v-34814 Reviews

Station Eleven: A Hawk from a Handsaw (2021) Season 1, Episode 2

9.5

[9/10 · 15 January 2022]

Yes the first episode was stunning and ep2 is different from ep1 because it has a different purpose/task, but the consistency was there, the story of ki unfolding beautifully.

Maybe some people watched it for its potential to be a series about Covid-19? If so, it's reasonable that they are disappointed that ep2 is no longer in a "modern" setting.

If you have a little bit of knowledge of theatre, you will love this episode.(like, Shakespeare wrote plays and the wheels was a thing)

I have not read the original book, but so far, I can see this show is going to let me have some deeper realizations of civilization and art, and the characters seem nice and very human, the overall production-and-storytelling is both gentle and determined.

I Am What I Am (2021)

They're trying to make a thing.

[29 December 2021]

Everything is trying to be realistic except for the fat phobia jokes. Did they made this an animated movie so that they can make fat phobia jokes?

This is a...movie?for Chinese kids, giving the small delicate brains the impressions of "we're proud of our culture", "respect the working class people", and "a feminine boy can become a strong male male!".(yeah feminine boys there's no need to be incels, just don't give up)

But the fact that it's for kids made me really uncomfortable about the fat-phobia jokes.

Every time someone laughed, while I was watching, it was because of some joke made out of the fatness of the fat character.

I started thinking about whether this kind of media made the younger me see fat people as animated characters, that their behavior are supposed to be funny, whether the younger me thought fat people need to get rid of their fatness to live a normal life.

Think about the kids, ffs.

Well, to be accurate, there's one time the kid sat behind me was not laughing at a fat joke.

It was a scene that was supposed to generate a sense of inspiration, but the momentum of the scene was really weird, and while I was feeling confused, the kid might thought"oh time to laugh again", so, not their fault at all.

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (2021)

Reminding.

[8/10 · 12 December 2021]

It's so funny that certain reviews think this film disconnects filmmakers and audiences.

What are you imagining audiences as? Passive receivers of whatever codes/coded realities made by the entertainment industry?

Audiences walk in the streets, find people's behaviors hilarious or annoying or pathetic, read online articles and think, or don't think. A lot of them go to Pornhub and watch other videos online made by random people which may contain codes never existed in the field of films.

What's too difficult for audiences to understand? Living? We all live, and I hope when you think about films, you're still alive.

Most ideas in this film are the ones you can easily encounter online, whether it be "I hope we are all excited to live another day and love the sight of our doormats" or "having sex is legal". But they're put in a moving entity, in a space and time where we're audiences who are trying to understand and think, and imagine.

Imagine. Film exists in the audiences' imagination, another academic cliche. But that's exactly what happened in part one, we imagine and live the world though the soundscapes and decentralized pictures.

And the imagining, the living, made it possible for the part 2and3 to be delivered as something similar to what they are originally in the filmmakers' head.

This process happens all the time in great films, but this film reminds.

Men suo (2021)

6

[6/10 · 8 December 2021]

The casting is great. The writing represents the modern China pretty well. The overall sound experience is Chinese domestic TV level stuff trying to be cinematic, music in several scenes was annoying. The directing is still learning how to direct from other movies, 70%scattered.

So if you want to compare it to the invisible man2020, it's a 5. If you're just going to a movie and don't dislike action scenes, it's a 7.

By the way I love how this movie only used Chinese songs, but the English subtitles for that song's "aiyouaiyou" part was "ouch ouch ouch ouch" Lol.

You (2018–2024)

2nd half of season3 is so bad......

[5/10 · 17 October 2021]

It was like watching the writers' room trying to cobble together a product in haste.

Add Diversity? Disabled working class gay man who wants to adopt another child. And some non-white women.

