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alexbryson
Reviews
Cats (1998)
Right, this is going to be a little complicated.
To explain why I went into this is very simply... I watched the 2019 movie. This is going to be complicated but when I see the public go up against an adaptation like that what I usually do (not always but sometimes) is try to see if there is an appeal there to it's source material. I couldn't as it was buried underneath the really awful CGI, the emotional core being just confused (like Victoria was abandoned, and the added Beautiful Ghosts seems to be scolding Grizabella even though by the end we should be more sympathetic to her... What??) and music like Mr Mistoffelles and The Addressing of Cats being utterly painful to sit through. I was curious because after that and hearing about Cats' legacy as a stage show I thought "Okay, there is no way with a legacy like that, that the original is this bad! I'm not an Andrew Lloyd Webber fan but... It can't!". So I knew next to nothing about Cats going into this.
The plot is... In written form this is going to be kind of strange and awkward to explain. Breaking the fourth wall A LOT we get introduced to a group of cats called the Jellicles, how there's this big event they all go to once a year called The Jellicle Ball where their leader Old Deuteronomy selects a member to go to a place called The Heavyside Layer to be reborn and live a new Jellicle life.
From there we get basically hours of cats singing about each other specifically how awesome they are. Which is a spectacle entirely carried by the music and the dancing EXCEPT... 25 minutes in we're introduced to Grizabella the Glamour Cat - used to be a Jellicle Cat but isn't. She is the only cat who explicitly doesn't want to go to the Heavyside Layer. More cats, an amazing dance number for the Jellicle Ball (like if you need to watch any clip from this movie that'd be my suggestion), Grizabella comes back, can't cut it, sings a short version of Memory. Deuteronomy says then that the Jellicle choice will be someone with happy memories (if that, in conjunction with Grizabella's song being called Memory isn't a giveaway another cat Jemima starts singing it afterwards).
After that more cats, then Macavity a cat guilty of and I quote "Every human law" kidnaps Deuteronomy, Mistofelles saves him but Jemima sings a song called Daylight set to Memory and Grizabella makes one last ditch attempt to get back into the group. She sings Memory in full and gets chosen.
The thing about this plot is... it's really flimsy. Only a handful of these numbers have any bearing on the plot. The ones used to set up the world, Rum Tum Tugger (only to establish who sings Mistofelles), Grizabella the Glamour Cat, Old Deuteronomy, The Jellicle Ball, Memory, The Moments of Happiness, Macavity, Mr Mistofelles, Memory (Reprise) and The Addressing of Cats... THAT'S IT. Whether you like that or not is something that will vary from person to person but what worked for me is to think of the songs as mostly separate and episodic entities to the larger overarching story if that makes sense.
Also one number that I made no reference to because I don't think it had much to do with anything even with something like this is The Pekes and the Pollicles where the cats I guess in some way to entertain Deuteronomy when he appears, dress up in dog costumes and enact them fighting only for a superhero to jump in and save the day... I got nothing with this. It's a strange number and I didn't expect to see a superhero in Cats. The rest I can somewhat connect to the premise and the story being told but I don't know why this is here.
BUT with all this said... I got charmed a fair few times while watching this. I love the dancing, the atmosphere conveyed and the numbers I singled out to eviscerate from the 2019 thing are hugely improved in this version (...Hell, everything's improved in this version). The emotional core is consistent (like it only slightly diverges when Gus the Theatre Cat is on but those are separate and don't intertwine into a confusing mess). The cats all being touched (which gets mocked a lot for it being sexually suggestive - like that and Memory were the first 2 things I was told about this) is all a motif in the show to I guess show Grizabella being culled out of the group in the beginning so Victoria can touch her at the end and have her accepted into the group again which while weird is actually a good way to single this person out in a way that can be seen from a distance.
One thing I must mention, you can tell that the people behind it are kind of throwing their everything at it to make sure that what they are giving is a version of this popular musical that not just had the benefit of being filmed but deserves to be. As this is going to be an intro to it - like everything else I've seen online has the fanbase gushing about how perfect these actors were in their parts. Oh and I have to mention, Helen Massie dubbed the voice of Jemima and it's just so pure and gorgeous, I get literal chills when she starts singing, I love it. Absolutely love it.
