57. Mute (2018) - February 26th
This was so bizarre I feel like I need to take another crack at it some time, but so terrible that I never want to. My full review can be found here. - 3.5/10
58. Battle Royale (2000) - February 28th
Any film that opens with something as extravagant as Verdi's Requiem, Dies Irae is starting on my good side. Battle Royale is violent and tragic and riddled with teen melodrama, skillfully mixing its confronting and saddening nature with contrasting and surprisingly appropriate humour.
The immediate comparison to The Hunger Games is drawn; short answer, this is better in every way, but I'm glad I saw The Hunger Games first, because my experience with it wasn't dulled by the fact that I was simply watching a worse Battle Royale.
The melodrama in this movie is pitch perfect in tone given the film's context. I love the way so many of the social circles that form on the island are based on the girls and boys characters like; it makes every scene so ripe with unstable emotional motivation, as every group teeters on the edge of chaos, ready to be pushed off by something as minute as an unspoken crush. It's all so silly, and the film knows it, with the classical music and dialogue mingling to heighten it all before cutting it down with a gunshot or two, killing characters off with the realisation that their immaturity is so stupid. At the same time, it all feels warranted; the characters are high school students thrown in to a horrifying survival situation that asks them to kill each other, the fact that their reactions and breakdowns are all emotionally motivated and melodramatic is what makes it so excellent in the end, because it leads to some hilariously fantastic scenes that intermingle with soul-deadening ideas.
My personal favourite of these is the scene in the lighthouse. The fact that the scene opens with 'we're all friends here' before devolving in to a shootout over mistakenly poisoning one of those 'friends' due to liking a boy that was killed by one of the main characters is just the sort of debacle you can expect when you put forty-odd teenagers on an island with deadly weapons. The humour that follows the freakout, screaming about how getting shot hurts, just sells the ridiculousness of it all so well. The film keeps it all in perspective by humanising the characters it chooses to focus on. Sometimes this is more melodrama being thrown in to contrast with their current situation, such as Shuya thoughts about Nobu straying to Nobu's confession that he likes Noriko; despite the fact that he's just seen Nobu's throat get blown out his first thought is his emotional betrayal to his friend for liking the same girl. A little silly perhaps, but the sort of humanity one doesn't want to lose in a situation like this.
That's another of the film's biggest strengths, really; it spends a lot of its time showing the variety of individual reactions. Some of it may seem cliche because it all has to be shorthand to accommodate every teen, but I appreciate the choice to make each group of people killed have a bit of personality or attitude that separates them from the rest. Even though the film requires them to be simple numbers to be called out after their untimely deaths, it's done so in a way that gives enough to these poor souls that the immediate reaction to hearing them simply called out as nothing more than a name and number is disgust. The film evokes dark humour, but does so with regular reminders of solemnity that the laughs it ekes are mixed with sighs of despair at the world the film depicts and the monstrosity of it all. - 8/10
59. Superman Returns (2006) - February 28th
With this, I've seen every live-action Superman movie. After Superman III and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, this was a relief. Its plot is coherent, its direction is competent, Spacey's performance is really good (less cartoonish than Hackman without losing the psychosis or megalomania), and it evokes a similar spirit to the first two. At the same time, it does have its problems.
The most surprising performance was Routh. He almost comes across like Reeve's Superman, but without the boisterous boy scout energy; the performance is too restrained. This seems to have been motivated by an attempt to update the characters, and with a character like Luthor this works fine, but this colour of character looks drab on Superman (in retrospect, this incarnation does feel like a true in-between of the Donner era and the Snyder era, still positive as a person but seemingly sobered by time). It's a shame too, because anyone who's seen Legends of Tomorrow knows that Routh can play that type of character; Ray Palmer is essentially Superman with a few less brain cells. That said, as far as attempting to humanise a heroic icon goes, I've seen worse.
The movie is also way too long; a lot of the early stuff seems superfluous and drags out the actual return of Superman unnecessarily. It kind of takes the wind out of the film's sails, so once it actually gets going it's hard to really get invested. - 6.5/10
60. Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion (1997) - March 2nd
This was made as an alternative, or companion piece, to the last two episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion.
In its initial run the show ran out of money and as expected became limited creatively. The final two episodes of the show express this almost obnoxiously, with the scope of the final two episodes taking place in the main character Shinji's head as he battles with his own self-hatred, and it's presented only in voice-over of often half-finished stills. Despite this, the original was undeniably compelling, as it believably expresses the entire growth process of a teenager as he battles with what it means to exist, how much of other people should influence his identity, and ultimately that he need not hate himself. It's ethereal, and melodramatic, and leaves you hanging with indecision, and that all feels appropriate given the nature of the show's main character.
The ending was controversial; director Hideaki Anno even received death threats from dissatisfied fans. Despite defending their work, production eventually was launched on a follow-up, and so we got The End of Evangelion.
The film takes a more concrete approach to ending the story, explaining explicitly a lot of what was merely implied and showing a lot of what could only have been spoken about before, while also showing what was going on in the world around Shinji as he slowly slipped further in to the world he created in his mind to protect himself. The plans of human ascension becomes a roller coaster of backstabbing and action interlaced with brutal and macabre imagery. All of the themes and style of the show are still present and turned up to eleven, the emotions and conflicts all come to a head, and the ending is as weird and fitting as you would expect from the show. With all that in mind, it's also unabashed in its reliance on the series, which is simply required reading to get the most out of this whole experience.
