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Reviews
The Mosquito Coast: The Glass Sandwich (2021)
Good conclusion to a decent series - i look forward to the next series... and really want to revisit the film now!
I liked this episode and the series, as a whole. Good central theme of where family can take us and how we might feel about it. I like how Ally feels justified in doing all of what he does throughout, and how his family just need to see the bigger picture, goddamnit! At the same time, he's lost the plot - many people have died because of him. It's insane from an objective point of view, yet subjectively, what choice has he had? I liked that tension. As a prequel (really) to Mosquito coast (the novel and film) it really sets the tone of what would happen if an idealist won't compromise after having a family - a notion many men can identify with before and after children come along I suspect. And a notion Paul Theroux exercised through writing his original novel perhaps? I also like how the son is tussling with his masculinity. He's the one most enamoured by his father's ways. It's a neat way to pull at the family and contrast how the women are far less impressed.
Good tension in this last episode too. Really enjoyed it as a finale. The last scene is a great too.
Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood (2019)
A rough diamond
There was so much I liked about this film but, and it's a big but, it TRULY felt like a rough cut edit of a final film.
A sharper more satisfying film was so close to the surface I felt - especially in the first 2 hours. In many ways it reminded me of how I felt about Death Proof (or my 'recollection' of how I felt about Death Proof - I watched that a long time ago!) which was that the preamble was just about worth sitting through to get to the climax.
Anyway, I'd read enough to know the first two hours were slow so I prepared myself for it, expecting I could withstand a meandering love letter to Hollywood, but even with this knowledge I genuinely struggled with some of the longueurs.
Having said all that it is still worth seeing and there's many moments that show Tarantino can still surprise and delight. I just wish he had more trust in an editor at this stage of his career. It would do him the world of good I feel.
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Good in lots of ways but ultimately undone by a bloated script that tries too many things
I'm not adverse to long films but there's long films that need it for the right reasons and there's ones that need it for the wrong reasons. I think Blade Runner 2049 falls into the latter camp. It's long because it has way too much going on and this goes all the way back to the script.
It would have been easy to shape a better - and simplier - film at the development stage but, as is often the case with scripts originating from Ridley Scott and Scott Free Productions, it just wasn't addressed. I feel a bit sorry for Villeneuve because he was exactly the right director to tackle this - he gets so much right here - but I'm starting to suspect he might be a bit like Scott himself: he's good when he has a good script and less so when he doesn't. Personally I believe a good director should 'also' be a good enough writer to be able to shape a script when it needs it (i.e. when the writers fall short). I had the impression Villeneuve was that kind of director, but now I'm not so sure.
Anyway, the bottom line for me is this... this could have been a bonafide classic but it's fatally flawed and the finger points directly at the writers and the script editors imo - more specifically Michael Green I suspect, who's got 'Scott appointee' written all over him (and from his CV should never - ever - have been anywhere near a property like Blade Runner). Shame... so much effort (and talent) went into it and the foundations weren't quite there. Criminal really.
Under the Skin (2013)
Even though it took 10 years to make, this film still feels under-developed
I think the problem with this film is that it goes for stripped down minimalism - which in itself is laudable - but instead of this making the film lean, focused and powerful it leaves the underlying themes and story beats brutally exposed, and well, in full glare they are at best disjointed, and at worst, ill conceived.
I think minimalism is the hardest approach to get right because there is nowhere to hide. It relies on getting the fundamental, complicated stuff 'completely' right and THEN stripping away, until you're left with the perfect 'remains'. The problem with Glazer, I think, is that he's the perfect stylist but not the perfect storyteller, so he never bothered to get the foundations completely right in the first instance. He ploughed on with minimising it before it made total sense on a thematic level - which is criminal considering how long he's spent on it (although that could also be, ironically, the problem here)
Here's what I mean by the theme not making too much sense when left as exposed as it is. OK, so the main point of the 'simple' story seems to be - THE FOLLOWING ARE SPOILERS FOR THOSE WHO STILL HAVEN'T SEEN IT - that a callous, uncaring alien race harvest 'humans' for their needs (food in the novel; not explained in the film). Then through a series of smallish events one alien (our main character) has second thoughts and wants out. The filmmaker has basically said, as way of explanation for his main character's journey, an 'it' becomes a 'she'. So far so good (relatively speaking). So, through starting to identify with her prey, she starts to empathise with them. Roughly put: she becomes more human and more emotional (or at least curious about such things). OK, so that to me feels like the through-line Glazer is going for here.
So, by proxy and by the film's conclusion, her newfound empathy to her prey - and development as a character - will either become a positive or a negative.
So lets just analyse what happens by the end. There is an attempted rape and she is subsequently killed by a stranger who realises she is an alien. The emphasis here is on 'a stranger'.
OK, lets analyse that for a moment. Halfway through the film she lets her guard down and decides to try to change. The ending says it wants this change to be seen as a fatal mistake. Now, the problem I have with the ending is as follows: how the protagonist is trying to change is completely disregarded when applied to how she is killed. She doesn't even know the man who kills her. It's a stranger who she has built up no relationship with and has no empathetic understanding of! He literally wanders into the story (and boy does it feels like that!) and somehow that's supposed to articulate how her journey towards becoming more empathetic ends. A stranger kills her.
To me it 'has' to be an empathetic act on her part that causes her to die (or inversely to live). THAT'S THE THEME! There are two very frustrating things about this. One is that this is obvious to any writer!! And two is; the 'right' storytelling has already been established and then rejected ahead of this disjointed and awkward ending. It would have told the perfect ending and articulated the theme perfectly. And just as importantly everything 'else' would have been able to 'build' towards this ending better too.
What is this storytelling I speak of? Earlier in the film she tries to build a loving relationship with a man she meets and it goes wrong when she realises she can't have sex with him.
Now, that particular 'sequence' is left to shrivel and die, but wouldn't it have been a better line of enquiry into the film's theme than the one Glazer eventually went for? Wouldn't it have been great if a person she was beginning to know and love ended up killing her because he uncovers she's an alien!? Wouldn't that have perfectly illustrated how her growing need to empathise with others ended up being her undoing? Isn't that the exact 'right' symmetry the story was looking for and trying to express?
Even if the stranger ending had played out better - articulating that she has become too trusting (as a consequence of her previous encounter) and this allows a stranger to approach her, get to know her and take advantage of her - that would have been 'something'... but the way it is handled is not that. It is distancing and clunky.
So.... this can only sit at 4/10 for me. It can go no higher and it gets those 4 simply for trying the minimalist approach in, what has to be said are, beautiful and cinematic ways. These are to be applauded and there is no doubt Glazer is a talented stylist. Perhaps the best out there. He just needs to work with better writers and brush up on his own storytelling.