siderite Reviews

Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon (2021)

Underrated gem

[9/10 · 17 January 2025]

The movie is stylish, interesting, refreshing. I don't know why people rated it so low. I could find no fault in it except some pacing issues.

The story follows this Korean girl who is imprisoned in a mental facility for dangerous people. She escapes by using mental powers that controls the people around her. Then we follow her as she is trying to keep herself alive and out of the reach of police, while people are trying to take advantage of her. Friendly people turn out to not be that friendly, Suspicious people turn out to be cool.

The film is a subtle satire of society, but without ever shoving anything down your throat. You don't know who the main character really is, where she comes from or what her power mean. It's an "alien on planet Earth" story, told from the perspective of the alien. I liked it!

Bottom line: if you feel like watching something atmospheric, with cool music and a relaxed vibe, try this film. It's pretty good!

The Fix (II) (2024)

A nice little film from South Africa

[7/10 · 16 January 2025]

This is by no means a masterpiece, but with its budget it's a pretty decent flick. The plot is that a model drinks a drug that makes her immune to the toxin that is slowly killing the planet. You never know who is good or bad, they all want some piece of her. That ambiguity is the best piece of the film. The acting of the main characters is not bad, but most side characters are amateurish South Africans and it shows. The effects are decent too, although they are not a lot.

Clancy Brown is just cameoing in this film, so him being top billed to get people to watch this does not sit well with me. The main character is played by Grace Van Dien, and she is both beautiful and a good actress. Everybody else is mostly unknown. The end scene was kind of dumb, as well as the identity of Lazarus. The ending is also hinting at a possible sequel.

Bottom line: not something I would recommend, but a good effort.

Now the rest is slightly spoilery, so continue only if you've seen the film.

The premise of the film is that people (and everything else) are dying from an environmental toxin that we can only presume is the result of human action, but the two sides trying to solve the problem either want to sell a temporary antidote only for the "worthy" or to make everybody a different species in order to survive. The first assumes they know better and the latter that humanity, reaching this point, will not continue to be idiotic. In a way, that does make the villain camp more credible, adding to the fun of figuring out which faction one would agree with, but it also detracts from the natural desire of viewers to side with someone. I am not sure the writer saw it that way, so it may only be an involuntary achievement. You decide.

The Substance (2024)

Good, but the ending was kind of dumb

[8/10 · 16 January 2025]

Satire is served best in small portions. Or at least in subtle ones. In this film, the plot is obvious from the beginning, maybe even before that, since it's being revealed in every trailer, as well as its aftermath. So what's left? To have a marvelous implementation of the concept.

The Substance mostly delivers, with great visuals, poignant design and shots and some absolutely brilliant scenes: from the Quaid's disgusting character to the almost pornographic "pump it up" aerobics. It also ain't afraid to show both Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley naked, and they both look amazing for their ages. The acting is very good, too. But then things start to falter a little.

As an engineer I always find it funny when the customer fails and/or refuses to follow instructions, then panics when things go wrong, but in this case, with so much to lose, the main character(s) just make the worse possible choices, goaded by the Apple design of their drug supplier. If anything, that should really make you pay attention, but I digress. And it still kind of works, only the last 25 minutes bring nothing to the story other than body horror and gore. You already know what's happening and how it's going to end, so you feel like wasting time. And then there is the ending, that fountain of blood thing and the final scene, which just eliminate any reasonable suspension of disbelief. It's almost like it's there for comic relief.

Bottom line: a simple story, with brilliant visuals and acting, but overdrawn and exaggerated to the point where the satire loses its grip and gives way to nastiness.

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim (2024)

I understand why people hate it, but it's almost decent

[7/10 · 14 January 2025]

The latest victim in the culture wars, this movie is half good, a quarter ridiculous and a quarter feminist agenda, thus never finding its identity and failing to mean anything to anyone. Sad that the first taste of Tolkien for some kids is going to be this and the Amazon TV series, but at least this film has something good going for it.

