I didn't know the phrase "broken home" could be represented so literally. I'd say this is maybe my favorite 3D movie to come out of Walt Disney Animation Studios so far. (I'm being specific with my wording because WALL-E is still better.) I liked Moana a lot when I first saw it, but I think this one might take the cake for a few reasons. First, there's no stupid act 3 twist villain kind of just there to give the movie an easy bad guy (see Wreck-It Ralph, Frozen, Big Hero 6, Zootopia, Moana, and probably some others that I still haven't watched). As a bonus, the protagonist's parents aren't dead, so that's nice. Second, there's no villain. Period. None of the characters are outright evil or malicious. Encanto doesn't want to be a movie about good and evil. Encanto wants to be a movie about a dysfunctional, toxic family, and it does this really well. And third, Encanto is a movie about a dysfunctional, toxic family, and it does this really well. This is, by far, the most interesting central theme explored by a Disney Animation to date as well as the only one I know of to explore the effects of familial toxicity as the core of the story, especially regarding the way relatives who feel unwanted or unloved and are pushed away in strict and/or image-focused families.
Another thing I liked was the plot point of Maribel trying to hug Isabela. Any audience member who has seen a Disney movie before already knows that "hugging it out" isn't actually the solution to the issue like Maribel and Bruno believe. Maribel and Isabela actually need to make peace with each other and get along to solve the issue. I'm really glad that when Maribel goes in with a superficial desire to "fix the house," it doesn't work, but when she and Isabela really truly bond, that's what makes the candle burn brighter. This movie explores its themes both overtly and discreetly, and I'm glad it was able to do so much and still feel like one cohesive, enjoyable experience. Regarding the music, Luisa's song, "Surface Pressure", and Isabela's song, "What Else Can I Do?", are probably two of the most visually grabbing Disney musical numbers I've seen so far. The shot choices, transitions, and bends in physics in "Surface Pressure" are really amazing, and everything in "What Else Can I Do?" just pops, and the color choies are beautiful. They're both gorgeously animated sequences, especially "What Else Can I Do?" Also, "We Don't Talk About Bruno" is probably the most popular song of the movie, and it's just a really fun song. I also listened to a version where someone isolated the vocals, and you don't realize just how much the vocals carry that tune until you hear it. Also also, "Dos Oruguitas" is a really good song, and while I don't think Abuela's backstory is particularly compelling, I do think the song hits harder than a normal musical number sung by the character would have been. I was thinking a lot about the ending and if I would have changed it or not. A part of me feels like the movie's ending is good as it is, but another part of me feels like the Madrigals simply shouldn't have gotten their Gifts back. Maybe I'm used to downer endings or more cynical stories in general, but I think the family rebuilding the house and having to live without their Gifts might strengthen their bonds with each other. At the very least, I wish we would have gotten more than just a single song or that Casita hadn't come back right after the song ended. (I guess the song takes place over days, weeks, or months, though, so I guess it's just a lot of off-screen character development.) I think the ending we get is primarily done for the symbolism, though: each family member is supposed to be "as special as their Gift," but they all realize that they are the Gift and don't need the candle anymore. Normally, I would hate the "The magic was inside us all along!" trope, but it works really, really well here because this movie is about not being valued by your family, and "you are the gift" is the central theme of the movie, so it really drives the message home to tell people that love shouldn't be determined by talent or worth. Okay, this is an issue that, although I mostly overlooked, I need to bring up, and that is the climax, or rather, the pacing of the climax, or rather rather, the pacing of the climax compared to the rest of the movie. It's a good climax, but it kind of just happens immediately after Isabela realizes the full extent of what she can do with her powers. The climax itself is well-paced, but it's place in the movie feels rushed. I just feel that it comes on very suddenly compared to how the rest of the movie builds up. That being said, it's not too difficult to overlook considering the rest of the movie is good enough that it's not a huge bother, in my opinion. I'll give this an 8 or 9/10. As I close this blog, I realize that most of the reasons I like this Disney movie are because it's the least Disney Disney movie: no twist villain, no over-the-top-evil bad guy, and themes that go beyond the power of love and family. Definitely an upper-tier Disney movie, anybody who says they don't like it just doesn't get it.
