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shanayneigh
Reviews
Gokseong (2016)
Needed tightening
I can only imagine how good this movie could have been if they had tightened the script significantly. As it stands, it is at least half an hour too long. The basic idea is excellent, as is the setting. But there is too much extraneous fat. Was it for example necessary to have two exorcism scenes? I wish they had focused more on the relationship between father and daughter.
There is a lot of Korean-style overacting going on, especially from Kwak Do-won playing the pudgy cop. As in the otherwise excellent Steel Rain (the less that its deplorable sequel is mentioned the better) he is the weakest link. I don't know if he's a comedian or theatre actor, but everything he does is BIG. Kim Hwan-hee playing the daughter however is excellent, effectively acting circles around the adults surrounding her. Jun Kunimura and Chun Woo-hee are also very good.
Asteroid City (2023)
This has got to be a parody
There's no way this movie isn't a parody of a Wes Anderson film. It's like watching the Honest Trailer of Wes Anderson films come to life. It has everything one has come to expect from a Wes Anderson film - the symmetrical theatrical tableau imagery (although he mixes it up this time with an exaggerated two-strip technicolor grade), the stilted screwball comedy dialogue, the idealized faux historical look - all turned up to eleven. It's all so precious and twee. Such a shame that it's always comes with a cost - namely characters one cares about.
It would be interesting to see if Anderson could handle directing a feature which doesn't rely on his well established crutches. I loved his early films, but somewhere around The Darjeeling Limited it became clear how limited and one-note he is as a director.
I gave up after a half hour or so.
Ripley (2024)
All style, no substance
Although the best book in the Patricia Highsmith Ripley series, it's still not that great of a book. The 1999 adaptation, which I admittedly love, is a masterclass in adapting a novel for the screen. It elevates a 250 page (and quite mediocre) novel into a 140 minute masterpiece.
This 2024 adaptation stretches those same 250 pages into 8 hours (!) of lackluster, meandering boredom. I wish this ridiculous "slow burn" fad dies a thousand painful deaths. Just because something moves along at a snail's pace doesn't mean it's profound.
I love the stunning cinematography but it's a peculiar choice for this story. The vibrant and saturated imagery of the 1999 adaptation added to the sense of seduction of the beautiful life which is so important to both the story and the character of Tom Ripley. In the 2024 Netflix adaptation everything looks so bleak and austere it's hard to imagine what attracts Ripley to this life.
Speaking of seduction, the casting of Jude Law in the 1999 adaptation was perfect, since he oozes of charm and slimy privilege, attracting Tom Ripley like a moth to a flame. I have no idea who the guy they cast in the 2024 Netflix adaptation is, but he has the seductive charisma of a substitute home ec teacher.
Casting Sting's daughter as Freddie Miles was a peculiar choice. Apart from the fact that she couldn't act her way out of a paper bag, are we really supposed to believe she's playing a man? Although it would also have been groan-worthy, it would have been better if they gender swapped the character of Freddie from Frederick to Frederica instead of this pandering fiasco. Or better yet, hire a proper actor for the part.
Dakota Fanning, who was a remarkable child actress, is so milquetoast that there's not much to say about her. But that describes her role in the novel as well. She is far better written (and played) in the 1999 adaptation.
Andrew Scott playing Ripley is at least 20 years too old. In fact, he looks more or less like an uncle to the other actors in the ensemble who are supposed to be the same age as him. He is generally an OK actor, but woefully miscast in this adaptation.
I have to admit I didn't bother finish watching this series. I saw the first four episodes which was more than enough. If the second half of the series stick as closely to the novel as the first half, things are bound to get dull. The 1999 adaptation wisely left out the falsified checks storyline, and something tells me that this 2024 Netflix adaptation will be filled with umpteen painfully slow and detailed scenes of Ripley forging and cashing checks ad nauseam.
The Boys (2019)
Diminishing returns
I was really surprised by how good the first season was. When I reviewed the show back then I gave it 9 stars. I wish there was a way to rate seasons separately in IMDb.
Super hero fatigue hit me several years before this show first aired. The umpteen installments from Marvel and DC have bored me to tears as it's more or less the same thing over and over again. But The Boys came as a complete surprise to me. It has real characters and an intriguing story. And it's funny! Unlike the tepid humor and dad jokes in the neutered Marvel kids movies. Furthermore, the acting was really good for the most part (Frenchie being the glaringly obvious exemption). I can't remember if I've seen the guy who plays The Deep before, but he's a real find. Homelander is fantastic as is Kimiko. And Starlight was truly the heart of the show anchored by an excellent performance.
