Reviews...and other things of note
Jan. 23rd, 2016 11:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. As reported in an earlier post - I saw the highly praised film The Revenant today, which is directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, who is the same guy who directed last year's big awards winner Birdman. Inarritu is a surrealist director - who focuses more on visuals and the spirituality of both characters and story. His films are soaked in metaphor. So, if you are a literalist or not a fan of that sort of thing, not sure you'd like either film. If you are, nobody does it better. Also the cinematography of this film is...amazing. It's beautiful - filmed entirely in the Canadian Rockies...you have scenes that film scholars will be analyzing for decades. The shots, the camera work, the artistry -- blew me away. And I just saw it on a 30-45 inch screen at a friends house during a blizzard. Also Leonardo Di Caprio wins the award for the most suffering done by an actor in a motion picture, which means he's a sure-thing for the Oscar. He definitely suffers.
The New Yorker's reviewer, Richard Brody, did not like The Revenant --- the magical realism or surrealism got on his nerves, and he found the depiction of the Native Americans to be a bit too magical and over-sentimentalized. (Not sure I agree with that. Also, seriously, after years of John Wayne Westerns, it's nice to see the flip-side.) He did make some valid points though. Although not sure I'd call the film a taut classic double chase. It meandered. For 2 and a half hours. We started watching at 2:15, around 4:15, I said aloud, this is a long movie. And wondered...just how much further we had to go. Also, filmmakers feel the need to put poor Mr. Glass, our stalwart hero and tracker, through every horror imaginable. Some of which defy belief. He rides a horse off a cliff. The horse breaks its back, a tree apparently broke his fall and he manages to survive. This, by the way, is after he survives being mauled by a Grizzley Bear, almost suffocated, buried alive in a pit, swimming through freezing water, a blizzard, freezing temperatures, and not one but three gruesome Sioux attacks. I decided at one point that he was just impossible to kill. I would have cut half of that out of the movie, and moved up the screen-time a bit, so he ran into the Pawnee healer a heck of a lot sooner. I also did not buy the mauling by the Grizzly - for one thing for an experienced tracker, he does several really dumb things that were clearly plot dictated. So, from a plot standpoint? The film doesn't quite work. And the dialogue..sigh, could be a heck of a lot better.
But this isn't a dialogue movie or for that matter a writer's movie like The Big Short - this is a movie about the visuals and cinematogrphy. It's visually stunning.
It's also largely saved by the brilliant performances, DiCaprio, who I'm not a fan of, is riveting as Glass. He sells the film. Tom Hardy as Glass's antagonist and the villain of the piece, is unrecognizable as Fitzgerald. I wouldn't have known it was Tom Hardy, if I wasn't told.
Also it is spiritually beautiful - for the deep message inside it -- is revenge should be left in God or the Creator's hands, not ours. And to focus on the beautiful things, not the ugly. To hold to the trunk of the tree - and soak in its stability.
Like Birdman, it's a male-centric film, no women really grace the screen except briefly and often only in relation to the men. The perspective is unrelentingly male, and violently so. But, yet, it is amongst the most visually stunning films I've seen this year.
Interesting, the most visually stunning films I've seen are also the most violent - Mad Max - Fury Road (visually stunning, some excellent cinematography and little dialogue), and The Revenant (again visually stunning, excellent cinematography but little dialogue)
Flawed, but oddly beautiful film. Worth seeing I think -- and definitely on a big screen.
2. Trumbo -- also saw Trumbo, which is a biopic of Dalton Trumbo, the 1940s-60s blacklisted screenwriter, who managed to find a way around the blacklist to write some of the best films of the decade. He wrote The Brave One, Roman Holiday, Spartacus, and Exodus. It's a film about old Hollywood and the era of The Cold War. In the 1950s - people were terrified of Communism. This was the big threat. (Now it's the Islamic State, back then it was Communism. The Politics of Fear - we always find a bogieman hiding in the closet to rally against.) At the end of the film, having finally overthrown the Blacklist, Trumbo tells a roomful of people -- that there were no heroes or villains under the Blacklist -- only victims. I thought the movie and its message were timely...considering we deal with similar issues today, just in different ways. Hedda Hopper - Sarah Palin and Joseph McCarthy - Donald Trump. Hopper lost power eventually, as did McCarthy, both victims of their own acidity, but not before they left numerous victims in their wake and destroyed one too many lives. History frowns on them both, along with their supporters. John Wayne, Ronald Regan, Richard Nixon, and even the Kennedy's numbered amongst them.
