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inkabelledesigns · 4 months

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Okay, I don't voice a ton of opinions about Disney movies, but here's one I think about from time to time: Raya and the Last Dragon AND Encanto would have worked better as animated series than movies.

I say this as someone who absolutely loves Encanto mind you. Every time I see a Camilo post I am immediately sending it to my sister, we both appreciate this film. But our inside joke is that it gets an I for Incomplete. The movie spends so much time giving us musical numbers that expose us to each character's struggles, but it feels like Mirabel just kind of shows up and listens to how her family members are feeling? Like she doesn't get much of a chance to actually help most of them through their problems, even though the movie seems like it wants to frame her that way. She barely suggests a solution. Luisa just had a good cry around her, and Isabella yelled at her and then found her solution on her own. I feel like listening and having a soundboard are important when it comes to working through your feelings, but this format and pacing actively strip Mirabel of getting to be fleshed out and have an active role in the story. Things just kind of happen around her. We don't get to see much of what makes her unique as a problem solver. And I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that this story was being told in a movie format. It has such a big cast where all of them are important, it's hard to give anyone enough time to be fully fleshed out and have the entirety of their character arc within that time span.

Raya suffers from the same problem. The world is so large and expansive, its geography and individual cultures have so much potential, but we only get this tiny glimpse of these characters and places that doesn't tell us all that much about them, outside of a small taste of exposition when they're all missing their families. Which kills me, because both of these movies have some really interesting ideas on display. The scope is just too ambitious to fit cleanly into one singular movie. If they were animated series that had some slower growth to compliment their rich world building, it would have made a significant difference. I would love to see more shenanigans with each of these characters, more ups and downs of serious conflict and a little goofiness. Don't get me wrong, I'm not upset by what we got, it was nice to have some original IPs that were fun and took some risks. But I am a little disappointed, because they had the potential to be a lot better than they were.

It's been feeling like Disney movies are more and more rushed over the past couple years, or at the very least, not thought through as much as they could be. -gestures at the behind the scenes of Frozen 2 where they didn't know what the voice was for most of production- And I can't pinpoint any one thing as the reason why, because there are a lot of factors contributing to it. But it definitely makes me want to be more conscious of that when creating my own stories. I guess that is the great thing about storytelling and art, you're always learning, and as you take in more art, you figure out what you value most about it. That is key in teaching you how to make what you want. Art is a language after all.

#disney movies #movie criticism #story thoughts

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professoruber · 10 months

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Nimona Quick Thoughts/Review (Netflix 2023 Spoilers!)

So, having just gotten finished watching Nimona I wanted to dot down some quick thoughts while they’re still fresh on my tired should probably be alseep mind.

Be mindful of spoilers below cause this is a brand new movie which came out like a few hours ago. Okay? Okay! (Also spoilers for the graphic novel )

First of all. I thought it was good! I read the graphic novel leading up to the movie’s release cause I heard good things about it over on Discord, and I really liked the graphic novel. As far as adaptions go this was one with a decent number of differences, but still kept a pretty general settings and characters and themes all pretty intact. Villainising those different from the ‘norm’ as ‘monsters’ is bad, and there is corruption amongst those who are meant to protect us from said ‘monsters’.

The movie definitely does play much more into the whole ‘pseudo-medieval futurism’ thing the graphic novel has going on. Cyberpunk! But with knights! I thought it was pretty good and I like how they incorporated it all together, like the flying carriages.

Ballister Blackheart, or rather Boldheart here, was also pretty good. Even if he was perhaps more inexperienced compared to the graphic novel. Which is a result of the movie having events take part over a shorter time period. Ballister is no longer an established villain of some time but rather fresh fro the academy and forced into the role upon his knighting. Rather than taking on the role to act as a sort of ‘heel’ to the Institution’s ‘face’ cause the Institution were some ableist assholes…. Which kinda brings me to some of my criticisms of the movie.

in the movie the director was seemingly acting alone. Stuff such as the institution (technically it’s institute in the movie) experimenting with jaderoot, experimenting on Nimona two seperate occasions, kicking out a competent and loyal knight cause of ableism, or attacking protestors were zapping weapons are all excluded from this adaption. Despite Nimona’s claims of the whole system being corrupt… the movie institute seems genuine besides some jerks and the only real bad egg is the director, who was acting alone and has to tread carefully to prevent her underlings from turning against her cause of her crimes. Also I may be misremembering but wasn’t it implied the graphic novel director was homophonic? So there’s that as well. Ambrosius is also more heroic in the movie, cutting off Ballister’s arm to disarm a queen killing weapon rather than during the aftermath of a joust. He may not have intentionally done it in the graphic novel, but he still knew something was suspicious about the sudden misfire of his weapon and how he was specifically given it, and yet still continue supporting the institution and never apologised for it until much later.

