Movies, Again
Dec. 21st, 2024 01:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
netgirl_y2kI got a new phone recently and every time I turn the bloody thing on it asks me if I want to set my 'AI' assistant, and no, no I don't, and if you ask me again, phone, I will hit you with a brick.
Anyway. My whole watch a movie every night project has fallen by the wayside to be replaced by a hopefully more sustainable watch two new to me movies a week thing, so let's see how that goes.
Blink Twice - This I watched by accident. Someone recommended me a movie with a similar, but, vitally, different title, and I failed at typing words into a search bar. And I'm not sure anyone would have recommended this to me because of my well known discomfort with onscreen sexual violence, that said I do not entirely regret watching this.
The plot of this is that two waitresses at a fancy event manage to finagle their way into an invitation to a billionaire's private island, and instead of being, he's fucking Epstein. Things get increasingly weird and creepy, like it turns out none of the other female guests knew they guys before they came to the island either, they start losing time, someone goes missing and no one else remembers her. The twist turns out to be that the island is home to particular species of snake whose venom causes memory loss and the men have been using this to assault the women nightly and have them forget about it every morning.
The onscreen depiction of this is more explicit than would be my preference, although definitely from the perspective of the female characters, which makes it less creepy although no less upsetting. The main bad guy is played by Channing Tatum, a guy I am so used to seeing in himbo romcom mode that it made him all the more terrifying here. It was also the directorial debut of Zoë Kravitz, one of the nepo babies who is not without talent, so I'll be interested to see what she does next.
A not uninteresting watch that nevertheless I shall never watch again.
The Kid Detective - This movie is why it is sometimes - yes, not always - but sometimes a good idea to pick a movie you've never heard of at random to watch, because this was so good. So the setup is that there is a little kid who is this genius detective who is lauded by his town and is better than the police. So far, so twee. But it almost immediately time jumps twenty years and the kid detective is now Adam Brody, a disaffected thirty something who is still looking for lost cats and trying to prove that eleven year olds are lying about having trained with the Mets, and then he's hired to solve a real case.
It's part mystery, part noir, and I really, really enjoyed it.
Tár - It took me a while to get this one after it popped up on Netflix, because a nearly three hour Me Too movie starring Cate Blanchett is not immediately the easiest sell in the world. I liked it. It doesn't feel nearly its length, Cate Blanchett's performance is immaculate, it's beautifully shot in a very self aware this-is-a-movie type way, and I've certainly thought about it a lot since.
Mostly, though, I found it interesting on a meta level. Like, you can really feel the invisible hand of the director here; the story he wanted to tell is overwhelmingly a story of things men do to women, and you can tell he knows that, and making the main character a woman is a choice that I lurch between finding an interesting way to talk around his point and a cowardly attempt to sidestep backlash. I do, though, suspect that if this movie was being made now only a couple of years later they wouldn't have bothered with the genderswap and just gone with a man, and I think that's bad, probably.
Knock at the Cabin - This is the first M. Night Shyamalan movie I've watched since The Beach That Makes You Old made me so angry I could chew glass, and it does that M. Night thing where he makes two thirds of a really good movie and then ruins it by over explaining everything because he's allergic to ambiguity.
The most interesting thing about this is the cast. Dave Bautista is excellent, by now well out of Drax the Destroyer mode. Not related to his performance here, but will somebody not cast this guy as the romantic lead in a romcom, he'd be so good. It was weird to see Rupert Grint show up, not just in the 'hey, I've not seem this guy in anything in a while' way, but in the 'hey, Rupert, how are those assorted tax crimes going?' way.
Attack the Block - A fun little fairly low budget alien invasion movie, mostly notable now for starring John Boyaga and Jodie Whittaker before they were better known for other things. Not a waste of ninety minutes if it pops up.
