Change Your Image
wesleythegnome
Reviews
Irish Wish (2024)
Cute and charming
I always wished for Lindsay's star to shine again after she experienced her low period. She's a charming actress, and I think the projects she's been taking on recently suit her. This romcom is better than her last, going from a bit mediocre to good. It's undemanding entertainment, perfect if you're a lover of the genre and if you want something all the generations in your family can enjoy - particularly if you're in the mood for a gentle romantic movie with an engaging cast, and pretty scenery and fashion. It's one of those movies you can have on again and again, and enjoy its charm, like a warm bowl of comfort food. I think the only thing I didn't like was saint Brighid's weirdly dowdy outfit - she's a magical being, she couldn't find anything more enchanting to wear?
John Mulaney: Baby J (2023)
Pretty good
I've watched all of his other specials, not because I favoured John Mulaney, but because I like having on stand-up while I'm focusing on work (I work with my hands). And Netflix has an endless offering of the genre.
I thought he was decent to average - not laugh out loud funny, sometimes bordering on annoying, but clever enough and also never so annoying that it made me want to turn off the special. Perfect background television.
This special felt different, because he's digging into a more raw and real place. He said he's finally fine with being unlikeable, but I'd say this is the first time he started being likeable. Not because he's a reformed person, but because he seemed more genuine. I don't mind an entertainer having a persona, but I don't know if John Mulaney ever managed to convince me of his.
I think he's overall quite a bitter and tortured person, and hasn't suddenly become this way - I think he always was this way and is starting to give up on hiding it. But these traits tend to work for stand-up comedians, if they're self-deprecating or punch down enough, if they can successfully ride that line between bitter and acerbic wit.
If he's like most addicts, there will probably be relapses. I hope he gets through them and keeps creating his art, and finds a real place of contentment one day. The people in these reviews who implied his addiction would be worth it if it made his comedy better - who needs enemies with admirers like these.
Wifelike (2022)
Flimsy writing, wooden acting
While on the surface it tries to be a piece of commentary on the objectification of women, it still manages to objectify nearly every woman in the movie. So points for trying, but the execution isn't there.
There are several unnecessarily drawn out softcore porn scenes, which I'm sure will appeal to people who get off to those. I felt it got tedious after a while. As the movie progresses, it's also revealed all those scenes are rape, which made them extra unappealing to me. But it shouldn't be an issue for anyone who enjoys seeing women being objectified and raped.
The acting is largely serviceable, but it's not good. A lot of it is wooden. Jonathan Rhys Meyers is also wooden, but still pretty well-cast because he's meant to be creepy and villainous, and he exudes both these qualities in spades throughout the runtime. I think the only downside is that since they cast the villain as the lead, nearly every scene has high creep factor. Every time the movie zoomed in on his expressions, which is constantly, it made my skin crawl. But I think he'll probably be less off-putting to people who don't have to fear a predator like him.
I also thought it was disappointing that the robots look and act like humans acting like robots.
The ending is contrived, as are some of the aspects throughout the movie. Why give robots a dreamscape at all, and then maintain the service, when it's clearly just an added vulnerability? How do you install a dead brain's memories into a machinal one? Why do the undercover robots flip off Jonathan's character when their long-term survival depends on keeping a low profile? Why does the movie act like high-end sex robots existing, which are probably only accessible to 1% of the population, is having a noticeable effect on marriage and birth rates? Even if half of all men own a sex robot, in what way would that keep human women from conceiving and raising a family? How can an undercover organisation succesfully be led by a robot who doesn't know what or who she is for potentially years at a time? How does Jonathan's character successfully hide a kidnapping and the murder of two people, so much so that he can order a perfect likeness to the woman he kidnapped and then made disappear, and no one bats an eye. She didn't have any relatives? He had to provide her murdered body so they could extract her memories somehow, and no one checked or noticed her cause of death?
Overall, I'd say this is a perfect movie if you like the genre and aren't bothered by the quality of the writing or acting.
The Strays (2023)
No one behaves like a real person
The second/Neve act of the movie has Neve acting on edge because she's feeling persecuted. It's so overacted, it became grating. Having her scratch under her wig once or twice would have made the metaphor clear, but instead she does it like a dozen times. Not even mentioning the twitching, the stuttering, the shifty eyes, the panicked looking around, the yelling. It's the emoting equivalent of a sledgehammer.
It's a total departure from the opening act, which has Neve subtly glancing at a belt hanging from a door. Is she contemplating suicide? Is she being abused? The movie allows the audience to draw its own conclusions. But then things take a hard turn.
We're introduced to her first two kids, who say and do deranged things, and yet easily gain the trust of and befriend Neve's younger children. It's nonsensical - the son would have mistrusted a janitor, and the daughter would have mistrusted some random girl she meets in the street. Especially when both of them become cruel within a day.
The oldest kid turned janitor kills the new husband, which again makes zero sense. And also vindicates Neve fleeing that first time - she didn't just run from circumstances she didn't like, but children who must have been presenting early sociopathic tendencies. Making the abandoned children violent and terrifying is just a really weird choice. People don't become evil because their parents walk out on them.