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If you hate this movie, you just don't have a soul. Sorry, I don't make the rules. The animation in this movie is gorgeous, the plot is amazing, the dialogue is nearly nonexistent for the first 40 minutes and still manages to tell a clear story with just the animation and music. It's just an all-around masterpiece. This whole thing is just going to be me gushing about this movie.
I don't know how they managed to make such expressive characters with nothing but eyes. I mean, eyes are the windows to the soul, but how do you show so much emotion with nothing but a pair of binoculars? Honestly, who knows? But it's impressive! Also, WALL-E and EVE's voice actors are so talented for being able to bring these simple, silly little robots to life and give them human emotions and it's just so good I love this movie so much. The soundtrack is perfect, the musical numbers from Hello, Dolly!, both "Put On Your Sunday Clothes" and "It Only Takes a Moment", are really effective at showing the feeling of each moment and giving the film a solid musical through-line. Also, I now associate the music of Hello, Dolly! more closely to WALL-E than to Hello, Dolly! itself. The animation is gorgeous. The animation is gorgeous. I cannot stress this enough: The. Animation. Is. GORGEOUS. When WALL-E reaches through one of Saturn's rings, when EVE and WALL-E are dancing in space and circling around the purple fire of the engines, even the establishing shots of the the junk-filled Earth. THE ANIMATION IS GORGEOUS. The story does a really good job of being about environmentalism without being preachy and still being easy for kids to understand and being entertaining for all ages. There's also BnL, the not-so-subtle, Amazon-like megacorporation/government that's lowkey (highkey) responsible for almost all of the trash polluting the Earth. Something something consumerism something something megacorporations destroying the planet something something Amazon will own us in 700 years. 10/10 no hesitation easily the best Pixar movie don't @ me you cultureless heathens At the start, I didn't like this movie as much as Mean Girls. I still don't, but it was worse at the start. By the end, it was still very, very good, but I just didn't like it quite as much. Still, I think there were a lot of good things in this movie. Here's what I thought.
The opening scene is really good. It tells you everything you need to know about the Heathers: they're all named Heather, and they're all your typical popular girls. You just know exactly what their whole deal is. I also like the way they interact with each other. The way they each fall into their role, down to minute details like the colors they wear, and refuse to let the others in their group break out of those roles is a great touch. Plus, when Heather Duke takes over Heather Chandler's role as the most popular girl in school, it reflects that sort of "everybody needs a 'thing'" mentality that high schoolers fall into. Heather Chandler's death scene was really good. The part where she falls through the glass table caught me off guard, and I'll admit that I jumped a little bit at it. Also, Heather taunting JD for calling her chicken and then taking the bait was funny. Dark, all things considered, but very funny. Mean Girls was more focused on the spectrum of high school evil and the humanity behind it (makes sense since it's based off a self-help book). Heathers does something a little different: rather than give you good character moments, it just kills off the mean characters. It kind of just says, "Oh, they sucked, but at least they weren't JD, school bomber extraordinaire, right?" I don't want to knock the movie for this (I'm not here to tell you that, surprise surprise, Heathers is not Mean Girls), but I do prefer the Mean Girls approach better simply because I prefer having a little more character to dig into. Heathers does what it does for good reason, though. Regina George and the Plastics aren't evil, they're just mean, they're Mean Girls (if the title didn't give that away). The titular Heathers (as well as some other characters) are the mean girls of this movie, but like Regina George, they don't deserve death or having their lives ruined. They're just bad people. Teenagers, even. And the movie does a good job of showing that, especially with Heather McNamara's attempted suicide. She's a Heather, too, but it at least shows that each person's got their own stuff going on, even the meanest people. Veronica's supposed to be a really smart character, but the fact that she sticks with JD for so long is infuriating. She realizes JD is killing people on purpose after they kill the two jock bullies, but she still doesn't break up with him until way after that, which is really annoying. You can't even say she's afraid for her life because she still stays strong and confident and never shows any fear around JD while they're together, even when he's lashing out at inanimate objects. Normally, I might think this is about abusive relationships and the fear of the abusee to leave the abuser, but that's just not the vibe I get from it. She's just annoyed at best and disturbed at worst. Also, the red flags were there from day one. She should've avoided the man as soon as he pulled out a gun at school. Plus, he and his dad talk about their mom's death like it was something to be laughed at. Joke all you want about dead parents (I know I do) but they talk about it like it was the greatest prank ever and you just had to be there, you should've seen the look on her face. Very weird, very disturbing. I know she's supposed to be more book smart than street smart, but like... c'mon. JD kinda proves his point at the end. He doesn't win, but he proves that the world would be better if all the bad people just killed themselves. Also, his death is very cool. (He gets his middle finger shot off and then blows himself up in front of the school, that's awesome!) The man has the vitality of a slasher killer (fitting for an '80s film about killing teens). All of the deaths in this movie are really fun, or as fun as murdering teenagers in movies can be. This one's a solid 7/10, it's no Mean Girls, but it's still a good movie worth watching. I was originally going to write this blog as a double feature with Heathers, but I'm realizing I wrote way too much about this film, so the Heathers review will sadly be put on hold until next week.
