The "Thor" movies have sorta been Marvel's lesser cousin - they keep on making the movies as he's an Avenger and certainly Chis Hemsworth's hero has his charm and they have one of the rare decent Marvel villains with Loki, but the Norse mythology element always plays kinda odd and the second film, "The DArk World", had severe problems with a dull plot and villains (albiet salvaged slightly by a friendly supporting cast).
"Ragnarok" throws out both a large chunk of the supporting cast and deals with the dangling plot threads from the previous films pretty quickly while introducing director Taika Waititi's very personal sense of humour, along with a high camp villainous turn from Cate Blanchett (her second line has her calling our heroes "darling", and she continues to purr in a catsuit in languidly infectious pleasure throughout). There's also a big change in the visual stylings - while previously we had a rather sterile godly city and random earth locations, this time we've got various realms inspired 50% by heavy metal album covers and 50% by covers of classic science fiction novel reprints. There's also an electro-heavy score by Mark Mothersborough (leaning more on his work in Devo and less on his work for Wes Anderson).
While it's not completely a masterpiece of construction (there's a fast rush through the plot obligations at the beginning and the middle dawdles a tad), Waititi's native humour shines through, giving Hemsworth's easygoing comedic nature more time to play, and simple pleasure for the audience.
Monday 30 October 2017
Sunday 29 October 2017
Kingsman: The Golden Circle
Franchises can look very easy, until you try to actually kick one off. The traps are everywhere. In the case of "Kingsman: The Golden Circle" there turns out to be a problem where the arc that the first one described for the lead character, Eggsy, has been pretty much completed, leaving him curiously superflous in the sequel (or at least, very much "generic hero") . There is an attempt to give the spy hero a grounded romantic arc (rather than flinging his way through multiple love interests, he sticks with the one he had at the end of the last movie) but, again, this kinda means that most of the arc has already been covered.
There are a couple of supplementary pleasures (some nice action, a couple of ridiculous larger than life guest stars, a somewhat pointedly political villainous plot) but none of them entirely compensate for the film feeling somewhat unnecessary (and of course all films are ultimately unnecessary, but this one feels more unnecessary than most).
There are a couple of supplementary pleasures (some nice action, a couple of ridiculous larger than life guest stars, a somewhat pointedly political villainous plot) but none of them entirely compensate for the film feeling somewhat unnecessary (and of course all films are ultimately unnecessary, but this one feels more unnecessary than most).
Wednesday 25 October 2017
Blade Runner 2049
I always have slight reservations with the original "Blade Runner". I've still never seen the original cut, just Ridley Scott's Directors Cut and Final Cut, but still, it feels a little chilly, a film that's more production design than plot and with a protagonist at the centre who was, to that point, Harrison Ford's least compelling performance (he has, of course, got significantly duller since). But I've increasingly grown attached to Rutger Hauer's flamboyant performance and have softened towards the film enough to recognise what other people see in it.
The follow up, some thirty-odd years later, is a bit of an odd duck - very reliant on the original for the aesthetic while, of course, using everything that 30 years of cinema developments has applied since - including references to companies which have gone bust in the last 30 years, simply because they were featured prominently in the original. Also while it's set up with a McGuffin from the original film, the main person carried over from the original (Harrison Ford) is deliberately offscreen for most of the film. The story goes a bit deeper into the questions of artificial life raised by the first - about what they may want, how they go about their existence, and about how that may shape society. Gosling is a more central presence than Ford was in the first one, and while the plot ends up being slightly a red-herring that doesn't relate to him as much as he thinks it might, he's far more clearly the set of eyes we're following the narrative through. His relationship with an artificial intelligence is particularly intense and heartbreaking (including an emotional and erotic love-scene that combines complex visuals with complex emotional subtexts). There are gorgeous setpieces, particularly a shoot-out in Las Vegas.
Still, this isn't quite a winner for me either - in trying to tell a story that is both personal and about the wider futuristic world, this trips over its feet a little too much. The wider stakes are never really particularly well conveyed, and their inclusion distracts. There is also a languid pace which is going to be unappealing to people who aren't willing to look at a lot of lovely visuals for two and a half hours.
