My comment/review from that year’s Oscar thread:
Hacksaw Ridge: 56. Great action, terrific story, more cliches than I could have imagined being squeezed into one movie.
The Phoenician Scheme. My daughter is a mad Wes Anderson fan so naturally we went to see it and I have to say that it’s one of his better ones. Yes, it hits all the usual visual notes of all his films, the deadpan delivery, the array of bizarre characters played by a lot of familiar faces, the unpredictable plot etc. so if you like that sort of thing you’ll enjoy this. And it’s worth it just to see the facial hair they put on Benedict Cumberbatch.
If you’re not an Anderson film fan this will be just as weird as you might anticipate. But IMHO it’s much better than the way-too-meta “Asteroid City”.
Each to their own I guess. I really enjoyed Wicked and so did the 2 people I went with. Amusing throughout, well paced and some really catchy songs. Looking forward to the second film later this year.
Yeah I loved Wicked. It was in my top films of last year. I had such a great time.
My wife and I have been waiting to see Wicked until part 2 is released.
Same. My grandma wanted to watch it so we did while me and my Aunt just suffered. I’ve never seen the musical, so maybe that is great, but I think I struggled a bit with the over-the-top hamfisted polemic which seemed (from what I recall many years ago) a missed opportunity to work in all the delicious shades of grey from the novel. The movie also moved at a glacially slow pace. (Also, I’m not exactly a fan of the Wizard of Oz, I find it inherently uninteresting.)
One thing I will credit it for - I thought it was very well cast. I don’t know Ariana Grande as an artist but I loved her in her role. And Elphaba could really sing.
I have a friend who is conservative in his thinking style who objected to Wicked on principle because it upended the moral framework of the original. Like he was really upset about the idea that there are different ways to look at things. I think he saw it as a paeon to moral relativism. I think that’s interesting.
Huh. I didn’t think it was about moral relativism, i thought it was about knowing the rest of the story. The morality was completely consistent with the movie, but the facts were different from what we’d been led to believe.
(It was inconsistent with the books, but could have been true in the world of the movie.)
Well, the movie seemed to imply to me that Elphaba was really good-hearted but was framed by an oppressive regime, which does contradict her depiction in the original movie. I guess we won’t really know until the second movie comes out where it’s all headed.
I read Wicked a loong time ago but I seem to remember it as a literary exploration of how morally complex (not wholly good or bad, but significantly marginalized) people can be driven to do evil things. That wasn’t this movie.
Which is fine if you like that kind of thing, but I don’t like that kind of thing.
You could think of it being like Emma Stone’s character in the 2021 film Cruella, in which we are told of how Cruella de Vil grew up.
Or a much reviled prequel trilogy.
Predator: Killer of Killers
Recommended.
I did not realize this was going to be an animated movie, but it doesn’t really matter. It’s a really solid Predator movie. We watch a few warriors throughout out time fight Predators and then are brought together in the end for a Hunger Games style battle.
Well done, as was the previous Predator movie(Prey). Same director and I see he has a second live-action Predator movie coming out in a few months.
I enjoyed this one and it streams on Hulu if you are interested.
I’ve never seen Wicked but I recall watching the original Wizard of Oz a few years back with the kids. A couple of things I observed:
Elphaba (WWotW) never did anything really “evil” I could recall other than be green, scary, and cackle a lot. At worst, all I recall her really doing was send her enforcers out to apprehend several persons of interest in the untimely death of her sister.
Glinda (GWotN) who is a poster child for “appearing fairer but feeling fouler”:
- Recruited a minor to assassinate the head of state (WWotW) of another sovereign state (which we would largely regard as a “war crime”
- Manipulated the same minor to displace a second political leader (TWWoO).
- Probably orchestrated the killing of a third political leader via having Dorothy’s house drop on her (WWotE).
- Clearly had political ties of a questionable nature with the various shady mercantilist guilds across the region.
So who fills the power vacuum in Oz after the “wicked” witches are dead and the Wizard of Emerald City is on a one-way balloon trip back to Kansas?
A good movie. Also has Rob Corddry playing his typical Rob Corddry character and Toni Collette who turns out is not Hannah Waddingham.
Speaking of Toni Collette, she costars in Micky 17 directed by Bong Joon Ho (Parasite, Snowpiercer) along with Robert Pattinson and Mark Ruffalo. A funny sci-fi black comedy about an expendable clone on a space colony. Very reminiscent of the Sam Rockwell film Moon.
It may be “unmanly” to say I’ve become a Robert Pattinson “fan” but I like a lot of his non-Twilight movies (Tenet, The Lighthouse, The Batman, etc).
Pattinson is a gem. I loved him in The Lighthouse.
Just got back from this one and I think I need the Cliff Notes. Nice thing about Wes Anderson films is that there is always something to look at even if you have completely lost the thread of the story. If you have never seen an Anderson movie DO NOT START WITH THIS ONE!
Ozma. At least, that’s what happened in the books. Curiously, Ozma, the legitimate ruler of Oz, was hidden by turning her into a boy. She grew up as a boy and then had to decide to let someone undo the magic and turn her into a girl. Someday, i need to reread those books with my “trans sensitivity” glasses on. I’m curious how they will read.
But the story in Wicked is based primarily on the movie.
Try as I might, I just can’t get into Wes Anderson films. I just find them far too twee and the distinctive style (pastel colours, square-on and generally static with occasional tracking camera shots across the scene, that slightly old fashioned feel to everything) just gets rather repetitive. The only films of his I’ve properly enjoyed are the animated ones Fantastic Mr Fox and Isle of Dogs.
Autism is a very broad descriptive category, but certain subcategories like Asperger’s are often associated with compulsive obsessions along with possibly high intelligence. An exceptionally intelligent individual obsessed with achieving success in some particular endeavour is probably much more likely to achieve their goals than some more ordinary, socially adept schmuck. The latter is more likely to devolve into an insurance salesman like in Father Knows Best, living in a suburban home with the standard 2½ children, the unsung hero of the 1950s, never accomplishing anything of value.
I can see this too, and I did consider myself one after a few of his movies. Good Time was a bold choice and he deserved an oscar for his role in that, and I see he has done a LOT of movies, from the last Twilight movie he’s done 18 and I’ve seen 6 of them…
The term “Asperger’s syndrome” was used to indicate people with higher intelligence who also have some kind of autism. It’s not officially used anymore. To say that people with Asperger’s syndrome are often more successful because they are more intelligent is circular reasoning. It’s just saying that people who are more intelligent are more intelligent. Really, there is no correlation between intelligence and the various symptoms of autism. I.Q. scores and autism symptoms should be tested for separately and discussed separately.