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ringsofsaturnnnn · 1 year ago

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Okay okay, hear me out, can you make a part 2 of tell me you love me but instead of in Armin’s car it’s in jean and the readers apartment and jean doesn’t know what happened so they haven’t broke up

but while jean goes out of does something the reader and armin get a bit silly together

I just need some kind of part 2 it was so good please

— [🪐] ·˚ ༘ ✎ 𝐢 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐦𝐞

MDNI | a.arlert x fem!reader

𝘴𝘶𝘮𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘺 :: basically a part 2 to this story. you should def go check it out ;)

𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨(𝘴) :: fem reader, cheating, mentions of sexting & nudes, petnames/mean names, armin gets a little mean (hehe), unprotected sex, spanking, overstim (you really gotta squint), let me know if i missed anything

𝘢𝘶𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘦 :: RAHHH. i’m so glad you requested a part 2 to tmylm. one of my favorite stories i’ve written for sure 🤭💕 - if the buildup feels rushed it’s probably because i was so tired of it and i wanted to be done with it 😭

𝘭𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘤𝘢𝘴𝘦 𝘢𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘤 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘥

tag list :: @callm3senpaii • @arminsumi

the night that you and armin hooked up in the back off his car had been eating away at you ever since it had happened. you swore up and down that you’d break up with jean. he was a good boyfriend and a good person in general. he didn’t deserve to have his girlfriend cheat on him with his best friend.

the only issue was the fact that you never had any time to break it off with him. you weren’t going to do it over text, no. you weren’t that heartless. however, was cheating worse or better than breaking up with your boyfriend of two years over text?

you and jean had messed around a few times after hooking up with armin. the only issue with that? you nearly moaned armin’s name on accident, more than once. now that would have been a disaster. what made it worse was the fact that jean couldn’t make you cum. not like armin could anyways. many times you just faked your orgasm, opting to finish later when you could whimper armin’s name while you pathetically fucked your fingers.

night after night, you lusted after armin. you would stay up texting him while jean’s arm was slung loosely around your hips. his “who are you texting” questions were always shrugged off. you always lied, saying it was mikasa or your group chat with the girls. he didn’t need to know that you were sexting his best friend behind his back.

your wish to see armin again finally came true when jean told you that he had invited armin over for a movie night. you nearly fell off the couch in excitement. “really?!” you said almost too excitedly. “mhm..” your boyfriend nodded his head, continuing to scroll on his phone.

you were giddy with delight as you quickly rushed to text armin.

see you soon 💕

it wasn’t long before you saw the familiar three dots, letting you know that armin was responding.

yeah. see you soon, cutie 😘

it wasn’t long before armin was knocking on your apartment door. “i’ve got it!” scurrying over, you flung the door open, a wide smile on your face. “armin! so good to see you!” you feigned innocence, acting like you hadn’t been fingering yourself to the naughty pictures he’d been sending you.

“hi y/n. it’s good to see you too.” the blonde innocently leaned down to hug you, groping your ass in the process. a small gasp escaped your lips, but you made sure it was quiet enough that jean wouldn’t hear.

“armin!” your boyfriend emerged from your shared bedroom. stepping away from the blonde, you allowed him and jean to hug before they started talking. following them towards your living room, you sat down on the chair while they sat on the couch together.

it was a struggle to not just stare at armin. all you could imagine was his beautiful blonde locks glued to his forehead. his fingers gripping your hips. his cum leaking out of your sopping cunt. his moans. his pants. his whines. him. all you could think of was him.

about halfway through the movie jean’s phone rang. “shit, i gotta take this. it’s eren.” getting up, the male rushed into your shared bedroom so he could answer his other friend.

you and armin made eye contact, small blushes covering both of your faces. “i haven’t stopped thinking about that night..” you finally admitted after a while. armin couldn’t help but smirk, nodding his head. “me either, darling.”

it wasn’t long before jean was coming out of your bedroom. “hey guys, eren needs me to run over to his place. something’s going on.” looking at jean, you blinked. “is he okay? do me and armin need to come too?” shaking his head, jean motioned towards the tv. “just keep watching the movie. i’ll be back soon.”

your boyfriend walked over and placed a chaste kiss to your forehead before waving goodbye to armin and walking out. when he was gone, you and armin made eye contact again.

should you..? it seemed like both of you were thinking the same thing because it wasn’t long before both of you were standing, moving towards one another, and kissing each other passionately.

it wasn’t long before you found yourself in your bedroom, both yours and armin’s clothes discarded on the floor. “face down, ass up.” armin commanded. you eagerly did as he told you, shaking your bare ass in his face. he let out a grunt before spanking the soft flesh. it jiggled underneath his palm, making him smirk.

“god, you’re kind of a dirty little slut, aren’t you..” he teased. you felt the mattress dip under armin’s weight. his fingers immediately found your waist, squeezing gently. “‘m gonna fuck you so good, baby. my cock’s been missin ya, you know.” he groaned.

it wasn’t long before he was sinking himself inside of you. “oh yeah. fuck, you’re so goddamn tight.” he hissed, immediately starting to rock his hips into yours. your eyes rolled into the back of your head as his delicious cock filled you up.

your fingers gripped your bedsheets as you moaned. “can’t believe you’re letting me fuck you on the bed you share with your boyfriend. do you have any shame?” his tone was condescending as he bullied your insides with his dick. “hm? do you feel any shame that you’re about to get fucking bred on your boyfriend’s bed?”

armin was still mean as ever. but, like always, you weren’t complaining. his rough words were turning you on as he gently tugged on your hair. the action forced your head up. your eyes immediately locking onto the picture that sat on the nightstand next to jean’s side of the bed.

a picture of the two of you.

being the oh so observant boy he was, armin immediately knew what you were looking at. “aw, how cute,” he chuckled. “staring at a picture of your boyfriend while his best friend fucks you like the pathetic little puppyslut you are.” you whimpered helplessly, making him laugh. “aw, little puppy is whimperin’” he teased.

“keep looking at it. keep looking at the picture while i rearrange your guts, pretty thing.” you struggled to keep your eyes open as his thrusts got harsher.

“oh fuck. i missed your sloppy cunt. i missed the way it squeezed me, oh shit.” he groaned, tossing his head back. “your cunt still knows who it belongs to. tell me, has jean made you cum since you’ve fucked me? or have you had to fake it?” it was almost like armin knew how pathetic and helpless you were for him.

“f-fake it..” you whined helplessly as your fingertips gripped the bedsheets even tighter. “yeah, that’s what i thought.” he chuckled before spanking your ass. he gave a few more thrusts before pulling out. “hey-“ armin didn’t give you a chance to complain.

flipping you over, he pushed you on your back so he could look at you. slipping himself back in, he immediately started pounding into you with reckless abandon. the noises were lewd and the air smelled like sex.

“m-min! min, min, min..” you mindlessly babbled as he leaned down to sink his teeth into your neck. “yeah, that’s right. call daddy’s name like the good little girl you are. let jean know who owns you.” he whispered in your ear.

“c-cumming!” you gasp before releasing all over him, whimpers and moans escaping you as your high flooded through your system. he chuckled, pressing a kiss to your sweaty cheek. “that’s right. cream all over your daddy’s thick cock.”

your eyes rolled into the back of your head as he continued to pound you. “i-i love you..” you whined. “i love you. i love you. i love you!” those three words rolled off your lips as your legs began to shake. “a-armin, i love you!”

armin groaned as he sank his fingers into the soft flesh of your hips. “aw, you love me?” he chuckled. he was slowly nearing his own release, beads of sweat perspiring off his forehead. nodding your head, you panted loudly. “love you s’much!” you squealed.

armin chuckled before leaning down to capture your lips in a sloppy kiss. “i’m gonna cum, sweetheart. i’m gonna fucking cum inside your tight little hole and it’s gonna leak out and make a mess all over your bedsheets.” he kissed you again and again as you panted against his lips.

“o-oh fuck, min!” your fingernails dug into his shoulders as his hips stuttered. it wasn’t long before he was spilling into you, making your eyes roll back yet again. “o-oh fuck..” you whisper as his high slowly came to an end.

panting, armin pressed a sweet kiss to your forehead. “you did so good, sweetheart. so, so good.” his words were sweet as he brushed some of your hair off of your sweaty forehead. the sight above you was a sight to behold. armin’s golden locks were plastered to his forehead, just like they were in his car.

after a few minutes, armin started moving his hips against yours yet again. “let’s make a mess, shall we? i’ll make sure jean knows that i can make his girlfriend cum more than he can.” he chuckled deviously. through your somewhat fucked out haze, you managed to speak.

“i-i really do l-love you armin..”

“aw, i know you love me.”

#armin arlert #armin #aot smut #armin arlert smut #armin arlert x reader #armin arlert x reader smut #armin smut #aot x reader #armin x reader #armin snk #snk armin #armin x y/n #armin aot smut #armin x you #armin x you smut #armin x y/n smut #˗ˏˋ saturn’s stories ´ˎ˗#→˚₊·🐚 ੭* r.o.s | a. arlert

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sugarpasteltmnt · 9 months ago

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i am currently catching up on neon void, and it is a delight to read. your descriptions of leo’s mind is mesmerizing and grabs the reader’s attention so well. it’s very diverse and unique compared to other interpretations and fics♥️

i’m curious to know what your thinking process was like while writing leo’s insanity and his own thought processes.

(spoilers for ch11) the scene that stuck out to me the most was when leo was about to infect donnie. it felt so vulnerable and raw ahh

anyways i just want to dig into your mind a little to know how it works.

keep up the great work, you are doing wonderful.

WAAA THANK YOU SO MUCH 😭😭😭 you are so sweet thank you!! 💙💗‼️and ohmigosh what a fun ask.

tbh i sat on this one for a while to think of how to dive into it-- beware of my (VERY) long ramblings below!

this question really got me Thinkin' and i kinda popped off but!! If i may indulge myself, here's sort of a wild explanation of how i approach Leo's Insane Brain for this specific fic:

does it meet R.I.S.E???

R - Realistic? I - Interesting? S - Silly? E - Existential?

R - Realistic

"How the hell do i make this sound realistic" is often an obstacle i run into. but it's also the Secret Sauce. What really gives the thought process direction. Given Leo's current situation, he's battling between what he wants and what he needs to do. Which is often a very real problem real people have. Exaggerating it helps create a fun back-and-forth dialog that can make his thoughts seem muddled.

With Leo in this fic’s setup, there are about five main key factors i rely on with his decision making:

Happiness The root of Leo’s general personification. He’s the guy who beat Krang One. The one who escaped a place worse than Hell. After years of missing home so much he’s FINALLY home. He’s drunk on happiness. He was finally home. And that relief and joy is what makes him so jubilant and goofy.

Awareness of his goal Though Rise Leo is a very funny dude, he's still a Leonardo. Throughout the series, Leo is the voice of reason when things are getting out of hand or are potentially dangerous. Leo's had nothing but time to think. Wishing what he'd done different. Wishing he had been more serious. After five years obsessing over his mistake and missing his family, the moment he see's the opportunity to make sure this never happens again he'll latch onto it. And when the stakes are high, accentuating that tension can help with frantic impact of his thinking.

