Movies What I Have Seen Lately
Jul. 31st, 2018 11:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
netgirl_y2kI actually ended up going to the midnight opening of Solo in a half-empty cinema because my neighbour had a spare ticket. And for a movie that literally nobody wanted it was...fine. Quite obviously they should have swapped Woody Harrelson and Thandie Newton's roles around, because otherwise what even was the point of casting Thandie Newton? And they should have held it up for six months and released it at Christmas. Partly because it was too soon after The Last Jedi; I was sitting in the pictures when the yellow star wars logo popped up and I was like: Star Wars? I've just seen Star Wars. It's too soon. Plus, it means that the only big holiday movie this year is going to be the second Fantastic Beasts film; a movie with even more questionable casting choices than Solo, and Solo cast Emilia Clarke as a ninja crime boss. She was actually much better than I expected her to be, but you get my point. The thing I really don't understand about Crimes of Grindelwald is that you've got a character who can canonically change faces, and the knowledge that Johnny Depp is a cocksplat is unavoidable; it's not like anyone was going to ask questions if Grindelwald still looked like Colin Farrell.
Okay, I know I shouldn't apply any thoughts whatsoever to the new Tomb Raider movie but it did two things that really annoyed me. The first was that thing that a lot of movies and shows do, where they show what's clearly meant to be a fairly down at heel London flat, except it's got a roof terrace and a view of the gherkin. If you're a down on your luck Russian oligarch, maybe. Look, if Lara's making her living as a bike courier and refusing to touch her inheritance then she's living in a tower block and commuting in for three hours every morning. The second thing is, and I know it was just to get that sequel baiting shot of Lara with the two guns in, and maybe American movie producers have a skewed idea of how easy it is to procure firearms, but you cannot buy paramilitary weapons from the back room of a Ramsdens gold store. Good action sequences though.
I read Disobedience earlier in the year and thought this is going to be really hard to make into a movie, especially considering that the first trailer had made it look like a romance between the two women. In the book I never really got the sense that they really still had feelings about each other; Ronit was just a convenient vessel for Esti to pour her long repressed lesbianism into, and when Ronit finally did take her to bed it seemed to be less about Esti and more as a giant fuck you to the orthodox community that hadn't exactly welcomed her home with open arms. A hard setup to turn into a romance, yes? And as a result the changes the movie made to it seem like they were in love and might end up together someday felt pasted on, while leaving the ending ambiguous enough as to be unsatisfying. And if you've heard anything at all about this movie you probably heard about the bit in the sex scene where Rachel Weisz spits in Rachel McAdams' mouth, which doesn't make any more sense in context, and in fact the entire sex scene is a weird and uncomfortable watch. The movie is better as a study of an insular religious community than a relationship study, and the book does that better than the movie.
I didn't watch the new Jumanji film when it came out because I had thoughts about one of the only two female characters being played by Jack Black, and it seemed like they were doing a smurfette thing with Karen Gillan. Obviously, those were too many thoughts to be having about the frickin' Jumanji reboot, but they were also completely wrong, because it was the most delightful movie I'd seen all year, and it held that title until the next night when I watched Love, Simon.
I didn't see Love, Simon when it first came out, but I did read those opinion pieces about how we as a society are past needing sweet romantic comedies about two boys falling in love, and now that I have seen it I would like to join the chorus of people inviting the writers of those pieces to fuck the entire way off. Maybe we don't need Love, Simon but we don't need Jumanji either, and both of those movies made a terrible weekend at work (we had two residents, one of whom I adored, pass away) a little more bearable.
I entirely missed Wimbledon this year, as I was too busy biting my fingernails as England got perilously close to winning the World Cup. For the record, I unironically supported England up to the quarter-finals (by the standards of English footballers, Southgate and Kane seem like decent enough blokes who make it hard to work up a good head of nationalist steam) at which point I went cripes, they might actually win this and switched my allegiance to Croatia. Instead I watched Battle of the Sexes. Who would have thought Emma Stone would make such a convincing Billie Jean King? I think it was properly the best film I've seen since...gosh, Spotlight.
Okay, I know I shouldn't apply any thoughts whatsoever to the new Tomb Raider movie but it did two things that really annoyed me. The first was that thing that a lot of movies and shows do, where they show what's clearly meant to be a fairly down at heel London flat, except it's got a roof terrace and a view of the gherkin. If you're a down on your luck Russian oligarch, maybe. Look, if Lara's making her living as a bike courier and refusing to touch her inheritance then she's living in a tower block and commuting in for three hours every morning. The second thing is, and I know it was just to get that sequel baiting shot of Lara with the two guns in, and maybe American movie producers have a skewed idea of how easy it is to procure firearms, but you cannot buy paramilitary weapons from the back room of a Ramsdens gold store. Good action sequences though.
I read Disobedience earlier in the year and thought this is going to be really hard to make into a movie, especially considering that the first trailer had made it look like a romance between the two women. In the book I never really got the sense that they really still had feelings about each other; Ronit was just a convenient vessel for Esti to pour her long repressed lesbianism into, and when Ronit finally did take her to bed it seemed to be less about Esti and more as a giant fuck you to the orthodox community that hadn't exactly welcomed her home with open arms. A hard setup to turn into a romance, yes? And as a result the changes the movie made to it seem like they were in love and might end up together someday felt pasted on, while leaving the ending ambiguous enough as to be unsatisfying. And if you've heard anything at all about this movie you probably heard about the bit in the sex scene where Rachel Weisz spits in Rachel McAdams' mouth, which doesn't make any more sense in context, and in fact the entire sex scene is a weird and uncomfortable watch. The movie is better as a study of an insular religious community than a relationship study, and the book does that better than the movie.
I didn't watch the new Jumanji film when it came out because I had thoughts about one of the only two female characters being played by Jack Black, and it seemed like they were doing a smurfette thing with Karen Gillan. Obviously, those were too many thoughts to be having about the frickin' Jumanji reboot, but they were also completely wrong, because it was the most delightful movie I'd seen all year, and it held that title until the next night when I watched Love, Simon.
I didn't see Love, Simon when it first came out, but I did read those opinion pieces about how we as a society are past needing sweet romantic comedies about two boys falling in love, and now that I have seen it I would like to join the chorus of people inviting the writers of those pieces to fuck the entire way off. Maybe we don't need Love, Simon but we don't need Jumanji either, and both of those movies made a terrible weekend at work (we had two residents, one of whom I adored, pass away) a little more bearable.
I entirely missed Wimbledon this year, as I was too busy biting my fingernails as England got perilously close to winning the World Cup. For the record, I unironically supported England up to the quarter-finals (by the standards of English footballers, Southgate and Kane seem like decent enough blokes who make it hard to work up a good head of nationalist steam) at which point I went cripes, they might actually win this and switched my allegiance to Croatia. Instead I watched Battle of the Sexes. Who would have thought Emma Stone would make such a convincing Billie Jean King? I think it was properly the best film I've seen since...gosh, Spotlight.