I went into this movie with expectations: "It'll be fun, it'll have some quotable lines, but the story won't be anything to write home about." I came out surprised with the movie. It thoroughly subverted my expectations. It's fun and has quotable lines, but it's also actually very smart. Here's what I noticed. One big thing I was worried about as the film progressed was how the film would portray the "heroes," specifically Cady and Janis Ian, while they were doing mean girl things. A trap I feel a good many movies fall into, specifically high-school-bully revenge comedies, is "The villain is a flawed person, therefore doing bad things to them is justified because we ourselves, as the audience surrogates, cannot be flawed." The movie would have been fine and still funny if it had taken that route, but it wouldn't have been as satsifying narratively to see Regina be punished by Cady for things Cady herself is doing. It's already a pretty mean-spirited movie, if the title didn't already tip you off, so I totally could have seen Regina's life crumbling and then her getting hit by a bus and literally dying. Thankfully, though, the movie does not take the easy way out on this issue. Instead, the movie (Janis) spells it out for you that Cady is a titular "mean girl," among other things. And this is coming from the girl who manipulated and used Cady to try ruining Regina's life. Janis says the difference between Regina or Janis and Cady is that Regina and Janis don't pretend to be nice; they're out-and-proud mean girls. Cady puts on a face of being nice, but she's just as bad as the both of them. Also, the movie acknowledges that, although awful people, kids like Cady, Janis, and even Regina are still just kids. They still have time to grow up and mature. They have time to become better people. High school takes place during arguably the biggest stage of socio-emotional development in a person's life, so I'm so happy the movie points out that people can change through understanding and empathy rather than through counter-bullying and punishment alone. I'm glad the movie isn't just a generic bully revenge story. The filmmakers had so much more they wanted to say about high school bullying than just, "Want bullies to stop bullying? Just ruin their life lol," and I'm glad they were able to. I also want to talk about Regina George in-depth, including a scene that was sadly deleted from the final cut of the movie but really shouldn't have because it's kind of perfect. Regina George's introduction to the story honestly reminds me of Hannibal Lecter's long, drawn-out intro in The Silence of the Lambs. There's a great analysis video of Hannibal's introduction by The Closer Look on YouTube that really dissects Hannibal's first scene and the lead-up to it, and I'm going to use it as loose base for reading into Regina George's. First, there's the buildup. The meanest girls in school are introduced as the Plastics, and how bad they are is slowly built up: Karen Smith is the dumbest girl you will ever meet; Gretchen Wieners knows everything about everyone; and evil takes a human form in Regina George. Regina is the flawless queen bee who does car commercials in Japan and once punched a girl in the face (it was awesome). And those are just the descriptors that I can write here! None of them have even spoken a word yet, but we know these three are bad news for one reason or another. This serves as both the verbal introduction to the characters and also the "walk" down the row of "jail cells." They go from dumb to nosy to outright malicious as they're brought up. And then we actually meet the Plastics, and they're... fine? To poor, young, dumb, innocent Cady Heron, who's only a day-and-a-half into high school, that sweet summer child, they seem nice and well-adjusted. Airheaded, sure, but they can't be that bad, right? The villain "comforts" our leading lady after she is sexually harassed (something applicable to both this movie and The Silence of the Lambs), and we get to properly talk to the Plastics. Karen is as dumb as they say, and Gretchen is annoying, but Regina's actually really nice to Cady. It surprises her. She's invited to sit with the Plastics at lunch, talks about where she's from, is complimented, and is invited to sit with the three of them at lunch for the rest of the week. Maybe Janis was wrong after all. No. She wasn't. It's all manipulation to keep Cady close to her, but there's one specific thing I want to call attention to in this scene: eye contact. Regina George keeps intense eye contact with Cady Heron throughout the conversation and only briefly breaks that eye contact 3 times while speaking to her: once when she says she's not stupid (I can't tell if she's wounded because she's insecure or because she's not), once when she does that silent "Haha, oh, my God, guys, can you believe her?" thing with her friends that every high school bully seems to do, and once when she looks at Cady's bracelet to "compliment" her on it. On top of being offputting on its own--I would have had a heart attack if Rachel McAdams had been told to stare straight into the camera for some POV shots a la Silence of the Lambs--the eye contact is a clear test of the waters. Regina wants