at least cost time, but worse might make the person a lamb to slaughter in a political jungle (the case of the movie). There's rare the case when somebody manages to fight both fronts and keep the standards high - because a technical area has a dynamic that sometimes is hard to keep up to even without something else distracting you. Anyway, we got into a very particular niche :) so let's move back to the movie.

As a cinematic experience "Oppenheimer" is ok, but not impressive. We have some nice shots, but overall its camera work is not spectacular. I appreciated the reserve on using CGI - I think it's better like that, but on the other hand I'm convinced that cinematography could've been better. The sound, as the editing are typical for Nolan, meaning a bit too aggressive, at least for start. Nevertheless, towards its end the video editing fills the gaps you fill in the cinematography, the result being probably the best edited movie hour I've watched in the last two years. The jumping between timelines begins in adagio and gradually advances to a tense allegro, which in the last ten minutes builds up into a sensory impact explosion.

My casting opinions are typically subjective, so we can move quickly over - what's obvious is that both Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. will probably collect plenty of nominations in the upcoming awards season. I didn't talk at all above about the biggest star on the poster though... = the bomb :) This will generate a long boring philosophical paragraph. To summarize it, unfortunately, despite the setting being more than 50 years ago, the movie is very timely. As I was saying about "1917", or more recently about "Im Westen Nichts Neues", it should probably be included on a mandatory watching list for many heads of states. I'm not sure though how much would they understand it...

The conclusion: it's a long movie and it can get boring. As I got bored by "Mank", "The Iron Lady", "Mr. Turner" or other biopics over the years. It probably won't happen though if you have some interest in history or some minimal technical background. And the latter can make you a bit subjective ;)

Rating: 4.5 out of 5