a lot of movies
Aug. 10th, 2023 12:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
portico I just spent a week and a half with my 15-month-old nibling, and I watched soooooo many movies while there because it turns out babies go to bed very early. Sometimes my brother and sister-in-law would go out after he was down, and I was always happy to stay behind because 1) I am in general not much of a go-out-in-the-evening sort of person, and 2) this was compounded by my inevitable exhaustion (see: aforementioned 15-month-old). So: movies!
Renfield (2023)
This movie did not know what it wanted to be. It tries at subversive comedy and gross-out horror but never commits to either, resulting in something which felt awkwardly funny most of the time and badly startled us whenever it dialed up the grossness. Nicholas Hoult did the unexpectedly sweet monster thing much better in Warm Bodies, and didn't really feel like he brought anything new to this role. Awkwafina is the least Awkwafina I have yet seen her, but still very much Awkwafina. The performances I loved, however, were Nicolas Cage as Dracula (to my shock!! I am a Bela stan so I was already mad they inserted Cage into 1931 footage, and was expecting a very scenery chewing performance, but he was great) and Shohreh Aghdashloo as a crime boss (she DID chew some scenery, but i would watch her read the dictionary tbh she can consume whatever sets she wants).
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (2023)
Okay so some important context is that I don't know much or care much about transformers. I've never seen the Bay movies. I watched Bumblebee and I enjoyed it because it's essentially a horse girl movie where the horse is a transformer. This movie continues on from Bumblebee (so it's still a period picture--set in 1994), and is about the transformers (who are trapped on earth) teaming up with (checks notes) maximals to prevent what is essentially the metal version of galactus from eating earth. The requisite humans get pulled in because one of them accidentally steals Mirage, the Pete Davidson transformer and the other discovers the key that everyone will spend the movie hunting for. I don't know if this is true of all transformer movies, but this one could not decide if it wanted to be about humans or transformers, and could not do both. Noah, human #1, is introduced to us as an electronics expert, which is cool and literally never relevant. Elena, human #2, is a self-taught art expert, which is relevant, but eventually falls to the wayside along with the rest of her character traits. They are each supposedly close to specific transformers, but we are never really shown why or how that happens.
Some of the transformer designs are really cool! I loved Wheeljack, who is a VW bus and has glasses for some reason.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle: Mutant Mayham (2023)
Absolutely the winner of the week. My brother and I went to see this together, because TMNT was the only thing we really agreed on as kids. We've seen all of the various movie incarnations together (except, ironically, for the Michael Bay ones) and agreed this one was the best since 1990. The animation is fantastic, and the turtles (established as 15 years old and actually voiced by teen actors) really feel like teens! They love each other, they irritate each other, they know the best ways to get at each other. Forever a Donnie stan, I loved so much that they maintained his role as the "smart one" while also dialing up the nerdiness (he's a huge weeb). Raphael's anger issues remained, but weren't as much a huge bummer as they sometimes are.
I gotta shout out the voice direction, because I think it's one of the reasons this movie really works. I read that the filmmakers had the cast record in groups, and since so much of this movie is groups, it really really works. Especially for the turtles, who do a lot of very siblingesque cross-talking. The music, both the score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross and the soundtrack, is sooooo slick. I've been listening to both for days. I loved! All! The mutants! Their designs were so good, the voice cast was wonderful, and they each felt like fully rounded-out characters! My fave, naturally, was Wingnut, a bat mutant voiced by Natasia Demetriou.
What's Love Got to Do With It? (2022)
This is a rom-com about documentary filmmaker Zoe, who finds her newest subject when her childhood neighbor and best friend friend Kaz decides to go forward with an arranged marriage. The cast (Lily James as Zoe and Shazad Latif as Kaz) are very good and have great chemistry, and the will-they-won't-they of the marriage pulls the plot along very handily. My main issues were three:
1. Zoe's mom (played by Emma Thompson) has lived next door to this Pakistani family for years and post-divorce seems to have been absorbed by them, to the point where she's not only invited to weddings but to Eid celebrations, so her occasional thoughtlessly racist comments really land badly. Like, not thinking about how checking into the airport with Kaz, a Muslim man, is going to take longer than if it was just her and her white daughter is one thing, but some of the things she says about "them" are just. weird! And tbh made me think badly of Zoe! She clearly recognizes that her mother's comments are unacceptable, but rather than take her aside to explain why, she just rolls her eyes and lets her mother back loose to casually insult the people who have taken her in and treat her like family.