So as this has both a lot of stuff which simply knocks it out of the park and other stuff that could hinder people warming to it I find it difficult to recommend. With that said some of you may like it, some of you may not. I have really complicated feelings about this. Like looking online I also got descriptions like "The best bad musical ever made" and I can't help but see that point of view. Like this shouldn't work as well as it does but believe me, it does.
Desert Bus VR (2017)
Well, what did you expect?
Okay, I am not a connoisseur of Desert Bus however I know about the history, what's going on in the game and why it is like it is. I know nothing about Penn and Teller though so that is all new to me. With that said, this is exactly what I expected.
The gist of this game goes like this - you start a bus, you have to drive for 8 hours on a long, straight and flat road with desert scene. You can't pause and you can't just leave the game running pressing the W key. If you do that your bus will veer off to the right and get stuck in the sand, then you have to be towed back which will take exactly the amount of time you've been driving.
So... Why a 10/10? Well, originally this game was going to be on the Sega CD aka, this was an idea of the mid-90's. On the radio Penn even talks for a full hour about the game. In the interview he describes laughing at the senators and people like that going after video games and it was born of a specific person asking why games couldn't help get people jobs or something instead of the stuff we all know it for. Penn and Teller then took this idea for one of their 6 games of their cancelled compilation for the Sega CD to I guess laugh at how nobody would want to play a game like that. A game so close to the most mundane and boring of real life that anyone would shut it off.
So, again - why a 10/10? This clearly has different goals in mind. The points A and B of the 8 hour drive is Tucson Arizona to Las Vegas and while it does take 8 hours according to Google Maps no road there is as long, straight and flat as depicted in this game. Which says to me that as much as they insist it's about realism, I'm more inclined to believe it's about boredom.
It also gets better. There's a charity called Desert Bus for Hope where players are rewarded with how long they can sit through the game. Like even after the 8 hours you get a single point. Meaning if you wanted 100 hours of this, you'd need to sit at your computer and play this for 12 and a half points or 4.1 days non-stop.
Okay, so it's a desert bus on a long straight road that is meant to bore people, there is no pause button, there is only the reward of a single point if you get through it, people have made successful charities on just how long they can sit through it and they made sure that you have to sit there. Is there anything else of note? Well... Yes, when playing this in non-VR after a while I faded out a bit and started noticing the textures of the graphics, the motion and how much detail was put into it. Kind of like if you stare at a wall for long enough you notice the brushstrokes.
Save for the point climbing however, there is one massive and ground-breaking moment, a moment that will stop you in your tracks at what a rush it pulls, something that you will notice and keep you in the immersion of driving through a desert for 8 solid hours... 4 hours in a bug splatters on the windshield.
Stardust (2020)
This movie sucks and a lot of it's directly related to the lack of Bowie music
Before anyone else thinks "Oh another salty Bowie fan upset that they legally can't use Bowie's music". I am aware of Bowie's music and like what I have heard yet I personally haven't done the whole massive fanboy love over his music that other people have done and considering how absolutely vast his catalogue is I have listened to too little of it to call myself a fan. I am talking here from an artistic and storytelling standpoint.
The plot is basically his first 1971 tour when he can't catch a break. If you've seen Rocketman, Bohemian Rhapsody or any of the dozens of band biopics which go into detail of the band forming and rising to stardom, imagine the first act before they hit it big stretched out for 100 minutes. While there is some effort to add new information or go into detail you otherwise wouldn't with the contemporaries... We all know that Bowie would make it huge by the end, it feels less like trying to tell a story and more like circle-jerking the audience because of the lack of budget by comparison. And no, this isn't like an art film where the scenes could be played in any order and it would still make relative sense. There is structure here but the structure is barren. That's the problem.
Right onto the music. Film 101 is show don't tell. That means if you have a piece of information that you can show, a bad thing for the medium would be to just tell people. Like one of the reasons The Room is so heavily mocked is that Johnny and Mark keep telling each other that they're best friends. Film also being an auditory medium for about 100 years means if you can listen to the music, one of the things that would feel like a cop-out would be to just have people tell you that this music is awesome, and that's EXACTLY what happens here.
