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myobsessionsspace · 2 years ago

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I felt the need to write this in light of soo many asks I’ve seen throughout Chapter 2

The crux of the asks that got me here are “I don’t see many moments around Jikook anymore” “We need more Jikook moments” “I don’t think Jikook are close anymore, xx/xx have more moments than them”

*credit to all original owners of art & media

I just want to share *my thoughts*...

How did we meet Jikook?

Some of you may have known of them since debut, some since Blood Sweat & Tears, HYYH era, Dynamite, Butter or even most recently in Chapter Two.

However you became aware of them, you would have also been aware of their group. The reason for their current status. To know Jikook you must in some capacity know Bangtan.

I say this because to have gotten to know Jikook, it would have been through the group using videos, Bangtan Bombs, Bon Voyages, In The Soops, concerts, all of the above, some or none at all.

(I won't mention those that only know Jikook through fanmade edited Tik Tok, fanmade YouTube edits etc.)

We learned more about them as idols, as members, as friends and as brothers. All of what we learnt we learnt with the approval of either the members or their company.

The only other ways to have learnt about them without either theirs or their company’s approval, would have either been through paparazzi, stalker/sasaeng info, fictitious YouTube videos, rumours, guesses and assumptions.

Unless it came from the members directly, from their company, interviews, their music or their filmed content, it wasn’t meant for public consumption. It was most likely not in the members best interest and not in their control.

Now I’m not going to judge our consumption of the above mentioned ‘unapproved’ content. I myself have enjoyed and shared many sighting photos, concert videos, stories from people that had met them etc.

For example when Jikook were spotted heading to Tokyo, prior to that, their private schedule had actually been released, allowing some to know that the two of them had indeed planned to travel alone. They're private concert viewings of other idols & groups, their private cinema and dinner outing and more. This was enjoyable information for jikook fans, supporters and shippers to know but also scary information for the two’s safety, when in the wrong hands.

After their return from their private Tokyo trip that Jungkook organised and paid for as a gift to Jimin, Jungkook published a beautifully directed, edited and produced video of their trip. His first ever Golden Closet Film. On his terms we got full in colour, with meaningful (the permission to use Troye Sivan's song, again paid for by Jungkook) background music, a glimpse of their private trip, through Jungkook’s artistic eye. He shared with us his perspective of what he saw and how he felt felt during their private trip.

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I give GCF Tokyo as an example, when we wait for THEM to show US, we get soo much more than 144p blurry images, mistranslations etc.

We get it straight from them, exactly how they see it or how they want us to see it, exactly how they feel it, or how they want us to feel it.

How do we stay with Jikook now?

They are on group hiatus, meaning we just had the last of the Run Bts’ for a while. Bangtan Bombs are now focused on solo endeavours not the group as a whole, to see the group dynamics at present, no group concerts, videos, interviews etc.

Therefore we no longer have company approved content. We still however get member approved content, such as when they go on live, Weverse interactions, music etc.

We still get ‘unapproved content’ such as stalker/sasaeng footage, paparazzi pictures & info, fictitious YouTube videos, rumours, guesses and assumptions.

However with the group just recently celebrating their 10th year anniversary, they are no longer new to idol life, they have learnt from their past, they have reduced their circle. They have increased their security, they are internationally known and more recognisable even with hats, masks & baggy clothes. They also have more money and access now, access to private jets, private rooms, private villas or even just getting whatever they want or need to the privacy of their own homes, no longer shared with a 7 member team.

They no longer have to leave the dorms for a change of scenery, after touring the world, after sharing a form for years, staying home could be said to be their change of scenery at times.

So it’s understandable that the ‘unapproved content’ would be massively reduced in comparison to if they had embarked on Chapter Two 5 years ago.

So we no longer have a lot of company approved content (yes of solo endeavours but rarely of more than 2 members at a time and rarely repeatedly), we don’t have as much ‘unapproved’ content.

What do we the consumers have left?

What the members show us and what the members tell us.

What have the members have shown us/told us?

Since Chapter 2 Jungkook has shown us that he had initially been enjoying down time. Rightfully deserves after training and working since the age of 13/14!

He went through puberty working in the public eye, away from home, away from his parents. Most westerners know how that turns out for some child stars. Bleak. Jungkook has shown the strength of his character by being able to maintain his humility, joy, humour, care for others & love for ARMY.

We know about his down time due to him sharing this with us through his weverse lives. Straight from him, not the company, not sasaengs but him. And we enjoyed it! We love our hours long late night lives with Jungkook. We’ve gone boxing with him, eaten fried chicken with him, sang & danced with him and even most recently had him fall asleep with us TWICE!

Isn’t content straight from the members soo much sweeter?

Jimin, whilst Jungkook was having his down time, was flying all over the globe and in and out of the company's studios & offices. He was having intense music camp like periods with producers and practicing for his solo debut. He didn’t share with us more than a couple of pictures here and there with different producers, but when he did launch his FACE promo and subsequent videos & album, we were and still are GAGGED. Jimin KILLED K-POP in 2023 and DOMINATED (and still is) the industry.

The wait well worth it and we LIVE still!

Jikook

Though the loss of official content for some feels like a Jikook drought, some feel like the loss of official content somehow now means the loss of Jikook’s bond, relationship, whatever you may believe it to be.

Some feel as though the lack of official Jikook means they never were all they felt them to have been. There are a number of things I have seen and heard in regards to Jikook since Chapter 2.

But what have JIKOOK themselves shown us. As I said before, aside from ‘unapproved’ content, which is severely reduced as the members are older, smarter, richer and wiser, we can really only truly rely on the members themselves.

Jungkook

With his downtime, as I said earlier, shared his boxing training, his eating, drinking, watching tv and sleeping with us.

However what did Jikook share with us when Jungkook was boxing?

What did Jungkook share with us when singing?

What did Jungkook share with us on white day?

How sweet was it to see his face light up with each of his interactions with Jimin? How fun was it to watch him stan over Jimin’s music? How cute was if to watch him uwu over Jimin’s interviews?

Jimin

We know had been super busy in being involved with every aspect of his solo debut.

His solo music was and is soo important to him. It was his priority in Chapter 2. However he never failed to show his support with his presence via the comments on MANY of Jungkook’s lives.

Not only that but the biggest gift to ARMY, Jikook supporters and Jungkook was Jungkook’s presence on an album that Jimin clearly stated in multiple interviews had no features. Jungkook’s name is in the credits and his do ring voice cannot be denied, but apart from the credits and the vocals, Jimin has never mentioned Jungkook’s participation.

I guess they really mean it when they say ‘You are Me & I am You��

Letter to *me* is Jimin’s GCF Tokyo. A labour of love, showing us the thoughts, feelings and emotions, this time not through video but through song.

What Jungkook & Jimin have shown us in Chapter two is MORE than enough for me, it’s just as sweet and even sweeter than any ‘unapproved’ or approved content.

If you still need more from them, that is not for their benefit, with their interests in mind or to cement their bond/relationship. That is your issue to deal with.

Whenever you feel like you need ‘more’ from Jikook than they’ve already allowed you to have, go back and watch their labour of love GCF Tokyo (heck pretty much all of the GCFs including Saipan), go back and listen to their labour of love ‘Letter’, go back and read their interviews.

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If all of that is still not enough, it’s a you problem.

Not a them problem.

🖤🤍

#Jikook #Jungkook #Jimin #Chapter 2 #Chapter Two #Where are the Jikook moments #Jikook are not close anymore

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edwardslostalchemy · 1 year ago

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I watched Shouto Todoroki: Origins and I'm reminded of how insane both Izuku and Shouto are. They were made for each other, but fuck they wrecked that arena. Listen to me, the tododeku fight is incredible. It gives me so many different emotions and feelings. It really is the climax of the sports festival arc and it goes out with a bang. They could've killed someone or each other. Izuku sacrificed everything and gave his all to fight AND save Shouto from his past so he could look to the future using talk no jutsu. *Chef's kiss* 🤌 It's poetic cinema at its finest. I was trying to go into this episode the way I did for season 1 and 2 where I pretended I didn't know what was going to happen. But it is impossible with this episode because it's so poignant. Izuku challenging Shouto and his voice cracking when he tells Shouto his fire quirk is HIS and Shouto is having flashbacks mid battle. 😭 The way everything is intertwined and it flows together, the flashbacks cut in with the present time and Shouto narrating, the way we SEE the fight shift from Izuku's point of view to Shouto's point of view, then BACK to Izuku's to watch him witness Shouto's full explosive power....GENIUS. The director deserves an award for that. Horikoshi really went and invented cinema with Midoriya vs. Todoroki. He really went and gave us tododeku on a silver platter. The intensity. The emotions. The lighting. The drama. I just need to cry for a moment, it's beautiful. One of the BEST details is Shouto shedding a tear after his garbage dad loses his mind. He cried. 😭 He's free. 😭 Thank you Midoriya, indeed. 😭💖

#bnha #tododeku #shouto todoroki #izuku midoriya #bnha rambles #fran watches bnha #watching episode 23 is an experience of its own #it is its own entity. its own movie if you will #i just think we should appreciate it more #as if we dont already 😂#the cinematography #the musical score #I NEED TO CRY FOR THEM BOTH

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mmhawkes · 1 month ago

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Loudly Sing Cuckoo: A Perspective on The Wicker Man (1973)

Come. It is time to keep your appointment with the Wicker Man.

Those words, uttered in the stentorian tones of Christopher Lee, echo through the history of horror cinema. And it is, indeed, time that we come to The Wicker Man. It, alongside The Blood on Satan’s Claw and The Witchfinder General, makes up what is often termed “The Unholy Trinity” of folk horror. It is the Ur Text of the genre. The sharp-eyed among you may have noticed that even the name of this website is an homage to the film, and its stunning final scene.

