Finally got around to watching The Whale. Thought it was alright, definitely think it’s been well over hyped though Brendan Fraser is fantastic. It’s just a little hollow in my opinion, it tries to do and say a lot of things but as a result most of it remains surface level. A few very good performances though.
Also watched To Leslie which got me a bit misty eyed, the struggles of an alcoholic mother trying to pick up the pieces of her life and reconnect with her son just hit my feels real good. Marc Maron is in it, which is always a plus, and I’d recommend it to anyone, it’s a tightly packed little character study.
I’ve seen a handful of random F&Fs, and will agree that later ones are a lot more enjoyable. My guess is that at some point everyone involved just became fully aware of how nonsense the series is, and instead of mocking any of it they embraced the silliness and just had fun with it all. My favorite is definitely the ninth one, with all the ridiculous Magnet Truck scenes. (It is just as it sounds like.) There’s a sort of “shounen battle anime but with cars” vibe to F&F as things get increasingly over-the-top. It’s the sort of stuff that’s best watched with a group of friends.
The weird thing is that apparently Vin Diesel isn’t in on the joke and takes the series dead seriously. I hope that’s not actually true, but he and The Rock constantly butting heads over the series leading to The Rock leaving says that one or both of them need to learn to chill.
I just think it’s just so brave of Brendan Fraser to play a fat person, because clearly there aren’t enough fat people who can also act good, to tell a sad story about a fat person who is sad because all fat people are all sad always. And also can’t act in a movie, because ew, real fat people are too gross and sad to be in movies.
Yeah, I’ve seen a lot of people making those points too, can’t say I really disagree. His performance was pretty good, but that doesn’t bypass some of the ethical(?) points about the fat suit and representation and so on.
Watched a really weird (and fun) movie called Remote Control by Jeff Lieberman (by mistake actually i was thought i was watching the swedish film) and omg i enjoyed it, lol. It’s about VHS Tapes and there ‘receiver’ kiosks at the VHS store that allow aliens to take over peoples minds and kill each other. It’s got some slow parts but overall was truly wacky and goofed out fun that reminded me of a less glorious John Carpenter’s They Live
Just watch the title screen drops and you’ll know if it’s for you or not.
I remember I looked at theist of Best Movie Oscar winners one year and of the winners at that time (2021 I think) I’d seen less than half and of those only actually enjoyed maybe five or six. What I’m saying is I don’t think these awards really matter to the general public. Just look at the constant disparity between critic and audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes.
On the one hand the Oscars is an award show where Hollywood rewards Hollywood, so everything should be taken with a grain of salt when it comes to ascribing worth to a film based solely on awards won.
On the other, too much is made of the disparity between critical and audience scores. All that disparity really indicates is that critics and general audiences have different tastes, which is not really strange. Critics typically have the advantage of studying a wide breadth of film texts, have been introduced to or honed critical and analytical tools and have the (mis)fortune of having to watch a very large volume of films including many films that are outside their personal taste. General audiences are made up of a much wider range of people with varying media literacy skills and critical tools, but have the ability to invest mainly in what they expect they’ll enjoy. It’s not surprising then that general audiences taken as a whole tend, on average, to gravitate to films with wider appeal, while critics might have slightly more esoteric tastes. Of course that doesn’t mean non-critics can’t or don’t have esoteric tastes, nor that critics never enjoy films with mass appeal. What it does mean is that this difference in taste and preference expresses itself through the disparity in average film scores.
And the key takeaways from that latter point: one, is that individuals need to find the critics that match their tastes when looking for critical advice and two, aggregate or average media scores aren’t particularly helpful on an individual level.
yeah whole thing was wonderfully written. what i do is add people on letterboxd who are active watchers and you can tell with once glance their page they like similiar things you do. do 3 of these for each genre or wahtever and it gets pretty helpful
They need to not make the puppets villains in the Mandalorian. They’re too silly! I’m giggling my way through scenes where this swamp donkey kong is trying to intimidate me!
Watched Infinity Pool and if X and Pearl hadn’t already sold me on Mia Goth this movie certainly would have. It’s one of those films that it’s better to go in with as little knowledge as you can but Alexander Skaarsgard playing a failed author on a vacation resort who is tempted by the sudden appearance of fans and led into a trippy and violent series of events is a whole lot of fun.
The visuals, the performances, the Mia Goth of it all, I heavily recommend, probably gonna be one of my personal top films of the year.
I tried out Toxic Crusaders after seeing the news [re: the upcoming beat 'em up game]. I’d never actually seen it before; I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cartoon like that take itself less seriously
I had a Psycho figure, someone brought me him home because they presumably assumed he was a TMNT guy, which I was into
Anyway, having been in a Scott Pilgrim mood lately, the news about the upcoming cartoon was timely ! It was nice to briefly discuss it with my colleague, who likes the movie
O’Malley is the executive producer so I suspect it will likely follow his style. However Science Saru is one of my favourite animation studios so I’d be down to see them apply their own approach. That said, I’d be even more excited if Science Saru founder Masaaki Yuasa was helming the show but I don’t believe he is.