His desire to see his family This desire often clashes with point number 2. Writing his internal struggle between the two helps with the “overwhelmed thoughts” vibe. It’s hard for him to choose! And he doesn’t wanna have to choose! Playing out the conflict between his 'want' vs his 'need to do' helps me bring out his nervous thinking process.

He's self-reprimanding thoughts We all love an Angsty Leo. It was hinted in the show that he had some self-esteem issues, but who doesn't love ramping it up to 11 for a fic??? That, and he was trapped with Krang this whole time. After hearing he was nothing but trash for five years PLUS the guilt of nearly ending the world, the guy doesn't exactly see himself in a great light you know? This can help clash with point 1, again helping with that 'what he wants' vs 'what he needs to do' inner conflict.

Instinct to Survive / Feral Tendencies This one is super fun. I love feral AUs/tropes. With little to no socialization in the Prison Dimension, Leo's sanity started to slip, leaving his body's natural instincts to become more profound. Plus, with the Krang Parasite, I like to exaggerate how feral/dangerous he could be outside of 'turtle' instincts. (Seeing that parasite hosts in the movie were very violent). Sprinkling in feral moments is just a delicious thrill I love adding, and it makes the insanity factor skyrocket and it's so fun to write 🩵🩵🩵

I - Interesting

Is Leo's thought process interesting to read??? Honestly, I just gun for what I think is the most interesting; Leo's relationship with his brothers (especially Raph), and the cause and effects of his shenanigans.

Also, I liked to experiment with wonky texts to help emphasize key moments or words to grab attention. Mostly because it feels like a fun surprise to read them in my opinion. Though not necessary in writing, I thought using some funky fonts might entice and excite 💙

S- Silly

THE BIG ONE!!! EVERYONE'S FAVORITE!!! 🎉🎊🥳🎉 Something I really love love love about Rise's style is that it's silly It's unique! It's fun! I love that Leo and the others are goofy and have some slap-stick moments. And I wanted to keep that with Leo despite everything. Plus, I ADORE that in this iteration of TMNT, the characters are such showmen. They are DRAMATIC. They are SILLY. And that's something I wanna celebrate!! Plus, as much as I love angst, writing nothing but pure angst is exhausting. (And I'm sure reading pure angst isn't enjoyably to everyone.) Throwing in Silly moments is like a little moment of refreshment to me 🩵

I also like to believe that Leo kept his sense of humor out of sheer SPITE. The 'wipe that stupid grin off your face' line in the movie really stuck with me. I feel like Leo would smile through his fear and still be a clown just to spite Krang One.

E - Existential

At the end of the day, Leo is dealing with a VERY big issue. I felt like the Rise movie did an excellent job portraying the severity of an alien invasion for the setting Rise had. And the weight of the situation would be too great for one person. And this is often what I refer back to to make Leo snap. A relapse in clarity of mind. A moment for the panic and PTSD to come back in full force and make him rely on his instincts. Usually the feral instincts he became more attuned with while fleeing/fighting Krang One. It also goes hand-in-hand with his awareness of his goal (as mentioned in 'Realistic' above).

And that's kinda a word-vomit of how it goes!! Honestly??? The tug-o-war between conflicting thoughts helps me write the madness in his head. It's been super fun and interesting, and I hope it's been fun to read!!! (Though I'm telling you now I will NOT be doing those floating text tables again OOF)

Thank you again for the ask it was super fun to think about ;w; 🩵‼️

#thank u for coming to my Ted Talk #long post #sorry i kinda Went Off (affectionate) on this lmao #does this make sense??? only Pizza Supreme knows 😔#pastel prattling #writing advice

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dapper-nahrwhale · 2 months ago

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IDs in alt text!

trips and face-plants and all these fall out of my pockets... no my pyro manifesto... how did that get there haha...

anyways. i have thoughts about him so here they are! somehow this little freak wormed his way into being my favorite x men character and im fine with it. hes SO silly, he is everything, a pulp fiction writer, a journalist, a typical henchman, he's willing to kill kids but draws the line at animals, he's died and come back at least 3 times, he's had his identity stolen and said identity stealer had a thing with iceman that they never brought up again when he came back to life later, his original creator said he intended him to be gay but then he left marvel before they actually did anything with that, he's even australian. And that is just the comics!

In the shows and movies, x men evolution is SO good. He doesn't appear much sadly, and gets taken out with like one hit when he does, but he's very silly goose, he's an absolute delight to watch. And his design is top tier for me. It's SO practical and I love his stupid neon orange fire hair so much. In movies, he's absolutely wonderful, he's just not higher bcuz he's not an aussie :( and that's sad, I love how tragic he is for one, and his whole ex-friends with Bobby is SO good I wish we saw these guys after days of future past but nope. But we see pyro again in Deadpool and Wolverine and he's a minor antagonist yay I literally clapped and cheered when he came up I was the only one in the theater to do so but still. Pryde of the x men, he's main henchman in that and he's pretty good, the show sadly was never greenlit and it's just a pilot but still. X men animated series he's British they massacred my boy I know in his first couple comic appearances he was it they changed it, major L, and wolverine and the x men he's only in like? 2 eps and they could replace him with matchstick that's how much he contributes, then he gets fridged so whatever. And finally, superhero squad, my og superhero show that adapted the comics better than the marvel movies. He's technically in there too I guess.

I've tried to catch all his appearances in adaptations but I might have missed a few, so if I have PLEASE let me know because I'll watch it no matter how bad it is. I'm working my way through his comic appearances, started with Marauders and working back, not an ideal way to do it I can say.

anyways here's the full picture of his redesign i did. i love his regular design a lot but i wanted to make it more Complicated and Fun so.

#xmen #xmen pyro #st john allerdyce #x men #x men pyro #pyro #b.text #:3 my fave littol creature. hesso. silly to me.

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hannahssimblr · 10 months ago

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Chapter Ten

January is long, and February, somehow even longer. It brings with it the kind of biting cold winds that make my face hurt and indignance rise inside me at the injustice of having to be outside in it. I try to manoeuvre my useless fingerless gloves over my knuckles as though they might provide even the tiniest bit of extra heat to my hands, but it’s already too late. I’ve let the cold invade, and by now there’s nothing I can do to prevent the cold spasms that rip through to my bones.

It is five in the evening. I’ve been here since the morning, once Simon reluctantly allowed me to take a day of work away from the studio, but it’s been relentlessly cold since I arrived. The sun will set in an hour from now and I will lose the light, so I forge on anyway, tracing a careful line with the nozzle of the spray paint along the brick at the gable end of the bookshop that commissioned me. It is my first mural on a building, not a window, but nobody seemed to doubt my ability to do it when they approached me. Nobody except for me, and while I didn’t express it, I doubted it, and I still doubt it, even now.

I reach around at my feet for the cherry red paint can and rattle it before spraying a wide, confident arc across the brick. Does it look good? Does any of this look good? I’ve been nose to nose with it for so many hours now that I can hardly even tell what it is. The paint stains my finger tip red. Just about every inch of me must be dusted with paint at this point, as the wind has been blowing it back on me in clouds and leaving speckles all over my skin and clothes. I eye the streak of teal paint that has run down the side of my middle finger and dried there, and I silently curse at it, knowing how badly it will stain as I pull my vibrating phone from my pocket.

Don’t suppose you’re free for a call tonight?

I wish. I’m never free anymore.

Sorry, I have a date at the medieval torture chamber.

Gym with Shane?

Yep.

And in those rare times that I am, Jude isn’t. We’ve been missing each other for weeks, like trains passing on the tracks, what with my work, the increase in commissions, more cards to design, I’ve been finding myself cooped up in the studio until late into the evening sometimes. And Jude, he’s working hard on his final projects. He spends as much time in his studio as I do. Sometimes the only meaningful correspondence I’ll get from him in a given week is a photograph of whatever modernist chunk of plaster or clay he’s working on lately, and this week is shaping up to be another just like that, only I’ll be the one sending some hasty close up of a few swipes of paint and trying to convince him that I’m getting paid to do this.

We haven’t caught up in so long.

I like to imagine that he’s desperately sad about this fact, miserable and missing me terribly, when in fact he’s probably just bored at home again, Jonas likely out somewhere without him and whatever silly movie he’s put on the television has stopped being entertaining.

At this rate I won’t see you until I come over.

Yeah, what the hell. How have we not spoken in over a month?

Probably because I hate you and I’m avoiding you. 😉 We’ll have a proper catch up in Berlin.

He sends me a crocodile emoji, which has become our private code for “goodbye” as in, “See you later, alligator”. I type one back and get on with what I was doing, and paint another broad, sweeping line in that delicious cherry red paint. I last ten more minutes without an interruption, and there is a voice from behind me.

“Well.”

I whirl around. “Ugh, hi Shane.”

“Delighted to see me, are you?”

“Honestly it’s a bit like a bad omen when you appear.”

I yank my protective mask from my mouth while he huffs out a laugh. “Ready for the gym?” I groan in protest, but I gather my things anyway, stacking all of the spray paint bottles into a giant canvas bag and rolling up the tarp. We stop by Mezzotint to store all of it in the studio and let me change out of my painty clothes in the employee bathroom and then we take the Luas into town to the gym.

Shane decides to show me mercy, and lets me spend our session in the pool, so while he heads to the gym and does his usual routine, I swim lengths of the fast lane and keep strict count of the number so that I can brag about it when he comes to use the health suite. I reached a point suddenly, a month or two ago, where my lungs and limbs didn’t burn so badly during my swimming lessons, and in fact, despite the inevitable dread that the gym instils in me, once I’m actually in the pool I find myself enjoying it. I swim to the end, turn and come back, over and over as the smooth hands on the big clock rotate, and finally I anchor myself to the lip of the pool as Shane crouches in front of me, hair wet from the shower.

“How many?” He wants to know.

“Sixty lengths.”

“Many breaks?”

“None.”

He nods with approval and says “good stuff.” Which is the highest compliment available. I struggle out onto the tiles with trembling arms and follow him to the health suite sauna where we sit, ragged breaths, and the water that rolls off our bodies dissolves into mist as it drips onto the benches.

“How’s college?” I say.

“Grand.”

“Full on now, I’d say, is it? With the final exams kind of looming on the horizon a bit.”

He shrugs. “I dunno, I suppose so.”

Shane did not fail his Christmas exams. He didn’t pass them with flying colours by any means but Shane being Shane, has never once done poorly at anything he has attempted. As far as I know he has never failed a test, and it’s evident by now that it’s not for lack of trying. The final exams are Claire’s newest worry, as she’s convinced he’s yet to open a single textbook.

“And the football?” I venture, and watch as his shoulders slump. “It’s good, it’s busy and all. I dunno. I’ve a few things to kind of think about in terms of it. You know, like, some things to consider.”

I nod. “Must be tricky to balance it all, like what with the training and college and all. I can’t imagine how hard it is.”

