Well I figured I'd wait until the end of the month to post some new reviews, so here it is
A (10)/A- (9) /
B+ (8) /
B (7) /
B- (6) /
C (5) /
D (3-4) /
F (1-2) / No rating
L'Odyssee (The Odyssey) (
link) - bland and by-the-numbers biopic on legendary nature explorer and filmmaker Jacques Cousteau, the type of effigy building that is empty at its core about capturing the personality, also with the sinful ambition of covering as much of his significant lifespan as possible, from the ex-marine turning his diving passion into a business, his fight to manage, expand and maintain public and commercial interest, his marital and familial conflicts (particularly with one of his sons, who gets his own kind of B-story). For a French movie, the style is moreover trying to pander to Hollywood expectations and it's all very 101 in stereotypes and biopic tropes. I guess some of the wildlife shotmaking is good, but even that starts feeling NatGeo-ish, once in synergy with a schmaltz of a movie.
Logan (
link) - a no doubt inspired, if still way overdue (considering how much they took their sweet time milking the image of the most iconic of X-Men into one shitty action movie after another) quality Wolverine solo movie, timing it with a proper send-off to Hugh Jackman. The austere superhero build (think you can actually count the full-grown mutants on one hand) and gritty R-rated action offer some liberties in regards to focusing on the story and rising the stakes; both Jackman's Wolvie and Stewart's Xavier are shown in their late, post-glorious, ailing phase, which allows to care more about them; plus the prodigy child character, while kinda sketched to bank on the same magnetic appeal as say Eleven from
Stranger Things, has a buddy-up connection with Wolvie that works; the villans are corporate stock, but not annoying etc. etc. So technically there's a lot to like (the story, the meaningful action, the feels), yet I remain agnostic to the fact that one out of 10 capemovies working against the trend of Marvel's factory bland style or DC's spectacle of shooting itself in the face repeatedly is meant to earn instant praise. There's still a whole universe outside this capeuniverse, compared to which
Logan, just like
Guardians or
Deadpool before that, still doesn't quite stack up to or is in any way perfect. The flow of the movie, for instance, is not devoid of predictable, not spectacularly new set pieces and I can't say the use of a "superior Wolverine clone" trope as an element of tension, danger and "underdoggery" blew me away.
Lu bian ye can (Kaili Blues) (
link) - not much I can say about this right now, on account of having done a poor watching of it. On surface level, seemed like the kind of lo-fi, plot-light, slow 'n' pensive arthouse, plus I remember having had an impressive 30-minute or so long take. So good chops for a debut, but I just wasn't in an attentive mood that evening.
Notes on Blindness (
link) - what could have easily been a biopic or even an interview slash album photos doc is instead a documentary that uses theologian John Hull's audio diaries on his blindness and converts them in recreated scenes using actors. A delicately modeled, stylistically lavish movie, heavy on musings and recollections from which the core message is trying to actively understand your life as an existential mechanism.
Okja (
link) - UGH. Bong Joon-ho is an acclaimed director of Korean horror (
Mother,
The Host), but once he transitioned to English mainstream movies, I still consider him to be struggling in producing a levelheaded work out of his bonker, outlandish ideas. Did not join the hype wagon with the
Oldboy meets Orwell meets Matrix pastiche that was
Snowpiercer and I feel even worse about this one. In essence, it's meant to be a sharp satire on ecological woes and Western corporations, but the end product is risibly off the wall. Thing is, it
could have been an idyllic, funny, exciting and moralizing movie - heck, in small doses, it even is - but it's almost like it went for deliberately retarded instead. Tilda Swinton does an only-for-fanboys role, just like in
Snowpiercer and Jake Gyllenhaal puts on the most absurd, imbecilic comedic hat, a role that I think even Rob Schneider would have had the dignity to pass. Also notable that this is the movie that stirred controversy at Cannes over the eligibility of Netflix screenings, but I couldn't care less now considering that its content doesn't hold up to its merits.