I don’t know, I get they have to condense things in adaption but it still to me kind of feels like undermining some of the themes perhaps. Hm. On another note, not the biggest fan of Ambrosius being made a descendant of Glorath… mostly cause little was actually done with it. They had the whole classism thing but that seemed under-explored to me at least, especially with the scenes of institution knights attacking protestors and the director openly prioritising the safety of nobles were both removed. Ambrosius being specifically Glorath’s descendent doesn’t seem to add much to his story or arc and is only focused on a few times, doesn’t even lead to any interesting interactions between him and Nimona despite this movie establishing her as being close friends with Glorath.

I guess it can be argued it removes a bit of tension and complexity to the relationship, and give Ambrosius less to atone for. Also I thought the original backstory of the two of them being from the same orphanage as really cute.

Also they removed Meredith Blitzmeyer. Granted, her role of providing exposition and hinting at Nimona’s past was fulfilled by Nimona and the director. And her anti-magic thing was replaced by the cannon. And her backstory of travelling behind the mountains messes with the movie Kingdom being kinda North Korea. But on the other hand I really liked her so am kinda disappointed she was left out.

Overall I liked the movie though despite my last few paragraphs of complaints. Covers much the same themes even with the changes, although I do feel some of those themes were done somewhat weaker due to the changes. It was an enjoyable watch though, and it’s nice to see some well made animated LGBT+ representation! Ballister and Ambrosius OTP! Plus the whole thing with Nimona and her shapeshifitng and dislike of being inserted into a box. The growing friendship between Nimona and Ballister was also really nice and I love that it looks like they reunited by the end (even if the bittersweet note of the graphic novel of Ballister not being sure where she is was also good as well).

#Nimona #Nimona netflix #nimona 2023 #nimona spoilers #ballister boldheart #ballister blackheart #ambrosius goldenloin #the director #netflix #spoilers #professoruber reviews stuff #Meredith blitzmeyer #Movie criticism #Movie review #animation #cartoon

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doshmanziari · 2 years

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A Phenomenology of Gazes || Nope

“Nope” is almost aggressively defined by gazes. Anyone who has seen it will remember Daniel Kaluuya’s character, OJ, not so much deducing as intuiting, within a life-or-death scenario, that the movie’s flying saucer — really, more of an Unidentified Feeding Object — consumes anything which grants (or appears to grant, as the movie’s climax demonstrates) it attention. This recalls a pivotal scene from “Get Out” wherein the protagonist, also played by Kaluuya, avoids falling under hypnotic suggestion by stuffing his ears with cotton. In both scenes, the person is in direct contact with the threat and nullifies it by an autonomous denial, the preservation of a crucial sensory faculty.

But a quick review of the rest of the film reveals that the gaze is everywhere, from the eyes-on-you gesture shared between OJ and his sister, Em (Keke Smith); to the moment when a chimpanzee “animal actor”, Gordy, having just exceeded his limit for being a captive and gone violently berserk on set, locks eyes with a surviving boy actor, Jupe (Steven Yeun); to what becomes a shared concern, or obsession, among OJ, Em, Angel (an electronics store employee, played by Brandon Perea), and esteemed filmmaker Antlers Holst (Michael Wincott) to film or photograph the UFO.

As with OJ’s intuition and aversion, the gaze here is also defined by its avoidance or negation: when OJ, who has inherited a horse ranch from his father, brings one of his horses to the set for a commercial, he tilts his head down and away from the reach of the rest of the irksome crew; OJ’s father is killed when miscellanea is ejected at blistering speed from the UFO’s oral-anal hole and a nickel enters his brain through his right eyeball; a recapitulation of the scene involving Gordy, as viewed from different cameras and moments before the assault, stresses the chimpanzee’s presence by his absence by keeping the focus solely on the humans (this ocular exclusion is also an effective technique for invoking an expectant anxiety).

What to make of all this? Locating a theme only tells us that the theme is there, or that it may be interpreted as being there. What I’ve omitted to mention so far is that OJ is black, as are his sister and father.

In certain ways, “Nope” is as much a UFO movie as it isn’t. Although Jordan Peele’s screenplay engages with contemporary incidents and aspects, both reputable — Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal, and Leslie Kean’s NYT article of 2017 is mentioned — and disreputable — Angel’s namedrop of Ancient Aliens prompted a ripple of knowing laughter among the theater’s audience — , its narrative is ultimately a divergent appropriation of the UFO phenomenon. The only black-eyed humanoids here are costumed folks playing a prank on OJ, while the UFO turns out to be an aerial life form, a sort of enormous, sky-bound variant of oceanic siphonophores. Its interiors are not curvilinear metallic chambers containing operating tables but a network of puffy, ribbed digestive tracts, an inflatable funhouse from a thrumming nightmare.