Full disclosure before we begin: I want to like this movie so badly. I can’t say that I actually do. I am, in the truest sense of the word, deeply ambivalent about it. There are moments that I think are perfect. The shape of it appeals to me immensely. The rest of the time it is weirdly groovy, kind of a mess, and feels like it gets in its own way.

None of this has stopped me from watching it multiple times, trying to nail down what about it remains compelling. And, clearly, I am not alone in being intrigued. There is a wealth of writing about The Wicker Man, ranging from densely scholarly essays to enthusiastic rambles to harsh film criticism. But we do all keep coming back to Summerisle.

While the imagery and afterlife of the film are ubiquitous, I’m not sure how many people have actually seen it. So, we are going to take a moment for a brief synopsis

Read the rest at The Shadowes Are Icumen In

#the wicker man #wicker man #folk horror #the unholy trinity #the shadowes are icumen in #shadowes are icumen in #horror movies

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magicalyaku · 3 months ago

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So apparently, I didn't go on vacation but a King of Prism fangirl tour ... We went to Fukuoka for two days and I stumbled across the most dangerous store which had really cute acrylic plates. I was just meandering around, waiting for my friends, and then bam, there was that giant poster. Only freaked out a tiny bit. It was so hard to decide who to get! I wanted them all. >3< Even Ace and Shine were there! Afterwards we went to Mandarake where I picked up some doujinshi that looked pretty and finally (because I saw an actual television commercial for the movie!), I caved and went to see the Dramatic Prism.1 movie a second time. This time, the cinema was quite full, so I got a nice cheering experience and they gave out a present as well, I was very happy. A very successful day indeed.

#yaku travels #king of prism #kinpri #my beloved #that's the last one i swear

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pepperf · 2 years ago

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I did indeed go see this at the cinema, and it was so much fun! Nida Manzoor really knows how to capture the stupidity and anger and fun and bravery and magic of being a young woman in the world. The film moves smoothly between humour and genuine feeling - as I would have expected from the creator of We Are Lady Parts. It’s full of references, some of which I caught, some of which my sil explained to me afterwards (particularly some of the Bollywood tropes, that aren’t massively familiar to me) - my sil, who was in stitches throughout: she grew up in a Hindu family with two older sisters, both artists, so a lot of it was incredibly specifically familiar to her.

Highly recommend seeing this at the cinema, the fight scenes are gorgeous, especially when they include the really fancy wedding outfits omg. You’ll enjoy this if you love silly kung fu movies, or romcoms, or if you have siblings, or struggled at school, or ever had a dream that other people thought was dumb, or if you’ve ever been a teenager.

#polite society #ritu arya #nida manzoor #priya kansara

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denimbex1986 · 1 year ago

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'Next week comes the strangest pairing at the multiplex we've seen in years. We're talking, of course, about Greta Gerwig's Barbie and Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer — together dubbed Barbenheimer — set to go toe-to-toe for box office dominance on 21 July. The former is a hot pink franchise comedy inspired by the iconic line of Mattel dolls, the latter a stylistically austere biopic about the invention of the atomic bomb. Such is the striking contrast at play, of course the internet (read: Twitter) was going to do what the internet does and meme the shit out of it: now, all anyone can talk about online is Barbenheimer, sucking attention away from other major summer releases like Mission: Impossible 7 and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

Though this clash of cinematic titans might've been elevated to event prominence by the internet's collective love of ironic memedom, it's hardly the first example of diametrically opposed movies dropping on the same day. Fifteen years ago in the US, on 18 July 2008, cinemas were similarly split into two queues: the Batman enthusiasts on one side, clamouring to get into The Dark Knight and usher in a new superhero movie age; on the other, ABBA stans awaited a trip to the sunny isles of a fictional Greek island in Mamma Mia!. Had the internet grown beyond its cringey 9gag nascency by then, it might've been the original Barbenheimer. The Dark Mamma, if you will.

After all, there are huge parallels between the duelling duos. The Dark Knight was the dark and dreary, terminally serious Christopher Nolan movie. Mamma Mia!, the fun-loving “chick flick”, a jukebox musical for the gays and girlies to let their hair down with campy, sun-kissed escapism. Say you did the double bill back then: you could spend two-and-a-half hours with Christian Bale growling gravely under the cape and cowl, then it'd be time for cocktails on the beach with Amanda Seyfried and Pierce Brosnan. With Barbenheimer, it's another pitch-black Nolan flick where its male lead does a lot of broody staring into the middle distance, contemplating the deep evils now ushered unto the world, paired against Barbie, where men are Just Ken. For both Mamma Mia! and Barbie, it's hard to think of more colourful chasers to stave off Post-Nolan Depression.

The Dark Mamma, alas, never took off as Barbenheimer has. Indeed most people online, anecdotally, simply forgot that the two released on the same day, such was the broad surprise when viral tweets prompted by Barbenheimer brought new attention to the OG. (Here in the UK, they came out eleven days apart.) Little media coverage at the time pointed to the contrast, the most prominent article available on Google search being a Vulture piece from the week of release, the headline of which jokingly announced Mamma Mia! and The Dark Knight as battling “for the very soul of America.” Strikingly similar contrasts were zeroed in on: “Are you a happy person, or a sad one? Do you see the glass as half-full, or half-empty? Do you prefer your toast with strawberry jam, or do you like it sprinkled with shards of broken glass?” All ring true of Barbenheimer, too, only the question now isn't which, so much as which first. Shard sarnies, nevertheless, remain ill-advised.

Hollywood studios know exactly what they're doing with such stark counter-programming: the lack of demographic crossover suggests, on paper, that the movies won't eat into each other's profits, giving audiences a variety of options. In 2003, for example, X-2 was released into US cinemas on the same day as The Lizzie McGuire Movie, and in 2015, Mad Max: Fury Road roared onto screens simultaneous to Pitch Perfect 2. Barbenheimer is distinct in that we seldom get such a major clash of two big-budget summer blockbusters, nor a meme-propelled online movement spawning Etsy merch and Twitter stan rivalries. But that's the key thing, and the true movie-loving spirit of Barbenheimer: while we might joke about Nolan nuking Barbie's Malibu Dreamhouse, these aren't warring parties battling for audience supremacy. Much like The Dark Knight and Mamma Mia! — which went on to be the first and fifth-highest grossing movies of 2008 — early projections suggest that both Barbie and Oppenheimer will both do pretty well for themselves. And there's only one winner when that happens: the movies.'

#Mamma Mia #The Dark Knight #Christopher Nolan #Barbie #Oppenheimer #Greta Gerwig #Mission Impossible 7 #Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny #Mad Max: Fury Road #Pitch Perfect 2 #Barbenheimer #X-2 #The Lizzie McGuire Movie #Amanda Seyfried #Pierce Brosnan #Christian Bale

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it-may-be-dull-but-im-determined · 26 days ago

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So it's been an entire week of Wicked-the-Movie-part-the-first being completely unavoidable and I am so.freaking.tired.

And why am I still going on about why I didn't love it? Because it's one of those things that people vaguely know I'm a fan of the show. So they keep asking me what I thought and I'm just overtired enough to still launch into an incoherent explanation of why it didn't work for me.

That explanation is entirely meaningless, because I am really not the intended audience. I never really thought I would be (probably from about the moment they cast Ariana Grande, if we're being honest). And mostly that's because I read the book multiple times 20+ years ago and I've seen the west end production 20+ times since then. I've sidetracked NYC trips to see it on Broadway and to San Francisco to see it at the original workshop theatre and I remain obsessed with the 2007 Broadway cast. I did indeed show up to the opening night screening dressed in pink and green and I have two different types of Chistery plushies sat on my sofa idk??

I'm a.. fan, to all intents and purposes. But I'm too much of a fan to want a new version that doesn't really add anything meaningful to how the show tells the story - part one is an hour longer than the show and yet it moves it further away from the book, if anything. It took me a LONG time to process how the show adapted the book back in 2006 but the show added that goddamn all time great soundtrack dammit. The movie adds pretty much.. nothing of note?

The things that bug me about the movie are not things that would ever occur to the people asking me what I thought it the film, and they're probably irrelevant to other people who consider themselves long term fans. Everyone is a fan in their own way, and that's great. It also means I reserve the right to want the character choices to make sense (they do not make sense. Why is Elphie being treated like a grown adult and not even enrolled at school?? Why is she wearing a version of her Act 2 dress TO THE OZDUST and not only undermining the costume reveal in Defying Gravity but also making the lyrics of Popular MAKE NO SENSE to the point they then ...have to invent the word 'froat' for absolutely no reason? This version of Elphie does not actually even need a makeover. Why are we even here, folks? I'm so confused 😭)

What I wanted was the damn film made fifteen years ago with a lot fewer intense close ups starring... Literally any of the show cast, idk? Idina and Kristen, Julia Murney and Kendra Kasselbaum, Kerry Ellis or Rachel Tucker, idk I have a lot of favourite Elphies?? Actually let's not get started on casting because *sob* Ariana Grande?? really?? And I will yet again be baffled why every other shot of the film was a close up of the actor's face. It's a musical. The songs are designed to be viewed from a distance. As per the show, the cast are very much decades older than the characters they are playing, but unlike the show this then becomes VERY OBVIOUS in close up on a cinema screen. In IMAX it was veering on fucking terrifying at times, and Ariana Grande becomes an abject lesson in how lip filler can go horribly wrong *shudder*

Here's the other thing: I know full well the show creatives were involved in the film as well, so I'm not sitting here complaining about John Chu per se (although I am also complaining about a fair few of his choices to over-egg the existing story). Stephen Schwartz is just as responsible for how the songs sound in the movie. The choices to keep the nonsensical points of the show plot but pad out the runtime to bizarrely now give you time to notice that the plot structure verges on nonsensical. There's a whole clash of sensibilities as to how they approached the work 20+ years ago compared to now, and to what it meant to me back then and now as well.

