Category: *.AVI

If the first half of the season was impressive to say the least, the second half is mindblowing.

It’s an incredible muscle flex.
Basic principles of animation is that frames are expensive, backgrounds are cheap. You can have a single background for thousands of frames. That’s why you generally avoid “camera movement” in animation: it moves the background.
And that’s exactly what they’re doing here. They rotate the camera, in a rather mundane scenes, or show scenes from different angles. Something common to movies, although still not cheap. And extremely rare for anime.

What else did they do? Unique ending for every episode. Again, that’s something you just don’t do. Animation is expensive! So, you draw one outro, and use it for 6, 12, maybe even 24 episodes. But those crazy bastards decided otherwise.

Been planning to watch this for ages, without any particular reasons. Just stumbled upon a trailer, and I also like Jennifer Garner.
This is a Female Punisher, basically. Husband and daughter of a bank worker are killed by a gang of a drug dealers. Five years later, she comes for revenge.
There’s a strong influence from John Wick on how everything is filmed. Holding firearms close, shooting point-black, all that stuff.
The only interesting parts are how Jennifer treats her wounds. At one point, she uses a surgical stapler, then wraps it with a silver tape. At another point, she uses a sanitary pad to stop bleeding from a stab wound. She’s still very resilient, and survives even a bullet wound or two.

Reminded me of Sex Education in many ways. Same artificial school, with lockers, beer in red plastic cups, varsity jackets, everyone living in huge houses and all that.
I feel zero sympathy for both main characters. The girl, Hannah, neglects the Nice Guy and decides to date an athlete instead (because he has a nice smile and body).
Then complains that the friendzoned Nice Guy is not nice enough to her anymore.
The Nice Guy, in the meantime, decides to steal a walkman from what seems to be his only friend.
Also, not sure at whom all the nostalgia is aimed. Maybe Gen Z find Walkman appealing somehow?

Truly enjoyed the atmosphere and aesthetics of it all. Watched it almost in one go.
This is not the first time Edgar Allan Poe is made into a character. But Harry Melling is mostly comedic, as is Gillian Anderson.
Christian Bale is fantastic, as usual. Full range of emotions. And it’s interesting how he and Melling switch roles from one scene to another.
“Lenore” is a real poem by Poe, by the way.

A parody on noir movies. Though I feel like I’m not educated enough to appreciate it. Or maybe I simply didn’t watch enough Hitchock?

There’s a dog killer everybody talks about. And a millionaire went missing. And a dude, that is a total dickhead, meets a girl, Sarah, that disappears the next day.

So he goes looking for her. In woman’s restroom, at one point.

He’s a total dickhead, as I said. I found the protagonist to be repelling (I guess this is on purpose, everybody mentions how he smells like a skunk).

The millionaire turns dead, burned in his car with a woman, and the dickhead suspects it’s the same girl he met. He starts obsessing over secret messages, that eventually lead him to an empty atomic bomb shelter and to a cult leader. Turns out the millionaire is not dead, not yet. You see, millionaires use those atomic bomb shelters as tombs. They bury themselves alive in those with their wives to eventually “ascend”. And Sarah is happy with her fate. Is that a commentary on how young girls in LA “sell” themselves to millionaires? Not sure.

Decided to watch this due to some interesting actors: Ruby Rose (John Wick 2), Tom Hopper (Umbrella Academy), Andy Serkis
The storyline is “back to 90’s”, and very similar to Die Hard or Under Siege: bunch of mercenaries capture a train that runs between London and Paris, that just happens to have a well trained SAS operative heading to his honeymoon onboard.
Female (sorry, genderfluid) villain is surprising nowadays, when the only evil comes from white men. Can a good guy kill a woman, even if she’s a terrorist?
The only interesting idea is that even the good guys in movies are sociopaths. Otherwise, you can’t kill 20 people in a day and just walk away as if nothing happened.

Absolutely fascinating. Watched in one go. Although certainly not what I expected. I expected more scares.
There is no one evil mastermind. Instead there is a web of lies that also evolves over time.
It’s easy to look at everything with a modern cynical eye. But it’s important to remember those people honestly believed in things like Hell and Purgatory.
There’s a lot of subtelty in the dialogs, without them being vague. Like: “He went to school, and I didn’t”. In 1860, 40% of women in the UK were illeterate.
Poor box is an interesting detail. The local church may be monetarily benefiting from a local Saint or miracle, but not the family. The family gets the house at best.
Another interesting detail: chickens in the main room. Although I guess the family could be considered a lower-middleclass: they have chickens, and a maid!