That these divergences might disappoint some people (including myself, to a degree) is beside the point that “Nope” is the first major UFO movie I can think of which so prominently foregrounds black people, to say nothing of Jupe or Angel. While it racially implicates the film industry and the uses of photographic technology, this foregrounding also evokes the notable lack of black Americans’ accounts of, or engagement with material concerning, UFOs. Barney and Betty Hill’s experience still stands out today, not just because of its situating as the United States’ first widely publicized, domestic account of alien abduction, but also because of Barney’s blackness. So obvious and pervasive is this lack that when Patricia Avant produced a short film featuring her own footage, she was compelled to entitle it like a corrective assertion: “Black People Do See UFOs.”

Undoubtedly, black people do see UFOs. The phenomenon is worldwide, relentless, and seemingly nonselective (excepting an understudied intergenerational pattern). Yet when one examines, at least as far as the United States goes, the details of authorship, reports, and cults, one does find a dearth of black people. Anthony Lane’s review for The New Yorker is keen to illustrate a difference between OJ and Richard Dreyfuss’ character in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”: “Both guys lean out to see what’s happening. Roy gets flashed and scalded for his pains, and, as the encounter ends, he is left panting and shuddering in shock. O.J., on the other hand, opens the driver’s door, glances upward, and then, with unforgettable aplomb, slowly closes the door again. He contents himself with uttering a single word: ‘Nope.’”

OJ’s utterance is the equivalent to “I don’t fuck with that,” and the retraction of his gaze is as self-assured as it is self-preserving. But we needn’t only look forty-five years ago to Spielberg’s movie to find a difference of attitude: during “Nope”’s final confrontation with the UFO, Antlers removes himself from shelter for the sake of a money shot and is gobbled up. Although the movie’s internal context might sooner prompt one to consider Antlers’ decision as being informed by a suicidal-romantic commitment to True Art, for me it recalls the cavalier attitude of modern contact-pursuing cults like Steven Greer’s, wherein everything that is dangerous about UFOs has been sidelined by an underlying arrogance. It is just as unsubstantiated and reductive to suggest that black Americans may generally avoid talking about UFOs because of some uniform, trauma-informed cautiousness as it is somehow unsurprising to know that Greer is white, as were practically all of the UFO cult leaders mentioned by Jacques Vallée in his 1979 book, Messengers of Deception.

Antlers’ hand-cranked film camera, like all cameras, is an eye with its own type of gaze: directive and reflective, but not affected. Its antique form calls to mind an early scene, wherein Em joins OJ on the commercial’s set to give the background for the ranch’s business. Referring to one of photographer Eadweard Muybridge’s later chronophotographic sequences depicting a black jockey upon a horse, Em explains that this “nameless” jockey, in contrast to Muybridge’s renown and the horse having a recorded name, is actually identifiable (a fiction of the movie’s) and her family’s thrice-great-grandfather. Expanded to a fuller context, the centrality of the camera here, and elsewhere, speaks to its real-world powers as an arbiter of history, reality, and humanization, or dehumanization. OJ and company’s fixation on the cameras they install on the ranch to film and thus prove the UFO’s existence is simultaneously reasonable and unprecedentedly modern. Objectivity, as it were (with all the ways by which the camera objectifies), has priority over empirical reality. The subject is made or unmade by the lens’ presence.

So there is an irony to Em’s historical pride, not lost, I think, to the movie: a dimension of her and her family’s racial, cultural, and vocational lineage has been legitimized by a prototype of the same technology which has been used to invisiblize them. The fact that we are, in many respects, more beholden to the camera, and its industries, than it is to us is suggested by a feature of the shapeshifting UFO’s final form: an angular, green projection containing a sort of inscrutable mouth and, with each of its undulations, producing a whipping sound. Here is the green screen placed behind actors, ready to tame and overpower them, and future audiences, with a consuming spectacle. Naturally, this implicates “Nope” itself, to a degree.

The movie’s simultaneous engagement with and disengagement from the UFO phenomenon, and its fixation on the gaze’s powers and vulnerabilities, also aligns it — unintentionally or not — with a commonality among abduction reports. The main pop-cultural legacy of Whitley Strieber’s Communion: A True Story, published in 1987, may be the crude, shameful reduction of Strieber’s trauma to a sort of prison-rape “joke”; but its secondary legacy is surely its disturbing cover: a painting of an almond-eyed being who looks at us with a sort of unknowable, arresting placidity. Accordingly, one finds within the literature (John E. Mack’s and David M. Jacobs’ books being exemplary) descriptions of a being staring into the abductee’s eyes. The abductee, who has little to no control over their body, has the profoundly naked impression that they are being mentally infiltrated, that nothing about their inner or outer life can be kept secret from the gaze. These experiences are caught between the aforementioned mean-spirited joke, New Age sentimentality determined to see the phenomenon only as a drawn-out protocol for spiritual guidance, and scientific disciplines which categorically refuse to study them even from the angle of a collective, subconscious fiction with psychosomatic effects.

If the phenomenon is the product of human minds, then it would seem to be meta-fiction rather than fiction, in the sense that dreams are also sorts of demon-strative fictions with, nevertheless, a psychic (and then physical) reality. This reflective quality of meta-fiction brings us back to the fact that to examine aspects of UFOs is to also examine aspects of ourselves and the ways of the world (and perhaps universe). In cattle mutilations are resonances of our meat industry; in crafts’ killing of the verdure they land upon are resonances of the effects of our vehicles and airplanes; in their effects upon witnesses’ skin, hair, and internal organs are resonances of our scientists’ acquiescence in developing weapons of biological warfare; in the beings’ remorseless forcing of humans to be medical subjects are resonances of productions such as Unit 73, or our experiments upon “lower” animals.

It is the Otherness of the phenomenon which simultaneously readies a gazeful cognizance of its horrors and a blindness to our own capacity for even greater heights of “inhumanity” — a nice word that allows us to believe evilness is the corruption of an inherent gentility. That the threat of “Nope”’s UFO centers around its voracious nature and violent excretions (an inversion paralleling the camera’s inversion of an image) is not, then, only symbolically indicative of socioeconomic or sociocultural hegemony but its phenomenological nearness to us, a horrific immanence settled below a constructed normality. This nearness is never more powerfully illustrated by the movie than in its thunderstorming scene where the UFO hovers right above the ranch house, dumping a deluge of blood and phantasmic screams upon its exterior. It is this scene above all others where one may reconsider whether or not this is truly “just” a hungry creature, and not also the revenge of the unconscious, or the anima mundi.

When OJ asks Em, after having first seen the UFO, “What’s a bad miracle?”, the answer to his question might be a miracle, all the same. Sophocles’ tragic observation, “Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse”, is as applicable to the invention of the magical camera (now so common as to have had its obviously magical qualities regularized and diminished) as it is to the emergence of the magical UFO phenomenon. Prior to the camera, there was the camera obscura, the “dark chamber.” We can literalize and metaphorize this term for a statement: the camera obscures as it reveals. And is not the same thing true of UFOs, those cameras, vaulted chambers, of the sky? To gaze upon the miraculous, the wondrous, is to receive all of its afflictions.

#movie criticism #nope #sociology #ufology #nope movie

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abuddyforeveryseason · 26 days

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This is the Buddy for April 3rd. It's something I drew last year and had it in the back-burner all this time. I'm not sure I remember why, to be honest.

Maybe it's because it's Marlon Brando's birthday? Buddy's face there does remind me a bit of Brando's personal brand of overacting.

Not that I dislike him, anyhow. I know he went a bit insane during his later years, but that kind of happens to a lot of celebrities (and non-celebrities), and Brando did have a lot of admirable qualities.

I was reading a book by Nathan Rabin (one of my favorite movie reviewers) and he mentioned The Island of Doctor Moreau, wherein Brando plays the title role. Rabin's review, unfortunately, focuses on him and his insane behavior, rather than on movie director Richard Stanley (whose behavior was even more insane).

The movie itself wasn't that interesting, and Brando's part in it even less so. It's a sad story, in that Brando was grieving his daughter's death and had little patience for acting. Stanley wanted Brando for the role, but he ended up quitting before even meeting Brando.

There's a documentary about the movie that's a lot more fun than the movie itself, called Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Doctor Moreau. It details a lot of the craziness in the making of the movie - Stanley's voodoo cursed aimed at Roman Polanski, who also wanted Brando' for a movie of his own; His interest in remaking Apocalypse Now, partly because of his descendance from Joseph Conrad; Him living in the woods during the weeks of filming, and attempts at sabotaging the movie from withi; The crew's support for him almost leading to a revolt.

That's really a lot more interesting than the actual movie. Even if Marlon Brando was playing a human dolphin with white make-up and an ice bucket over his head, the part he played in the saga wasn't that interesting - it was built more out of sloth and sadness than actual malice.

And, I think we can all agree, the curse on Polanski worked, right?

#ab4es #drawing #Marlon Brando #movies #Nathan Rabin #movie criticism #the island of dr moreau #The Island of Doctor Moreau #Richard Stanley #John Frankenheimer #Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Doctor Moreau #Apocalypse Now #Roman Polanski #Joseph Conrad

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zenosanalytic · 11 months

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Minor Solo Interlude

there are ALLOT of problems with the Solo(2018) movie but one of the bigger ones is that it didn't really leave any room for new adventures with the character.