Lastly - why do the two younger, privileged children not talk like their parents and their community? This doesn't make any sense, since it's all they've ever known. Neve is very controlling about how her youngest daughter presents, but her speech not fitting their station didn't bother her?
No one in this movie behaves like a real person would, they make decisions based on whatever the plot demands of them. The direction on how to act out scenes is poor, as is the plot and the dialogue. The only thing I can praise is the sets and wardrobe, both of which are excellent.
The Rookie (2018)
Starts out great
The show has a compelling pilot, and it's a fun watch at first. There's a bit of a slump in the middle of season one, but the season started and finished strong. I felt the writers really found their voice. They initially pair Nathan Fillion's character, John Nolan, with Lucy Chen. While an interesting pilot twist, the storyline lacked longevity, and the writers wisely move on to making the John-Talia interactions the center piece of the show.
Then season two starts, and the Talia character is gone. I think this was a huge loss for Nathan Fillion's character - she was his counterbalance, and that's what made his car scenes compelling to watch. From then on, the show flounders on what to do with the titular character. They try to find a new character to pair him off with, but the magic is never recaptured. They try humanising him in a variety of ways, through his extremely bland son and his son's off-putting fiancée; his rich best friend who is almost always absent; the undercover cop turned cranky pregnant detective; his doctor girlfriend, and finally his firefighter girlfriend, who somehow also manages to be devastatingly bland despite being good at everything and having a sociopath husband.
John Nolan becomes a more and more lighthearted character as the show goes on, but the jokes often fall flat and his charm runs thin, making him less relatable. It just doesn't click, I think because the character no longer has anyone anchoring him in reality.
The most maintained and compelling character arc by far belongs to Tim, and how he navigates training Lucy. I think the writers realise this, because a lot of the episodes start revolving around them.
Tim's unexpected approach to training rookie Katie Barnes (Katy O'Brian) was equally compelling, and also still centers around the rookie theme of the show, but the character leaves the show forever after one episode.
John Nolan's character isn't the only character who gets saddled with uncompelling love interests - it's actually a hallmark of the show. I have no idea why the writers waste so much time giving everyone a bland wife or husband storyline. Angela Lopez and Wesley Evers are the most egregious example of this - the actors have zero chemistry, but the show forces it anyways. The fourth season especially is bogged down with silly side plotlines to give the Wesley character something to do. The writers then pull the exact same "we work different parts of the justice system and act like enemies but we're actually attracted to one another" storyline with Lucy Chen, and it's just as tedious the second time around.
And then there's the very weird episode where they shoehorn in Niecy Nash's character as a rookie FBI agent and make her the main character for one day. I absolutely adore Niecy, but it felt like they were setting up a Rookie spin-off show with Niecy as the focus, only ?? Spin-off shows usually revolve around beloved existing characters in the show. Retconning Niecy's dad into the community center doesn't make her an existing character in this universe.
The writing also becomes very heavy-handed in regards to intersectional issues like racism within the police force. I care about these issues and generally enjoy when they're explored in fiction, but by the third and fourth season the writing becomes so hamfisted that several scenes made me cringe.
Overall, a show with a ton of potential, that's wasted because of directionless writing and way too much focus on pointless romance plotlines.
I'm also worried why this show keeps losing main cast actors, especially Talia/Afton Williamson. She said it's because she experienced racism, and was harassed and assaulted on the show. By who? Is he still working on the show? Discovering why she left a really bad taste in my mouth, especially because the show pretends to champion human rights.
The Brothers Sun (2024)
Suffers from casting
I had this downloaded on Netflix in case my internet crapped out, as an emergency watch. I always rotate in whatever I'm excited to watch. Today my internet crapped out, and I was like, no problem! I've got a show ready to go, and I'm excited to dive in because it has Michelle Yeoh. My excitement quickly faded, not because Michelle Yeoh is not the main character (disappointing but I accepted it) - it's because the actual main character is not relatable, or charismatic, or funny. I think comedy shows with a lead like this have their work cut out for them, because now nearly every scene becomes a task to get through. Sometimes it does work - maybe the Brothers Sun needs a second season to hit their stride?
As it stands, this show had me wishing non-stop my internet would come back on so I could watch something else.
Leave the World Behind (2023)
Moody, understated, powerful
I enjoyed this movie a lot. The acting wasn't solid across the board, but when it was good, it was really good. Julia is a shining star, as she always has been - her character completely pulled me in, I really wanted to know what happened to her next. I didn't feel the same way about the other characters, but even when they were difficult to connect with, they were a lot of fun to hate. The ending indicates they're all going to die, either immediately or because of a future factor, which is always a pretty delightful ending for a disaster movie. The odds are not in these people's favour, and it was refreshing that they didn't have plot armour. The possible explanations for why this is all happening were intriguing too, it was fun to know as little as the characters do and speculate alongside them. It kind of reminded me of the Others (with Nicole Kidman) in that way. Lastly, I loved loved loved some of the shots. That opening shot in the deep blue bedroom! The deer's eyes! The look of shock when they saw the atomic bomb! The ominous red hallway! An open ending can add a lot to a story, and I think this movie used it perfectly - it leaves you thinking and wondering. I can see why this is a divisive movie, but I agree with some of the other reviews here - if you disliked the ending, it might be because you were expecting a disaster movie with an ending wrapped in a neat little bow, and your favourite badass characters coming out on top. But I don't think this is a disaster movie, it was more like a quirky drama in an apocalyptic setting.