So this is a "liked but did not love" film for me.
The follow up, some thirty-odd years later, is a bit of an odd duck - very reliant on the original for the aesthetic while, of course, using everything that 30 years of cinema developments has applied since - including references to companies which have gone bust in the last 30 years, simply because they were featured prominently in the original. Also while it's set up with a McGuffin from the original film, the main person carried over from the original (Harrison Ford) is deliberately offscreen for most of the film. The story goes a bit deeper into the questions of artificial life raised by the first - about what they may want, how they go about their existence, and about how that may shape society. Gosling is a more central presence than Ford was in the first one, and while the plot ends up being slightly a red-herring that doesn't relate to him as much as he thinks it might, he's far more clearly the set of eyes we're following the narrative through. His relationship with an artificial intelligence is particularly intense and heartbreaking (including an emotional and erotic love-scene that combines complex visuals with complex emotional subtexts). There are gorgeous setpieces, particularly a shoot-out in Las Vegas.
Still, this isn't quite a winner for me either - in trying to tell a story that is both personal and about the wider futuristic world, this trips over its feet a little too much. The wider stakes are never really particularly well conveyed, and their inclusion distracts. There is also a languid pace which is going to be unappealing to people who aren't willing to look at a lot of lovely visuals for two and a half hours.
So this is a "liked but did not love" film for me.
Thursday 5 October 2017
Fantastic Fest 2017
"Fantastic Fest" is an 8 day film festival made up of the wild and weird bits of filmography, taking place in Austin Texas each year at the Alamo Drafthouse chain (currently at the South Lamar location). The platonic perfection of having a film festival take place all in one venue cannot be over-stated - while, yes, it gets crowded and loud and busy, you're immediately concentrated into one location and can share conversations immediately about what you saw, what you missed, what you're catching later and how it all feels. There are 37 slots available to see films, with about 70-80 films on the menu from all round the world, in genres from crime to horror to fantasy to sci-fi (my total only goes to 36 as I skipped a midnight screening)
This year happened to be one of the more controversial ones, mostly due to factors within the organisation (though occasionally, as will be mentioned later, with issues emerging with some of the films themselves). Sexual harassment allegations that had not been handled well at an organisational level put a cloud over the organisers and led to the cancellation of the originally planned opening night screening (the much anticipated by me and other people "Three Billboards in Ebbing, Missouri"). Without forensic knowledge of the details I can't really comment on the rights or wrongs beyond noting that, yes, harassers should be punished and organisations should not cover up for them, but throughout the festival there felt like the spirit of equity was being mostly understood.
Anyway, what about the films? I'll do short writeups of each of them here (and will write a longer one for any films that actually get general cinema releases in Australia as they come along). But for general recommendations, I'd urge people seek out "3 ft ball and souls", "Killing of a Sacred Deer", "Top Knot Detective", "Blade of the Immortal", "Bodied", "Professor Marston and the Wonder Women", "Gilbert", "Pincushion", "The merciless", "Tigers are Not Afraid", "Salyut 7", "See You Up there", "World of Tomorrow Pts 1 and 2" and "The Endless".
1) "Thoroughbreds"- two troubled girls plan a murder. Stars Anna Taylor Joy as one of the girls and Anton Yelchin in his last role as a drug dealer brought into their plan. It has dry dark comedy and the performances lift it, but it does feel a tad thin. 3.
2) "3 Ft Ball and Souls" - Japanese film about a suicide club who find that time resets to the moments just before their group suicide from a ball of fireworks. It's funny and touching and kinda sweet - for a lot of the film the action is confined to a shed, so it's very performance-and-script dependent and fortunately this is good at both. The ending is a little after-school-special, but there is a witty tagline, and there's sincerity and sweetness that stops this getting overly painful.4
3) "Ichi The Killer" - A 4K Restoration of Takeshii Miike's Crime-Horror hybrid, which remains disgusting, ultraviolent, perverted and kept me awake at a midnight slot. Also undobutedly a masterwork of its kind. 4.