When you meet Han and Chewie in Star Wars(1977)(Im not calling it New Hope and Never Will; Shut Up), you get a real feel these are people with history; that there's a backstory there you aren't privy to, and allot of it. Solo dispenses with all that in one of the most shameful fanservice speedruns ever put to film. The movie starts with Han as literally Nobody, and it ends with him and Chewie going off to work for Jabba, pretty much where we meet them in Star Wars(1977). Even if it HAD been a movie good enough to justify sequels(which, tbc, it is not), there wouldn't have been any room for them anyway.

#Star Wars #Solo(2018)#Movies #Storytelling #Fan Service #this post brought to you by that Lando Calrissian one cuz it was SO GOOD it reminded me of how BAD this movie was #except for Glover and Waller Bridge's performances #zA Writes #zA Opinions #Movie Criticism

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moviecriticseanpatrick-blog · 1 year

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#Fast X #Vin Diesel #Jason Mamoa #Charlize Theron #John Cena #Ludacris #Tyrese #Sung Kang #movies #film #movie review #film review #movie #film critic #film criticism #movie criticism #movie critic #Jason Statham #Helen Mirren

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the-one-where-casey-watches-tv · 5 months

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The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes: Is Katniss Lucy Gray's Granddaughter?

The Hunger Games prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is chock full of easter eggs and homages to the original trilogy. So much so that many folks are wondering if the District 12 survivor from years past has any relation to the Girl on Fire.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes follows young performer Lucy Gray Baird as she is reaped for the 10th annual Hunger Games, becoming the female tribute from District 12. Her path crosses with the ambitious yet penniless teenaged Coriolanus Snow, whose curriculum at the Capitol’s Academy causes him to take a vested interest in Lucy Gray’s performance in the Games.

Tom Blyth and Rachel Zegler in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Image courtesy of IMDb.

Similar in some ways, but different in even more, Katniss Everdeen and Lucy Gray Baird both played to their strengths to survive the brutal Hunger Games. Here are the reasons some people got the idea that these two protagonists could be related.

The Timeline Checks Out

In The Hunger Games trilogy, the white-haired President Snow has a granddaughter just a couple years younger than Katniss and her sister Prim. Given that his younger self was two years older than Lucy Gray, it’s perfectly feasible that Katniss and Prim could be her descendants.

“The Hanging Tree”

Now, Lucy Gray isn’t the only one who knew this song- certainly not after performing it for a vivacious crowd of dancers at a District 12 pub. But Katniss is no performer. She gritted her teeth through any performative act she had to take to ensure her own survival, yet “The Hanging Tree” is a song she occasionally sang willingly, one she found peaceful. It must have had a special place in her heart to bring her that comfort. And why might that be?

Jennifer Lawrence and Amandla Stenberg in The Hunger Games. Image courtesy of IMDb.

Their Strategies in the Games

Lucy Gray and Katniss handled the Games- and the mind games leading up to the Games- very differently. Yet at their core, they played the same way. Both girls played smart, rather than violent; they both waited out the initial bloodbath and took as little life as was possible, given the circumstances. When finally forced to play their hand, Lucy Gray and Katniss both did the wholly unexpected, somehow finding a third option for themselves besides kill or be killed. Their strength in not succumbing to the animal-like behavior that the Capitol so eagerly wanted to televise is an outlier that draws a connection between the two of them.

Rachel Zegler in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Image courtesy of IMDb.

Katniss

Lucy Gray had a fondness for Katniss- the plant. It’s a swamp potato that the Covey would eat on their travels. Not everyone called the plant Katniss, but Lucy Gray liked to. Did she like it enough for a child of hers to pass the name along in her honor?

Despite all these easter eggs in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes that can’t help but draw the mind to Katniss Everdeen, no relation between the two District 12 victors is ever confirmed. A strong argument can be made for one, but there are also some reasons this theory is just that- a theory.

The Covey

Lucy Gray Baird is a member of the Covey, a traveling performance troupe that happened to be settled in District 12 at the time of the 10th annual Hunger Games. Her Covey identity is so important to her that she is reluctant to call herself a resident of District 12, despite being reaped as the district’s female tribute. Yet, there is no mention of the Covey in The Hunger Games. The group is a new addition to The Hunger Games world with The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. If Katniss was related to Lucy Gray, they would only be two generations removed, and Lucy Gray’s Covey identity would likely play a role in Katniss’s sense of self as well. The complete absence of the Covey in Katniss’s story casts some doubt on the possibility of a connection between the two girls.

Rachel Zegler in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Image courtesy of IMDb.

District 12

The Covey complicates things even further. Given that they are a traveling group, to the extent that Lucy Gray refused to call District 12 home, it seems unlikely that she spent the rest of her life there. When you add in the fact that, at the end of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, she and Coriolanus had set out to leave the districts and never return, the thought of her establishing a family in District 12 feels even more far-fetched. The prequel ends on an ambiguous note, with Lucy Gray deliberately losing Coriolanus in the forest, so it’s hard to say if she ever saw 12 again, much less made meaningful connections there.

