I forgot how fun movies are.
I've...been reluctant to go to the cinemas. Although we've gotten more and better movies recently, I still just didn't had enough reason to go to the movies, until recently. I actually don't know the precise reason, but if you were to ask me, I think the movie lineup I find it very interesting, and thus compelled me to watch. It helps my friends are interested in movies, and sadly my scheduled clashed so I had to watch alone, but it's great to have friends that share the same interests.
Enough preambulatory, let's get onto the mian course. I've watched 3 movies specifically in a week (crazy ngl but I love it), which is :
- The Drama
- Project Hail Mary
- Monster (2023)
Reviews may contain spoilers but I've written them so that it shouldn't affect your enjoyment that much when you havent watched it. Anyways, I'm very late to project hail mary's release, and I'm sad I missed the imax release...but the regular screening is still pretty awesome. Let's get to it.
The Drama
The drama, or hell even A24 films, I'm not familiar with them. I want to watch more movies, but it wasn't in my priority. The reason why I watched The Drama, is because it only opened for 2 days in my town (I live in the capital mind you, probably licensing issues) and I have to watch it immediately. These genres, I am not familiar, so I had a whiplash of emotions as the movie proceeds.
What I like about The Drama is the movie, is in fact about a drama. It doesn't lie about what it advertised, but I like how the "drama" isn't like what your typical drama. When I think of the word drama, I think of soap dramas, full of overly dramatized gossip that eventually lead to a comedic burst of emotions, or those cringy romantic-drama shows made to appeal to teenagers, like euphoria. But The Drama takes it's time to introduce the conflict and how are characters revolve around it. I love that there are some shots that can be interpreted in many ways, means the film trusts the audience to pick up the clues.
The most powerful asset of this show is definitely the acting. We get to see how insanely disturbed our characters from the conflict, and how eventually it boils down to the most second-hand embarassment climax that I've witnessed. You can tell that they genuinely love each other but at the same time they don't know if they still want to be together or not. If y'all like Zendaya or Pattison, this is a must watch movie.
I personally felt satisfied, I like how we slowly delve to the chaos, and it builds up to this god-amazing climax and a bittersweet ending. The film isn't trying to be an avant garde masterpiece of storytelling. It knows it's budget, it knows what it wants to do, and within that frame it can deliver the best production it can, which I appreciate. It's a 8/10 movie, this troupe must've been recycled to death but even so you can't help but feel amazed by how amazing each of the elements of the film interwove itself to each other.
There are some minor things that I found disliking, but for me, this movie would've probably hit home closer if I were American. Since I'm not, it just...doesn't hit the same. Because of this, I can't fully relate to our main characters. It doesn't help I'm still a young person and I have not been married, so I haven't had the experience of, y'know, preparing and executing a marriage in itself.
I don't think this film is for everyone at the end of the day, but it's still a fun watch regardless. It's definitely worth my time and I wished more people watched this. It's a solid 3/5 stars movie, and I love it.
Project Hail Mary
I have this rule where, when a film is popular, that means it's made for mass-consumption, ie it would be good, but It'll probably piss me off. I set my expectations low initially, but when I saw the runtime, I was surprised. Two hours and 20 minutes-ish? Usually films run for 80 minutes. So, this is definitely something unique. And yes, people have praised the IMAX release, and I'll be forever sad that I haven't watched it, but I have seen snippets and the visuals looked amazing. And, I like scifi too. I will say, people say this movie (because it's a adapted from the book, which is the main subject here) feels reddit. After watching, I can definitely see why. But nevertheless, I had a great time.
By all means, you can argue with me, the movie's plot is linear. It's predictable. The troupes used has been recycled to death, and my realization initially does wash me with slight despair. But the film, I think, knows this, and incorporates comedy to fight this cliche. It worked for me, I laughed and cherished the first act. I wasn't into biology that much, but I was a STEM major, so naturally I had to be nitpicky. For the most part, it's pretty...okay? Like they deliberately can interweave when to use the science fiction and now which referenced actual science, but I am dissapointed in a certain level. There are some addition that is separate from the book which is refreshing (carl for example, he was very entertaining) , since the book is faced with some criticism. Ryan Gosling truly elevated the acting though.
However though, despite all my praises, let's look back at my first statement. A movie that is liked by everyone is a safe movie, which means it won't have scenes that are risky. Not nessecarily mature risky, just scenes that are unconventional in film. This means the cinematography is safe, the acting is safe, even the most climactic moment is unfun because you know the main character will survive and there is no actual risk involved. Project Hail Mary doesn't feel like a movie of space exploration, it feels that it borrows the theme rather than exploring it. At risk of appealing to mass audiences, it ignores the deeper question of it's scifi elements which I'm pretty sad, I expected something at the very least. Hell, I remember they only mentioned relativity at total like 10 times. This is space travel of light years away man...Also, being a 2+ hour film means that you are dedicated to the film itself, that includes the worldbuilding of the world in project hail mary. I'm dissapointed we don't see alot of what's happening in earth, especially when the movie emphasizes it. I appreciate the flashback editing, but like, I get it. Why not show what the world had done, or hadn't done, if Grace decided to not commit to the mission?
I'm sure alot of people watched this movie. I'm not afraid to be critical about it. After all, If you love something, you're bound to accept for who they are, both the good and the bad. I hope this movie can spark interest towards space, and pursuing their dreams, at the very least. Don't let this movie be just your average weekend consumption. 3.5 stars for me.
I'm late. I'm three years late. I've seen the praises, and (thank god) the synopsis hides the story pretty well, so by the time I watched this in the cinema years after it's original release, I could still shed tears.
With that said, I find the aspects that I love the most versus the parts that I hate the most comes from the same aspect, or rather, the film's biggest identity, the different timelines. The film essentially gives us whiplash, plot twists, from it's previously established 25 minutes. Because of this, it's fun. Arguebly, the film's most interesting moment is at the start, because as the film goes on, it doesn't put another hook that's as interesting as the initial hook. As a storytelling perspective, this makes it so that you can focus on the development for the plot, but when your appeal is giving essentially three different perspectives, you have to make sure each live up to their standards.
The first perspective sets us for the initial story. It's kinda like playing chapter 1 of a story driven video game that flashes back for the next chapters. It's good, and we are deliberately misled by intentional omitting and framing of the characters here. Second perspective gives us more context about our teacher, and puts out scene and gives us another false expectation, which will be spun once again for the third and final perspective. But...it ends up messy because the events aren't nessecarily aligned, some scenes requires you to remember precisely as it's not shown via the shots. I'll say that this film is very heavily contextual on japanese, both on it's culture and it's language. For example, an easier scenario is at the scene when the teachers pressure our teacher to basically apologize for something he didn't do, it might seem weird, but it happens more and makes more sense if you are surrounded by japanese culture. Another hard subplot to solve is figuring out exactly how our teacher can exactly deduce that the young boys are in love, simply from looking at yori's homework.
Ultimately, the movie uses the question "Who's the real monster?" as a narrative device to keep the plot moving. However, I don't think the movie can answer this question quite well. Is it the adults? Is the monster our assumptions? There's no deliberate answer simply we didn't had scenes for this. Obviously child abuse is bad, and Monster trusts its audience to understand this, but the question becomes how can we critically analyze it further? I just don't think there are any rooms for further discussions. There are some subplot points that could use some discussions, but they're mostly trivial and don't affect the main interpretation of the film itself.
Still a good movie! 4/5 stars.
That's not even all.
Expect more reviews coming! I plan to finish off with Mother Mary, with consideration of watching The Devil Wears Prada 2, and Levitating (a local movie). Thank you for reading!