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Guava Island (2019)
Storytelling at its best.
This is storytelling as it should be - unpretentious, simple, touching, beautiful, powerful. Very good sense of atmosphere, the imagery is evocative, music is refined and sensuous, the whole movie is full of feeling, and the animation at the start is very enjoyable. Loved it.
Coming 2 America (2021)
Great costumes TERRIBLE everything.
There is only one reason to watch this movie, and it's the costumes. Astonishing, beautiful, imaginative. What one would imagine an African fairy-tale to look like. But the movie - oh, no. Just a massive ego boost, smacks of inferiority issues and self-conscious self-gratifying illusions of personal status and grandeour. Hate every bit of it, the story makes zero sense. They should have left the first part rest in peace.
But the costumes. Kudos to the costume designer/s! 10 stars for the costumes, minus 10 for the movie... I guess I'll leave 2 in total.
Otel «Belgrad» (2020)
Good entertainemnt
This movie is fun. Light and entertaining, fast-paced, with an absurd plot and twists around every corner. Super fresh. I'm always a bit sceptical of comedies, especially Balkan comedies - I have a deep hatred of everything vulgar, and the vulgar features heavily in Balkan sense of humour. But this movie had only a small level of vulgarity - just enough to make it realistic (after all, it takes place in Serbia). The movie feels very modern and is very enjoyable. People who rated it super low clearly had unrealistic expectations: not every comedy is supposed to reveal some deep philosophical truth about the world. Cheer up, people!
Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994)
Lame, Base, Pretentious
Pale, well-dressed men with long hair go around killing beautiful scantily clad women while delighting in their beauty. They believe themselves to be deep and sensuous and the viewer is supposed to believe that too but, well, there is nothing to impart that belief: slow movement and big ego doesn't suddenly make you deep and sensuous.
Perhaps an outcast teenager would enjoy this movie: Louis, 'a vampire with a human heart', tells us that he feels out of place everywhere. The oldest vampire in the world tooks a like on him: guess what, Louis is the only one who can connect the vampire world and the human world! 'You feel out of place, Louis, and this is precisely your strength, you are the only one who can bridge the vampire and the human world, you, Louis, you!' See what I did there?
'We mistake our barbarism for sophistication, and our isolation for having special qualities.' The audience can now satisfy its lower instincts and delight in the cruel scenes and in the ego inflation scenes, all quite innocently, because of the fancy shmancy decor and top actors on the cast - surely this must be some quality art? No, it's not.
Lame would be an understatement, but the producers clearly knew what threads to pull in order to produce a box-office hit.
Why the 3 stars? 3 good things in this movie: The opening scene. Brad Pitt's clothes - really amazing, a delight to watch! Red velvet jacket's my favourite, I think. And Antonio Banderas, who somehow manages to not be horrible despite looking ridiculous with the long straigth hair and no colour on his face.
Majo no takkyûbin (1989)
Beautiful but a bit annoying
The animation is beautiful. I also enjoyed how heart-warming the movie is, how full of positive emotions. In fact, I see this as a plus - there are no villains, no excessive drama, just indulgence in positive emotions, for the most part. In general, I think that the movie business is over-saturating us with excessive drama and sensationalism, so I am very happy that I saw this exception that proves the rule. This is why I am giving it such a high rating. I like the gentleness of it!
However, the movie plot is also annoying. Basically Kiki, for no merit of her own, meets all these wonderful people that just happen to want to help her in any way conceivable. She faces no challenges whatsoever, only the most minutest ones. She is not even very nice to the people around her, e.g. the boy that she keeps being cold towards. I cannot possibly understand why this boy keeps inviting Kiki out when she refuses to speak to him for no reason! Why does everyone like Kiki so much, when she has barely done anything to deserve this, or shown any particularly great character trait? She is a witch who can fly a broom, this is not even her own merit, it is not even something that she has worked towards, every witch can do this. Is this a reason to invite her to live at your house? Is this a reason for the artist to befriend her in the forest? Kiki then doesn't even keep in touch with the artist, as we learn - when she visits Kiki in the city, the artist says something along the lines of - you didn't come visit me, so I decided to do it! Is this a reason to have a boy invite her out over and over again, and wait in the rain when she isn't nice enough even to speak to him?
What annoys me a lot in this filmis that the characters make so little sense, it feels completely unnatural. All these people are fascinated by Kiki, who is a decent girl, but doesn't deserve it any more than anyone else. If Kiki had faced a bit more of a challenge to deserve people's friendship, or if they weren't all that much lovey-dovey towards her, but more realistic - like if the boy invited her out only once or twice before she warms up towards him, if the artist didn't show so high levels of affection for what is basically a stranger, I would have loved the movie so much better.