Et Quietam Locus

Sssshhhhhhhhh!

Beings came from the skies and they have a problem with sound. In that they attack any source of sound. Fortunately this family has a deaf daughter and have learnt sign language so they can communicate without talking. Then we get to the story of one day where a number of things so terribly wrong and so they must fight for their lives.

This is one of them slow build thrillers. Establish the threat, establish the new reality, and then watch it crash about. They do signal the solution rather early so then we are waiting for the characters to click on it, but it still manages to be tense in a lot of places.

So husband and wife John Krasinski and Emily Blunt are the leads, with Krasinski directing. This is a tight cast with only seven actors in total on screen. I don't know how well they learnt sign language, but it looked to work for me. The monsters do feel a little CGI blobby, largely a mass of red streaks in brown.

Decent enough, doesn't outlast its welcome, but doubt I'll ever watch this again.

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Deth of Stalin

An English black comedy? You don't say.

Stalin dies at the beginning of the movie, and what we get is the backstabbing and infighting of the Central Committe as they try to position themselves into being the new power. Beria steps up, and seems to be in the lead, but others are working to dispose him.

Okay, spot the names. Jeffrey Tambor, Steve Buscemi, Simon Russell Beale, Michael Palin... and others scattered around. It is written and directed by Armando Iannucci, and he definitely goes into dark humour on all of this. Want light hearted laughs around the mass death of people? Got you covered! And piss jokes too!

That all said, this felt long. During the middle of it, I was just wondering how much of this I was through. With that on board, if this appeals, go for it.

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Mon Oncle

It's a classic Jacques Tati French comedy. It is Mon Oncle.

A man (Arpel) and wife have an extremely modern house, with electrical gizmos and a sparse decor. They also have a son who goes to a school and is sometimes picked up by the wife's brother, Mr Hulot. What story there is involves the rather lackadasical Hulot trying to be given a purpose in life so that he doesn't take the father's spot in the son's life. Arpel gets Hulot a job in his factory and his wife tries to set him up with the neighbour, but never really turns out to work that well for him. In the mean time, the son is getting up to pranks with his friends, and that's the final accidental moment that bonds father and son.

There is only a little story, and otherwise this comes across as a rather random collection of scenes, either from people coming up with it on the day, or a writer getting out of hand and not cutting anything that came into their minds. This does mean that the movie does feel long and rather incoherent at times.

As for the humour... a lot of people were continually giggling throughout this movie, but I didn't get most of it. There were a few moments when even I could get it (and I quite liked the House Eyes moment), but most of it just didn't do anything for me.

I'm glad I watched it, but it does lend more weight to watching movies on fast forward...

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Reedy Plater Won

So I listened to the audio book... and it was complete trash. So how does the movie work?

Parzival is the dude, and he works out how to win a race that everyone knows about to get the first key. Woo! But then he works with the others to work out the other two puzzles. Which aren't complete replications of games and such. We do get a big battle at the end, and overall... this isn't terrible.

As in, this is far better than the book deserves. Speilberg must have decided to tell an actual competent story over fetishing every aspect of the 80s. The puzzles are actually based on the characters in the movie, and what matters is how they are interacting with each other, not who is best at Joust or can quote War Games. I'm not saying this is the most brilliant movie ever made, we aren't talking deep revelations here, but given where this started, this came a long way.

I'm not saying that anyone should go and see this, but if you have read the book and wonder what the hell, this works far better.

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The Adventures of Prince Achmed

The first German film of the year, Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed.

A sorcerer turns up at the Caliph's palace, and tricks the Prince into taking off on a flying horse, and while hitting on the Caliph's daughter the sorcerer is thrown in jail. The Prince ends up in some magical lands, and hits on the demon Peri Banu, and kidnaps her, but of course she gives in to him. The sorcerer escapes, kidnaps Peri Banu himself, sells her off to the Chinese Emperor and leaves the Prince on a volcano. Fortunately, the witch in the volcano picks the Prince up and helps him to get back. They collect Aladin along the way, but really it is the witch that solves all the problems at the end.

This was done in 1926 as a silhouette animation film, in which the animation is stop motion cut out figures. That said, it's really well done, and although it's monochrome (as in one colour, not as in black and white) the colour does help it pop. The story is largely a retelling, which makes me suspect that this was mainly a technical passion rather than really wanting to tell the story.

But I liked it, so check it out if you can.

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The Final Movement

Via accidentally clicking, I found out that the Embassy was going to screen a screening of Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: The Musical - Le Mouvement Final. So of course I had to go see it. As did around two dozen other people. In a theatre set up to hold over 600. Well, it was a school night, the movie started at 8pm, and went for three hours, and wasn't well advertised. Kinda shot themselves in the foot over that one.

This is the musical of the Sailor Stars storyline. The Three Lights arrive, as does mysterious figures intent on attacking the Senshi. While the Guardians try to protect Usagi, some of them fall, and the Three Lights are revealed as the Sailor Stars. Eventually, Sailor Galaxia unveils her plan to use the Sailor Crystals to wipe out the Galaxy Cauldron and defeat Chaos, but Chaos is onto it. Can Usagi survive losing her friends to defeat the biggest threat of all?

So yeah, I went in with little idea what to expect, and enjoyed myself. I'm not too positive that musicals work when you have to subtitle everything (except the extra songs at the end - boo!), but everything still seemed to work to me. This was a recording of the stage play, so I did spend some time noting the technical aspects of how they moved things around on the stage, and the use of lights to hide/accentuate moments. And as this is the first one I've seen (which happened to be the last arc, so I'm not expecting more any time soon), I did also note with interest that all the parts were played by women (including Mamo-chan).

This is concentrated Sailor Moon, and... hmm... where did I put my DVDs of the series?

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Pasifik Rim Uprosen

So, name this movie: an unneeded sequel featuring the son of a character in the first film, the son being the focus of the second film, and the original character no longer around. We also have various cameos of characters from the first movie that are completely wasted. And there's the promise of more movies we don't need. And there are creatures that are not of this earth.

Did you say Independence Day 2? You are right! There is another answer.

So, yeah, we have the son that didn't exist in the first movie, and now it's all about him. And there is also a girl straight out of Transformers 5, but she has a twist: she wants to drift but suffers from traumatic memory when trying to drift. No, wait...

Do we at least have spectacle? Frankly, the Transformers comparison is apt on a few levels, although I could slightly follow the fights just a little more. I did follow the plot, and the clearly obvious villain did have more going on than I thought, so I will give them that.

I went less than a week after it opened, and while it was early afternoon, I'm not sure there was anyone else in the theatre... which says a lot.

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