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Ripley (2024)
Modern Day Noir with Downright Beautiful Cinematography
I was fortunate enough to attend a screening of the first three episodes of this in NYC, in which I was able to meet Andrew Scott, Johnny Flynn and Eliot Sumner.
Scott seemed a bit annoyed that all I wanted to do was talk about Sherlock (he said not only was the series not coming back but he wasn't), and Flynn was quite cool.
Anyhow, I'm here to talk about the cinematography, which if it hasn't already, deserves to win awards. If you've been to film school, you know that every shot needs a foreground, there should be mise en scene and some expressive purpose for the shot. With elements of Wes Anderson, this DP makes all of this happen and then some. The shots are orgasmically beautiful, so much so that it fulfills noir cravings whether or not you're a fan.
I was so blown away by the first three episodes that I literally re-subscribed to Netflix just to see the rest of them.
While the subject matter can be extremely difficult to watch, nearly every 20 or 30 minutes was another heart attack just given the way circumstances are set up and you wonder who's side your on? Do you want him to get away with it or be caught? While that's the case the amount of beauty more than makes up for it.
Truly, there's nothing to really make up for, as the series is flawless in practically every sense. This series is destined to win awards and become one of the most acclaimed limited series of the year if not the decade. It's addicting, horrifying and beautiful all in one.
I'd finally like to add that having seen five of these actors in the flesh and spoken to three of them, I am STILL haunted by these performances. My conscious mind wouldn't seem to care if I spent a day with Johnny Flynn, these performances are legendary.
The Mission (2023)
Not quite sure what I watched.
So first off, the guy behind me fell asleep (he was snoring and breathing loudly), the guy to my right got up and left 3/4 of the way through, the woman to my left fell asleep and the woman in front of me fell asleep.
Almost every blackout in the film people were disappointed that there was more content when it faded back up.
During the Q&A section, the audience was like a block of ice. The filmmakers didn't say much to break it.
Overall, it was a decent film, but not made very well and largely forgettable. Animation was used for parts they didn't have footage for, but it would have been better to style it like Tintin. There was a supplemental reader out in the lobby that, missed opportunity, they should have made look like a Tintin book.
No disrespect to the guy who died (allegedly), but the film seemed very pro-Jesus with only a few dissenters from that theorem who were also pro-Jesus. It didn't do a great job at portraying both sides. I am not quite sure what the message was. "Don't following dogmatic religious zealotry?" "Believe what's in your heart even if it kills you?" I just don't know. A very odd choice for NatGeo to pick this up, but they're becoming a bit like Netflix.
The content leading up to the end just wasn't presented interestingly enough. It explored this isolated foreign culture but I wasn't quite sure why I was watching it or why it was important.
If you want to see a better story of a missionary, go see "The Book of Mormon." Not even kidding. It's a lot more balanced in perspective than whatever I just saw was.
Also, the title really should have been called "The Missionary." Its current title is too wracked with ingrained spy/espionage tropes, or elicits "Mission Impossible" sentiments. I was quite disappointed we weren't watching a good spy movie with lots of explosions, but I didn't really look into what this was until I got there.
Jesus.
The Rookie: Feds (2022)
Interesting, Fun
When Niecy guest-starred on "The Rookie," I thought it was odd to feature the actor through the entire show. Still, she fit well-I soon learned about "Feds" and anticipated she'd stagger from one disaster to the next in this interaction, barely squeaking by her superiors much like Fillion did in the Rookie's first season. Instead, she seems like she has an intuitive knack for the role.
The plot of episode one is solid-I don't think it is unbelievable unless most of these reviewers have all personally worked for the FBI! In the first episode, the antagonist is downright scary in his total disregard for human life; and it's interesting to see the dynamics between different agencies at the city and federal level-where does one's jurisdiction end and another begin?