4) Before we vanish - Japanese alien alien invasion film where the aliens are acquiring human sensations as preparation for a full scale invasion. A tad slow and within soppy ending that takes too long to arrive. 2.5
5) Mary and the witches flower - anime from the director of arietty and when Marnie was there - sweet but a tad standard sub-Ghibli - Enough nice bits to be worthwhile without really surprising. 3.5
6) Anna and the apocalypse - the Scottish zombie Christmas musical that combines songs in the style of Glee with violence in the style of Romero - fun if shallow but... who cares? Good giggles. 3.5
7) Killing of a sacred deer. New film by the director of "The Lobster" that applies the same style to a modern grand tragedy. It's good but I love the lobster and I only like this, though I recognize the quality. 4
8) Mon Mon monsters. Taiwanese high school bullies meet and capture a creature - who is the real monster (of course it's the high schoolers). The early bullying sequences are so heavy-handed it's difficult to enjoy when it gets bloody later. Not impossible but difficult. 3
9) Top Knot Detective. Docuparody of a cult Japanese tv show and its making and strange history. Absolutely will appeal to anyone who loves and misses the Des Mangan cult movie. Americans seem to like it too. 4.5
10) Batpussy. A 60s -70s porn that is simultaneously inept as superhero movie, porn and improvised domestic drama. This is the "so bad it's strangely compelling" selection (it's also the "I couldn't get into the film I wanted to see in this slot" selection). I enjoyed some of it but I also spent plentiful time studying the theatre decor. 1.5
11) Super Dark Times - generic American indie about high school boys who get their friendship strained after an accident. Competent, set in the 90s basically so the cast can't use mobile phones, but not particularly special. 2.5
12) VIP - South Korean police procedural - serial killer is also a valued intelligence asset, making arresting him a complex challenge. The procedural stuff was a little dense but it has a satisfying ending. 3.5
13) Les Attanes. A very French Canadian zombie movie. Still got exploding heads but with introspection and an accordion as well. 3.5
14) Blade of the Immortal - Takeshi Miike's 100th film, an immortal ronin helps a young girl get revenge for her murdered family. Beautiful and bloody, I loved the hell out of this. Instantly iconic costume design and beautifully shot plus a lotta blood spurting. 5
15) Take it out in trade - Ed Wood's previously lost final film he had creative control over - a private detective hunts down a missing girl while taking a lot of unnecessary overseas trips. It's certainly an Ed Wood film with bad jokes, stock footage and a few naked women applying lipstick to themselves. 2
16) Bodied - American indie about a white college student who wants to write a thesis on battle rap and ends up being more involved than he planned - hilarious and challenging look at speech and race and the controversies around them. I loved the hell out of this. 4.5
17) Professor Marathon and the Wonder Women - the unconventional relationship between the creator of wonder woman and his two loving partners. I loved this as a film though it opened up a lot of current issues I'm having with rage over the postal plebiscite as unconventional lives are judged again. 4
18) Vidar the vampire - a highly blasphemous vampire comedy, dragged down by interminable Norwegian folk music. 2.
