Megapolis

I will grant that this is the movie he wanted to make.

However, it is not a movie I have to like. If you want to make Shakespeare, make Shakespeare. If you want to make a period piece, make a period piece. If you want to make some vainglorous project that appeals to you alone, make this. This doesn't try for subtlety, but it does go for long drawn out pieces between the not-subtlety that make you check your watch to see how many hours have passed to only find out it has been ten minutes.

I'm sure a lot of the actors signed up because of the director, but when he makes a proud statement of hiring "problematic actors," they should have decided to think again.

Frankly, it got the reception it deserved.

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Rouge One

It's a Christmas movie, so I guess I better watch it for Christmas.

Blah blah Santa gets kidnapped, Dwayne Johnson gets him back, and Chris Evans learns to be a father. Lots of other people have talked about this, and the plot could be more basic, but it's pretty basic.

Instead I want to complain about things that we are supposed to ignore because "this is a movie in which Santa is an actual person".

How does commercialism work? Santa provides presents, so... what the heck are parents doing? But more presents? So kids get presents, but some get more because they are Nice? And where does those presents come from? Vampire Assassins 4 is a popular game, so... is Santa creating them ex nihlio? Taking them from the publishers? If the latter, do they still get money? Where does that come from? (Let alone Dwayne just straight up steals from a store later on... unless all toy stores are supposed to be Santa outposts? If you want to say things are better by positing a global network all run via Claus Inc...)

But hey, Chris Evans is a hacker, so can find Santa. And is jacked. Like he lives a terrible lifestyle, drinks and eats badly, but... is still pretty jacked, can fight a whole squad of people sent to grab him, or giant snowmen, and do all that without even raising a sweat. What?

How does the Naughty List work? Everyone who has ever been naughty is on the list including "jaywalkers" and "litterers". So... are we talking breaking extremely minute laws here? Does jusridiction count? Does morality trump the need for legality? And those are adult crimes, so at what age are people in the list? Any time? How many kids are "killers"? Do people themselves decide if they are naughty or nice? What about psychopaths?

Meanwhile Dwayne does all the right things, get the heroic moments, because that's what's in his contract.

What Christmas movie I would like to see is set on Boxing Day. Santa goes out and sees what his presents have done and... I dunno, but something should be done with that.

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Last Venom

We made it, one last dance to go.

Eddie is in Mexico, and decides to go back to America because he's in trouble and... the movie needs to happen. But there is an alien creature (I've already forgotten the name) that's after him for some macguffin that exists in him that can release the Final Fantasy villain, but the alien can only track him when he's in full symbiote mode. So Eddie goes into full symbiote mode and every opportunity, and eventually they end up at Area 51 where there are a lot of other symbiotes, and the second half of this movie is just one big extended CGI fight scene of symbiotes we don't know fighting that one creature until the movie ends.

As you might be able to guess, I wasn't that impressed by it. I'm sure there are some out there that deeply care about these characters, but the movie doesn't, and give very surface level characterisations. One guy is military, one guy is hippie dad, one woman is scientist because her brother died (this is the biggest character beat anyone gets), and one woman is there because... they need other people? Tom Hardy barely seems to interact with anyone, just schlubbing his way through the movie, which could be a deep character point about Eddie, but just comes across as him not caring about how he's on screen.

As I said, the second half is basically a CGI fest of a large number of symbiotes that no-one whos they are without a scorecard, and they don't stick around long enough to matter anyway. The big ending between Eddit and Venom is... what happens, but since they are an annoying pair, I'm not sad to see them go.

Apparently Sony is giving up on SPUMC, so there is a big likelihood we are done with these... until they are rebooted on screen again in the future.

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Pulsy

Japanese horror movie, why not?

So I had to look at a plot synopsys to fully get an idea of what is going on. Ghosts are invading the real world via the internet, it seems. Okay? We see people seeing creepy images of people on the computer, and then they go away (in various meanings of that term). It's all about being alone, and loneliness is death, so if you are alone, are you a ghost?