He glances at me with a furrowed brow as though what I’ve just said has nothing to do with what he was talking about, but he throws me a consolatory “Yeah.” anyway, clearly not bothered to explain what he meant.

“Pity you can’t come to Berlin.” I pivot. “It’d be nice if you were there, like, I know you’ve visited before and all, but I think it’ve been a fun friends thing to do altogether. Not often we all get to hang out now that we’re so busy.”

“Nice for Claire to have time away on her own though.” He says. “I think a bit of distance would do her good, a bit of space.” and I wonder if he means from Dublin or from him.

“I’m a bit nervous to go.” I admit, which prompts him to look right at me for the first time since we came inside. “Why?”

“I’m not sure, I suppose it’s been years since I’ve been out of Ireland, like, been in a different country with a different language and… like, I dunno I suppose I’m nervous to be around Jude and all his friends.”

“They’re just more of the typical artist types, nothing to get that excited about.” He eyes me for a moment before adding “They’re not going to think you’re uncool, or whatever it is that you’re worrying about. Nobody cares about that type of thing except for you.”

“I don’t care if they think I’m uncool.” I lie defensively.

“Right. So is it about Astrid then? Do you think she’s going to tear you a new one?”

I stare at him, startled. “What are you on about?”

“Astrid, like.”

“I have no idea what you mean.”

He rolls his eyes and gets up, slinging his towel over his shoulder. “I’m sure you don’t, Evie, you fecking dope.” He says, and then pushes his way out into the cool air of the poolside.

Beginning // Prev // Next

#lucky girl part 3

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cassipedia · 11 months ago

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Review of Migration (2023)

Hey, Cassipedia, what’re you watching?

Over the weekend, I watched the film Migration. It is an original animated film directed by Benjamin Renner and co-directed by Guylo Homsy and produced by Illumination. When I say original, I do mean it, as it is the first movie I’ve seen in a while that is not an adaption nor based on a pre-existing property.

Do you recommend watching it?

Yes, very much so! This was a surprising experience that I would hate for others to miss out on. The commercials had piqued my interest with the beautiful animation of the flying scenes and the jokes seemed harmless enough. Sometimes I am wary of Illumination films as they can be sometimes a bit too noisy or chaotic, but I’m very glad I saw the movie anyways, as it was surprisingly heartwarming, very cute and stunningly gorgeous (and, contrary to my concerns, it actually uses quiet moments better than most animated films I’ve seen recently!)

What's the story like?

This is a story about the Mallard family, ducks that live a peaceful and simple life in their pond, until a flock of migrating ducks stirs an adventurous itch in everyone except the nervous father, Mack. However, he soon comes around to the idea as he realizes how much an adventure would mean to his family and especially his wife Pam. So they start flying to Jamaica for a vacation. The trailers for the movie spoils the fact that the ducks take a wrong turn and end up in New York City, but the story is less focused on ‘duck shenanigans in an unfamiliar place’ and it instead is more of a road trip with a seamlessly integrated villain. This road trip allows the Mallard family to see different locations and meet different birds, all the while the family grows closer, trusting each other and growing braver in their own ways. There are delightful moments of silliness that are reminiscent of Looney Toons, but the movie takes seriously how much the family loves each other, giving them a reason to grow together as strong and beautifully as the trees they fly over.

What does the movie look like?

Think of how beautiful the sky is. Have you ever been on a plane and looked out at the sloping mountains and pillars of white clouds? Or perhaps, as the sun sets, you look up see how the red sun fades into golden orange blanketed by increasingly purple clouds and the approach of blue night? This movie understands how beautiful the sky is and elevates that feeling, as our bird characters soar and fly through vibrant forests, to a claustrophobic but intriguing water-logged shed, to the shiny and colossal skyscrapers of New York. The settings are gorgeous and the characters themselves are animated masterfully, so each character is incredibly expressive, with the beauty and grace of real-life birds mixed with Muppets-style comedic timing and cartoon stretchiness anchored by being able to carry heavy emotions. This all goes hand-in-hand whenever the birds take flight, as the camera seamlessly follows the birds from take-off to being air born, giving the thrill of a flying rollercoaster. There is such a sense of scale and height, and the world is from the birds’ perspective, with little details that brought me back to the creativity of early Pixar, such as having the father duck blow away a lightning bug nightlight like blowing out a candle, or how the birds will seamlessly alternate between their wings or their feet to gesture. With the movie being from the perspective of the birds, that means none of the human characters talk, being more like creatures existing alongside the bird characters, and this results in a very entertaining and interesting villain in the form of a duck chef with a Yakuza, gang member level of intimidation, whom never utters a word beyond grunts and yells paired with very well-made expressions. To give an idea of how good the animation is, even though the chef has no lines, from simply how he moves, sharpens his knives and looks at the ducks, one can see how, he’s a chef that takes his cooking very seriously, demanding high quality, but, when the ducks start interfering with his business, then he’s all too happy to start seeking revenge. And he is technically only a fun obstacle as the core of the story that this beautiful movie conveys is not about them versus a villain, but instead focused on a family.

How are the actors and actresses?

Every voice perfectly fit their characters, and the animations did excellent in having it where I could feel the characters talking, watching how their beaks formed the words with little flashes of their pointed, bird tongues. The father Mack Mallard was voiced by Kumail Nanjiani and did excellent as an anxious father who could get silly and serious, (and whose manner of speaking fittingly reminded me of a more grounded Daffy Duck). Elizabeth Banks voiced Pam Mallard and delivered as a mother with energy and eagerness paired by a snappy quick wit and a genuineness in each word. One of the cores of this movie is seeing and hearing how Mack and Pam fall back in love with each other over the course of the film, and I believe these voice actors delivered. The rest of the family cannot be overlooked, as Caspar Jennings as Dax Mallard provides a great performance as a courageous young boy who is itching for adventure. Dax is full of bravery but lacks the knowhow on how to protect himself along with others, whereas his father Mack is an excellent survivor but needs to be urged out of his comfort zone to truly become brave. The lesson between them is not simply one is right and the other is wrong, but it is a sharing of perspectives, in which the boy’s bravery inspires the father, and the father’s wisdom equips the boy against their obstacles. I was most concerned of the family member Uncle Dan, voiced by Danny DeVito, as to if he would be an unpleasant tagalong as sometimes happens in these movies, but he quickly established himself as someone who, though he makes quips and seems to lean on his self-interest, he never, ever hesitates to dote on and play with his darling niece, the youngest Mallard, Gwen, who is voiced adorably by Tresi Gazal. Notably, the film makes a point to show that the family already loves one another at the start, but their trip lets them appreciate each other and push their boundaries and discover more of themselves. The other voice talent are more than just recognizable celebrity names and each fit their characters, providing a distinct and colorful cast as one would hope from a road trip type movie. The Herons were my favorites in setting the tone of characters not always being what they seemed in an intriguing way, but each played a role in furthering the family’s journey and usually closed their loop on their own personal journey. The only group of these characters that may feel underexplored are the migrating ducks that inspire the Mallards on their journey in the first place, but I think it is due to the other characters simply having more screentime, as I’ve no doubt these characters would have been just as entertaining as the rest of the cast if they had been given more time.

Is the music worth talking about?

This is not a musical, but the score is absolutely a big part in why the scenery and so many of the moments in this movie sticks out in my mind so vividly. If you listen carefully, you will hear how the music changes depending on the setting. While the Mallards are in the forest, there is an emphasis on using a whimsical choir, adding to the lighthearted feeling, and as they enter the city, unsure of what it even is at first, the music takes on an ethereal, almost dream-like quality that one isn’t quite sure what to make of, until the ducks pass through the smog and nearly run into a steel beam and suddenly you got energetic and chaotic brass instruments banging in as the Mallards are caught in a whirlwind of New York City hustle and bustle. My words really can’t do it justice. And it is worth noting, there is only one distinct instance of a pop song being used in the movie and it is incorporated quite well as a band in a scene plays that song, resulting in a surprisingly beautiful display of ducks engaged in a Salsa dance. The movie is very smart with its music, as it furthers the immersion of seeing this colorful world through these cartoon ducks’ eyes. There are also great moments of quiet and silence, as the movie will also let the atmosphere talk for itself, really letting you sink into it (though it is worth noting that, for the opening of the Universal and Illumination logos, these are the complete opposite and are the noisiest parts of the entire film as the Minion characters from Despicable Me introduce the logos with kazoos. And if you are watching the film in theaters, you may find yourself sitting a surprisingly long time watching a short film based in the Despicable Me universe called ‘Mooned’ but rest assured, you did not walk in on the wrong movie and I very much encourage you not to leave your seat as I overheard many others in the theater seats next to me nearly did.)

Who would like this movie most?

If you are someone that likes birds or the sensation of being high up in the air or on a rollercoaster, I very much urge you to check out this movie. It is also a film that I think would be very enjoyed by those whom are interested in animation and illustration, to see an excellent example of how colors and movement can truly be blended to dazzle in a movie format. The story and characters are well-written and compelling for any age, though I think this movie would be well-received by families, especially as this film strives to show how a family grows closer together. There is a clever, timelessness to the jokes that focus more on the situation on hand and when you have animal characters reflecting on human habits, such as when one of the birds refers to a chef as ‘a predator that hunts prey and serves it to much lazier predators.’ During one of my viewings of the film, I had the pleasure of a family of a broad range from the parents, to their parents to young boys all sitting near me, and it caught my ear that each generation consistently laughed throughout the course of the film.

Where can I watch it?

This film is available in theaters for only a little bit longer at the time of writing this, but I heavily recommend seeing it in theaters at least once. Not only so you can really soak in the colors and the scope of the heights as the birds fly, but also so you can better feel the thrusting of wings as the birds take to the sky and the wind rushes through their feathers. It is an incredible experience. Considering it is an animated movie, it is possible it may re-appear in theaters for kids movie special offers as theaters like the Marcus Theaters sometimes provide. Otherwise, if this review reaches you too late, the film is available for streaming on Peacock for the first four months of being released, then will move to Netflix for the next ten, and then will return to Peacock for the remaining four, so I recommend checking between those streaming services of Peacock and Netflix. Otherwise, it doesn’t hurt to keep an eye out for a physical copy.

Final thoughts?

Migration is a beautiful film that I think can very easily fit in as a classic film, one that focuses on bringing a family together through a fun and colorful adventure. At the very least, it was a pleasure to watch in theaters as a visual rollercoaster, especially for the bird lover in me, and I hope, after its theatrical release that it will make its way into homes as it made its way into my heart. If you’re up for an adventure, then I completely encourage taking the dive.

#migration #migration 2023 #illumination #duck movie #animated film #film review #movie review #Kumail Nanjiani #Elizabeth Banks #Caspar Jennings #Danny DeVito #Tresi Gazal #cassipedia

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sw4tch · 1 year ago

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ON THAT NOTE-

the 80s transformers movie is absolutely fucking bonkers. I have been marathoning the G1 cartoon, mostly bcus it's something silly to put in the bg while I work. and I finally reached the end of s2 and so it was time to watch the movie.

and first of all, the animation is a delight. Peak sci-fi anime visuals. It's clear the sci-fi elements were made with so much love. The funky space creatures and cybertron look so good. I am Licking The Screen bcus the animation simply looks Nostalgic and Good. There's sequences that go longer than they should but I don't care because clearly the people that animated them were flexing something and they deserve to.

