Movies What I have Watched Recently
Apr. 20th, 2018 09:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretPacific Rim: Uprising
I've been telling anyone who asked "It was stupid, but fun," and that suffices as the topline review. But I do have more to say about it.
There was nothing in the movie as gloriously, weirdly stupid as the analog circuits and other technobabble of the first movie. This was a more 'studio' film than Del Toro would make, and part of my pleasure in Pacific Rim was how devoted it was to installing that background weirdness as part of its core aesthetic, so i was disappointed that PR2 had less of it, but still, giant robots fighting checks enough of the boxes that I was going to enjoy this movie as long as the cinematography and choreography of the fight scenes worked. And it did.
And I also felt that, for a studio movie, it didn't hit the formula with enough precision. There was with the introduction of Amara the hints of a new kid at the military academy formula, but while they sketched out the barest arc of it, they didn't hit all the beats the formula required. Similarly, John Boyega's Jake Pentecost had the whole academy washout returns for redemption arc, but he was accepted back too easily, they didn't actually hit the story beats of his redemption. They clearly wanted to, but too much time was needed for giant robot battles and that limited their movie storytelling. So this was a movie with the ghost of a narrative and a lot of giant robot fights.
I loved that instead of the giant robots forming up like Voltron, the giant monsters formed up like Voltron. Where the movie did have a sense of weirdness and fun and playfulness was almost exclusively in the giant robot fights, which is where it should be if for some reason you have a budget of playfulness (there is no reason to have a budget of playfulness). The mini giant robot, the battle on an Arctic ice shelf, launching into the atmosphere to gravity slingshot into Mount Fuji... That was what made PR2 fun to watch. Also John Boyega.
Also, a complaint: One of my dings on PR1 was that the name of the lead giant robot was an offensive racist slur. In this movie, the lead giant robot was named after and symbolically the child of that giant robot... but instead of retaining the inoffensive part of the name, they retained the racist slur. That pissed me off.
Pitch Perfect 3
This was a ludicrously bad movie. That surprised me because Pitch Perfect 2 was ludicrously weird, but not bad. But Pitch Perfect 3 was bad. It was a movie that knew it was unnecessary because Pitch Perfect 2 had been made with no expectation of a three and had effectively wrapped up character arcs, and its writers had been unable to come up with meaningful new character arcs.
So the movie starts with a strange reset where it turns out that all the successes of the previous movie have resulted in abject humiliating failure, so that reuniting the Bellas is presented textually as the characters trying to wallow in their college successes. It's a terrible way to start a movie where we the audience are primarily there to see the Bellas singing! You're setting up for the movie to end with the main characters not reluctantly giving up the Bellas (as happened in PP2), but actively rejecting the Bellas... why?
Further, the whole movie seems trapped in these weird anxieties of identity. We're three movies in, why are the characters still dealing with an inferiority complex about not making original music or not playing instruments? In this movie's riff-off, the instrumentalists the Bellas are riffing against go a round or two, and then settle into a mutual jam session. Which is an awesome concept and was generally well executed musically, except that for some reason this jam session and the fact that their competition grabs instruments causes anxiety for the Bellas, who seem incapable of joining in because it violates the rules of a riff-off? I'd have loved to have this mutual jam session build even further as the Bellas get the feel for it and join in. There's a scene where the Bellas say that they don't do original songs, except for the one Hailee Steinhardt's character wrote in the last movie, and then Hailee Steinhardt blushes and says she doesn't do that anymore, and it feels like they're lampshading the fact that this movie doesn't have any original songs, but why bother? Nobody cares, that's not what we're here for. You do not need to sell the audience of a Pitch Perfect movie on a cappella covers of pop songs. And every time they seem embarrassed about the core purpose of the movies, it makes me less interested in watching.
I was lost trying to navigate this new Beca, new Fat Amy, new Chloe, new Aubrey. They looked the same, and had some of the same mannerisms, but mostly they acted weirdly different for no particular reason.
And IMO there were no musical performances in the film good enough that I could say "Okay, forget the plot, I'm here for the music." So strong anti-rec for this movie.
The Paper Chase
One of my father's favorite movies, as he went to law school in the '70s himself. I've intended to see it for ages, but finally did. And it is indeed quite good. Though Professor Kingsfield isn't anywhere near as nasty as pop culture had led me to believe- his traps are more intellectually rigorous and demanding but nowhere near as meanspirited as the trap laid for Elle in her first law school class in Legally Blonde, forex. I enjoyed the way the film meditated on how to balance pursuing personal excellence against the demands of human connection. I thought Lindsay Wagner was fantastic as Hart's romantic foil, brittle and damaged by the brilliant men she is drawn to, and capable of being brilliant on her own terms.
I've been telling anyone who asked "It was stupid, but fun," and that suffices as the topline review. But I do have more to say about it.