Yep everyone else loves it. Good for them. I'm just kinda being forced to keep having pointless conversations about why I didn't love it and it's giving me thinky thoughts about what the hell fandom means in that context idk.

#I'm not even tagging this for wicked #apologies to anyone who has had to sit through me rant in the tags about this multiple times already #i feel like I'm failing as a fan lmaooo but idk i just have basic standards about character arcs #especially when youre going to spend this much time and money #i am very much not the target audience and I'm so tired of talking about it

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thought-bubble-doodly-doo · 3 months ago

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Joker: Folie a Deux Thoughts and Spoilers

So, did I enjoy the movie? Yes. Was it a good movie? ....It's complicated. I get really rambly now. Just FYI.

I really appreciated what Joker 2 was trying to do with the musical elements. Arthur is retreating into a fantasy world to help him cope with the bleak reality surrounding him. It's an idea that's been used in the musical before (and to better effect) in things like Chicago (2002) and most especially Pennies from Heaven (1981). I would, in fact, be quite surprised if the creative team behind Joker 2 hadn't seen Pennies from Heaven.

Academically, this is often how musical numbers are interpreted. It's not that the characters happen to live in a world where they are diegetically breaking out into song and dance. Rather, the musical numbers are a nondiegetic representation of the character's emotions and psyche. So the idea of Arthur imagining a musical number when he feels lonely or in love fits in perfectly.

However, the film does not take full advantage of its musical aspects. With few exceptions, most of the musical numbers are performed with minimal accompaniment and diegetic set pieces. I think the film would have hit a lot harder if when Arthur is having these mental breaks, he's not just suddenly dancing in the mental asylum, but instead he is teleported to a fantasy world that's more bright and colorful and CONTRASTS with his bleak reality. I think the most powerful moments in the film are when the movie chooses to take this direction: the fantasy wedding, the fake variety show, and most especially the courtroom scene.

(Again, very Chicago.)

The moment he "breaks" and the Joker personality takes over is probably the best moment in the film. Because the musical style is emphasizing the point/question the movie asks to both the audience and the jury. Is Joker another personality or is it just Arthur? His defense is trying to argue Arthur had D.I.D. (Disassociative Identity Disorder), and thus is not truly guilty of his crimes, because he was not in control of his body when he committed them.

From the very beginning, the film creates this idea of "two" in regards to Joker/Arthur. The opening animated bit casts Joker and his Shadow, a darker side of himself that is nonetheless inherently connected to him. Even the title, Folie a Deux is about shared delusion, about a mental bond of some sort with another person. Of course, Harley is the person that is superficially experiencing Folie a Deux with Arthur, but if he does indeed have D.I.D, could it not be suggesting that Arthur has Folie a Deux with himself????

Anyway, so the lawyer is trying to say that Arthur and the Joker are two separate identities. Also, musical numbers and the plot that surrounds them are two separate realities. So when Arthur finally snaps and the Joker personality takes over, this is represented by him singing a song about being a fool. This is good cinema! The form is following the function! Good job, movie! WHY DIDN'T YOU DO THIS MORE?!

Because oh my GOSH did they WASTE Lady Gaga. I was SO EXCITED to hear Lady Gaga was going to be Harley Quinn. Even after it came out that she was going to be a completely different kind of character from the Harley we know, the anticipation was HIGH. Gaga is an excellent performer, and she would KILL in a musical. But literally 90% of her performances are those realistic, minimally accompanied numbers I was discussing before. She is constantly singing off tune and amateurishly, and it's not like Lady Gaga suddenly became unable to sing. She was clearly directed to sing that way, and it disgusts me. You have one of the greatest performers of a generation, and you give her 2 real songs and NO DANCE NUMBERS?!

Harley in this film is a corrupting force to Arthur. She literally tells him to stop taking his medication. She is actively making him worse, encouraging him to live in that fantasy world Joker resides in. She is also first introduced with music. She's a mental patient who sings in the Arkham choir. So easily, the film could have made the musical elements a symbol of Arthur's declining mental health. She could have introduced those first moments of spectacle and nondiegetic song into his life, and the more he sings and plays along, the more the two are getting wrapped up in each other.

Admittedly though, Joaquin Phoenix is not a very good singer. That's another problem I have with modern Hollywood musicals. Actors can't sing. I know it's already incredibly difficult to get good enough at one kind of art to compete at a professional level, so asking Oscar winners to pick up singing lessons might be asking for a bit much. But just DUB THEM! DUB THEM! We used to do it all the TIME, even to people who were already good singers! Rita Hayworth got dubbed over in Gilda (1946), and we couldn't dub over Joaquin Pheonix???

Anyway, back to the whole question of Joker/Arthur and the validity of that... I do think it's still a question. Arthur does eventually end the film admitting to the Jury and by proxy the audience, that the Joker does not exist. He is indeed a fantasy, a character. He admits to killing those people during his closing statements. Thus, he is found guilty on all counts, having been judged mentally capable to stand trial and mentally sound enough to take responsibility for his actions. And the prosecutor's claim that Arthur's D.I.D. wasn't a real diagnosis seems to be proven true.

However, we, as the audience, are privy to moments in Arthur's head that the lawyers and jurors are not. We see him retreat into musical numbers. We see him have that mental break when the Joker takes control. We see him fire his lawyer and represent himself in clown make up. It doesn't seem like a sane thing to do.

Several witnesses claim Arthur and the Joker are one person, but the final one, Mr. Puddles says that this is not who Arthur is. This does seems to suggest that Arthur and Joker are not the same.

Does he have D.I.D.? I don't know. Probably not, at least not as textbook DM5 meeting criteria D.I.D., but this idea of the Joker as separate from Authur is an interesting one to explore. Because the Joker was born out of Arthur's untreated mental illness. The abuse he suffered from his mother, his identity issues, the failures of the systems around him, they all contributed to what Arthur became. And of course he has a level of responsibility to his actions, but the Joker is Arthur as his very worst. He was man pushed off the edge and became a monster. Is the 'truth' of a human's identity found in who they are at their worst? Who among us hasn't said a cruel word when we were cranky? Or snapped at someone when we had a rough day? Obviously, Arthur's crimes outweigh these minor sins several times over, but the idea still stands. Are the best and worst versions of ourselves the same identity?

Ultimately, the Joker duology is a tragedy. Even if Arthur was 100% sane and responsible for his crimes, he's still a very, very hurt and abused man who spent his entire life being failed by those around him: his mother, the system, the guards, the courts, etc. Even if he did kill six people, does he deserve getting beat and possibly raped by Arkham guards? Does being a bad person revoke you of your humanity? Does being a criminal mean you don't deserve basic decency? Arthur hurt people, but Arthur was hurt... And by the end of the film, he doesn't even have fantasy to retreat to any longer. He's given it up for the bitter reality that kills him. It's sad. I'm sad.

I really liked what Joker 2 was going for with these ideas and the musical aspects, but I just think it didn't push hard enough. It wasn't grand enough.

The cinematography was wonderful though. I can say that.

#joker 2 #joker folie a deux #also this is the second time i've seen efforts to humanize the joker come at the expense of making harley quinn more evil #it happened in batman: the telltale series #and now it's happened in joker 2 #if i had a nickel #also i know the director said he purposely made the film to be antagonistic to fans of the first one #and honestly?#cruel move dude #very mean #yes there were certainly some people who took the wrong message #but i hate when people gain success and then turn around tell the audience that made them successful to screw off #let people have their stupid power fantasy where the beta male loser becomes cool and kills people #as a little treat

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doomedandstoned · 6 months ago

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AINU Paint Compelling Post-Doom Landscape on Self-Titled Debut

~Doomed & Stoned Debuts~

By Billy Goate

AINU is a welcome new name to us, a three-piece heavy cinematic psychedelic post-doom powerhouse from Genoa, Italy (where many a band has popped onto our radar over the years, most recently Isaak). Here emerges today five soundscapes of the instrumental variety, part of the explosion in instrumental rock and metal that has emerged in recent years. The album is 'Ainu' (2024) which, besides being the name for the indigenous peoples of northern Japan, means simply "human."

First track is the stormy "Il Faro," which takes its name from The Lighthouse and appears to quote from an Italian language version of the 2019 film in its opening minutes. While I may not understand the dialogue, I can tell that there's a lot of passion and fluster in the words, and contrasts with a backdrop of eastern drone and psychedelic post-metal atmosphere, gathering like massive rain clouds.

The full band drops its weight two-minutes in and caught away in a swell. From the get-go we notice Ainu is a band that's quite confident in itself as an instrumental unit. The collaboration between Dani on guitar, Jacco on bass, and Gelso on drums is tight. Each instrument is deftly captured on this recording, the bass in particular has lots of clarity and plenty of oomph. It rewards listening with earphones, especially, but you can open up your speakers with this one and give the benefit of a full room -- the sound will claim it all. Listen for a key moment of transition 5:20 in with a warm, doomy bassline.

In many ways, this 12:43 piece mirrors a day on ocean's cliffs overlooking the waters and experiencing moments that are turbulent, mysterious, and serene. It is indeed cinematic in its vision, and this applies in many ways to the evolving scenes that follow.

Likewise, second track "Aiutami A Ricordare" (which means "Help Me Remember") generates big, rumbling sound in the service of a broad tapestry (it also makes its big splash around 5 minute mark with swinging bombast.

