Siren is a tie in with the second game. It features MTV Cribs style slow motion speed up establishing shots. It features minimal farsight-zombos-hellscape netherplane. The kinetic energy of the boring first half eventually drowns under them not having any budget to do anything and none of the actors being any good.
There is a 4 minute scene where the heroine reads and excel article full of information the audience has already seen. We see the openning scene again.
Despite that there are several multicam style scenes where either they film the scene 5 times from different angles or filmed once with 5 cameras. It was uhh strangely noticable.
Mother! : Aronofsky made a metaphorical story with Xenogearesque biblical references about how heās a shitty boyfriend to Jennifer Lawrence. She broke up with him afterwards. Whatās not to love
Your name: This is definitely Anime BS but I did almost cry at the end so there you go
Good time: See title
Open at Night: French comedy that maybe wasnāt even released in the states, moving on
Okja: I mean, big guts to put such a huge anti-meat message in this blockbuster
Twin Peaks: The Return - It totally counts, damnit! This may have aired as TV, but itās one of David Lynchās greatest works of cinema. My whole summer was all about this show.
The Florida Project - This captured Orlando, FL perfectly. It portrayed the experience of extreme poverty without judgement, but also without condescending sentimentality or romanticism. It was empathetic without being exploitative. It really situated me in the point of view of a child. The ending made me cry.
Fraud - Not enough people saw this, and fully explaining whatās great about it would spoil the movie. A documentary filmmaker found a youtube channel full of hundreds of hours of home movies from a family obsessively documenting their lives. From that footage he constructed a narrative of their lives, including an act of insurance fraud and arson that they committed and filmed. The family is punch drunk on consumerism, and the way the movie documents this is mind blowing. This thing has more to say about class in America than pretty much any other film Iāve ever seen. Also, itās directed by the person who made Marcel the Shell, weirdly enough. Donāt look up anything more, just watch this movie.
Raw - Amazing French coming-of-age body horror film. The sibling relationship in this is so well-drawn. The scene with the finger was so visceral, so awkward, so funny, and so horrifying. It was maybe the moment that stuck with me the most from any film this year.
Good Time - One of the most effective one-night-in-NYC thrillers I can think of. Tense all the way through, and the way the main character operates will baffle and impress you.
Get Out - Not much I need to say about this one, itās all been said. Jordan Peele is such an exciting new voice in cinema. I can feel that this dude is going to be a great American master.
Okja - The worldās cutest and funniest eco-terrorists. I loved this movieās simple absurdist vibe.
Dawson City: Frozen Time - This is a collage film documentary about the discovery of a collection of frozen film reels buried in the ice under a hockey rink in the gold rush city of Dawson in the Yukon. The collection contained a bunch of silent films that were formerly thought to be lost. This film tells the story of Dawson City, the gold rush, and the film prints by using footage from those prints themselves. I have a real soft spot for collage film, and this one is done very well.
Nocturama - I still donāt know whether I think this film is good, but I can tell itās going to stick with me more than most films I saw this year. Itās hard to explain but thereās something about this thing.
Blade Runner 2049 - I want more epic, uncompromising big-budget sci-fi art films please!
I finally watched Logan, it was actually pretty good imo. It felt kind of like a Marvel movie in the style of the Marvel Netflix shows. The good ones at least. I can imagine that wolverine hanging out with Jessica Jones
I liked that they did the Fury Road thing and released a B&W version as well, which works pretty well. Also that they made the comics exist in the universe.
Maybe thatās for the best, though basically that comparison amounts to there being more violence, drinking, and talking than most Marvel movies. It also has (at least) two (simulated) long-take action sequences that are kind of a hallmark of the Netflix shows. There is nothing nearly as hamfisted as the Daredevil courtroom antics/deus ex ninjitsu. Iād say if you hated even Jessica Jones you probably would not get anything out of Logan.
Everyone says āfuckā a lot! Itās weird to hear Professor X say āFuck!ā
There is one sequence that totally just becomes way too āedgyā for my liking and makes the whole thing just feel incredibly dismal and mean spirited, rather than just gritty and dark. If youāve seen it you know what Iām talking about Iām sure. any time a movie introduces innocent bystander supporting characters with relative depth only to kill them all off for the sake of motivating the main characters, I just get really sad. But I guess itās cool to see Eriq La Salle again
But other than that I liked it. For some reason based on the trailers and the Old Man Logan comparisons I thought it was meant to be totally post-apocalyptic, but itās actually set in a somewhat plausible ānear-futureā setting. The score is also pretty good for a Marvel movie.
It also has a surprising amount of āworld buildingā crammed into like 2 dialogue lines, things that would have been entire unneeded subplots in a normal X Men movie (Genetically engineered Corn Syrup making it so that no mutants have been born in 20 years, Wolverine being slowly poisoned to death by his adamantium skeleton, Professor X having basically accidentally killed all the X-Men after having a psychic seizure, etc.it also has the least stupid āultimate villain is a dark reflection of the protagonistā gimmick in any superhero movie Iāve seen, but it is still pretty stupid)
oh and I think the only non-festival movies I saw in theatres were fate of the furious and the last jedi and neither one disappointed so thereās that!
has anyone itt watched Wormwood yet? I have not been a huge fan of other true crime type stuff as of late (and this is why, I think, although I liked American Vandal I wasnāt as thrilled by it as other people have been), but it is Errol Morris after all so I figure it would still be worth watching. Canāt decide if itās the sort of thing I really want to devote so many hours to.
Itās really, really good, especially if you are interested in the CIAās dirty little secrets. Itās also only 6 episodes which are like 45 min each, not that much of an investment in this day and age
Watched the first episode of Wormwood tonight. The production and editing are quite good and the story has good hooks so far! Iām impressed by it. Think the only other Morris stuff Iāve seen is Vernon, Florida.
I did like American Vandal, although I may not have watched the whole thing had I not been sick when it came out. A lot of my enjoyment of it was as a sort of biting criticism of Serial and other true crime shows. American Vandal leans pretty heavily into satire and Wormwood doesnāt seem to at all.
My end of year movie list of movies I saw this year that stayed with me (it is hella pedestrian because I am obsessed with the spectacle).
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Logan
Spider-man: Homecoming
Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2
John Wick: Chapter 2
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
Blade Runner 2049
I also saw Split and Wonder Woman but I was kind of meh on both. Split is just another M. Night Shyamalan movie that hints at some of his other movies taking place in a shared universe which is only interesting if you already like his movies and Wonder Woman, while generally being a decent enough superhero origin story movie with good performances from the leads, kind of drags on a bit too long and overstays its welcome by the time the end finally does arrive.
Saw Lego Batman as well and while it was fun I donāt really have any interest in watching it again. Alien: Covenant as well. It was a visual feast but as a story about humans and androids and a xenomorph it didnāt really do much for me. Every time the plot did anything it was like, yep, saw that one coming and yep, thatās a twist thatās going to come back in the next movie etc.
Still want to see:
Justice League
Thor: Ragnorok
Atomic Blonde
War for the Planet of the Apes
The Mummy with Tom Cruise
Ghost in the Shell
and other stuff I guess but it can all wait until I catch it on cable or Netflix or amazon or whatever random movie streaming site is working this week etc.