Although not as good as the first, the second season was still good.
The decline begins in season 3, which I rewatched after the release of season 4. It is essentially eight episodes of fluff. At the end of the season every character essentially ends up where they started with nothing really changing, kind of like an episode of The Simpsons. Crazy shenanigans ensue, but next week they're right back where they started. It was also at this point that this show was beginning to feel pretty drawn out and with no clear end goal in sight (because why kill a cash cow?).
The fourth season is not very good. It's as if both the actors and the creators are starting to get fed up with this show and are only going through the motions.
Karl Urban is good as Butcher, although his "Oi govna!" routine is starting to get a bit old.
The writers obviously have no idea what to do with Kimiko and Frenchie, so they're mostly off on some inconsequential sidequest. Despite spending three seasons building up the relationship between Frenchie and Kimiko, he's apparently gay now. That is, until he's not at the end of the season. I guess that counts as character development in the 2020's. I wish the writers could come up with something real for Kimiko to do. I would not mind one bit if they killed off Frenchie, one of the hammiest hams that have ever hammed. Same with Mother's Milk to be honest. In season 4 he's more or less a glorified extra. Shame, because he had the potential for an interesting story.
Starlight's change in both physical appearance and acting is jarring. In the fourth season she looks bored out of her mind and is slurring her words like she's constantly hammered. As I said, she was the highlight in the early seasons of this show, little traces of which can be seen in the later ones.
I'm afraid this is going to be yet another one of those TV shows that overstays its welcome.
Hotaru no haka (1988)
Remarkable
This is one of the best animated movies I have ever seen. There are very few movies that move me to tears, but Grave of the Fireflies is one of them. Everything about this movie just works. The story is engaging on an emotional level. It deals with an interesting subject matter and period in history.
Although elevated in style, there is none of that over the top animation and voice acting with shouting and screaming aplenty that (for my taste) is far too common in Japanese fiction. In fact, the acting is great all around. Especially remarkable is the performance by Ayano Shiraishi playing the little sister Setsuko. She was only five years old when playing this part. Five! And not one single moment is overacted or false.
Ted Lasso (2020)
Tonight on a very special Ted Lasso
I put off watching this for quite some time since I generally can't stand milquetoast Jason Sudeikis. Although I have to agree with the review in Rolling Stone that it's more a hypothetical comedy than an actual one. At least they try to include some jokes in the first season, which is basically a fish out of water story. But by the third season, it's an alleged comedy without jokes.
It's clear that the writers aspire for the show to be more than a lowly comedy. It wants to be Important ™ Every episode plays out like an after school special or Hallmark movie. Some minor conflict is added and in the end Ted says something along the lines of "aw schucks, can't we all just get along?" and everyone sees the error of their ways. Consequently, the show becomes very formulaic and saccharine.
David Sims sums it up beautifully in his review in The Atlantic from May 4, 2023:
"Scenes are devoid of jokes and filled with dopey, self-important monologuing on the issues of the day. Rather than have any conflict, characters offer endless hugs and wan smiles, all under the watchful mustache of Mr. Lasso, whose retinue of dad jokes feels noticeably phoned in."
It certainly doesn't help that the runtime is stretched from about 30 minutes in the first season to over 60 in the third. This is the curse of streaming. Since there are no boundaries today - like keeping a network schedule or how many screenings you can fit on one screen per day - filmmakers have zero incentive to keep their products tight, more often than not resulting in meandering messes.
More nuggets from Sims where he compares Ted Lasso with other shows Bill Lawrence, one of the creators, have made previously:
"But they were also all 30-minute network shows that had to pump out episode after episode. Ted Lasso might have debuted as a sitcom, but it now obeys the freewheeling standards of premium dramas, pushing its episode lengths to make grand social statements about depression, workplace dynamics, and the changing standards of 21st-century masculinity."
Apparently the origins of Ted Lasso were a number of commercials. And I have to say that it made a lot more sense for him to star in short ads than being the central character in a three-season show. Because both the writing and acting are lightweight. Also I can't understand why they kept Nick Mohammed's choice of softly whispering everything he says. Half the time I can't hear what he's saying and I feel like Jerry and Elaine at the dinner with the low talker.