There was something bugging me as I watched this movie... that I felt like I'd seen it before. Certainly I could have, it is the sort of thing I would watch, and certain moments did feel very familiar. And then again, parts of this was completely unknown to me. Did I just remember the "good bits"? Did another movie do some of this and I'm remembering that? Any and all options are possible!

But this is very low key horror. Seeing where ghosts inhabit is enough to "infect" someone, so don't expect jump scares or anything. I like me some atmospheric horror, and Japanese horror does tend to be atmospheric, but this... this isn't that.

It's like Suicide Club in that this is likely saying something about how Japanese people see themselves as disconnected, but it comes across as very abstract.

There's an Americanised version in 2006 that I suspect is nowhere near as subtle.

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Hereaticky

Hugh Grant has transited into evil characters well.

Justify your religion. That's the point of the movie. Two Mormon girls visit Mr Reed, who knows a lot more about their own religion than they do, and also raise several red flags immediately. However, it's too late at they are caught in his game as he tries to demonstrate the true power of religion, complete with miracles.

Is this movie anti-religious? I wouldn't say so, although I could easily see others saying it is. It does question the foundation of many beliefs, but no more so than many other athetists have pointed out, and indeed religious scholars already know about, and we still have religion here, don't we? Indeed, you can easily say "well, yes, but despite all those other religions, mine is true".

So what we get is a bit of a character study of what does one man who thinks he knows what the right religion do when confronted by people who believe in another? Try to dismantle their beliefs so they accept his. His wider point is one I've made myself, but is only half the story (I will refrain at the moment explaining more under the pretence of spoilers).

Hugh Grant is lovely and menacing, and Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East are indeed the two women are are also in this movie opposite him. Not to say they are bad at their job, just that they aren't really given much to do that isn't just reacting to what is going on around them.

There are many movies about religion, and this is one of them.

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Longing for Leopards

Leopards are such beautiful creatures.

This is a documentary on Netflix, so you can see it there for yourself. We follow Mochima, a female leopard, as she gives birth to two cubs, and then spend a few years following the new family. She has a daughter and a son, and they are quite different, and it's a question as to whether or not they'll grow up enough to be independent leopards, so if nature will be as nature will.

They really are beautiful, whether loping along, stalking, taking down prey, eating raw meat... such a delight to watch. And we get to see them, and some the crew who feel like the cats are now a part of their lives.

It's a great watch if you like leopards (which I do), but I perfectly understand that they would take me out without pause if I got in their way.

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Secret Not Tunnel

Eight episodes based on games. Sure, why not?

Varying between 10 to 20 minutes, these are wee snippets of "what if we saw some adventure set in the world of X?" Where X could be Warhammer 40K, or Dungeons and Dragons, or Sifu or... some other things I have never heard of. Most are pretty much just an extended fight scene, and if there's anything more to the lore being revealed, I'm not getting it.

And then there is that other episode, the weird one. Yep, it's weird! And it's apparently now going to be a thing.

Got some big names in there too: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Keanu Reeves, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, and others. I guess 'cos it's an easy voice role, it probably wasn't that hard to get them.

Various animated styles, in the vein of Love, Death and Robots. ... ah, same producer (Tim Miller), that explains that.

Not bad, but more gimmick than anything else.

Oh, and there's another eight episodes coming. Didn't know that.

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Last Horrible Movie

Another meta-horror movie. Have I said I've been watching meta horror movies? I've tried to, some aspect where they are trying to draw the audience in, but here is another one.

The gimmick is this is just some schlocky horror movie... but something else has been taped over it. A person addresses us, tells us he a murderer, shows us him murdering people, and wants to know what you think of it all. And he'll ask you because he followed you home from renting the movie.

Which relies on this being a media that could be taped over, this might work for VHS days. But for DVDs, not really. And for streaming, even less so... although you could do a gimmick whereby the person has hijacked the stream and showing something else? That might have legs actually...