What's worse is that a specific song on a specific album is required listening in order to understand what's going on. It's called All The Mad Men from The Man Who Sold The World album. I stated my Bowie credentials earlier for a reason... I have never heard this song. If this song is supposed to be a deep dive into Bowie's psyche and functions to go into detail about his wants and desires then a song like this needs to function in a way similar to musicals where the songs need to be there to serve the story and, as I said - dive into the inner thoughts of the characters. Even if it's not explicit in what it's about the meaning of the song is stated all the time in this movie, again without listening to it.
I also tracked down interviews with Johnny Flynn and Gabriel Range, neither of them have a problem with this saying (and this is to try and promote it) to go and get the album instead because they don't want to make a jukebox musical... I'm not kidding, that was their MO in multiple interviews when being asked about this (I may have made it sound a bit ruder but that's basically what they said). You don't want to make a jukebox musical? Fine but why have a specific Bowie song (a man who made 28 albums) as being crucial to the plot? If they were between 10 and 12 tracks that would make it between 280 and 336 songs. The average person when talking about David Bowie wouldn't have listened to all that yet it's almost required to know Bowie's music like the back of your hand to see. Is your intention to have people stop the movie and look the song up? Why even make a Bowie movie then if you're not going to use his music?
You can tackle some of the human elements and whatever else the intention was but as comic book movies are all the rage, what goes on here is like watching the 70's Captain America movie where he doesn't suit up for 80 minutes. Oh and in those interviews I talk about they say the backlash against this movie was based on the idea of the fans not entirely getting that Bowie wasn't always a huge star. No joke, that's why they think this movie failed critically and commercially. They also say that art like this is about taking risks... You don't need a film major though to explain to you why celebrating a rock star with none of his music and people just telling the audience that their music is awesome and making a song that we can't hear crucial to the plot is a bad idea. It's like - counter-intuitive to the entire medium of film.
Should I go on though? Oh of course. While I like some of the shots the cinematography is mostly dull, the story is basically "Bowie goes on a speaking tour of the US with some guy and has fears of becoming like his brother Terry." that's everything though, there's nothing added. The acting is hopelessly miscast (like these people think putting cheap wigs on their cast would hide how miscast they were, it doesn't).
As a final thing which I thought I need to separate, the time-jumps make the movie completely imbalanced. I'll explain. Terry is the emotional core of this movie, that's obvious as you can pick it up and the interviews I keep talking about say that they wanted to talk about mental health back then in a serious way (I know I shouldn't refer back to these but context is everything to me when it comes to a movie) but he doesn't show up when the time jumps forward to Bowie in his Ziggy gear and the movie's over. I don't think it's intentional that they discarded the only connection people are going to have to this beyond "That's Bowie" in the final 5 minutes but it's still not a good look. Even then Terry's story is incomplete. Like he is a paranoid schizophrenic and that sucks but the only thing that happens to him in this movie is he gets put in an asylum. The rest is all related to Bowie.
In short, this wasn't as awful as I thought it would be but there is still a lot wrong with this movie that makes me think just researching this period in Bowie's life, his brother and listening to his music while you're doing it would make for a better experience. Any other biopic movie I've seen fared better than this.
Sia: Together (2020)
For a 15 times Platinum artist, this is an incomparable embarrassment
People when reviewing this music video almost invariably link it to the movie it's connected to. I have not seen this movie and if this music video is anything to go by this whole thing feels like Simple Jack as directed by Ken Russel (after receiving a double-lobotomy). However, this is just the music video nothing else and... This is bad. There's no way around it.
I originally had a very long paragraph here about my thoughts on Ziegler's performance (which I feel was relevant here as it bled across from the leaked trailers into just being awful!) Sia's awful mishandling of PR being one of the most quixotic things I have ever seen hype up a film (up to and including getting into twitter fights with every autistic person who has a problem with being infantized, publicly saying that her reason for casting was nepotism, that she hates musicals... despite this being a musical), how she got controversial, closely associated with eugenics group Autism Speaks involved and how I'm not on the spectrum but I totally see how she rode her own hype train off the deepest cliff. I think I summed it up better here but it's just driving a point that Sia essentially... If you know about this movie it's impossible to be impartial to it. With that said I really tried to ask if this video was okay even if I can write a paragraph about the baggage which (lets be fair here) is entirely Sia's fault... It's not.