Trumbo's not a great film, it fails in much the same way many biopics do -- gets a wee bit preachy, and feels the need to tell us too much about its subject. It's fun to see John Wayne, Edgar G. Robinson, and Kirk Douglas swagger across the screen. And Helen Mirrin is effective as Hedda Hopper. Bryan Cranston, the lead, holds the movie together and sells it, as the Dalton Trumbo. An understated performance, but an effective one, he takes on the physicality of the role -- and his eyes radiate a tenderness that well, brought me to tears. (I still wish I caught him on Broadway as LBJ.)
But the film is worth seeing for it's depiction of the era, and for Cranston. Just wait for the rental.
3. Unless you've been woefully behind on your lj reading and/or Facebook...or are just not a Doctor Who fan (yes there are people reading this and lj who couldn't care less about Doctor Who, some of them, are gasp, even British although I'm guessing not that many - Doctor Who is to Great Britain what Star Wars is to the US), you probably already know that Stephen Moffat has stepped down as show-runner of Doctor Who, soon to be replaced by Chris Chibnall.
Now this news has received mixed results. Moffat fans are beside themselves with grief. While people who weren't that fond of Moffat's reign, my former Unitarian Universalist Junior Minister comes to mind, are applauding this turn of events. It's actually amusing - Face Book is happy about it, Live Journal is apprehensive.
I'm not all that surprised, I could tell Moffat was burning out. The episodes had become increasingly uneven plot wise (there were plot holes you could drive a truck through) and the characters seemed a bit lost. Granted mileage varies on this - my flist loved the last two seasons to little bitty pieces, while I was bored, and found myself surfing the net during them or wandering about to clean, or fix something in the kitchen. I didn't even watch half the episodes. And I loved Moffat's writing, I was one of his fans. RT Davies? Mixed feelings about. Enjoyed Children of Earth, liked Family of Blood and The Human Condition, the rest, felt a bit operatic to me.
Is Chibnall a good choice? I don't know. While I enjoyed the first season of Broadchurch, I rapidly lost interest in the second and basically gave up on it after three-four episodes. Also, I can't say I was a fan of his Who or Torchwood episodes. Is he misogynistic? (Various people on LJ mentioned he was.) I don't think so. Sexist maybe, but no more so than all the other writers on the series.
Moffat's not quite done with the series yet. He has another Christmas Special, then a ten-thirteen episode run in 2017. Gives people plenty of time to get used to the idea, which is most likely why they announced it.
It's hard to care one way or the other. Sort of boring. Just another white guy at the table writing about an old white guy running around the universe with a young female sidekick solving crimes. Hoo Hum. Hire a woman. Let Helen Mirren or Idris Elba be the next Doctor Who. For a companion? Maybe a talking dog or a kid, or an old woman, or a young guy. Now that would be exciting.
The New Yorker's reviewer, Richard Brody, did not like The Revenant --- the magical realism or surrealism got on his nerves, and he found the depiction of the Native Americans to be a bit too magical and over-sentimentalized. (Not sure I agree with that. Also, seriously, after years of John Wayne Westerns, it's nice to see the flip-side.) He did make some valid points though. Although not sure I'd call the film a taut classic double chase. It meandered. For 2 and a half hours. We started watching at 2:15, around 4:15, I said aloud, this is a long movie. And wondered...just how much further we had to go. Also, filmmakers feel the need to put poor Mr. Glass, our stalwart hero and tracker, through every horror imaginable. Some of which defy belief. He rides a horse off a cliff. The horse breaks its back, a tree apparently broke his fall and he manages to survive. This, by the way, is after he survives being mauled by a Grizzley Bear, almost suffocated, buried alive in a pit, swimming through freezing water, a blizzard, freezing temperatures, and not one but three gruesome Sioux attacks. I decided at one point that he was just impossible to kill. I would have cut half of that out of the movie, and moved up the screen-time a bit, so he ran into the Pawnee healer a heck of a lot sooner. I also did not buy the mauling by the Grizzly - for one thing for an experienced tracker, he does several really dumb things that were clearly plot dictated. So, from a plot standpoint? The film doesn't quite work. And the dialogue..sigh, could be a heck of a lot better.