Radically Different Personalities

Lucy Gray’s reaping consisted of her dropping a snake down another girl’s dress and then bursting into song. Katniss’s reaping found her intensely and tearfully volunteering in her sister’s place. The contrast between Lucy Gray’s levity and Katniss’s seriousness is a constant in their personalities. Lucy Gray, a performer for a living and a performer for survival, won Capitol hearts with her charm and voice. Katniss, on the other hand, had to be begged to grin and bear it, to give a single twirl, to save not just herself but Peeta- whose affability was an essential counterpart to her stone-faced persona. If the two girls are related, a similar demeanor is not one of the clues.

Jennifer Lawrence and Stanley Tucci in The Hunger Games. Image courtesy of IMDb.

Ultimately, though, we’ll never know for sure. It’s possible that The Ballad of Songbirds and Snake’s homages to Katniss served more as an explanation as to why the Girl on Fire bothered President Snow so much. Maybe she just got under his skin because she reminded him a little too much of the girl who bested him and broke his heart all those years ago- related or not.

What's your gut telling you? Do you think these two share blood? Or just that powerful fighting spirit?

#the ballad of songbirds and snakes #lucy gray baird #coriolanus snow #tom blyth #rachel zegler #the hunger games #katniss everdeen #jennifer lawrence #amandla stenberg #movie review #movie criticism

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catgirl-kaiju · 2 years

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I saw a review of Nope (2022) that compared it to Jaws in its basic structure (high tension thriller where the main characters stalked by a dangerous animal that is difficult to see coming). I can kind of see that, but I think something more interesting about the film is how much it is the opposite of Jaws.

Jaws is a film about a wild animal that is portrayed as a vicious killing machine with implied malice. It turns what is a real life animal into something that is not human or animal, just a scary monster with little acknowledgement that it is a living thing. The framing of the shark attacks is of a shark invading waters that should be safe for humans to use for leisure, rather than as people suffering the consequences of intruding into the shark's natural habitat. The idea of closing the beach isn't about respecting the boundaries of a wild animal, but about keeping people safe from a vicious killer.

Nope (and this is where I start getting into some spoilers) is about a creature that is assumed to be something artificial by the main characters. Because of its resemblance to a classic flying saucer, Jean Jacket is assumed to be a vessel for intelligent and possibly malicious aliens. A classic movie monster. However, we discover part way through the film that Jean Jacket is actually a living thing, a predatory organism, and is framed as such. Jean Jacket isn't killing because it's evil; it's killing because it's hungry and territorial. Only by acknowledging that Jean Jacket is essentially a wild animal, with rules and boundaries, are the main characters able to survive it. Meanwhile, characters that assume that Jean Jacket isn't alive or seek to control or exploit it are put in harms way by their own actions. It's also implied that this is not actually Jean Jacket's native habitat, it is an outside force that has intruded on the Haywood ranch and it becomes a matter of people defending themselves against an invasive species.

I think all of the ways in which Nope contrasts Jaws makes it a stronger film with more nuanced messaging. Jaws may be good at creating tension and suspense, but it also doesn't care to think about its monster as a living thing (which is especially problematic since great white sharks are real and endangered animals that are not even known for attacking humans). By taking the time to show that Jean Jacket is a living thing with needs and boundaries, (even though it's a very fictional creature) Nope creates some very interesting conflict that feels more grounded despite the premise being so outlandish.

Anyway, thank you for reading and go watch Nope if you haven't already. There's a lot more that's great about it that I didn’t fit into this analysis.

#film analysis #movie criticism #horror #jaws #nope 2022 #nope #nope jordan peele #jordan peele #steven spielberg #thriller #movies #jean jacket

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the-celluloid-correspondent · 6 months

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Next Goal Wins Movie Review

Dutch coach Thomas Rongen attempts the nearly impossible task of turning the American Samoa soccer team from perennial losers into winners.

After years of delay, Taika Waititi’s latest film, Next Goal Wins, is finally having its wide release after its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, in which it received mixed reviews, just like Jojo Rabbit. But those reviews didn’t deter me as I enjoy Waititi’s unique comedic style with his meta commentary and humor. However, I am left disappointed with Next Goal Wins. Yes, it is an entertaining comedy primarily due to its classic underdog story and the ensemble's performance. Still, there is so much left to be desired as Next Goal Wins is an amalgamation of Waitit’s worst qualities as a filmmaker.