2. The fact that the "white lens" aspect of Zoe's doc has to be called out by her extremely out-of-touch money guys and isn't brought up by anyone else (or realized by Zoe herself, supposedly an experienced and award-winning filmmaker) is wild lol. And it led to me actually looking into the people who made this movie. It's directed by Shakhar Kapur, who is Indian (and directed both Elizabeth films?? til!), and written by a woman called Jemima Khan. Khan was the last name of her first husband, who is Pakistani, but Jemima herself is very much white (is, in fact, the granddaughter of a marquess). Which explained some things for me!
3. The whole thing wraps up too quickly. Kaz and Maymouda (also: more about Maymouda, please!) decide to divorce, and Kaz invites his estranged sister Jamila to Eid, hoping that confronting his mother and grandmother with Jamila, her white husband, and child will force a reconciliation, which it does. And then he's off to kiss Zoe in the treehouse. That's a lot of character development from Kaz, very quickly. Earlier in the movie he's pretty clear that his devotion to his faith is such that turning his back on Jamila, while difficult, was still the correct thing to do. Having him come around on that as well as the fact that Zoe is non-Muslim and not likely to convert and then offer us (and Zoe!) zero explanation is. A lot.
Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase (2019)
I vaguely remembered seeing the trailer for this and thinking it looked fun, but I must have forgotten it immediately. As a Nancy Drew connoisseur I find it so interesting how difficult it seems to be for film people to adapt her. I think this movie does a pretty good job, in terms of character! The fact that she's from Chicago gives her the big city kid in a small town vibe that does a good job explaining her Big Protagonist Energy. And making Hannah Carson's sister rather than the Drew housekeeper (rather than writing her out entirely), was a good call. I thought the actress they cast as Nancy was great, and everyone in this movie seemed to want to be in it! Unfortunately, it still wasn't very good.
The biggest failing was the script. It's not very funny! It wants to be funny and relatable to kids and adults and--it isn't! Which is a bummer, because I would have loved seeing a little franchise come out of this specific Nancy setting.
Bullet Train (2022)
My brother was shocked I hadn't watched this yet, because it seems like exactly the sort of mediocre action movie I love. It's even on a train! But I was wary about the sheer number of faces in it (big movie stars more known for being that actor than as an actor), and wary about why there were so many white people in this movie nominally set in Japan. It turns out I was right to be wary, as those were the aspects that bothered me the most. Even the train let me down! As my friend Julian put it, they could have set it in a shopping mall and nothing would have been different.
The premise is pretty simple: there are a number of assassins on a bullet train in Japan, all with either overlapping targets or otherwise at cross-purposes. The stand-outs for me were the duo of Brian Tyree Henry and Aaron Taylor Johnson as Lemon and Tangerine.
Their chemistry and banter was fantastic, and Lemon's whole Thomas the Train Engine thing (where he viewed everyone he met as various Thomas archetypes) was great. For his part, Aaron Taylor Johnson looks great in a mustache. Also, it was nice to see Hiroyuki Sanada again.
There's some good action and I love a movie with bright colors but idk! It just felt lazy.
Happiness for Beginners (2023)
This was the other fave of the week. Helen, an English teacher who has had trouble getting out from under the shadow of her divorce, signs up for a group camping trip along part of the Appalachian trail where it runs through Connecticut. On the trip, she encounters Jake, her little brother's best friend. Obviously they fall in love.
I love a movie that really seems to like its characters. The hiking group is a bunch of misfits and I could easily imagine another version of this film that sets them up like bowling pins to be knocked down, but this movie doesn't do that. It finds things to like in all of them, and gives them opportunities to like themselves, and each other. It is a romance between two people, but it's also one between the 8 people on the trip. It made me feel really good inside!
It's also definitely supported by strong performances across the board. The big name in this film is Ellie Kemper as Helen, playing against type as stern and sad and generally disapproving and doing a great job at it. Watching Helen gradually rediscover herself and her sense of wonder was delightful. Her Jake is Luke Grimes, who I didn't know but the tumblr girlies do. He gives great pining-for-his-best-friend's-big-sister, which is a trope I have a particular soft spot for. It's a lovely little movie! I might read the book.
Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (2023)
I didn't see this when it came out, because although I typically enjoy Guy Ritchie movies, I have become very tired of Jason Statham's schtick. But I watched this on the plane home from niblingtown, and reluctantly enjoyed it. Ritchie doesn't quite nail it with this one, but some of the component parts were very good.
I'll give Statham credit for dialing back the Stathamness and actually supporting the ensemble. It could have been the Jason Statham Show and it wasn't! Aubrey Plaza was just weird enough to make her turn as a hot girl hacker into something unique and fun (and, it must be said again, hot). Cary Elwes was very nice to see. The most fun part of the film was definitely Josh Hartnett playing a movie star suborned into infiltrating the home of Hugh Grant's billionaire arms dealer. Whenever the two of them were on screen together was ::chef's kiss.::
This was also, ultimately, a movie about very competent people doing things competently, which is the sexiest thing a movie can be imo. So, points for that as well. Was it great? No. If they make more of these will I watch them? 100%.