to know what this new girl's "deal" is. This may be best exemplified when Regina says, "But you're, like, really pretty." When Cady thanks her for the compliment, Regina responds, "So you agree? You think you're really pretty?" As an aside, this line is as close as you can get to psychological horror in a teen comedy for the audience because we know exactly what's up from that point forward. There's also this shot after Regina passes out the Burn Book pages that just exemplify her true power over the rest of the school. It's probably my favorite shot in the entire movie and is in this blog purely because I like it. Watching the school's full descent into chaos and the queen bee herself, victorious, standing proud and tall, watching over it all, with drums pounding in the background is truly a sight to behold. Finally, there's the heart-to-heart scene between Cady and Regina that was cut from the movie for some bizarre reason (link here, go watch). It's here that the movie finally explains Regina's character. She forgives Cady and sort of realizes her immaturity by comparing everything she's done during the movie to something she did when she was 7: Regina's mother wanted to give away an expensive dollhouse she never played with, so she threw it down the stairs and broke it so nobody else could have it. It's kind of a perfect metaphor, honestly. I'm glad this scene exists but sad that it's technically not canon, or at least isn't shown in the movie. (I never thought I'd be talking about the Mean Girls canon, but here we are.) Overall, I give this movie an 8/10. It's a classic of the "chick flick" genre. It's got a great story, a ton of great lines, and Regina George, what else could you want in a movie? My personal favorite is "Why should Caesar get to stomp around like a giant while the rest of us try not to get smushed under his big feet? What's so great about Caesar, hm? Brutus is just as cute as Caesar, 'kay, Brutus is just as smart as Caesar, people totally like Brutus just as much as they like Caesar, and when did it become okay for one person to be the boss of everybody, huh? Because that's not what Rome was about! We should totally just STAB CAESAR!" Alternatively, this one's pretty good. Disclaimer: the only version that was free was the colorized version, so I unfortunately had to watch that. I don't think it made much of a difference, though.
So, I watched Stanley Kubrick's feature directorial debut, Fear and Desire. Put simply: it's not good. The movie has the emerging signs of a good director, but it's just not good. It's watchable (partially because it's only an hour long), but it's really just not good. I picked this movie for two reasons. One: I was tired, it was late, and this movie was short; two: all of the Kubrick movies I had seen were from the second half of Kubrick's career (i.e. out of Kubrick's 16 movies, the 3 I had seen were from the later 8), so I figured it would be good to look at an earlier film of his. Here's what I noticed. Even in his first film, Kubrick started exploring one of his favorite themes: extreme, mindbreaking stress. Dr. Strangelove did it with General Ripper, A Clockwork Orange did it with Alex DeLarge, The Shining did it with Jack Torrance, and Kubrick's original does it with Sidney. The difference is Fear and Desire does it badly. The other movies had crazy people who were menacing or dangerous. Fear and Desire has... Sidney. The other three movies did insanity with great subtlety. You knew the characters were crazy without it being immediately spelled out for you. Sidney, though, is too over-the-top crazy to the point that's he goofy. You know as soon as he gets left with the girl, something's gonna go wrong, and from the way he acts, you pray it's just a death and not something worse. Fun fact: Kubrick was a huge perfectionist. Anybody who knows anything about the production of The Shining could tell you that (see: the on-set abuse of Shelley Duvall). But another fun fact about Kubrick is that he hated this movie. He supposedly destroyed the original negatives of the film because he hated it so much. He even tried to keep any screenings from happening after the film hit public domain, calling it, "written by a failed poet, crewed by a few friends, and a completely inept oddity, boring and pretentious." There are some weird experimental shots of people dying, like a hand flopping around in a bowl of slop, but they're a little too static and messy to be effective. There are also internal monologues the characters give during long shots of them doing stuff that show too little and tell too much. Everything else, plus the soundtrack, is pretty generic. I'll give this movie a 3/10. Kubrick despised this thing, and I totally get why. The acting ranges from passable to bad, the inner monologues are too frequent and mesh with what the characters are saying out loud, the music is bland, the execution of a lot of scenes is messy, there's just a lot to hate here. But at least it's short, and at least it gave us Stanley Kubrick's greats. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is a very funny movie. I went in expecting something pretty good and came out with something amazing. Anyways, here's what I noticed.
