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Dracula (2020)
Just Just misses the mark.
If it had just been the first two parts then it might have been nearly perfect.
I say this as a person who is not a fan of horror, but the first two parts of this miniseries, and even portions of the third were some of the most artful depictions of horror and suspense that I have ever seen.
The uncertainty of not knowing what's going on, the moral conflict of risk, of sacrificing yourself, the slow crawl of an killer. The expected surprise that is the full breadth of human nature
I don't like slasher films and I find most uses of blood and gore to be cheap shock value, but here it seems meaningful, even parts that verge on dark comedy don't seem to be just there for the reaction.
I also think that Sister Agatha is hands-down the best part of the show, fully aware of the horrors and both embracing and manipulating them. That combined with some other spiritual commentary I think is what provides the necessary balance to stop the horror from being pure violence, fear or confusion.
There are some problems though, in general things are either not explained or contradict themselves.
Dracula's backstory is never explained but it's semi-relevant to the reveal of the plot, blood rejuvenates him and he's vey selective with his targets but then why is he aged and decrepit when the story begins when we know that he regularly hunts?
Dracula survived for centuries but he continues to take pointless risks and mistakes, like moving the body of a dying man he fed on, implicating a perpetrator instead of leaving him(or the old woman) where their deaths could have been attributed to natural causes.
Also it Was 1897, there were far bigg steamboats with more passengers and crew than a random sailboat. If they were going to change how Dracula traveled why would they not compensate by making the travel option make sense.
The latter third is where it really falls apart,
Dracula immediately kills someone, and for some unknown plot reason the government wants to cover that up, so Dracula can't be detained for the murder, even though he is depicted carving a path of destruction, breaking and entering and killing at least one other person. But Dracula is set free from the shady government facility because none of the crimes counted and this shady government facility, unlike every real off the books government organization is very concerned with due process.
Dracula has a law firm to represent him, and a random modern lawyer just accepts that he works for an immortal man-eater and starts scoping out victims? None of this is seen or noticed, even though Dracula initially has a very poor understanding of how the modern world works and the lawyer keeps meticulous records of past and potential victims.
The general undead are also bizarre and contradictory, initially they're described as fully aware and conscient and they occurred randomly but then vampirism seems to be induced with some predictability by being bitten which presumably most of dracula's victims are, but all full vampires shown are described as dumb and animalistic despite the lower undead being conscient. A plot point is dependent on knowing when a vampire resurrection is going to happen, and yet one person resurrects almost immediately and the other takes several days; this despite resurrection time being attributed to level of consciousness.
Also the fact that people can become undead is something no one's ever heard of even though sometimes the undead crawl out of their graves and wander around, many being audible even being buried in their graves.
There's a Texan.. he talks and acts like an Elvis impersonator, the most accurate part of his character is that he proposes to someone at the presumed age of 22.
Weird inaccurate Texans are a part of the original novel I guess but it seems like a weird thing to keep.
There's a blood donor program, we don't know why, one of the donors is the POV character for some reason.
Lucy supposedly embraces death but as soon as it happens she doesn't like it, but as soon as she resurrects she's cool with it again. All of her "not scared of anything because nothing matters" attitude is because she's tired of being pretty and having people smile at her.. both of these are correctable without supernatural suicide..
She's just generally very unpleasant, the only person she doesn't actively disrespect is her gay friend, who she still abandons and tells no one where she's going.
And I don't want to be nasty, because I'm sure that the actress is probably a fine person, but at no point does the character of Lucy garner any sympathy from me, even when objectively horrible things are happening to her. Likewise, she's not ugly but almost no one is pretty enough to complain about being pretty.
Zoe discovers that Dracula is afraid of death and treats it as a victory that a monster will feed upon innocents for eternity because he'll be sad while doing it..
Not that she wants anyone to know that.
And Dracula decides to kill himself because.. he feels convicted?
It's unclear.
We never get any explanation about what happened to sister Agatha, presumably she didn't drown, because apparently vampires can't drown.
The series also tries to imply that Dracula is gay/pansexual a couple of times but he never has sex(real or dream) with a man or expressed any interest in men sexually or romantically. He flirts with a gay guy because he wants to feed on his youth and beuaty but.. I don't know feels like predation not homosexuality. The only even remotely gay things that happen is he wants to make a man his "bride" or better named vampirism test subject and there's one gay guy who stupidly thinks that if he betrays people for Dracula that he'll turn him into a vampire and they'll be together.
When it comes to Queer characters, do it or don't do it.
