Change Your Image
dev-null-7
Reviews
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022)
Better than most, short of perfect
I'm quite conflicted about this movie. Without spoiling too much, it's clear that it deals in facing one's own mortality in tandem with one's hopes and dreams vs. One's actual circumstances. And that it tackles these themes at all (in a quite entertaining AND funny way, may I add) already elevates this title far above the generic feel-good (or worse, mindless action-driven) fare we get so much of these days. So, you know, kudos for that, slow clap, or whatever floats your boat. Consider me duly impressed, because I AM.
Then again, there's the root of the problem: the general idea being happiness IS within reach - just as long as you surrender any dreams (or in this case, "wishes") you may have had, and acknowledging that whatever it is you have is pretty much going to be as good as it gets. On the one hand, this is really nice advice, for anyone who might remain blind at the good things in their life they already have. Appreciating that is definitely something we all need more of, one way or another. On the other hand, the message conveyed also implies that the price of this happiness is giving up any dreams you may have had, so that you can properly appreciate whatever it is that you DO have. Puss in Boots and Goldilocks both have happiness within their reach - but its price is to give up whatever they were wishing for before they decided to grab it. Pursuing which might well have lead them both to solitude and ruin - but the sacrifice of which is still very much a sacrifice of whatever they COULD have had, been, or achieved. If "realistically, you'll never be an astronaut, but you can be a very, very good baker" sounds good to you, then you'll love this. Otherwise, you might - might - feel pretty seriously short-changed...
Gravity (2013)
Vastly over-hyped CGI-fest
If you're easily distracted by shiny objects, sure, you'll love this movie - and hey, more power to you; it does look like a million bucks (well, lots of millions actually) no question about it. If, however, you like your entertainment having something resembling a plot and/or know anything at all about things moving around other things in space, you'll be brutally disappointed - the plot is thinner than a soap bubble and the science... well... let's just say there's nothing they do that doesn't break physics in some way.
I'm not going to try to pick apart every single thing here from why debris doesn't cascade like that to how shrapnel would either float past fairly harmlessly, zip past completely invisibly fast or not be in your orbit at all, to how there's no "tug" on a tether in space once all parties involved stopped moving relative to each other, to how you don't just skip between vastly different orbits at a whim etc; it's not any particular point when things get stretched thin, the whole wreck is running on pure fantasy from beginning to end. Others wrote at length about that already...
But therein lies the problem. There's suspension of disbelief, and there's mandatory lobotomy - this flick requires the latter, sadly. I have no problem with Warp drives in Star Trek or 1m long lasers in Star Wars - because they are admittedly fantasy worlds, never sold as "realistic", as something that is actually conceivably happening involving contemporary technology. "Gravity" on the other hand would have you believe just that - being in the same class as, say, "Apollo 13". Well, fat chance.
I mean, seriously - could you really watch, say, a police procedural allegedly set roughly in the present, in this universe where two cops in New York talk about taking the next lawnmower to Moscow with a straight face...? Would you really want to have your plot pivot on that...? If anything, that would be MORE realistic than the orbit-hopping-with-a-nearly-depleted-MMU-or-landing-rockets in "Gravity".
As far as I'm concerned, all the shiny FX in the world are completely worthless if the movie systematically makes it impossible for me to suspend disbelief, and doesn't at least attempt to reward me with an exquisite plot that would make up for it. "Gravity" puts all its chips on lots of 3D 'splodey things and whizzy things, and that is why it completely fails for me. If you can leave your brain at home going to see this, go for it. Everyone else: AVOID.
A porcelánbaba (2005)
On a scale of one to ten? Negative, if you ask me...
I was careless enough to let myself dragged into watching this, without checking first what I would go to see. BIG mistake. In short: this flick didn't work for me at all. Big time. Now, just for context: no, I'm not an action-and-shiny-fx-only-please guy. Yes, I do quite like good "art" movies. I do like Kurosawa, I do like Tarkovsky. I do like fantasy, and movies with an unlikely premise. I can happily watch Stalker, or Dogville, or even the grass growing, or the paint dry, if I can relate to it. But this, I couldn't. Sorry to disagree with everyone else here apparently, but one hour into the movie I was seriously considering starting to mentally calculate decimals of Pi, just to get away from it. Why? Because what you are presented with here are several unrelated stories of "miracles", that don't go anywhere. No real connection between them, other than (presumed) common location. No context in time or space. Hardly any spoken dialog at all. No reason is given for the miracles happening. No reason is given for nobody seeming to be seriously startled by the fact that they are happening at all. No conclusion of their significance is drawn, at least none that I can see. No possible cause or source or explanation is given or even proposed for them. No thought provoking issue or question is exposed. Let's see... have you seen the starting scene of "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead" where the tossed coin comes up "heads" every time...? What if that movie abruptly ended right there, with that? What would that tell you? How would you relate to it? Would it be a great movie? - That's how I feel about this one. It just bounced right off me. I was just sitting there at the end, thinking "Wha...? What am I supposed to do with this?" Imagine watching a Picasso with a few random geometric forms on it - that's about as much sense as you can make of this flick. Unless of course it "clicks" for you, and you can fill it with your own answers and meanings. Well, I couldn't. It didn't even manage to touch me (emotionally), though I can see how it might, some of you (it does try, boy, it does...). If I ever TRULY and ABSOLUTELY wasted 90 minutes in my life, this had to be it. Utter crap as far as I'm concerned. Good luck to you if you still want to give it a try...