Midsommar does all the usual horror movie things: plenty of gore, cult village you cannot leave alive, bunch of outsiders (different clothing, speak English instead of Swedish) that get picked off one by one. Not much screamers, but they do have corpses that open their eyes. But it does a lot of things also differently.

Most things happen during daytime. Or, to be more precise, it’s hard to distinguish between day and night. I learned that there’s even a name for that: “daylight horror”.
Turns out that we watched the regular version, which is already 2:30 hours long. But I can’t complain: watched it in one go, and the amount of detail and characters do make up for the length.
There’s also a Director’s Cut, which is almost three hours.
Sharp transitions. Danni walks into a bathroom in Christians apartment, and she’s in the bathroom of the airplane. Josh is sitting at the table during day, then he’s sitting on his bed at night, thinking of sneaking into the temple.

Reflections. Danni sees a scary reflection after taking the mushroom tea. Josh sees the reflection of what he thinks is Mark. The table they use for celebrations is reflective.

Bear. There’s the bear poster, a live bear in the cage, bear in the Matron’s house, and of course the bear ending.

Distortions. When heroes take hallucionogenic mushrooms, viewers experience this as well, from a 3rd person view.

That goes with the 4th wall stares: different characters have that long stare into the camera, when there’s nothing for them to look at.

Things I didn’t get at all: Scissors under the pillow and inbread oracle.
Although maybe oracle supposted to be vague: can the Elders really interpret his drawings? Or are they just using him as an excuse to promote their own plans?

One thing that Director’s Cut explains, though, is why the British girl is shown drowned and in some kind of a fishnet with pictures in the last scenes of the movie.
There’s another scene, when a ritual of sacrifice to the river happens. And one of the boys is offered, wearing a fishnet (he is sacrificed to the water) and probably the most precious things (pictures of his relatives and child toys, I assume). Then the ritual is interrupted. Guess that’s because they found a replacement.

DRC was ruled between 71-97 by a dictator. Then from 2001-2019 there was a “President”. 2019 was the first time of peaceful transition of power.
Rwanda’s “President” rules since 2000, indefinitely.
In between those two countries, there’s the Virunga national park, protected by a bunch of dedicated rangers.
The most impressive part of this documentary is the undercover filming: Congo official trying to bribe the rangers, corporation mercenaries, sorry, contractors, discussing between themselves how Europe should recolonize Africa. What you get when you scratch the civility.

Very good character exposition. Notice how literally all of the characters are in the same scene, and each has a different pose that tells something about them.

The 3D elements are literally in the face.

There are some annoying screamers. But they got the atmosphere of Lovecraftian horror just right.

Moreover, the concept of a spaceship that traveled places and became a living organism is very W40K. Suprisingly, this is not even a coincidence, as the writer admitted he was inspired by W40K.

Second part of the movie does feel cramped. Guess that’s where they cut the 40 minutes out.

It’s a joy to watch, because it’s all filmed in London. Some places are very recognizable. Elephant and Castle, for example, before it was demolished.
The narrative reminded me of Sharp Objects quite a bit. Women can be abusive and dangerous. Not just men. Marcella stalks and even hits her husband that decided to leave her. And the camgirl portrayed by Florence Pugh beats a guy and steals his stuff. But there are also a lot of men with different levels of abusiveness. It’s like every episode we have a new suspect.
The idea of protagonist having blackouts or fits of rage to the point they aren’t sure if they may be the killer without knowing it is for sure isn’t new. Taboo, also set in London, is just one example. But I think it’s the first time when it’s a female protagonist.
Also, some themes I don’t encounter much. Like dealing with your kids while separated.

Blacksplotation movies are back!
So, you have a very advanced civilization, and you put as the head of all the research a teenager, that also happens to be the princess? That’s not suspicious at all!

Then, you have all that technological advancement, but you still… train fighting rhinos? And you have street markets. Yeah.

Northern niggas confused me a lot. Although alright, technically Kilimanjaro is high enough to have an arctic climate.

I guess it’s considered a funny joke by some to call every white American “a colonizer”?

Why does your council looks like a bunch of clowns?

The first half of the movie is just setting the stage with a long chase in South Korea.

The second half is a strange combination of fighting and dancing. Neither is particularly enjoyable.

I was planning to write some more about how bad that movie is, but someone already did this job better than I ever could: