10 more movies done.
Training Day: This is purely Denzel's show. Ethan Hawke puts in a solid shift, but even so, everything good about this film centers around the character that Denzel brings to life. It's a masterful performance, and certainly one of my favorite of Denzel's that I've ever seen him in. That said, I didn't find it to be quite the neo-noir classic that some have told me it was, but it's worth seeing. ★★★½
Idiocracy: Although it undercuts itself from time to time with its juvenile humor, Idiocracy is oddly prescient in its portrayal of growing stupidity, vapidity and corporate influences over life. I think some people have misinterpreted the film as approving of eugenics, or taking an unjustified dump on the poor/undereducated/etc. But that's not at all the point. The point is that
anyone can make a small difference, even the most average of people, and that ultimately, we're
all responsible for our own destruction. ★★★½
The Transformers: The Movie: I never watched the
Transformers show as a kid, so I had next to no attachment to the characters when I started this movie. Even without knowing much about the show, the movie is pretty good, and I'm particularly fond of this mid-80s style of animation. I assume if I rewatch it after actually catching up on the show, I might be able to bump it up half a star or so. Props for being better than basically any modern Transformers adaptation since. ★★★½
Senna: Formula 1 is something I always want to get into more, but the awkward race times for someone living in America usually result in me being pretty OOTL, so watching docs like this is a decent way for me to brush up on my F1 history. I've read people say that this doc gives Alain Prost a harsher portrayal than he's due, but I don't think you can ever expect a doc that's purely unbiased. The blending of archival footage and interviews into a coherent narrative is really impeccable, and makes this feel much more like a
film than a mere paint-by-the-numbers documentary. ★★★★
WarGames: Over the years, I've caught bits and pieces of
WarGames on TV, but I've never made time to watch it from start to finish. It's a pretty goofy premise, and it's gone some of the dopey cliches of the era (slacker nerd, slacker nerd gets the pretty girl, kids unknowingly causing havoc to governments, etc), but overall it really works quite well. I think the thing that I love the most about the movie (and many movies from this era) is the emotional sincerity. It's fun, it's goofy, but it doesn't feel like it has any pretensions of trying to hide its cheese. Maybe it was made completely unaware of the cheese, but unlike many modern movies, it doesn't seem to feel the need to cut its emotional highs with the equivalent of stupid fart jokes. It's just unabashedly fun. ★★★½
Still Walking: I remember rather liking
Like Father, Like Son when I saw it a few years ago. Then I saw
After the Storm last year and really liked it. And now I think on my third Kore-eda movie, I've found one that I really
love. It's a beautiful movie, with an amazingly nuanced and thoughtful portrayal of inner-family drama. The thing that's the most impressive is that even though there are uncomfortable moments, the movie never feels less than homey. It's warm and gentle, with some thorns on the outside, just like people themselves. ★★★★½
The Searchers: This is another movie, kind of like
Idiocracy, that I feel has had some unfair readings of it in recent years. It's accused of being insensitive, racist and above all, boring. I went into the movie with some of those claims in mind, and I never saw it that way. John Wayne's character is never anything less than clearly despicable, and the fact that some people might find him to be
not despicable is just part of real life being filled with tragically broken, flawed, deficient people. The only thing that bummed me out here is that I don't think the ending was as strong as it could have been. To drive home the degeneracy of Wayne's character, he shouldn't have gotten that little piece of redemption at the end. Other than that, it's a gorgeous, methodical movie. ★★★★
Somewhere in Time: Another movie that ticks my boxes of desiring emotional sincerity. I have to (shamefully admit) that I don't think I've ever watched a Christopher Reeve movie before this, and I rather enjoyed my introduction to his acting. The only thing that holds this movie back is the extremely slow and plodding introduction to the premise, including its whole introduction of time travel. Other than that, it's a sweet love story that could have traded some of the early intro for more character time. ★★★½
Sicario: Day of the Soldado: This is a movie similar to The Searchers, where a solid movie is undercut by the despicable protagonists getting redemption at the end. In this case, because the characters are
so hardened, and we've seen them do such
horrendous things in the first movie, the heel turn to do some good things at the end of the movie here is just really,
really bad. Up until that final section, it's a thrilling, tense, edge-of-your-seat movie. But all the tension and previous investment kind of melts away once you see what they do at the end. ★★★
First Man: This is about to be a huge rant because of how much I care about the subject: I genuinely do not understand
who this movie was made for. On the one hand, it's clearly not for the 'Murica crowd, because the whole political drama of the moon landing is basically forced into the background. A big deal was made about how the movie doesn't show the flag planting, and while
I don't mind that not being in the movie, it is strange how almost all of the geopolitical stuff is absent. So based on that, you've lost most of the nationalistic, right-leaning, patriotic and/or American-loving crowd. But on the other hand, the movie doesn't sideline the patriotic stuff (like the flag) in favor of a more progressive message. It could
easily play up the achievement as one for all of mankind to be proud of, it could easily advocate for investments in the sciences and what innovation government spending on the program led to. But...it doesn't do that either. Instead, we end up with a biopic about the most famous astronaut in history, and how his family drama
hypothetically intertwined with his moon landing mission. I emphasize hypothetically, because as far as I know, none of the drama around his dead daughter is known for sure. We can speculate and make educated guesses based on his interviews, what his family says/said, flight records, official reports, etc. But a lot of this stuff is all theoretical. And to what end? We should be inspiring people more than ever to care about things like NASA and scientific research, but instead we end up with just the moon landings and family drama, which is just so...blah. It's an interesting idea in fairness, but seems more appropriate to a book, or a documentary than a feature-length movie. I enjoyed Gosling (as I usually do), but there's not too much to be thrilled about here beyond him. This topic should inspire someone, but the movie seems content to inspire no one. I haven't seen it in years, but I recall HBO's
From the Earth to the Moon doing much more justice to the subject. ★★★