Recent films
Nov. 26th, 2023 03:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livI didn't get round to posting about it when I first saw it, but I have fallen completely in love with Everything everywhere all at once (2022). I watched it again with my partners' children and although they were somewhat skeptical at first, they got really into it too.
EEAAO may in fact be the best film I've ever seen. In keeping with its title it's almost every genre, a thriller, and a comedy, and SF, and martial arts, and drama. It is extremely silly, in ways that would normally put me off, but it really cares about its characters, and somehow manages to make the audience care about what happens even when the scene is an extended butt plug joke. A lot of what makes it so outstanding is absolutely world-class acting, but it's also very cleverly plotted and manages to do something original with the concept of a superhero trying to save the multiverse from certain doom. The other reason it blew my mind so much is that it's really about relationships and believable humans trying to connect to each other as best as they can, even against the backdrop of OTT drama and silliness.
I expect everybody has probably already seen this, but just in case you haven't, I really, really recommend it, even if you've read descriptions that make you think you wouldn't like it. And obviously I'm not really very original in my tastes since it's won all the awards and all the critics think it's amazing too, but I've seen much-hyped films before that I liked much less. I very much enjoyed this review by S. Qiouyi Lu pointing out Taoist themes and discussing their experiences of watching the film as a Chinese-American.
I was very excited about Polite Society (2023) as it's by Nida Manzoor, the director of We are Lady Parts which I completely adored. It was only in cinemas for a very short time, and I didn't manage to get to it, so I bought a copy forghoti_mhic_uait when it came out on DVD. When we finally found time to watch it, her 11yo asked if he could be in the room while we were watching, and although I hadn't seen it I was prepared to gamble that the things that contributed to a 12 certificate would not make it inappropriate for him. It turned out that 'be in the room' meant sit on us and ask incessant questions all through the film, including about things like the history of the Partition of India. On the one hand, that meant it was not exactly the date we'd hoped for, but on the other, I would not at all have expected it to appeal to an 11yo boy who is mostly interested in superhero movies and modern history.
I didn't love PS quite as much as We are Lady Parts. It's good, and original, but it doesn't quite hold together. The main flaw is that 3/4 of it is a light-hearted family drama about a teenager whose beloved older sister is engaged to be married to a too-perfect-to-be-true man, but the twist is that the dark secret he hides turns out to be a really bizarre plot from a maximally trashy horror movie, and the two don't mesh together at all. I loved the portrayal of an over-dramatic teenager coming up with increasingly terrible plans to prevent her sister's marriage, but when it turns out that the fiancé is actually a monster and she really does need to pull off a heist to save her sister from a terrible fate, the tone is all wrong. Nimra Bucha plays basically the same villain as in Ms Marvel.
The film has lots of enjoyable moments, and I'm an easy sell on a coming-of-age story of a British Asian teenager who wants to be a stunt woman but must navigate between her parents' immigrant culture and developing her own identity. It's sort of like Bend it like Beckham except that, being 20 years later, it doesn't need to centre a white girl but is able to tell its story on its own terms. But I wish it had kept to vaguely realist setting instead of bringing in a plot even more dramatic than the ridiculous made-up theories of a teenager!
And finally, having heard lots of good things about it, I managed to catch Nimona on Netflix. It's an adaptation of a graphic novel by ND Stephenson, and there have been lots of articles about the background to the film.
I'm really glad this film not only exists, but is being hyped to the max. And it's worth the hype. It's absolutely gorgeously animated, and I love that it takes itself completely seriously while also being mainly aimed at children. In a lot of ways it reminds me of Lilo and Stitch; it similarly tackles a story about a monster who actually is monstrous and destructive as well as being an allegory about learning to accept yourself if you are different. There's the idea that Gaiman and Pratchett attribute to GK Chesterton about the point of fairy tales being to convince children who already know that monsters exist, that monsters can be beaten. But Nimona, like L&S, goes further and shows children that monsters can be loved.
EEAAO may in fact be the best film I've ever seen. In keeping with its title it's almost every genre, a thriller, and a comedy, and SF, and martial arts, and drama. It is extremely silly, in ways that would normally put me off, but it really cares about its characters, and somehow manages to make the audience care about what happens even when the scene is an extended butt plug joke. A lot of what makes it so outstanding is absolutely world-class acting, but it's also very cleverly plotted and manages to do something original with the concept of a superhero trying to save the multiverse from certain doom. The other reason it blew my mind so much is that it's really about relationships and believable humans trying to connect to each other as best as they can, even against the backdrop of OTT drama and silliness.
I expect everybody has probably already seen this, but just in case you haven't, I really, really recommend it, even if you've read descriptions that make you think you wouldn't like it. And obviously I'm not really very original in my tastes since it's won all the awards and all the critics think it's amazing too, but I've seen much-hyped films before that I liked much less. I very much enjoyed this review by S. Qiouyi Lu pointing out Taoist themes and discussing their experiences of watching the film as a Chinese-American.
I was very excited about Polite Society (2023) as it's by Nida Manzoor, the director of We are Lady Parts which I completely adored. It was only in cinemas for a very short time, and I didn't manage to get to it, so I bought a copy for
ghoti_mhic_uait when it came out on DVD. When we finally found time to watch it, her 11yo asked if he could be in the room while we were watching, and although I hadn't seen it I was prepared to gamble that the things that contributed to a 12 certificate would not make it inappropriate for him. It turned out that 'be in the room' meant sit on us and ask incessant questions all through the film, including about things like the history of the Partition of India. On the one hand, that meant it was not exactly the date we'd hoped for, but on the other, I would not at all have expected it to appeal to an 11yo boy who is mostly interested in superhero movies and modern history. I didn't love PS quite as much as We are Lady Parts. It's good, and original, but it doesn't quite hold together. The main flaw is that 3/4 of it is a light-hearted family drama about a teenager whose beloved older sister is engaged to be married to a too-perfect-to-be-true man, but the twist is that the dark secret he hides turns out to be a really bizarre plot from a maximally trashy horror movie, and the two don't mesh together at all. I loved the portrayal of an over-dramatic teenager coming up with increasingly terrible plans to prevent her sister's marriage, but when it turns out that the fiancé is actually a monster and she really does need to pull off a heist to save her sister from a terrible fate, the tone is all wrong. Nimra Bucha plays basically the same villain as in Ms Marvel.
The film has lots of enjoyable moments, and I'm an easy sell on a coming-of-age story of a British Asian teenager who wants to be a stunt woman but must navigate between her parents' immigrant culture and developing her own identity. It's sort of like Bend it like Beckham except that, being 20 years later, it doesn't need to centre a white girl but is able to tell its story on its own terms. But I wish it had kept to vaguely realist setting instead of bringing in a plot even more dramatic than the ridiculous made-up theories of a teenager!
And finally, having heard lots of good things about it, I managed to catch Nimona on Netflix. It's an adaptation of a graphic novel by ND Stephenson, and there have been lots of articles about the background to the film.
I'm really glad this film not only exists, but is being hyped to the max. And it's worth the hype. It's absolutely gorgeously animated, and I love that it takes itself completely seriously while also being mainly aimed at children. In a lot of ways it reminds me of Lilo and Stitch; it similarly tackles a story about a monster who actually is monstrous and destructive as well as being an allegory about learning to accept yourself if you are different. There's the idea that Gaiman and Pratchett attribute to GK Chesterton about the point of fairy tales being to convince children who already know that monsters exist, that monsters can be beaten. But Nimona, like L&S, goes further and shows children that monsters can be loved.
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