Okay, I'm going to dive away from the music for a minute. I need a minute to pace myself some more because... I can't help BUT hate the directing here. This isn't adding to the previous paragraph, I will explain myself. This music video is one continuous shot with an elaborate choreographed dance number. That's fine however the camera work is pulled in way too close to see what is going on even in a basic way and the main characters of the movie disappear from the shot several times briefly. The set is also entirely painted rainbow and dancers keep being added to the video.
Lets break this down. Why are shots in movies the way that they are? It serves to tell the story or an artistic meaning behind it and that goes for everything. If you're doing a one-shot scene then what you should do is have the important stuff followed and not throw in anything distracting. Sia here seems adamant to fixate on the other dancers and hold on them even though the movie isn't about them and it isn't their "pander to some reductive stereotype" THIS IS ALL A FANTASY thing. The credits list 6 people in front of the camera and there are many more which don't seem to hold any purpose to the final film. Adding dancers to an already visually heavy music video like this and doing it in one shot is like directing a fight scene in one shot and not giving anybody cues. How would you follow that?
There's also this moment where Hudson and Odom do this musical chairs thing in one direction while Ziegler runs around the chairs in the opposite direction. It's probably one of the most amateurish looking things I have ever seen. That has an easy fix, pull back enough to see both. The set is big enough and if not, this is by a viral singer doing a vanity project - find a bigger set.
I'm not done with this, I'm not even digging deeper and deeper into the same issue. There are moments which feel like mistakes that made it into this like one guy enters from a door, the camera tilts down to his feet walking then it tilts back up so they're dancing with Ziegler. This is almost sequential so it's not even a "this is a reveal" situation because we were just moved all around this location. This is also everywhere in this video. Looking at the cinematographer's credits this guy is by no means inexperienced.so I don't know if this is from a genuine lack of talent on his part or if this is more of Sia's idiocy at play as she's credited as the director.
Adding to the "lets throw everything at the wall" directing style, the dancers that seem to be there for no reason, the amateurish cinematography... What ELSE could make this music video an eyesore? Well Ziegler and Hudson are wearing blown up hands because... autistic people like hands? Again, I haven't seen this movie but Sia released this context-less. Let's compare this to something that is also weird and psychedelic and has the name of someone popular attached - Tommy (1975), Ken Russel there quickly establishes that the world we are in is weird (as the whole album it's based off was a metaphor for the guitarist of The Who finding religion) and as such you can look up any random clip on YouTube and enjoy it without context and there is some really on the nose symbolism in Tommy as well. Here, they just put giant inflatable hands on people.
The rest however I've already touched on, I get second hand cringe watching Ziegler's performance in this video (like imagine someone sending their boss something and instead send their browser history from their home computer, that's how I feel about watching this performance) although it's not her fault. There's lighting effects that cue with dance moves (because adding that on top of what's already a visual headache is... just AWFUL!) so I'll just go onto the music.
It's bad. Musically this sounds like Rihanna songs from a decade ago, Sia also doesn't have good enunciating in this song either (I had to look up the lyrics) and said lyrics have bizarre pop culture references in the song and she rhymes "I can hear the thunder" with "Give me some Stevie Wonder"... Need I say more?
In short, even if you take away that I don't like the music there is NOTHING here that redeems it. It's so hard to watch this music video on a basic level that I wouldn't expect from a 9 time Grammy nominated artist to name a touch of her success. I have genuinely seen low-budget bands do far better with a lot less. Even if you take out the controversy surrounding the movie that this music video is taken from, this is just awful.
Doctor Who: Orphan 55 (2020)
Umm... No, not the worst in Doctor Who history
Okay, I was a little late jumping onto this but I honestly keep bracing myself whenever I hear fan backlash against Whittaker's era Doctor Who and when I watched Demons of the Punjab I was so pleasantly surprised that I reviewed it as a defence for Series 11 overall. I am also one of those few fans who has seen literally everything not lost to history since the beginning. So a handful of Hartnell and Troughton stories are all I need to see.
The warnings for sitting down and watching this were so extreme both here and on other forms that I hit play like I was being condemned and... It's middle of the road bad for this show... At worst. I mean not to crap on other fans opinions but the rage against this was the stuff reserved for the animated Titanic musicals. It's at worst a crap Roland Emmerich film.