Movies, man. Love to watch them.
Renfield (2023)
This movie did not know what it wanted to be. It tries at subversive comedy and gross-out horror but never commits to either, resulting in something which felt awkwardly funny most of the time and badly startled us whenever it dialed up the grossness. Nicholas Hoult did the unexpectedly sweet monster thing much better in Warm Bodies, and didn't really feel like he brought anything new to this role. Awkwafina is the least Awkwafina I have yet seen her, but still very much Awkwafina. The performances I loved, however, were Nicolas Cage as Dracula (to my shock!! I am a Bela stan so I was already mad they inserted Cage into 1931 footage, and was expecting a very scenery chewing performance, but he was great) and Shohreh Aghdashloo as a crime boss (she DID chew some scenery, but i would watch her read the dictionary tbh she can consume whatever sets she wants).
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (2023)
Okay so some important context is that I don't know much or care much about transformers. I've never seen the Bay movies. I watched Bumblebee and I enjoyed it because it's essentially a horse girl movie where the horse is a transformer. This movie continues on from Bumblebee (so it's still a period picture--set in 1994), and is about the transformers (who are trapped on earth) teaming up with (checks notes) maximals to prevent what is essentially the metal version of galactus from eating earth. The requisite humans get pulled in because one of them accidentally steals Mirage, the Pete Davidson transformer and the other discovers the key that everyone will spend the movie hunting for. I don't know if this is true of all transformer movies, but this one could not decide if it wanted to be about humans or transformers, and could not do both. Noah, human #1, is introduced to us as an electronics expert, which is cool and literally never relevant. Elena, human #2, is a self-taught art expert, which is relevant, but eventually falls to the wayside along with the rest of her character traits. They are each supposedly close to specific transformers, but we are never really shown why or how that happens.
Some of the transformer designs are really cool! I loved Wheeljack, who is a VW bus and has glasses for some reason.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle: Mutant Mayham (2023)
Absolutely the winner of the week. My brother and I went to see this together, because TMNT was the only thing we really agreed on as kids. We've seen all of the various movie incarnations together (except, ironically, for the Michael Bay ones) and agreed this one was the best since 1990. The animation is fantastic, and the turtles (established as 15 years old and actually voiced by teen actors) really feel like teens! They love each other, they irritate each other, they know the best ways to get at each other. Forever a Donnie stan, I loved so much that they maintained his role as the "smart one" while also dialing up the nerdiness (he's a huge weeb). Raphael's anger issues remained, but weren't as much a huge bummer as they sometimes are.
I gotta shout out the voice direction, because I think it's one of the reasons this movie really works. I read that the filmmakers had the cast record in groups, and since so much of this movie is groups, it really really works. Especially for the turtles, who do a lot of very siblingesque cross-talking. The music, both the score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross and the soundtrack, is sooooo slick. I've been listening to both for days. I loved! All! The mutants! Their designs were so good, the voice cast was wonderful, and they each felt like fully rounded-out characters! My fave, naturally, was Wingnut, a bat mutant voiced by Natasia Demetriou.
What's Love Got to Do With It? (2022)
This is a rom-com about documentary filmmaker Zoe, who finds her newest subject when her childhood neighbor and best friend friend Kaz decides to go forward with an arranged marriage. The cast (Lily James as Zoe and Shazad Latif as Kaz) are very good and have great chemistry, and the will-they-won't-they of the marriage pulls the plot along very handily. My main issues were three:
1. Zoe's mom (played by Emma Thompson) has lived next door to this Pakistani family for years and post-divorce seems to have been absorbed by them, to the point where she's not only invited to weddings but to Eid celebrations, so her occasional thoughtlessly racist comments really land badly. Like, not thinking about how checking into the airport with Kaz, a Muslim man, is going to take longer than if it was just her and her white daughter is one thing, but some of the things she says about "them" are just. weird! And tbh made me think badly of Zoe! She clearly recognizes that her mother's comments are unacceptable, but rather than take her aside to explain why, she just rolls her eyes and lets her mother back loose to casually insult the people who have taken her in and treat her like family.
2. The fact that the "white lens" aspect of Zoe's doc has to be called out by her extremely out-of-touch money guys and isn't brought up by anyone else (or realized by Zoe herself, supposedly an experienced and award-winning filmmaker) is wild lol. And it led to me actually looking into the people who made this movie. It's directed by Shakhar Kapur, who is Indian (and directed both Elizabeth films?? til!), and written by a woman called Jemima Khan. Khan was the last name of her first husband, who is Pakistani, but Jemima herself is very much white (is, in fact, the granddaughter of a marquess). Which explained some things for me!
