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Reviews
Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire (2023)
I'm glad this came out on Netflix and not the theatres
Overall, I liked the movie, but this is also the kind of movie that you have to watch with your expectations in check. I thought the movie was entertaining because it felt like I was playing a video game for two hours
I liked the visuals and I like his ability to create action scenes. Some of it can seem over the top, but I still generally like it
I thought the world-building was very weak and the world itself seemed non-sensical. The movie starts us off in a medieval Scandinavian-type but on a moon of a ringed planet. There's a war going on between rebels and evil empire. Somehow this village-which is miles away from a space port and who farms the land with horses-produces enough food to attract the attention of the rebels and the evil empire, and thus our hero gets her call to action. She must gather a crew of warriors to save this village
The characters that we get introduced to are very shallow and not much is given to their character development. The story follows it's beats and is very simple
If you like the genre and already have a Netflix account then it's worth watching. It's not worth opening a new Netflix account for nor is it worth seeing in the theaters.
Napoleon (2023)
Save your money on this one
Like many on here, I was thrilled with the trailer and couldn't wait for this movie to hit the theaters.
Watching the movie, I felt disappointed, like I was sold something that wasn't real because the movie fell really flat. The I thought the acting, the costumes, and the sets were great, but my issue was with the tone, character takes, and general writing
The movie opens with the French queen being led to be executed. It was a very awful event, but the music being played is very lighthearted which creates a sense that the events in the movie aren't taken seriously. This can work for some movies, but the lighthearted tone that we see throughout doesn't work for an intense historical epic
Which takes me to the characters. I feel like the movie does a very reductionist take on them, and that the movie doesn't take either Napoleon or Josephine seriously. Josephine is portrayed as a woman with co-decency and anxiety issues, while Napoleon is portrayed as an idiot who stumbles into power and keeps seeking more power to impress a woman who never tells him that she wants power in the first place. She doesn't come off ambitious herself, and I spent much of the movie wondering what it is that she actually wants or why she even likes this man. There's a scene where he throws a fit and says that she's nothing without him, and later she says that he's nothing without her, but we don't see it. She's not whispering in his ear telling him to go after more and more, instead she spends much of the movie crying or staring moodily into a lake
The classical philosophers and writers were all well aware of what a tyrant was and ambitious people are obsessed with leaving a legacy. Even the biggest ego maniac doesn't seize power for power's sake, rather they seize power because they see something broken in the system that *only* they can fix. In "Gladiator," there's a scene where Marcus Aurelius explains to Maximus what legacy he wants to leave so that he is not remembered as a tyrant who just started wars, and why Maximus must succeed him. We never see this from Napoleon in this movie. No discussion of his philosophy or why he's doing what he's doing. Napoleon himself was complicated. He's primarily remembered as a military general, but he also reformed French laws and the Napoleonic Code is still the widespread law in the world (which, again, were not shown this in this movie). People don't rise to the level that he did without some level of social tact, charisma, and political genius-but we see nothing of that in this film
The movie generally cuts pretty quickly and skips over a lot. One moment Napoleon is married, and the next moment he's suddenly in Egypt, with no discussion of why. One moment he insults the British ambassador (which felt like a scene from Napoleon Dynamite), and the next moment he receives an offer to become king, and the next moment he's being crowned emperor of the French by the Pope himself. Napoleon taking the crown and placing it on his own head is one of the great moments in history, yet this movie treats it very casually
There's also lots of anachronisms that bothered me as a history buff. In a letter to Josephine, Napoleon says that he's invading Russia with the combined armies of France, Poland, ITALY, and GERMANY. I think this is meant to evoke a comparison to Hitler, because Germany and Italy didn't exist as states back then so it would've made no sense for him to say that. Also, at Waterloo, they tell Napoleon that the Prussians are twelve miles away, even the metric system was created during the French Revolution and miles is an English system of measurement anyways
Maybe the Director's cut with the extra hour adds more, but save your money and don't see it in theaters.
