О фильмах и сериалах
I love Guy Ritchie as much as the next man. But I must admit that considering how rich his characters often are, they could have benefited from a TV series. Snatch series, I didn’t enjoy much. But Gentlemen are much better.
Main theme is “restrained aggression” common to British culture. Undercurrent of threats that is everywhere: public announcements especially. Another theme is the modern royalty, and where all the money comes from (mostly property rent, actually).
I’ve never read Dredd comics nor have I seen the Stallone movie, so have nothing to compare with.
I vaguely remember this movie wasnt appreciated much when it came out, but with the rise of The Boys, it got re-evaluation.
It is 90s level of brutal, I give it that, flayed bodies and brains scattered all around.
Also, it has a way of depicting drug use, slow mo and bright colours.
Another interesting decision is that Dredd wears the signature helmet, but Rookie doesn’t, because she relies on her psychic powers.
Storywise, this is basically Raid all over again, minus silat. A huge slum building on lockdown trapping two policemen trying to arrest a criminal, all gangs hunting for them.
I’ve been meaning to watch this movie after Queen’s Gambit, but like always, everything takes me ages.
They didn’t exactly go for physical resemblance. But Tobey Maguire unhinge game is brilliant.
So is Peter Sarsgaard as candy crushing priest.
There’s a lot of russian language in the movie. The bookstore keeper talks just russian, without subtitles. And so are russian chessplayers. Some are better, some, like Liev Schreiber playing Spassky, worse. Spassky is such a fun character, though, as he’s depicted as this superstar macho.
The Game 3 and Game 6 aren’t explained very well. So I’ll need to find a separate video on them.
And it’s interesting that they tried to attribute Spassky same obsessive behaviors, like Xraying the chair because it made strange sounds or talking to the lightbulb, because KGB is listening.
Visually very impressive, and not pulling punches until the last half, at least.
It’s not a movie about church, though. Or, putting it another way, it’s the worst when it tries to be about church. But it’s a brilliant movie about management. How your organisation starts crumbling once you rely on a combination of verbal agreements and informal decisions most people are either unaware of or don’t see the sense behind.
When I started playing Fallout games back in ’97, I also read through a bunch of postapocalyptic novels. But I skipped “Boy and his Dog” somehow.
Lately, though, I stumbled upon analysis of the movie on YouTube, most likely because I watched a few Fallout 1997 retrospectives from people that discover the original games only now. And after a few minutes of the analysis, I had to watch it.
It’s a terrible movie, so I’m not surprised by the fact that no one ever quoted it. It starts with a gang of bandits raping and killing a random woman, and it doesn’t get any better.
But I can see how entire Fallout sprang from that movie, with peaceful songs accompanying the most brutal scenes. Even the loading screen from Fallout is, and I’m sorry to say it, from a pornographic movie The Boy watches in a theater for a can of sardines.
The Boy is 18 years old, and all he cares about it getting laid. He uses a telepatic connection with his Dog to find women in the Wasteland. And the Dog uses him to aquire food, as with its telepatic abilities, it also lost ability to hunt.
“Rovers” are Raiders. “Down Under” are the Vaults. “Over the Hill” is Eden.
Speaking of Vaults, Down Under is where “We Happy Few” got its inspiration from, most likely. This, and sending people “to the Farm” for infringements. And I guess “Elder’s Proclamation” also influenced Silo.
As I mentioned, the movie is badly acted. The only role worth mentioning is Susanne Benton.
Not the movie I expected. It is confusing at first, with sudden time jumps that are hard to follow, and the storytelling feels rushed, despite the movie is some 2:30 hours long. But it becomes more interesting as you begin to notice discrepancies between depictions of same events from different character perspective.
The movie dedicates a lot of attention to the role of woman in the 14th century. A woman cannot appeal to court without her husband’s approval. Rape is not offence against the woman, but agains her husband. And, of course, sentence for a woman who wrongly accuses someone of rape is to be burned at a stake.
The duel is indeed impressive. It’s chaotic and brutal. A horse can run into a wall or trample a squire or hit you with its hoove. And they use “halfsword” grip a lot, because they are so close. All this from almost static camera.
And it surprised me that they didn’t chew on the implications of mother’s role in the events at all, leaving it all to be deduced.
Some good actors (Florence Pugh, the guy from Dungeons&Dragons, Stannis Baratheon) and surprising attention to historic accuracy (William Wallace wasn’t a pict, and they weren’t wearing only browns in Medieval times). But I can’t help but feel that it should have been a miniseries, due to the density of events. Robert’s loses most of his army, his wife is taken hostage and two of his brothers killed in span of 20 minutes. And those two brothers are half the way across Scotland!
The most ridiculous scene, when Robert stabs his competitor in the church is historically accurate.