So it's written like a drama and played like a comedy and the two approaches clash.
The First Omen (2024)
Useless rehash
Much like the failed The Exorcist: Believer (2023), this sequel also released roughly 50 years later takes a huge steaming dump all over the original movie. Everything that made the original Omen - a movie I absolutely love - is gone from this deplorable sequel. There is no real sense of dread. I'm not talking about jump scares, those are startling (and cheap), not scary. And I'm certainly not talking about gore. These aspects had no place in the original Omen either. I'm talking about mood, which the original is marinated with.
The story of this sequel is basically Rosemary's Baby (a movie and book which are both great) with sprinkles of rehashed scenes from the original Omen ("It's all for you") in an obvious attempt at pandering. Just like so many movies these days this one is more preoccupied with being Important ™ than being a good horror movie. But of course it's going to be critic proof post Roe v Wade.
It certainly doesn't help that this abomination of a sequel lacks actors of Gregory Peck, Lee Remick, David Warner and Billie Whitelaw's caliber. Nell Tiger Free in the lead is as bland as British cuisine. The more well known actors stunt cast into supporting roles like Bill Nighy and Charles Dance are only in the movie for a couple of minutes (kind of like Bruce Willis in his later career), too short for them to have any real impact.
The director clearly bit off more than she could chew. The staging is to a large extent amateur hour. Just look at the riot scene if you don't believe me.
Inception (2010)
Overstays its welcome
First of all, I have massive respect for Christopher Nolan as a director. Partly because he does origial stories, but also, on a more practical level, that he opts for physical effects when possible.
The first time I saw this at a cinema I was amazed by its visuals. Now as I'm rewatching it for perhaps the third time (on a glorious 4K transfer) and the visual spectacle is no longer a novelty I am struck by how drawn out this movie is. Like so many Christopher Nolan films it overstays its welcome. Yes, the visuals still look amazing, but it goes on forever, especially the heist aspect. And just like Stanley Kubrick, Nolan is a fantastic visual director, but their lack of character work leads to a cold and distant end product.
Red Dragon (2002)
Better adaptation
Who could have honestly guessed that a hack like Brett Ratner would be able to direct a better adaptation of the novel than Michael Mann in Manhunter (1986)? But then again, unlike Mann, Ratner had the good fortune of having a successful blueprint in The Silence of the Lambs (1991).
Like any adaptation it has to do some changes since film is a different medium, but Red Dragon remains closer to the basic structure of the novel than Manhunter, which goes completely overboard in the end. None of the adaptations, however, have been able to nail the character of Francis Dolarhyde. Ralph Fiennes comes closer than Tom Noonan, but both fall short.
Manhunter (1986)
Lackluster adaptation
A very lackluster adaptation of a great novel. Although most of the basic structure and events of the novel is still there, the movie has retained none of its mood. The ending has been changed radically, however. It's not clear if it was changed because of budget restrictions or sheer incompetence. The final showdown has a gunfight that is so ineptly staged that one can't believe it's been directed by the same Mann (ba-dum-tss!) who shot one of the best shootouts ever captured on film in Heat, released less than ten years after Manhunter.
William Petersen is amazingly stiff in the lead. It's easy to see why he's been mostly relegated to TV when not working with Mann. I have no idea what what the hell Brian Cox was up to, but he certainly wasn't playing the Hannibal Lecter from the books, that's for sure. Lecter in this adaptation is as menacing as a substitute home ec teacher.
It's quite honestly remarkable that a hack like Brett Ratner was able to direct a better adaptation of the novel in Red Dragon (2002). But he had the good fortune of having a successful blueprint in The Silence of the Lambs. None of the adaptations, however, have been able to nail the character of Francis Dolarhyde. Ralph Fiennes comes closer than Tom Noonan, but both fall short.
A Moral Right: The Politics of Dirty Harry (2008)
Yes men
This documentary is nothing but a bunch of yes men - half of them with skin in the game, the rest of them fellow filmmakers - pontificating about morality and the nature of fascism with the same kind of insight one might expect from a toddler. I have no idea who these "social scientists" that were promised in the blurb were. Perhaps the documentary counts the biographers of Clint Eastwood as social scientists.