This movie has been hailed as one of the greatest comedies of all time. So when I wasn't really laughing for the first 20 or so minutes, I was worried that I was just too dumb to understand the comedy of the film. It's about 25 minutes in when the movie properly lays out why the situation is so laughably hopeless: General Jack Ripper committed an act of insubordination by locking down his base and enacting Wing Attack Plan R, an order for pilots flying just outside of Soviet borders to start bombing their targets in Russia. Plan R specifically includes an order to close the planes' radios to only accept messages from within the plane or those from outside with a specific three-letter prefix, a prefix which only the insane Gen. Ripper knows. To make things worse, the Russians just finished a Doomsday Device that will automatically launch nuclear missiles at America and essentially nuke the Earth should any of Russia's important bases be destroyed. What's more, it will also activate if any attempt is made to deactivate it. When I realized the scope of the situation, I began cackling. I think the clincher for the whole thing is why Ripper did this: he believed the commies had been putting fluoride in the water that was fatiguing the American people and destroying their "precious bodily fluids." To recap, Dr. Strangelove is about how a crazy Air Force general set off a convoluted, domino-effect armageddon because he felt a little tired after having sex one time. No, that's not an exaggeration. Not even a little bit. The script is absolutely amazing. Dr. Strangelove also has a lot of iconic quotes. "Mein Fuhrer, I can walk!" and "precious bodily fluids," and of course, "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" are among some of the most well-known. There's also the famous scene of Major Kong riding a nuclear warhead like a cowboy, hootin' and hollerin' and wavin' his hat, all the way down to the ground where it explodes. It takes a second to get going, but everything from the first War Room scene and onwards is top tier comedy. I especially love the president and Dmitri's long-distance relationship, it's pretty genius to hear two opposing world leaders talk to each other like a married couple. I can't say much about the cinematography other than Kubrick tends to zoom in on the important thing that a character mentions right at the end of a shot, especially on the plane when Plan R is being enacted. I guess it adds that extra little bit of tension to everything happening. The soundtrack is pretty good. It definitely heightens that military setting feeling, with emphasis on heavy bass drums. And of course, Vera Lynn's rendition of "We'll Meet Again" is just a cherry on top for the ending. I'm sure there's some very relevant commentary I've forgotten about. The mention of the impending "mineshaft gap" between the Americans and Soviets comes to mind as well as General Turgidson's hatred for communists getting in the way of preventing the literal end of the world. Very funny, 9/10 at least, I highly recommend this film. I have also been made aware that they're putting chemicals in the water that are turning the freaking frogs gay. A new movie? On my blog? It couldn't be. But it is! I saw Last Night in Soho on opening night with a few of my friends, and we all loved it. Last Night in Soho is the 3rd installment in the Perfect Blue series, following 2010's Black Swan. Okay, that's a joke, but there are striking similarities between this movie and Perfect Blue (and between Perfect Blue and Black Swan, so I've heard). When watching Soho, I kept thinking, Wow, this is just like Perfect Blue. In fact, they're so similar that when I watched Perfect Blue with the same group of friends two nights later, they kept comparing it to this movie. (My personal theory is that the movie you see first is the one you'll like better, so choose wisely.) This also genuinely has a chance to overtake The Truman Show and join my top 5 movies list. But enough comparing this movie to other movies (though all the comparisons here are absolutely meant as positive), here are some things I noticed about Last Night in Soho. (I'll try to make this a more conventional review and keep any spoilers near the end since this is a new movie.)