The animation, the direction and the voice acting are top notch. The script had potential, as well. But when the narration starts with the great work of Hera Hammerhand which is not sung in any song, implying that's because she's female, you know what you're getting into. There is also the background theme of the shield maidens, but that's actually not used in the story in any meaningful way.

The film is about a vengeful villain who wants to destroy the Hammerhand clan: the king, his two sons and his daughter and former love interest Hera who dared tell him she doesn't want to marry any man, and become king himself. The king messes up, so Hera must take over. If they kept it at that, it could have been great!

Alas, Hera is oscillating wildly between damsel in distress and sword master extraordinaire, between intelligent and intuitive woman and shell shocked bystander, between an inspiring hero and a woman ignored by the men around her, between the hungry princess of a besieges population to expert mountaineer and so on. And she's not the only character or world building item that change randomly to fit the plot. Most of the story makes sense, except when it needs to change direction, and then something really stupid or inconsistent happens.

Bottom line: it was decent, not great in any part of it, but with some blatant failings. Probably without the agenda corrupting the writing, this would have been better.

Distant (2024)

Light and fun, should be rated higher

[8/10 · 13 January 2025]

I read one really dismissive review before I started watching and it really lowered my expectations. But then I was pleasantly surprised to enjoy the film. It's fast paced, funny, entertaining and has decent effects without turning it into a soulless CGI thing. Not perfect by any means, but it's like a faster, funnier, less deep Moon. People clearly cared about the film they were making, too, which is rarer and rarer these days.

We are following this random guy who gets ejected on an alien planet from his crashing mining ship. Of course the planet is not empty and so he must survive with low oxygen, alone, while trying to reach a mysterious woman stuck in another escape pod. The dialog between them is what keeps things light and funny, the planet is interesting (although someone didn't know how combustion and breathing work when they wrote and directed the film) and the ending is... well, think it through a little and you realize is not as happy as you might imagine at first :)

Bottom line: Entertaining and light enough to have regretted to having watched it alone and not together with the wife. For its genre, it's a success.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of the Zone (2024)

Decent, but a game cinematic would have been better

[6/10 · 13 January 2025]

The acting was decent, even the military lingo and movement, maybe even some tactics. It had a slight Tarkovski vibe as well. However, the budget for this film must have been minuscule. The effects were very basic, for example.

Also, the story has almost no meaning to someone who has not played the games, such as myself. Random people go into the zone and shoot other people for long protracted periods of time, but I don't know who those people are and why I should care. When double or triple allegiances are revealed, I don't even understand the sides. Stranger still, the info dump at the beginning calmly announces stuff that never happened near Chernobyl, making it an alternate history that is never explained. So do yourself a service and read a little about the S. T. A. L. K. E. R. Game if you want to have any chance of understanding the film.

That being said, the film has no meaningful depth. Stuff happens, some mysteries are revealed, then clarified, but nothing is of consequence. It's all mostly atmospheric, where the movie did excel. A decent effort, but I would not recommend it.

Gladiator II (2024)

An impossible dream

[7/10 · 10 January 2025]

The journey of most main characters would have required years of their lives, but for the sake of the story, it all happens fast fast fast. People know things without any reason to, plans just fall into place like a charm (or fail spectacularly when it's needed) and everything is synchronized perfectly. For that reason, the feeling of unreality is what one gets from the movie and not one of entertainment.

I like Paul Mescal and he did a decent job, for a short guy who played in Normal People. The supporting cast were good, too. Denzel Washington gave a terrifying but subtle performance up to close to the end, where it just went a bit sideways. In fact, probably the ending is what hurts the film most. It's rushed, with little time to feel anything, and it ends with a discourse given to twelve thousand men. I mean, maybe twenty people who were closest to the guy understood what he was saying, not to mention they were Roman soldiers so God knows what language they spoke and understood, and the speech was so cheesy.

In fact the story is peppered with these little details that one can dismiss as plot devices until they overwhelm common sense. The dynastic nostalgia doesn't help either.