Rant about woke culture, Rant about the conservatives, Rant about toxic masculinity, Rant about how pathetic women are... wait, we're feminists, whatever, we just need to make actors say those lines on how hard it is to be a good wife repetitively. What's really important is to make this thing look like a psychological thriller. 1.psychological? We can only imagine the mind of Ted Bundy, so we're going to do what we're good at, joe's inner voice, poor little boy, 50% of the work is done. 2.thriller? We try so hard to make the plot work, especially the last episode, it's so obvious that it's hilarious. Oh we need it to be bloody too so add that gore. And we'll have another season, the audiences are delighted.

I support arts centered around the ugliness of human, but I'm one hundred percent not interested in another season of inner voices of a stereotypical deceitful male trial killer. One season was enough, the end of the 2nd season gave me hope that it would add more perspectives, and the end of season 3 is the opposite of that hope.

Raw (2016)

Pithy and interesting

[8/10 · 15 October 2021]

Full of metaphors, and they're the refreshing ones.

Great acting, masterful filming, the gore wasn't redundant(I supposed it would be before watching it) But it doesn't feel like a "must-watch" at all. Skip it if you're not that interested in the topics related.

Bodyguard (2018)

Hard to find a purpose

[4/10 · 2 October 2021]

A male gaze projecting his desire as a middle-age female figure hornying over the perfect blue-eyed boy image, then coats it with boring and ostentatious plots based on bias.

Requiem for a Dream (2000)

Don't waste your time on this

[4/10 · 21 September 2021]

Nothing changes after the first 15mins. Characters don't change, every creative aspect of the film doesn't change, relationships between the characters are just general ideas of relationships, and they don't change.

Art is not enforcing fixed ideas of art. This law is based on the nature of the human brain, always adapting and changing.

Many "artful" films from the beginning of this century is obsessed with behaviorism, and I think that's so laughable, you're like 80years late. Boring.

Also it's hard for me to buy into this presentation of the elders, it feels like an outside observation and assumption of what's going on in the elders' minds, the prefrontal-cortex-undeveloped way of assuming. Either way, it's about people unable to grow with the flow of time, fixation, again.

So perhaps you can say this repetitive way of filming is representing the pathetic repetitive pattern of the brains of irresilient people. But I don't need it. There's an amazing film on addiction that we all know, and the formist way of deepening emotions is nothing new. Definitely regret not spending that an hour and a half reading or just going out for a walk.

Gossip Girl (2021–2023)

Ew

[4/10 · 18 September 2021]

This series is a over-confident, sometimes narcissistic, TwitterInsta kid who consistently post popular-indie music or novel related information that would gain likes and think themself as a very liberal, educated, I-have-immaculate-taste, important person, but unfortunately they can't even produce appropriate sound for bar scenes.

And the teacher part is so annoying that I have to be alert to skip them.

Maybe the blonde girl who I've seen from"doctor sleep"is the only bright spot.

Captive State (2019)

A 2-hour ad, but worths the time.

[9/10 · 3 September 2021]

Great sound, great editing, smooth ride.

If you try to solely intellectually engage with it, it's empty as hell.

But it's also good enough to make me think of it as a work of art, which delivers the unspeakable, and that changes everything--the unspeakable is a cliche not because it's a cliche itself, but because the attempt to speak about it is bad. And this attempt isn't bad.

We can say that a lot of signifiers are stupid, but if that gives us a sense of purpose of life, which means this signifier is useful and timeless, maybe this signifier is smarter than us and we need to experience more to have a deeper understanding. Sometimes film is a simulation of life experience in some ways.

So if you can vibe with it for one hour, then finish it.

Minari (2020)

Better than I expected

[8/10 · 2 September 2021]

Not a fan of Korean traditional parental dynamic, don't like the crescendo or the climax, but the editing and implicit sense of humor was good enough to make me love half of this film. Love the grandma.

The Social Dilemma (2020)

Rewatched it.

[10/10 · 22 August 2021]

After watching this doc last year, I stopped posting on social media (meaning I still check my timeline but I stopped presenting myself, including interacting with online friends), and damn it's been so good.

I read books, had some obsession on philosophy, art history and films. And these things made me feel like I'll never feel empty, like, I can just be standing there and breathing, and I'm me--as opposed to the state where you're constantly building an online image but there's nothing in you.