Film 19 - King Cohen - doco on Schlock director Larry Cohen. Interesting but makes me appreciate Mark Hartley's docos as this does not have the tightness and focus those do. 2
Film 20 - Wheelman - getaway driver gets pulled into something more when a job goes bad. Simple genre stuff enhanced by a tight "everything takes place in the car" aesthetic and a strong central performance from Frank Grill, usually a journeyman supporting thug. 3.5
Film 21 - Gilbert - doco on Gilbert Gottfried and his surprising family (in that, yes, he does have a wife and kids and no, he does not always talk like that). Funny but also touching and sweet and thinky. 4.5
22) Secret screening- Death of Stalin - Armando Ianucci's follow up to In The Loop about the events surrounding the title event. It's bitter and twisted and brutal in a way that makes satire tricky. It's interesting but... I was in an audience that wasn't finding it funny. So I liked it but.... 3.5
23) Ron Goosen Low Budget stuntman - Dutch comedy about an alcoholic who becomes a stuntman after a viral video of a car accident becomes a sensation. One of those "this would possibly be funnier if I was Dutch" films. But it does have enjoyably cheesy music videos and a Black Pieter joke so... 3
24) The Originals, Egyptian, a fired bank manager joins a secret society monitoring other Egyptians. Has some striking visuals but the pacing drags and the conclusion is messy. 2.5
25) Pincushion - girl and her mother move to small time and both suffer intimidation. A combination of brutal painful story and beautiful aesthetic means this is angsty pain done well. 4
26) The Merciless - stop me if you've heard this before - young cop gets sent to prison undercover but loyalties get confused. But this Korean film is an excellent version of the genre with multiple betrayals, slapfighting and other violence. Like infernal affairs it's a great execution of a familiar premise. 4
27) Gerald's Game - Stephen King adaptation - Carla Gugino is chained to a bed by her husband in a bit of light sex play which goes wrong when he has a heart attack. It's a bit regular TV movie but with two gory elements that lift it to a 3
28) Cold Hell - German film about a taxi driver who gets stalked by a serial killer and punches people. It's good when she's punching people, less so when there"s a plot. 3.
29) Tigers are not afraid. Mexican film about homeless kids tied into the drug war when one steals a phone belonging to drug-and-human trafficker. Sad and brutal and gorgeous, told completely from the kids perspective with few adults and a bit magic realism. The kind of film that is the reason I come to a fest like this. 4.5
30) Salyut 7. Russian film on the 1985 mission to save a space station after it was damaged in a debris accident. A bit rah rah the glorious Soviet Union but it's on a level with similarly US product like Apollo 13 (except in this case you probably don't know the ending). 4
31) Applecart - yeah, this sucks. A dubious Evil Dead knockoff without any of the good bits of Evil Dead. 1
32) See you up there - two French soldiers after ww1 get involved in the war memorial industry and tangle with their former lieutenant. Beautiful and stylish film - this should end up in the French film festival next year. It also deserves a wider release but film distribution ain't just. 4.5
33) World of tomorrow episodes one and two. A little girl is visited by strange visions of the future. Don Hertzfeldt's work is a mixture of simplistic, almost stick figure animation and complex challenging thoughts about identity, memory and destiny. Plus it's funny and adorable and scary. 4.5
34) 78/52 - an in-depth documentary analysis of the shower scene from Psycho - this is compellingly deep cinematic analysis with a whole lot of detail drawn out of maybe 90 seconds of material. Yes, it's a familiar sequence but there are a whole lot of discoveries still to make. 3.5
35) The Endless - low budget horror/fantasy as two former cult members return and find something strange... Really liked this simple film of ideas and character with minimal on the effects or gore. Some surprising twists. 4
36) Downsizing - From Alexander Payne (Election, Sideways), a shrinking technique is used to combat over-consumption - a film that takes about an hour to work out what it's about, with Matt Damon as an extremely passive protagonist. The second half improves things but it's only a 3.
This year happened to be one of the more controversial ones, mostly due to factors within the organisation (though occasionally, as will be mentioned later, with issues emerging with some of the films themselves). Sexual harassment allegations that had not been handled well at an organisational level put a cloud over the organisers and led to the cancellation of the originally planned opening night screening (the much anticipated by me and other people "Three Billboards in Ebbing, Missouri"). Without forensic knowledge of the details I can't really comment on the rights or wrongs beyond noting that, yes, harassers should be punished and organisations should not cover up for them, but throughout the festival there felt like the spirit of equity was being mostly understood.
Anyway, what about the films? I'll do short writeups of each of them here (and will write a longer one for any films that actually get general cinema releases in Australia as they come along). But for general recommendations, I'd urge people seek out "3 ft ball and souls", "Killing of a Sacred Deer", "Top Knot Detective", "Blade of the Immortal", "Bodied", "Professor Marston and the Wonder Women", "Gilbert", "Pincushion", "The merciless", "Tigers are Not Afraid", "Salyut 7", "See You Up there", "World of Tomorrow Pts 1 and 2" and "The Endless".