As previously stated, I love Waititi’s comedic style, but here he and co-writer Iain Morris can’t help but throw in a joke every five seconds into the screenplay. These jokes ruin many serious scenes that would have been incredibly compelling if the jokes didn’t force themselves into the room. Moreover, it becomes incredibly tiring to see the same five jokes being repeated over and over again. It was funny the first time, but after a while, it got old very quickly. It’s similar to the screaming Goats joke seen in Thor: Love and Thunder. Waititi needed to pull the reins back and allow the story to flow naturally. He has proven previously in Jojo Rabbit and in The Hunt for the Wilderpeople that he knows when to be serious in tone and not put in a joke. I am wondering where that person is right now.

However, that is not the end of Next Goal Wins problems. The biggest problem that plagues this movie is its narrative focus. It’s a mash-up between the classic “fish-out-of-water” and “sports underdog”, that follows these narratives almost beat per beat. However, with these two story tropes, the narrative clashes as it can’t decide who to focus on. Thus causing the characters, their relationships, and their struggles to feel shallow and emotionally manipulative. If it had focused on one of the three points of view it introduces, the coach, the team, or their relationship, this feature would have been much more engaging and impactful. However, because it is a mix between these three, it movie never feels like it has a central focus.

But the movie's biggest crime is that it’s acting a lot smarter than what it actually is. It states in the very beginning that it’s going to subvert the white savior trope that is common in many sports films. However, it falls right into the trope it sets to subvert because that is what happened in real life. When American Samoa brought in Thomas Rongan to coach their team, he changed their team forever in his single year. He gave them the guidance and knowledge they needed to change their team around, as well as providing him wisdom he desperately needed. Yet, the movie underscores his influence as all the team needed was to have fun to win in the movie. This could have worked if the team was shown to be somewhat organized before Rongan’s arrival, but instead, they are shown as comically disorganized. Thus when they finally get the speech telling them to have “fun”, and they become an entirely different team, it's incredibly unearned. This could have worked if it had been properly set up like in Ted Lasso, where the team and the coach both needed each other to achieve their goals. That would have been more wholesome and closer to reality.

With all of that stated, the movie is still very enjoyable and this is primarily due to the performances from the ensemble. Michael Fassbender breaks his dramatic and dark type casting in this oddball comedy. For the most part, his comedic timing works for me even though he does feel out of place at moments. But when it comes to the dramatic parts, he delivers the goods. Oscar Nightley does bring in some great comedic moments and has some great chemistry with the ensemble. However, the biggest standout was Kaimana playing Jaiyah Saelua, the first non-binary trans-woman on a FIFA team. She is the emotional heart of this film and should have been the movie's main focus as she has a very interesting conflict. Her conflict is a very relevant one with trans athletes on whether they continue to take hormones to feel like themselves or stop taking hormones so they can continue to play the sport they love. It’s a fascinating conflict that I wish was explored more. This was a massive missed opportunity and is especially shocking coming from self-proclaimed gay icon, Taika Waititi.

Overall, Next Goal Wins is an entertaining classic underdog tale that is heavily reliant on its feel-good story and the performance of the ensemble. But, this movie could have been so much better if there had been several more rewrites to help focus the script's narrative. As well as Taika recognizes that he needs to stop forcing humor into these stories and let them flow naturally again. He has proven it before and I know that he is better than this. Hopefully, with his next feature film, he will finally learn how to do his unique comedy right again.

My Rating: C+

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troythecatfish · 2 months

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zanystudentherofish · 6 months

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#film reviews #time after time #david warner #malcom mcdowell #movie criticism #Youtube

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talkingandwatching · 6 months

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So I watched the fnaf movie yall this was crazy

Hello everyone, I'm literally on my way home from the movie theater while I'm writing this post (might be a couple of days to publish it because I have no attention spam) because I watched the Five night's at Freddy's movie and yall, this was wild.

Before I get into it, I wanna complain that the guys in the front seat talked nonstop, like, all the time while we watched this movie so I wanna tell everyone, if youre the kind of person who does this crap, please stop, its very annoying.

I never once had the chance to feel like I literally cant talk about a movie, not because of the spoilers but because I literally cannot find the words to describe what I just saw, not because it was shocking or anything but because there is almost nothing to talk about. But what kind of "movie critic" would I be if I didn't at least try?

I think the main reason why I cant say anything is because I can barely comprehend the fact that this is a real movie that I watched in theaters, I think it will take about 3-5 business days for me to finally settle this information down.

This is the part where I start talking about the movie and it will probably have spoilers, so read it at your own risk.

Even before watching the movie I realised that it will be a real challenge to figure the lore out, since okay, we got Mike as a main character, I thought then it supposedly Michael Afton right? But his sister was called Abby and not Elizabeth and I knew Mike is interacting with William Afton (and I knew its William because it was Matthew Lillard in the trailer and everyone knew Matthew Lillard will play William Afton, the internet went crazy for over a week), but somehow he doesnt suspects its his dad? Also Vanessa is in this movie? And I had even more questions and let me tell you, none of them was answered by the movie.

