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Blonde (2022)
Ana de Arnas is the saving grace of this pathetic film
Ana de Arnas's performance makes the film very much deserving of watch, if that watch is simply seeing an actor at the height of their craft. If acting was all it took to make a film I could end the review here.
Monotone 4:3 aspect ratio fever dream: the words set the film up to be something cool and edgy that Criterion aficionados can eat up.
Unfortunately, this film parades around Marilyn Monroe's trauma like proudly lit float, never slipping any deeper into the substance of her character. She cries, many times. She breaks down many times. Over and over, cycle after cycle. What's missing from this raw emotional carnage is the woman herself. Marilyn Monroe had a charming sense of humor, was a foodie, and had more books than some school libraries. She was intelligent and had a surprising wit. Her marriage to Arthur Miller, which was billed as a mismatch, was in fact just two intellectuals vibing as we now know.
It's a shame that the most interesting and fundamental parts of who Marilyn Monroe was are lost is this 3-hour tangent down wallow road. In Blonde, she's angry, keeps it in, then unleashes it in a series of breakdowns. It's perplexing to watch when, as much as Marilyn Monroe had been taken advantage of, she was also incredibly strong-willed and bold. It wasn't entirely doom and gloom and she wasn't constantly in the victim role either.
For any fans of the three-dimensional person Marilyn Monroe was, Blonde will be a let down. Blonde will perplex you, bore you, and then make you upset that this piece of filmmaking, disguised as art that wants to be taken more seriously than it deserves, is only another in the line of exploitative features trading truth for distortion.
The Beguiled (2017)
A quiet chamber piece of film making with southern aesthetic
I feel like Coppola's films always cake on the atmosphere and aesthetic over the story. Style over substance, but generally enough substance to please. It's the same case in The Beguiled.
I'll go right ahead and say I liked this film for the fine, quiet way it depicted the south at that time. Little things like cicadas, leaves rustling and cannons in the distance really did their part to set the mood. I also loved the palette of colors chosen to represent this film. Some scenes look so old fashioned that it's as if the original film was black and white and the color was tinted in post-processing. Shots of the exterior of the mansion, the opening with the famous walking path covered in mist in which was obviously Savannah, Georgia... These exterior shots all made me wish I was there having a southern Gothic tale of my own.
The Beguiled is a very simple, straightforward southern Gothic tale. There are no filler moments. It starts immediately with a very clear "in the beginning..." and it wraps up like a fairy tale with a clean cut "the end." While the story isn't complicated, the characters are.
Colin Farrell's character John McBurney is wounded and carried to Ms. Farnsworth's school for girls, to be cared for until he can go on his way. They're southerners of the Confederacy and he's a Union soldier. The complications arise in their repressed sexuality and his cunning prowess at unlocking it.
I found McBurney, Farrell's character, to be especially interesting. In the 1971 version with Clint Eastwood, it's clear that Eastwood's McBurney is lying through his teeth (shown in flashbacks that conflict what he tells the girls) and his intentions seem to be just charming them enough to not be turned in. In this version the McBurney character's intentions aren't as clear. I'm still confused as to what he wanted. At times he alluded to wanting to stay, other times to go and why IS he charming all the women at the same time? We don't get the answer to that either. Or perhaps Farrell's character is so good at what he does that he's actually beguiling the audience too.
Unclear motives and intentions are one of the shortcomings of the film. I felt the 1971 version (it's hard not to compare) did a lot with dialogue, making as much use of it as possible. Coppola's Beguiled was too quiet at times. There were moments where certain interactions were needed. More was needed between Dunst's character Edwina and McBurney. More interactions between McBurney and the girls were needed, ones that drove the jealousy, instigated our suspicions and had purpose. Some of the dialogue in the film fell flat or came in at the wrong time. That's where this "style over substance" clearly shows its flaws.