3. The whole thing wraps up too quickly. Kaz and Maymouda (also: more about Maymouda, please!) decide to divorce, and Kaz invites his estranged sister Jamila to Eid, hoping that confronting his mother and grandmother with Jamila, her white husband, and child will force a reconciliation, which it does. And then he's off to kiss Zoe in the treehouse. That's a lot of character development from Kaz, very quickly. Earlier in the movie he's pretty clear that his devotion to his faith is such that turning his back on Jamila, while difficult, was still the correct thing to do. Having him come around on that as well as the fact that Zoe is non-Muslim and not likely to convert and then offer us (and Zoe!) zero explanation is. A lot.
Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase (2019)
I vaguely remembered seeing the trailer for this and thinking it looked fun, but I must have forgotten it immediately. As a Nancy Drew connoisseur I find it so interesting how difficult it seems to be for film people to adapt her. I think this movie does a pretty good job, in terms of character! The fact that she's from Chicago gives her the big city kid in a small town vibe that does a good job explaining her Big Protagonist Energy. And making Hannah Carson's sister rather than the Drew housekeeper (rather than writing her out entirely), was a good call. I thought the actress they cast as Nancy was great, and everyone in this movie seemed to want to be in it! Unfortunately, it still wasn't very good.
The biggest failing was the script. It's not very funny! It wants to be funny and relatable to kids and adults and--it isn't! Which is a bummer, because I would have loved seeing a little franchise come out of this specific Nancy setting.
Bullet Train (2022)
My brother was shocked I hadn't watched this yet, because it seems like exactly the sort of mediocre action movie I love. It's even on a train! But I was wary about the sheer number of faces in it (big movie stars more known for being that actor than as an actor), and wary about why there were so many white people in this movie nominally set in Japan. It turns out I was right to be wary, as those were the aspects that bothered me the most. Even the train let me down! As my friend Julian put it, they could have set it in a shopping mall and nothing would have been different.
The premise is pretty simple: there are a number of assassins on a bullet train in Japan, all with either overlapping targets or otherwise at cross-purposes. The stand-outs for me were the duo of Brian Tyree Henry and Aaron Taylor Johnson as Lemon and Tangerine.
Their chemistry and banter was fantastic, and Lemon's whole Thomas the Train Engine thing (where he viewed everyone he met as various Thomas archetypes) was great. For his part, Aaron Taylor Johnson looks great in a mustache. Also, it was nice to see Hiroyuki Sanada again.
There's some good action and I love a movie with bright colors but idk! It just felt lazy.
Happiness for Beginners (2023)
This was the other fave of the week. Helen, an English teacher who has had trouble getting out from under the shadow of her divorce, signs up for a group camping trip along part of the Appalachian trail where it runs through Connecticut. On the trip, she encounters Jake, her little brother's best friend. Obviously they fall in love.
I love a movie that really seems to like its characters. The hiking group is a bunch of misfits and I could easily imagine another version of this film that sets them up like bowling pins to be knocked down, but this movie doesn't do that. It finds things to like in all of them, and gives them opportunities to like themselves, and each other. It is a romance between two people, but it's also one between the 8 people on the trip. It made me feel really good inside!
It's also definitely supported by strong performances across the board. The big name in this film is Ellie Kemper as Helen, playing against type as stern and sad and generally disapproving and doing a great job at it. Watching Helen gradually rediscover herself and her sense of wonder was delightful. Her Jake is Luke Grimes, who I didn't know but the tumblr girlies do. He gives great pining-for-his-best-friend's-big-sister, which is a trope I have a particular soft spot for. It's a lovely little movie! I might read the book.
Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (2023)
I didn't see this when it came out, because although I typically enjoy Guy Ritchie movies, I have become very tired of Jason Statham's schtick. But I watched this on the plane home from niblingtown, and reluctantly enjoyed it. Ritchie doesn't quite nail it with this one, but some of the component parts were very good.
I'll give Statham credit for dialing back the Stathamness and actually supporting the ensemble. It could have been the Jason Statham Show and it wasn't! Aubrey Plaza was just weird enough to make her turn as a hot girl hacker into something unique and fun (and, it must be said again, hot). Cary Elwes was very nice to see. The most fun part of the film was definitely Josh Hartnett playing a movie star suborned into infiltrating the home of Hugh Grant's billionaire arms dealer. Whenever the two of them were on screen together was ::chef's kiss.::
This was also, ultimately, a movie about very competent people doing things competently, which is the sexiest thing a movie can be imo. So, points for that as well. Was it great? No. If they make more of these will I watch them? 100%.
Movies, man. Love to watch them.
no subject
Date: 2023-08-11 12:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-08-11 04:21 pm (UTC)