Honestly surprised they managed to pull the final battle. Very impressed.
Transformers are quite a ridiculous universe. I mean, there are female transformers, you have transformers going to a gym, and riding to work in trains.
But in this nonsensical universe, they created an excellent origin story, where Optimus is the adventurous one, while Megatron is the more level headed. Both of them can’t transform. This is actually a thing in the Transformers universe, you need a Cog to transform, and some original episodes were even dedicated to this cog being stolen.
Also, it’s Optimus who gives Megatron his emblematic sticker.
And, because those are all robots, there is a place for some ultra violence, like Megatron tearing the previous tyrant in half.
What this movie manages to capture is the aesthethics of the early ninethies. With no blur:
Maybe not all is lost yet.
Watching Batman after Penguin is quite interesting, as I have more context on who Maronis and Falcones are.
I never liked Nolan’s trilogy, especially Dark Knight, so for me going back to investigative roots of Batman works great.
Seems like the art of dialog writing also returns to us:
” – I have a thing about strays” while Catwoman speaks with Batman is a good one.
The most distinguishable feature is the top-down shots.
Not groundbreaking or anything, but distinguishable. That, and that cats. The cats are gorgeous.
“The Bear” changed cinema. “Saturday Night Live” tries to recreate the same frantic athmosphere, minute by minute: the movie is 90 minutes in length, and starts 90 minutes before the show goes live on TV.
I feel like it requires too much prior knowledge. Am I supposed to know all those comedians that they mention? John Bellucci? Chevy Chase? Billy Preston? Because I don’t.
One bit I didn’t get is why they used Nicholas Braun (Succession) for two characters. One of them is some strange Italian, and another a muppeteer if that’s the name. It doesn’t seem like any other characters acknowledges it’s the same person. The one I actually knew was Dan Aykroyd, Ray from Ghostbusters. And I actually did see Chevy Chase in “Memoirs of an Invisible Man”.
After reading some more, I discovered that some of the cast died before they hit 40, either from overdose or cancer. And most of them left the show after 4-5 years.
I can’t deny it’s a good movie. The allegories with putting bricks is brilliant: just like putting a show together. Also, the actors they choose represent their real-life counterparts extremely well.
But I’m not sure it’s a movie anyone should go to theaters for.
I didn’t watch The Batman with Pattinson. Not a fan of DC or the Batman universe. But after The North Water, I decided to see Colin Farrell play another villain—and I’m glad I did.
The only connection to Batman is some names: Gotham, Arkham, Oswald Cobblepot. Batman himself is literally mentioned twice: at the very start of the first episode and at the very end of the last one. Everything else is a crime drama.
I almost want to say they pulled a bait-and-switch, like Mad Max: Fury Road, which wasn’t really about Mad Max but about Furiosa. But they didn’t. It’s just that Sofia Falcone is very fleshed out here. But so is Penguin. They toe a fine line, without making it a story about a “Girl-Boss” who was told all her life what to do, betrayed by those Evil White Men, and now she will crush them… No, it’s not that kind of story.
I also almost want to say they just repeated what Joker did—creating an ultra-realistic villain attached to his mother. But that’s incorrect too. Phoenix’s Joker wasn’t a villain at all; he was an anti-villain, in the way there are anti-heroes. While Farrell’s Penguin is a full-fledged villain.
The main theme for me in Penguin is the theme of lies. Cobblepot is an absolute liar, as demonstrated in the very first episode when he’s tortured by Sofia, and again in the very last, where she tortures him once more. He never tells the truth, never admits it—he always doubles down. There’s a lot of defiance of expectations throughout. And it’s not just Penguin; his mother plays into this as well. What actually convinced me to keep watching was Deirdre O’Connell in the first episode—that switch between a somewhat lost old woman with dementia and a vicious, megalomaniacal force.
And going back to lies—the biggest lie we tell ourselves is probably that what we do is to make our parents proud.
Visually, it’s so stunning I can hardly believe it’s a TV series. They did borrow a bit from Fallout, with ultraviolence set to jazz songs, but they have their own style too. Probably the scene that impressed me the most was the “vote of confidence” using cheap beer cans. But really, there was so much to unpack. Like the mundainess of Penguin’s violence.
All I can say is—my faith in TV series has returned. For now.
Finished watching North Water.
It’s only 5 episodes, ideal format, but is a very heavy show. Especially the animal cruelty, like the hunting of seals and whales.
My main issue with the story is that Drax is something between an animal and the Devil, as most of the evil comes from him. Maybe it’s the idea, though, as at one point characters start to refer to him as The Devil.
Also, I feel that I read the story with the white bear somewhere else.
Interesting that Jack O’Connell (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1925239/?ref_=tt_cst_t_1) plays here very similar role as in another beloved miniseries: Godless.