To be fair, this is a decent film. It just lacks any emotional stakes. Everything is telegraphed minutes in advance, too. The potential was there, and maybe a miniseries would have been more appropriate to tell the story the right way. To shove all of that into two hours and a half was an impossible dream.

Bottom line: Decently acted and produced, but what could have been a critique of modern times by how similar they are to Roman ones, taking us through political intrigue, devastating personal loss and raw violence turned out to be a popcorn movie that in the end glorifies the very empire everyone in the film seemed to hate. I guess one can't expect anything else from an American film these days.

Copshop (2021)

Pretty damn fun performances, but ultimately a bad Tarantino clone

[7/10 · 8 January 2025]

I enjoyed this film! Butler brings all of his charm in this film, Grillo and Louder are not bad and the other actors do a pretty good job. Toby Huss does steal the show, come on! He's is so funny.

This is one of those films that happen all in a building, with people either hidden in a room or stealthing about while being stalked by predators. A lot of dialog to fill up the time, but nothing on the level of fun as Tarantino films. Characters are not always what they seem to be, but the story isn't actually going anywhere. And the end was just BAD. I mean, completely pointless, really. I bet most people who ended up rating this low did it because of the ending. If they did things slightly different for the last 15 minutes, this could have been a gem.

Bottom line: entertaining flick with a strong start and fizzling out towards the end.

Rebel Ridge (2024)

A Rambo for our days and sensibilities

[8/10 · 8 January 2025]

Our entire history we have fought for power, usually using violence. And inevitably the people we trained to be the protectors and the destroyers would become too strong to control, so society invented religion, morals and other constraints to get around that. It's bad to kill, unless you do it in the name of God, country or law, and other way to tame them.

Rebel Ridge has been called the Rambo of our times, but that's both terribly accurate and misleading. In Rambo, a soldier comes traumatized from war and he's pushed into another war with local cops, therefore he explodes his frustration using all of his training and experience. It's raw, cathartic and emotional. You fear, pity and root for Rambo. In Rebel Ridge we get a soldier who never went into battle, an instructor of martial arts who never killed someone. In order to master anything, one must master themselves. He is cool, in control, doesn't kill or hurt with any pleasure, he is educated, articulated, composed and moral. All in the face of impressive levels of corruption and crime in some local law enforcement.

The message here is: exploding into violence is bad. Even in the most dire consequences, we must be kind, sensitive to others and in control of our emotions, following social norms as much as possible. And if the biggest gang out there: the police or some government or multinational corporate criminals give you a hard time, just bring them to justice, giving them every opportunity to change their ways. We swapped religion for the myth of inner strength. We believe in the second coming of Batman.

So when I say all that above, mind that this is a rather good film, played marvelously by most cast and playing with your emotions pretty heavily. However, it's a bit slow and its message, its ourtimeness, is the same as so many others that show our hero survive through sheer luck, but never compromising their strong morals, only louder. This is what gets people killed and under control by local yokels. So it's a bittersweet sentiment, a good action film with a passive obeisance message.

Kraven the Hunter (2024)

A bad movie in a hopelessly dead universe, made worse by the editing

[6/10 · 7 January 2025]

Some time has passed from the Kick Ass movies, so Aaron Taylor-Johnson got BIG. But even when he keeps his hands ten meters from his waist and shows off perfectly sculpted abs, all one can focus on is his forehead. The guy has the most annoying arrogant expressions I've seen in a long time. The Rock has nothing on this guy! But that's OK, right? Surely the script will make him be a positive character despite the actor. And the character is positive! Only in the most obnoxiously arrogant way possible, killing people for sport because... they are killing people for sport. The whole idea of the film was still-born from the beginning. No one could possibly identify or root for the guy.