The Prom (2020)
Rough Delivery But at Least the Box is Decorated
The style is great, though it doesn't quite meld with the real world it tries to also show in some scenes. The cinematography is good to the point that it captures the movement of live theater without feeling like a chopped up drama. The writing is bad, part of the time on purpose, other times on accident; sometimes the writing is good but it's usually between bits of intentionally bad writing. I think they were going for camp. The plot progresses in a really disjointed way and realistic and hyperpspeed character growth happen simultaneously which does abuse suspension of disbelief. There's a lot of moments that feel like in this Queer-centric movie the Queer people serve as a backdrop to the Straight characters's own problems and growth and in general there are a lot of things that feel homophobic(James Corden's accent, having one old-fashioned dress) though that clearly wasn't the intent.
I also take unbridge with any "moderate city is no place to be gay" because it has nothing to do with the place, it's misattribution talking about the place just reminds the audience that Indiana is actually a better place to be gay than most. Which is factually true but definitely not in line with the story. Whereas this would be a good time to point out that this problem is everywhere and usually much worse.(if you're going to comment about geography at all).
All in all it was cringy, not quite camp enough and I don't think I'd suggest a friend and I watch it together -
but I did break out into deep, barely contained sobs no less than four times during the run time of the film, so there's clearly something there that hits to the heart of the issue, even if the execution was messy
xx.
Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022)
It's not a traditional movie, it's not a traditional fairytale
The movies is a blending of staples of fairy tales and movie formats.
It alternates between sweeping memory of an ancient being and the human perspective of the moment.
The visuals are stunning but very little is explained outside the main plot.
It would be an interesting story to explore more but it gives just a glimpse, although on the whole it feels very human, and gives some interesting perspective.
Superbly acted, albeit a bit to graphic for my taste and verging on the grotesque at various times.
History isn't a Disney movie but I don't think that I needed to see an old man having sex with his child bride or an orgy den.
Dora and the Lost City of Gold (2019)
Almost a masterpiece
It's campy and ridiculous the cgi is terrible and the socially inept angle of Dora is fun
They keep on trying to trying to give oof weird political messages like implying that veganism and quinoa farms are better for the rainforest than cattle farms(weird and wrong) and that a high school mean girl isn't a mean girl and saying so is misogyny.
Also that it's bad to make a monkey wear shoes but making a Fox lift crates is fine, but at least that's ridiculous on purpose.
There's no reason this movies should exist, but I think that it's charming that it does, even if it's a bit too entrenched in modern times for its own good.
The Resident: Doors Opening, Doors Closing (2021)
I'm still so incredulous
I casually saw this episode over a year ago while watching it with my mother and it still shocks and enrages me to the point that I had to identify the show and episodes just the tell someone about it.
When Jake and Gregg insisted on being in the room when the homophobic parents of their would-be child's mother I was incensed.
Not that I could be too angry because I was in a room with someone who didn't know I was closeted.
There is the idea that only Queer people can be outed. Sure you can't surprise people with the sexuality of a straight person but some people don't even have the luxury of openly admitting to knowing a Queer person, especially historically.
The fact that they almost put a young vulnerable girl on the street and risked the safety and well-being of their child for the sake of some deluded idea of "authenticity" is just sick.
Personal safety and human lives come before the ideas of authenticity, and anyone with a knowledge of Queer history would know that.
Heck, anyone who's ever seen or been.l a Queer person in danger would know that.
If it was any other piece of information that determined whether this girl would have a place to sleep at night they would have been quiet but because it's was a Queer issue they tried to project an image of being loud and proud, no doubt an effort by the writers to not appear homophobic.
I especially hate it because despite it being fictional it projects this moral snobbery over people who are closeted for their own safety.
Which ironically is far more homophobic.
Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness: Can We Say Bye-Bye to the Binary? (2022)
It doesn't explain anything
The only thing it really says is that non-binary people are people who don't fit gender expectations(which would include most of us) and says that it's not about clothes.
But it doesn't explain anything on philosophical, ideological, biological, neurological level or even sociological level.
It takes some time to mention the negative perceptions of Non-binary people(some more grounded than others) which of course is important to acknowledge but ultimately I have no idea how or why I'm supposed to distinguish between a gender non-conforming person and a non-binary person.
"Sorry, your review is too short. It needs to contain at least 600" characters."
Love, Death & Robots: Jibaro (2022)
Not quite there
Well, it's something that's for sure.
I've spent twenty minutes watching much worse things, but It really doesn't justify its run time. Partially because it's just not well thought out.