John Wick has changed action movies for good.
This is “John Wick” Indian style. The rolls, use of environment as weapons, like hitting with a tray, and all the other tricks.
It’s magical, the amout of abuse hero can withstain, but also realistic, exemplified with the attempt to jump through a window “movie style”. Trying to tie it all together into a Hanuman myth was a good option.
I’m not sure how the second half of the movie works, though, as I don’t believe repicursiosn for the transgender community in India is on everyone’s mind. And using fireworks as weapons perhaps not the most efficient, when you have guns? But it’s good visuals for sure.
“Maybe cleverness will get you nowhere. Maybe it’s only the stupid, the brilliantly stupid, who will inherit the Earth”
1859, England. A whaler “Volunteer” sails to Greenland. Only the captain and a couple of the crew members know, that the goal of this voyage is to sink the whaler and get the insurance money. Sails are obsolete, steam is the future. And there are no more whales anyway.
Writing is technically very impressive. We have the complete opposites: Sumner and Drax. Sumner is a surgeon. Drax is a harpooner. Sumner is addicted to laundaum. Drax likes to drink. Sumner reads Homer. Drax can’t even read.
Drax is also extremely violent. He kills a man with a brick for not buying him a drink. He enjoys hunting seals. But maybe it is the man you want on your boat when your purpose is to hunt and kill whales, a cold blooded killer?
The movie is brutal for sure. The skinning of seals, whale hunt and 19th Century medicine such as draining puss all shown in great detail. Not for the faint-hearted for sure.
I’m surprised we are still able to produce good animation, and not just trash. But Migration is very impressive. The herons, the pigeons, the Jamaican parrot. I mean, I didn’t even know we are allowed to do accents anymore, when everything is offensive.
The tricks are mostly classic, villain looking over one side of the column, heroes hiding over the other. But then, there are surprising animation twists borrowing from Nickelodeon (the pleeeeeeease, for example).
It’s Inglorious Bastards all over again, but it isn’t a bad thing. We have characters switching between English and German on the go, and an educated villain played by Til Sweiger instead of Christoph Waltz.
You can also view it as a James Bond movie, with cool characters shooting from the hip while cracking jokes.
The most interesting bit is that the craziest parts are actually true. An SOE agent did set up a party on Fernando Po to lure Italian and German officers away. And the crew did employ locals to steal the boats, and did blow the anchor chain with explosives. Only all the killing didn’t happen.
The saddest part is that in real life, no participant of that operation survived until the end of the war. Henry Cavils character, Gus, died on the very next mission, while his team got lost in France and bumped into a patrol. And Anders was killed in ’45, storming an Italian bunker line.
Another interesting improvement over the game is that the game is always from the protagonist POV. Here, we get more glimpses into Risette/Rise, and how she quit being a popstart.
One character they added that I think wasn’t in the game is Aya. She was mentioned as the daughter of the owner of the ramen place, and that she goes to the same school.
Until 12th episode, it’s pretty standard stuff. I don’t know what changes (the opening does for sure), but it’s after the 12th episode they’re start messing with the audience, and it becomes spectacular.
The game has a few “bad endings”, where you don’t conclude your investigation fully, the friendships fall apart. And here, they included one of those, but in a way you don’t even understand what’s going on until 10 minutes in it.
Then, the game has a bunch of random characters you need to befriend. And here, they show you all of them, but after you already did, doing a timeskip.
The best part of Persona 4 was the characters and anime cutscens, and it’s true about many Atlus games. So it’s no wonder anime based on Persona 4 is actually very good. I think they also used same voice actors as the English translation of the game.
I’m not sure it’s watchable if you haven’t played the game. But if you did, the way it treats the original art, music and characters is brillaint.
First, as I read somewhere already, the protagonist now has a name, Yu Narukami, and a character, while it the game, he had none. And the way they fleshed out some character arcs is fantastic as well: mainly Yukiko and her story about a caged bird.
Also, let’s admit, the fights in Persona are nothing special, personas are basically a bag of spells with a shaby animation. Here, Izanagi, Yu’s persona, has some cool fight scenes.
Finished Ripley.
You can appreciate art without enjoying it. I appreciate the irony that Ripley is not some kind of genius, it’s just that the world around him is very incompetent. And the last episode reenacting Caravaggio’s crime is brilliant.
It’s amazing deconstruction of superheroes genre. With mismatching music, and dialogues that punch every. Fucking. Line.
I mean, the movie made me laugh out loud on an airplane on 20th minute. That’s something.
It is still a superheroes movie, though. So despite Ryan Reynolds making a cheeky comment about “here comes a CGI fight”, the fight between Colossus and Juggernaut is indeed… a CGI fight.
What else? Zazie Beetz is great. I liked her in Bullet Train, and I like here as Domino even more.