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juliaperlkvist
Reviews
Matilda: The Musical (2022)
Decent movie but altered the story a lot
I really wanted to love this, I read the book when I was around 7 and it has a special place in my heart (one of few books I very distinctly remember from my childhood). I also watched this largely because I knew Tim Minchin wrote the music and I'm a big fan of him.
Sadly this was a disappointment as someone who was already familiar with the story. The plot deviated quite a lot from the original - changed things, added things, removed things. Several impactful key scenes felt lost because they were sort of just thrown in there in a way that felt haphazard, like they knew they should include certain bits but couldn't bother doing it well (such as the newt bit or the writing on the chalkboard - the latter being pretty important to the climax and resolution).
All the additions felt very unnecessary and distracting, they already had a great story to work with so I don't know why they added the extra stuff. I also wasn't a fan of how exaggerated the superpower aspect was, with Matilda creating storms and explosions and... giant chain monsters? And also she has some sort of psychic ability to "see" a story from the past?? It was all wayyyy too much.
This movie falls into the same trap that makes me dislike a lot of modern movies (by "modern" I mean released in the past 10-15 years or so), everything has to be so big and exaggerated that it just completely ruins it for me. What's wrong with a cozy little intimate story of a girl in a classroom? Why does it need to be made into a ginormous spectacle?
That being said, as a movie on its own it's perfectly fine. As an adaptation, however, it is very disappointing and loses pretty much everything that made the story so great in the first place.
Queen of the Damned (2002)
Disappointed, but not surprised
I hesitated for YEARS to watch this movie, because Interview with the Vampire is one of my absolute favorite movies and based on the summary ("Lestat becomes a rock star and awakens an ancient vampire queen") it sounded awful, like some cringey fanfiction written by a 14-year-old on Wattpad. Nevertheless I finally decided to give it a chance, and... well it was exactly that.
To get some of the positives out of the way first, there are a lot of very gorgeous aesthetics, some great outfits, and plenty of good music. But that's where the good things end. I can imagine young teens loving this just for the aesthetic feast that it is, but the characters and plot and dialogue are all just painful.
It's hard not to compare this to Interview, and it certainly pained me to see Lestat as an entirely different character. Trying to think of this movie as its own thing helps it somewhat, but it by no means saves it. Plenty of very cringeworthy dialogue, so bad in fact that I almost turned the movie off very early on. The overall plot feels very "hey kids what if we made Lestat a cool rocker dude with leather pants and an open shirt, the kids like that stuff, right?" in the worst possible way.
To my understanding this is two books smashed into one movie, and it REALLY shows. The plot feels extremely rushed to the point where it almost doesn't make sense, and plenty of characters are included with practically no backstory or even context. Who are these people and why should I care? Definitely one of those situations where a movie cannot possibly flesh things out enough in its limited runtime so everything feels rushed and unexplained and hardly makes sense to anyone who hasn't read the book(s).
It really hurts to see that there IS potential here. This could have been a good movie. Not faithful to the books perhaps, but it could have been a good movie. Disconnect it from Interview to avoid comparisons (as well as inconsistencies in timelines and lore), make the dialogue less cringey, maybe remove some characters and minor plot points that there isn't enough time to explain. A musician vampire - who is not Lestat - could work under different circumstances, and a queen of the vampires could also work. Just done differently.
I will simply pretend that this does not exist as related to Interview, just as I pretend season 4 of Sherlock doesn't exist.
Us (2019)
Underwhelming, but not bad
I rarely get excited to see movies, but this one captured my attention for reasons I can't put my finger on so I wad pretty hyped to see it (despite knowing practically nothing about it except that it had to do with doppelgängers, and the outfits looked cool).
It started off pretty good, nice and creepy when the doppelgänger family entered the picture. The "tethered" children were probably my favorite throughout the entire movie. But after the first encounter in the house, the movie went downhill. The bit in the friends' house was alright, and that's as far as it goes.
The creepiness factor quickly went away and the vibe started feeling a bit more like an action zombie apocalypse type movie, except with doppelgängers instead of zombies. The explanation for it all seemed strange and didn't make much sense. Frankly I think it would've been cooler (and more manageable in terms of plot) if it was only the family's doppelgängers instead of the whole... country, I assume?
Overall the movie was alright, it's worth seeing, but I'm probably not re-watching it any time soon.
UNHhhh (2016)
My go-to binge worthy feelgood content
Just two biological women talking about any and all topics imaginable (while rarely staying on topic), complete with the utter delight that is Trixie's bird noises and Katya's hysterical wheezing. High re-watchability. Worth noting that some references may be missed without sufficient knowledge of drag queens and pop culture.