But this isn't a dialogue movie or for that matter a writer's movie like The Big Short - this is a movie about the visuals and cinematogrphy. It's visually stunning.
It's also largely saved by the brilliant performances, DiCaprio, who I'm not a fan of, is riveting as Glass. He sells the film. Tom Hardy as Glass's antagonist and the villain of the piece, is unrecognizable as Fitzgerald. I wouldn't have known it was Tom Hardy, if I wasn't told.
Also it is spiritually beautiful - for the deep message inside it -- is revenge should be left in God or the Creator's hands, not ours. And to focus on the beautiful things, not the ugly. To hold to the trunk of the tree - and soak in its stability.
Like Birdman, it's a male-centric film, no women really grace the screen except briefly and often only in relation to the men. The perspective is unrelentingly male, and violently so. But, yet, it is amongst the most visually stunning films I've seen this year.
Interesting, the most visually stunning films I've seen are also the most violent - Mad Max - Fury Road (visually stunning, some excellent cinematography and little dialogue), and The Revenant (again visually stunning, excellent cinematography but little dialogue)
Flawed, but oddly beautiful film. Worth seeing I think -- and definitely on a big screen.
2. Trumbo -- also saw Trumbo, which is a biopic of Dalton Trumbo, the 1940s-60s blacklisted screenwriter, who managed to find a way around the blacklist to write some of the best films of the decade. He wrote The Brave One, Roman Holiday, Spartacus, and Exodus. It's a film about old Hollywood and the era of The Cold War. In the 1950s - people were terrified of Communism. This was the big threat. (Now it's the Islamic State, back then it was Communism. The Politics of Fear - we always find a bogieman hiding in the closet to rally against.) At the end of the film, having finally overthrown the Blacklist, Trumbo tells a roomful of people -- that there were no heroes or villains under the Blacklist -- only victims. I thought the movie and its message were timely...considering we deal with similar issues today, just in different ways. Hedda Hopper - Sarah Palin and Joseph McCarthy - Donald Trump. Hopper lost power eventually, as did McCarthy, both victims of their own acidity, but not before they left numerous victims in their wake and destroyed one too many lives. History frowns on them both, along with their supporters. John Wayne, Ronald Regan, Richard Nixon, and even the Kennedy's numbered amongst them.
Trumbo's not a great film, it fails in much the same way many biopics do -- gets a wee bit preachy, and feels the need to tell us too much about its subject. It's fun to see John Wayne, Edgar G. Robinson, and Kirk Douglas swagger across the screen. And Helen Mirrin is effective as Hedda Hopper. Bryan Cranston, the lead, holds the movie together and sells it, as the Dalton Trumbo. An understated performance, but an effective one, he takes on the physicality of the role -- and his eyes radiate a tenderness that well, brought me to tears. (I still wish I caught him on Broadway as LBJ.)
But the film is worth seeing for it's depiction of the era, and for Cranston. Just wait for the rental.
3. Unless you've been woefully behind on your lj reading and/or Facebook...or are just not a Doctor Who fan (yes there are people reading this and lj who couldn't care less about Doctor Who, some of them, are gasp, even British although I'm guessing not that many - Doctor Who is to Great Britain what Star Wars is to the US), you probably already know that Stephen Moffat has stepped down as show-runner of Doctor Who, soon to be replaced by Chris Chibnall.
Now this news has received mixed results. Moffat fans are beside themselves with grief. While people who weren't that fond of Moffat's reign, my former Unitarian Universalist Junior Minister comes to mind, are applauding this turn of events. It's actually amusing - Face Book is happy about it, Live Journal is apprehensive.