The Fall of the House of Usher (2023)
Not good
It was a chore to get through. The writers did not kill their darlings - there's things that sound good when you're in love with your own writing voice, and not critical of it, and then you end up with purple prose. What is meant to be poetic now comes off melodramatic and cheesy. The script is meandering, repetitive, and self-indulgent. The actors work their way through these endless monologues, that seem like they're meant to sound compelling or deep, but they're largely neither.
I did like the one about the lemons, it was in love with itself but also critiqued consumerism in a fun way. And I also enjoyed the brief rant on consumerism and the resulting stripping of women's rights towards the end, although the show itself does not have that focus, and fails the Bechdel test nearly the whole way through.
Another aspect that bothered me is that sexuality in this story is written a way that is meant to make you go: "Wait a minute! This is not what I was expecting!"
I support representation of queer or variant relationship styles. When it's meant to be a gotcha of some kind, and done for several characters, it starts feeling silly. By the time we discover Camille is, gasp, sleeping with both of her assistants, against their will, I was rolling my eyes. We get it, they live lives of debauchery and don't respect other people as human beings, not even their partners. I think it's a serious mark against the show that this point is made eight separate times, like the writers thought it was too exciting and sexy to stop bringing it up. It felt like I was watching something meant to titillate straight people, both the writers and the audience.
The skills of the actors vary, but are mostly good. I thought Willa Fitzgerald was a stand-out. Ruth Codd is just a delight, even while not being given much to work with, and I'm excited to see more of her. Rahul Kohli was brilliant as ever, and Bruce Greenwood was perfectly chosen as a narrator. His butter-y voice draws you in, and is a big reason I struggled through the show until the end.
T'Nia Miller somehow overemotes every second of her performance, I didn't realise that could be a thing until I watched her. Aya Furukawa was exceptionally wooden.
Omohide poro poro (1991)
Slow, overlong, joyless, and somewhat unsettling
I think my main gripe with this movie is adult Taeko's face. I found her unsettling to look at in nearly every scene, it was immensely distracting. They also do a lot of exaggerated smiles for the male lead (Toshio), but it works better on his face.
I don't understand why they drew adult Taeko's cheekbones like that. It's an odd artistic decision. It makes sense on the face of a much older woman, and indeed, some of the elderly women in the movie have it too. It works on their faces. It makes them look older.
Adult Taeko is not old. She's youthful, and so the cheekbones being emphasised at the bottom like that don't make sense. She looked like her surgeon botched her cheek fillers. I can't stress it enough, she did not look right. It only get worse whenever she smiled, which happens very frequently. Her smile is borderline creepy.
Young Taeko looks exceedingly normal in comparison. I actually couldn't put together how such a regular looking child could grow up into such an unsettling looking adult. If the unusual cheekbones were fully natural, wouldn't she have had evidence of them in childhood already? Wouldn't some of her family members have shared such a pronounced facial trait? At the very least, she would have had her creepy smile already. But young Taeko doesn't have the creepy cheekbone-bulgeing grin. Her expressions are mostly somber and shy, with some cute moments thrown in.
Because the two don't look like each other, I didn't feel like they were connected. The movie's storyline does little to mitigate this. Young Taeko is willful, sensitive and creative - a true romantic at heart. Her parents and siblings do their level best to crush this out of her. They look down on her any chance they get, ridicule her and verbally degrade her. Overall I did not get the impression anyone in her family liked her.
Adult Taeko seems lonely, self-conscious and odd. She is still a romantic, and is still looked down upon by her family, because she's single at twenty-seven. And she leaves her boss under the impression that she has a boyfriend. So she's self-conscious about that, since she's lying by omission. She also tells the male lead how common it is for women her age to still be single, and says all her friends back in Tokyo are. Does adult Taeko actually have friends back in Tokyo? We don't meet them.
I can see how a child that was suppressed and mistreated as much as Taeko would grow up into a weird adult. But that framing is missing from the movie entirely. Instead adult Taeko endlessly goes into monologues about "funny" moments from her childhood, that are actually just depressing, and then insists it's a charming story when her audience looks upset. That part is realistic. Abused people often don't realise they were abused, until they see the horrified expressions of their listeners.
But the movie doesn't frame it that way. Instead Taeko tells a young teen who is frequently being slapped by her father that maybe that situation is preferable to being hit only once, the way Taeko was. She never comes to the realisation that she was hit by her family over and over, just not with hands. She never confronts her family, not even internally. She just keeps spinning miserable tales of disappointment and alienation from her childhood. For the entirety of the movie.
I wish they hadn't applied that story-telling technique for the entire two hours. If there had been one or two flashbacks, the point in the present day story could already have been made. That life is full of disappointments, and then you become tougher, gain perspective, and keep going anyways. But, no. Half the movie is devoted to meandering vignettes that have a tenuous connection with the present day. I did enjoy them on some level, because young Taeko is an adorable child. But it was hard watching this sweet little kid getting mistreated over and over, with no narrative purpose besides "that was then, now is now, disillusionment is a natural part of life".
The only positive and cute thing that happens to young Taeko is that she develops her first crush. That's never followed up on. Romance is an important theme in the movie, but young Taeko's crush storyline ends abruptly. We don't know if that boy became her first boyfriend, if it partially informed her adult outlook on relationships, nothing. It could've been an interesting deeper look into why the character is single when she clearly doesn't want to be, it could've connected the younger and older version.
All the countryside people are nearly wholly devoid of personality. They're all kind, to an unrealistic level, and nothing else. The countryside itself is painted as intensely idyllic. That does make some sense, if we're observing it the way Taeko is, because she heavily romanticises this life. But it makes her time there boring. She does something that delights her, like watching a sunrise, she talks about herself a lot, repeat repeat repeat.
So now we have two somewhat boring and repetitive halves to the movie.
Towards the end of the movie, a local farmer grandmother confirms that Taeko is not complete unless she marries someone. That she can't just be in the country because she romanticises it, and feels lost in her own life in the city. Her time there should lead somewhere. Toshio likes her, so obviously, they should get married.
Taeko feels intensely embarrassed by this suggestion, because she feels like it exposes the fact that she's a fraud. She has no opinions about the countryside besides shallow ones, and she has never considered Toshio as a romantic interest.
She runs off, stands in the middle of a bridge in the rain, and nearly gets run over by Toshio. They sit in his car for a while, and she tells another depressing story from her childhood. She admits that she fakes being nice, and actually holds a lot of negative feelings.
Toshio reframes it for her, and makes her realise that the boy she thought must hate her because he could see through her, actually liked her. I think we're meant to draw a parallel to Toshio's feelings about her. Which she seems to realise on the train home during the credit roll, because she immediately returns to continue her conversation with Toshio, and probably actually get to know him as a romantic prospect.
Which means the most cathartic moment of the movie is vagued across the credits. I know this is a stylistic choice that Ghibli employs more often, but I found it especially frustrating in this movie. After all that tedium, there's finally a tiny bit of catharsis, and we don't get to hear any of Taeko's thoughts or words on it. We're shut out and left to draw our own conclusions based on what we're seeing.
I sincerely hope she didn't move to the countryside to be with Toshio. It would be a cheap conclusion to a narrative about internal exploration and making peace with yourself and the past.
Overall, this movie put me off and left me feeling narratively robbed.
You know whose story I would've loved to actually find out more about? Taeko's older sister Yaeko, who had a massive crush on a Takarazuka revue actress, which is a classic phase for a queer teenager (me included). It's so rare for Ghibli to feature a queer-coded moment that isn't accidental or reversed at a later point in the story, it felt like a breath of fresh air. Taeko loves the theatre too, it would've been interesting to see a story developed about her getting to know her sister better that way during her college years, while she pursued her interest in it. But we learn nothing of present-day Yaeko.
Mary Poppins Returns (2018)
I love Lin Manuel Miranda but...
... he lacks the stage presence and acting skills required to appear in a project like this. Stage acting is very different to movie acting. He made the movie hard to watch, because the whole time I kept seeing him instead of his character, and getting annoyed by how distracting that was.
Additionally, he is a man with mediocre looks, and while that doesn't bother me in the slightest, the script kept referring to him as handsome. Why? They could have made another morality lesson in song form out of it instead. "He might not be that good-looking, but he has a wonderful heart, looks aren't everything." would be a great lesson for kids.
There's a forced romance plot with the sister - why would this woman go for a lamplighter, when she is so clearly of a different social class? This isn't acknowledged. Is it because the brother inherited everything, being the son, and she is sick of living off his goodwill? I still think she could do better than the mildly creepy lamplighter who looks into people's windows. The movie indicates she's an incel, but that was expected of women at the time. I don't think it would keep her from meeting a nice man.
The songs are serviceable and sometimes even fun, but there's a very long rapping segment that again took me out of the movie, and felt like I was watching the Lin Manuel Miranda show. I know he's terrific with spoken word, and I absolutely love the work he has done on Hamilton. But it feels out of place in this movie. It felt like Disney was trying to make him happy and make him feel good about himself. Why? This movie isn't about him. I wish they had just cast an actor instead of him. He can write excellent music, he doesn't need to also sing it and star in the movie.
The dad character got on my nerves. His wife apparently did the child-rearing, brought in the money, handled the bills, the shopping, and so on. He spent his time painting and not making money. She dies, he gets a job that pays the bills (and moans about it) and then can't even manage to keep the single most important bill paid, so he can keep a roof over his kids' heads and hold on to the beautiful inheritance from his parents. He doesn't even have to do the cooking and cleaning, they have a maid.
The mortgage bill doesn't get paid, not because he doesn't have the money... he just didn't keep track of paying it. And why did he even have to take out this second mortgage? The house has been in the family for generations, so which bills did he get so behind on that he had to take out such a massive second mortgage. He also doesn't bother to locate his shares, that form an important part of his inheritance, until years have passed. He could have set up his sister nicely with that money. She can't work due to her class, she can't inherit nor have a bank account due to her gender, so how has she been surviving?
The children are nearly fully devoid of personality. The youngest really loves his stuffie and has a hard time keeping himself safe. I couldn't tell you anything else about them. Child one, two and three.
The only character I actually loved was Mary Poppins. Emily Blunt brings a magic to the character that's reminiscent of the characters in the original. I desperately wanted anyone else in the movie to be half as captivating as her. Her cousin comes closest.
Shin'ya shokudô: Tokyo Stories: Salmon and Mushrooms (2019)
I've loved every episode, but...
... the way cheating is handled in this episode is nothing short of disgraceful. The wife is supposed to just politely accept this utter betrayal and send the mistress away on her husband's behalf. And then she smiles at her husband and they have a nice meal together.
Disgusting cowardice on both their parts.
He also gambles away a significant sum, and it's never mentioned again.
Him losing all morality and sense if his wife isn't physically present is presented as charming and wholesome. It made me feel so repulsed.
Another sentence to reach the minimum required character amount for this review.
Love, Death & Robots (2019)
I love rewatching these
There's a few episodes that I don't enjoy as much, but they are few and far between. This is an incredible series, with consistent high production value. The storylines are gripping and unique. There's a lot of violence and bleakness, but in a way that feels true to human nature.
Alberto Mielgo's episodes are my favourite offerings on the show. He made "the Witness" in season 1, and "Jibaro" in season 3.
He was the original director for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and everything I loved most about that movie was his brain baby and shines again in the Witness and Jibaro. He has a confident looseness in his character creation style that's just mesmerising.
If you want to check out only one of these series of shorts, I recommend checking out Jibaro.
The Age of Adaline (2015)
Beautifully contained
The Age of Adaline sets out to tell a very specific story. For once the narration adds to the effort, because it allows for the movie to emphasise metaphors in a way that feels satisfying, and deliver information that the characters don't have access to, and won't have access to for the duration of the movie.
Adaline's adventure is thrilling. At some point I felt the movie had presented a satisfying conclusion to her character arc, and discovered I was only halfway through. I wondered what else was left to explore, and was delighted by the twist. It's not predictable, and yet it makes perfect sense. It added a satisfying layer to Adaline's quest for change, despite her appearance being unchanging.
Loved that the comet was a metaphor for Adaline and also William's love for her.
1899 (2022)
Suffers from its own writing
Shows where it's revealed at the end that nothing was real, all suffer from the same consequence: it removes all value and impact of everything we just saw.
There's some good qualities to the show. The set design is gorgeous, the actors are skilled, and I couldn't get enough of the costumes. I looked forward to seeing certain characters again, just so I could see their beautiful outfits again.
But the story and directing choices...
There are many, MANY scenes where characters just stand around a bit with frozen faces and tears in their eyes. All the flashbacks are equally tragic. It really started to drag after a while, especially once it becomes clear that they're trapped inside a simulation. Why should I care? It's all fake anyways.
The puzzle of escaping the simulation is as simple as joining two objects that exist in it. That's it, that's the entire puzzle. And yet it took them dozens of tries to make it happen. At any point, the boy could have showed his mother his little pyramid key opening and asked her if she had a key. But no.
I'm sure there's a reason for the entire cast having horrible traumatic pasts, but because it was so one-note, I became numb to it. Oh no, yet another horrible betrayal... yawn.
There's so many characters that occasionally, one would return to the screen, and I'd go: "oh right, I forgot you exist"
Everyone speaking a different language is cool for a while, but then when they improbably start hanging out together, and have countless conversations where the other parties don't have any idea what's being said because they don't speak Portuguese/Polish/Danish/Cantonese/... and the speaking party also makes zero effort to mime their intentions - that got old, so fast. Because now they're having conversations that don't matter, and are also not exchanging any kind of valuable information.
The big mystery - the ship - is not the mystery at all. It's the fact that they're all asleep and trapped inside their own minds. The show's antagonist is barely present in the season, he is only revealed in the last few minutes. It's then also revealed that there's another ship, a space ship, and now that ship is the mystery again.
But at that point, I'd grown so weary already. I don't care if this never gets continued. It's convoluted and messy.
Your Place or Mine (2023)
Excellent for its genre
Consistently funny performances, semi-light and engaging plot. A bit of cheesiness. Honestly, everything you could want out of a romcom.
I thought the settings were really well-designed. Every bit of Reese's location screams her character's personality and traumas, and so does Ashton's. The homes were like characters of their own.
There were small touches to the character building that aren't explicitly stated, or not immediately explicitly stated, and it was nice to dive into it. When he mentioned rehab, and then came out with a beer for the gardener slash lover, and a water for himself. When she mentioned her drunk mother, and now she has a best friend who used to be a drunk and who she worked to save from himself.
It was a fun subversion of the trope when they both switched places, instead of girl goes to big city and meets boy, or boy goes to small town and meets girl. They don't meet until the end, but it works.
I loved all the casting for the side characters. The slinky millennial character, Zoë Chao, was delightful and hilarious the whole way through. As was Tig Notaro. I really love Tig's delivery and timing.
Also, the child actor could act and was funny in some scenes! It's always shocking when that happens, a rare gem of a performance when it comes to child actors.