"D.E.V.S." and "Khrono" (the latter featuring guest musicians Francesco Bucci and Giorgio Nattero) reference the American science fiction thriller television miniseries D.E.V.S. and samples from the show here and there. The first two-minute track begins with surreal and calming ambience, but soon errupt into second -- a strumming, churning, tremelo-filled current. It's easy to get swept away in the momentum.

Whether you're listening intently, riding, or doing something else around the house, these songs always find a way to pull you into their moods, and here it is serious, searching, and tumultuous. "Krono" ("Time") ends with some of that broad, brash tossing back and forth Yob energy.

"Call Of The Sea," while not the longest, is certainly one of the more ambitious of the record and closes this cinquefoil journey out. The band takes time to build the story, and one could picture themselves picturing the landscape from a seagull's view. After three-and-a-half minutes of development comes the brake-squeaking dissonance announcing a transition, which comes with cymbals, watery reverberating strings, and a bass riff which you almost want to go on forever. It's Bongripper worthy stuff, but not meant to a barnstormer here, just enough gravity to keep our feet planted while our heads sail far above with the whirling, misty ambience of echoing loops and Lili Refrain's remarkable guest vocals. It's not really important to know what words she is singing, so much as to experience it, for it is beautiful and enchanting.

Ainu's self-titled debut comes out June 28th via Subsound Records on vinyl, compact disc, and digital format (get it here).

Give ear...

Ainu by Ainu

SOME BUZZ

'Ainu' is a concept record that moves between powerful and stirring soundscapes, building up at a slow but steady pace between psychedelia and post-metal, stemming from the Genoa trio’s passion for cinema and their close relationship with the sea, its stories and creatures.

Featuring special appearances from Lili Refrain as well as Francesco Bucci (Ottone Pesante) and Giorgio Nattero (Carcharodon), this album is an intense, emotionally dense experience that uses the descriptive foundations of seamen and the calls of huge animals to recall the connection between the sound and the environment. An electrifying and contemplative journey for the heart and soul of heavy music lovers.

Follow The Band

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#D&S Debuts #Ainu #Genoa #Italy #post-doom #post-sludge #instrumental #atmospheric #metal #Subsound Records #D&S Reviews #Doomed and Stoned

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murphy-quest · 4 months ago

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MurphyQuest: A Journey of Healing

Once upon a time, I could not behold of the Oscar-winning actor, family man and human rights activist Cillian Murphy without being intensely triggered. Not his fault, as it was all through some unfortunate associations, and tragic, as I was otherwise perfectly fit to appreciate the talents of this fascinating Irishman. I was able to develop some coping mechanisms so I could watch Batman in the theater, but I still bound by bitter memories.

But guess what: therapy works!

For real. After years of treatment and practice, I can finally allow Cillian Murphy into my heart. And I have so much catching up to do. Hence, MurphyQuest.

Since embarking on this odyssey I have noticed some particulars of this man’s career that I can’t help but analyze. Patterns, if you will. While the memes are indeed lit and thirst levels critical, what compels me is the craft of how Cillian Murphy is depicted in cinema. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a great actor, full of range and all around pretty cool dude—it’s the methods of the madness behind the camera that pique my interest. Analysis does come naturally to me, so I shall log my discoveries on MurphyQuest as I delve into every film/project I can find starring our favorite blorbo.

As we all know, art is subjective, so my opinions are personal—however, the most powerful art deals in the communication of truths. In my search for truth, I strive for an objective metric. Therefore, we must define some terms and parameters. In this process, I have designed a very scientific rating system for these presentations of Cillian Murphy.

We begin with four basic criteria:

C**t served

Creature

Punchability

Babygirl

*Note: to be perfectly clear, this is not a reflection of Cillian Murphy’s performance as an actor, but the presentation of said performance. That is to say, this is not a criticism of the individual. Just in case. I mean, he will never ever know this exists and that is perfectly fine w me

Definitions:

1. “C**t served”

The percentage of screen time specifically focused on serving said c**t, generally represented by a score out of ten. See above for an example of rubric by which we measure the service of c**t.

2. “Creature”

Rating from 1-10 based on levels of pure, feral, unhinged emotion. The emotion involved can be anything, from anger to sorrow to mania, most often exemplified by acting with the entire body—for instance, running, stumbling, dropping from the rafters like a xenomorph, etc. Basically any moment where Cillian Murphy could be replaced by a xenomorph and it would not disrupt the conveyance of the narrative. Uncanny staring also counts.

3. “Punchability”

Often related to percentage of c**t served, Punchability involves other factors, such as the number of shots to the face/head/neck per scene, the intensity of these blows and the amount of narrative satisfaction intended in the work. The value is calculated thusly:

Use the above integer value of the percentage c**t served for the value s for “service of c**t”

Measure the number of instances of violence and duration thereof vs the amount of total screen time the character is given. Convert this percentage to an integer for the “punch amount” value, or P

Take the number of instances of violence and rate each by the intensity of trauma on a scale of 1-5 (1 being mildly superficial and 5 being perhaps fatal). Calculate the mean of these individual ratings to find the “Intensity” value, or I

Calculate the “Satisfaction” quotient (or S)from the number of instances of violence that arguably represent a comeuppance in the narrative

Plug these values into the following formula: [P*I]/[S+s] (That is the Punch Amount multiplied by the Intensity value, and divide the result by the sum of the Satisfaction Quotient and the value of C**t Served)

This formula will provide us the objective Punchability of Cillian Murphy’s character in a particular project. But it is a lot of work, so I am just going to rate it from 1-10

4. “Babygirl”

This is the final and possibly most notable criterium. This is a rating from 1-10 that represents the tendency of the camera (and by extension, the director) to focus on certain physical attributes of the actor, to the extent of fetishization. This includes emphasis on vulnerability, inexplicable loss of garments, etc.

Of course, as I rate each project featuring Cillian Murphy, I will show my work and explain the ratings if need be. I will also include some very subjective and candid opinions on the movies themselves, because c’mon.

Thank you for joining me. Excelsior!!

#cillian murphy #cillian murphy babygirl #MurphyQuest #Murphy quest #rules #movie review

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agentnico · 6 months ago

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Hundreds of Beavers (2024) review

This is cinema.

Plot: A drunken applejack salesman must go from zero to hero and become North America's greatest fur trapper by defeating hundreds of beavers.

Can we just take a moment to appreciate the greatness that is this film’s poster! Very reminiscent of the poster for the 1963 epic comedy It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, it truly encompasses the full scale cartoonish madness of the movie, and honestly is a piece of art in itself. As for the movie itself? Yeah, it’s fricking awesome!

This comes to us from director Mike Cheslik and co-writer Ryland Brickson Cole Tews (by the way holy Moses what a cool name that is!), the pair who gave us the Tews-directed Lake Michigan Monster, a bonkers little indie film that’s a mix of Life Aquatic and The Lighthouse and is immensely entertaining and stupid. What I like about these guys is how they fill their micro-budget productions with so much creativity, humour and visual inventiveness, and it really puts a lot of modern day Hollywood pictures to shame. These guys are great and so when Hundreds of Beavers popped up on my Letterboxd recommendations, it was a no brainer - I had to seek out this movie!

Hundreds of Beavers echoes the structure of video games, especially RPGs. The central character starts out as an absolutely numpty loser, and then as the film progresses he by trial and error improves his craft to become a skilful and talented trapper. This is reminiscent of how in a video game when your first start you’re essentially useless and crap at everything, but as you level up you become an utter boss. Take Resident Evil for example. In the beginning you struggle to defeat a single zombie. Chances are on your first few playthroughs you’ll die like a little b**ch. Talking from experience here, I remember that first village fight in Resident Evil 4! Then by the end you’re drilling through hordes with unlimited ammo and rocket launchers with super high HP and literally nothing can stop you. With Hundreds of Beavers it’s the same. The first part of the film the poor chap can’t even kill a single animal, let alone a beaver. By the end though he’s engaging in an impressive battle of fisticuffs with crowds upon crowds of beavers. I mean, not really a spoiler to say that there are loads of beavers in this film. Not just a hundred, we’re talking thousands!

That brings me to one of the biggest surprises of this film - there’s actually a fully fledged story here. Like yes the narrative exists entirely for the purpose of throwing as many ridiculously nuts slapstick gags in our faces at a rapid speed of a joke every second, but they are held together by a cohesive narrative. The main character Jean Kayak (brought to life by a superbly committed performance from Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, again, love the name) goes through a significant growth throughout the movie, and his mission to get the girl is as timely and charming as ever. I must say it took me about 20 minutes to properly get into the movie, but once I got to the level of whackiness it was going for I was engaged throughout.

So the visuals. Filtered throughout with a surreal black-and-white grainy filter, this plays out like a live-action cartoon in the vain of Looney Tunes or Tom & Jerry. The stylistic choice that really makes this movie so unique is that the overwhelming majority of animals that Jean comes across are played by actors in full sizes costumes. Yep, it’s a bunch furries alright. Smaller animals such as birds and fish appear as little puppets, but all the larger animals are indeed played by actors in suits. You’d expect a gimmick like this to lose steam after a while, however the funny thing about Hundreds of Beavers is that it manages to consistently stay hilarious throughout, and in fact gets progressively crazier as it goes on. The final 20 minutes are truly fantastic, with the creators throwing every creative idea and visual gag they could possibly whip out of their books in your face. This movie could have easily ended up feeling like a stretched out SNL sketch, but luckily the creators share so much ambition to allow this movie to flourish in its endless creativity. Charlie Chaplin would be proud.

