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Believe it or not, I have actually seen a reasonable number of films in theaters recently besides Cats (2019).
Knives Out: I had heard this was great and I was not disappointed! elegantly constructed plot; gorgeously shot; painfully perfect portrayal of racism, privilege and hypocrisy that nonetheless allows for enough of a spark of human warmth that you leave the theater feeling satisfied rather than grimly depressed with all humanity. I have heard there is a sequel in the works and I, too, hope Daniel Craig has a different accent in each one. I do find it really funny that the entire internet is inexplicably gaga over men's sweaters now; throwback to when the Hays Code tried to ban angora sweaters for being too sexy in 1941.
Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker: I did not like it and I think it was overall a bad movie and I'm mad on behalf of Kellie Marie Tran; that said I did enjoy watching large chunks of it, especially every time Daisy Ridley and John Boyega and Oscar Isaac's charming faces were all actually in the same frame and also every time someone intoned "Rey Palpatine" in a portentous tone and I burst out laughing once again in the back of the theater. When Rey turned up to face Palpatine for the final sequence I leaned over to whisper "GRANDMAMA!" to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
genarti and I'm still not entirely sure she's forgiven me for it any more than I've forgiven the movie for not having Rey dramatically drop a Jedi robe at that pivotal juncture. The prequels would have committed!
All that said the real thing for which I haven't forgiven this movie, or indeed the entire trilogy, is for making me excited about Finn as a co-protagonist in the first film and then never delivering on it. I would have forgiven this film a whole lot if Finn had had a coherent arc, but alas.
Jumanji: The Next Level: Was this, on the other hand, the best sff blockbuster of 2019? POSSIBLY. Whoever decided "how do we improve on the premise of Jumanji and Newmanji? ADD GRANDPAS" is a genius. Oldmanji is a conceptual work of art. I want to spend my life watching different action and comedy stars trading off bodyswap shenanigans and competing to see who can do the best Danny DeVito and Danny Glover. Also, I'm just really charmed that there exists a major sff blockbuster that's emotionally grounded in re-forging the friendship between two eighty-year-old restaurateurs who are being guided through mortal peril by a collection of very tired college students and one good-natured grunge dad.
The movie has only one big flaw in my eyes but it is a large flaw: the last Jumanji film included a fairly boring but inoffensive obligatory romance between two of the kids, and for a long period of time in this film those two kids were played by Awkwafina and Karen Gillan, and yet NOT ONE ROMANTIC MOMENT BETWEEN AWKWAFINA AND KAREN GILLAN DID I GET. All romantic resolution was carefully delayed until Kid 1 was once again played by the Rock; the filmmakers are cowards and I, personally, was robbed.
All that said, at the end of this film they teased a next Jumanji film involving the main kid's mom and I am there for Jumomji with bells on, I hope they drag this franchise out on increasingly wild legs as far as it will possibly go.
Little Women: The film does an incredible job making both the world and the story of the source text feel extremely lived-in; I walked out of that movie and was like "I can't believe how comfortable they all seemed in their Civil War-era outfits, they made me believe those clothes were comfortable." This is not a small thing! So many historical-set films fall into the trap of feeling like a Costume Drama and I was vastly impressed by how this movie avoided that, and how all the actors inhabited their characters and made them feel like complicated, layered humans. I also think Greta Gerwig and the cast did a pretty stellar job complicating scenes and themes like Laurie Shames Meg For Enjoying A Party, and shout-out to Laura Dern while we're at it for making me incredibly interested in Marmee for maybe the first time ever. The metafictionality, intercutting and flashback structure worked well enough for me that I'm not even going to talk to much about my questions about the timeline - I mean, they were there and we had them, but that's a pretty small price to pay for what I thought overall was a really effective and innovative take.
Daughter of Shanghai: This is not a recent film but I did see it in theaters in the past two months and have been wanting to write it up so we're counting it! This was, I believe, Anna May Wong's one theatrical role in which she played the action heroine, against Philip Ahn's dapper hero -- she's the plucky daughter of a sweet Chinese-American businessman murdered by an evil gang of people-smugglers, he's the FBI agent who's brought in to catch the people-smugglers, they both independently go undercover to investigate. Hijinks and heroics ensue!
I do think it's a little bit telling that the two heroic Asian-American stars are explicitly as law-abiding legal immigrants working to foil an illegal immigration scheme -- an illegal immigration scheme that's explicitly led by evil white people selling hope to positioned-as-sympathetic victims, which is vastly more than one might expect in 1937, but still, like, they're not fighting jewel thieves, you know?
On the other hand, how much do I love that the lead villain is a white society lady whose pose as a simple Orientalist patron of the arts is a cover for her evil schemes? SO MUCH I LOVE IT.
Anywaysovay has a much more thorough review over here so if you're interested you should go and check that out.