Anyway. It's an extremely silly movie. The soundtrack is actively distracting because it's all rock music. and One (1) song by weird al. Like sure, I love it, but also I am shaking this movie and going AN INSTRUMENTAL MORE ATMOSPHERIC SONG SONG HERE WOULD HAVE BEEN MORE THAN OKAY.

but it wouldn't have been the same movie with those choices. truly a product of its time.

Also the introduction of roddy is so funny. here's some new guy. he has youthful spunk and a funny grandpa. He Will Be Your New Favorite. No, We Won't Elaborate Further. What Do You Mean You Still Miss Optimus.

(like, of course I still love roddy. but I already was endeared to him thanks to the comics. I cannot imagine 80s kids being happy with him after such a sudden introduction even if I still like his character).

anywho. before going in I already knew they killed most of the cast to sell new toys so I was prepared for the worst. I said "if they kill percy, tracks or rumble on screen I will Lose it" BUT GUESS WHAT. PERCY AND RUMBLE LIVE, THEY ACTUALLY SURVIVE ALL THAT SHIT. LETS FUCKING GOOOO no idk where tracks is but hey I'll take 2/3

they still absolutely vaporize my wife though. that was a thing that happened. rip starscream you beautiful queen hope I'll see you again bcus till the end you were the funniest mf. ruthless too, he threw TC and SW under the bus just so he could also throw megs out to his death. like bitch that was your trine. Iconic truly.

anyway can't wait to start s3 so I can see the og cyclo nus in action.

#snaily blabber #movies of all time if i do say so myself

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tricornonthecob · 11 months ago

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Dialect notes! Dialect notes! Dialect notes!

Because I missed my calling in academic research, I've spent a non-zero amount of time going down rabbit holes on early North American dialect for Along The Northern Heights. Is it worth doing all this research for a fanfiction of a PBS kids show from 20 years ago? Well it gives me considerable amounts of joy to write, so yes.

Anyway! I want to share a massive infodump, because writing gives me goodfeels and so does sharing! Please let me know if I am inaccurate or wrong about anything. I am not an academic and furthermore I do not want to spread misinformation.

MASSIVE WORD BLOCK UNDER THE CUT

A Pregame With Disclaimers About "Good" English

The history of Modern English is rife with Big Oof moments, and I'm not just talking about The Great Vowel Shift or Noah Webster deciding that the "u" in "colour" was silly. Especially in the late 18th century, there was a push to make accents more uniform and to establish a single "Good" English - and there is so much aggression towards what those scholars considered "Bad" English. And, in my extremely uneducated opinion, it seems like it's a conveniently moving target, just like "whiteness." In the context I'm in when writing, it positively reeks of shitting on any of the world's population groups that aren't Southeastern England. And, being from the United States, I know all too well the absolute shit that's been lobbed at AAVE for not being "Good" English.

This "Good" vs "Bad" way of looking at dialect is reductive, destructive, and boring, and I think it goes without saying I don't condone it in the slightest.

A Further Pregame With Received Pronunciation, or RP

the "generic" British dialect many of us outside the UK think of when we think of a British accent (a shame, I think, because the UK is so dialect-diverse and there are some absolute bangers on that damp island!) There are certainly a myriad of reasons for this, but probably the most common reasons/claims I've heard through my life are

A) 19th-century upper-class British folk wanting to have a more separate dialect from the other classes.

B) associations with the way the Royal Family has spoken English since at least Queen Victoria (a generic reasoning that we see happen along populations: imitating those in power)

C) 20th-century RP became "generic" in a similar way that the broad North American dialect* now associated with the United States and, to some degree, Canada, did - that is, it was further developed and use encouraged as the easiest to understand when recorded and played-back on period audio recording equipment (specifically radio and television.)

*a timeout is to be made here for the so-called Mid-Atlantic dialect at the dawn of "talkies" and early Hollywood. Its the delightful way of talking you'll hear in old black-and-white movies: slightly musical cadence, and combining the broad north american dialect with a bit of the non-rhoticity of RP. This dialect was mostly affectation and as anyone with living American relatives born before 1960 can tell you, mid-20th-century Americans largely did not speak it in normal settings.

Now, all of this is to say, RP as a dialect doesn't really appear until mid-19th century (although it would seem the loss of rhoticity we so associate with RP was a gradual shift starting in the very end of the 18th century.) Furthermore, the ways that we, 21st-century denizens, know RP don't come into their own until the 20th century and proliferation of audio-based mass media.

On to My Actual Point : 18th Century American Dialect (non-AAVE)*

*I make this distinction because the history of AAVE is a massive topic all on its own and I feel even less qualified to speak on it

It can't be ignored that the base strata making up Anglo-American speech patterns would have been as varied as where the original settlers/invaders came from, nor can it be ignored that the American Colonies were made up of more than just Anglo-Saxon descendants. Even back then, they were a mosaic of cultural interaction, which is why Thomas Paine declared America (at least the white part) a European, and not British, culture.

That being said, multiple primary sources indicate that the dialect of Anglo-Americans at the late 18th/very early 19th century was similar to "well-bred" Londoner dialect of the time (assuming there's enough of a distinction here from broad Southeastern UK,) and that this particular dialect was broadly spoken with less regional variance than the family of dialects in the UK.

This is made clear in vol 3 of Timothy Dwight's Travels in New-England and New-York, a collection of letters sent to colleagues in England:

"I shall not, I believe, offend against either truth or propriety if I say, that the English language is in this country pronounced more correctly than in England. I am not, indeed, sanguine enough to expect, that you will credit the assertion, nor that you will believe me to be a competent judge of the subject. Still I am satisfied that the assertion is true. That you may not mistake my meaning, I observe, that by a correct pronunciation I intend that of London; and, if you please, that of well-bred people in London."

(Dwight, Timothy. Travels in New-England and New-York vol 3 p 265)

Now in context he is only speaking of the New England region, and he does make a disclaimer here that he's not "a competent judge" of the subject, and we are certainly ignoring his hope that he won't be cited on the matter. But, his observation holds true from other primary accounts, especially William Eddis' Letters From America, which are composed of his observations (mostly of Maryland gentry) from 1769 to 1777. (His letters also happen to be an invaluable primary source for observations on culture and political commentary on the rising crisis between the colonies and Britain, from the perspective of a loyal well-to-do British subject.)

On the uniformity of language, Eddis has this to say:

"In England, almost every county is distinguished by a peculiar dialect; even different habits, and different modes of thinking, evidently discriminate inhabitants, whose local situation is not far remote; but in Maryland, and throughout the adjacent provinces, it is worthy of observation, that a striking similarity of speech universally prevails; and it is strictly true, that the pronounciation of the generality of the people has an accuracy and elegance, that cannot fail of gratifying the most judicious ear."

(Eddis, William. Letters from America, Historical and Descriptive. p 59)

if the odd comma placements are making it hard to read, you're not alone. 18th century writing is choc-full of what we might today consider run-on sentences, comma splices, or just generally cumbersome. Here's me paraphrasing as best I can:

"In England, almost every county has its own dialect, habits, and modes of thinking, noticeably different inhabitants that don't live very far from each other; but in Maryland and adjacent provinces, there is a notable similarity of speech, and its absolutely true that the generalized accent/pronunciation has an accuracy and elegance that won't fail to gratify a discerning ear."

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All this background I'm giving comes to this point: late 18th-century "well-bred" Londoner is the dialect I have chosen to loosely base what I write in Along The Northern Heights. I listen to alot of Simon Roper's work on youtube regarding the topic. I would say these two are probably the most valuable videos on the accent.

youtube

He makes disclaimers about not being formally qualified to speak on linguistics, and I would be remiss to not pass along those disclaimers.

That being said, what's in my mind is pastiche of that, the local "country" (read: appalachian) dialect in rural Virginia, the dialect work used in Turn:Washington's Spies and HBO John Adams, as well as some of the dialect you hear in PBS Masterpeice's Poldark, and various media I've watched/read from Living History re-enactors about reconstructing dialect.

------------------------------------------------------------------

Since I've made it a headcanon feature that James Hiller has a bit of a brogue that he feels pressured to correct, but slips into when he is excited or upset, I'd like to dig more into less-"proper" dialects of the time, and, if possible, the less-proper Philly accent. For shits and giggles, here's what I suspect is a dramatization of a modern-day Philly accent:

And then a very similar, a very real Baltimore Baldmer accent:

youtube

Honestly? Hearing both of these warms the cockles of my heart, because my late grandparents (especially grandma. *Especially* grandma) spoke with a Baltimore accent, which has similarities with the Philly accent. My aunts and uncles all speak it; its been normalized and blended with a virginia rural accent in mine (I say wadder, my grandma said wooder. I say toosdaye, my grandma said toosdee. I say ahn, grandma said ooowan. I say y'all, grandma said all youse/all you. I say "d'jeet," she said d'jeet, and you can pull d'jeet from my cold dead hands.)

In addition, you have the modern-day "High Tide" dialect of Okracoke, the Carolina Brogue.

youtube

trouble with Carolina Brouge, which is disappearing, is that its got too much modern-day southeastern drawl to really use as a basis for an 18th century Philly boy. Though it does seem like drawing out the "A" in water into wooder/woader is a commonality.

Anyway. That's been my infodump. I spent too long on this!