The questions which the documentary allegedly sets out to answer are actually interesting. But there is not one single voice able to speak in any kind of depth about the subject matter. I would be much more interested in hearing what actual scholars have to say about this than some random Hollywood filmmakers scratching each others backs.
What a missed opportunity.
Shogun (2024)
Weak adaptation with poor characters
Full disclosure: I love the original 1980 adaptation. Yes, it's a bit cheesy at times (here's looking at you, Richard Chamberlain) but overall it's a marvelous adaptation of a fairly mediocre novel.
I can binge watch the entire 1980 adaptation in a day (and I have), no problem. It's that captivating. The 2024 adaptation however took perhaps two or three weeks to get through. Only once, if memory serves me right, did I watch more than one episode in a row. I took a break for about a week or so after the second or third episode simply because it never grabbed my attention. It's not bad, it's mediocre, just like the novel.
It is interesting to witness two completely different adaptations of the same source material.
The 1980 adaptation is basically a fish out of water narrative almost exclusively told from Blackthorne's perspective where he is stranded in a strange, foreign land whose society and customs we learn along with him. More than that, we the viewers also learn snippets of the language along with him.
The 2024 adaptation is closer to the novel whose second half in particular is devoted to an intricate Japanese power struggle a la Game of Thrones. This, incidentally, is also the least intriguing thing about the novel, and the TV show does not surpass its source material. For anyone who has read the novel, it surely doesn't come as a surprise that they would up the sex and blood in this new adaptation. And finally Mariko gets her B A moment which is absent from the 1980 adaptation.
It's amusing to read the reviews lamenting the blue balls ending to the show. A ton of build up promising a final confrontation, and then nothing. That's taken straight out of the novel.
The point where this adaptation fails are the characters who are poorly introduced and defined. They mostly melt into the wallpaper. I have both read the novel (as recently as last year) and must have watched the 1980 adaptation at least a half dozen times (low ball estimate) yet it took quite some time before I realized "Wait, that's Omi? And *that's* Buntaro??". They came off as extras, not as vital characters to the plot.
The guy playing Blackthorne is doing Richard Burton for some reason. Other than that, he's OK. Although he seems to be almost fluent in Japanese quite fast, using words that we as an audience have not seen him faced with earlier. Blackthorne and Mariko have absolutely zero chemistry in this adaptation. It's like watching a vacuum. As for Sanada, he lacks the natural authority of Mifune.
Visually, it is quite honestly a let down. Yes, beautiful costumes and wigs. But the VFX work is surprisingly shoddy. Take the scenes on the boat, for instance. No doubt nowhere near water but shot on a parking lot with a blue screen. I'm reminded of the director's commentary track to The Naked Gun where they joke about their cinematographer being the only one who can make a location look like a set thanks to poor lighting. The roto work, especially in their hair, is a fuzzy mess. I fully understand shooting action scenes in a controlled environment. But regular sailing shots in beautiful weather on calm seas? This just came off as lazy.
But it's not only the boat. It's basically any show where you see more architecture than a wall or wooden hut (sometimes even nature) in the background.
The PR for this show drones on and on about its "authenticity", yet it was shot in Canada. I'll tell you what, the 1980 adaptation got so much free authenticity just from being shot on location. When Blackthorne draws the world map in the gardens by the pond, it's really Hikone Castle (standing in for Osaka Castle) in the background. When Blackthorne and Mariko are strolling through the gardens, it's really Himeji in the background. As Blackthorne is escorted through the castle by brother Michael, the Japanese priest, near the end of the series, they blend seamlessly between Himeji and Hikone. If you go to these locations (as I have) you can literally walk in their footsteps. Now that's authenticity.
Assassin's Creed (2016)
No
I've played the Assassin's Creed franchise from the beginning, and I have (mostly) loved the games, in particular the fantastic Ezio trilogy, which remains the gold standard.
I watched this movie in a half empty cinema in Hai Phong back when it was released.
My.view of the film echoes the one I have of The Dark Tower movie adaptation released in 2017. For anyone who hasn't played the games or read the books, the story in the movie must be nigh incomprehensible. And for anyone that has, the story in the movie deviates so far from the original material that it becomes nonsensical. Although to be fair, the story in the Assassin's Creed movie is so weak I can barely remember what happened.
The film boasts the highest free fall performed by a stuntman, but everything surrounding him is so smeared in CGI that it might just as well have been a digi-double.