Thomasin McKenzie stars as Eloise (or Ellie), a new fashion student moving to London to become a designer who loves anything and everything '60s themed. She loves the neon lights of the city, the old records and movie posters, and maybe most of all, its fashion. Of course, a lot has changed since the 1960s, and Ellie is disappointed. Her college dormmates are awful, the men of the city are all creepy, and nothing is like she dreamt until she decides to move out of her dorm and into a cheap apartment in Soho. That night, she has a vivid dream of Sandie, played by Anya Taylor-Joy, walking into the Café de Paris of the '60s and demanding a job from Jack, the club's manager, played by Matt Smith. Sandie proves her merit on the dancefloor, and Jack is thoroughly impressed. The two of them run off, Jack gives Sandie a hickey, and after they get to Sandie's apartment, Ellie wakes up. In class the next day, though, she's surprised to discover the same hickey on her own neck, which means the dream was real, and so was everything she saw. I won't go in-depth on the story past the first act or so because I want to talk about the technical aspects of the movie. No narrative deep dive for this one. Edgar Wright is an amazing director. During the dancing scene with Sandie and Jack, Wright repeats match cuts between Ellie and Sandie for at least a minute, the two of them switching out every time they walk behind Jack or whenever they're out of frame. In general, the dream sequences are just magical to watch. They're colorful and dreamlike, but they still feel real, like a dream (or nightmare) come true rather than a delusion of Ellie's. There are scenes of Sandie walking next to and looking at mirrors and Ellie standing there looking back. The way the movie plays with perception is fun. It's not as trippy or confusing as Perfect Blue (for the better here), but it is just as fun and intense. Speaking of a movie with an amazing soundtrack, Last Night in Soho has an awesome soundtrack. The score here is thematic and very effective. There are a few original songs sung by Anya Taylor-Joy and one composed by Steven Price (I assume "Neon" is the movie's scary song), but the vast majority of the soundtrack consists of older songs by a bunch of different artists, mostly from--you guessed it--the 1960s. I've slowly come to the realization that I don't think much in the way of movies scares me. That being said, I am not immune to being put on the edge of my seat for 2 hours, and boy, did this movie have my attention by the throat. The way scenes unfold are truly difficult to look away from. You're constantly wondering what could happen next, and it's never totally clear where the director is going to take you next. All of the dream/hallucination sequences are intense. There's one scene in particular where Ellie chases down a hallucination of Sandie through the crowded streets of Soho (I think the same that was in the trailer), and the whole time, you just want to know where she's going. The soundtrack, the shots, the acting, it's all absolutely masterful. Like I said, I'm not going to get into the story as much. All you need to know is that it keeps you guessing and ready to get to the next scene. The first act is a little slow, but once Soho starts Soho-ing, it becomes truly amazing and worthy of the top 5 list. Last Night in Soho gets a 10/10 from me. I feel like it was engineered for me to like it (it is pretty similar to Perfect Blue after all), and it plays with your mind just enough to keep you on edge right down to the last minute. It's good, go watch it. (And then watch Perfect Blue so you can see the comparisons, too, I know I'm not crazy.) Before going any further, just watch this movie, okay? I can't talk about this thing without spoilers, so just watch it. Because it's only an hour and 21 minutes, and it's amazing, and it's disturbing, and it's mindbending, and I love it, and it's uploaded on YouTube in 720p for free in sub (sub better), or you can rent it for $2, and Darren Aronofsky bought the rights to it so he could copy it and make Black Swan (it's practically plagiarized from what I hear), and imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and if that doesn't convince you it's worth watching, I don't know what will, please, just watch it, it's so good.