#liberty's kids #my writing #linguistics #language #English language #me infodumping #infodump #hyperfixations #dialect writing #english dialects #british dialects #north american dialects #18th century English #Okracoke brogue #Youtube

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singsweetmelodies · 10 months ago

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tagged by lovely @car-bo-hydrate to try this <3333

star sign: virgo

favourite holiday: new year

last meal: a hot mug of tea and some south african buttermilk rusks (comfort food breakfast!!! ❤️☕)

current favourite musician: probably taylor swift, but as always, it's hard to choose just one. OOOH! lately, dove cameron is high up on the list too

last music listened to: confetti (acoustic version) by little mix - LISTEN. ever since ms perrie edwards put out a tease that her solo music is coming soon, i have been on a big little mix high again, listening to all my old favourites and hyping myself up sooooo much for that perrie music drop 👀👀👀😍

last movie watched: my girlfriend and i rewatched shang-chi and the legend of the ten rings again last night for movie night <3 LOVE that movie, omfg. both my gf and i firmly declared all michelle yeoh's scenes our favourites 🤭

last tv show watched: you know, it's actually been really long since i've properly watched a TV show, so the answer to this is probably something silly like reruns of FRIENDS

last book/fic finished: 2 different answers here!! last book was iron flame by rebecca yarros (yes, i caved to all the hype and read it on the plane - yes, there were bits that pissed me off, but i mostly enjoyed it) and last fic was one of AO3 user venerat's landoscar masterpieces, "i'll kiss you first" <3

last book/fic abandoned: hmm... i tried to read this rom-com called "you & me: a mlm single dads romance" while on holiday in SA, and i just... couldn't make it more than 5 chapters in. the cringe (& the VERY american focus of... everything...) was just too much for me, especially because i tried to read this right after a super delightful wlw rom-com recommended to me by darling @duquesademiel. after that, this one just... couldn't compare. at all.

currently reading: well, i'm back to work, so my time for books has unfortunately dropped exponentially... all i'm actively reading rn is a bunch of f1 rpf fics, to be perfectly honest

last thing researched for writing/art/hyperfixation: "WHAT COULD CAUSE A SCANDAL IN THE REGENCY ERA" 🤣🤭

favourite online fandom memory: storytime sundays where we tell those long DM fics with @boxboxbrioche and @welightitup <3333

favourite old fandom you wish would drag you back in/have a resurgence: HMMM! i am mostly over all my old fandoms by now, to be fair, but if i really had to choose one... probably one direction?? because a proper resurgence would mean the reunion, right? (right?) ((so maybe i'm not quite as "over it" as i pretend 🤭))

favourite thing that you enjoyed that never had an active fandom: ohhhh, i can't think of a name immediately now, but it's definitely some or other book series that, if it had a fandom at all, was so tiny that i was practically the only person in it 🥲

tempting project that you're trying to rein in/don't have time for: LISTEN. i have had the most awful writer's block for months, and now that i can finally write again, somewhat, all that i want to write are the things that i should NOT be focusing on rn, because those things don't have deadlines but other things do *charles_wtf discord react*

prime example: about 2838474829 piarles smut WIPs and a/b/o and chussyverse explorations, instead of... my PWFE fic. some belated birthday fics. some celebration fics i promised nearly half a bloody YEAR ago. oops 😭😭 but, we'll get there. we will! just like this will be ferrari's year (i am delulu) xD

no idea who's done this yet and who hasn't, so i'm just going to tag some friends and hope i'm not double-tagging anyone - also, if i miss anyone, please feel free to say i tagged you anyway, because i'd love to see your answers <3 @boxboxbrioche @welightitup @hourcat @teamnick @sedicii @francophones @radiocheck, if any of you feel like giving this a go <3333

#tag game #tagged!#oh i am so behind on my tag games that it's not even funny - but i loved doing this one!! tysm for thinking of me charlotte <3

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mylifeincinema · 3 months ago

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My Week(s) in Reviews: August 25, 2024

Yikes... it's been damn-near a month, and I've only got three new ones. That's summer, though. With my concert schedule, most of my free time goes toward keeping up with reading, and anything else has been going to reruns (of Seinfeld, mostly). ::shrugs::

Anyway, here they are...

Alien: Romulus (Fede Alvarez, 2024)

I mostly liked this one. Cailee Spaeny and David Jonsson both turn in phenomenal performances. Alvarez handles the tension and terror beautifully. And the production design is a perfect blend of the Alien & Blade Runner films of the past. Unfortunately, whatever that abomination of a final act was damn-near ruined the entire experience, for me. Still a solid piece of sci-fi/horror, overall, though. - 7/10

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (Gil Kenan, 2024)

I actually really liked this one. There's a charm here that kinda seemed missing from the last one. Still nowhere near the brilliance of the original, but it's really not a bad way to spend a couple hours in a familiar, likable world filled with familiar, mostly likable characters. - 6/10

Incoming (Dave & John Chernin, 2024)

Pretty damn bad. But it's kinda the type of bad that I didn't entirely hate wasting my time on. It shamelessly plunders its elements from just about every teen movie of significance over the past 40 years. There's heavy doses of Superbad, Booksmart, License to Drive, 10 Things I Hate About You and more, and poorly veiled hints of countless others. The characters are types and nothing more, making everything that happens seem inconsequential at best. It's at once a warning and a wet dream, and too few of the lessons learned feel quite like they stick. However, there are two elements that I really liked. And that's the outcome of the stolen Tesla storyline, and Bobby Canavale. The former actually feels super '80s, rather than feeling like a ripoff of the '80s, and the moral of it—that kindness begets kindness—is something refreshing to see in a film about today's youth. And the latter is just having the silly, absurd time of his life. I love Cannavale, and the dedication that he brings to this trainwreck of a character is simultaneously delightful and wholly cringe-worthy. I especially liked that they checked his nonsense in the end. - 3.5/10

Also got a couple revisits in. Bone Tomahawk held up well, but lacks the overall "holy shit" factor when you know what's coming, so I had significantly less fun with it this time around. Then I watched Rosemary's Baby because I finally got around to reading Ira Levin's book. It really is an all-around perfect adaptation. What an unholy masterpiece.

Enjoy!

#movies #film #my week in reviews #alien romulus #ghostbusters frozen empire #incoming #movie #etc.#film review #movie reviews #cinema #new movie #netflix

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the-nameless-wacky-inventor · 1 year ago

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How was the HM movie?? You were SOOO excited about it, and I know what a huge fan of the ride/lore you are. Did it meet your expectations? Was there anything you were especially surprised, delighted, or disappointed by?

IT WAS SO GOOD OH MY GOD

I went into it KNOWING my expectations were set too high, knowing that I was getting myself too excited for this movie, and it still completely fulfilled what I wanted. It was amazing.

It was just a fantastic amount of scary, enough that it’s still spooky while not being so much that my chicken ass can’t handle it. The main characters were all so silly I loved them so much (Harriet and Bruce my beloved), and it was really funny too without having the comedy overthrow the emotion and the spooky-ness. I loved the way it handled grief and loss, of course that’s something to be expected from a movie about death and the afterlife, but they did it so well here I teared up a few times.

I don’t know much about Haunted Mansion lore other than going on the ride a few times five years ago, but the references that I did get were SO fun. I got so excited whenever they played Grim Grinning Ghosts, and they had the exact view of the ballroom, and Constance Hatchaway my beloved got her own part, and the mariner, and the hitchhiking ghosts and the way they were followed home, and the Doom Buggy chair, and the incantation starting with ‘when hinges creak in doorless chambers and whenever candlelight flickers where the air is deathly still’, and the clock only having the number 13 and going crazy, and the silly engravings on the headstones, and the WALLPAPER, and AAAA THE STRETCHING ROOM WITH THE PAINTINGS WITH NO WINDOWS AND NO DOORS EEEEEE

The only reference that I was looking for that I don’t think I saw was the singing busts, I expected them to be more prevalent (if there at all???), I missed them :(. And I wished they’d actually sung the lyrics for Grim Grinning Ghosts more at the end, but honestly those are my only two things I wished they’d done different and they’re really minor things.

The cgi wasn’t too bad either, and I felt like some of the clunkiness was on purpose?? Especially when it came to the way the Hatbox ghost moved and spoke, it felt less like odd cgi and voice altering and more like they were trying to mimic the animatronics + special mirror effects + Ghost Host voice of the ride. Maybe I’m reading into it too much and maybe it was just a little odd special effects but to me it felt like it was on purpose. I also loved the animated sequence when they talked about Crump’s backstory. That was so fun.

ANYWAY YEAH I LOVED IT IVE GONE TO SEE IT TWICE NOW ITS SO FUN

#AAAA #thanks for the ask!#shychick-52 #haunted mansion #haunted mansion 2023

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hall0wedwyrm · 1 year ago

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HI HELLO I JUST FINISHED SONIC PRIME PT2 HERES MY OFFICAL REVIEW SPOILERS AHEAD (these thoughts are very unorganised just a warning)

The next post might be some like more general thoughts and theories

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

DJSKLHFJKDHgjkhgkljgkjJFDSKAGKHGJKD RAAHHHH

so yeah it was pretty awesome. Nine Villain Arc is gonna be a banger. Shadow gets to say 'I told you so' like 80 different times. Everytime someone turned on Sonic I was like Shadow was right. btw Shadow is so pretty its not fair, liek they weren't even doing anything and i was like pretty,,,,,

Also Chaos Sonic didn't deserve to be hit by a bus like that wtf. and then shot by a lazer. They were so goofy and silly and chaotic i miss them :(

ALSO ALSO I LITERALLY PRESSED THE PAUSE BUTTON SO HARD WHEN SONIC SAID "I heart you too Shadow" I HAD TO TAKE A MINUTE TO PROCESS. WHO DID THIS I NEED A WORD. I CAN'T TAKE THIS ANYMORE.

anyway, Prime Sonic might be my favourite because he has really good emotional moments (like nine turning on him) while also being silly and chaotic. The end with his Paradox power up (which i wish to call Paradox Sonic) when he was talking to himself also really reminded me of Movie Sonic (and when he high fived himself!? ohmygod thats my blorbo right there)

Im a very big believer in 'Please let Dread come back and cause more problems because hes so delightful' when he grabbed onto the Mothership and i was just like DREAD. DREAD NO.

#also all in favour of Rusty and Black Rose being best friends until the end said aye #and Thorn can join in too #ALSO DID ANYONE ELSE SEE HOW BLACK ROSE LOOKED AT THORN HELLO????#and someone else did a gay smile i think it was Dread when Sonic came back omg.......#sonic prime #shadow the hedgehog #sonic the hedgehog #sonic prime spoilers #sonic prime season 2

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if-you-fan-a-fire · 2 years ago

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"DRESSED SAFELY THESE WAR WORKERS LOSE NOTHING IN APPEARANCE," Toronto Star. February 16, 1943. Page 3. ---- 20,000 WARPLANT VERONICAS MUST CHANGE THEIR HAIR-DO ---- Too Many Imitators of Star Are Tangling Tresses in Machinery --- SHE'LL HELP, TOO --- By FREDERICK C. OTΗΜΑΝ Hollywood, Feb. 16 - (BUP) - The federal government cracked down on Veronica Lake today as a men- ace to the war effort. It claimed too many lady airplane workers, imitating her peek-a-boo bob, had scalped themselves in the machinery.

Miss Lake said okay. She said she was tired of looking at the world through one eye, anyway. and that henceforth she'd wear her hair on the top of her head.

The war manpower commission took up the problem of half blind war workers with the war production board, which wrote Paramount Pictures, Inc., which notified Miss Lake, who said:

"Any woman who wears her hair over one eye is silly. I never have worn it that way, myself, except in pictures. It made a good trade mark on the screen, but it was hard. mighty hard, to see where I was going."

The situation concerning 20,000 Veronica Lakes trying to operate turret lathes in war plants all over the nation first reached the desk of Mary Brewster White of the war manpower commission (woman- power division).

Driven Near Mad To Monroe Greenthal of the war production board she sent an inter- office memo: "Subject, Veronica Lake's hair."

"The working gal's indifference to the dangers of long flowing hair- do's has driven personnel directors to the last stages of profanity." wrote Miss White. "Veronica Lake has had a tremendous influence because of her unfettered mane upon too large a percentage of ladies engaged in turning out the ammunition."