Instead, we get a funny little man who can turn into a rhino and a guy who can stop time or something when he takes his sunglasses off. But it gets worse, because of all the characters in the film, the ones I really found more sympathetic and better acted by a lot more charismatic people where those guys, The Foreigner and The Rhino, aka the villains! Alessandro Nivola knocked it out of the park! Meanwhile all the "good guys" came off as angry sociopathic Twitterati.

And even so, stacking up magical witches, Russian mobsters and all of the characters Sony still has a hold on, they could have done something entertaining. And I have the feeling that somewhere in there there was a version of the story that made some kind of sense. And then probably came the edits. Whatever the film was supposed to be, it's now a jigsaw puzzle.

I really wanted to like the film, but it's just a complete mess.

Dragon Age: Redemption (2011– )

I enjoyed it, but it was not good

[6/10 · 7 January 2025]

I was just wondering what Felicia Day was up to, so I looked her up and found this film. Also starring Doug Jones as the tall prosthetically covered villain. And since I enjoyed the Dragon Age games, I said I would watch it.

It is more of a Dungeons and Dragons kind of story, but set into the DA universe. You have the Qunari elf assassin, the valiant Chantry knight, a pubescent Dalish mage and even a Reaver, trying to stop a rogue mage from opening The Veil!

Any of the DA games have a better story than this film and even action, if I may say so, but the banter between characters is fun and the film is very short. And you will say "but wait, isn't this a series?". No, I've seen it as a standalone 50 minutes long (or short) movie.

Bottom line: just scratches that indie fantasy D&D web series itch a little bit. It's really low budget and has little to recommend it. But it wasn't bad.

Autumn and the Black Jaguar (2024)

I respect what they were trying to do, but they failed

[5/10 · 7 January 2025]

This is supposed to be a family friendly, kid oriented, environment aware film. It is about a young girl who goes to the jungle to save her childhood friend, a black jaguar that she raised as a cub, because the bad poachers and business people are after him. There is also a hapless biology teacher who somehow falls into this and accompanies the girl and, of course, the father.

However, the film only works if you map it in your head to one of those loud, obnoxious, pastel colored, exaggerated kid cartoons. If it were a four year old targeted little film, akin to the Paw Patrol or whatever, it would have been decent. As a live film, though, it's beyond annoying. The plot makes little sense, people behave in random ways and the only good part is the jaguar, who just walks around bored, as if to critique the quality of the film he is starring in.

This is not a one star thing, it's not THAT bad, but as an adult or even a child who has survived infancy with no mental issues, this is not the film for you.

Werewolves (2024)

I like Frank Grillo, but this was just bad

[3/10 · 6 January 2025]

Why did Lou Diamond Phillips agree to a cameo in this film? Why did Katrina Law? As for Frank Grillo, I always wanted him to succeed, but he just agrees to play in any movie you ask him to.

This is the second disappointing werewolf movie today. The moon is not with me. But it isn't that the film is bad, it's that it's simply pointless. The premise is that one random night, a blood moon turned one billion people into werewolves, all over the globe. Nice idea, huh? Only this is just the info dump at the beginning. Fast forward to a normal USA preparing for another night of terror: guns, fences, electric countermeasures that depend on the general power grid to work, big cars and branded cool clothes. Then we spend the entirety of the film with two groups of people: the mandatory woman who can't make any rational decision with a kid next to them, and the mandatory tough man who must make his way to said kid, presumably for more stupid decisions. And that's it. There are no large scale scenes, there is no discussion about the ethical and moral complexities of shooting people that are afflicted by something or waking up to see you murdered people in wolf form, just pointless running around, chased by people dressed in wolves.

The werewolves are funny, there is no real action to talk about, a lot of overacting and heavy breathing, inconsistent behavior and a bunch of subplots that make no sense and don't improve the story one bit. Despite decades of conditioning, my brain still rages at the fact that writing a good script only involves a mind, some time and a word processor. If it's not good, you can rewrite it at almost zero cost. How the hell do such bad scripts even make it on the screen remains a mystery to me. Who pays for them? Werewolf actors should unionize!