I'm biased, I'll admit it. Perfect Blue is one of my favorite movies ever (I put it in my top 5), and this is my third time watching it. Not to digress too much, but I've noticed all 5 of my top movies are about existential horror of some kind that rips away control of your own life: End of Evangelion, you've got SPOILERS (I know you still haven't watched it yet), The Shining has the hotel that drives you mad, A Clockwork Orange is all about taking away somebody's free will to make them a "better person," and The Truman Show is about your whole life being a lie and every major choice in your life being part of a script you have no control over. Perfect Blue is no different; it takes the idea of losing your grip on the world and not knowing the difference between reality and illusion and cranks it up to 11. It's not just your average "X faces the struggles of Y and slowly delves into madness..." plot synopsis. It is such an absolute mind-heck of a movie, possibly the most confusing I have ever watched. For some anecdotal evidence, I didn't believe the ending on my first watch-through about a year ago (I think it was a year ago). I don't mean I was in disbelief, I literally mean I didn't think the last 10 or so minutes actually happened. Even when the movie spelled it out for me, I thought it was another trick, right until the credits rolled and even past then. Anyways, here's what I noticed my third time around watching this movie. Director Satoshi Kon makes you pay attention to a lot of tiny details, specifically when in Mima's room. For example, there's a scene a little before 3/4 of the way through the movie where... okay, so basically there's something that happens that should be impossible, but also we're not totally sure if it happened or not because some of it definitely happened, and all of it potentially could have happened, but also we don't trust that it actually happened how we saw it, but also we have an extremely unreliable narrator by this point, so we're left questioning how that thing happened. This movie does such a good job of putting you in Mima's confused, terrified shoes. By the time you get to the climax, you're not sure what's real and what's not. Little inconsistencies and details really act to disorient you. Scenes switch on a dime while the camera revolves around Mima, and the backgrounds change seamlessly from place to place. Satoshi Kon is known for playing with perception a lot, (I've seen Paprika, another movie he directed that actually directly inspired Inception, two very similar, very good movies), and he really knows how to make you question what's the real thing and what's nothing more than an illusion. The color red is used expertly in this movie. There's a whole video on YouTube just about the use of the color red in the film that goes into it better than I ever could. My favorite use, though, is about 1/4 of the way through the film, when Mima realizes that the person who's threatening her is also stalking her every move and uploading it all to a website they call Mima's Room. As she plays a voice clip of her very first line as an actress, stolen from her shoot only a few days prior, the track "Nightmare" kicks into high gear with heavy drums, and we get this great scene of her staring in distraught disbelief at her computer as her voice repeats over and over again, "Who are you?" and her curtain sways between her face and the camera with a haunting, deep red background. This is also my go-to scene to point to when recommending this movie to people. It doesn't give away too much but also makes the premise clear, and it also shows the director's skill and a little bit of the soundtrack. Link here, go watch. The soundtrack is amazing. "Virtual Mima" is one of the most haunting songs I've ever heard in a movie, period. Also, whatever drum motif the composer, Masahiro Ikumi, uses during "Nightmare" sounds like a cymbal being crashed against a train track, and it's just--mwah--chef's kiss. The whole soundtrack is one of the most memorable I've ever heard in a film, up there with the likes of The Shining and End of Eva, in my humble opinion. Perfect Blue gets a perfect 10/10. Watch it with subtitles, though. The dubbed version glosses over a super important detail in the very last line of the film for some reason, and honestly, the dub's already pretty meh anyways. The voice acting in the original Japanese version is just fantastic. I don't consider myself one to be scared easily. The Conjuring was a "scary" movie that hardly phased me outside of, like, one good scene that I forgot about immediately after it was over. I had heard from people that this movie, Ouija: Origin of Evil was just absolutely terrifying and I should watch it and yadda yadda yadda. So I watched it. And you know what? It wasn't. Outside of like one good series of scenes around the 30-to-40-minute mark of the movie, I was almost totally unphased. Here are some things I noticed about Ouija: Origin of Evil.