30 Days of Night (2007)
An excellent take on the vampire genre
This film managed to make the vampire genre feel fresh and exciting again. Made on a mid-range budget of 30 million, every dollar ended up on screen, especially since the entire town had to be built from the ground up. CGI is kept to a minimum which works in the film's favor. The acting is good for the most part. The one exception - as per usual - is Ben Foster who always go over the top with his telenovela drama school intensity.
Sure, there are some curious aspects. I've worked above the Arctic circle, and of course planes land there all year. And the perpetual night looks pretty bright in this film. But if one suspends disbelief enough to overlook these very minor points, you're in for a good ride.
It's strange, I haven't seen much by the director David Slade after this movie. Judging from his impressive work on this film and the excellent Hard Candy which was released two years prior, I thought he would be a much bigger name today. I had to check IMDb to learn that he directed a Twilight movie (not my cup of tea) and some television episodes (including the Black Mirror episode "Metalhead" which, incidentally, is my least favorite episode in the series).
I can recommend the blu-ray which has a nice collection of special features.
Just don't bother with the pointless sequel released in 2010 which is amazingly bad.
The Exorcist: Believer (2023)
This is the Muppet Babies of Exorcist movies
This managed to do what I thought was impossible. It made Exorcist II: The Heretic - with its ridiculous campy scenes which reached its apotheosis when Richard Burton attempted to put out a fire by beating it with a crutch - seem like not such a bad movie.
Can someone please ban David Gordon Green and Danny McBride from ever touching another horror movie? The Exorcist: Believer is so poorly written with a plot so dumb that it boggles the mind. The twist with the choice was a nice touch, but the rest of the movie was insulting.
David Gordon Green has zero skills in setting a mood. Sure, there are a couple of cheap jump scares. But those are startling, not scary. Compare this movie to the original Exorcist, which primarily really isn't about an exorcism. It's about the plight of a mother afraid that her daughter is going insane, attempting to do anything she can to find out what is wrong. Parallell to this the personal torment of Father Karras. The mood is *everything* in the original Exorcist. Going to a priest in the original Exorcist is a last resort. In The Exorcist: Believer the main character's friend (?) immediately invade his house with a bunch of witch doctors seemingly hours after his daughter has gone missing. Why? Hell if I know. Other than to set up the ridiculous third act, of course. I assume they wanted the exorcism scene to be scary. Nevertheless, I found myself laughing out loud more than once.
The girls do a good job with what they have to work with. The rest of the supporting cast apparently believe they're in a telenovela. The whole production reeks of Blumhouse cheapness. Everything in this film is as pedestrian as a Hallmark movie. This is the Muppet Babies of Exorcist movies.
Bimilui Soop (2017)
I gave up
I liked the early episodes of this series, but I gave up in the middle of episode 12 of the first season. At that point I really din't care at all who was the killer and why. The characters were acting in the dumbest way imaginable in order to stretch this into sixteen 1+ hour long episodes. I am being generous if i say that there is possibly enough story and character development to fill half as many episodes, and that's already a stretch.
After I gave up I read the episode summaries on Wikipedia and I'm glad I didn't sit through another 4+ hours of melodrama. I watched a couple of minutes of the remaining episodes. The actual core of the story - corruption - is actually quite interesting, but the way the choose to tell that story was so convoluted with fake-outs aplenty that they even have the main antagonist write a letter in order to explain the plot. Also known as lazy script writing.
Bae Doona is always good and the guy in the lead does a fine job, but with most of the supporting cast there is the usual Korean style overacting with people pulling faces and shouting.
Jigeum uri hakgyoneun (2022)
Could have been a good movie
I made it two and a half episodes before checking out. Already at this point it felt terribly drawn out, and we had almost ten more hours to go.
As per usual Netflix has to turn everything into a ten episode series regardless of whether the project has enough story or character development to justify ten episodes. But hold, this time Netflix went even further and stretched it into twelve episodes each lasting about an hour.
The basic concept of the show, with the school and the science teacher, is interesting at its core. But judging from what I've seen so far this story has just about as much meat and potatoes to fill a two hour film. The rest is endlessly drawn out and shoddily executed action sequences where the oh-so scary violent zombies are bested by flimsy sliding doors and handheld windows, I kid you not.
The acting is on par for a Korean drama. Over the top melodramatic at every turn.
Not finishing the rest.