1) "Thoroughbreds"- two troubled girls plan a murder. Stars Anna Taylor Joy as one of the girls and Anton Yelchin in his last role as a drug dealer brought into their plan. It has dry dark comedy and the performances lift it, but it does feel a tad thin. 3.
2) "3 Ft Ball and Souls" - Japanese film about a suicide club who find that time resets to the moments just before their group suicide from a ball of fireworks. It's funny and touching and kinda sweet - for a lot of the film the action is confined to a shed, so it's very performance-and-script dependent and fortunately this is good at both. The ending is a little after-school-special, but there is a witty tagline, and there's sincerity and sweetness that stops this getting overly painful.4
3) "Ichi The Killer" - A 4K Restoration of Takeshii Miike's Crime-Horror hybrid, which remains disgusting, ultraviolent, perverted and kept me awake at a midnight slot. Also undobutedly a masterwork of its kind. 4.
4) Before we vanish - Japanese alien alien invasion film where the aliens are acquiring human sensations as preparation for a full scale invasion. A tad slow and within soppy ending that takes too long to arrive. 2.5
5) Mary and the witches flower - anime from the director of arietty and when Marnie was there - sweet but a tad standard sub-Ghibli - Enough nice bits to be worthwhile without really surprising. 3.5
6) Anna and the apocalypse - the Scottish zombie Christmas musical that combines songs in the style of Glee with violence in the style of Romero - fun if shallow but... who cares? Good giggles. 3.5
7) Killing of a sacred deer. New film by the director of "The Lobster" that applies the same style to a modern grand tragedy. It's good but I love the lobster and I only like this, though I recognize the quality. 4
8) Mon Mon monsters. Taiwanese high school bullies meet and capture a creature - who is the real monster (of course it's the high schoolers). The early bullying sequences are so heavy-handed it's difficult to enjoy when it gets bloody later. Not impossible but difficult. 3
9) Top Knot Detective. Docuparody of a cult Japanese tv show and its making and strange history. Absolutely will appeal to anyone who loves and misses the Des Mangan cult movie. Americans seem to like it too. 4.5
10) Batpussy. A 60s -70s porn that is simultaneously inept as superhero movie, porn and improvised domestic drama. This is the "so bad it's strangely compelling" selection (it's also the "I couldn't get into the film I wanted to see in this slot" selection). I enjoyed some of it but I also spent plentiful time studying the theatre decor. 1.5
11) Super Dark Times - generic American indie about high school boys who get their friendship strained after an accident. Competent, set in the 90s basically so the cast can't use mobile phones, but not particularly special. 2.5
12) VIP - South Korean police procedural - serial killer is also a valued intelligence asset, making arresting him a complex challenge. The procedural stuff was a little dense but it has a satisfying ending. 3.5
13) Les Attanes. A very French Canadian zombie movie. Still got exploding heads but with introspection and an accordion as well. 3.5
14) Blade of the Immortal - Takeshi Miike's 100th film, an immortal ronin helps a young girl get revenge for her murdered family. Beautiful and bloody, I loved the hell out of this. Instantly iconic costume design and beautifully shot plus a lotta blood spurting. 5
15) Take it out in trade - Ed Wood's previously lost final film he had creative control over - a private detective hunts down a missing girl while taking a lot of unnecessary overseas trips. It's certainly an Ed Wood film with bad jokes, stock footage and a few naked women applying lipstick to themselves. 2
16) Bodied - American indie about a white college student who wants to write a thesis on battle rap and ends up being more involved than he planned - hilarious and challenging look at speech and race and the controversies around them. I loved the hell out of this. 4.5
17) Professor Marathon and the Wonder Women - the unconventional relationship between the creator of wonder woman and his two loving partners. I loved this as a film though it opened up a lot of current issues I'm having with rage over the postal plebiscite as unconventional lives are judged again. 4
18) Vidar the vampire - a highly blasphemous vampire comedy, dragged down by interminable Norwegian folk music. 2.