Knives Out: I had heard this was great and I was not disappointed! elegantly constructed plot; gorgeously shot; painfully perfect portrayal of racism, privilege and hypocrisy that nonetheless allows for enough of a spark of human warmth that you leave the theater feeling satisfied rather than grimly depressed with all humanity. I have heard there is a sequel in the works and I, too, hope Daniel Craig has a different accent in each one. I do find it really funny that the entire internet is inexplicably gaga over men's sweaters now; throwback to when the Hays Code tried to ban angora sweaters for being too sexy in 1941.
Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker: I did not like it and I think it was overall a bad movie and I'm mad on behalf of Kellie Marie Tran; that said I did enjoy watching large chunks of it, especially every time Daisy Ridley and John Boyega and Oscar Isaac's charming faces were all actually in the same frame and also every time someone intoned "Rey Palpatine" in a portentous tone and I burst out laughing once again in the back of the theater. When Rey turned up to face Palpatine for the final sequence I leaned over to whisper "GRANDMAMA!" to
genarti and I'm still not entirely sure she's forgiven me for it any more than I've forgiven the movie for not having Rey dramatically drop a Jedi robe at that pivotal juncture. The prequels would have committed! All that said the real thing for which I haven't forgiven this movie, or indeed the entire trilogy, is for making me excited about Finn as a co-protagonist in the first film and then never delivering on it. I would have forgiven this film a whole lot if Finn had had a coherent arc, but alas.
Jumanji: The Next Level: Was this, on the other hand, the best sff blockbuster of 2019? POSSIBLY. Whoever decided "how do we improve on the premise of Jumanji and Newmanji? ADD GRANDPAS" is a genius. Oldmanji is a conceptual work of art. I want to spend my life watching different action and comedy stars trading off bodyswap shenanigans and competing to see who can do the best Danny DeVito and Danny Glover. Also, I'm just really charmed that there exists a major sff blockbuster that's emotionally grounded in re-forging the friendship between two eighty-year-old restaurateurs who are being guided through mortal peril by a collection of very tired college students and one good-natured grunge dad.
The movie has only one big flaw in my eyes but it is a large flaw: the last Jumanji film included a fairly boring but inoffensive obligatory romance between two of the kids, and for a long period of time in this film those two kids were played by Awkwafina and Karen Gillan, and yet NOT ONE ROMANTIC MOMENT BETWEEN AWKWAFINA AND KAREN GILLAN DID I GET. All romantic resolution was carefully delayed until Kid 1 was once again played by the Rock; the filmmakers are cowards and I, personally, was robbed.
All that said, at the end of this film they teased a next Jumanji film involving the main kid's mom and I am there for Jumomji with bells on, I hope they drag this franchise out on increasingly wild legs as far as it will possibly go.
Little Women: The film does an incredible job making both the world and the story of the source text feel extremely lived-in; I walked out of that movie and was like "I can't believe how comfortable they all seemed in their Civil War-era outfits, they made me believe those clothes were comfortable." This is not a small thing! So many historical-set films fall into the trap of feeling like a Costume Drama and I was vastly impressed by how this movie avoided that, and how all the actors inhabited their characters and made them feel like complicated, layered humans. I also think Greta Gerwig and the cast did a pretty stellar job complicating scenes and themes like Laurie Shames Meg For Enjoying A Party, and shout-out to Laura Dern while we're at it for making me incredibly interested in Marmee for maybe the first time ever. The metafictionality, intercutting and flashback structure worked well enough for me that I'm not even going to talk to much about my questions about the timeline - I mean, they were there and we had them, but that's a pretty small price to pay for what I thought overall was a really effective and innovative take.
Daughter of Shanghai: This is not a recent film but I did see it in theaters in the past two months and have been wanting to write it up so we're counting it! This was, I believe, Anna May Wong's one theatrical role in which she played the action heroine, against Philip Ahn's dapper hero -- she's the plucky daughter of a sweet Chinese-American businessman murdered by an evil gang of people-smugglers, he's the FBI agent who's brought in to catch the people-smugglers, they both independently go undercover to investigate. Hijinks and heroics ensue!
I do think it's a little bit telling that the two heroic Asian-American stars are explicitly as law-abiding legal immigrants working to foil an illegal immigration scheme -- an illegal immigration scheme that's explicitly led by evil white people selling hope to positioned-as-sympathetic victims, which is vastly more than one might expect in 1937, but still, like, they're not fighting jewel thieves, you know?
On the other hand, how much do I love that the lead villain is a white society lady whose pose as a simple Orientalist patron of the arts is a cover for her evil schemes? SO MUCH I LOVE IT.
Anyway
sovay has a much more thorough review over here so if you're interested you should go and check that out.
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Yeah, that's such a good way to put it -- I loved the enthusiastically layered dialogue, all of them talking over each other and constantly getting into each other's space in a way that felt super comfortable and energetic and appealing and also a little bit exhausting (I also really liked the moment when Marmee's coming back into the house during the Christmas scene and just has to stop and take a breath before she lets the girls know she's home, because she loves her kids but also she's tired.)