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Midweek Movie Free Talk
Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.
Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.
I recently saw Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning. This was the first Mission Impossible movie I have seen.
Spoiler Warning
What I don't get is why they didn't have antagonists that were working for the "Entity". Other than trying to launch the Nukes the AI did nothing, despite it being established that it had indoctrinated many people that it could have used as patsies to further its goals, especially as the AI was established as being able to "rewrite the truth" iirc. It felt like a massive afterthought, like the AI was thrown in there just because.It may have made a bit more sense if you had watched the previous movie, Dead Reckoning. I'm wary to explain due to spoilers, but the plot of the previous movie helps explain the motivations of everybody in the new movie.
Queer - 7/10
The first two acts of this were just incredible, but then the third act really plummeted my enjoyment. It just did not land at all. Been a very long time since I've watched such an uneven movie - two thirds of it was 9/10 and then the last part was 5/10 if not lower, like it just went completely off the rails with weird shit, totally uncharacteristic from the rest of the movie. But the first two thirds were amazing.
Yes I enjoyed the first parts of the film as well, what with the art design and costume design. It was pretty good vibes and then it just goes off the rails.
Did it feel like 2 different movies to you as well? Some of the main overall themes remained the same - the seeking of quick pleasure and self indulgence or hedonism. But in the first two thirds it seemed to be to be a lot more about the unhappiness of his inability to find relationship, being heartbroken. Basically a tragic romance film, with of course alcohol (and sex?) addiction. Final third, still about addiction, still about hedonism, still about unrequited love. But it became hard drugs which I did not see, perhaps just not realize, before the needle scene at the table. I suppose that was fine too actually, with the withdrawals and him paying essentially an escort to accompany him. It made sense how his life starts falling apart. But the jungle.. yeah, off the rails.
Yeah it feels aesthetically different. It also made me lose interest.
Last year I did a favorites of 2004 (like a 20 years later retrospective). I don't think I did one for '05. But here's what would be my list for '05:
Honestly a surprisingly weak year for movies. I am partial to other blockbusters I saw as a kid: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. Although I haven't watched Narnia since at least the end of the 00s. I also enjoyed Mr. and Mrs. Smith when I first watched it last year and debated putting it there over Squid and the Whale.
Edit: I actually watched Pride & Prejudice right after posting this for the first time (I had already planned on watching it but didn’t realize it was also an ‘05 release) and decided to put that instead of Squid and the Whale. Beautiful looking film, such lovely texture.
Everybody is always, 'the book is better than the movie!' --- but in the case of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, this is absolutely true. The movie had some moments, but the key parts can't even compare.
Since Cannes was going on I took the time to watch some of the acclaimed Cannes films from recent years.
Ali Abbasi's Holy Spider from 2022 was something I had high hopes for, as his Gräns from 2018 totally blew me away as something utterly unique, and I also recently saw his debut film Shelley that wasn't perfect, but showed his ability to create unique unpleasant atmosphere. Holy Spider has plenty of his touches with being utterly relentless in showcasing how Iranian society can be ruthless misogynistic, as this movies retells the real story of a serial killer who killed 16 women, mostly prostitutes, in 2000 and while the murder was hanged, his actions had plenty of supporters. The problem I had with the film is that it is pretty evident very early on what its intention is and where it wants to go. It is well made, Ebrahimi is fantastic and well deserving of her Cannes award and as a way of both telling this story of the serial killer and putting it into the context of the general misogynistic Iranian society, it is successful. But since all of that is established pretty early, there wasn't really much more for me to unpack for the rest of film. It has no surprises or new insights.
Hirokazu Kore-eda won the Palmes d'Or for Shoplifters in 2018, and while Broker from 2022 and Monster 2023 didn't win the highest awards, they still came with plenty of praise. Monster is about a young boy living alone with his mother and he starts to act really strange, maybe it has something to do with his teacher but it isn't clear. It is one of those types of movies that relies on the viewer being confused. Events happen, but exactly what or why are not exactly clear. We see different viewpoints that tells us different things, and the confusion is the point. It explores personality and personal truth, and not who is right or wrong per se. We see why things can be misunderstood or misread, how signs and memories can be rejected and replaced. Like in Shoplifters, Kore-eda has a special ability to make the characters seem like authentic real people and there isn't any judgement passed onto anyone.
How Kore-eda approaches his characters is something I consider a unique trademark of his. There is rarely any outright bad people in the movies of him I have seen, but people filled with flaws and people who make mistakes, but it doesn't come with the usual moral judgement of their actions. This concept is being put to the test in Broker from 2022 where the premise would in most other directors hands have been bleak and depressive. A desperate young woman leaving her newborn son in a public baby box, only for the baby to be kidnapped by baby traffickers seeking to steal the baby on the black market, doesn't exactly sound like a premise for an uplifting movie. Yet that is exactly what Kore-eda does here as we generally understand where every character is coming from and why they are doing what they are doing. Flaws, mistakes, misjudgement and all. No one here has bad intentions, there is still conflict, but it gets resolved peacefully through increased mutual understanding. It is a nice movie, but perhaps a bit too light and easygoing with its thematics, compared to both Monster and Shoplifters that I think had more weight to them.