Getting real burned out on movies tbh, might be time to ease off the pace.
Memories of Murder
Okay, so I went into this movie expecting some kind of gritty, suave, crime drama film. And while it has features of my expectations, it’s also totally
not that. It's brutal, it's ugly, and it's not really at all about solving cases. It's more about the meta-reality of detective work, and the obsession and failure that comes from that work. Also, the ending scene of the movie is absolutely soul-piercing.
Nobody Knows
I think I genuinely loved about 85% of the movie. Without giving away too much information, I feel Kore-eda almost undid everything he had built up to with the way the movie ended. Granted, maybe I’m letting the real-life details of the Sugamo abandonment case color my perceptions too much. Or it’s possible (and likely) that I’m a moron and I just didn’t understand the message he was trying to convey in the ending. Which is a bummer to me, because I felt like Kore-eda deftly turned the Sumida Ward baby swaps into a compelling and complicated experience in
Soshite Chichi ni Naru, whereas this movie’s ending just kind of took the wind out of my sails. It’s still really good and worth watching, I just wish that last little bit was different.
Ikiru
Ikiru kind of reminded me of a Japanese
It's a Wonderful Life, and I mean that in a very positive way. The main difference here is if we took
It's a Wonderful Life, and then added a very cynical view of life at the end, after we've seen the changed man's life. I don't think it's
inaccurate, but it is kind of a bummer in some ways and a lot to process. I believe this was only my second Kurosawa movie, so I'm excited to continue delving into the back-catalog.
The Phone Call
A Sally Hawkins short film about working for a suicide/crisis hotline. It's
okay but I didn't find it particularly interesting.
Junkyard
Snitches get stitches? I guess? Another mildly interesting animated short film that at least
looks pretty good, but I don't really know what the hell the point was.
Helium
Yet another short film, this time about a Danish boy with a terminal illness coming to terms through the help of a hospital worker. Again, decent idea, but in this case the execution was pretty horrendous. The CGI in some of the shots is particularly awful, and really amateur looking. Amateurish is okay, but when it gets
this bad it just takes away from the story.
Strange Invaders
This is actually a pretty decent short film compared to some of the others I've mentioned. Again, animated, but in a really bizarre way. Basically the story of parents dealing with a first child, and it's hilariously chaotic and weird, framing the child basically as an alien invader. Can't say that seems wholly inaccurate.
Enemy
Up to this movie, I had
loved everything that I'd seen of Villeneuve so far. I still liked Enemy, but I found it to be an even
slower burn than BR2049, Arrival or Sicario. And none of those movies were exactly setting the world on fire with their pace (except for certain parts of BR2049 and the end of Sicario I guess), which made this movie pretty hard for me to "get into" until maybe the final third.
The 39 Steps
First Hitchcock movie I've ever watched, and I loved it. There's a pretty simple story and "twist" here, but it's incredibly effective, and engaging.
And praise God for movies that are less than 90 minutes
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Nah. Even aside from the utter destruction of the original play's intent, this movie adaptation is just
not good. I love Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman, but their acting here came across as hysterical and overwrought. Imagine people who say "I don't enjoy theater," and then imagine what they
imagine theater is like. This movie is the overacted, hysterical, overwrought thing that people mistakenly believe all theater to be. Bleugh, what a waste of two hours.