There was nothing in the movie as gloriously, weirdly stupid as the analog circuits and other technobabble of the first movie. This was a more 'studio' film than Del Toro would make, and part of my pleasure in Pacific Rim was how devoted it was to installing that background weirdness as part of its core aesthetic, so i was disappointed that PR2 had less of it, but still, giant robots fighting checks enough of the boxes that I was going to enjoy this movie as long as the cinematography and choreography of the fight scenes worked. And it did.
And I also felt that, for a studio movie, it didn't hit the formula with enough precision. There was with the introduction of Amara the hints of a new kid at the military academy formula, but while they sketched out the barest arc of it, they didn't hit all the beats the formula required. Similarly, John Boyega's Jake Pentecost had the whole academy washout returns for redemption arc, but he was accepted back too easily, they didn't actually hit the story beats of his redemption. They clearly wanted to, but too much time was needed for giant robot battles and that limited their movie storytelling. So this was a movie with the ghost of a narrative and a lot of giant robot fights.
I loved that instead of the giant robots forming up like Voltron, the giant monsters formed up like Voltron. Where the movie did have a sense of weirdness and fun and playfulness was almost exclusively in the giant robot fights, which is where it should be if for some reason you have a budget of playfulness (there is no reason to have a budget of playfulness). The mini giant robot, the battle on an Arctic ice shelf, launching into the atmosphere to gravity slingshot into Mount Fuji... That was what made PR2 fun to watch. Also John Boyega.
Also, a complaint: One of my dings on PR1 was that the name of the lead giant robot was an offensive racist slur. In this movie, the lead giant robot was named after and symbolically the child of that giant robot... but instead of retaining the inoffensive part of the name, they retained the racist slur. That pissed me off.
Pitch Perfect 3
This was a ludicrously bad movie. That surprised me because Pitch Perfect 2 was ludicrously weird, but not bad. But Pitch Perfect 3 was bad. It was a movie that knew it was unnecessary because Pitch Perfect 2 had been made with no expectation of a three and had effectively wrapped up character arcs, and its writers had been unable to come up with meaningful new character arcs.
So the movie starts with a strange reset where it turns out that all the successes of the previous movie have resulted in abject humiliating failure, so that reuniting the Bellas is presented textually as the characters trying to wallow in their college successes. It's a terrible way to start a movie where we the audience are primarily there to see the Bellas singing! You're setting up for the movie to end with the main characters not reluctantly giving up the Bellas (as happened in PP2), but actively rejecting the Bellas... why?
Further, the whole movie seems trapped in these weird anxieties of identity. We're three movies in, why are the characters still dealing with an inferiority complex about not making original music or not playing instruments? In this movie's riff-off, the instrumentalists the Bellas are riffing against go a round or two, and then settle into a mutual jam session. Which is an awesome concept and was generally well executed musically, except that for some reason this jam session and the fact that their competition grabs instruments causes anxiety for the Bellas, who seem incapable of joining in because it violates the rules of a riff-off? I'd have loved to have this mutual jam session build even further as the Bellas get the feel for it and join in. There's a scene where the Bellas say that they don't do original songs, except for the one Hailee Steinhardt's character wrote in the last movie, and then Hailee Steinhardt blushes and says she doesn't do that anymore, and it feels like they're lampshading the fact that this movie doesn't have any original songs, but why bother? Nobody cares, that's not what we're here for. You do not need to sell the audience of a Pitch Perfect movie on a cappella covers of pop songs. And every time they seem embarrassed about the core purpose of the movies, it makes me less interested in watching.
I was lost trying to navigate this new Beca, new Fat Amy, new Chloe, new Aubrey. They looked the same, and had some of the same mannerisms, but mostly they acted weirdly different for no particular reason.
And IMO there were no musical performances in the film good enough that I could say "Okay, forget the plot, I'm here for the music." So strong anti-rec for this movie.
The Paper Chase
One of my father's favorite movies, as he went to law school in the '70s himself. I've intended to see it for ages, but finally did. And it is indeed quite good. Though Professor Kingsfield isn't anywhere near as nasty as pop culture had led me to believe- his traps are more intellectually rigorous and demanding but nowhere near as meanspirited as the trap laid for Elle in her first law school class in Legally Blonde, forex. I enjoyed the way the film meditated on how to balance pursuing personal excellence against the demands of human connection. I thought Lindsay Wagner was fantastic as Hart's romantic foil, brittle and damaged by the brilliant men she is drawn to, and capable of being brilliant on her own terms.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-04-20 03:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-04-20 04:15 pm (UTC)If I ever get curious I can just check out the soundtrack, which is bound to be a) less bad than the film and b) have less references to work related things.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-04-21 11:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-04-22 02:12 am (UTC)