Lovesong (
link) - as the title suggests, a simple kind of indie vignette in which a young mother (Riley Keough), whose own marriage becomes strained, almost becomes involved in a relationship with her best friend (Jena Malone). Years later, as her friend is getting married, their reuniting also becomes an occasion to reconcile with what could have been or even what might still be between them. Soft-spoken, emotionally charged framing and performances, but ech, nothing particularly special.
Sieranevada (
link) - meanwhile on the Romanian front, nothing new, as New Wave eminence Cristi Puiu goes as deep and implacable as always with his hyper-realistic ways, trying to capture for nearly three hours the "nothing-happens-ness" of a family gathering in an apartment to commemorate the recent passing of the protagonist's father. Of course, aside from the technical goals for minimalistic, long-take shotmaking and seamless, incredible montage within a small, crammed space for filming (all achieved with excellence), Puiu's ambition must certainly be to create a fresco of family and human interactions. To us, it hits very much home to see these scenes of randomness, small talk and animosities at a family gathering - for the rest of the world, though, idk; I suppose it could appeal to American fans of
Osage County? Anyway, I've dreaded a bit to actually watch this movie - it created, as expected, an even bigger rift between critics who lick it with praise for its utter big-lettered Cinema and those who are fed up with New Wave's incorrigible style and thus mocked it as "three hours of waiting for the pastor to arrive, so the family can have the memorial service and then finally sit down to eat borscht". At Cannes, the reviews were positive, but the jury ultimately went with some laurels towards Mungiu's
Graduation, although I think this one is somewhat better. Its screening time did not prove such an issue, the three hours flew by and at times I was genuinely amused or enchanted by this bitter comedy of manners.
Sobache serdtse (Heart of a Dog) (
link) - a TV two-part adaptation of one of Bulgakov's novels. As a moderate fan of Bulgakov's anti-bolshevic satirical works (
Master and Margaret,
Fatal Eggs), I found the style both recognizable and a bit too plainly transposed on screen - though some credit to the acting, to the old movie sense of sepia-tinged visuals and especially to finding a dog who can act depressed.
Split (
link) - well then, dare we hope for an "M. Night Shayamalanaissace", as this is his first decent movie in fucking forever? The movie's premise remains wacky and precarious to handle, having "batshit" and "exploitative" written all over it, as James McAvoy plays a man with 23 split personalities who abducts three female teenagers as an offering for an emerging dark, ominous 24th personality. And yet the movie is solid enough, McAvoy carries the movie's difficulty and prevents it from plunging into derision (he doesn't perform all 23 splits, don't worry) and I have to credit Anya Taylor-Joy as well, who follows up her role in
The VVitch with the same mix of pure and troubled horror damsel aura. Not bereft of some clunk in its treatment of mental dysfunction or in some flashbacks serving as blunt exposition and has a "tweeeest" that links the movie with a previous Shyamalan (good) oeuvre, but still, well beyond decent -
which is saying something, in this case.
T2 Trainspotting (
link) - also on the "colour me impressed, this didn't suck" list, Danny Boyle's sequel to his cult, magnificent (at least IMO) 90s movie. Not that the world desperately needed a Trainspotting 2 - then again, there was pre-existing material for this, as Irvine Welsh has a taste for sequels himself (what I'm saying is that this movie adapts his book
Porno in some degree). Boyle applies his usual modern-day style, much like you might have seen on
Slumdog Millionaire or
Trance, especially with the fast-paced dialogue and zappy montage. Not an essential, relevant movie by any movies, but still a nice view on the characters returning 20 years later to muse on their aging life, following their fucked-up teenage days. Some of the slur-heavy, Scot-argotic humor holds up about as hysterically well as on the original, too.