Hundreds of Beavers is one of the most creative, inventive and entertaining comedies of the last decade, and I had a smile on my face from start to finish. From the punchy editing, funny music cues, well-timed cutaway gags, goofy costumes or the endlessly creative deaths, this thing has so much unhinged energy it’s unreal. I can see this not being for everyone, but then again silent slapstick comedy nowadays can be definitely classed as an acquired taste, but I truly believe that everyone would find at least some part of this film amusing. In my eyes, this is a comedic marvel. Yeah, f*** those beavers!

Overall score: 9/10

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aromantic-misguide-to-romance · 2 years ago

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Ace Dates with Belphegor

Contnuing with @kingsheir's request! After two years I finally completed the brothers. Wordcount: 866

It seemed likely that – being asleep for most of the time – he missed the cues about your asexuality. And that was about what happened. But if you worried that he would get whiny or needy – considering it’s his persuasion method of choice – he proved you wrong. He listened to your coming out with full attention and accepted it completely.

It seemed in the beginning that he’s not taking it as a serious thing – he has that peculiar easy-going attitude that makes him sometimes find positives in an exceptionally unexpected place despite all his whininess that he developed as the youngest and most coddled of the brothers.

If you didn’t know him so well, it could have seemed that he isn’t taking your coming out seriously. Maybe he indeed doesn’t think it’s a serious thing – it’s a fact, and fighting facts isn’t what you do when you save your energy, so why should we get fixated on it? It’s time for a nice nap on your lap anyway.

There’s however one question. Is napping together a date? Probably not exactly, but with Belphie being sleepy more often than not, it’s still one of the main ways you’re spending time together. Even if you personally don’t need so many naps, it’s always good to have a moment to take some rest and have a nice excuse of the type “I can’t now, the cat is sleeping”. And with him being the baby of the family, the excuse works pretty well.

He’s already pretty cuddly to begin with and likes to take a good cuddly nap, but it goes up to eleven after you two get together, so it inevitably reaches the point where you have to wake him up. He always complains a bit that his nap was interrupted, but he doesn’t fully mean it – it’s become a habit long time ago and he’d rather wake up and follow you sleepily (or eventually kiss you goodbye, even if it’s a goodbye for approximately 5 minutes) than just be left behind for the sake of his nap.

This doesn’t mean you don’t get any more standard type dates in the town. He gladly tags along whenever you go visit someplace in the town. And since he mostly tags along and it’s rarely a meticulously planned outing, it’s usually pretty chill and helps you unwind. Even spontaneous, if something as leisurely paced counts as such.

When he invites you out, it’s similarly relaxed – you wouldn’t suspect him spending a lot of time on planning of the date, but he actually picks up whenever there’s something that might interest you and is always happy to take you there. While the date rarely has a strict schedule or a detailed plan from dawn till night, it’s probably not what you’re looking for, dating the Avatar of Sloth of all demons. His date plans are more like a pool of options you can choose from - whatever speaks to you at that moment.

He tries his best not only when researching it, but also to making sure his sleepiness won’t interfere. Still, you already got used to the fact he often falls asleep in the cinema pretty fast, but it might surprise you that he actually doesn’t miss much from the film if he knows you thrilled about it. He wants to know what it was about and see with his own eyes the parts you praise afterwards, so he needs to actually watch the whole thing. Sometimes it doesn’t work well, but he does his best and sleeps in advance to be as well-rested as possible. Which is probably why he annoys everyone the day before by turning in immediately after school.

There is also another – secret – type of date that a third party would never suspect to exist. With his entire dream universe created just so he doesn’t have to wake up to study, it’s no wonder he’s also made sure there are some nice dating spots there. It took him some time to build it– and he really worked hard to make it as flawless as possible. And it’s a wonderful surprise! If you’re physically tired after an active, busy say but still don’t want to go to bed yet, it’s a perfect workaround! A romantic walk towards the sunset? Maybe just laying down on cool grass to stargaze? The dream world is now filled with the most tooth-rottingly romantic opportunities.

There is also something really alluring in the sense of secrecy and trust – no one but you knows about it after all, and no one knows that you two are on a date when you’re seemingly napping on a couch. That is also an excellent way to continue when you return home after your outing.

Since your minds stays very much active in that dream world of his though, it might not be the best place for a refuge from mental exhaustion. In such case a traditional nap seems like a better idea. He really needs rest after your outings anyway as he’s been fending off his sleepiness all the time. So whether you continue the date in the dream world or just fall into slumber, it’s cuddle time!

Also on Ao3.

#obey me #obey me!#obey me belphegor #obey me headcanon #no one's om headcanons

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grigori77 · 1 year ago

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2023 in Movies - My Top 30 Fave Movies (Part 1)

30. SICK – the year’s first real horror cinema surprise was also one of its VERY FIRST standouts period, a brilliant little streaming sleeper from Peacock which snuck in under the radar but EFFORTLESSLY captured my attention AND the darker parts of my imagination. Best of all, though, it was SO COOL to see legendary revisionist horror screenwriter Kevin Williamson return to the “big screen” again after spending so long plying his trade on TV – I was VERY MUCH the target audience for Scream when it came out, I just ATE UP his delicious post-modern deconstruction of the slasher genre and its subsequent follow-ups (although Robert Rodriguez’ The Faculty, his fantastic take on alien invasion movie tropes, remains my very favourite of Willaimson’s creations to date), even if it did lead to a fresh sub-genre which, paradoxically, became increasingly tired and toothless as the years progressed. In the end, I think it’s probably A GOOD THING he took a step back – he just needed a chance to rethink things and find a fresh angle to come at the genre … and BY THE GODS has he ever found one with THIS. Interestingly, for Williamson at least, the Pandemic couldn’t have come along at a better time, giving him fertile ground indeed in which to grow a particularly potent darkly comic slasher which EASILY lives up to his masterworks. Taking place in the early days of the original outbreak, when the first Lockdown was just starting, infection alerts and self-isolation were only just becoming a major thing and everybody was PANICKING over how much they really DIDN’T yet know about what was REALLY going on, the setting was already ripe for some pretty intense, chaotic storytelling … so adding a brutal serial killer with a penchant for killing off the idiots who flagrantly flaunted the COVID safety restrictions and purposefully went out of their way to pretend things were the same as normal was a slick move. The main bulk of the narrative revolves around three college kids in some nondescript part of the US – Parker (Blockers and The Society’s Gideon Adlon), a well-off party girl who’s looking to make some major changes in her life, and her best friend Miri (up-and coming R&B artist Beth Million), who go to Parker’s family’s expansive country home to quarantine in comfort, and Parker’s newly-EX boyfriend DJ (Man of Steel and Teen Wolf’s Dylan Sprayberry), who turns up ostensibly to try and patch things up between them but may simply have come for an opportunistic hook-up – who are targeted by a killer who subsequently hunts them during a night of fraught tension, smartly staged stalk-and-slash set-pieces and a hefty dose of Williamson’s characteristic jet black-but-enjoyably geeky sense of humour, which is this time pitched to a particularly sharp edge of biting finger-on-the-pulse satire given the rich socio-political real-life material he’s able to mine here. The small but extremely potent cast are all BRILLIANT, although the film really is DOMINATED by Adlon, who once again shows that she’s destined for GREAT THINGS INDEED in the future with a brilliant turn that runs an impressive gamut from irresponsibly entitled brat to vitally determined survivor once circumstances have fully driven her to take proper responsibility for her childish behaviour, making for a compellingly sympathetic young heroine we find easy enough to root for. It probably helps the man behind the camera is John Hyams (All Square, Alone), son of legendary genre-hopping director Peter Hyams, who shows he’s definitely inherited his dad’s impressive skill by crafting a lean, tight and precise slice of thrilling cinema which takes full advantage of a tight budget and (mostly) a single location, which results in a brilliant little comedy horror gem that I’d heartily recommend folk hunt down on streaming, or at the very least keep in mind for Halloween …

29. HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE – it’s always nice when a sharp little indie banger sneaks in under the radar to place on one of my lists for the year, and this impressive critically acclaimed underdog thriller definitely shaped up as one of the year’s most memorable examples. It’s a very low-fi, gritty down-and-dirty procedural slice-of-life thriller about a motley collection of eco-terrorists banding together to sabotage an oil pipeline in West Texas, focusing almost entirely on this core group of disillusioned youths played by eight uniformly EXCEPTIONAL actors each handing in genuine (ahem) dynamite performances. Ariele Barer (Marvel’s Runaways), The Revenant’s Forrest Goodluck, American Honey’s Sasha Lane and Marcus Scribner (probably best known as the voice of She-Ra & the Princesses of Power’s Bow) are the undeniable stand-outs here, but all of these kids are ON FIRE throughout, showing they’ve got truly BRIGHT futures ahead of them indeed, while Irene Bedard (Smoke Signals) also impresses in a supporting turn as Joanna, an FBI agent who may be onto their plans … the film bounces between the varying points of view amongst the characters, gradually unveiling their motivations to commit a morally complex terrorist act through a series of scattered flashbacks punctuating the planning, execution and aftermath of the bombing itself, with writer-director Daniel Goldhaber (Cam, here co-adapting Andreas Maim’s incendiary non-fiction novel with Ariele Barer herself and Cam’s co-writer Jordan Sjol) weaving a suitably taut and atmospheric slowburn path throughout the flawlessly executed narrative, the film brilliantly building its wire-taut tension to a rewardingly cathartic climax which is as provocative as the challenging subject matter. This is a film that asks some VERY BIG QUESTIONS and delivers some suitably complicated and rightfully TROUBLING answers, a razor sharp piece of indie cinema which definitely deserves the critical acclaim and cult hit status it’s earned …