Little Women (2019)
Wanted to love it, but...
I'll start of by admitting I haven't read the book, I've only seen the 1994 movie before. I went into this really excited because I liked the 1994 one and thought this looked promising, but.... it just didn't really work.
You can really tell it's a movie based on a book because they're cramming a LOT of plot in there, to the point where it's hard to follow. Basically no build-up for anything, things just happen and happen and happen in a way that feels random and just pulled out of thin air. Doesn't help that there are tons of time skips, jumping back and forth without clearly indicating when it's happening, which just makes it even more confusing. If I didn't already know the story from watching the 1994 movie I'd have been completely lost. I saw another review say this should've been a series instead and I agree, the plot just didn't fit into the 2 hour run time.
I was surprised to see how highly reviewed this version was!
Midnight Mass (2021)
Interesting experience but a bit disappointing
Just want to start off by noting that I'm still kind of processing this so some of my views may change later when I've thought about it more.
I went into this not knowing what it was about, I had just noticed it seemed popular and all I knew going in was that 1) it had some sort of horror element and 2) there was a priest character. Overall there were a lot of interesting things going on and I enjoyed a lot of the themes, but I feel like there were some loose ends and also some things just weren't what I expected - in a bad way.
When the "horror" elements in the early episodes were limited to just seeing a figure with glowing eyes, I was stoked! That's exactly my brand of horror, really freaks me out. Honestly it completely stopped being creepy when the monster was revealed and it wasn't particularly mysterious. Speaking of which, maybe I'm just dumb but I feel like it's a bit unclear what the monster even is. Obviously the priest thought it was an angel but I'm guessing that's not the case (though at first I thought maybe they were taking the route of angels being evil, which could've been interesting). Either it's just a straight up vampire, or as the trivia section states it's the vampire-like biblical Alukah (which again could've been interesting if they actually made it clear that's what it was).
Before the monster was revealed I had thought that the priest was the villain, that he was some sort of supernatural being or whatever. Which isn't entirely wrong I guess but he wasn't ever the villain, he ultimately had good intentions. I kinda felt like it would've been more interesting in my personal opinion if the monster wasn't there, or if it was just part of the backstory but not physically on the island so that the priest could still be the monster of the story, I don't know. It just took away a lot of the intrigue that he had nothing really sinister about him. Then again I do appreciate portrayals of harmful religious zeal so it was interesting in that way, just not what I expected. Maybe it's just me not being a fan of very explicit monsters.
One thing that really bugged me was that Riley didn't feel like he was used to his full potential. His drunk driving accident that landed him in prison didn't seem particularly relevant to the story aside from giving him a reason to be away from the island and eventually returning. He didn't contribute much to the story in my opinion and it could've played out largely the same without him. And what was up with him seeing a glitchy vision of the dead girl? That could've been something to play around with for the writers but nothing really came from it. If all they wanted to convey was that he was still haunted by the experience, normal flashbacks would've been enough. The fact that they basically gave him a freaky hallucination but did nothing with it seemed wasteful, it could've been something to explore and they just didn't.
Overall it was not a bad experience, and since it's so short it certainly didn't feel like a waste of time. I'm just a bit disappointed because I felt they could've done more with it, there were several very interesting parts that fizzled out to nothing.
Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008)
Beautiful and fascinating
This is one of my absolute favorite movies. The visual aesthetics are amazing, quite an interesting take on a "futuristic" look that mixes alternative fashion and a grungy dystopia with some new technology. The music is great and I listen to it a lot outside of the movie too, only one song (Seventeen) really puts me off but that's forgivable. Very interesting plot and how it envisions a future where everyone has surgeries, whether for cosmetic or medical reasons. The drug aspect is also quite a neat addition - I've heard some people argue it's completely unnecessary to the plot but in my opinion it adds a lot.
Now, as for some of the negatives, which aren't too severe but worth mentioning since I didn't give the movie a perfect score. The biggest issue is that I don't like the main character. She just has a pretty annoying personality and I'm not a fan of any of her song bits. The other characters do make up for it though so it's fine. Another smaller issue, thogh perhaps a nitpicky one, is that it's never explained what the organ failure epidemic actually is (this is not a spoiler since it's literally the first thing mentioned in the movie). How can there be an organ failure epidemic? Especially one that is apparently only fixed with extensive organ transplants? That part is a bit strange but I am willing to accept it for the plot.
Overall an interesting and quite unusual movie that I would recommend to a lot of people, as long as you're not too squeamish about gore. Definitely a staple of the alternative communities!