Okay, I'll skip the nuts and bolts story of the film and go onto why people don't like this and my own 2 cents on that. Right, the message seems to be one of the most vocal tearings I've seen of a message ever with the final speech at the end getting about a 50/50 like to dislike ratio on YouTube on the official channel. The complaint about Doctor Who being for escapism is... wrong. There's no other way to put it as I see this as being a milder version of Aliens of London crippling reality to write socio-political commentary on the Iraq War (See, there's precedence in the era that people are WAY too lenient towards) and if you really want to go back The Dinosaur Invasion is about a group of scientists and hippies time travelling to the age of the Dinosaurs to guide humanity in the right direction which causes displacements (meaning Dinosaurs in modern day London)... I want people to genuinely think about the latter one and how that one is the most sane. It's the same here - they write a message without realising what they wrote around it is bonkers.
As for the message being too preachy - I don't really agree with that either as there has been far worse messages in Who being delivered with the same level of being preachy. As one example In The Forest of the Night is anti-mental health treatment. As in that episode features a child with mental illness, The Doctor says that mental illness means tuned to a higher frequency (their words, not mine) and the story justifies this... Sorry but that message alone is FAR worse than this one, I say that as someone who has lived with anxiety and depression. The message of "climate change poses a very real and great threat" is at least a message I can get behind even if the delivery causes this rage.
As for the story problems there really is no time to breathe in Orphan 55 before stuff happens and The Doctor and crew react to it, the pacing is so fast that there are later scenes with the obligatory side characters not part of the TARDIS crew which pay off relationships... Except the whole time I was scratching my head wondering what scene they spent alone to garner that relationship to be paid off. There's also the Dregs (I think that's how you spell it) breathing in Carbon dioxide and breathing out Oxygen, and they hate Oxygen to the point of starting attacks. I'm no scientist but if Oxygen causes that kind of rage with them and they breathe the stuff out wouldn't that cause them to die out or something?
So... it's bad but not the worst of the show's history. I also don't know why this statement was so controversial as I did write a mini-review on a Doctor Who group and things got heated REALLY fast for me saying that. Because some people agreed with me and others didn't and those that didn't REALLY didn't like my saying that this isn't rock bottom for the show. As a final nail in the coffin for those that seem to love what came before I'll go through each of the "Worse episodes than Orphan 55 of previous seasons" in my opinion.
Aliens of London/World War 3
Bad Wolf/Parting of the Ways
Everything between Love and Monsters and Doomsday
Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks
The Last of the Time Lords
Voyage of the Damned
The Doctor's Daughter
The Stolen Earth/Journey's End
The End of Time
The Beast Below
Victory of the Daleks
A Good Man Goes to War
The Doctor The Widow and the Wardrobe
Kill The Moon
In The Forest of the Night
Hell Bent
Well... I didn't mean to completely eviscerate my credibility as a Doctor Who fan but I think I've done it. The short version is that I see a bunch of people resistant to change and so a bad episode from an era full of daring changes gets completely shredded by the public when there is far worse in what they're nostalgic for getting a pass.
Doctor Who: Demons of the Punjab (2018)
As a defence for Series 11 and this episode, as in my opinion it's one of the most underrated.
Right I'll just go through this bit by bit. I enjoy Doctor Who to the point where I have seen everything up until Resolution, not including the episodes that are lost in the classic show's first 6 seasons. I know of the great highs that the show can reach and the lowest depths that make me question what I'm doing with my life. I think everyone can agree on that. I remember when Whittaker was revealed as The Doctor and people exploded online, then I sat down open-minded to Series 11 despite being told it was the worst season thus far. I'll keep it to this episode because this episode to me shows the best of what Series 11 has to offer, hear me out for a little while.
Right the plot is that Yaz starts wondering about her Pakistani grandmother and what exactly she isn't telling her about a broken watch. Through convenience they end up at the moment India and Pakistan were displaced and all the stuff to follow - rising tensions are everywhere but Yaz meets a younger version of her grandmother and a man who is not her grandfather getting married with the possibility of an alien threat.
