Film Reviews
Jul. 29th, 2018 06:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatWhee...figured out how to post photos using Google Photos onto DW finally.
Saw two movies this weekend.
1. Finding Dory -- which is on Netflix until August 1. It's the sequel to Finding Nemo, which I've completely forgotten. So can't really tell you which I preferred. Dory can be appreciated on its own merits, you really don't have to see Finding Nemo to understand it. (I forgot the entire plot of Nemo and bits came back to me during this film...sort of in the same way that bits of Dory's memory came back to her. It's not that important, because we are in Dory's pov and Dory has short term memory loss...so can't really remember it either.)
I liked the film better than I thought I would. It's rather innovative in spots, and hilarious in others. Hank, the Octopus, nearly steals the entire film. He's hilarious. There's some good sight gags here and there. Also it makes a rather strong statement about how humanity treats the ocean and ocean life in general. (Hint: We're a bit too self-motivated for our own good.) In fact, much like the first film, the villain here is well-meaning humans setting up exhibits to protect ocean life.
Whomever is making these movies is clearly pissed off at the Marine Life Research and Rescue Mission.
Dory, as voiced by Ellen Degeneros, is a kind and lovable fish. She can't remember things, but pushes her way through and saves the day, reuniting her family.
It's a lovely little movie that I highly recommend, if you can figure out how to see it.
2. Ready Player One -- this is Steven Spielberg's adaptation from the popular novel of the same name. The novel is a lot better, and considering I didn't like the novel that much that's saying something.
It's a busy action movie, with a lot of bad CGI. Too dark -- I don't mean content, I mean color scheme, hard to see, and everything is in grays, and dulled colors. You'd think the Oasis would be more colorful. Everything looks a wee bit too computer generated (TRON's special effects were better and more interesting.) In some respects it reminds me of the film "TRON", except it was a better film as was "The Last Starfighter", which had similar concepts.
My attention kept wandering during it, and I was having a lot troubles caring or following it.
The best bit is a long homage to the film "The Shining", which by the way was not in the book or I don't remember it being in the book at all. Also the book focused more on old video games, than this does, in part because old style video games aren't all that interesting to watch on the big screen.
Everything else is rather hoo-hum. And that's a problem. The villains are boilerplate as are the earnest young heroes. Spielberg doesn't have much to say that he hasn't said elsewhere, in a more convincing manner. And I felt that the best bits from the novel were completely lost -- and this is coming from someone who found the novel to be okay, at best.
Don't waste your time on this one. Rent Wrinkle in Time instead. It has much better special effects.
Saw two movies this weekend.
1. Finding Dory -- which is on Netflix until August 1. It's the sequel to Finding Nemo, which I've completely forgotten. So can't really tell you which I preferred. Dory can be appreciated on its own merits, you really don't have to see Finding Nemo to understand it. (I forgot the entire plot of Nemo and bits came back to me during this film...sort of in the same way that bits of Dory's memory came back to her. It's not that important, because we are in Dory's pov and Dory has short term memory loss...so can't really remember it either.)
I liked the film better than I thought I would. It's rather innovative in spots, and hilarious in others. Hank, the Octopus, nearly steals the entire film. He's hilarious. There's some good sight gags here and there. Also it makes a rather strong statement about how humanity treats the ocean and ocean life in general. (Hint: We're a bit too self-motivated for our own good.) In fact, much like the first film, the villain here is well-meaning humans setting up exhibits to protect ocean life.
Whomever is making these movies is clearly pissed off at the Marine Life Research and Rescue Mission.
Dory, as voiced by Ellen Degeneros, is a kind and lovable fish. She can't remember things, but pushes her way through and saves the day, reuniting her family.
It's a lovely little movie that I highly recommend, if you can figure out how to see it.
2. Ready Player One -- this is Steven Spielberg's adaptation from the popular novel of the same name. The novel is a lot better, and considering I didn't like the novel that much that's saying something.
It's a busy action movie, with a lot of bad CGI. Too dark -- I don't mean content, I mean color scheme, hard to see, and everything is in grays, and dulled colors. You'd think the Oasis would be more colorful. Everything looks a wee bit too computer generated (TRON's special effects were better and more interesting.) In some respects it reminds me of the film "TRON", except it was a better film as was "The Last Starfighter", which had similar concepts.