Dunkirk (
link) - so
bona fide Nolan-esque, it was both going to be hard to disappoint and yet there's room for letting you down a bit. Mainly it's the thing that I'm not sure Nolan can evolve past his incessant, ever-recurring tropes anymore (whether it's his fascination with time, his desire to create smart-mode blockbusters, his orchestral vision and large-scale meticulousness etc.). Somehow the Dunkirk subject was meant to fit like a glove on his approach (plus a chance for him to finally go back to making a bloody British movie), the only unique opportunity being for him to ease up on any Sci-Fi mindfuckery and hamfisted themes such as "love is the driving force of everything" - which he complies with, to the point of sacrificing any deep characterization (the Private-Ryan-esque aim to empathise with your heroes' struggles and goals) for a technically masterful and aptly grandiose depiction of war. So as a symphony of filmic structure, sprinkled with attention to historical fidelity,
Dunkirk is a safe accomplishment. Like Jay argued, I'm not sure myself if we needed or not another war movie - I'll add I never went in with the expectation of Nolan delivering the never-seen before, ultimate war movie experience. I'm even less concerned with how
Dunkirk stacks up, considering I'm usually sold by Nolan's cinematic wizardry when watching it on the big theatre screen, but then feel gradually worse once time passes and I process it more - same thing happened with
Interstellar and nowadays I can no longer rewatch that one with a straight face, tbh. And
Dunkirk itself did not end without any penalty either. I for one was slightly irked by the explicit mention of the three timelines' duration - it's not like Nolan cared about that when fucking with our brains in
Inception and
Interstellar - though I get it that it's grounded in reality (the army was stranded for a week, the civilian boats took a day to carry rescue trips and RAF Spitfires could only carry hour-long missions). Plus, by the time all the themes in this "symphony" converge in the third act, one might well be struck, depending on their acquired knowledge of previous works, by either the familiarity or annoyance of Nolan's frame-swapping non-linearity. Still, this movie is Nolanesque through and through. But it is so both in good and ech ways.
The Bad Batch (
link) - alas, I must conclude this briefing, as I conclude my month in movies, with quite a stinker. This is the second movie by Ana Lily Amirpour, who wowed indy audiences with her vampire glossy-shick debut
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (that failed to impress me, however) and now seemingly wanted to flex her "I'd be able to direct a Mad Max sequel" muscles with a dystopian, Texan wasteland gritty story filled with canibals, damaged people and dog-eat-dog surviving skills. At first, the movie wastes little time with exposition or social commntary, lauching us straight into the feral setting and for a good 20 minutes it seems to go unflinchingly brutal and dark. But then it gets bogged down by stuff like introducing a carnaval-like cornucopia community, in which everyone is damaged good and Keanu Reeves plays a spiritual patriarch bullshitter, plus Jim freaking Carrey is a silent wacky roamer - the plot gets erratic and undecided between badland dystopia, Kill Bill-esque revenge story and Stockholm syndrome tinged weird-ass romance; the pacing becomes atrocious; all the performances are unconvincing or forcedly bonkers. It's sad and strange, but this was by far the hardest watch I had to sit through all month.
Just to mention, I wasn't impressed or anything with the director's debut Fruitvale Station or with Michael B. Jordan at that time or at any point until now. As for Creed, not much I can say, it's a fairly solid revival flick, but it does stick to its revival formula nonetheless. Stallone is doing quite a solid performance, by his standards and by the fact that, as I understand it, he wasn't allowed to pen his lines this time, and Jordan can confidently carry the torch from here on out. My only gripe was how much fast-forwarding this story had to make its way towards an entirely predictable, but also entirely implausible "final boss" act. I would also go even as far as to question whether it feels right to build a revival-reboot-sequel thingy highly based on a death in a movie like Rocky IV that, back then, was a total cheeseball solution to pumping more drama into the franchise.
) A heavily syruped romantic story between an aspiring writer (RIP Anton Yelchin) going into a coup de foudre driven affair with an older, married French woman, who fully embraces however the style of her open marriage, to the point in which her husband does it as well and not even their kids find it odd or controversial. The sole conflict resides in how enamoured the protagonist becomes and what desires (read: wishful thinking) arise from this. There's elegance to how this romance plays out, although it's also very artificial and heavily scripted, making it all less plausible. Unfortunately the last act drives into total cheese, including music cues that made me want to slice my ears off. Speaking of which, the movie is so pompous, it gets to have Alan Gilbert, music director of the New York Philharmonic, in a cameo. 
) or even Interstellar (although you might cringe a bit at the aspect that's common between these, if you're familiar with both works).