It's not easy to deliver a romcom that stays light but also has characters with some depth to them, who have a reason to connect, and chemistry, and also deliver funny moments, and not totally rely on crassness for those laughs. I don't mind crassness, but it is a cheap way to get a laugh, and this movie mostly danced around that pitfall. I think the buttcrack joke was the only truly stupid joke.
I think this movie fully delivered within the confines of its genre. I wouldn't mind watching it again, and I rarely want to rewatch romcoms.
7 donne e un mistero (2021)
Mostly meandering and uncompelling
There's undeniably good things about this movie. The set design and fashion are nothing short of gorgeous. The actresses are all skilled and fun to watch. These things stand out, and elevate the movie to a certain extent.
But it's not enough to carry the whole movie. The plot is thin and poorly presented. We arrive at revelations by characters going "you have a secret, don't you" at several points in the movie, and another character responding "yes, yes I do".
The most mysterious character - the maid - serves a beautiful dinner. This is taken as proof that she's working somewhere below her capabilities, and the femme fatale demands to know her secret. The maid proudly goes "yes, I only came here because I enjoyed sleeping with the boss" and everyone has very mild reactions to this and then she decides to leave. Okay..?
The maid can't leave immediately so she decides to take on the spinster aunt as a permanent pet project instead. Why?
The revelations are all like this. They barely make sense and the responses from other characters are tepid or borderline nonsensical. A planted gun is found and three of the women let out little surprised screams, and that's the end of it. Why would the gun even matter as a murder framing device...? The patriarch wasn't killed with a gun.
The characters are all stereotypes, but I can forgive that, since I think it was intentional. The patriarch has no lines in the movie, is only shot from the back, and the only way we learn more about him is through descriptions of others.
Even then, this character manages to come off as intensely unsympathetic. He's bad with money, he's not a good businessman in general, he only married his wife so he could buy a house he likes, he was willing to put all his relatives through the trauma of his death just so he could decide who to leave impoverished in a time where women were wholly dependent on men for security, and seems to be loved by no one besides his children.
But when he actually dies by the end, not even his children are particularly upset. His youngest daughter asks if she's going to be grounded over the murder mystery she planned, her mother confirms, and that's the ending. It's light-hearted to the point of being stupid.
The Pale Blue Eye (2022)
Eerie, suspenseful, moving
Engaging plot and lots of great performances from many different actors.
I felt especially mesmerised by Gillian Anderson and Harry Melling. Anderson totally disappeared into her role, I was spellbound and vaguely put off by her.
This was my first introduction to Melling, but I look forward to seeing him in other projects. Every word he said, I just couldn't look away. His character's accent and maintained mannerisms were satisfying. When I discovered his identity, I became worried he was going to be some kind of joke character and the movie was about to become very silly - but luckily he was played straight.
Timothy Spalling and Christian Bale were also amazing. I actually hadn't seen much of Spalling since Harry Potter, it was nice seeing him again.
The movie is beautiful to look at, too. I loved the setting and costuming. It takes a while before we are introduced to the wealthy women in the movie, and I was struck by the impracticality of their fashion. They were like pretty song birds, only meant to entice, not be able to live practical or safe lives. I found all their exaggerated mannerisms, curls and satins borderline repulsive, which really added another layer to the movie. Almost everyone in this movie is kind of unlikeable in their own way, but in a good way. In a way that makes them human and tragic and interesting.
The denouement is both satisfying and not too obvious. I didn't try to figure it out as it was unfolding, I just let myself be taken along for the ride. There's flashbacks, but sparsely used, trusting the viewer to remember them.
Overall, a very satisfying watch.
A Castle for Christmas (2021)
The vibes are off
I love Brooke Shields and Cary Elwes, and I also love cheesy Christmas movies, so I was ready to love this movie.
I did not love it. Brooke Shields' choices for her character are baffling. She's always making an expression that only seems tangentially related to the scene, like I found her genuinely confusing to watch. She always looks somewhat nervous, agitated, or like she has to pee really bad.
There's zero chemistry between the leads. The scene where they're eating each other's breath and Brooke sniffs Cary's ear, I almost died of second hand embarrassment.
The plot is supposed to be adversaries who fall in love, but it isn't developed at all. Someone in the pub tells her the duke isn't so bad, and even though she thought he was awful moments before, now she likes him all of a sudden.
After that, they spend the whole movie kind of bickering and kind of flirting. Towards the end she's delighted by snow falling outside, and he's rude about it for no reason. I think Cary's character was supposed to come off as prickly but well-meaning, but I thought he was just unpleasant.
The castle has land attached, and tenants on that land. For some reason, those people are unable to pay off their mortgage by themselves, so they need saving. We see this same handful of villagers over and over, and it became really grating for me. They all become Brooke's best friends, because they keep her company and give her knitted gifts. Other than that, their characters were oddly developed.
There's the "bury your gays" gay man who is gay exclusively off-screen, because his husband is dead. He supposedly hasn't spoken since his husband passed away, but then there's a scene in the pub where he's just chatting with the person next to him?? He also sings. The predictable scene at the end where he finally speaks again had me rolling my eyes, because him overcoming his disability is a feelgood moment for the able characters, but especially because he speaks throughout the movie.