Well, I was just trying to say that I read books so now I realize how valuable the interviews in this doc are. Say you start reading "digital minimalism", you would be recommended to read the capitalism surveillance book for deeper ideas. But you can get to that deeper level just by following the flow of this doc(the writing, editing, music are amazing) , plenty of topics are brought to that insightful and affecting level of conversation, I wonder if I processing the information this clearly first time watching, but it clearly affected me and confirmed certain feelings I had before, and it was enough to make me act on it.

So, if you think this doc has dramatized anything, you're simply not understanding it sufficiently enough.

Fear Street: Part Two - 1978 (2021)

Music too annoying

[2/10 · 18 July 2021]

Melodramatic gore montage for teenagers.

Saw someone on Twitter said part2&3 is better that part1 and I gave it a try even tough I gave part1 a 3/10 The music is toooooo much, it's like those ones added to silent black and white films. Part2 is worse than part1 on that perspective.

And it's just basic formulated music for horror...easiest kind of music to make, tons of plugins for this.

There're scenes obviously better without music, visually it's just enough and then there's redundant music.

Well I know theoretically the purpose of this kind of auditory design is to make things unreal, so I guess this is a horror movie trying not to make audiences horrified-just blood gore swearing drugs for teenagers.

But I think I'm still gonna watch part3 lol, that's sad.

A Quiet Place Part II (2020)

Wish this didn't exist

[3/10 · 6 July 2021]

I heard from a podcast that part2 is going to tell the story before part1, and it did, but only for 20mins.

If you've already watched part1, just watch the first 20mins and leave.

The story before part1 can be interesting.

Low budget: people all want to stay in places with louder soundscapes but obviously there's gonna be fights, all that sound and struggle; government try reasonable but risky plans and how that effects this particular neighborhood.

There're numerous things can be explored with higher budgets, science and military, but this adaptation(part1 is an adaptation) has a very primitive/1900s texture, high tech doesn't fit this world lol.

But unfortunately, this movie is just trying to do part1 again. All that stupid premises, again.

MEN: powerful, protect women and kids, only have intuitive emotions-to protect women and kids, wounded.

WOMEN: powerless but emotionally kinda strong, want to protect their own kids, I-am-a-mother, I-wish-my-husband-is-safe-out-there, forgive-my-kids-and-help-them-grow-into-men-and-women.

KIDS: stupid, stubborn, but at the end always SUdDenLY out-strong their parents.

<<< The reason why I'm angry about this is that disability is included in this story, but only expressed in auditory novelty and a source of fear.

The uniqueness of that disabled girl only turned into stubbornness, anger, and possession of a hearing aid.

Yes I know they're in a life-threatening situation, but there is time and room for exploring their inner world--Actually we had: the boy risks his and a baby's life and walks with his painfully wounded foot only out of curiosity of his neighbors' life. Well, needless to say, curiosity turned into stupidity, for plot.

And that characteristic intense curiosity has no context nor source, so it doesn't feel like something that comes from that living boy. Maybe that's why we feel aversion to that stupidity, it's not organic.

Aren't we all trying to survive all the time? We just have much more time for pondering about subjectivity and what's on other people's mind and the meaning of everything, of life. That's why we human have a different kind of consciousness than animals.

Consciousness is different from attention, attention is only an aspect of consciousness.

"Narrowly Focusing" is only one kind of attention, the kind that doesn't involve your right hemisphere, and this movie makes you narrowly focus on sound.

I don't think that grants any superiority to the sound design of this movie, foley is done more carefully of course, but isn't pursuing for perfection a universal goal of sound artists?

I want more audiences to realize sound of film is a form of art, not to remember "this movie has better sound".

Auditory simulation of hearing disability + building a world afraid of sound is affective, it makes the magic, but apparently this formula is not created by this adapter and he doesn't really understand the magic.

It stopped at the level of sympathy, it can't reach the level of empathy.