28. COCAINE BEAR – gods, if EVER there was a true story that seemed TAILOR MADE for cinema, it’s the bizarre tale of Cokey the Bear, AKA Pablo Eskobear, an American black bear that died after ingesting 34 keys of cocaine that were dumped out of a smuggler’s cargo plane over the Tennessee wilderness in 1985. That being said, it’s not a huge surprise it’s taken Hollywood SO LONG to actually get it made, perhaps it’s just TOO CRAZY a concept for it to have been made before now. Ultimately, the film takes A LOT of liberties with the truth to instead craft an entertaining story, but in the end that’s definitely the smart move, simply using the concept as a springboard to craft a gloriously batshit horror comedy with a JET BLACK sense of humour populated by an offbeat collection of quirky characters. Keri Russell stars as Sari, a nurse and single mother who has to brave the woods in order to find her young daughter Dee Dee (The Florida Project’s Brooklyn Prince), who’s playing hooky in the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest with her best friend Henry (Sweet Tooth’s Christian Convery) right when Cokey goes on her drug-fuelled homicidal rampage; meanwhile, recently bereaved widower Eddie (Solo’s Alden Ehrenreich) and his best friend Daveed (Straight Outta Compton’s O’Shea Jackson Jr.) are two drug cartel enforcers reluctantly scouring the area in search of their lost product at the behest of Eddie’s overbearing St Louis drug kingpin father Syd White (the late, great Ray Liotta, to whom the film is dedicated); and then there’s hapless but dogged Knoxville detective Bob (the venerable Isaiah Whitlock Jr.), who knows he can bust White if he can just get his hands on the evidence. All three parties converge in the park while the bear wreaks merry havoc in Elizabeth Banks’ third film as a director (after Pitch Perfect 2 and the CRIMINALLY mistreated and overlooked Charlie’s Angels reboot), which looks like it might FINALLY get people to start taking her serious BEHIND the camera as well as IN FRONT of it – this is a proper laugh-riot of a film which is also delightfully non-PC, and it’s liberally peppered with impressively blood-soaked effects to thrill the gore-hounds as well as an impressively well-realised digital animal character in the eponymous drug-addled beastie. The cast are brilliant too, Russell and Ehrenreich both particularly impressing in their respective nominal lead roles while the kids are EXCEPTIONAL (particularly Convery, getting to gleefully overact as one of the most hyperactive-yet-not-irritating kids I’ve ever seen on screen), and it’s both enriching and a little heartbreaking to watch Liotta once again act his socks off in one of his very last film roles; that being said, several of the scenes are thoroughly STOLEN by the irrepressible Margo Martindale, who’s clearly having the time of her life in one of her most gloriously OTT roles as foul-mouthed, much put-upon park Ranger Liz. Ultimately this is a horror comedy where the balance is definitely tipped very much in favour of the laughs over the scares, but that’s fine, because with a concept this batshit bonkers we were always gonna find it too funny to ever be remotely scary, so the end result is one of THE FUNNIEST MOVIES I ran across in the cinema all year, rightfully revelling in its own inherent irreverence. It’s just about the most fun you could ever expect it to be, which is just what you want from a movie about a cocaine bear, really …

27. THE FLASH – oh boy … yeah, this one is gonna be a COMPLICATED talk. This was one TROUBLED project from day one, from the major shake-ups surrounding the Joss Whedon-compromised Justice League film and the subsequent mess THAT unleashed, through the whole conflicting debate over Zack Snyder’s original vision for the DCEU, and then the eventual collapse of the Cinematic Universe itself, this film, originally entitled Flashpoint (which personally I like A WHOLE LOT more, actually, since it really does pay DIRECT reference to the actually storyline they went with) went through a whole collection of incarnations and reiterations and, for a while, it was starting to look like we might NEVER see it hit our cinema screens at all … and that’s without even mentioning star Ezra Miller’s ongoing legal troubles and essential CANCELLING after their continued outrageous, unacceptable off-set behaviour, which looked set to torpedo the film all on its own. Honestly, I have to admit I was MYSELF a little wary going in, not because of these particular problems but more just the prospect of what I would actually do if, in spite of all this, I actually still LIKED IT … unfortunately for me, that was VERY MUCH the case, which is why we’re here in the first place.

But I must forge on, and so I’m gonna just take this film on ITS OWN face value and ignore the external problems … at least until THE END of the review … because The Flash is, actually, pretty fucking GREAT. Barry Allen (Miller) is finally coming into his own as a fully-fledged member of the Justic League, even if this does frequently mean he’s essentially cleaning up the extreme messes left behind when Batman/Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) gets involved in particularly BIG potential world-shattering events, as brilliantly illustrated in the film’s suitably SPECTACULAR opening set-piece, which does a BEAUTIFUL job of not only letting us know EXACTLY what this incarnation of the Flash is actually capable of, but also revealing Barry’s own distinctly unique, offbeat and, frankly, really rather ADORABLE personal style of superheroism. Then the plot itself kicks off when Barry’s father Henry (Ron Livingstone), serving life in prison for the wrongfully-convicted murder of Barry’s mother Nora (Pan’s Labyrinth’s wonderful Maribel Verdu), sees his latest (and, it looks like, FINAL) appeal fall flat due to a crucial new piece of evidence turning out to be useless, and Barry decides he's had enough of ignoring a particularly potent aspect of his superpowers –

the ability to run SO FAST that he can actually GO BACK IN TIME!!! So he races back to the day of his mother’s death and tweaks circumstances so that she survives, only for Barry to then get punted off track before he can return to the present by an unknown entity within “the Speedforce” which then lands him in 2013, just days before Earth’s invasion by the hostile Kryptonian forces of General Zod (Michael Shannon), as seen in Man of Steel. Still with us so far? Yeah, well it gets EVEN MORE complicated, cuz it turns out that, while his mum is now STILL ALIVE, Barry hasn’t got his powers in this universe, which means that he has to reform the Justice League himself in THIS timeline in order to defeat Zod. Except that there are FAR MORE consequences to messing with time than Barry ever took into account set to make things all but insurmountably complicated for him to succeed … beyond this we’re getting into DANGEROUS spoiler territory, beyond the fact that these new developments give rise to whole fresh and very complicated ideas of alternative universes somewhat akin to what the MCU’s already started experimenting with (which is also, actually, something that the DC comics universe does ALL THE BLOODY TIME), which gives rise to whole new incarnations of beloved characters from the established DCEU, some of which HAVE already been revealed in the trailers and beyond, but others not so much, so … yeah, anyway, it’s a glorious MESS of a narrative, but somehow this film does a REALLY IMPRESSIVE job of navigating this jumble in an impressively coherent and breezy way that ultimately makes this a whole lot of fun to watch, actually. Of course, the lion’s share of the praise for this HAS TO go to screenwriter Christina Hodson (Birds of Prey & the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) for wrangling the UNHOLY MESS of development done for the previous incarnations into an actual WORKING script, which was then brought to life with suitably brave and adventurous SKILL by director Andy Muschietti (Mama and It Chapter One and Two), but the uniformly EXCEPTIONAL cast shoulder a good deal of that responsibility too –

Miller may be problematic in real life, but there can be no denying that he is FUCKING BRILLIANT in his signature role, crafting a hyperactive, ultra-awkward social misfit of a superhero that us various underdog kids just can’t help rooting for, while it is a MASSIVE pleasure to get to see MY PERSONAL FAVOURITE Batman return as this AU’s altered version of Bruce Wayne, the legendary Michael Keaton himself again proving why he really is THE VERY BEST VERSION of the character out there (and I will accept NO ARGUMENT AT ALL about that, I swear you can all FIGHT ME on this particular hill upon which I am determined to DIE if I must), and Livingstone and Verdu bring an IMMENSE amount of pathos to their characters throughout which makes it ABUNDANTLY CLEAR why Barry tries SO HARD to save them both, and it’s also great fun getting to see Michael Shannon back as the Big Bad here again, I always really liked this spectacular scenery-chewing version of Zod. For me, though, the biggest win here has to be The Young & the Restless’ Sasha Calle, making her big screen debut as the most impressive and DCEU-consistent incarnation of Kara Zor-El, aka SUPERGIRL, that we could ever have hoped for, she’s a truly AWESOME creation, EASILY as badass as Henry Cavill’s Supes but also a good deal more complex as a character too. Ultimately it’s a shame that circumstances mean that we likely won’t get to see more of her in future projects, much like Keaton’s returning Batman, as they’re definitely the unexpected heart and soul of the film, easily delivering in the most impressively iconic set-pieces and memorable character beats. Indeed, this is SO BLOODY BRILLIANT all round as a film – from its spectacular action sequences, through its frequent gleefully anarchic screwball humour, to a variety of impressive jaw-dropping game-changer twists in the narrative – that the fact that the DCEU itself is officially over and all of this means PRECISELY ZERO in the face of where it’s all going in James Gunn’s incoming Cinematic Universe reboot makes this feel all the more ultimately pointless, which lends any viewing a bittersweet aftertaste no matter HOW enjoyable it all is. I mean granted, it’s NOT perfect (there is, famously, some pretty clunky CGI that ALMOST takes you out of the experience, especially in the climactic sequence when we see the timelines start to collide), but then very few of the DCEU movies HAVE BEEN anyway, and this one still works just fine for what it is. So it may not have any actual VALUE for the series moving forward, but it’s still a really great movie that MORE THAN deserves to be seen for its own merits, and I highly recommend you give it a chance anyway. At least Gunn and co have seen the sense to keep Muschietti onboard for their reboot (namely helming the new DCU’s Batman reboot The Brave & the Bold), and if they’ve any more sense they’ll bring Christina Hodson back for more too …

