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a bunch of movies
4 Oct 2016 10:24 pmA few months ago I went to New York, and as often happens on these 20+ hour flights, I caught up on a few movies. As often happens when you are sleep-deprived, cramped into a tight space and struggling to hear the dialogue over the drone of engines, these are usually not the best circumstances to meet a movie (or anything/anyone) for the first time. Sometimes I wonder if airlines should change the name from "entertainment" to "procrastinator" or perhaps more aptly, "sleep replacement therapy" - for those moments in life when you're too uncomfortable to sleep, too tired to read, and...well, there really isn't any option apart from trying to raid the galley for the 5th time for biscuits.
By the way, JAL has some really amazing snacks. Definitely worth the raid...ahem.
Strayer's Chronicle
This one I actually watched last year on our way via Japan. It's the sort of dystopian science fiction that Japan seems to love churning out - ala Gantz, SPEC and Shin Sekai Yori. Perhaps a little too similar to X-men than it intended to be, but much smaller in scale. In the near future, scientists have worked out a way to create "superhumans" via one of two methods. The first group "Team Subaru", to which the main characters belong, were born from mothers who had been placed under prolonged extreme stress during gestation. This group has heightened senses and perception, at the price that when they reach "adulthood", they undergo an abrupt breakdown and die - that process occurring at any point after they reach teenage years.
The second group "Team Ageha", areMagneto's team the antagonists, having been created from recombinant technology that spliced animal DNA with humans. Their DNA had been coded so that they were unable to live past the age of 20 (I can't remember if it was this movie or another that talked about telomeres, but the concept is similar).
The result is painfully akin to a watered down version of X-men, where the two groups of children meet as enemies and eventually unite in the common cause of preserving their line. Unfortunately, a recurrent flaw of these dystopian science fiction stories is that the final reveal, the big boss's motivation, the cruel hand that drove their fate...is incredibly uninspired and underwhelming. Think Death Note and its nihilistic "after death there is nothing" message, or SPEC and its ludicrous retconning.
What it does differently to the much glossier X-men, and in no small part due to the young age of its cast, is the sense of family between its characters. Japan seems to be able to do the tenderness of a family a lot better than Hollywood, but it may be more due to the cultural structure than scripting. The adoration the younger kids have for their big brother Subaru, and the responsibility he feels towards his charges, the bickering between the Ageha members while always watching out for each other...in the end you feel bad for them, because these are vulnerable kids who should be coming into their prime, and are yet faced with the imminence (and certainty) of death.
I wouldn't have placed Okada Masaki as an action hero, but he did a fair job here, having enough presence to pull off the thoughtful big brother and a keen fighter who can predict other people's moves before they make them. The kids all turn in on par performances, though this was probably an item that should have stayed a book where morals and social values could be explored without undermining an action-packed climax.
Kung Fu Panda 3
These days, everything must have a sequel, and when things have a sequel, they must be a trilogy. Hollywood logic *eye roll* Franchises that have so far been undone by the need for trilogies include and are not limited to The Hobbit, Iron Man, Pirates of the Caribbean and....Kung Fu Panda and How to Train Your Dragon.
In this perfunctory and forgettable final entry, we meet Po's (real) dad and a village of similarly fat and silly pandas. I don't really understand the logic of "we almost got killed because we knew kungfu so let's hide in a place where no one can find us...and purposely not learn kungfu". I'm pretty sure they'd kill you even faster....
Anyhow, I've seen talks on the net complimenting the climax on the way it portrays the importance of attaining inner peace, of looking within, of letting go of the attachment of life and death...but that's giving the movie way more credit than it deserves.
Funny and colourful, but unfortunately no longer as impressive as when the first movie was released, though to its credit, it's still much less hamfisted with the "be yourself" message as most other Hollywood animations out there...
Spotlight
This was the movie that won the Oscar. I feel watching it on the plane really didn't do it justice. Set in 2000-2001, a group of columnists expose the long-standing child abuse perpetrated by church priests(?) and protected by a society that did not want to know it.
It's really a sad movie that passes such keen criticism on the damaging inertia of society. People, involuntarily or not, protect the perpetrators and cast out the victims, because to do otherwise - especially in this case but also in other circumstances - would be to defy some part of their own beliefs.
In the end there was no powerful corporation, no scheming villain, no unscrupulous thugs...just lots of embittered and angry people who tried to make things right, and on their way discovering that the barriers that had prevented them were so insidious and institutionalised that they almost could not pinpoint it.
I think the most poignant scene was when Rachel McAdams' character tried to calm Mark Ruffalo's character down, and as they sat outside in the dark fuming, McAdam's character says in a sad, wistful tone, "You know...I used to go the church, then life got busy...but I've always thought I'd go back one day, you know, when I get older. But now that I've read all these...I don't know. I don't know if I can sit there, knowing what they've done."
For a lot of people who still have a belief, it's a very sacred, pure thing, whatever the religion. That moment after the newspaper was in wide release and McAdams' grandmother reads it, then puts a trembling hand down...it was terrible, not just what the perpetrators did to the victims, but to do so from a position of trust, and what it meant for the masses who had turned to them for purity and purpose.
Jurassic Park
I hadn't been meaning to watch this, given how reviews had been, and how scathing dear Joss Whedon had been about its use of regressive gender tropes.
What can I say? I think my brain had been pretty numb by this stage of the trip, which meant this was the perfect combination of running-screaming-shooting-and-rinse-and-repeat to engage your time without needing a functioning brain to actually process any of it. The CGI was nice, the main characters were gorgeous, there were predictable but not altogether too stupefying ebbs and flows of tension. Did someone die? I think someone did, but frankly I can't remember, so can't have been important.