Film 19 - King Cohen - doco on Schlock director Larry Cohen. Interesting but makes me appreciate Mark Hartley's docos as this does not have the tightness and focus those do. 2
Film 20 - Wheelman - getaway driver gets pulled into something more when a job goes bad. Simple genre stuff enhanced by a tight "everything takes place in the car" aesthetic and a strong central performance from Frank Grill, usually a journeyman supporting thug. 3.5
Film 21 - Gilbert - doco on Gilbert Gottfried and his surprising family (in that, yes, he does have a wife and kids and no, he does not always talk like that). Funny but also touching and sweet and thinky. 4.5
22) Secret screening- Death of Stalin - Armando Ianucci's follow up to In The Loop about the events surrounding the title event. It's bitter and twisted and brutal in a way that makes satire tricky. It's interesting but... I was in an audience that wasn't finding it funny. So I liked it but.... 3.5
23) Ron Goosen Low Budget stuntman - Dutch comedy about an alcoholic who becomes a stuntman after a viral video of a car accident becomes a sensation. One of those "this would possibly be funnier if I was Dutch" films. But it does have enjoyably cheesy music videos and a Black Pieter joke so... 3
24) The Originals, Egyptian, a fired bank manager joins a secret society monitoring other Egyptians. Has some striking visuals but the pacing drags and the conclusion is messy. 2.5
25) Pincushion - girl and her mother move to small time and both suffer intimidation. A combination of brutal painful story and beautiful aesthetic means this is angsty pain done well. 4
26) The Merciless - stop me if you've heard this before - young cop gets sent to prison undercover but loyalties get confused. But this Korean film is an excellent version of the genre with multiple betrayals, slapfighting and other violence. Like infernal affairs it's a great execution of a familiar premise. 4
27) Gerald's Game - Stephen King adaptation - Carla Gugino is chained to a bed by her husband in a bit of light sex play which goes wrong when he has a heart attack. It's a bit regular TV movie but with two gory elements that lift it to a 3
28) Cold Hell - German film about a taxi driver who gets stalked by a serial killer and punches people. It's good when she's punching people, less so when there"s a plot. 3.
29) Tigers are not afraid. Mexican film about homeless kids tied into the drug war when one steals a phone belonging to drug-and-human trafficker. Sad and brutal and gorgeous, told completely from the kids perspective with few adults and a bit magic realism. The kind of film that is the reason I come to a fest like this. 4.5
30) Salyut 7. Russian film on the 1985 mission to save a space station after it was damaged in a debris accident. A bit rah rah the glorious Soviet Union but it's on a level with similarly US product like Apollo 13 (except in this case you probably don't know the ending). 4
31) Applecart - yeah, this sucks. A dubious Evil Dead knockoff without any of the good bits of Evil Dead. 1
32) See you up there - two French soldiers after ww1 get involved in the war memorial industry and tangle with their former lieutenant. Beautiful and stylish film - this should end up in the French film festival next year. It also deserves a wider release but film distribution ain't just. 4.5
33) World of tomorrow episodes one and two. A little girl is visited by strange visions of the future. Don Hertzfeldt's work is a mixture of simplistic, almost stick figure animation and complex challenging thoughts about identity, memory and destiny. Plus it's funny and adorable and scary. 4.5
34) 78/52 - an in-depth documentary analysis of the shower scene from Psycho - this is compellingly deep cinematic analysis with a whole lot of detail drawn out of maybe 90 seconds of material. Yes, it's a familiar sequence but there are a whole lot of discoveries still to make. 3.5
35) The Endless - low budget horror/fantasy as two former cult members return and find something strange... Really liked this simple film of ideas and character with minimal on the effects or gore. Some surprising twists. 4
36) Downsizing - From Alexander Payne (Election, Sideways), a shrinking technique is used to combat over-consumption - a film that takes about an hour to work out what it's about, with Matt Damon as an extremely passive protagonist. The second half improves things but it's only a 3.