The Killer (2023)
Another dud from Fincher
First of all, I'm a huge fan of Fincher's movies, especially his early ones. His latest ones have not been for me. Mank (2020) was a vanity project for Fincher, and The Killer obviously a vanity project for Fassbender.
I certainly wasn't expecting a balls to the wall action movie, that's not Fincher's style. What we got was the worst of Fincher: Style over substance, a simplistic plot and zero characters. Fincher is a lot like Stanley Kubrick and Christopher Nolan in that way. Great visual directors but detached emotionally.
The main problem with The Killer is that I don't really care about the character, which also means that I don't care about what happens to him or those supposedly close to him. I suppose the filmmakers would argue that him not letting the audience in is intentional. But that also means that the one thing that supposedly drives the entire movie from the second act - The Killer avenging his girlfriend - doesn't work. Fassbender drones on and on about how empathy is weakness and to trust no one, yet we are supposed to believe he cares about his girlfriend we know absolutely nothing about? John Wick meting out justice to those who killed his puppy makes more sense, however preposterous that may sound, because we have seen that he actually cares about his dog.
And as Brian Cox says in Adaptation (2002): "God help you if you use voice-over in your work, my friends. God help you. That's flaccid, sloppy writing. Any idiot can write a voice-over narration to explain the thoughts of a character."
In its procedural style manner, I guess the one of Fincher's other movies it comes closest to is Zodiac (2007) which, incidentally, is one of my favorites. Some people have compared it to Le Samouraï (1967) with Alain Delon, I personally think it feels more akin to Edward Fox's arc in The Day of the Jackal (1973), a far superior movie.
The Devil's Plan (2023)
Too much reality drama nonsense
I had some hopes for this show since it (allegedly) was supposed to be an intelligence based competition.
But quickly, and I mean within minutes, it was just another reality show like Big Brother or Survivor with all the contestants forming pacts, secret or otherwise. And suddenly the show became more about the drama between the contestants than solving the actual tasks at hand. And this is where my eyes glaze over.
I can only agree with the guy in glasses (an actor perhaps?) who, in the second or third episode after a number of players had been sent packing thanks to reality show pacts instead of how they actually were performing with the tasks, said: "I'd personally like to see skill-based eliminations".
It does get a bit better with the last few episodes where it becomes more about solving the actual tasks.
Although the rules are enormously cumbersome and it takes up half the episode to explain them (just to have the speaker and players explain them again repetedly throughout the tasks) they aren't terribly difficult. They pretty much all center around very basic maths.
In the end I didn't root for anyone to win. The two who ended up in the finals were particularly unlikeable.
Sense8 (2015)
I can't believe I made it through 9 episodes
I sat through nine hours of this slog but I can't take it anymore. There is zero forward momentum with at best paper thin characters. Of course I watched this since it was written, produced and to a large part directed by the Wachowskis, but this show was a huge letdown. The Wachowskis seem more interested in producing an LGBTQ manifesto and are more preoccupied with representation than telling an engaging story with interesting characters.
And no, I wasn't hoping for huge shootouts and car chases simply because the Wachowskis made the Matrix movies. I was hoping for a good science fiction series with forward momentum, something which seems to be low on the list of priorities in the age of streaming.
After sitting through nine hours the show is still spinning its wheels with its oh-so clever transitions with different characters visiting each other, with precisely none of them actually doing anything to propel the story forward. The only one who even comes close is the transgender girl and to some extent the cop. The rest of them, like the Indian and Korean girls and the Mexican and Kenyan guys sort of trundle along in their own storylines which have zero bearing yet on the (alleged) overarching narrative. And this after nine hours! Oh how I detest the slow burn fad which is on par with the shaky-cam of the early 2000's.
The acting is very shaky, but what can any actor do with dialogue of this low calibre?
Apparently people were upset that this show was cancelled after the second season. I honestly can't believe why it wasn't axed after the first. This show is a huge waste of time.
Invisible (2022)
I gave up
I made it through two episodes before I gave up. The show is basically a string of standalone "monster of the week" episodes tied together with a gossamer thin narrative thread. Some people have compared it with The Blacklist, another show I gave up on mainly due to the fact that I can't stand James Spader.
Perhaps it was a mistake that I had just sat through Heaven and Hell: Soul Exchange, also starring Issey Takahashi, before watching this show. It too was a cop show with quite lackluster narrative and Japanese style overacting. I'm sure that Invisible too will turn into a romantic melodramedy between the two leads. Although I will never know.