And the cast is just underutilized: Phillips is fun, Law is cute and Grillo is tough. So they make the first be overly serious, the second run around with a gun and Frank be a gas bag who always says something that ends up not being true. And when it was his time to shine, oh, that atrocious scene with the beheading...

Bottom line: a complete waste of time. The effects are bad, the story starts nowhere and ends nowhere, the actors are misused. Yuck!

Nightbitch (2024)

Decent, but not horror, not sexy and certainly not a comedy

[7/10 · 6 January 2025]

This is yet another movie that tries to give metaphorical meaning to turning into an animal. I mean, it probably was that all along, but in this day and age, when you see there is a movie about someone turning into an animal and tagged horror and body horror you expect some were-action. But no, other than some slightly nauseating scenes of body hair, which are still less horrible than the birth scene at the end, this film is all about motherhood.

And I liked that it portrayed the good and the bad, the frustrations of and the unfairness towards women and pregnant women in particular, but also how their whining sometimes crosses the mark into self-absorption an bitchy preaching. Meanwhile the working dad, "mansplaining" (god, I hate this word, it's so dumb) and having a much better time without realizing it, yet still complaining, comes off as out of touch and insensitive, only to be shown to regret being blind to things and having his own feelings and frustrations to overcome. The interaction with "the other moms" was also nicely done, switching from a general dislike and lack of empathy to realizing they were probably feeling the same way themselves.

The dog thing... I don't know what to say. Apparently Amy Adams is cute even in dog form, but other than that it felt just a little bit gimmicky. It's true that I wouldn't have watched the film without Amy Adams in it and the promise of some fantastic elements, but I still feel cheated. Same applies to the sweaty dirty sexy Adams on the posters, when she is an overweight mommy throughout the film. BTW, her transformation in the film is dramatic. I don't know if she gained weight for this or it was more on the prosthetics side, but she embodied postpartum mom.

Bottom line: I have not read the book this is based on, so I don't know how good of an adaption it is, but it felt like a serious film, done with care and carried really well by all actors involved. I didn't love it, but also I can see how this is good. I will rate it average, though, because of the gimmick and poster bait and switch thing. People should not be lured to see a film they did not intend to watch.

Bookworm (2024)

A bit of a Kiwi mess, but a nice one.

[7/10 · 5 January 2025]

This is not a great movie, but it is not bad either. The story of a father and his daughter reconnecting in the New Zeeland wilderness. The kid is adorably annoying and the father is weirdly wimpy and some weird adventures that make little sense happen. I think the movie could have benefitted from having more reasonable events in it, so as to not feel so fantastical, but then again... it would have felt less fantastical. So take your pick.

Bottom line: it's a two actor movie, carried very well by both Elijah Wood and young Nell Fisher, a silly adventure with a warm feel to it. Can't recommend it, but I kind of enjoyed it.

Elevation (II) (2024)

Falling skies in the war of the worlds, in defiance of the walking dead

[6/10 · 3 January 2025]

This particular genre of movies feels stupid to me. It's a technobabble offshoot of the zombie film: absolutely same premise, but trying to make it more sciency. Alien monsters pop up out of nowhere and destroy most of the human race before we figure out what to do. And then we figure out what to do. They are always really tough, don't seem to need any reason or running power to kill people, but they have stupid quirks that limit their omnipotence. In the case of zombies it's headshots, in the case of A Quiet Place they can't see, in this silly little very low budget copycat it's they can't go over 2440m in altitude.

What I liked about the movie was that it was terse to a fault. Absolutely every detail shown or uttered had some sort of meaning later, like one of those computer games where you have to get objects to achieve a goal. Every stupid scene was there to foreshadow another stupid scene. All except the Katie character, who was completely useless and pointless to the story. I guess that piece of dialogue about an 80 year old hitting on Maddie Hasson was all the foreshadowing we needed, only it happened off camera.