Wednesday 4 October 2017
It
"It" is overweening proof that an adaptation can be simultaneously not-at-all literal to the book in detail and never the less completely faithful to the tone and spirit. Stephen King's book is one of his more epic efforts - over 1000 pages which, by King's admission, was his at-the-time summary of a whole heap of thoughts he had about childhood, fear and bits of American history. This film decisively snips the book in two (by deferring into a possible sequel the plotline about the characters in adulthood and committing to just tell the story of the character's childhood) and updates that childhood from a late-fifties-idyll to something more mid-eighties (partially to allow the 23-years-later followup to be set present day).
This does inevitably invoke comparisons to Netflix's recent "Stranger Things" series, which similarly drew on the iconography of the 80's (and indeed of a fair bit of Stephen King as part of that iconography) - and, indeed, one of the child actors is a "Stranger Things" alumni. And it does show some of the wisdom of "Stranger Things" that it winnowed the core kids down to four - with seven kids to follow, inevitably some of the "It" kids get little more than one or two core personality characteristics (and "jewish" and "black" pretty much count as personality characteristics here, a la Captain Planet). But at the core, there is a strong basic story that is held to about kids teaming up to fight an ancient menace that wants to scare then devour children. We get a strong sense of terror, the lurking menace is kept for the most part lurking rather than over-exposed, the kids are a non-obnoxious bunch, and, even though this is only half the book, we really don't feel short-changed for an ending - there is a satisfactory resolution followed by a thread laid down for possible follow up rather than something that leaves us unsatisfied. It's no wonder this has taken audiences by storm - it's a good relatable primal story told well.
This does inevitably invoke comparisons to Netflix's recent "Stranger Things" series, which similarly drew on the iconography of the 80's (and indeed of a fair bit of Stephen King as part of that iconography) - and, indeed, one of the child actors is a "Stranger Things" alumni. And it does show some of the wisdom of "Stranger Things" that it winnowed the core kids down to four - with seven kids to follow, inevitably some of the "It" kids get little more than one or two core personality characteristics (and "jewish" and "black" pretty much count as personality characteristics here, a la Captain Planet). But at the core, there is a strong basic story that is held to about kids teaming up to fight an ancient menace that wants to scare then devour children. We get a strong sense of terror, the lurking menace is kept for the most part lurking rather than over-exposed, the kids are a non-obnoxious bunch, and, even though this is only half the book, we really don't feel short-changed for an ending - there is a satisfactory resolution followed by a thread laid down for possible follow up rather than something that leaves us unsatisfied. It's no wonder this has taken audiences by storm - it's a good relatable primal story told well.
mother!
This has proved to be a controversial one, so I'll say up front both that I really liked this and at the same time kinda get why other people may have differing opinions. Darren Aaronofsky's film does not in any way work in a logical plot driven manner - it's almost entirely driven at two metaphorical levels, and if you have no patience for that, you're going to be frustrated. On the other hand, if you've been hanging out for a good all-round apocalypse, this might be the jam you're looking for.
The setup does look for a while as if we may have something that works vaguely at the level of realism. In an isolated house, a writer (Javier Bardem) lives with his wife (Jennifer Lawrence) in a peaceful setup. But the arrival of a fan (Ed Harris) followed by his wife (Michelle Pfeiffer) starts an onslaught of visitors who will disrupt the peace. Metaphor one is a religious one, which emerges more and more strongly as the writer is worshiped and the audience becomes more and more intrusive as they interpret his works in more and more violent ways. Metaphor two is about being a creative artist and your responsibilities both to the people around you and to the wider audience you wish to serve, and how you may blissfully sacrifice the people in your life to serve the hungry mobs.
Does everything entirely make sense? Are their major contentions that you can have with Aaronofsky's conception of humanity and our relationships with both each other and our religious impulses? Does this verge on the side of massively pretentious? Guilty, Guilty and probably Guilty as well. But never the less, this is one wildly ambitious film that engrossed me thoroughly and I fell completely under it's spell.
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