I have no idea about the policies and procedures of the FBI, even having read James Comey's entire book from start to finish. I didn't know much about LAPD either despite having watched a lot of police procedurals in my time (including Castle, which was set in NYC but shot in LA, so...yeah), and I think it will be interesting to learn.
The auxiliary characters are a bit 2D, but I'd look forward to seeing how their barriers are broken down in future episodes, perhaps even with storylines that follow them. Quite exciting and a fun premise; I am looking forward to the rest of the season.
Hamilton (2020)
Censored (not the American way and not the way it was meant to be seen)
This musical gets a 10/10 if you see it in the theatre, a 9/10 if you listen to the recording, but what I don't understand is why Disney censored the profanity.
That is part of what Hamilton and his colleagues were fighting for, among many other things.
I have NEVER seen a streaming service do this: I watch Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple, Hulu and Acorn and NONE of them censor their material. The fact that Disney did this to get a TV-14 rating is inexcusable. This show is NOT family-friendly, and for someone under that age to see it you'd need to take out the references to sex, prostitution, and even more censoring of curse words.
I will change the rating when Disney comes to their senses and releases the piece the way it was meant to be seen.
The Circle (2020)
Needs a Reformatting, Badly
I did not watch the original British series this show was based on, but the show needs a massive overhaul to even come close to being fair for the players.
Players coming in late had a HUGE disadvantage, at least this season the original crew was quite close-knit and had each other's back when the time came for elimination. It is too difficult for a new person to come in and learn what the others learned over time (I realize it's only about two weeks, but it's a 24/7 immersion with no phones or watches). Maybe this is whoever created the game's format, but it really wouldn't hurt to have maybe double the size of the original cast at the start (maybe 16 players?) and eliminate them one by one...you know, like pretty much ALL other reality shows do?!
Overall, despite that newcomers were pretty much picked off with no time to get to know them, the show was incredibly enjoyable. Binge-worthy, the winner very much deserved it. It was great to see that those who 'went home' were able to actually stay all the way to the end and have freedom at the apartment complex. I also hope the others or at least the top five got some type of consolation prize. These days, 100K isn't a terribly impressive prize for that much time and effort put in. It would have been nice to see them compete for over 500K or more because then they'd have a lot more at stake to lose and cuts would be all the more difficult to make. You could tell the cast was starting to think logistically about the eliminations at the end, but the concept wasn't really explored enough.
Overall, decent, but really needs to be developed and thought-out better.
The Morning Show (2019)
Great Acting, OK Writing
First off, the actors did excellent work here especially the uniquely-talented Mark Duplass. However, a few lines (about one every five minutes) are complete throw-aways and make no sense in the show. Lines like 'I've got a gun' as Jennifer Aniston was walking away from Carell in the rain didn't do anything and made the scene weaker. Many of the actors did excellent attempting to make the lines sound like emotional logic, but in the end, it was packed with 'stuffing...' very cliche stuff and dialogue used just to fill space. Apple seems to have missed the value of the pregnant pause in television drama, instead choosing to make sure someone is always speaking, and that the F word comes about every five words. Nothing really life-changing about this show-it seems mainly filler until they can come up with some better original content.
Booksmart (2019)
Very good for what it is, but it could have used one final edit.
I quite enjoyed it, and the audience I saw it with did too. Olivia Wilde for more or less her directorial debut in a mainstream release keeps the audience engaged with chemistry-driven dialogue or action.
The problem I saw, as a film editor myself, is that the film seemed to have been finished or rushed out and used as least one more draft.
Two major problems that should have been cut:
1. Some of the jokes just don't land. Many of the interactions with parents or the kid hosting the murder mystery party, the jokes just didn't register with me or the audience. Anything that doesn't push the story should be CUT, rewritten, or reshot, or a combination of those.