Okay, onto the compliments - I love the setting. Very rarely does something like this ever come up in Doctor Who and it's great to finally see it. I think as is standard for Season 11 the cinematography is the absolute best the show ever had and it decides to not use previous staples of New Who and honestly I think a lot of people are going to be mad at this but... That's fantastic news! While The Doctor does save everyone like they're Superman on steroids is a staple of the new show I love that there's finally a writer that just has the audacity to say "Maybe sometimes the situation is bigger than them." I'm not saying it's better to like one over the other but the only reason this show has this mileage is the changes it's made and I personally like this change.
Right more compliments, I actually really like the dialogue here. Vinay Patel seems to have only written 2 episodes (I haven't seen the other) and if this is the quality of his output then I'm really looking forward to it. I love the whole loving in a time of hate as a theme here and this idea in this episode is honestly more powerful to me when Prem sacrifices himself at the end to save Yaz's grandmother.
As for the problems... Well there's only one major one - back in the 60's it was common for Doctor Who to have no sci-fi aside from The Doctor and the TARDIS crew and quite frankly the same should have happened here. This isn't the only time I've seen it in New Who (as one example The Unicorn and the Wasp) and here the aliens are not antagonistic. Honestly considering this season already threw people into a rage over there being no arc (which in New Who I only tolerated at best - episodes like Heaven Sent to me worked in spite of the arc, not because of it), there not being any classic aliens (which I liked in principle but the execution is mediocre - I mean there's only so many times you can see The Doctor wipe out the Daleks for good then ret-con it the next season) among other things I honestly don't know if just cutting the aliens out would have made the fans who only watched New Who dislike this to an even greater extent but to me personally it would have made for a stronger story..
Honestly, while Season 11 is not perfect, I think this episode in particular is more than enough for me to try and stop people from throwing it to the fire as this is a beautifully shot, acted and written episode that to me only fell short of being flawless in a handful of areas. I expect people to disagree with me (when talking about this episode and season people get weirdly defensive about the season arcs and quick to try and throw genuinely bad episodes like Love and Monsters more slack than this for... some reason) but I would like to say that this is not only the best episode of Series 11 it's also the best episode in Series 10 and 11,
Depression Quest (2013)
A very average game that gets slightly worse beyond your first playthrough
OH BOY! Okay, before I start with this I know that there is a lot of background outside of the game itself within the community and the subsequent scandal about it was one of the hugest and most divisive scandals at the time. I say this for people who weren't in touch with games media at the time or don't remember (to the point where if you asked someone what the scandal was about you get 2 widely different answers). Honestly I don't want to bring that stuff up except where it's needed, which amounts to it being a divisive game as in some people love this game and others really REALLY didn't. However, considering that there's a lot of division and that all I want to do is to go through my experiences of this game.
The first time I ever played Depression Quest was that I was bored one night and found it on the Steam page completely for free. I decided that the controversy around it was so blown up that I had no idea what the game was like so I downloaded it with the thought process of "it's free. There's no real harm to my wallet if I get it. Might as well try it."
Now the gameplay is... I don't really know how to describe it because it is interactive and there are different options to get the story to a different destination (how different they are will be discussed further) but it's essentially an interactive "choose your own adventure" book about depression. Some of the choices are deleted and some of them, permanently. I know that there is an artistic reason for it as it illustrates how simple answers in depression aren't the ones that the people suffering from it feel like doing.
As for everything else like the story itself, some have criticised it for being un-engaging which while I see that I really struggle with the thoughts of whether or not it's deliberate - as in people with depression sometimes aren't engaged at all with what's going on in the outside world. But one of my biggest complaints is that the altering pathways are one of those things where it does seem as if your choices matter but it seems like no matter what you always end up at a party with your family reflecting on that time you had depression (even the descriptions are the same). I then decided to play the game with the specific intent on getting every choice wrong and you still end up there.
While I'm being completely fair there IS another screen afterwards which changes how you respond to your mother but this idea that we start somewhere fixed, it converges after about a half hour of playing and then splits again depending on your previous choices seems to be a strange and in many ways nonsensical way to do the branching paths.
As for the rest... Well, here's the interesting thing. I actually like it as a tool to re-contextualise depression whether you or someone you know is suffering from it. I also can't get too mad at this as it is a free half hour game and while it can't have all the experiences of depression it really seems like it's bending over backwards to try and do this well and honesty it has my respect for doing that.