I'm not all that surprised, I could tell Moffat was burning out. The episodes had become increasingly uneven plot wise (there were plot holes you could drive a truck through) and the characters seemed a bit lost. Granted mileage varies on this - my flist loved the last two seasons to little bitty pieces, while I was bored, and found myself surfing the net during them or wandering about to clean, or fix something in the kitchen. I didn't even watch half the episodes. And I loved Moffat's writing, I was one of his fans. RT Davies? Mixed feelings about. Enjoyed Children of Earth, liked Family of Blood and The Human Condition, the rest, felt a bit operatic to me.
Is Chibnall a good choice? I don't know. While I enjoyed the first season of Broadchurch, I rapidly lost interest in the second and basically gave up on it after three-four episodes. Also, I can't say I was a fan of his Who or Torchwood episodes. Is he misogynistic? (Various people on LJ mentioned he was.) I don't think so. Sexist maybe, but no more so than all the other writers on the series.
Moffat's not quite done with the series yet. He has another Christmas Special, then a ten-thirteen episode run in 2017. Gives people plenty of time to get used to the idea, which is most likely why they announced it.
It's hard to care one way or the other. Sort of boring. Just another white guy at the table writing about an old white guy running around the universe with a young female sidekick solving crimes. Hoo Hum. Hire a woman. Let Helen Mirren or Idris Elba be the next Doctor Who. For a companion? Maybe a talking dog or a kid, or an old woman, or a young guy. Now that would be exciting.
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no subject
Date: 2016-01-24 07:12 am (UTC)But I guess that'd be idle hope.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-24 09:43 am (UTC)If I had I wouldn't have been a fan of the show since it begain.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-24 02:25 pm (UTC)They hinted at it a while back - and the fandom got very upset. They'll never have a female writer either, for the same reason. (shrugs)
I remember when it got rebooted and everyone said that it had become less sexist, that RT Davies was writing a strong female character. And Davies, to his credit, did a spin-off with one of the Doctor's Companions as the lead character. Not sure how well it did, or if it ended because the lead died. Moffat tried and Davies tried to expand beyond it, but were shut down - mainly by the fandom.
Watching fandoms over the years --- it's alarming to me how sexist so many men and women truly are. They seem to be offended by anything that jumps outside of traditional stereotypical roles. As if this somehow minimizes them or their life? The Sad and Rabid Puppies debate that almost ate the Hugos is yet another example of that. I don't know why people can't handle change? What would be so bad about handing the reigns of Doctor Who to a female show-runner for five years or make the 14th Doctor Female or Black for five years? The world wouldn't end. Fans bewilder me.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-24 10:44 am (UTC)I will watch Trumbo for Bryan Cranston. He conveys so much with is eyes indeed.
I really don't understand the Moffat haters...
The second series of Broadchurch was such a writing mess.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-24 02:41 pm (UTC)But the visuals blew me away. So the did the performances. Tom Hardy is unrecognizable in the movie. (Although I still prefer Christian Bale in the Big Short, actually I prefer the Big Short overall, much better movie.)
I don't know if you ever saw Julie Taymor's film "Titus Andronicus" but some of the visuals in The Revenant reminded me of that film. There was a painting feel to them. Actually the same could be said for the film Carol, but The Revenant just felt more unique. But the plot may aggravate you -- it aggravated me.
Trumbo is worth seeing just for Cranston -- he's amazing in it. Alan Tydke from Firefly and Dollhouse is also in it, but he doesn't do all that much. It's Cranston's movie. John Goodman plays Frank King, which he played before in another film.
Agree on Moffat - but then I've always been at odds with the Doctor Who fandom, particularly true blue, old school Who fans, one of the many reasons I've steered clear of it. The fandom loved RT Davies reign, and loves Capadali, I found both somewhat boring, and not all that memorable. I loved Moffat's episodes during Davies reign (Blink, Silence in the Library, and Forests of the Dead), along with S6-7. Also loved the episode Listen, which a lot of fans despised preferring To Kill the Moon and the Girl in the Fireplace, neither of which I can even remember. So discussing the series with a true Doctor Who fan is sort of...problematic for me. We just don't understand each other. ;-)