[This is My Blog Place Thing]

Sunday, September 18, 2016

Watched: Laggies

Nice little indie(ish) film about growing up, both in the ways we're expected to and the ways that actually make sense for us.

This is a very, very smug movie. It's enjoyable at times but also seems like it's going for the frenetic editing of a Michael Moore documentary while also attempting to provide a narrative arc. So it's got some metatextual stuff going on that's interesting. And it looks good, it's got an impressive cast and some good cameos. But at the same time... it's easy to for Hollywood to come in and be really self-righteous with the benefit of hindsight. It reminds me of The Newsroom in that respect. I'm not sure how much I enjoy or am supposed to enjoy a movie that tells us about how stupid we are and how broken our system is, how terribly we are being lied to and cheated. I don't know.

Watched: Fantastic Four (2005)

Silly, mindless, verging on fun if not for how very, very stupid it is. Like the stupidity impedes on my ability to enjoy it. I still found a way to appreciate Chris Evans though.

Stan Lee, every Marvel film. Even when he really shouldn't.

Ugh.

Watched: Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

This skipped over necessary exposition and spent too long on uninteresting plot points to a point even more egregious than its predecessor. Just... not great.

Ugh.

Can't help himself.

This was a very Star Wars prequel-esque shot.

This was a good shot. I like Doug Jones. He's been in everything.

Problematic.

So lame.

Watched: Sunshine

Danny Boyle is good at beautiful hopelessness. If Sunshine isn't enough to convince you of that, see also: 127 Hours, Trainspotting, 27 Days Later, and Trance. This film does a lot of really great visual storytelling with foreshadowing and symbolic use of color and shadows. It's a pretty dark story that perhaps not the best thing to watch when you're living abroad and having a not great day but MAN is it well-made and as far as a "science fiction" movie goes, I thought the story held up pretty well. The connective tissue from plot point to point holds together well. And the cast is really, really good.