26. THE EQUALIZER 3 – Director Antoine Fuqua and Denzel Washington have had a long and extremely fruitful working relationship, from their earliest collaboration on his best-known film, Training Day (which finally landed Washington his long-overdue best actor Oscar, although many of us agree that it SHOULD have gone to him a few years prior for The Hurricane), through the EXTREMELY impressive remake of the classic western The Magnificent Seven, to their most lucrative and long-running collab to date, a series of feature adaptations of a cult classic TV thriller show from the 80s which has now reached its THIRD instalment and STILL seems to be running at full steam with no sign of flagging. Indeed, this just might be THE BEST ONE YET … Washington once again effortlessly delivers a coolly sophisticated, often understated but still typically deeply nuanced turn as Robert McCall, the former special-forces soldier turned SOCOM operative who reemerged from self-imposed faked-death-retirement in the first film in order to deliver bloody retribution for the brutal assault of a young girl, only to subsequently find a new calling as a freelance guardian angel for the weak and powerless who have nowhere else to turn with a dangerous problem. This time round his antiheroic adventures has brought him to Italy, where the ill-fated end of his latest operation sees him near death from a bullet in his back, being nursed back to health in the remote coastal town of Altamonte. It’s here that he finally finds that true peace that’s so long eluded him as he recovers from his injuries, but he finds himself ultimately dragged back into the fray when a

Camorra crime outfit from Naples, looking to expand their operation to new territories, starts trying to exploit the townsfolk that Robert has grown so close to beyond their breaking point … ultimately this is a more slowburn, understated affair than the previous two films, but that actually proves to be this instalment’s greatest strength, allowing us to get closer to our Equalizer than ever before, as well as the people he’s driven to help, which makes this BY FAR the most emotionally investing film in the trilogy, and makes us root for Robert like never before as we wait for him to FINALLY bring the pain to these Mafioso thugs. That dam-break, when they finally come, is as viscerally intense as we’ve come to expect from the series, but thanks to the additional groundwork this time round the kills and cathartic payback delivered feel more satisfyingly substantial, while the film’s greatest pleasures ultimately lie more in the anticipation as Fuqua cranks the tension tighter and we edge further forward in our seats. Once again, the supporting cast all shine through, with Andrea Scarduzio (Colour On the Cross) giving great bad guy as subtly reptilian Mob boss Vincent Quaranta, ably backed up by Andrea Dodero (Thou Shalt Not Hate) as Vincent’s vicious, jumped up thug of a little brother Marco, while Gaia Scodellaro (CentroVetrine) and Eugenio Mastrandeo (From Scratch) deftly show us what’s so worth fighting for in this town as effervescently friendly local café owner Aminah and Altamonte’s principled but pragmatically fair sole Carabinieri Gio Bonucci; the biggest standout, however, is Dakota Fanning as Emma Collins, the smart and dogged FBI agent who ends up tracking Robert down following his involvement in the opening showdown and uncovers a whole nest of previous overlooked criminal chaos. At the end of the day though, this is ONCE AGAIN every inch Washington’s film, the erstwhile star clearly enjoying himself immensely in one of the best and most iconic

roles of his career, although this third instalment looks like it might be the last Equalizer with him in the lead since it becomes abundantly clear that it’s looking to wind things up for Robet’s final adventure in a suitably satisfying way. That being said, there’s definitely room, interest and clear demand for more from both the fanbase AND the creatives here, with the pervading theory being that we may be going back to the early days of McCall’s time with the CIA, in which case the obvious choice moving forward would be to let John David Washington step into his dad’s shoes as young Robert. In truth it’s the only smart choice …

25. ANT-MAN & THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA – coming off the back of 2022’s decidedly hit-and-miss big screen slate for Disney and Marvel’s current flagship property, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, THIS past year’s first MCU release had A LOT of eyes on it. Gods know, I definitely had TWO OF ‘EM … and it probably wasn’t the best title to be laying all this weight on, either – the Ant-Man movies in particular have always been a bit of a marmite property within the larger universe, with as many detractors as fans, which definitely didn’t help things here. If this turned out to be third time unlucky for Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang and the rest, it could spell much larger disaster for the MCU overall, or at the very least signify that the cracks are definitely growing beyond the studios’ capacity to patch ‘em up on the run. So I’ll admit, I went into this one with a whole lot of trepidation … was it unwarranted? Well, being completely honest … not ENTIRELY. Tried-and-tested comedy director Peyton Reed’s Ant-Man films have always been a pretty mad collection anyway, as much a full-blown comedy sub-franchise as the Guardians of the Galaxy movies or Thor under Taika Waititi, but even so they still managed to keep ONE FOOT on the ground even while the rest was set EXTENSIVELY in the Quantum Realm, but this one has somewhat jumped the shark. Granted, part of this film’s particular OTT outlandishness and unabashed WACKINESS is down to narrative necessity – giving too much away plot-wise unfortunately runs the risk of dropping some MASSIVE spoilers, but it’s at least safe to say that the lion’s share of the story takes place ENTIRELY in the Quantum Realm this time, and it’s a place which is A WHOLE LOT DIFFERENT from anything we might have imagined from our very brief visits in Ant-Man & the Wasp and Avengers: Endgame. For a start, it’s A WHOLE LOT BIGGER than we thought it was, and MUCH more heavily populated by some truly WEIRD SHIT … the film also has some major heavy-lifting to do with regards to setting up the Big Bad for Phase 5 and 6 both – Kang the Conqueror (The Last Black Man In San Francisco and Creed III’s Jonathan Majors), a Multiverse-based Thanos level threat we first encountered (sort of) in 2021’s runaway hit first season of Loki. This at least is one of the areas in which the movie definitely SUCCEEDED – ultimately problematic as he may have become since the film’s release, Majors at least did a commendable job of establishing one of the franchise’s most interesting and effective supervillains, a near God Tier Bad Guy who’s clearly gonna give the whole Avengers roster a run for their money when they finally come face to face with him (in whatever recast form he ultimately takes). The plot, such as it is, is pure scrambled bananas, a heavyweight mindfuck it’s best to just DISENGAGE the brain to go with in order to get proper enjoyment

out of – this is definitely a cinematic GUILTY PLEASURE, and trying to take it even remotely seriously immediately draws the eye to a thousand gaping plot-holes and glaring narrative stumbles. At least the patented stunning, primary coloured visuals, winning sense of humour and cavalcade of delightfully wacky set-pieces (the clone-spawning “probability explosion” sequence is a particularly overblown, super-trippy highlight with an unexpected tear-jerk factor built in) are all fully functional and behaving correctly, and the thoroughly endearing cast all deliver admirably with nary an off-note hint of miscasting – Rudd and Evangeline Lilly (returning as Hope van Dyne AKA the titular Wasp) are both still pitch perfect, while it’s nice to see Michael Douglas and PARTICULARLY Michelle Pfeiffer getting to do a whole lot more this time round as Hank Pym and Janet van Dyne, and the glaring Michael Pena-shaped hole is ALMOST filled by a few other quality comedic turns from the likes of deadpan laugh-MASTER Bill Murray and David Dastmalchian (here returning in a VERY interesting but also very DIFFERENT role to what we’ve seen from him here before), as well as a surprise returning face (ahem) from this trilogy’s past. Meanwhile, alongside Majors there are other similarly noteworthy series newcomers who make BIG IMPRESSIONS, from Z Nation and The Mandalorian’s Katy O’Brien (who’s been a growing favourite of mine for a little while now), who’s a completely EPIC badass I wanna see A LOT more of in the future as hard-nosed Quantum freedom fighter Jentorra, to Kathryn Newton (Supernatural, Freaky), making the role of Scott’s now (pretty much) full-grown daughter Cassie ENTIRELY her own, and she’s clearly got a MAJOR future ahead of her in the MCU herself now she’s started carving out her own super-powered secret identity (roll on Young Avengers, I say!). The movie may be another flawed, somewhat unwieldy and occasionally downright CLUNKY beast, but the franchise is still managing to stand up where it counts, and compared to the likes of Thor: Love & Thunder and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever it definitely holds up a good deal better in its own right. Most of all, though, it’s A WHOLE LOT of pure, unadulterated FUN, which is ultimately exactly what you want from a big primary-coloured superhero blockbuster. In the end, it still remains to be seen if the MCU can be clawed back from the brink it’s still teetering perilously on the edge of, but despite all that’s still wrong with it, this is at least a VERY SMALL step back in the right direction …

24. THE PALE BLUE EYE – largely sneaking in under the radar on Netflix to start the New Year off, the latest offering from highly acclaimed indie writer-director Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart, Black Mass, Antlers) is, much as we’d likely expect from such a consistently varied, genre-hopping filmmaker, a strange, unique and deeply intriguing beast of a film. Adapted from Louis Bayard’s well-received speculative fiction novel about a young Edgar Allan Poe aiding the investigation of a bafflingly macabre murder in the US Military Academy at West Point in the early 1830s. Christian Bale returns with typical stoic, intense and magnificently brooding megawatt presence for his THIRD leading man tour of duty for Cooper (after Out of the Furnace and Hostiles) as Augustus Landor, a former West Point graduate-turned misanthropic former detective brought in to lead the investigation into the brutal hanging and evisceration (with additional heart-removal) of a young cadet that’s baffling the faculty and local police, which is soon compounded when additional bodies start piling up. He’s aided in his endeavours by another cadet, the young Poe himself (played to PERFECTION by Harry Potter’s own Harry Melling, continuing his meteoric and deeply impressive rise to prominence with another TOUR-DE-FORCE performance here), while the clues lead to a variety of deeply troubling twists and revelations as well as an intriguing collection of suitably odd and often highly charismatic characters played by the sterling likes of Lucy Boynton, Toby Jones, Simon McBurney and a fascinatingly unusual turn from Robert Duvall, although the real standout here is a truly MAGNIFICENT career-best performance from Gillian Anderson. Cooper piles on the story’s doom-laden gothic atmosphere to great effect throughout while cranking up the slowburn and deeply uncomfortable suspenseful tension throughout, while the plot is nothing short of MACHIAVELLIAN in its levels of ingenious labyrinthine intelligence, dropping an ultimate denouement that you really have to be paying SERIOUS ATTENTION to see coming, and the production design, costumes, period detail and, most of all, the thoroughly MOODY bleak-midwinter cinematography make for a freezing cold but thoroughly rewarding feast for the eyes for the most discerning film-fanatic. Altogether Cooper’s delivered another winner, and I hope he continues to make films this good well into the future.