Kidman did a fine job with this film, but I actually felt she lacked something. She came across as stone frozen cold no matter what scene it was. There was no light-heartedness to her character. McBurney's supposed to beguile and enchant her but there was no clear moment of her heart melting or her emotion peeling away except at two scenes - 1) the moment she cleaned his body and 2) when she drinks with him after dinner. But those two scenes aren't enough to show her attraction, a very stark contrast to the 1971 version in which Geraldine Page fantasizes of a three-way with him!
It's still a good film. I stand by what I said earlier. It's very complete, begins and wraps up sharp and clean. And it's beautiful in it's simplicity.
I give it a solid 7/10.
Tangled: The Series (2017)
Awesome series continuation, has a Princess Bride feel
As a fan of the original Tangled, I was curious where they were going with this series. Happy to say if you're a Tangled fan the series follows the film almost seamlessly.
First there's the TV movie, Tangled: Before Ever After, which I personally didn't care for too much. It was a bit too hammy and moralistic, low on humor and cliché. "Stubborn princess disobeys father. Father doesn't understand stubborn princess." We've seen this story play out so many times.
Now the SERIES on the other hand really gets things going. I would still recommend watching Before Ever After because you get explanations for some major plot elements of the series.
First there's the humor. I think Tangled the Series is really funny. It's anchored by being set in a renaissance / medieval period and it manages to work the period into its humor, which is really great because it reminds me of things like The Princess Bride or Monty Python and the Holy Grail, other films that did well with not taking the setting seriously. That's a huge plus for Tangled.
Then there's the voice cast which is awesome since it's being helmed by the original voices. You never get a sense that you're not seeing Rapunzel or Flynn being the way they are, and the voices really help with that. In fact one of the best things about Tangled is that we get to see more of Flynn and especially Rapunzel. As much the film developed her character, it was still limited by the runtime. The series really fleshes her out and we have a more defined idea of who Rapunzel is. Flynn was always flashy and we get a lot more of Flynn, the arrogant side and the deeper "Eugene" part of him. Although we really should be calling him Eugene since that's what he goes by in the series. There's also a new character who is just fantastic, Cassandra. The banter being Cassandra and Eugene is one of the running jokes that the series plays with really well. As a trio, they work really well together.
It's also nice to see Rapunzel and Eugene "dating" in a sense. Since the film went by so fast, we have more of a chance to see what their relationship is like.
So far I've been really loving this. It's like an expansion pack of the original movie - more insight into the kingdom, more insight into the characters and a bigger setting to play around with.
The Powerpuff Girls (2016)
Not as bad as you think
6/10 would be a fair call
These 1/10, 2/10 ratings are far too biased and rageful to be considered.
First, let's get the bad out of the way.
The new Powerpuff girls don't have that cutesy innocence they had in the original Powerpuff Girls. I'm not sure if this new series is a time skip ahead and the girls just don't really age (possible), but they seem more like they're pre-teens or maybe late Elementary school. They're more concerned with boys, smartphone games, looking good and being popular than their 1999 counterparts. On that fact, I think the new series lost one of the key elements that made the original good. There's no naivety, none of that wonder of learning the original had. It seems these new Powerpuff girls know it all.
**Special note to the rage haters: Even though we, the ones who grew up with the original Powerpuff Girls, don't like it, the new Powerpuff Girls are an accurate reflection of kids today. Kids aren't as curious and naive, and it kind of makes sense for the new PGG to piggyback off of that.
The reliance on meme humor and Internet jokes is, for me, a minus. Although to be fair, the Internet episode was very creative and handled well. The problem really comes down to the PPG's humor not feeling authentic. The original PPG had a humor and wit about it that was really authentically branded to JUST that show. This new PPG's universe is no different than any other Cartoon Network show. I really can't see much difference in the new PPG for instance and Adventure Time or Gravity Falls. The humor really blurs its authenticity into the background and keeps the new PPG from having its own unique style.
Lastly, for the bad, the action sequences. I get a sense that the animators and storyboard artists aren't fans of action stories or sequences. The original PPG was, at its heart, an action series. Every punch and kick had force. Sometimes this new PPG succeeds at that, but many times it doesn't. There were quite a few episodes where the villain kind of melted into the background and what should have been a really badass action sequence, was just kind of blah.
