We can have a little film discussion in here.
Angel’s Egg | Mamoru Oshii | 1985 | JPN | 71 min | Animation | Drama | Fantasy | I loved it
A gloomy little existential anime. Still beautiful. Still don’t get it, but that’s fine. The last shot reminds me of Solyaris.
I’ve never head of Angel’s Egg, for that matter Solyaris. Why should I be interested in them?
Saw 2014’s Godzilla, it was baaaaaaaaaaaad.
Joke’s on me for expecting something something different.
I enjoyed it, but I didn’t expect much. Considering the rest of the Godzilla franchise is far from the pinnacle of movie making, I felt it was a nice approach to the monster movie. Yes it spent too much time on the military guy, but then again showing the monsters the whole time would have been boring eventually.
I know i’ll sound like a bit of a weirdo but i honestly couldn’t help but be constantly annoyed at how inherently american the movie was, especially taking into account the, though small, effort they put into representing other parts of the world (i’m sure there’s some institutional racism at play as well, but i’m not good enough with words to explain it properly). I also don’t know what to think about Godzilla being something other than analogous to the dangers of nuclear proliferation, as even in its original incarnations that was a very present metaphor. There is a very weird mixture of scientific reasoning and outright narrative tomfoolery, both undermining each other constantly.
In all respects, this does feel like a movie that’s both striving for wider competence while still referencing a lot of genre tropes, but i feel the monster genre (it’s also very annoying to see “monster” being used as a synonym for antagonist, the MC went insta douche the moment he said it) has shown such enormous promise and accomplished such incredible leaps that Godzilla ends up lacking in many, many areas.
I did notice that. It was a bit odd, and honestly I don’t know why they had to have the final scene in SF. In fact the way the monster stuff worked in LV too was a bit stupid. None the less, the actual monster bits were enjoyable, and for me outweighed the less enjoyable parts.
You could literally eliminate most of the characters and the film still will chug along. There was such a flimsy feel to any of the characters motivations or purpose, and the absurdly silly character of Lizzie Olsen (especially of her running around when buildings were going down) reminded me of the the pointless sequences in Man of Steel, when Lois Lane’s coworkers (Lawrence Fishburne and co.) were running from collapsing skyscrapers. No attention was paid to their arcs and not enough time was devoted to making them matter. You just don’t care about them (or the world for that matter), they are background props. That subplot with the Japanese kid being separated from his parents was an example of eye rolling drama. Thats pretty much how I felt about everyone in this. That paper thin characterization in disaster flicks is Emmerich territory. The size of Godzilla was oddly handled, especially within the frame. His presence rarely felt like it should have, a godlike destroyer of the earth. Too many of the shots were wide and rarely did you feel the scope with a character present (the bridge sequence being the only one). The camerawork tried to get to cute with its Tony Scott-isms. And there are maddening cutaways during the well executed action sequences that leave you scratching your head. Thinking about how Jurassic Park or Cloverfield were handled (especially the depth of field) makes me wonder how Edwards was picked to direct this.
That was a lot of editing.
Movies that do that always make me laugh. It is hard to imagine someone would be that stupid, but then again there are people that stupid. 
I watched The Fault of Our Stars a day or two ago. It didn’t make me sad like I thought it would. Usually movies like that tug the heart strings and I’m bawling like a baby midway through.
I might have needed to read the book first.
I made fun of my sister about liking that movie/book so much. Then again she loved Twilight and well everything tween/teen lol.
Maps to the Stars | David Cronenberg | 2014 | USA | 111 min | Drama | Great
Felt like somewhat of a return to form for Cronenberg to me (not a fan of his last two). Or rather, it feels like a combination of old and new Cronenberg, with mental illness and psychology playing as much a part as physical manifestations/metaphors illustrate this (though it’s not quite “body horror” yet). I can see why Julianne Moore won the award at Cannes. Also fun to see John Cusack, haven’t seen him in anything since 1408. As a satire of self-absorbed Hollywood I’m not sure it entirely works, but it’s appropriately dark, violent and funny.
Now that I live part time with children, I see more animated movies than ever. Most of them are the same even.
I think you’d like Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise, though you shouldn’t exactly watch it with children
it’s about a group of people developing a space project in a demilitarized zone inbetween two countries in a cold war