So it's a divisive game that stirred up a lot of controversy but when actually looking at the game it's fairly okay. I mean it kind of has this awareness that it's trying to be what I mentioned I liked about it earlier and not this mind-blowing change to the indie community. I personally think as what it was going for it could have been better (mostly due to the branching paths) but ultimately undeserving of what it ignited.
Avengers: Endgame (2019)
As a finale of sorts it's good but on other fronts it fails
Okay, I was about 12 when Iron Man hit theaters back in 2008 and I thought it was awesome and I kind of had a bit of an on/off relationship with the MCU - I mean I expect people to disagree with me on this but the only decent movie out of phase 2 in my opinion was Captain America Winter Soldier. But after this became the highest grossing movie of all time I decided to catch up and see if it was worth it. As this is the highest grossing film of all time and there's about 20 films worth of backstory for this I'd honestly rather not dive into the plot and things like that as either you've seen it or you won't.
Right onto the stuff I like, I treated this as a series finale to a TV Show for some aspects and I actually think it delivers a satisfying conclusion to all of the characters. It's not easy to do that in a satisfying way for many, many characters and I'll give credit where and when it's due. I also really liked the bits in the first act where they deal with the grief of what Thanos did in Infinity War. Each one deals with it differently and each worked.
Now onto the more controversial opinions of this movie. The main gist of what happens is that the surviving heroes find a way to go back in time to undo what Thanos did in Infinity War for their own gem collecting - okay, fine. My problem is that they establish that they can't change what happens in their past. It's the only rule for time travel given and they literally ignore it by doing what they do in the film. I mean the argument could be made that they said they'll put the stones back immediately after undoing what Thanos did but Thanos also gets wind of this despite it not being in any of the films beforehand and past Thanos travels to the present to stop them but Iron Man kills him - more stuff that makes no sense. It's literally the focal point of the entire plot.
Now onto another point of the plot which is also kind of a complaint with Infinity War but no matter, I'll bring it up here - Thanos' plan is moronic. I get that what they're going for is a more sympathetic look at him and not the guy who did those things because he wants a romantic relationship with The Grim Reaper but if with no warning half of Earth (just Earth) got snapped away then cars would have no drivers, planes would have no pilots and economies would pretty much crash as a result. Causing way more death and starvation than doing nothing to combat overpopulation - I mean Thanos literally says in Infinity War that it's completely random. I mean I know he takes out half the universe in the comics and introducing The Grim Reaper would be a bit out of nowhere, I admit both these things however I really think "The universe is overpopulated so I'll kill half the universe with a magic glove that can control said universe" just really doesn't work.
As a way to say goodbye to the majority of heroes who appeared in the MCU previously this satisfies on that front but my problem with it is that the entire story save for the first act where they're trying to recover, before the time travel thing gets introduced is really not satisfying and considering this is the longest MCU film and that it wraps up everything the overwhelming feeling I get from this is exhaustion. There is good here but while I like previous MCU films this big crossover feels less like wanting more out of it and more like I need to take a break from the series and play catch-up again.
Joker (2019)
Solid film but there are glaring problems
Okay, when I first heard that there was going to be a Joker origin story film I just didn't want anything to do with it. I just feel as though with his ideology in the comics, the cartoon, The Dark Knight movie and other stuff that less is more to explain why he is the way he is. Then the first trailer hit and my expectations changed again, it changed them from "kind of meh" to completely sold on the idea. So I sat down and watched it and... it's GOOD but things get a bit complicated.
I'll skip over the plot because I'd like to summarize the benefits and disadvantages this has as a film rather than go over the plot to a movie you've either seen or want to see (I mean I assume that's why readers are here). I'll start with the compliments - Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck is a good and nuanced performance with the steady deterioration from mentally ill but harmless guy that wants to make people laugh, take care of his mother and make ends meet to a psychopathic killing machine is well done, and to address the controversy - I really struggle to see how anyone can interpret this as anything other than sympathetic villain, as in you can see why he does what he does but you don't agree with it.
I'd also say the acting from the other main players, the cinematography, the way it flawlessly blends fantasy in with reality so any 2 people can walk out of this with different opinions of what actually happens in this movie all works well as is the rather nihilistic nature of the plot - where things escalate over essentially nothing does fit in with the idea that this is an origin story to a villain that does horrible things because he thinks it's funny.