Now why am I still giving this a 6/10??
I don't know if the reviewers giving it a 1/10 are just extremely rageful that it doesn't emulate the original enough or just too disappointed in the lack of a Bellum or original voices. In my opinion the voices are fine! Great, even. They fit the characters perfectly. Sure, it would've been nice to hear the original voice cast, but we can't blame the new cast for picking it up and actually getting the voices down correctly can we?
The reason it gets a 6/10 is because there were some episodes that looked frame for frame like they could be taken out of an old season of the original PPG at its peak. Some examples of these episodes are "Power Up Puff" "Arachno Romance" and "Little Octi Lost." These episodes showed the potential of the new show and how it can emulate the original while still being fresh enough for a new audience. "Arachno Romance" with its omage to "Mommy Dearest" was such a good episode in fact, it's a shame that it wasn't thought of in the original.
I'm also giving the show a pass because let's face it, the original audience of the PPG are all grown up. The new PPG, it can be said, isn't meant for us but for the new generation of kids who are slightly more phone-obsessed, image-conscious and (though we despise it) spouting Internet meme lines left and right. To them, this new PPG is relatable but to us, it looks almost foreign. A lot of us fans haven't recognized that fact and are tearing it apart because it doesn't mirror our nostalgia enough.
Clearly the new PPG staff have realized that the audience is actually in large parts the OLD audience of the original PPG. We can expect in the next season they might cater to the old audience more and that there will be more action-packed, villain- focused episodes that recapture a lot of what makes the old PPG so dear to us. And --- here's the thing. They can do it!! They did it in a couple of episodes of this first season.
So for that, I give them a 6/10 and would ask my fellow PPG fans to keep calm, quit raging and 1-star reviewing it (you know as well as I do, that rating is far from accurate) and wait for season 2 where, let's hope, the staff has taken some of our opinions to task and cleaned up this show a bit.
Suicide Squad (2016)
Still succeeds despite that one, huge shortcoming
And by one, huge shortcoming I mean that PG-13 rating.
Wow, if ever a rating killed the potential a film had it would be this one. What an R rating could have done for this film, well... We'll all have to imagine it somewhere in the back burner of our fan-tasies.
Despite that oh so obvious attempt to make the PG-13 rating work, it still has merit in being just a fun, hot mess of a film.
The film gets things rolling very well right from the start. It's not a slow build up. Nice to finally see the scenes from the trailer in the correct order (probably not in the order you thought).
Introduced are Deadshot, Harley Quinn, Boomerang, Diablo, Killer Croc, Enchantress and a host of other characters. For a cast this size, I'm impressed that the film neatly managed to squeeze screen time for every character without throwing any under the bus. What's more it managed to make us feel for the characters. That would also be a challenge for a cast this big, to zero in on and focus on their deeper personas, but the film manages to do so effectively particularly with Harley Quinn and Deadshot, who by the way, are the film's best characters. Margot Robbie deserves a few award nods for her take on Harley Quinn.
As the trailers implied, the film gathers them up and spits them out in front of an enemy no one is prepared to deal with. They have just the right amount of devil may care attitude to carry out the job. This is where the film weakens a bit. Yeah, it's a scary foe, but we're left wondering, "With an enemy that fierce, where's the panic? Where's the wider sense of something going horribly horribly wrong." We never really get a broader scope of what it implies for the rest of the world. We see it purely from the angle of the insiders.
This "insider view" is constant and consistent throughout the entire film. Whatever the world is seeing (something we often get in most comic book films) we're not seeing it. Everything is from our anti-heroes' point of view. This is one of the things that separates Suicide Squad from other films. It paints a dark but rosy outlook that we often don't see in most comic book films.
In the end this is a very character-driven film. The action sequences work well, funny bits here and there, but if your'e not rooting for these guys by the end, you're obviously not a fan of interesting characters.
One thing I'd like to add. Zack Synder's fingerprints are all over this film (making a film into one long music video is basically his signature), but luckily there are very few slow motion scenes.