Morena Baccarin is a sci-fi darling ever since Firefly when she was a perfect 23 year old girl with just enough acting skills. 25 years later she is a slightly better actress and not as cute. Anthony Mackie is ... well... you know.... Marvel. Neither of them are very good actors, but they are the only actors you get, because this is almost like a play, carried by 2+1 actors on a scarcity budget script.

The ending strongly implies this is just the first stage of the alien menace, reminiscing of Defiance, Falling Skies, War of the Worlds, Independence Day and any number of ridiculous stories where aliens need flashy energy guns or alien bots or creatures of some kind to get rid of humanity. Only just decently acted and not as fun as any of the aforementioned ones.

Bottom line: this film costed at least 18 million dollars. Remember when one could make magic with this money? Now it's peanuts. The film is of a genre I find stupid, it's barely acted by the two and a half main and only actors and in the end says nothing about anything. A waste.

Flow (2024)

Good animation, but silly story and a video game feel

[8/10 · 31 December 2024]

I liked the concept and the little animals running around a human free world and helping each other after a great flood. It's a metaphor, of course, that the viewer has to interpret, but in the end it's a animation about animals. And they are portrayed well, but not great.

Another issue with the film is that I've played video games that felt exactly the same: the flooded world covered in overgrowth and filled with stock stone buildings and inexplicable large artwork, the ethereal music, the sharp colors, playing an animal and so on. The experience is that of watching a video game cinematic, a well done one, a creative one, but stuck in that uncanny valley of video game worlds that have nothing to do with reality.

Bottom line: creative, well animated, but too much like a video game and too little like watching real animals. For an alternative that is also not animated, but feels much better, see The Bear (1988).

Levels (2024)

Not the best film, but it has heart

[7/10 · 19 December 2024]

Well, you can't refuse to watch a Canadian sci-fi film starring Cara Gee and featuring David Hewlett. Bonus points for Amanda Tapping's voice!

It is a proper science fiction story, not perfectly told, though. The pacing is slow, a lot of things happen for no good reason and the whole underlying drive for the plot is a bit... too Canadian? The budget is probably tiny, so I think they did a good thing with what they got.

Without spoiling things too much, although every plot twist is pretty much telegraphed from the very beginning, it's a decent science fantasy romance with some over the top conclusions and a very classical plot.

One thing that did bother me was a movie poster that has nothing to do with reality (heh!) and the trailer featuring every single CGI scene worth its salt from the movie. Why do that when your whole concept is empathy, truth and human value?

Bottom line: don't expect too much, it feels more like an anthology series episode that got stretched to a feature movie length. I probably liked it more for nostalgic reasons.

Watchmen: Chapter II (2024)

Brings more information than the second half of the live action movie

[9/10 · 18 December 2024]

I was wondering what was the purpose of this animation, since Chapter I basically followed the same narrative as the film from 2009. Well, Chapter II does add more stuff in, explaining some things left vague in the film, making the parallels with The Black Freighter subplot more evident and even having a slightly different ending which made a lot more sense to me.

I liked the animation, I found the voice acting good, and I rated this this high because when it came out I was blown away by the 2009 movie. I have to hope that without having seen it, I would have been just as enthusiastic about this animation. As it stands, it brings extra value, but not enough to justify its existence. I've heard a lot of people talking about how the comics are so much deeper and better. Why, then, were these two cinematic versions so similar?

Bottom line: Watchmen is a very deep and interesting story about personal and societal responsibility and moral sense. I think it's great! Whether you chose this or the 2009 movie, I recommend them highly. I just don't see the point of watching both versions, since they are very similar. If you don't have anything against animation, I think I recommend this version to the live one.

Venom: The Last Dance (2024)

What was this movie even for?!

[4/10 · 18 December 2024]

I had to reread my reviews for the previous Venom movies I remembered nothing from. I liked the first, I hated the second because it had no story and no chemistry. This one has some chemistry between Brock and the symbiont, but man all the rest is a jumbled mess that makes no sense at the best of times. It is a complete waste of time.