That being said all but the main two characters and a couple of priests look like the ruddy corpses of ugly men; just unpleasant to look at, balancing on the fine line between ugly caricature and uncanny valley.
Thee human movement was so unnatural and frankly disturbing to watch. They moved like puppetry corpses, moving with obviousl weight but unnatural bending and jerking all the wayZ
Why does the man need to do four spins as he runs towards his death with a spine like a rag doll?
The weird movement could have been used in the dancer for the same disturbing effect, but frankly she moves more like a person than any of the men.
The dancer herself does move like a human but it's clear that there were missing elements, the frame rate was off, the skin at times was indistinguishable from early low poly 3-D games and while it could be intentional, the constant blurriness, jerking camera and shots that are too far or too close make it seem like the creators knew that it wasn't Finished and we're intentionally trying to cover it up.
Certainly even if it were perfect you wouldn't be able to see it most of the time.
Though to their credit, the trees and water in particular were very well done, it's just to bad we weren't looking at those instead.
As far as plot, there really isn't one there are just events, but as far as theme I have to say it's really not that deep.
I got part way through that this is supposed to be a metaphor for colonialism but that wasn't what was actually occurring on-screen.
If you want to separate an event from it's context, as was done by the spacey priests and face tattoos, then the events have to comparable.
It's highly questionable to try to do a colonialism narrative where the victims of colonialism are bloodthirsty monsters that instigate unprovoked massacres on sight and hoard wealth made by others.
That and making the protagonist a deaf mestizo man as the eyes and hands of colonialism is questionable.
In context the main character acted rationally(more or less) and we're meant to treat his actions like they're unearned brutality while also ignoring the other deaths and the fact that his deafness is only used a plot device to preserve him as the "perpetrator" to justify the brutal killings at the start after which his deafness is magically erased so he can be killed too.
The only reason reason I knew it was meant to be a metaphor was because of the Spanish aesthetic and people saying that it was "deep".
But it really isn't that deep; saying "imperialism is bad" is not a message that can sustain you for twenty minutes and when it doesn't make sense in context and you focus on the gore to evoke emotion it just really doesn't go anywhere.
If you add greater themes it's socially unconscious or problematic, if you don't it's a few steps above a fever dream.
Glee: The Power of Madonna (2010)
Character Integrity Was a Problem for the Message™
Just why.
Turning all the male characters into stereotypes of misogynists just so you could tell them not to be misogynists is such a waste of time and writing.
Dear White People (2014)
It is what you would expect
If you want to know what the movie is like I recommend looking though discussions of race and racism in tumblr, this movie has about the same amount of depth.
El camino de Xico (2020)
Inacabado/Unfinished
(English below)
La trama es contradictoria y apenas sobre Xico, la calidad de la animación oscila entre decente e embarazosa, es bien obvio que los escritores no entienden que es el fracking porque lo describieron como un antivaxer describe las vacunas.
Y lo más horrible la película parece usar la raza como un símbolo de la moralidad de sus personajes.
Pero me gustó El Tlacuache, él fue fantástico, estuve completamente absorto cada vez el estuvo en la pantalla.
...
The plot is contradictory and Hardly about Xico, the quality of animation varies between decent and cringeworthy and its very obvious that the writers don't know understand what fracking is because they talk about fracking like an antivaxer talks about vaccines.
Worst of all they use race as shorthand for the morality of the characters.
I did like the possum(el tlacuache), he was great, I was completely absorbed whenever he was on the screen.
Easy A (2010)
A Self-Aware Classic
Easy A definitely leans into the inherent cringe-worthiness purity/promiscuity culture. It has a lot to say about how people talk and act about one another without ever really coming off as preachy and it does it all while being cognizant of its own tropes and the ridiculousness of every specific.
It also makes the journey fun, which is no small benefit.
The Little Mermaid Live! (2019)
I only cared about two characters
Conceptually I love the idea of a live performance of a Disney film, certainly it's more justified than another attempt at a live-action movie, but this really just misses the mark.
The original footage are chopped up and shortened and live representations are expanded, both mostly for ill as the pacing is jarring and emotionally unfulfilling and the casting is, with the exception of Prince Eric and Ursula, misguided at best. The performances as stand alones don't always make sense but would still be very impressive if they were produced by anything other than a multi-billion dollar company with a star-studded cast.
The chef and Sebastian seem to be phoning in their performances or at least their accents.
I genuinely enjoyed Ursula and the Prince's parts and even the edited original footage but otherwise it was mostly disappointing