zetes
Joined Nov 1999
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zetes's rating
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zetes's rating
It definitely has a lot of flaws and it can feel like a generic Hollywood blockbuster at times, but it's fairly competent and has some good action. It has two major problems right up front: 1) this is supposed to be the start of Universal's new "Dark Universe" shared universe, dredging up its classic monsters for the studio's version of Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe. This doesn't exactly sound like a good idea, especially with these being action movies and not horror flicks. 2) Tom Cruise stars, Tom Cruise has creative control and he wants it to be another Tom Cruise movie. Tom Cruise! Just had to say it once more to satisfy Tom Cruise's ego. This is also just a bad way to start a new franchise, especially one in which Tom Cruise is probably not going to pop up in every future installment. "Tom Cruise movie" is just not the way to go with the initial film in your franchise. So, yeah, this film definitely has elements at odds with each other. It still kind of works, in my opinion. Tom Cruise is certainly getting past his sell-by date and I think another star may have worked better, but he's not bad and he can still do action stuff, like the thrilling plane crash showed prominently in the trailers and the many, many chase sequences. The monsters are pretty decent, too. Nothing you haven't seen before, but pretty cool, jerky undead monsters. And Sofia Boutella is quite good as the main villain. Jake Johnson is also kind of fun as Cruise's sidekick, often used for comic relief. As a huge fan of Johnson from New Girl, I love seeing him in these movies even if he doesn't belong. Russell Crowe is also very good as, well, it's easy enough to see on the IMDb page but let's just say he's the major expansion of the Dark Universe in this film. Annabelle Wallis isn't bad as the lead actress, but she doesn't have all that much to do. My major gripes with the film are its clunky opening exposition and especially the way it ends, which is just kind of confusing. Obviously it was going to end going towards a sequel / the expanded universe, but I could have used a bit more info here. Very low expectations paid off well for me, and I certainly wouldn't unabashedly recommend it, but I definitely had fun.
Written by Mike White, Beatriz at Dinner completes an unofficial trilogy with the screenwriter's Year of the Dog and the HBO series Enlightened. All three of these works are about middle aged women searching for relevance in modern society via politics. This one is a bit smaller in scale, a bit less comedic, but it shares a lot of traits with the other film and TV series. Salma Hayek stars (and is fantastic) as a holistic healer and masseuse. She is called to a rich client's home, where her car breaks down after the job. Stuck there overnight, she is invited by the client (Connie Britton) to stay overnight and dine at their party. There's a bit of fish-out-of-water comedy here, but it's more painfully awkward than funny, and the class issues are at time gut wrenching. One of the other guests is a rich mogul (John Lithgow), whom Hayek seems to know from the past. Perhaps fate has brought them together for a reason? Lithgow is an obvious stand-in for Donald Trump. Frankly, all the wealthy characters, even the relatively friendly Britton, are despicable, but White doesn't do much to stack the deck against them. They certainly don't speak in any way that feels egregiously unfair. Lithgow definitely chews into the role, but, hey, so does Donald Trump. I'm not entirely satisfied with the ending, and I would say this is the weakest of the trilogy, but it's easily the most thoughtful and most thought-provoking film I've seen all summer. 8/10.
I felt much the same way about this one as I felt about the previous, more famous Yoshida film I watched last week, Eros + Massacre: it's gorgeous but maddeningly esoteric. As a result of its difficulty, I found the film fairly boring. This one is perhaps even more difficult than Eros + Massacre, but it's also 90 minutes shorter, so I'd rate them pretty much even. The film involves Communist revolutionaries in Japan, who were more or less outlawed in the country by the U.S. The film spans several time periods, including the distant future of 1980 (you can tell it's the future because of the theremin music). The main action begins in 1952, which was a turbulent year for student protests. One might just watch it for the visuals - what Yoshida does with space is absolutely astounding at times. The filmmaking often brings to mind Antononi and Resnais. But it's hard to watch it just for the visuals when you know Yoshida is trying to get at something and is so deadly serious about it.