Aquamanatte and the Climate Allegory

Just came out, but ... eh, wasn't that excited about seeing it. But it was on, and there weren't many people, and I had time, so...

Black Manta finds an Ancient Artifact (as one does) and immediately goes on a global killing spree (in that he is killing the globe, not that he is killing a lot of people... directly). However, he ends up crossing paths with Atlantis and so our "hero" is brought into the plot. Aquaman teams up with Orm to make the movie a buddy comedy as they track down Manta, and eventually there's a big fight and Aquaman's family is put in danger.

Oh, and Mera is also there.

Jason Mamoa is just there having fun, while Patrick Wilson is actually trying to act. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II should be doing a lot, but they really trim down any scene with him and give the spotlight to Randall Park instead. And even Dolph Lundgren gets more screen time than Amber Heard!

I won't say I was bored during the movie, but there was just often big fighting scenes with lots of colour and CGI and... I couldn't tell what was happening. And I didn't care. We all know it's going to come down to the main actors punching each other, so get to that and let us get to the personal conflict (as expressed through punching).

And so ends the DC:EU... and I have no idea what the next DC movie is.

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ThanksGiven

Yes, this is the Eli Roth trailer-turned-movie... can't recall if there is one left but can't be bothered to look it up.

What if Dawn of the Dead but not subtle about its message of consumerism? That's the opening of this movie, in which several stupid deaths happen in a Thanksgiving sale, and so one year later vengeance will be taken! I will immediately give that there are some intelligent moves and people don't start with the Stupid Brain, although there definitely are some SB moments. Unfortunately, the killer has standard teleportation powers, and the ability not to look like the person who is later revealed.

Not a lot of cast I recognise. Patrick Dempsey of course, and Gina Gershon briefly. Rick Hoffman is great in every scene he is in. The others, especially the younger actors, were fine, and I may or may not ever recognise them if they end up in anything else.

Overall it's decent if typically example of the genre.

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Future Relaxed

A time travel movie? Maybe. With Rhys Darby? Okay, I'll check it out!

A time traveler comes to our present day with a plan to help make the future better. But being aware of time travel consequences, he keeps low key, hangs out with people who don't have much of an impact, but there is just one artist he can't help getting involved with. And causing problems in what should happen. But it's fine, there's someone else from the future too who is here to make sure there are no other time travelers around.

This is a comedy in that it's light hearted, and not taking itself seriously. It's not really a comedy, in that it isn't funny. If anything, it really wants to be a stoner comedy, but Rhys Darby can't do that. He spends every scene talking way too much, so any tension or even interest is drained away by the tide of words. Julian Richings is a great character actor who should be more of a focus, but he isn't on screen enough. Gabrielle Graham is the closest person we have to an actual protagonist of interest, and she fits the stoner comedy part, but again there isn't anything funny going on.

This could have been good... but it isn't.

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One Last Monk

Monk was a great tv series. It ended, as far as I recall, and that's fine. But clearly someone decided to dip back into that well, and so we get a Last Case.

Monk is not doing well, and plans on joining his wife. However, Molly is about to get married but her husband-to-be dies and she gets Monk to get involved. And we all know who the guy is. [The movie isn't subtle, the chap is a Jeff Bezos stand in.]

Who is Molly you might ask? Apparently Trudy knew her, but... I have no idea who she is. The only kid in the series was Natalie's, but that was way after Trudy died (Natalie was what... third season?), so... just agree that this character was a major part of Adrian and Trudy's backstory and move on.

We get the team back together, Natalie, Randy, and Stottlemeyer (Sharon has a cameo). Aside from the emotional beats with Monk on the verge of moving on, this is a fairly standard story. The bad guy is obvious, and the method of the death was fairly obvious too (although it is revealed way late). The ending moment is a nice touch and... is there going to be a new series? I doubt it, but the set up is there.

It's nice to be back with the crew, and this should be enough to get me to go back to watch the series, but I'm good. Nice to revisit, but no need to stay here.

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From Madonna's Unknown Heart

Clearly I am a Maddy fan, and for whatever reason YouTube decided that I need to know about unreleased songs from albums. Which is pretty cool. Here for example, are the unreleased songs from Rebel Heart.

But my question is... how did they (the video channel) get them? Or whereever they got them from? Does Maddy secretly release these on the sly? Do recording studios stockpile them and someone leaks? It's neat to hear these songs, but... does Madonna really want people to listen to songs she hasn't explicitly released?

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Dawn of the Nougat

Many years later, we got a chicken sequel... been a while since I saw the first, so let's see what I remember.

And the movie recaps the salient points from the first movie, so that's not a problem! Here we get the next step, namely the introduction of a kid, who grows up and causes trouble. Which eventually because the drive for the chickens to actually do something and where they escaped a camp last time, this time they... infiltrate a camp! What a twist! ... but yeah, that makes sense. It's not a story I think needs telling, but I'm not dismissing it now we have it.

