Last and First Men

I recently worked through an anthology of time travel stories, so when this movie started with "we are the last men from billions of years from now", I was able to take that on board and work with it.

This is a missive from them into the past. We get some information about what life is like now, find out that it's not a utopia, it's just people being people (where people has changed, but still). But there is an unfortunate event that is gonna wipe everyone out. And so they speak out, to be heard, before they are gone.

...oh dear gods. Ever watch a movie and think "this was a waste of time and resources for everyone involved, including the audience"? This is Tilda Swinton narrating this almost essay (this was adapted from a book... should have stayed there). And under this is... completely irrelevant black and white imagery of mosaics from around the world. Actually, I don't know if they just found these things or made them, and they are nice as monuments in and of themselves, but have nothing to do with whatever point this movie is going for.

I admit I watch movies at quicker that 1x speed... never more so glad to be able to do so when dealing with a movie like this.

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La odisea de los giles

The New Zealand International Film Festival is coming, and it's online, so I'm probably gonna watch a lot of them. But I can see something of them before hand. Such as this one about the Argentinian Corralito.

A small group of townspeople decide to pool money on starting a communal effort, raise money and put it in the bank to be safe. Then a thing happens. They find out that one man swooped in and removed their money just before it, so he has a lot and they don't. And he happens to put a vault nearby that contains the money. And so the rest of the film is them trying to work out what to do about that and eventually hopefully get the money back for themselves.

Okay, I know nothing about the corralito, but having seen a few "economic events", I could guess the basics and the precise details don't really matter. What we have is a very rural take on the heist/revenge movie, that while being comedic is also about a father who loses his wife and doesn't want to put his son at any risk.

Decent movie, moves along well, and keeps the stakes personal. And doesn't exactly end up as you'd think.

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The Boookselllers

I went to the movies! (How dare I! Actually, it is fine for New Zealand, and indeed the Welling Film Society is back up and running. Although that is at the Embassy and this movie was at the Lighthouse Cuba, and I was a bit more worried about space, but I was able to get a good enough seat that was away from other people.)

Anyways, this movie is about, as it says on the tin, booksellers, in particular the booksellers around New York. We talk with various people who are booksellers, mainly of rarer items, about how they got into it and the issues they are now facing. Which is a few. Some see the internet as a good thing... many don't. A lot of them will be "aging" out soon and think the age of the bookseller is coming to an end, but there are some younger ones who are quite excited (and by younger, they look to be around my age). In all, they all have large collections crammed in small spaces and they basically view a book as an object and not something to actually sit down and read.

This is mainly talking heads about their lives. I would have liked to have seen some more about how they deal with books and such, but that wasn't this movie. Most of the heads are elderly, so you definitely get a large dose of their world view, especially with the more pessimistic edge of things coming to an end. (I can't say I've been buying tons of physical books myself.) While there are the younger ones, the film doesn't spend much time with them nor their ideas, beyond saying "hey, we're not out yet."

While being a bookseller has an interest for me (and my bookishness), ultimately I don't think that lifestyle is for me.

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The Grodge

I'm pretty clearly on the record for loving the Ju-on movies, so I was savouring watching the 2020 version. Okay, sure, small hitch with certain events closing down cinemas, but we live in a connected world so it wasn't that much a problem.

After having been to a certain house in Japan, Fiona Launders returns home, and a new cycle begins. Later there's a cop, and she investigates Fiona's house. And there are other people living there. And there is someone else in a car. And there's another detective, who is obsessed with what happened. And there are other people too.

What you might be able to tell is that there is a lot of people in this movie. What you might not be able to tell is there is not a lot of scares or deaths. By halfway through a normal Grudge movie, half the cast would have been killed in gruesome ways! In this, we're still introducing new people! (The movie jumps about in time.) This is sort of saving up the death scares for the end, but... what we actually get is a really boring movie with just a whole of people and not much happening. A Grudge movie shouldn't be boring, but this is!

There is the usual palaver of ghosts sort of being seen and random jump scares, but they aren't effective. Well, except one. Otherwise they are all telegraphed and you just wait for... there it is!

The director, Nicholas Pesce, has ideas for a sequel. And this was supposed to be a reboot, but he tied it in anyway. After this, then yes, let's reboot, but give it to someone else.

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Bludshut

This was one of the last movies in the before times, but I only got around to watching it now.

We have Vin's character... I don't recall his name, and frankly it's just Vin the whole time, so I'm not going to bother, we have Vin's character be a kick arse military guy, who's wife is killed, then him, then he comes back as a supersoldier and kills for revenge. Then we find out this was a fictional set up, and the bad guys are just created digitally. So far, this is what is in the trailer. And we take about half the movie to get this point which, again, everyone knows because of the trailer. Then Vin has to deal with the company that did this to him, and that is the rest of the movie.

When this movie was coming out, I grabbed the comics so I could get the story and see how well the movie did. What the movie does it just the first two (approximately) of the comics, although with more action/violence pumped in because this is an action movie. The rest of the comics deals with "what happens next". Which I guess this means this could be a whole series of movies? And the comics also crossed over with other comics, so this could spin out into its own Valient Comics universe... but I doubt they're going to go that far.

What we get in this movie is the basic set up of the character, and that's about it. Frankly, a lot more could be done with the character, but given the focus of this movie is "let us do action sequences with CGI bits", I don't get the feeling the producers actually cared beyond "action movie vehicle for Vin, check".

To be honest, the most interesting part of the movie was noting that one of the leads was Guy Pearce and this easily could have been his AIM character and this movie fitting in that quite easily.

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Unvard!

Well, it's Pixar, so of course it's going to be the greatest thing ever. When has Pixar ever failed?

It's a literal coming of age story as Ian becomes of age, 16, and goes on a quest with his older brother to make a man... out of his dad. Because it has to be about father issues. Which isn't to say the mother isn't in this, but it's about the guys dealing with their father who has been gone for a while, but hey we can say that at least this movie has a plot featuring women in it. And I guess it passes the (low standard of the) Bechdall test in that they talk about a curse, but it is about getting an item to help the boys with their father, so it's in service of a man? Not sure about that one.

Anyway, this is a road trip movie, where the gimmick is that these are DND style creatures, and aside from the magical staff, the fact that these are different creatures isn't really relevant to anything. Could just have easily been different flavours of humans.

I'm not saying this is a bad movie (it's not in the Cars franchise after all), but it definitely didn't feel like anything amazing to me. It just feels... generic. Standard storyline you can get anywhere. Pixar can do some really moving storylines, but this...

It's not terrible, but I've seen better.

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Da Hunt

With it going straight to VOD, let's check out this masterpiece that was too controversial for its original release date.

You remember the trope of "the most dangerous animal is man", and the many many many films made around "let's hunt man", well, what if you made another movie that was that? But this time, it was class divide, but only using the most over the top trope stereotype characters. Are you rooting for everyone to die? Most likely, I know I was.

The big deal for this movie seems to be Betty Gilpin... but since I don't know who that is, that isn't really a drawcard for me. The actress playing Athena is shown as really mysterious, so lots of shots from behind until a big reveal later to show it was... actually I had to look up the cast to realise who it was, so that wasn't a big moment for me either. I may not be the target audience for this.

That said, this is a very goofy movie. It isn't subtle, but it is fun with it, so that works more me. As such, sure, check this movie out, it's watchable enough.

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