There's the perky baker, who is 100/10 perky in every scene she's in. She was making me nervous. Her plotline is that her business kicks off thanks to baking for the pub people at the castle, instead of baking for them at the pub. Her baked goods looked awful??
There's the pubkeeper, who is very lovely and has truly zero personality. She wants to date the kilt guy from the castle, and they date. Okay.
Everyone loathes the kilt guy's tours, and it's never shown why. His tours seem fine? He gives a normal castle tour. So why does he send tourists running? Why do the tourists buy heaps of souvenirs when Brooke gives the tour? It's supposed to be a funny moment, but it's not based on anything. You can't have a pay-off without a set-up.
Brooke's character is an author, but she's an amazing hairdresser too, for some reason. Because she lived near a hairdresser. What??
There's a daughter character who is so flat, I could not remember what her face looked like every time she hung up the phone. A heartwarming reunion between mother and daughter is planned at the end of the movie, and it was totally not heartwarming. They seemed moderately happy to see each other. It also had no impact on the remainder of the story.
Netflix tries to be self-referential by including characters from other Christmas movies. It's a cute joke, but I totally forgot those two characters and was just left feeling confused that a villainous couple was introduced and then never brought up again, until I read an explanation online. It makes an already sloppily written movie feel even sloppier.
All in all, I felt bored and confused. It's insulting how little they tried with this.
Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)
Beautiful sequel
There were some aspects that bothered, but I think they were negligible. Their adopted tween daughter being voiced by a grown woman broke the immersion for me, every time she spoke. The movie starts off with a lot of exposition, a bit of retconning, and some serious deus ex machina. Oh, it's actually a pity that two of the most compelling characters died at the end of the previous movie! No worries, they're both alive again, in some way. The addition of Spider felt like a plot device, rather than a natural part of the story. He fell flat for me, as did his friendship with Kiri. And, of course, the Papyrus font is hideous as ever. I really hoped they would have dropped it.
But for every small thing that bothered me, there is so much wonder and beauty and intrigue. I wanted to see a lot more of the world of Avatar, and this film delivered in spades. There's touching connections, between people and between people and animals. There's action packed sequences that I found truly thrilling, because I was rooting for the characters. I felt connected to them. The villains retain some likeability, which helps maintain the mystery if they're going to survive or not.
This movie is magical and touching. I really enjoyed the first one and re-watched it occasionally, because it's clear-cut but powerful. I know it's a meme to hate on it and to be above enjoying it. But although it's flawed, I still think it offers poignant commentary on the way humans destroy nature. I think this second offering is even better. The writing is still lean, but simplicity doesn't equal stupidity. Its core message is strong: we are killing our mother.
Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (2022)
Distractingly unpleasant aspects
Even though it's a beautifully crafted movie, I struggled to feel for any of the characters, and I was put off by the intentional ugliness of the puppets.
The Carlo character at the start creeped me out, with his peering eyes and cutesy accented voice. Although a parent-child relationship is usually touching to me, here Carlo is presented as solely having mattered within the context of his father's love. A love turned alcoholic obsession.
Geppetto becomes genuinely difficult to like from there on out. The only thing he cares about is having an object for his affection, not who that object is at its core. Pinocchio comes along and he wishes over and over that he'd gotten Carlo back instead. He doesn't love his younger son for who he is, he laments who Pinocchio should have been.
Although Pinocchio acts soulless and off-putting - fearing consequences nor pain - and inherits Carlo's overly cheery accent; I still felt bad for his situation, because he's an innocent. But I never liked him.
The cricket is a bit self-centred but eventually a quite likeable character, but his shtick of being physically crushed over and over and OVER as a way of comedic relief was off-putting to me too.
Pinocchio spends a great deal of his time with one unsavoury character after another, trying to be a son his father can be proud of. They eventually end up meeting again inside a disgusting-looking and monstrous fish.
Pinocchio sacrifices his life to save his father, and because of that, is finally deemed to be good enough, and worthy of love.
His cricket wishes him back to life and he spends years caring for his elderly father, not building any kind of life of his own. His father eventually dies, and the cricket likes to think that Pinocchio was accepted by others, once he travelled out into the world. There's no reason to think this. He's unnatural, cannot age, and can't build a meaningful relationship with another human, unless to care for them until the human dies.
There's also heavy war and fascism themes in the story, but I'm not sure why, as they never become fully thematically relevant. They're always in the backdrop, but, any accident could have killed Carlo. Any event could have lead to Candlewick's father dying.
The only time the storyline is directly impacted, is when the circus master loses everything thanks to the intervention of a fascist leader, and it allows Candlewick's father to legally draft Pinocchio into a school for fascist youth.
There's also a monkey who escapes his abuser by killing him, and only speaks through puppetry. While that might be cathartic to some viewers, I was too distracted by how unappealing I found the monkey.
Overall, I think this is a work of art, but not one I enjoyed viewing, and not one whose message I found meaningful or touching. I found it pretty depressing for every character. Which is a very realistic way of looking at life, I'll give the movie that.