Miss White added that she was delighted to note that Miss Lake's hair had gone up in her last movie. and said she believed the war manpower commission and the war production board should do everything possible to keep Lake's topknot on top. As she put it:

"The effect upon war production could be nothing less than electrify- ing if all the women suddenly dis- covered that there was something rather 'old hat about long-haired disorder. It would be swell to learn that Veronica, like all the other girls, is working harder and wants her beauty strictly streamlined. She might say long hair and one eye are all right for the home, but that two eyes and short hair are necessary on the job. Thanks, thanks, and thanks."

Had Nothing to Do With It Greenthal mailed this letter to Hollywood, with a note of his own in which he said he thought Miss White had something, all right, and how's to persuade Miss Lake to say the peek-a-boo bob is a thing of the past? This, he said, would save many a feminine stamp-press operator from losing her locks in the gears.

When this communication from Washington reached the studio, the publicists leaped to life and last were seen leading Miss Lake to the machine shop, to photograph her with her tresses tangled in the camshafts.

She said she didn't quite understand all the fuss. She said she had nothing to do with her one-eye hair-dress, anyhow.

"What happened was I was making my first movie test as a drunk," she said. "That hank of hair came down in front of my eye - and the head men insisted I leave it that way. I've been worrying with it, and stumbling through life, ever since. This request from the government isn't only a pleasure; it's a relief."

Everything all right now, war manpower commission?

Image captions: Top: HERE IS HOW WAR WORKERS CAN DRESS SAFELY AND SMARTLY

Left: Most safely dressed war worker is the title given Kathe Vandenberg after a country-wide safety drive. Kathe, 22, is employed in a Los Angeles plant as a hydraulic fitting worker.

right: VERONICA LAKE will uncover her eye

#hollywood #world war ii #veronica lake #disciplining bodies #women in history #women at war #social construction of bodies #fashion show #fashion photoshoot #historical fashion #a la mode #war workers #movie star #any excuse to show beautiful women #paramount pictures #united states history

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gazzhowie · 11 months ago

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My Top 25 Movies of 2023.

Sitting in cinema screens in 2023 has continued to re-enforce that it is a weird time for the industry, with huge three hundred million dollar (!) blockbusters attracting only ten or twenty people per screen on opening weekend and highly acclaimed independent movies being given no home except for a dumped VOD release. This year felt ‘tough’ being a fan of both great films and the big screen experience.

Anyway, scaremongering over... it is time for me to dust off the cobwebs from my Tumblr account and post my Top 25 movies of this year, 2023.

[Years 2008 through to present are available in the archive.]

As always, films listed are based on their UK release date whether that’s in the cinema or on DVD, VOD etc. Which was a tough rule to stick to this year because I thoroughly enjoyed the lean and effective b-movie action horror antics of Last Voyage of the Detmer, which could’ve earned a slot on my list had its UK release not been pulled 2 weeks prior to its date due to its European distributor going bankrupt.

Frequent visitors know that I’ll throw out a few special mentions to all the films that I wish I could’ve included but couldn’t make fit yet believe they deserve a shout-out regardless and then I get stuck into what I think are the 25 best films of the year. Anyway, without further ado, here are the ‘also-rans’ and ‘near-misses’ separated per genre that very nearly made the final list:

Action movies that I have enjoyed this year include The Covenant which holds the distinction of being an actually enjoyable and tolerable Guy Ritchie movie, John Wick: Chapter 4 who’s bludgeoning and unnecessary excess gives way to a final hour that is part ode to Walter Hill’s The Warriors and part ‘modern action classic’ effort, Guardians of the Galaxy 3 which was uneven but still the best Marvel effort in quite some time (though that is a low compliment), the first part of the French two-parter Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan which brings John Wick-ian action to the oft-told tale, the Gerard Butler ‘Prime Exclusive’ double-bill that was Kandahar and Plane, Denzel Washington’s (“final”) entry in his Equalizer series and Thomas Jane’s cheapo Brannigan / Coogan’s Bluff b-movie tribute, One Ranger.

Not many comedies impressed me this year but going off the ones that made me laugh and surprised me some what were the kind of delightful Woody Harrelson sporting underdog remake Champions, the vastly better than we all thought it was going to be / surprise sleeper success of the year No Hard Feelings and the ‘animals saying uncouth things’ silliness that was Strays.

I liked a lot of horrors this year; the legitimately great (no seriously!) Influencer, the gimmick-heavy but incredibly effective No One Will Save You, the immensely fun Kids Vs Aliens, the Covid-19 slasher that you didn’t realise you secretly sort of wanted that was Sick, the semi-disappointing yet still enjoyable recalibration that was Evil Dead Rise, the Godzilla-homaging creature feature The Lake and the frankly insane / insanely nasty Project Wolf Hunting.

Not a huge amount of animation blew me away this year but Leo was a stand-out for not just being shockingly good but for the sheer amount of repeated viewings it has gone through in my house with my boys without it losing too much. I have to also give props to Spiderman: Across The Spiderverse which was gorgeous to look at and immensely entertaining but excessive and unwieldly to its own detriment.

It was a good year for documentaries with both Milli Vanilli and The Pigeon Tunnel impressing me immensely. The former being surprising in its depth and emotion. But within the documentary form it was a banner year for the ‘biography’ approach with genuinely excellent and thorough studies of fascinating people. I loved Mr Dress Up, Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie, Judy Blume Forever, Hatton and Albert Brooks: Defending My Life.

Dramas I’ve liked a lot in 2023 have been Till which moved me immensely, the justifiably acclaimed May December, The Burial which was far more captivating than it had any cause to be, the Netflix survivalist preposterousness that was Nowhere, Ben Affleck’s fabulously entertaining Air which was another entry in the ‘business origins’ subgenre that continues to somehow flourish, Michael B. Jordan’s overdirected but strong Creed 3, the ode to old-fashioned 1990s studio potboiler thrillers that was To Catch a Killer, the Sky Original Dead Shot and the smart phone / techno warning Unlocked.

And in a little section all of its own marked ‘better than they had any right to be’ I’ve got to give a shout-out to Elizabeth Banks’ incompetently directed but decidedly fun Cocaine Bear, the Jackie Chan / John Cena greenscreen-heavy team-up Hidden Strike, the wonky but fun Scream 6, the exhaustive Extraction 2, the low-bar hurdling Blue Beetle and the absolutely insane (and mildly better than the last two excretable efforts) Fast X.

And now… my Top 25 favourite movies of 2023… but for those who know me to be an enormous John Woo aficionado I will make clear from the outset that at the time of compiling this I still have not seen Silent Night. Sorry.

25. The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial

We must mention William Friedkin’s last film before his death - a reminder that the man was a master filmmaker across the board but specifically a master at letting the material and the performance(s) lead. Never has that felt more reinforced than with his interpretation of The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial where, like what he did with his excellent made-for-tv redo of 12 Angry Men, he lets the power of one single setting, a very good cast and exceptional material (in this case a soft update of Herman Wouk's 1953 play of the same name) lead and he gets out of the way and stays there. A more fragile or less confident director at the age Friedkin was, at that point in his career / so close to the end, would've likely been tempted to go big or get flashy to show they've still "got it". There was nothing fragile or unconfident about Friedkin right up to the end. This is an impressively engrossing watch with a great kick at the end that Jason Clarke absolutely sells the shit out of.

24. Talk to Me

I genuinely thought the 'hype' machine was going to have seriously done a number on this, a la BARBIE, but thankfully that turned out not to be the case.

Directors Danny and Michael Philippou have taken a weathered and well-worn concept - that grief and trauma can be open gateways for otherworldly malevolence to exploit - and they've injected it with a fresh voice / energy, whilst respecting 'old standards' like practical effects work.

The concept is decidedly hokey and the lead character isn't particularly likable to say the least (though Sophie Wilde is excellent playing her), but the Philippou Brothers are so thoroughly committed here and the practical effects work is so impressive that it's infectious.

You're almost pulled 'in' despite yourself because the scares are so well-executed and the feeling of dread is so effectively threaded. You know you're being 'played' and you try to fight against it, but it's a mark of its quality that it gets you anyway.

23. Beau Is Afraid

If Taika Waititi parlayed the goodwill and acclaim from a series of beloved low-budget Kiwi comedies into a mainstream career making multimillion dollar Marvel movies and becoming one of the most sought after studio hires of the last decade, then Ari Aster has used the instantly accepted and highly regarded successes of HEREDITARY and MIDSOMMER to... *checks notes* ... work through some complicated shit involving his relationship with his mother (and his father - who may or may not be an actual 'penis monster') and have arthouse kingmakers A24 pay $35 million for it.

This made less than a third of its $35 million budget back (because, come on now, how on earth do you effectively market this thing?) so it's tiring but true that the label "cult classic" has •already• been applied to it.

Look, I'm offering zero defence to accusations against the film that it is overlong, incredibly self-indulgent, ill-disciplined, carrying nowhere near the depth it claims to, tiresome and exhausting. It IS all those things. By the final stretch it is floundering haaard and there's a serious feeling of being trolled starting to set in.

But, first of all, it shouldn't be discounted how excellent and effective Joaquin Phoenix is here and Aster's wildly uneven material is greatly assisted by his casting. Secondly, it has to be acknowledged that there's moments - long stretches, in fact - where there's absolute brilliance at play here.

There's masterfully crafted moments of genuine hilarity (dark hilarity, for sure) alongside flashes of abject discomforting horror. I'd go so far as to say some of the most interesting, inventive, unique and intriguing moments in cinema this year are tucked away inside this behemoth of a clusterfuck.

People pushed hard for the extended cut of MIDSOMMER to be released. I'm pushing for the reduced cut of this.

22. There’s Something in the Barn

I thoroughly enjoyed and had a great time with this. It's not at all embarrassed to lean into its influences, evoking affectionate RARE EXPORTS / GREMLINS vibes without coming across like its heavily plagiarising from them.

It’s got a terrific dry wit to it thanks to writer Aleksander Kirkwood Brown's script and which the cast, especially Martin Starr (essentially doing his SPIDER-MAN shtick here) and a very winsome Amrita Acharia, sell well. And director Magnus Martens doesn't skimp on the dark stuff and sense of foreboding either.

There's no snobbishness to put up against this thing - it's a horror comedy that made me laugh multiple times and jump occasionally. That's a very solid success to me and I highly recommend it if the likes of RARE EXPORTS, KRAMPUS, CHRISTMAS BLOODY CHRISTMAS and SINT are favourites of yours.

21. Pearl

I'm a big fan of Ti West and I really enjoyed X, which was one of my Top 25 of 2022 and which in my review I defended by saying:

"... It's very easy to dismiss what West is doing here as just an exacting homage to THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE but it's more than that. Obviously there's overt nods to it but you could also suggest West is doffing his cap affectionately to Paul Thomas Anderson's BOOGIE NIGHTS, Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO and, yes, both Lewis Teague's ALLIGATOR and Tobe Hooper's EATEN ALIVE as well..."

