Read the credits after you watch a movie. Aren’t you amazed at how many people were paid to contribute to creating it? These are good times indeed.
So there’s the silliness, yeah, and the comic book costumes and sci-fi setting and all, but Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is also about… family. There are a bunch of serious emotions in the movie, all relating to what it means to feel a sense of belonging, whether as a sister, a father, a son—or a genetically anomalous member of a tightly knit team.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/guardians-of-the-galaxy-vol-2/id1225848804
Can the movie industry please stop putting all the jokes and surprises into the previews? I would have enjoyed F8 much more if I hadn’t seen so much of it already.
It was still a surprise to me, however, when the villain got away, because that sets up another whole movie, and I was expecting this to be the last one, on account of the rather final-sounding name. I’ve now realized they chose the name because this movie is the eighth, and “F8” sounds like “fate” in leetspeak or SMS shorthand or whatever. (Letters? Where we’re going, we don’t need letters!)
In the first act, the villain (a female super-hacker, yay) tries to make it sound like Dom isn’t really loyal to his team, he’s loyal to his sense of adventure, but that interesting ambiguity doesn’t last long. By the time we reach the climax, the villain is a boring cardboard cut-out who just stands there desperately gnashing her teeth, ranting at underlings on a comm system, and jabbing buttons on a control panel. I felt sorry for her.
Still, the set pieces and humor were wonderful, and although the movie’s reveal during the resolution was pretty far-fetched, I still found it satisfying. The movie lacks plausibility and emotional depth, but it has lots of antics involving bald dudes and cars. Box office receipts indicate that this suffices.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/the-fate-of-the-furious/id1220995579
I have re-watched the 1995 animated version of Ghost in the Shell, and I stand by what I said before: the English dialog is uninspiring, both for how it sounds and what it says.
Some of the dialog explains too much, and yet the movie is still confusing. The voices are wooden sounding and incongruously American. I should maybe have watched it in Japanese, but then I’d have been dependent on the English subtitles, which are maybe just as bad at representing what’s going on.
What’s going on is some kind of conflict between two different government departments. Something to do with an AI.
The setting is amazing, and beautiful… in a dingy, dystopian kind of way. Doesn’t make me want to move to Hong Kong.
The main character, Major Matoko Kusanagi, has a robot body with no organic human brain inside, but rather a scan of the contents of one.
The theme is how we might redefine what it means to be human—or rather, sentient, since humans are biologically obsolete; evolution is moving on to the next stage.
The theme is what was most interesting to me about Ghost in the Shell, but overall I didn’t think the theme was communicated well. I enjoyed watching this insightful analysis.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/ghost-in-the-shell-25th-anniversary-edition/id1219320615
See below for a plot summary with SPOILERS.
Though I feel like I may be painting a target on my own back for saying so, I enjoyed Ghost in the Shell. This Guardian article expresses a similarly positive view.
Parts of the movie reminded me of the 1995 version, which I vaguely remember as flawed, bogged down by abstruse exposition. If people don’t like the 2017 version, it seems to be because it feels too personal, emotional, and actiony in comparison. The “problem”, in essence, is that a mainstream American movie doesn’t match the tone of a foreign cult classic. I’m not sure I understand why anyone expected it to, or even thought it should, though I do applaud the suggestion that the script could have been sparser.
Many have complained that most of the cast wasn’t Asian. That doesn’t bother me because the genre is sci-fi; it’s hard to insist that the ethnographic landscape of the future is being misrepresented, especially when everyone in that future is some kind of cyborg.
I like the theme of self as defined by choice, but—as disproportionately dedicated as I am to the life of the mind—I believe the implications of a complete mind/body dichotomy are only philosophically relevant in a fictional future world where brain transplants are possible. Here and now, we are not our brains; we are who we are in large part because of how we are embodied. Injuries, even those we fully recover from, can disrupt an otherwise stable sense of self. (Case in point: A Leg to Stand on, a book about neurologist Oliver Sacks’s recovery from a serious mountain-climbing injury.)
Another way to think about the mind/body theme is from the standpoint of a political prisoner. A government can jail you, torture you, or even kill you, but it can’t change your mind because your mind (the ghost in the machine) remains yours and yours alone—unless you live in Orwell’s dystopia, in which case, all bets are off.