In the spirit of the season I have watched both Hot Frosty and Red One, and, hear me out, Hot Frosty is better. Like, okay, I watched it under ideal circumstances (with friends, while drinking slightly too much Bailey's, with the express purpose of making fun of it) but everyone involved with Hot Frosty understood the assignment. They were trying to make the movie Hot Frosty, and indeed they did. Red One is so forgettable that a) I have been calling it Red Notice all week, and b) if you told me that every single person involved here tripped and made this movie accidentally, I would believe you.
Anyway. My whole watch a movie every night project has fallen by the wayside to be replaced by a hopefully more sustainable watch two new to me movies a week thing, so let's see how that goes.
Blink Twice - This I watched by accident. Someone recommended me a movie with a similar, but, vitally, different title, and I failed at typing words into a search bar. And I'm not sure anyone would have recommended this to me because of my well known discomfort with onscreen sexual violence, that said I do not entirely regret watching this.
The plot of this is that two waitresses at a fancy event manage to finagle their way into an invitation to a billionaire's private island, and instead of being
The onscreen depiction of this is more explicit than would be my preference, although definitely from the perspective of the female characters, which makes it less creepy although no less upsetting. The main bad guy is played by Channing Tatum, a guy I am so used to seeing in himbo romcom mode that it made him all the more terrifying here. It was also the directorial debut of Zoë Kravitz, one of the nepo babies who is not without talent, so I'll be interested to see what she does next.
A not uninteresting watch that nevertheless I shall never watch again.
The Kid Detective - This movie is why it is sometimes - yes, not always - but sometimes a good idea to pick a movie you've never heard of at random to watch, because this was so good. So the setup is that there is a little kid who is this genius detective who is lauded by his town and is better than the police. So far, so twee. But it almost immediately time jumps twenty years and the kid detective is now Adam Brody, a disaffected thirty something who is still looking for lost cats and trying to prove that eleven year olds are lying about having trained with the Mets, and then he's hired to solve a real case.
It's part mystery, part noir, and I really, really enjoyed it.
Tár - It took me a while to get this one after it popped up on Netflix, because a nearly three hour Me Too movie starring Cate Blanchett is not immediately the easiest sell in the world. I liked it. It doesn't feel nearly its length, Cate Blanchett's performance is immaculate, it's beautifully shot in a very self aware this-is-a-movie type way, and I've certainly thought about it a lot since.
Mostly, though, I found it interesting on a meta level. Like, you can really feel the invisible hand of the director here; the story he wanted to tell is overwhelmingly a story of things men do to women, and you can tell he knows that, and making the main character a woman is a choice that I lurch between finding an interesting way to talk around his point and a cowardly attempt to sidestep backlash. I do, though, suspect that if this movie was being made now only a couple of years later they wouldn't have bothered with the genderswap and just gone with a man, and I think that's bad, probably.
Knock at the Cabin - This is the first M. Night Shyamalan movie I've watched since The Beach That Makes You Old made me so angry I could chew glass, and it does that M. Night thing where he makes two thirds of a really good movie and then ruins it by over explaining everything because he's allergic to ambiguity.
The most interesting thing about this is the cast. Dave Bautista is excellent, by now well out of Drax the Destroyer mode. Not related to his performance here, but will somebody not cast this guy as the romantic lead in a romcom, he'd be so good. It was weird to see Rupert Grint show up, not just in the 'hey, I've not seem this guy in anything in a while' way, but in the 'hey, Rupert, how are those assorted tax crimes going?' way.
Attack the Block - A fun little fairly low budget alien invasion movie, mostly notable now for starring John Boyaga and Jodie Whittaker before they were better known for other things. Not a waste of ninety minutes if it pops up.
In the spirit of the season I have watched both Hot Frosty and Red One, and, hear me out, Hot Frosty is better. Like, okay, I watched it under ideal circumstances (with friends, while drinking slightly too much Bailey's, with the express purpose of making fun of it) but everyone involved with Hot Frosty understood the assignment. They were trying to make the movie Hot Frosty, and indeed they did. Red One is so forgettable that a) I have been calling it Red Notice all week, and b) if you told me that every single person involved here tripped and made this movie accidentally, I would believe you.