This is an interesting companion piece to that movie (with a third entry, MAXXXINE, imminent) made more fascinating due to how it came into existence:

Whilst in their Covid 'bubble' prior to production beginning out in New Zealand for X, director Ti West and star Mia Goth became so enamoured with the backstory they were creating for the character of Pearl that they wrote an entire prequel, pitched it to A24 and built filming into the back end of the original production. A high value 'two-ffer' if ever there was one.

The end result is something less blatantly and broadly enjoyable than the first (second) story but it's definitely the more curious and interesting one; if X really was Ti West's TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE / BOOGIE NIGHTS / PSYCHO / EATEN ALIVE bastardisation, this is his Douglas Sirk melodrama injected with Technicolor and falsely set loose as a 'follow your dreams' fable gone really, really wrong.

It obviously lives and dies by the lead performance and, by crikey, Mia Goth is so good here. That much-memed final credits thing is lauded but it's that late stage monologue that drops your jaw a little. If horror wasn't so easily dismissed her performance would've won awards.

For years we've always considered horror prequels to be the nadir of the genre. After all, who cares if Leatherface only became Leatherface because he was made redundant? Or Jason Vorhees killing nubile teens because he got his pot farm trampled on? Or... or... how no one taking Michael Myers trick or treating turned him into a psychopath? Here though, PEARL indicates that doesn't always have to be the case.

20. Reality

For those worrying as to whether Sydney Sweeney's tsunami of scantily-clad content across advertising and social media platforms has left her precariously overexposed (in more ways than one), along comes this fascinating and considered film to remind you that behind the bikinis, the false nails and the airbrushing is an extremely talented actress capable of incredibly powerful work.

Devoid of make-up, carrying the film nearly 70% of the time in close-up shots she can't fake her way free from and regimentally parroting the actual recorded FBI transcripts down to every sigh, stumble and gulp Sweeney is frankly astonishing in how she carries this thing.

Director Tina Satter keeps things tight in terms of both location, framing and running time (it plays as an almost real-time exercise) and as a result the film becomes a riveting, claustrophobic and maddening display (how did Reality Winner's actual charges and ridiculous sentence stand when all of this occurred without correct due process and legal entitlements being followed from the outset?) from a first-time film director showing exceptional command of her cast and her visual space.

19. Fair Play

Chloe Domont's corporate morality play / torchlight on gender politics by way of a recalibration of the 1990s style erotic thriller is all the more astounding because of how assured and masterfully controlled it is for someone's feature directorial debut.

Driven by two excellent performances from Phoebe Dynevor (who I'd not seen before in anything and was astonished by her) and Alden Ehrenreich (who I think is terrific and deserves treated way better by the industry), and supported by atypically great turns from Eddie Marsan and Rich Sommer, this thing has no right to be as engulfing and nail-biting as it is for what it is.

Domont refuses to make compromises or concessions in the way she presents latent sexism, money, toxic alpha cultures, wounded pride and corporate backstabbing infecting her characters. It's a brutal, relentless ride she takes us on.

One where the brash bloodied cunnilingus opener keeps returning to your conscience like it was heavy foreboding for what feels inevitable - these two can't keep tearing away at each other like this, surely? Not without someone dying at the other's hands.

You keep trying to shake that feeling off, telling yourself that it's not ~that~ kind of film. But as this thing starts to barrel towards its third act it is testament to Domont, and how Dynevor / Ehrenreich are executing her material, that you come to realise all bets are off.

18. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One

There's action movie franchises and then there's •this• action movie franchise; hitting its stride at the fourth entry, delivering back-to-back masterpieces with its fifth and sixth and now this - a seventh entry so frickin good it rides out evident flaws (and Mark Gatiss' horrendous "accent") that would absolutely fatally decimate other films!

Because it feels sacrilegious to even say this but the latest entry manages to straddle both being very good, decidedly high end, etc etc and... *whispers it* ... kinda 'samey' to what we've had since Christopher McQuarrie became 'grand master':

Still no one trusts the inherent righteous genius of Ethan Hunt, forcing him to go against one and all. Blah blah. There's excessive shots of Tom Cruise running. Yes, yes. There's elaborate stunts seamed together by a 'not as clever as it thinks' plot. Of course. And too many characters. Far too many. Confoundingly, it feels somehow a little stale and yet brilliant.

The film's 'grand' action sequence this time round has been so overexposed, so heavily spoilt (a making of dissection for it ran before the film itself at my screening for Christ's sake) that you naturally assume it'd deflate a little by the time you see it 'in context'. That's not so. Mainly because it is actually just the entrée to the main course which is the train finale.

The climax is an utter masterwork of technical execution, mixing real stuntwork with very well done greenscreen and (yes, shocking as it is to say for a Tom Cruise movie) CGI facial replacement alongside terrifically accomplished narrative construction.

If like me you continue to be aggrieved by the presence of Simon Pegg's Benji and how he's ostensibly exactly the same character as Luther with exactly the same skillset, routinely forcibly sidelining a vastly superior Ving Rhames, then that's more evident here than ever before. So much so that they literally 'Poochie' Luther out of the film in the third act. Which is obviously racist bullshit. Also, I know I stand alone in my apathy towards Rebecca Ferguson (I really don't get the adoration for her / her character at all) and my hatred for Vanessa Kirby and all the stupid gurning that comes with her, but both are drowned out by a crackin' turn by Pom Klementieff and a performance from Hayley Atwell that you really need to believe the hype on; she lights up the screen and is a tremendous comedy player amongst all the weighty waffle.

And that's the film's biggest flaw that ROGUE NATION and FALLOUT both managed to masterfully swerve - the minute the action stops the film starts to sink under the weight of really heavy exposition. Mounds and mounds of the stuff, in fact. I know McQuarrie and Cruise have been open about how they conceive a script around action set-pieces but this is the first time where the stitchwork is so headache-inducing having to listen to it that you start to see a wobble in the method for the first time... even more so now McQ and Cruise have started injecting all this whiffery about "the choice" and portentous context about how IMF agents work, are recruited, etc. Like, what are you doing trying to 'John LeCarre' my fucking MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE movies, goddamnit?

Still, it's the most minor of hardships considering you're never more than 10 minutes off from getting out the other side of all that exposition and getting to another sublime action sequence or a close up of Atwell's wonderous smile.

17. Sisu

"Sisu is a Finnish concept described as stoic determination, tenacity of purpose, grit, bravery, resilience, and hardiness, and is held by Finns themselves to express their national character. It is generally considered not to have a literal equivalent in English (tenacity, grit, resilience and hardiness are much the same things, but do not necessarily imply stoicism or bravery)."- Wikipedia

The RAMBO sequels should look to this, kneel before it and weep just for being in its presence.

And we better start doing the same with Jalmari Helander, who in just three movies has done Finnish 'interpretations' of John Carpenter horrors, 80s Amblin movies and now 'lone warrior' action films to magnificent effect.

This is a gloriously ridiculous live action cartoon of violent excess and bonkers propulsion; land, water and air set-pieces of utter insanity stitched together with inventive, nasty gore.

It is outlandish in its speed, its fat-free story construction and its refusal to ever stop or give way to wimpy, silly things like character development.

16. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

I totally get Hollywood's whoreish mentality for seeing something succeed and then bastardising it to the point that what we once loved is something we become bored by - it's why we suffered through a noughties onslaught of what felt like nothing but zombie movies because 28 DAYS LATER landed well or why everyone's trying to do "shared universes" now because of Marvel.

Or why after the massive success and instant affection for INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE every animated movie of late has been plagiarising the hell out of it.

You saw the trailer for this - a heavily belated sequel to a spin-off from a SHREK sequel - pulling that very shit and it just felt a bit like your old dad after your mum's left him, spraying on the 'hair filler' and squeezing into skinny jeans to "get back out there" and prove he's "still got it"...

... and then it just casually reveals itself to be a film of massively inventive design (both visually and narratively), that's surprisingly deep and very funny - and as a result superior to both its predecessor and the entire franchise from which it was born.

You don't •think• you NEED time spent in the company of Olivia Colman and Ray Winstone as Mama Bear and Papa Bear or Florence Pugh as Goldilocks and John Mulaney as Jack Horner... or best of all ELITE SQUAD's Wagner Moura as Death... but you absolutely do! Don't make the mistake of thinking you're 'above' this sort of thing, cos I can guarantee you you're not.

It's a delight!

15. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

It feels like I've got to be apologetic in my opinion of this if 'Film Twitter' / the critical majority is to be believed, in which case I'm sorry but I enjoyed this. I just don't think you should ever underestimate the positive impact factor(s) that can be drawn from this particular actor turning up on screen as this particular character, scored to John Williams' music. And I'm saying this as someone who's seen KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL.

I can see why people would have issue with this latest / last outing; it's overlong to the point of bagginess (there's a staleness that starts to set in from the repetition of Jones and Co landing at a location, having the baddies immediately show up, outwit them and make off with the macguffin only for Jones to steal it back) and the character of Helena Shaw is a fairly odious and unlikeable one who exists to cause more shit for Indiana Jones than is tolerable (and I was no fan for the most part of how Phoebe Waller-Bridge played her).

And then there's the 'look' of it too. Did it HAVE to have such a shitty, plastic sheen to it? It cannot be overstated that one of the most tremendous qualities of those first three INDIANA JONES movies was in how Spielberg went out to REAL locations and had Vic Armstrong and Harrison Ford REALLY ride REAL horses and jumped on top of REAL tanks or fall under REAL trucks. Here, it's pixels and screens. Again. With nothing learnt from the issues KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL generated.

James Mangold has done a commendable job of 'apeing' Steven Spielberg and there's a lot - and I mean a lot - of great action here. But the vast majority of it has the shine taken off by continually cutting into terrifically adrenalinised action sequences to insert very obvious greenscreened shots of Ford and Waller-Bridge bickering and shouting like they were really honestly / definitely / maybe there involved with the sequence when it was getting filmed.

It's infuriating because this thing is stacked to the gills with thoroughly enjoyable, legitimately well-designed action sequences - the escape from the castle in the French Alps, the Apollo 11 parade and New York City Subway chase, the Tangier sequence, the Aegean Sea set-piece, the Ear of Dionysius cavern stuff and the airfield chase - but in every single one there's moments of really quite shoddy CGI that draws you right out of the moment to remind you 80% of this was done on computers. There's not ever a moment to make you gasp in awe at how the stunt-man survived like in the original trilogy. But there's a LOT of moments that has you thinking "This thing cost $350 million?"

But all that said, Mangold making a 'fan' version of a Steven Spielberg INDIANA JONES movie is better than Steven Spielberg phoning in one. And I'm not going to lie, this thing had me from the minute the font come up in the opening titles and we got a straight-up legitimate 1940s set INDIANA JONES mini-movie (which seemed to sit as an eery bedfellow to MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 7, weirdly enough) with the best... though still not flawless... de-ageing techniques I've seen.

14. The Fabelmans

It's more than a little disingenuous for all involved, specifically Steven Spielberg himself, to describe this as "semi-autobiographical" and "loosely based" on his adolescence and first years as a filmmaker when anyone who's read any number of books on the man or watched director Susan Lacy's 2017 biographical documentary can see the beats are all there, wholesale. If THIS is "loosely" then the biopic version would be the greatest invasion of privacy ever committed. This ~isn't~ a "fable", man!