And speaking of 80s, I loved the choice of automobiles for this movie. They didn’t look like cars of the future, they looked like cars of the past. Or science-fiction of the past, at any rate. The setting had a Blade Runner kind of feeling to it; but this time the neon lights were all 3D, none of the skyscrapers were pyramids, and none of the robots were owls or snakes.
Keep reading for a plot summary with SPOILERS in the form of a beat sheet in the style described in Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/ghost-in-the-shell/id1213171514
Kings of Pastry offers a glimpse into the lives of those aspiring to the highly respected designation “Meilleurs Ouvriers de France (MOF)”, awarded in France to the world’s top pastry chefs.
Although there were some aspects of the documentary I found interesting or dramatic, I didn’t think it was particularly good overall.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/kings-of-pastry/id414573195
Logan was bloody, morbid, and sad.
There were some darkly funny and grimly satisfying moments, but in general I’m not a fan of the trendy “decrepit superhero” trope, which is what governs the entirety of this 137-minute film, a gritty, R-rated, sci-fi/western production marking the end of the seventeen-year era in which Hugh Jackman has played Wolverine.
I was impressed by the female star’s Hugo Weaving-like frowny face, which she used for almost the entire movie, and the character (portrayed by a digital collage of the actress, her stunt-double, and a laboriously created CGI avatar) seemed pretty capable.
It’s hard to call the movie a triumph for her, though I would have liked to. For one thing, the tone of the movie is hardly triumphant, and for another thing, the movie isn’t about her, or even about her relationship with Logan, it’s about Logan. (It says so right there in the title!) So although she drives the plot, and one or two of the cars in the plot, unquestionably, she’s still second fiddle.
Keep reading for a plot summary with SPOILERS in the form of a beat sheet in the style described in Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat. Continue reading Logan (2017)
Jiro Dreams of Sushi is an amusing, eye-opening, and well-produced documentary about an exacting Japanese sushi chef named Jiro Ono, whose dedication to his craft is remarkable as much for its relentless lifelong perfectionism as for its world-famous success.
What I least liked about it was seeing dead or soon-to-be-dead sea creatures being inspected, bought and sold.
Visually, what I liked best was seeing each individual piece of sushi placed on a lacquered, rectangular dish on the softly-lit counter top, where gravity briefly, subtly altered its shape in a kind of slow, glistening ooze.
The strongest impression I’m left with, though, is Jiro’s seemingly unflagging sense of purpose: to make the most exquisite sushi he possibly can. Nothing else seems to matter in the slightest.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/jiro-dreams-of-sushi/id542088376
Huh. Well, I really don’t know what to think of Annie. On the one hand, it’s really long, and as some reviewers point out, it doesn’t really go anywhere or mean anything, but on the other hand, I’m super nostalgic about the songs! I had fun watching it, but I have no idea whether a child or adult who has never seen it before would enjoy it.
Keep reading for a plot summary with SPOILERS in the form of a beat sheet in the style described in Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat.
Also below: Some things about the movie that surprised me, and the history of the character as she has appeared in a wide range of media from 1885 to 2014.
Although iTunes calls Timeless a drama, there’s a healthy dose of science-fiction as well. It’s a time-travel show, for Pete’s sake!
The three main characters, who have a pretty nifty-looking time machine, are struggling with some kind of shadow organization that has control of a newer one.
The sets, costumes, and special effects are fun (the show must cost a fortune to produce), but I found the expositiony dialog intolerably overbearing. Clearly the writers are trying to contrast prejudiced views of women and minorities in the past with views of women and minorities in today’s more enlightened times, but the well-meaning messages are written in clumsily.
Since the good guys and the bad guys both wind up changing history and killing people, there are interesting moral issues at play, involving questions of the good of the many vs. the life of an individual and whether the end ever justifies the means. Why couldn’t some of the same subtlety be brought to bear on issues of race and gender?
See below for two grating examples of political correctness in Episode 8, “Space Race”.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/timeless-season-1/id1142726283
Well. Point Break (1991) was about fifty million times better than Point Break (2015). It had some actual characters and plot.
It also seems to have been a cultural touchstone, though not one that I was ever particularly aware of. If the interviews on the special features menu are to be believed, it introduced the zen of surfing to the masses.
My personal opinion is still mixed. On the one hand, the movie was horribly bloody. On the other hand, the skydiving was awesome.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/point-break/id547103622
Now, having just seen a Keanu Reeves movie and a Sandra Bullock movie, I feel like I need to re-watch Speed.