The director, Mike Flanagan, uses wide shots a lot. He specifically likes to put our main characters in the foreground with creepy stuff, usually Doris smiling or standing around with her eyes rolled back into their sockets and her jaw on the floor, in the background. One particular scene I liked was the one where Marcus, the monster, stands in the doorway of Paulina's room when she goes back to sleep. You can see his bright, yellow eyes peering into the darkness six and a half feet off the ground, it's very creepy. Even the scenes where Doris peers into the planchette are really tense. You already know she's going to see him eventually (it's a possession movie, after all, they're no better known for being unpredictable than your average yearly slasher), but you still ask yourself, "What's he going to do?" And then we get a good look at him. And he's very silly looking. And then the movie stops being scary. Lulu Wilson's performance as Doris low-key carries the remaining two-thirds of the movie. She's very good at making Doris seem both innocent and sinister at the same time so you're never totally sure how much control Doris has over her own body, even when you think you know who the characters are talking to. It's honestly super impressive for an eleven-year-old. One that stands out to me is the scene of her describing what it feels like to be strangled. It's just the right amount of creepy and disturbing without taking itself way too seriously, and the uninterrupted shot slowly zooming in on her while she's talking makes it a really well done scene. There's also a scene, just before the climax really gets going, where Doris's head starts twitching while she smiles at the camera from the background while Mikey reaches into a hole in the basement wall in the foreground. It's genuinely really disturbing. That is, without sound. With sound, you can hear her neck loudly cracking every time it moves, and it's very goofy sounding. Basically, The Exorcist did it better. The soundtrack's nice, the directing is good (there's a nice shot of the camera turning with the Ouija board), and the story and characters are fun enough. The ending was actually surprisingly good. I know this movie is a prequel, but I'm still happy with the direction it took. Killing off the whole family except Paulina was a gutsy move, something a similar movie in the vein of The Conjuring probably wouldn't have done. I don't have much to say about the story or characters outside of that. You root for the family to make it out alive, and you hope they'll be able to exorcise the demon. Also, Lina is easily the best character, I know she's more the everyman for this movie than a typical final girl, but she's smart, she knows not to split up, and she knows what she has to do when she has to do it. 7/10, pretty entertaining, even if it wasn't that scary, and--what's this? MY GOD, IT'S PAULINA ZANDER WITH A STEEL CHAIR! Now that I've gotten Inception out of the way, Spooky Movie Month can begin! Parasite, directed by Bong Joon-ho, is a 2019 home-invasion film about the power of love and family. It's a heartwarming tale of relationships that transcend even class and social status. Here are some things I noticed about this silly little movie.
Okay, jokes aside, this movie is really good, it won Best Picture 2020 for a reason. It's Bong Joon-ho, though, so what else is new? He's a master of his craft, and he's got some really good shots, as expected. He uses a lot of tracking shots to show the size of the house, and some stationary wide shots for some of the more suspenseful scenes, like when Ki-woo is sneaking out of Da-hye's room. Also, on the night of Moon-gwang's visit, there's a really good shot that stood out to me of all of the workers' hands desperately reaching to get the phone. I don't know how much it actually means (outside of maybe workers willing to put each other down to get ahead because competition is cutthroat), but I just thought it was interesting. The soundtrack is also really good, especially during the last third or so of the movie. The sound of the strings bubbling up and descending as Ki-taek is ordered around by Yeon-kyo is really haunting. We've seen something rising up in him the whole movie, specifically when so many people, even his own wife, comment on his smell, and at the party, we finally see it break the surface. It all works very well. Speaking of, the movie uses the idea of a "poor person smell" quite often. For example, when Da-song points out the whole Kim family smells the same, it's implied that this has less to do with the smell of the family and more with the fact that they're all poor, even before the cut back to the Kim home. It's also interesting that when the family's smell becomes an issue here, they talk about trying to change it, but Ki-woo points out the issue isn't their detergent but where they live. Essentially, the movie is trying to say that the rich will always think less of the poor by virtue of them being poor, that there's a smell (stigma) you can't get rid of no matter how hard you try. The rock is some cool symbolism. I kind of knew from the get-go it was gonna be used to hurt someone in a symbolic way, Chekhov's gun and all, but I felt my heart sink when Ki-woo got conked over the head by it. I figured he was going to end up killing Moon-gwang or Geun-se in self-defense, but instead the roles got reversed. (I do not know how that man survived two blows to the head from that thing, but I am so glad he did.) Also, as soon as I heard Dong-ik say, "We'll jump out and 'attack' Jessica," I felt myself die a little inside before the death even happened because I just knew it was coming. I wasn't totally expecting everything that went down between Moon-gwang and the Kim family. First off, I thought the twist was going to be that Moon-gwang's husband was being kept in the basement by the Parks, but the direction it took was so much more interesting. Second, my gut reaction to Moon-gwang's request was to think that Choong-sook would agree because she'd have a little bit of sympathy and would remember that her family had recently been in a similar position of weakness, but once again, the direction the movie took was better. The different shots of the Kims hiding from the Parks while they try to escape the home without waking them up are really good, too. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time. The first half of the movie is funny, though, in a schadenfruede way at times because wow, it must suck to be that driver or Moon-gwang. And then the end is sad and leaves you feeling empty and hopeless. Fun times with Bong Joon-ho. With all of that being said, I would totally live in that house. Just pour some hydrogen peroxide on the lawn, clear out the icky poor people from your tax-evasion bunker, and boom! Perfect home. 10/10, this movie shows off all the great things about living in a society. |