The End of Evangelion is disturbing, confusing, visceral and soul-stirring. The uncomfortable and often sickening imagery on display is incredible, and the way the film builds Asuka up only to cut her down in the first half is crushing. The second half is strange, all emotion and filled with concepts that you just sort of have to go with because they fit thematically. It's reminiscent of 2001, as it deals with the evolution of humanity in to its next form, although through consensus as opposed to space exploration. Once we jump back inside Shinji's head, it also becomes much like the series' ending, but with an animation budget that allows for the imagery and Shinji's thought process interlink more smoothly, and it gets more deeply in to some of the sexual nature of Shinji's internal conflict, something implied in the series but never considered like this before.
Admittedly, some stuff simply doesn't work in my context; showing an empty movie theatre doesn't have the same impact when I'm sitting in the comfort of my own home.
It's one of the weirdest and most visually engaging animated films I've seen since I watched Akira, and I recommend it only to anyone who has stomached the series. - 8.5/10
61. A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) - March 3rd
The last thing I expected to see at the start of this movie was an Edgar Allen Poe quote.
As far as sequels go, this is a considerable improvement over Freddy's Revenge and a way more interesting concept that builds on the first. The idea of Nancy seeking out the others attacked by Freddy in order to help them work together in order to fight them is really cool, and it's coupled with some sickeningly dark revelations about Freddy's origin and some of the more disturbing kill scenes in the franchise so far. Freddy ripping flesh to turn Phil in to a human marionette is one of the more shocking kills in the series so far, not only gory and visceral but also drawn out with some light character irony. I also appreciated the films attempts to give the groups of characters a bit of actual character. It wasn't really successful at it beyond a couple of differentiating or cliche personality traits, but these were enough to feel life breathed in to the film, even though it's not enough to really attach yourself to the characters.
The gore and design of the horror stuff was all really intriguing and reminiscent of the best work in Freddy's Revenge, and the final reveal of Freddy absorbing the souls of his victims in to his body to make himself stronger is a particularly memorable and disturbing moment. Overall, this is better than just fine due to the consistent quality and inventiveness of these moments. - 6/10
62. Raising Arizona (1987) - March 3rd
This movie predicted Nic Cage as Ghost Rider twenty years before it happened. That, or it was the inspiration for Nic Cage to do Ghost Rider. Either way, I'm certain that I can retroactively insert this in to the Marvel Cinematic Universe on this shaky connection alone.
By this point I'm used to the standard screwball surrealism of Coen Brothers movies, and this was still a cartoon by comparison. The closest of their films I can compare it to in terms of pure silliness are Burn After Reading or Hail, Caesar!, and I liked Raising Arizona a little more than those, which is to say that for whatever flaws it has it's always fun, energetic, and technically skilled. The Coens have this certain flow in their films; a natural rhythm in the way their editing and the actors' dialogue and movement intermingle, it's very conversational and makes their scenes feel dynamic, even when they're employing just a simple shot/reverse shot. It means that when their storytelling isn't at its best, it all works well enough together. It's a given at this point that their comedy styling is hilarious and well-timed, even in their non-comedic films. Despite not enjoying Raising Arizona as much as, say, Barton Fink or O Brother, Where Art Thou? it was consistently making me laugh. It also helps that Holly Hunter and Nicolas Cage are really good actors, and Cage in particular suits this silly, Looney Tunes style of comedy in this film.
All that said, it's stretched as a concept; the film contains a few scenes that seem unnecessary and don't add much to the surreal nature of the film that hasn't already been expressed already, so while the moment-to-moment editing is fine, the overall structure of the film loses itself now and then. - 7.5/10
63. Son of Godzilla (1967) - March 4th
This is just adorably bad.
Son of Godzilla is entirely targeted at a kid audience, filled with cutesy moments that humanise Godzilla and his son, Minilla. Despite this, it also bizarrely includes a heavily convoluted human plot involving scientists trying to make a weather controlling machine, a reporter whose presence interferes with their work, and a native girl that meets the reporter and narrates scenes of Godzilla and Minilla.
The effects are bad, even for a Showa-era Godzilla movie. Godzilla's proportions are all out of place, and his eyes skew off in different directions. Minilla barely moves at all, and his design is incredibly ugly and cumbersome; he's so feeble it's silly, and it's strange that this character that's clearly designed for kids has nothing more to it that a gray ball of fat, and how that translates from Godzilla's own design is beyond me.
As terrible as they are, the way the monsters are framed isn't doing them any favours. Part of the reason that the first film worked so well was because they always shot Godzilla from low angles that emphasised his size; in an effort to make him more kid-friendly that idea is thrown away and replaced with simple shots that make him look more human, which destroys what little illusion there actually is. It's so strange that they'd try and make Godzilla targeted at kids in the first place; it's like trying to make Freddy Krueger or Jason Vorhees more friendly just to try and appeal to a wider audience (that said, I am not opposed to the idea of Freddy Krueger doing the ABCs on Sesame Street, just because of how absurd the idea sounds).
That said, the cuter moments in the film don't fall completely flat. As stupid as the idea of making Godzilla find his softer son by caring for a son is, the idea is taken to its completion. Godzilla starts out as rough and rude to Minilla, resigning only to carrying his son around on his tail, and threatening to hit Minilla if his son doesn't breathe atomic breath, he becomes noticeably softer on Minilla over the course of the film. It culminates in a surprisingly heart-warming scene of Godzilla finding his son in the gathering snow (the weather scientists decide to destroy their own project and throw Monster Island in to a nuclear winter) and cuddling him as they begin to hibernate. It's not enough to make the movie good, but it's a surprising amount of follow-through on such a dumb idea. - 4/10
Re-watches
13. I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)
A film that was never particularly good to begin with and has in retrospect been ruined by Scary Movie. The film is mediocre at best, with a lot of average acting and passable storytelling that doesn't really stand out unless it gets bad enough to be funny. It's uninspired and uninteresting and occasionally funny, the perfect movie to watch when you need something in the background while you get stuck in to a kebab. - 5/10
Published March 4th, 2018
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