Anyway, this is a British take on what reminded me on The Rise of Leslie Vernon... which was actually after this, so the British did it first! The psychopath actor is fine, but I couldn't help feeling "I'm just watching a movie" especially when he kept going on about "is this real or not?"

It looks like this did quite well on the indie film festival circuit, but it doesn't quite hold up nowadays.

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Emelia Parez

It's a big movie that Netflix has... unless you have a local Netflix which doesn't have it.

Emilia wants to fully transition, and hires Rita to get it done. However, she was the head of a rather nasty cartel, and has a family, so she now has to face not being in her children's lives as a parent, and coming up against the consequences of her past actions. There's a lot of good things happening... until there is.

Now this is a musical we should be talking about. Zoe Saldana is putting her limited Spanish into play (she herself said she wasn't happy with her Spanish), as Rita, who occassionally breaks into song and/or dance. As does Selena Gomez. But the main start is Karla Sofía Gascón as Emilia, an actual trans actor playing a trans character. This is what representation is supposed to be, people!

While full on, it does get rather unpleasent at times, but it is always watchable. And watch you should, if you can.

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Futterbly Kisses

A documentary of a found footage documentary of found footage.

Layer 1: A student film looking into Peeping Tom. Layer 2: a filmmaker finds those tapes and tries to make something of them. Layer 3: A documentary looking into that process.

I've seen my share of found footage movies and this... is pretty good! I like that meta level of it, and they are doing interesting and different things with comparing how this could be real but also could be fake. There's a large element of "make up your own mind" while suggesting that it is real, and at the same time suggesting it is fake.

And I like more than they are including real world people in there, such as Andy Wardlaw, editor for Finding Bigfoot, and Matt Lake, writer of Weird Maryland. No doubt those people have to be careful around what they say "that stuff is fake, but my stuff is real", but it's nice to see bringing in links with that area of media. (This isn't the only case of this I've seen, and it's always nice when it happens.)

There's a lot here about obsession, about what looking into the abyss can do.

The final ending is a little bit of a let down, with the film trying to be tricky about what it wants to convey at the end, but otherwise is a good watch.

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Dark Tales of Japan

Anthologies can be hit and miss, so how does this J-Horror fare?

With a brief frame of creepy ghost on a bus, we get a collection of random other horror fare. Spiderwoman is pretty straight forward "here is a creepy supernatural urban legend" that of course turns out to be true. Crevices could have been more, but on the other hand it doesn't hang around. Sacrifice is pretty straight forward, you can call what is going to happen after a minute, but then need to wait for it to play out. Blonde Kwaidan is much of nothing. Presentiment is another instance of "yep, we see what you are doing and... waiting for it to happen".

With these being short tales, it plays both into it and against it. We get to the point, but the point isn't anything amazing to get to. These are fine, but more of a sampler taster than fuller fare.

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UzuTaVi

No doubt you've all be waiting for my opinion of the latest tv adaptation.

This is the same plot of the manga, spiral slowly overtake a town and all kinds of Junji Ito weirdness happens. In this version, they mash a lot of the stories together, so going to the school might encounter the snail people and the attracting hair, going to the hospital deals with Shuichi's mom and the mosquitos. And for me, that is fine. I know the stories well enough that I know what bit of plot goes with what. Some of the actual manga stories are rather short, eg jumping jack, so we don't want to spend a lot of time drawing that out, although that particular story ends up as a few weird moments scattered around other episode.

A lot of comments have been made about the animation itself, about how episode one is so much better. Um, yeah... the later episodes do have a lot of dodgy moments, but there are dodgy moments in the first episode to, so while it is clear where the effort went, it's not like the first episode didn't show its cheap hand. Given that Ito adaptation tend to be straight putting on the screen what was on the page, this worked about as well as other attempts I've seen.

Like other people, I wanted this to be great... but as been pointed out many a time by other people disappointed by adapations: the manga still exists! And that is always worth a re-read!

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