2. The chemistry between the two leads was great, but there were WAYYYYY too many extreme close ups on the girls' faces. They dominate almost every scene and it seems like the cinematographer has a compulsion towards framing faces REALLY REALLY CLOSE. While film has matured over the years, you do need to mix it up with a share of wide establishing shots once in a while, medium shots, OTS, high/low angle, etc. 90% of the film is ECU on the mains, and it leaves a different memory of the film than what I think Wilde was intending.
I've heard people say this was a female version of Superbad. Superbad was based on real events in the lives of the writers (Seth and Evan), but this script seemed to be contrived from THAT story. And sometimes, a copy of a copy is not really as good as the original. Several scenes worked very similarly, with almost identical mechanics to SB. There was a lot of fresh, intelligent, female-empowering, and yes even controversial dialogue, but the source material could have refrained from attempting to look like it was 'covering up a stolen plot' and gone off on its own direction a bit.
Still, if the film were to be re-edited following the two points I made above, audiences may be forgiving in an era of remakes, sequels, spinoffs and flat-out copycat films.
Men of a Certain Age (2017)
A good follow-up to Shanmugam's You're Rejected Universe
In Shanmugam's 'You're Rejected,' the main character (George) interviews a gay man who has characterized the type of men he is interested in as 'needy and shady and sketchy.' The anti-hero frequently bashes gays for their genetic inferiority, inappropriate lifestyle and negative cultural influence.
In this piece, we see similar dynamics at play. We see two gay men who are already relegated to the 'shady and sketchy' by finding each other on a dating app; and their age differential brings up even more moral questions.
We do not have a George-like character to measure the social barometer of these life choices. Instead, WE serve as the judge to make our own assertions of whether this relationship should be allowed to exist. Do we care what this culture does in 'the shadows?' Should they be 'in the shadows' to start with? How old is too old when it comes to dating and finding love? In this film, Shanmugam asks these questions but in the course of following the characters on their normal routines, leaves it up to us to judge what 'normal' actually is.
Vanilla Sky (2001)
Wake Up
Contains Spoilers Too many times in film history are we handed the classical narrative structure on a silver platter. American audiences walk in to cinemas expecting some laughter, some tears, all wrapped up in a neat little package to finish the job.
But why? It's our format. But how long can happiness last? Does life really become constant when we are locked in that 'happy' or 'satisfied' state that we bring from the theater? The truth is, there are no happy endings. Oh, there are very happy moments, but nevertheless, life continues to push on in its seemingly malevolent way.
Why not, says Crowe, leave the audience with something to ponder. Why not leave them with something to discuss over dinner, something to lie awake at night wondering. Why simply feed aesthetic desires to encourage us to blink the event out of our minds. Film, above all mediums, must move us in a way we have never been moved before. It must divert our desires, feeding them gradually but never giving us the whole pie in one serving.
You may criticize "Vanilla Sky" as a one shot attempt for some big name actors to remake an already extant film. You may criticize it as an excuse to dissipate the classical narrative structure, because it's easier to confuse people than create a coherent plotline. It's easier to just shoot confusing garbage than find some symbolic means to link everything together. Well, you'd be dead wrong.
"Vanilla Sky" is a film which stands in a genre all its own: Surface Surrealism. As the surrealists believe, film is a dream, and this film is fully aware that it acts on dreams to create its own reality. Anything can, and does, happen.
Now I ask you this. When was the last time, in a dream, did something confusing or astonishing, shocking or tormenting, or so blatantly against every moral code you ever stood for, happen? Laws, morals, and above all, physics cease to exist in your dreamworld--your dreams explore POSSIBILITIES.
There is nothing wrong with this. Dreams can momentarily confuse you, frustrate you. They can cut you deep, they can reoccur and disrupt your life. How many times have you dreamt about someone and then faced them the following day? How many times did you experience something in your own life that you could swear you dreamt only the night before, or many months ago?
The problem in criticizing this film for being confusing lies in our own minds. So the film did not conform to what we expect. And why not? It acts on the science of dreams. And sometimes, inside of us, there are dreams that we would never dare share with the world. Respect the ones that did.