The Witcher (2019)
Noticeable Decline During Season 3
I enjoyed the first two seasons of this show. I'm still watching season 3, but I don't consider it to be a "must watch" anymore because there's been a decline in writing quality. Part of this comes from the show in the third season trying to become something that it shouldn't, while part of it just bad writing with events shoehorned in to add audience entertainment and/or artificially advance character development and the plot
In my opinion, there's two types of fantasy: heroic fantasy and political fantasy. Lord of Rings is arguably the best heroic fantasy, while Game of Thrones is the arguably the best of the political fantasy stories. Fantasy shows shouldn't try to do both, which is what I think leads to much of the failings in the third season. The end result is that The Witcher is no longer the protagonist of his own show, and many of the characters are flat with key political dialogue taking place in scenes that could take place in an Olive Garden
There's also characters making decisions that just just seem weird or poorly thought out. An example is in episode four in season three, where a boatman refuses to ferry people across the water because there's a monster in the water. When the Witcher tells the boatman that he can kill the monster, that's it. Nobody seems to care. Not the boatman or the other passengers who were just being denied entry. The lack of tension in that scene was absolutely criminal.
Barbie (2023)
Entertaining, silly summer movie but not really a funny comedy
Overall, this movie was about what I expected. It was a fun, summer blockbuster packed with stars and it felt like a nice, fresh break from all the superhero movies and rehashed stories that have been pushed out lately. It's not perfect, and I feel the messaging at times was too blunt, but the elements of the movie that were silly and enjoyable balanced it out
Pros:
1) best part of the movie is the soundtrack. I really liked it and the song by Billie Eilish that they played at the end has been replaying in my head ever since
2) the cast is also really good. Robbie and Gosling fit the roles perfectly and did a good job of adding layers to otherwise one-dimensional characters
3) the writing was generally pretty good, and there were several scenes that I feel like packed a decent emotional punch
Cons:
1) probably my biggest con is that the movie isn't very funny. It's written like it should be a comedy; it's silly, it's fun, and it's entertaining, but the jokes aren't that great. Even though the theatre was full, the audience was very quiet during some of the jokes. For example, Will Ferrell tried very hard, but the role he played didn't really have any good jokes to work with. The movie leaned into the silliness of its world, but seemed afraid to lean into the silliness enough in order to make a truly funny film.
Lourdes (2019)
Raw and difficult to watch, but still a must see
I would consider this to be a must watch documentary, at least once. It discusses people in a way that we're not used to seeing in our comfortable and privileged lives.
First of all, this is not a religious documentary. Although religion is one of the two centerpieces, it makes no statements on the validity of the Catholic religion, Catholic beliefs, or the miracles that have allegedly taken place at Lourdes. Although the opening states that 7000 miracles have been documented and the church acknowledges that it considers 70 of those to be genuine.
Instead, the documentary focuses on the people-both the visitors there and the volunteers/workers. By focusing on the people, it makes the audience two questions: 1) why does God allow such suffering to exist? 2) what can we do about it? The documentary makes an implied answer, but still leaves room for the viewer to draw their own conclusions
The documentary is extremely raw, which is both its biggest strength and weakness. We know very little about the people pictured in the documentary or what is taking place there. There's no narrator to explain anything, which is allows us to connect to the people there as they are and not to get swept away in judgment or self-righteousness. However, the rawness can make it confusing and difficult to follow at times. Blink and you may miss something; take a bathroom break and you may come back feeling lost.
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010)
Enjoyable, but bland, forgettable, and not faithful to the book
The books were childhood favorites, and I've been re-reading them and watching the movies with my girlfriend recently. This book was one of my favorites of the series.
The book itself is extremely simple. Caspian vowed to find seven lords who his uncle banished, and after created peace in his realm he is finally able to do so. The story doesn't have massive stakes, but it doesn't need to. The characters are trying to answer questions: what happened to the lords? What really lies at the end of the world?