My attention kept wandering during it, and I was having a lot troubles caring or following it.
The best bit is a long homage to the film "The Shining", which by the way was not in the book or I don't remember it being in the book at all. Also the book focused more on old video games, than this does, in part because old style video games aren't all that interesting to watch on the big screen.
Everything else is rather hoo-hum. And that's a problem. The villains are boilerplate as are the earnest young heroes. Spielberg doesn't have much to say that he hasn't said elsewhere, in a more convincing manner. And I felt that the best bits from the novel were completely lost -- and this is coming from someone who found the novel to be okay, at best.
Don't waste your time on this one. Rent Wrinkle in Time instead. It has much better special effects.
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Date: 2018-07-30 02:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-31 12:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-31 12:08 am (UTC)I mean color scheme, hard to see, and everything is in grays, and dulled colors.
So many shows and movies with dark scenes where you can barely tell (or just can't) what's going on. Speaking of Ladyhawke yesterday, even though half the movie was supposed to take place at night I noticed they never shot in the dark, just in a greyer light. You could see everything perfectly.
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Date: 2018-07-31 12:45 am (UTC)Exactly. I have to turn off the lights in my apartment sometimes to see it. And even then...I can't. Stranger Things drove me nuts. A lot of sci-fi horror series are guilty of this tactic, along with action shows.
You're right, they did a better job with lighting dark sequences in the 1980s.
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Date: 2018-07-31 01:23 pm (UTC)Don't get me wrong. I don't need a "grimdark" version of the movie, where all her fishy friends are slaughtered by ocean predators and Dory swears bloody vengeance--
No.
But, all kidding aside, that's how "Finding Nemo" starts out: Nemo's mother and hundreds of siblings are killed by a predator. The only reason why millions of kids aren't traumatized for life by that is because: a) we don't see the slaughter and b) it's a cartoon about cute little clownfish.
But this horrific incident is the basis for the whole movie. It informs Marlin's desperation and moves him to work past his fear and go on his grand adventure. The loss stays with him, and that's what Dory represents in "Nemo"--his loss. Her short-term memory tells Marlin that things are gone and won't be coming back.
And, call me a sick bastard, that's how I wanted "Dory" to bookend the two movies. She doesn't find her parents. She doesn't save all her friends through an entirely too complicated set of circumstances. (She doesn't have plot-convenient bursts of remembering...) Some things are gone and they're not coming back.
But she has Marlin and Nemo and their circle of friends. They love her very much. That's enough.
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Date: 2018-07-31 05:14 pm (UTC)Well, thank you, for clearing something up. I'd forgotten why you disliked Finding Dory and loved Finding Nemo so much. I remember sitting there as the credits for Dory rolled, with a big happy grin on my face...thinking why did he dislike this movie again? Was it the character of Dory? The message about the Marine Life Rescue Center? So, thanks you cleared that up for me. Actually this is ironic in a way, since Finding Dory is about finding memories, and I have no memory of Finding Nemo (even though I saw it) and couldn't remember why you disliked Dory (even though I remember you telling me).
I loved the ending of Finding Dory. Actually I adored the movie. I teared up when she found her parents - mainly because they were the last piece of the missing puzzle, her memories of who she'd been and was.
What was important there was by finding her parents, Dory found herself. She lost them as a child, and not by any means such as a violent predator or motor boat or some evil human, but her own disability -- her short term memory loss. And their loss resulted in her losing her memories of them as well. The whole film is about memory and what it means to people. And how it defines us.
In the movie Dory overcomes her disability and her short-comings, to be able to find her way back home. To find out who she was. When she's with Nemo & Dad, she has no memory of her parents really. She only knows she has them because it is logical -- she had to come from somewhere, right. It's not that she needs them -- note she isn't living with them at the end. No, it's that she needs to "remember" them and by finding them, she finds her memories and herself.