Pepsi, Where's My Jet? (2022)
Made me feel sad
There's the massive corporation who lied, as massive corporations tend to do, and the 20-year-old who was trying to hit a big payday. He keeps painting himself as a kid stumbling around and up against the big dogs. At no point during this story was he a kid. Just a dude pursuing a frivolous lawsuit in hopes of getting rich. I guess this is what highly privileged people do with their time? He faced no challenges, besides wanting more of the finer things in life, and decided Pepsi's false advertising was the loophole that was gonna get him there. The only reason he can even attempt to get the jet, is because he formed a friendship with a rich friend during his climbing hobby. Most people his age can't fly out of the country, even just his hobby is totally inaccessible and breathes privilege.
They mention Liebeck v. McDonald's, but Liebeck had a case because she got horribly injured because of McDonald's actions. It's not the same thing at all.
I think it would've been amusing if this goof had cost Pepsi millions upon millions, because massive corporations are their own kind of evil. But I wasn't rooting for John Leonard either. I heavily disliked both parties. Just a bunch of men sparring and getting to feel important and cool, instead of doing something good or useful with their time. Everyone came off frivolous and kinda dumb. I guess that's what happens when you face no actual challenges in life.
Falling for Christmas (2022)
Not bad
If you take it for what it is, then it's solid entertainment. The plot is mostly predictable, the child actor is slightly unsettling, the Christmas decorations are tacky and several actors either look too old or too young for their roles. In other words, all the Christmas movie staples are present. I appreciated the small touches like including poc and queer characters. The main actors are still white and straight - as they eternally are - but, baby steps! I thought it was totally refreshing that the male antagonist is bisexual and had a genuine jaunt with a woodsman.
I was worried they were going to give Lohan one hairstyle throughout the entire movie, like she's an animated character, but they started switching it up halfway through. She's still as hammy and delightful as ever. I hope she'll do many more movies. She's like your favourite comfort food over the holidays; familiar and nice.
Raya and the Last Dragon (2021)
Magical
I'll admit the plot/writing wasn't perfect. At the end, the motivations of the would-be villain feel like they're just there to drive the plot forward, rather than an honest decision she'd make in the moment. She clearly is in awe of the dragon, and worships it, but would still dare to point her weapon at it?
And the scammer ninja baby felt tonally weird, maybe because we don't get to see any other kids like her. Her physical abilities are too much of a gag, or too supernatural, which doesn't really fit because all the other humans are just humans, non-magical and bound by the laws of physics. I could have done without that character. They could have combined two of the lands and made the cast a little leaner.
Other than that, I thought the movie was perfect. The main character has a really cool silhouette design and both touching and intimidating moments. The way they emoted her hit for me, it felt so true to life. The dragon is heartwarming and funny, I already think Awkwafina is hilarious but this was some perfect casting. She both elevates the dragon as a character, and the performance also made me love Awkwafina more. I really liked that her human form looks and emotes like her, it was like seeing an old friend.
The moral was really simple (unite and trust one another, and together we'll be greater), but I think it's a timeless sentiment that is always applicable and true. It's something all of us clearly still need to hear all the time, since as a species we continue to be relentlessly petty and short-sighted.
The Midnight Club (2022)
Mind-numbingly boring
The extremely long and emotionally predictable monologues each character loses themselves in are skippable. As are the stories within the story.
You are able to spot the bad guys from a mile away. Several of the main actors are just not good at acting, and it makes their scenes even harder to sit through, as the already shaky writing becomes even harder to believe. The show's internal logic makes no sense - how are these kids from varying economic backgrounds able to afford this place?
So what's left, when so many aspects of the show aren't worth sitting through? Barely anything. The actual story can be summed up in a single sentence: a bunch of terminal teens go live in a pretty hospice house and something supernatural and evil is going on with the lady who runs the place, which is never discovered or resolved.
Boo, Bitch (2022)
Miscast
For me the main issue is that while Zoe Margaret Colletti still manages some of the youth, playfulness and exuberance of a high schooler - Lana Condor doesn't. She looks too old, and too out of place with the rest of the cast.
Additionally, she's the most heavy-handed actor on the show. When she's morose, she's unlikeable. The one scene where she has to act out angriness, she looks like she wants to rip Colletti's spine out. When she's acting bitchy and self-absorbed, it's with such commitment that we start rooting against the character. It's always too much, there's not enough layers to the performance. How could a character flip-flop between empathy and utter cruelty like that? Unless they are secretly always vacuous and cruel deep down, but work hard to hide it, because they know it's socially unacceptable. I wish she'd shown some restraint or heartfelt insecurity, so we could connect with the character on a deeper level.
Then she shows up at prom and manages to make her friend's passing about herself, once again. Everyone instantly forgives her and she goes on to live a lovely fulfilling life, with occasional quirks like a lava lamp heating up instantly. This redemption feels unearned. All she did for her best friend was go to a party and cry to a group of people about how hard it is on her that her bestie is dead.
By the end, I was sad Lana's character wasn't actually the one who had died. The best friend had to fight to get Lana's character to have the tiniest amount of fun with her, and then immediately dies. She's loveable but underwritten, an afterthought to facilitate Lana's character being awful to her.
I liked Lana Condor as an actor just fine, but now I realise it was because her other roles haven't been very demanding. It was enough for her to show up, act mild and soft, and be beautiful. This show made me rethink the extent of her skill.