The issue that plagues this movie (which also plagues Prince Caspian before) is that the writers seem to have their own ideas that they want to explore. In this movie, they inserted a green mist in order to add existential stakes to the story. However, they by essentially changed the character of the story and weren't able to do it in the good way. Nothing about the green mist or the seven swords is really fleshed out well, inserting it made the the rest of the story feel bland and awkward
None of it even fits within the context of the world. "Prince Caspian" made a big point about how the Telmarines stuffed out Narnia and magic. It makes no sense that they would have magic swords, nor the does the movie try to explain how the swords are magical or any of of that. Most egregiously, no one on the crew seems to worry or care about what happens after they defeat the green mist. Caspian saves the dozens of people only to have them starve to death in the middle of the ocean on lifeboats
I think it could have been a really good movie if it had stayed faithful to the source materials. The actors are decent and the visuals are good. As it is, it's a pretty forgettable adaption.
Im Westen nichts Neues (2022)
Should have been called "The Last 72" or something similar
Subjectively, I will give this movie 4 stars. There's a few things which I extremely dislike from artists, one of which is a bait and switch. This movie is not "All Quiet On the Western Front." Other than the name of the movie and the characters, it bears nothing in common with the book and to be frank it should have been called something else. This movie is about the last 72 hours of World War 1. It is a decent story to tell, but one that did not need to appropriate the name of a more famous work in order to tell.
I've noticed a trend in recent war movies to present war as merely as a survival situation in a horror game. It started with "Dunkirk," continued with "1917," and now we have this. It is interesting artistic take and survival is certainly a part of war, but it's a take that's going to be played out because war is so much more than that. Erich Maria Remarque captured that in the novel, but much of what he captured is missing from this movie.
None of this say that this is a bad movie. It's very immersive. The acting and cinematography is well done, and the story is easy to follow. However, aside from Paul and Kat, we are never able to connect with any of the characters because the narrative focuses elsewhere.
The biggest artistic flaw in the movie is its lack of subtlety. Where the movie could use a scalpel to make a point, it chooses to hit you over the head with hammer, which can be distracting. An example is the scene in the shell hole where Paul stabs the French soldier. By itself, this should have been a very haunting scene; however the costume department gave Paul a muddy green mask that covered half his face. Although I understand the artistic reasons--to show the "two-face" dichotomy of war and how Paul's primal desire for survival dirtied his soul as he watched a man who by virtue of being a father possessed objectively more right to survive than Paul--I felt like the decision to muddy his face in mask distracted from the power of that scene. I also find this lack of subtlety to be an issue when it feels patronizing. We don't need to see the stereotype of the bloodthirsty general eating good food and drinking wine while his soldiers die in awful conditions to know the horrors of war, nor do we need to hit over the at the closing of the movie with statistics about the war.
Ultimately, it feels like the filmmakers lack trust: they lack trust in the source material to adequately express the anti-war themes that they wanted to go for so they wrote their own story, and they lack trust in the audience to know anything about World War I. The writers have a lot to say, but I feel like they say it in a way that minimizes the overall messaging. Instead of broad messaging about war, we get another rehashed indictment about the cruelty of the past and the folly of those who sent a generation of men off to die in the trenches.
People go to war for a variety of reasons: patriotism, a desire for adventure and to be a part of something great, brotherhood, and a desire for glory among some of them. The strength of the book is that took those reasons and flipped them on its head. Paul finds brotherhood with his friends, but each one of them dies. He fights for his homeland, yet when he goes home on leave he feels disconnected from those he is fighting for. In the end, instead of glory, he dies on a day where all is "quiet on the western front." His very death is so unimportant that his unit finds nothing worthy to report.
By altering the story, the filmmakers missed the mark and altered the very powerful messaging of the book, something which I find very disappointing.