I liked Chris Pratt from GotG, and if I had time I'd watch Parks and Recreation, but somehow Jurassic Park took an all-round fun and charming guy and turned him into a sour bore.
So it was fortunate I watched this in a state of stupor that I would forget it before GotG 2 rolls around, I suppose.
That was not a review.
By the way, JAL has some really amazing snacks. Definitely worth the raid...ahem.
Strayer's Chronicle
This one I actually watched last year on our way via Japan. It's the sort of dystopian science fiction that Japan seems to love churning out - ala Gantz, SPEC and Shin Sekai Yori. Perhaps a little too similar to X-men than it intended to be, but much smaller in scale. In the near future, scientists have worked out a way to create "superhumans" via one of two methods. The first group "Team Subaru", to which the main characters belong, were born from mothers who had been placed under prolonged extreme stress during gestation. This group has heightened senses and perception, at the price that when they reach "adulthood", they undergo an abrupt breakdown and die - that process occurring at any point after they reach teenage years.
The second group "Team Ageha", are
The result is painfully akin to a watered down version of X-men, where the two groups of children meet as enemies and eventually unite in the common cause of preserving their line. Unfortunately, a recurrent flaw of these dystopian science fiction stories is that the final reveal, the big boss's motivation, the cruel hand that drove their fate...is incredibly uninspired and underwhelming. Think Death Note and its nihilistic "after death there is nothing" message, or SPEC and its ludicrous retconning.
What it does differently to the much glossier X-men, and in no small part due to the young age of its cast, is the sense of family between its characters. Japan seems to be able to do the tenderness of a family a lot better than Hollywood, but it may be more due to the cultural structure than scripting. The adoration the younger kids have for their big brother Subaru, and the responsibility he feels towards his charges, the bickering between the Ageha members while always watching out for each other...in the end you feel bad for them, because these are vulnerable kids who should be coming into their prime, and are yet faced with the imminence (and certainty) of death.
I wouldn't have placed Okada Masaki as an action hero, but he did a fair job here, having enough presence to pull off the thoughtful big brother and a keen fighter who can predict other people's moves before they make them. The kids all turn in on par performances, though this was probably an item that should have stayed a book where morals and social values could be explored without undermining an action-packed climax.
Kung Fu Panda 3
These days, everything must have a sequel, and when things have a sequel, they must be a trilogy. Hollywood logic *eye roll* Franchises that have so far been undone by the need for trilogies include and are not limited to The Hobbit, Iron Man, Pirates of the Caribbean and....Kung Fu Panda and How to Train Your Dragon.
In this perfunctory and forgettable final entry, we meet Po's (real) dad and a village of similarly fat and silly pandas. I don't really understand the logic of "we almost got killed because we knew kungfu so let's hide in a place where no one can find us...and purposely not learn kungfu". I'm pretty sure they'd kill you even faster....
Anyhow, I've seen talks on the net complimenting the climax on the way it portrays the importance of attaining inner peace, of looking within, of letting go of the attachment of life and death...but that's giving the movie way more credit than it deserves.
Funny and colourful, but unfortunately no longer as impressive as when the first movie was released, though to its credit, it's still much less hamfisted with the "be yourself" message as most other Hollywood animations out there...
Spotlight
This was the movie that won the Oscar. I feel watching it on the plane really didn't do it justice. Set in 2000-2001, a group of columnists expose the long-standing child abuse perpetrated by church priests(?) and protected by a society that did not want to know it.
It's really a sad movie that passes such keen criticism on the damaging inertia of society. People, involuntarily or not, protect the perpetrators and cast out the victims, because to do otherwise - especially in this case but also in other circumstances - would be to defy some part of their own beliefs.
In the end there was no powerful corporation, no scheming villain, no unscrupulous thugs...just lots of embittered and angry people who tried to make things right, and on their way discovering that the barriers that had prevented them were so insidious and institutionalised that they almost could not pinpoint it.
I think the most poignant scene was when Rachel McAdams' character tried to calm Mark Ruffalo's character down, and as they sat outside in the dark fuming, McAdam's character says in a sad, wistful tone, "You know...I used to go the church, then life got busy...but I've always thought I'd go back one day, you know, when I get older. But now that I've read all these...I don't know. I don't know if I can sit there, knowing what they've done."
For a lot of people who still have a belief, it's a very sacred, pure thing, whatever the religion. That moment after the newspaper was in wide release and McAdams' grandmother reads it, then puts a trembling hand down...it was terrible, not just what the perpetrators did to the victims, but to do so from a position of trust, and what it meant for the masses who had turned to them for purity and purpose.
Jurassic Park
I hadn't been meaning to watch this, given how reviews had been, and how scathing dear Joss Whedon had been about its use of regressive gender tropes.
What can I say? I think my brain had been pretty numb by this stage of the trip, which meant this was the perfect combination of running-screaming-shooting-and-rinse-and-repeat to engage your time without needing a functioning brain to actually process any of it. The CGI was nice, the main characters were gorgeous, there were predictable but not altogether too stupefying ebbs and flows of tension. Did someone die? I think someone did, but frankly I can't remember, so can't have been important.
I liked Chris Pratt from GotG, and if I had time I'd watch Parks and Recreation, but somehow Jurassic Park took an all-round fun and charming guy and turned him into a sour bore.
So it was fortunate I watched this in a state of stupor that I would forget it before GotG 2 rolls around, I suppose.
That was not a review.