The movie starts with our main character Mike (played by Josh Hutcherson), who works as a security guard in a mall, but beats the shit out of a random man because he thought he's kidnapping a kid but the kid was actually his son, then he gets fired, so a guy, supposedly his boss called Steve Raglar (played by Matthew Lillard) offers him a security guard job at an abandoned restaurant called Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, but Mike rejects it, saying he cant do night, then we find out why. He has sleep problems because he dreams about the same thing over and over again, which is the memory when he witnessed his little brother, Garret being kidnapped. This memory haunts him and he's also the legal guard of his little sister, Abby. Abby is a weird kid, she has invisible friends that only she can see and she's also very antisocial in school, which worries both the teachers and Mike's & Abby's aunt that want to take full custody over Abby because she doesnt think Mike is a suitable guard for her (neither does Mike thinks he's suitable for this but yk, he doesnt want Abby to live there because they both hate their aunt). After this, Mike changes his mind about the security guard job and calls Steve. So the job starts and boy o boy, what the fuck is going on in this movie-

First of all, I was very excited when I saw that Matpat got a cameo as a waiter, I audibly gasped when I saw him on the movie screen, what makes this even funnier is that I literally told my boyfriend who sat next to me that Matpat would probably get a seizure from this movie's storyline (also something that I havent paid attention to in the theater is that his name tag says "Ness", someone on youtube pointed that out and this makes the cameo 100x more ironic, if you know, you know), I think he deserved it 100% and I was pretty sad Markiplier at the end didn't make it into the cameo because of Iron Lung.

I gotta admit, I fell into the flaw that I thought the story will be a part of the main things that happen in the game and thats why some aspects of the movie left me very very confused. For example, we found out Vanessa is the daughter of William Afton. The fans speculated that there might be some sort of relation between them after Security Breach came out, but I dont remember if anyone thought he's her father, only maybe her grandfather or something. Just so you know, in this movie, Mike and William are not related (or at least doesnt look like they are) and my boyfriend had the idea that this movie might be about Mike Schmidt, which is a very og character in the fnaf games/community, who in this story, isnt Michael Afton, this could explain why his sister is called Abby and not Elizabeth either.

Speaking of Abby, she also left me a bit confused. We found out that her imagined and invisible friends are actually the ghost children that haunt the robots and she can communicate with them through her drawings. I was left a bit dissapointed that they didn't explain how this works exactly, especially because I personally liked the aspect that the robots arent malicious and that theyre still just traumatized children who were manipulated.

Of course, nobody was suprised by the fact that William who said he was Steve, was the villain and oh boy, Matthew Lillard KILLED it as William Afton. As someone, who's childhood wasnt just FNAF but also Scooby Doo, this man is literally the face of many many childhoods, including mine. He didn't get enough screentime AT ALL, even though I dont really mind, because its nice that Afton wasnt the main focus of the story, but Matthew was so good, so talented that I wanted more and more.

Josh Hutcherson as Mike was also awesome in this role, he's relatable, he's flawed yet a very sympathetic character and you cant help but root for him.

These two were the stars of this movie, however Piper Rubio as Abby was also pleasant in my opinion, I thought her character was sweet and lovable and I hated how the guys on the front row were mocking everything she said. Elizabeth Lail as Vanessa was also.. okay? I didn't like Vanessa's presence in the movie at all, because it was very confusing, but she was pretty okay in the role. The ghost children werent that good in my opinion, the acting was very small and Garret's actor had only one face through the entire movie, he didn't have any dialouge either.

Speaking of dialouge, I didn't like it at all. It felt like someone trying to grasp and mimic how people talk to each other, some dialouges were almost ridiculous and NO, if you havent watched the movie but still read my blog post, no, the phrase "Together we're fnaf" does not appear in the movie sadly.

In conclusion, did I dislike this movie? No. Not at all.

In fact, I enjoyed this movie very much. I was a bit of than a casual fan of this game franchise since 2016 and it was a great experience to dress up with my boyfriend and watch the Five night's at Freddy's movie, because we were and are both fans of this game. The bad habit everyone fell into is that we were fixated on the "lore accuracy" and missed the fact that this is more than probably a spinoff, using lore from the books instead of the games.

It was really nice to see this movie and I dont think anyone who wasnt a fan of this game growing up will watch and/or appreciate this movie because its like Barbie but for weird kids and I think its flop among critics is just the Mario movie all over again, where the fans are praising the movie and its story to the roof but the critics just sat into a cactus or something.

Anyways, I'm curious what you guys think of the movie, let me know if you had any opinions and until next time, see ya.

#fnaf #five nights at freddy's #fnaf movie #movie criticism #movie critic

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