First of all, remember that scene at the end of Venom 2 when he was transported into the Spiderman universe? Well, he gets back immediately and says he hates multiverses. Yeah, we hear you, buddy. And with the release of Last Dance, Sony announced the cancelling of all these pointless Spiderman spin-off flops. So with a movie that probably they knew would do nothing at the box office, maybe they could have taken some liberty. Like free Knull and destroy the universe. That would teach them copyright lawyers, right? No. Instead they did... what they usually do. Absolutely nothing.

The problem with the film is that it's not a film. It's a collection of short scenes that don't belong together and of actors that have no business being there. You switch from a comedic bar scene to Venom killing some Mexican dog breeders, from comedic hanging off an airplane and joking about Tom Cruise to Brock personally having to kill someone in self defense, feel bad about it and even express his trauma in like two sentences, from universe ending monsters following a McGuffin to dancing in a hotel in Vegas and bringing said monster to them. It goes on like this. A random hippie family. A scientist with a backstory that ultimately leads nowhere (and played by Juno Temple who looks awful! What the hell happened to her?), another scientist that pretty much fills the whole role, Mulligan is alive (heh, Mulligan, I wonder if that was a joke they knew they were going to make happen), the God of the Void is called Null?! Well, Knull, but whatever, the K is silent.

Even the CGI battles were ridiculous. Multiple symbionts stabbing monsters that can regenerate from being shredded in jet engines, said monsters hitting symbionts when they can emit specific sound to neutralize them, soldiers shooting at both knowing full well it was pointless. Why is Knull a humanoid with white hair? Why does he sound like Gollum? What were they thinking?!

Who the hell was this movie made for? Other than a tiny part rightfully ending the arc of Venom, the rest were like random stuff someone got out from the closet and plastered on. And whatever piece they were putting on was not quality, at all. Comedy was not funny, violence was not really violent, drama was not dramatic, the plot wasn't there, characters were thin and inconsistent, there were multiple contradictions with previous lore. I simply fail to understand what was that audience they were trying to appeal to. Did any of the makers of the movie see it at all? Had anyone a generic idea of what it should have been? It just seems the Franchise series was made about this film.

Bottom line: it was the saddest type of bad.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)

It was OK, but I didn't feel it

[7/10 · 10 December 2024]

It's hard to make a sequel of an '80s movie in the 2020s, but especially something like Beetlejuice. I can barely remember the first one, but I am pretty sure I had more fun watching it than watching this one. And it's not that it's bad, it's that it's average. The jokes feel Looney Toons, the characters are over the top for no reason and everything seems a big joke. Jenna Ortega's casting didn't help with the feeling that I am watching a crossover with The Adams Family. Oh, there were musical numbers. I admit they weren't unfunny, but it all added to the slapstick and less to the story.

The first movie was about a normal family terrorized by a trickster demon. The fear was real and the comedy was just easing in the experience. I didn't feel there was any horror in this one, while featuring a nutty and eccentric family to being with, where the biggest problem was not believing in ghosts and then being indifferent to them, rather than fearing them. Everybody went and came back from the underworld like it was a room next door. Monica Bellucci's side story had absolutely no bearing on the plot, Danny de Vito just cameoed and Willem Dafoe's character did nothing but look pretty. Or was that Monica?

Anyway, bottom line is that, if this would have been a new idea, it would have probably felt better. Instead it's a really... uninspired sequel. Not bad, not good, not the '80s, but not the '20s either. The acting was fine - maybe that was the best part of the film - the rest was just... meh.

The Outrun (2024)

Very real, but also very boring

[7/10 · 5 December 2024]

This is another of those artsy "non linear storytelling" films, which would normally too boring to present in a linear fashion so the editor switches randomly between time periods in someone's life. It's also a movie about a recovering alcoholic, which is hard to watch and by definition is reserved to a small category of people, because those who don't know alcoholics or addicts don't get it and alcoholics watch the movie and feel the need to drink. Being smack in the middle I didn't get it and I felt the need to drink.