The voices get recast, because it has been a while... and a lot of them are fine in an of themselves, but are quite different from what we got the first time. Instead of Mel Gibson we have Zachery Levy (barely a step up), and instead of Julia Sawalha we have Thandiwe Newton, and that's quite the change. But hey, Bella Ramsey as the kid, so yay!

So we have a second. Is there a sign of a third? I'm not looking for it, but I won't turn away should we get one.

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Sugar/Swan/Rat/Poison

For some reason Netflix decided to do a "week" of Wes Anderson adaptations of Roald Dahl short stories, where week equals four days.

Each adaptation has the same approach, the main characters narrate the story directly to the camera, and limited portrayals of actual events. There are very artificial sets and changes are done on screen, as if this was a collection of stage plays. And there are about five main actors who turn up as different characters across and within the stories. This works only because these are short stories, if this continued for a full movie it would be a bit much.

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar goes several stories deep as it tells its tale, and while engaging the sparse portrayal of the story could do with more complexity.

The Swan is the most abstract, with even more telling not showing and walking along long hedge paths.

The Ratcatcher is more of a character piece with the title character showing what it means to go after rats. This also dives a lot into the stage play aspect as well as featuring an animated sequence that, hey, continues the trend I've been following!

Poison is one I think I might have read before? If one would skip any, this might be one, as the resolution is rather faint.

We get Ralph Fiennes, Benedict Cumberbatch, Dev Patel, Ben Kingsley, Richard Ayoade, and Rupert Friend across the stories, with Ralph Fiennes repeating his role as Roald Dahl a few times. All good performances, and it is clear when they swap around roles. Good makeup and costume work!

I do wonder if this could be combined as a stage performance of all these stories in one go. It would be something to check out.

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Doggy Isle

Not just Anderson, but still more Anderson animated.

It's quite the leap to suddenly declare all dogs as evil, but that's the set-up we get. Following that, we get a young boy trying to get his dog back, and there is a group of dogs that will help him, and will those dogs be able to save the day? There is also a B-plot with a young girl, but that feels so incidental that it could have been easily lifted out.

One issue with this is the stylistic approach of Wes Anderson here is great to look at for individual frames of the movie but... the dogs are more like very staged creatures, ie they aren't dogs. There is Dogs As People metaphor, but this goes beyond that to not even having dogs as dogs. (And I don't entirely follow that the dogs would act as they do here, but that's a big ask of the movie to get invested in what is going on.)

Again, good cast, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Bob Balaban, and others, but again the stilted nature of Wes Anderson does make these dogs come across rather oddly.

I did enjoy this as I watched it, but thinking back on it now... clearly I have some issues. But hey, in the time, I did enjoy watching this.

We had two animated Andersons, of which one was a Roald Dahl adaptation, so next...

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Foxy Fantastic

Time to catch up on some Wes Anderson! This time it's George Clooney as a sexy creature that gets into trouble... hang on...

Mr Fox is a clever creature that we immediately like. He's a rogue, gets away with things, and everyone likes him (more or less, his son is rather more ambivalent). However, his reach exceeds his grasp, and soon he and his companions are in over their head, and extremes are needed to get out.

I think I read this as a kid, it was a little kind of familiar, but hey, it's a fun story, and this is a great adaptation. There's a lot happening with Fox, with the two kids, with the other animals, with the three humans, and...

Great performances really come through. Even aside from George Clooney, we get Michael Gambon, Jason Schwartzman, and Eric Chase Anderson giving great voices to their characters. Which are matched by...

Great visuals. This is Wes Anderson of course, a careful study of each frame, and just because this is animated/puppeted, that makes this no less meticulous in set and execution. I will be saying that a lot.

This is on D+, so easy to catch, and it led me to the next one.

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Gojira i squared

Oooh, new Toho kaiju movie? I'm in!

A scared man lands down at an aircraft repair base.. and Godzilla attacks! With that, he is trapped in his own war, as signified by this giant dinosaur like monster, but having external demons doesn't help with internal demons.

This is going back to Godzilla as the atomic war metaphour he was before, and, moreover, actually gets presence on screen, unlike other Godzilla movies! Toho knows what we want!

And this is shot brilliantly. We are with people as they face dealing with post-war life on a small scale, as well as having to battle this giant stomping devastating analogy monster. We get a good balance of scope, and while some moments you can spot comings, it's still wonderfully portrayed.

Although note that this is subtitled, so some people might be upset by that. It's a Japanese movie, what did you expect? At least we didn't get a reedit with an American journalist badly inserted into it...

I'm not expecting this to reboot a whole new series of Godzilla movies... but I wouldn't say no.

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