23. DOOR MOUSE – Avan Jogia may be best known as an actor in fare like Caprica, Zombieland: Double Tap and Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, but his debut feature as a writer-director definitely shows he’s got a lot of potential as a genuine filmmaking talent moving forward. This is an edgy, offbeat and enjoyably quirky little indie oddity that CLEARLY doesn’t care to play by anyone’s conventional rules, telling its unapologetically DARK and dirty little story the way IT WANTS TO without ever trying to spell its message out for the viewer. Riverdale’s Hayley Law is, as ever, simply MESMERISING as Mouse, a tough, hard-bitten burlesque dancer looking to make a better life for herself as a comic book creator, only for fate to throw a wrench in the works for her when girls at her club start disappearing under mysterious circumstances. Her resulting investigation leads to the shocking realisation that they’re being kidnapped into a life of sexual slavery, and it looks like she’s going to have to make a bold and very dangerous choice in order to effect a rescue … as always, Law simply OWNS the screen, powering the story along with equal parts guarded bravado and well-hidden wounded vulnerability, and she’s ably supported by the likes of Keith Powers (Straight Outta Compton) as Mouse’s best friend Ugly, the club’s unassuming but VERY capable bouncer, the great Famke Janssen as Mama, the club’s owner and Mouse’s laconic mother figure, and Jogia himself as her ex-boyfriend, local drug-dealing hood Mooney. The plot twists and turns with suitably pulpy skill while Mouse’s comic book bleeds into the narrative through striking imagery and quirky little animated episodes, while the film tackles big, dark themes with an unflinching eye and refuses to deliver easy answers, particularly in the cathartic but suitably JET BLACK ending. This is a hell of a debut for a promising new filmmaking talent, then, and I’d LOVE to spend some more time with Mouse herself if Jogia and Law are willing …

22. SHAZAM: FURY OF THE GODS – it’s interesting that, at least on here, the DC Cinematic Universe (AKA the DCEU) has managed to stand up so well this past year, especially given the recent MAJOR upheavals that have rocked the franchise as a whole. Not least because said Universe is essentially about to get hit with a Hard Reset under the guidance of new DC Studios CEO James Gunn, so none of this even MATTERS any more going forward … certainly this fact has NOT been lost on cinemagoers, who were already starting to pull away when Black Adam came out in late 2022 and subsequently seemed content to STAY away IN DROVES for this one, likely waiting to give it a go in the privacy and safety of their own homes once it hit streaming. In a way this sounded a pre-emptive death knell for the DCEU which I was genuinely sceptical about it recovering from … which is a shame, because 2019’s Shazam! was one of the franchise’s BEST FEATURES, a gleefully anarchic post-modern deconstruction of the overblown superhero antics the franchise largely glorified before while never taking itself particularly seriously but simply playing itself with just the right amount of knowing wink-and-nod. Even more of a shame, then, that this follow-up has proven to be SUCH a performance TURKEY, because it’s JUST AS GOOD as the first one, taking all the lessons learned from the first movie to heart and delivering more of everything that really WORKED once again while trying something new and fresh to expand on this little corner of the Universe with impressive aplomb and consummate skill.

Returning director David F. Sandberg (Lights Out) once again delivers in HIGH STYLE and customary spooky flair as he and returning screenwriter Henry Gayden (Earth To Echo, There’s Someone In Your House), along with Fast & Furious franchise lynchpin scribe Chris Morgan, expand on the adventures of coming-of-age young hero Billy Batson (Andi Mack’s Asher Angel) and his (still unnamed) superpowered alter ego (Zachary Levi), alongside his now similarly gifted teenaged foster siblings, as the Daughters of Atlas – Hespera (Helen Mirren), Kalypso (Lucy Liu) and Anthea (Rachel Zegler), a trio of immensely powerful but (somewhat) morally dubious classical Greek goddesses – come to claim their powers for their own in order to rejuvenate the Tree of Life and punish Mankind for its wickedness. The usual existential high stakes, then. Angel and Levi are, once again, ON FIRE here, the former star of Chuck in particular once again proving what an undisputable comedic MASTER he is while they both deliver MAGNIFICENTLY in the dramatic moments too, while their returning co-stars and sterling veteran support are once again just as great as before, It’s Jack Dylan Grazer particularly getting to really SHINE this time round in a particularly WEIGHTY role that nonetheless once again manages to utilise his own impressive comedic talents to full effect too, while it’s also GREAT to see This Is Us’ Faith Herman get a much more expanded role this time round as the irrepressible Darla; Djimon Hounsou, meanwhile, also gets a lot more to do as he returns as the enjoyably crabby and pompous Wizard Shazam, who’s none too happy with Billy for breaking the staff last time round and setting this all off in the first place. The Daughters, meanwhile, are FANTASTIC antagonists, Liu and Mirren clearly enjoying the opportunity to be flamboyant, majestic and over-the-top in proper Shakespearean

style, while Zegler invests “Anne” with a good deal more moral fibre and complexity as the most sympathetic (and ultimately conflicted) of the trio. Sandberg and co again deliver IN SPADES on the action, atmospherics, gorgeously exotic design and sheer creativity which made the first movie such an unexpected treat, while also delivering more of that winning, sometimes downright SCREWBALL BONKERS humour to keep it entertaining and let you know that, just like its predecessor, this film knows FULL WELL how ridiculous it is and is fully prepared to just OWN IT. The end result is, ultimately, one of the best of the closing slate of DCEU films, which just makes it even sadder to think that they probably won’t continue the story once the franchise reboots.

21. GODZILLA MINUS ONE – as much as I LOVE the new efforts of Warner Bros’ impressively robust Monsterverse Expanded Universe to bring the greatest big screen kaiju of them all to life, I am not even REMOTELY surprised that it took a Japanese writer-director to truly get right down to the heart of the character with what feels like the truest, most respectful and, quite simply, VERY BEST big screen reworking of the classic original to date. Mostly I just count myself lucky I was able to find a showing at my local cinema that I could actually get to – this is definitely one of those features that really does DESERVE to be seen on the BIG screen. Writer-director Takashi Yamazaki certainly has an impressive track record, having helmed the likes of Space Battleship Yamato, The Great War of Archimedes and Lupin III: The First, but even so, this came somewhat out of the blue to not only become a MASSIVE, runaway hit in Japan but also in foreign markets, particularly blowing away western audiences who are universally praising it as one of THE greatest movies of this decade so far. All right … from a purely critical point of view, I may not quite think THAT about this, but this IS an EXTREMELY GOOD FILM, Yamazaki guiding an impressively game cast and clearly deeply committed crew to create a work of rare emotional power and uplifting intensity that tells a breathless tale of the unbreakable power of the human spirit even in the face of HORRIFIC cataclysmic events … a theme which has, of course, remained close to the hearts of the Japanese ever since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which famously directly informed Ishiro Honda’s beloved original. This time round, Godzilla is a pure, monstrous and thoroughly TERRIFYING force of nature throughout the film, a devastating and unstoppable mutated aberration created by the fallout of America’s H-bombs, which is unleashing unfathomable chaos across post-World War II Japan, leading a band of desperate civilians to take matters into their own hands and attempt a desperate stand to stop the horror before all is lost. Ryunosuke Kamiki (probably best known for his years of work as one of Studio Ghibli’s key voice actors) proves a compellingly fallible hero as deeply traumatised failed kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima, who finds himself battling internal demons even worse than the monster he’s up against in the real world, ably supported by Minami Hanabe (The Great War of Archimedes) as Noriko, the spirited young adoptive mother that Koichi takes in after returning from the war and forms a tight bond with, Hidetaka Yoshiaki (Always: Sunset On Third Street) as Professor Kenji Noda, the former Naval weapons engineer who becomes Koichi’s mentor, and Munetaka Aoki (Rurouni Kenshin) as Sosaku Tachibana, a former Naval fighter mechanic suffering from his own deep-seated traumas after the War. This is an interesting departure from the classic Kaiju cinema recipe, because while the Big G is definitely a powerful and potent threat that casts a very BIG shadow over events here, Minus One is ultimately less of a monster movie than a movie with a monster IN IT, Yamazaki preferring to focus on the human story and concentrate our attention on the horrors these people have to endure at the unfathomably massive claws of this terrible creature, certainly physical but predominantly mental and emotional. That’s not to say it ain’t suitably potent in the action stakes, EASILY delivering some suitably THRILLING set-pieces while the creature himself and the chaos he unleashes is portrayed with impressively executed visual effects flair … it’s just that, ultimately, this is a film which is much more of a triumph of GREAT WRITING, peerless direction and awards-worthy performances from an astonishing cast. In other words, it’s just a really GREAT FILM, period. Which makes this something TRULY SPECIAL after all, I guess …

#2023 in movies #sick #sick movie #how to blow up a pipeline #cocaine bear #the flash #the equalizer 3 #ant man and the wasp quantumania #the pale blue eye #door mouse #door mouse movie #shazam fury of the gods #godzilla minus one

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