Now, I am a bit mean, because the movie is well acted, covers well a very serious matter, the music is good, the Orkney nature scenes are beautiful and, as a drama, this is a very good film. But it's not entertaining in any way, it's just depressing and sad. Imagine Trainspotting, but without all the comedy and camaraderie and wacky drug imagery or the good internal monologues, just the part where he is sober and bored out of his mind.

Bottom line: a good presentation of alcoholism, but not fun.

Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024)

The series was better

[7/10 · 2 December 2024]

In preparation for watching this film, I also watched the series, itself an offshoot of another anime that I had not seen. Watching the Mononoke series I was left with questions and uncertainties that I felt were due to be resolved in this film, released 15 years after the series was. No such luck.

Instead more questions, more obscure references, a more 3-D animation that felt less impactful than the series and a promise to continue the Mononoke tales in another upcoming movie. In short, I got less from it that I got from the original. That doesn't mean it wasn't an interesting, informative and beautiful animation film, it was just that I would have preferred a second season of the series, with the same attention to detail and less focus on the feature's length. In truth, this should not have been a movie at all.

Bottom line: the stories in this universe are interesting and very Japanese, they make me feel like I begin to understand more of their culture, but I fear the direction the productions are going is not the right one.

Ace in the Hole (1951)

Way too relevant?

[9/10 · 30 November 2024]

This is an instructive movie and I think a very good one. Deserves to be in the Criterion collection and I highly recommend it, especially today.

I can't imagine when the ideas in this film were not relevant and I think that's the problem with this film: it pushes too many buttons. Because when you see the cynical manipulation of events for personal and political reasons by desperate and amoral people you are forced to recognize immediately something in your own life. And funny enough, you can be in whichever "bubble" you want, this movie made more than 70 years ago will affect you either way, because this is not about sides, it's about "Tell the truth" and it hits too hard to understand that you are at the same time the one making it happen and the sucker falling for it. So people hit back saying something about how old it is, how Douglas' performance is too over the top, how they didn't like the music or the ending or whatever. But you know what it is.

Ironically, the film kind of mirrors the story it portrays. It's a manipulation of a real event by reporting it as cynical manipulation when in fact it wasn't. The events referenced in the film, the death of a cave explorer named Floyd Collins, did cause a media circus, but the reporter there participated in the rescue because of his small stature and had no direct effect on the (misguided) rescue efforts. That still won him a Pulitzer and made Collins have "the greatest cave explorer" written on his tombstone, even if he had been quite unremarkable before his death.

Maybe the thing that I didn't like that much was the ending. The protagonist suddenly waking up to the evil he is causing and paying for it felt rushed, inconsistent and pandering. But maybe they didn't have a choice in 1951, they had to have a moral ending. And the film is one hour and fifty one minutes long, which is a bit extreme. Still, it was a movie I really appreciated. Made in the same year as The Main in the White Suit, another masterpiece of cynical truth. Maybe there was something about that year.

Bottom line: you should watch it no because of who made it or because it's considered something or other, but just because it is a good movie that makes you look at the things that don't change with time, like human nature.

Conclave (2024)

A complete film

[9/10 · 28 November 2024]

Imagine Twelve Angry Men, but instead of jurors you get cardinals voting for the next Pope. Subtle yet fantastic acting, intriguing ideas, good sets and clothing, appropriate music, this film has it all to make it a great film. Certainly one of the best of this year.

What it doesn't have is action, or levity, or entertainment value. This is a careful study on the state of the world and the fate of our souls through the tiny, yet perfectly framing window of some priests in a big room. A slow and attentive burn, just like the votes of the cardinals after each election.

There will be a lot of talk about the twist at the end. Frankly, I found it superfluous, a cheap trick at the end to enhance excitement and intrigue when the film ends. It doesn't harm the movie, but I feel it doesn't help it either.

Bottom line: come for Ralph Fiennes, who I consider one of the greatest actors of his generation, but stay for everything else.