Nemo, his Dad, her friends see Dory only as an adult, they can tell very little about where she originate, where her home was, who she is. But through hunting her parents and finding them, on her own, she is able to rediscover those memories.. Also, she blamed herself for losing them -- by being reunited with them -- she was able to get past all that finally. That's why it is called Finding Dory, not Finding Dory's Parents, Dory was hunting for herself. (It's actually a nice subversive twist on the Finding Nemo trope, the old, oh I lost my son, I need to man up and find him. And the whole film is just about finding the kid and worrying about the kid forgetting you. Finding Dory reverses the trope, so she's hunting her parents, and as she hunts for her parents and uncovers clues, she uncovers memories. Memories make us who we are, and without those memories Dory was missing part of herself. She was confused. When she regains her memories...she knows what to do. Her parents are the metaphor for her lost memories/her lost self.
When she found Nemo''s Dad at the beginning of Finding Dory -- she was lost herself. She had no idea where she was. And no confidence. At their home on the greater shelf -- she has friends, etc, but the reason it can NEVER be enough is because she doesn't know if she has a family, no one believes her, and no one believes that she can find her way. Dory is still lost. All they appear to see is her disability. And she is thinking, where did I come from, who am I? Keep in mind, she got lost at the same age as Nemo, a child. So this is a "lost" child being reunited with the family she'd lost ages ago.
The illogical plot hijinks really were around Dory saving Nemo and Dad from the van headed to Cleveland. Which was saved by how hilarious it was. If I were to critique the film, I'd say that we really didn't need all the Nemo/Dad bits. We do need them to a certain extent, because they represent where Dory is now. But she does need both -- to reclaim her memories of the past or who she was, and to keep the memories of who she has become.
Sorry, it didn't work for you.
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Date: 2018-07-31 07:01 pm (UTC)I love bouncing this stuff off of you, because I know you'll give me an intelligent, soundly reasoned response.
Believe me, I wanted to buy into the happy ending. But to me, it seemed that almost everything in the movie kept pulling the other way, right up until she found her folks. The harder Dory tried to find her family, the farther away they seemed to be, and I was waiting for Dory's epiphany that the past was gone and she had a life in the present that was just as precious.
I may have been prejudiced toward that viewpoint by previous Pixar films. The Pixar brand isn't shy about showing kids painful life lessons and how to work through them. Carl's wife Ellie died and isn't coming back ("Up"). Riley isn't going back to her old home ("Inside Out"). Andy's grown up and gone away ("Toy Story 3"). And, you know, Nemo's entire family died a horrible, violent death. (There's also the influence of my personal family history....which I'm willing to discuss next time we're FTF.)
I liked the ending, with Dory alone on the reef, at peace with herself, with Marlin and Nemo watching over her. I think that, even if Andrew Stanton went with my version of events, that's how the movie would have ended. She didn't need to succeed in her quest. I think the very act of pursuing the quest, of seeing her old home, gave Dory belief in herself, a sense of who she is. In its own way, I think it would've been a happy ending.
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Date: 2018-08-01 12:53 am (UTC)I like bouncing things off with you as well.
While I get where you are coming from...I think what worked for me here is that the writers went in the exact opposite direction of the Pixar brand. (It's worth noting that all the films you mentioned didn't really work for me on some level, and it may have been how they sort of neatly dealt with loss. I think when we lose someone they stay with us. In small ways, and big ones. Coco sort of got that across, although I had issues with Coco too, because it made a big deal of how if you don't actively remember someone they are lost...and I don't agree with that perspective. I think the people we meet are a part of us, we learn from them and they stay with us in various ways. We don't require mementos.)
What I liked about Finding Dory and how it surprised me is it didn't go the predictable route all the films before it had gone. It surprised me. Of late, all these movies go that route and think they are shocking and real, but they aren't. For a few, perhaps, but not everyone. And unlike the other films the film wasn't about "losing someone" but about "finding yourself". In the end, it isn't really that important that she found her parents. Note that after she finds them, she barely spends time with them, her attention is on saving Nemo and Dad, and at whatever cost. She also saves Hank the Octopus. Helps him get past his fear of the ocean. Her parents were really about her rediscovering who she was, finding the shells, finding the way home, and letting go of that guilt. Letting go of the past which was "weighing" her down. After she reunites with them in that depressing spot, where they stayed until she found them again...she moves one.
And while they move with her, she's not living with them. They are part of her life again. When before...they weren't part of her life at all, to Dory, she had no parents.
It's such a complete subversion of UP, Finding Nemo, and the Pixar Trope. And you know me, I love it when someone subverts a trope or does the exact opposite.