So what are my problems? Well I don't think they got the character of The Joker down for one thing - Arthur Fleck slips in and out of fantasy stuff like dates and appearances on his favourite comedy show. I'm going to say it - The Joker's blend of crazy ISN'T the failure to distinguish between fantasy and reality - it's that his ideology is so warped that all the murder, mayhem and violence - he thinks the pain he causes has a funny side to all of it. He also creates complex and intricate plans to all of this - he is essentially as smart or smarter than Batman, a self proclaimed "World's Greatest Detective" but also his opposite. Arthur Fleck seems more like a character The Joker of other media would use(for his plan), chew up and spit out like he frequently does with Harley Quinn.
Well I don't think the whole "That's not The Joker" is a bad thing, just when you call your movie Joker - it really needs to be said. My other complaint is a very simple one - this story does have themes in it. Mental illness, not treating it properly from the government, income inequality, failed dreams, failed job prospects, failed dating prospects, horrible blood relatives and does absolutely nothing with it. The final scene cuts back to Fleck in a mental hospital - meaning it's big statement on this is "These exist, do with that information what you will". Even in media that tries the "all is for nothing" stuff whatever it starts bringing up as themes it usually follows through, this doesn't.
I do want to stress that I did enjoy this movie - I just feel as though the idea might not have been there to begin with and people seem to overlook the elements within the film that really aren't as strong - at least not strong enough to be considered #10 on the "Best movies of all time" list.
They (2017)
disappointing watches in recent memory
This is a movie where not many people have seen it but it's one of those ideas that ideally should work out. This is the first movie that I'm aware of with a non-binary lead character. I stumbled on this little fact a while ago and thought that it's worth taking a look at on that alone. So I found a copy and watched it and if you're expecting anything amazing then I have disappointing news, I then looked on here and didn't think the other haters had the right perspective so I finally decided to write a review on it.
The set-up is that J is a teen who identifies as non-binary. They've been on puberty blockers for years and unsure of which puberty is right for them. Unfortunately their doctor says that now is the time to get J off and has the whole weekend or so to decide whether to grow up as more male or female, while feeling disconnected from their older sister and her boyfriend.
In terms of what I didn't like, then the directing is awful. The other haters criticised the acting (my thoughts on that later) but faces being cut off in shots so you only see half of someones face for no artistic reason, stuff in the foreground obscuring actors faces, showing a conversation either through a single character is all we see for most of a three person conversation or have the oly thing we see being what they browse on their computer (TWICE!) and a shot where you only see a finger tapping on a car door to convey that J was in there. I'm sure there's other stuff in here but it's distracting how much it either feels like there's no effort into the shots or they tried too hard to be avant-garde and make their mark, but failed.
There's also another thing, it's about how they handle the topic of the movie. For a movie about being non-binary you'd expect some persecution, some idiot being wrong about it in a way that denies their existence. Gone (or I should say off-screen in a visual medium, we only hear second hand from J themselves)! J coming out is gone! What the choice the whole movie hinges around as is gone. The last thing is that for 20 minutes in this 80 minute movie we focus entirely on Iranian-American people and the struggles they go through. Look, this is fascinating stuff and in another movie I wouldn't have minded but the problem is that for the entire time I was thinking "Hey, doesn't J have to contemplate their decision?" It feels like an entirely different film.
I really wanted to like this so I'll go through what I actually liked about this movie. I did say some harsh things about the directing earlier (I backed it up but my point is you can make your own judgement on what I had to say to back it up) but one thing that is captured is the disconnection between J and the stuff around them that doesn't involve this decision. We know that they like poetry and there's one they keep repeating that's meant to convey their loss of youth and the scariness going forward and whether what they decide is a mistake. All of that is done well and Rhys Fehrenbacher does pull the performance off. Him being a trans boy mid-transition playing this role also makes it a lot more believable.
In short, the amount of potential I saw in this movie was enormous. I understand how representation matters in fiction (namely if they aren't represented then long story short, stuff like being non-binary is an alien concept to some and may not lead to as widespread acceptance) and to see it end up like this is really disheartening. I really wanted to like this. Trust me in saying that, and I did find stuff in it to like. It's inescapably not very good. I'm really, really sorry. Check it out if you're curious but if not - I wouldn't bother to be honest.