Plane (2023)
Surprisingly good action movie
I didn't get my hopes up too far considering it starred Gerard Butler, who seems like an awesome guy but one whose output has been rocky. From great movies like Law Abiding Citizen and Olympus Has Fallen, to mediocre fare like Gods of Egypt and Den of Thieves, and then horrendous ones (the less that is said about Gamer and the Fallen sequels the better).
But Plane is a different story. It's a good old 90's style action movie with a perfect runtime of 1 hour and 47 minutes. Unlike a lot (it almost feels like most) of other action movies today it doesn't overstay its welcome by dragging out the proceedings to 2.5 hours or more. The script is tight as is the pacing.
The first 25 minutes of the plane going down (that's the premise, not a spoiler) is fantastic. I can see why this movie wasn't included in the in-flight system on my recent long haul flight (funnily enough to Tokyo, as in the movie) just a few weeks ago...
Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000)
I probably would have liked it better if it was scripted
I gave this show a shot some years ago and couldn't stand even a full episode of Larry David's constant smirk, which one could describe in one way that is apparently verboten on IMDb.
I gave it another chance this year and have watched it from beginning to end, still without really knowing anything about it other than it stars Larry David.
After watching for a bit I started to think "This smells a lot like improv". Characters are constantly yes-anding by either saying "oh wow!" or simply repeating what the other character has said, as if to buy some time to come up with something (allegedly) witty to say. Almost every scene starts spinning its wheels and end up being 20% too long.
So I look it up on Wikipedia, and lo and behold: The dialogue is indeed improvised with simple outlines for the plot.
I can't say I'm surprised I haven't seen much of the actors in anything else (except for the celebrity guest stars, of course) because the acting is pretty weak throughout, especially Larry David and JB Smoove (what a ridiculous name, by the way). The many, many scenes with these two characters are like torture after a while.
Judging from Larry David's performance I guess I must have seen a later episode when I first tried watching the show. Because he is surprisingly low key in the first seasons. But that goes straight out the window after a while, especially after season 7, the Seinfeld reunion season. After that point every episode is mainly a bunch of Jews yelling at each other. Comedy, I guess.
Also, the attempts at catch phrases like "prettyyy, prettyy good" and moves - meaning the stare down - get old very, very fast. They were likely improvised one day and someone said, "hey, let's have Larry do that in every scene from now on!".
I guess I'm too much of a fan of tight scripts to appreciate this show. I have chuckled a couple of times, but real belly laughs are few and far between. Which is remarkable since I've sat through 110 episodes at this point.
Ai amu a hîrô (2015)
Zombie action
I watched this movie mainly because it stars Kasumi Arimura who was excellent in "Call Me Chihiro". Unfortunately she isn't given much to do in this film.
It starts off very well where we follow Hideo, a manga artist in Tokyo, as the viral outbreak begins and all hell breaks loose. Pretty soon he runs into Hiromi and I won't spoil it any more than that. They head for Mount Fuji because of a rumor that the virus is inefficient at that altitude. For some reason though they stop at an outlet near Mount Fuji first which is where the rest of the movie takes place.
This is also the point where it becomes pretty standard zombie action fare with people making the dumbest decisions imaginable to fill a two hour runtime. The effects look pretty good, and the high jumper was a pretty nice touch.
It killed two hours but like not something I'll watch again.
Chihiro-san (2023)
Wow, what performances
Due to innumerable disappointments I usually stay away from films with the big, red Netflix N. But I am so glad I gave "Call me Chihiro" a chance, because it was a gem.
This is not a plot driven movie. Anyone expecting a fast paced car chase will be sorely disappointed. It's very close in style to the later films of Hirokazu Kore-eda (one of my favorite directos), perhaps best described as character studies or slice-of-life films.
What is truly remarkable is the acting, which is on point from top to bottom, even the kids whose performances are top notch. Just look at the scene with kid Chihiro working up the courage to reach for older Chihiro's hand. Or the dinner scene at the little boy's house.
I have maintained for almost 20 years that there is no living director better at working with children than Hirokazu Kore-eda. But it seems he has some competition now in Rikiya Imaizumi. I have never seen any of his work before, but I'll be sure to be on the lookout for both past and future films.