I can also see with it why some have braced against it and the instant critical adoration that was applied to it, because the longer it sticks around the more muddled it becomes about what its point of view is and whether it has anything left to say. By the end it slides to a stop after 2½ hours with an admittedly wonderful (and wonderfully bizarro) comedic bon mot having scattered barely etched vignettes / sketches in its final stretch. And tonally, there's questions as to really what was trying to be said with that late 'Ditch Day' subplot and whether co-writer Tony Kushner was working through his OWN stuff within Spielberg's memory bank.

That being said, I loved it in all honesty. For the first two thirds of its running time, I thought it was •really• something special - and anyone pushing out the notion that this is Spielberg on autopilot ain't watching this properly. That cold pan cutting his [screen] father from the frame in a moment of parental happiness but leaving in his [screen] mother and her lover? That's some brutal, subtle craftsmanship there. And layered on top of choices like that is more precision cinematography from Janusz Kamiński and scoring (for the final time?) by John Williams.

The performances across the board from Gabriel LaBelle (as 'Sammy' / Spielberg), Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, [CENSORED] and Seth Rogen are extremely good. Though as atypically great as Williams is here, I'm not certain this ends up being the 'ode' to Spielberg's mum, Leah Adler, that some think it to be.

I totally understand the perspective of those that see this cynically as a 'pre-designed awards hoover' - you can't help but come away from Judd Hirsch's cameo feeling like the entire thing was written as a Best Supporting Actor Oscar clip reel - but for me it just hit me right in the chest... exactly as it will for anyone who spent some of their best summers with their dearest friends, being creative, making films, watching films, dreaming of a future that involved cinema, fending off unsupportive family and trying to hold close those that did try to help your talent flourish.

13. Babylon

As much as Film Twitter has taken against BABYLON's final moment, it must be said that for a "love letter" to cinema and the movie industry overall, Chazelle can 'sign it off' how he likes (and "SINGIN' IN THE RAIN to AVATAR" is certainly •a• take!) with no obligation to be subtle. However, considering there's NOTHING subtle about this film whatsoever preceding it, why you'd think it's conclusion would be any different is silly.

I'm a Damien Chazelle fan. I liked WHIPLASH and LA LA LAND enormously and I genuinely consider FIRST MAN one of the finest films of the last decade. No matter its flaws (of which there are several), I drew a great deal of enjoyment from this, his latest effort. Repeat viewings have put it as one of my favourite films of 2023.

It's a very, very messy film. Chazelle seems to believe the debauchery and excess of the era his narrative lands within - Hollywood's transition from silent to sound films in the late 1920s - gives him unrestrained reign with an overindulgent running time and a cavalcade of graphic content. Added to all the blood, vomit, excrement, etc etc the opening Kinoscope Studios Exec's bacchanalian mansion party is the "opening sequence of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN" of debauched, drug-fuelled, orgy sequences in cinema.

There's no real consistent throughline to any of this which makes it all the more difficult to embrace across 190 minutes and because it plays like a plethora of sketches it has massive peaks and troughs Chazelle doesn't always seem to have total control of - the vignette involving Margot Robbie's Nellie LaRoy first experience of recording a 'sound' take starts solid, gets funny, outstays its welcome and then beats you into submission.

There's a lot of excellence here though. Whether that's in Brad Pitt's surprisingly layered, moving and deft turn or through the sojourns onto the desert location shoots of multiple oscillating productions, topped off with the very 'on' appearance of Spike Jonze's 'Not Otto Preminger' Otto Von Strassberger.

I'm thinking that opening on elephant defecation and sordid acts of urolagnia is something that in retrospect director Damien Chazelle may well be regretting now critics have been "pissy" about his latest film and it's now considered the big box office "turd" of the year.

12. The Killer

I've seen a few people talk about this as if it's "beneath" David Fincher, inarguably one of our greatest working filmmakers today. Like a tight hitman-out-for-revenge yarn based on Alexis Nolent and Luc Jacamon's comic book series is not "worthy" of him or something. Clearly these people are forgetting this is the same guy who spent 6 years in development hell on a WORLD WAR Z sequel, gave us the glorious (if flawed) bit of pulp that was THE GAME, the immensely effective b-movie in an a-picture gown in PANIC ROOM and remade an adaptation of a popular airport potboiler with THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO in amongst whatever is regarded as his "prestige" flicks.

It's absolutely a David Fincher movie; that's apparent in the droll humour, the Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross soundtrack and the clever visual flourishes - like the entire Amazon 'bit' in the final stretch.

It's a caper. A yarn, if you will. A bit of pulp, just with high end flourishes - such as Fincher's meticulous choices, Erik Messerschmidt's cinematography and the casting itself (Fassbender, Arliss Howard, Charles Parnell and Tilda Swinton).

There's this brilliant layering here between the clinical, detailed voiceover Michael Fassbender provides (that leads us to believe this is an assassin at the peak of his 'game') and the actions we physically see from him on screen (missed shots, beat downs suffered, etc) that indicate there's a little bit more than what's on the surface.

I had an absolute blast with this - a tight / immensely refreshing sub two hour, jet black comedic (the aliases!!) thriller that sits as Fincher's hat tip to Jean-Pierre Melville's classic, LE SAMOURAÏ.

... Though I do want to deduct a star off my final rating for the bit where Tilda Swinton co-opted my favourite 'go to' pub joke that I've relied on for 20 years. Now whenever I tell it people are going to say I've just ripped it off this, goddamnit!

11. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.

What an absolute gem of a film!

You knew you were in steady hands because Judy Blume's 1970 source novel is just that good, Kelly Fremon Craig's EDGE OF SEVENTEEN is an instant classic and there's a dependable excellence that comes with casting the likes of Rachel McAdams and Kathy Bates.

But there was always the risk that this COULD'VE got fucked up. Some idiot at the studio might have tried to modernise it. Or believe that it needed more 'incident'. Or cast someone too precocious in the lead role. But James L. Brooks clearly bodyguarded this thing correctly.

The final result is a sweet, funny and very lovely little film with an absolute sweetheart of a turn from Abby Ryder Fortson as the title character.

I genuinely loved spending time watching this.

10. 20 Days in Mariupol

There's a moment in this - Mstyslav Chernov's truly harrowing frontline documentary of the twenty days he and his colleagues spent besieged in Mariupol after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine - involving an emergency cesarean and an unresponsive newborn that is more upsetting, more thrilling and more uplifting than the combination of every horror and every feelgood drama released in the last five years.

This is the most important and vital film you'll see this year and then never ever want to see again.

More so because as humans in this modern age we rather callously only seem to have the heart / stomach / attention-span for one 'war' at a time, and we appear to have abandoned the Ukrainian conflict to refocus our outrage on what's going on in Gaza instead.

For large parts of it we feel like Mstyslav Chernov's been given exclusive access to the pits of hell and he's taking us on a tour. This is intense and riveting, shockingly so considering the unrepentant footage of dead or dying children.

9. The Night of the 12th

I've worked in the field of investigation for over 20 years and I can tell you this much - this movie fuckin gets 'it', man.

In opening with the title card that it does it offsets any eventual disappointment you may feel when the ending arrives. You don't feel short-changed because you've been brought in from the start to share the frustration with the characters.

There's nothing easy here. Nothing pat. Just real investigatory pathways followed with dead ends jumping out in front when everything in your gut says this lead, that lead or the next was going to be 'the one'.

It painstakingly shows that the work is in the hours. And the work can become an obsession. An obsession that gives nothing back equitable to what it takes from you.

It starts with a suitably harrowing and upsetting sequence and it ends on character uplift in lieu of narrative resolution. It also sits as one of the best movies about the art and reality of investigation in modern cinema.

8. The Creator

If there's anyone out there still 'over crediting' Tony Gilroy for the success of ROGUE ONE - one of the best (and the last great) STAR WARS films - this is the "fuck you" exhibit.

Gareth Edwards' sci-fi action epic doesn't entirely land its thematic intentions and hampers itself somewhat by placing dramatic reliance on the anti-acting vessel that is Gemma Chan, but by crikey is it an enthralling and gorgeous-looking ride. (John David Washington remains a magnetic watch, though I do wonder because he sounds so much like his dad whether we're all just hooked on the idea that they've 'prequelised' Denzel?)

You're gifted something here that feels like 1982 Ridley Scott and 1993 James Cameron have got together to play with action figures and do a sci-fi Vietnam movie... it's glorious stuff!

Full of some of the best effects and well realised set-pieces of the year, it's the old 'protect the child' trope given a beautiful lick of paint thick to feel make it feel just about unique enough and a) stand out in an ocean of comic book movies and sequels, and b) probably make Neil Blomkamp go "Ahhh. That's how you do this? Riii-ght!"

So of course no fucker showed up to watch it!

7. Close

I don't really have friends. I don't have the sort of 'personality' that lends itself to people being able to find me tolerable at the most basic level - at least for more than a couple of hours at a time anyway.

I've come to accept and acknowledge this fact the older I've got in life. I've always tried to make friends / keep friends etc but the type of person I am seemingly lends itself to being easily used and/or quickly put down.

It wasn't always like this though. When I was a child there was a boy who saw something in me that others did not and could not. He was in my class and lived close by my grandparents, where I spent most of my time. We were bonded by our loneliness amidst a sea of heads at school as much as our shared sense of humour. Even at a young age I came to appreciate this friend for simply •liking• me and we quickly became inseparable.

On the last day of school, with a vast and limitless summer ahead of us before separate high schools would provide an inevitable divide, we had an argument. A silly, stupid, ~nothing~ argument - significant enough in postscript that I can still recall it now 31 years on - that degenerated into shoving and me accidentally banging his head off a bathroom wall during lunchbreak.

We left school that day with our friendship impacted and the first week of the summer holiday's heavily damaged by him not being by my side in it. And on the very night that I finally decided I didn't want this to continue any longer... that the very next morning I would pick up the phone and ask him if he wanted to go ride bikes in the dene... he died.

An asthma attack. A fuckin asthma attack.

He died not believing that I was his friend and that devastated me. It still does. 31 years later, I think about Neil at least once a week. I see clips of talent show magicians and KNOW that'd have been him. I've tried all my life to replicate a friendship like it and I've never succeeded. But can we ever generate that closeness in adulthood towards someone like we could as children, when we were free of responsibility and bonded by limitless possibility?

I've frequently wondered what my life would've been like if Neil had still been in it, telling myself over and over that this would've been one of the rare pre-teen childhood friendships that lasted.

I miss him and would give anything to be able to deliver the apology to him that he deserved then and is still owed now.

So... all THAT said... it goes without saying that this deeply human, carefully etched and very naturally drawn drama hit me like a train travelling at 150mph.

This is one of the most effective and important films about grief, trauma-processing, adolescence and friendship that there's been in some time.

It really is a brilliant piece of cinema that should be shown in schools to every kid from twelve upwards.

6. The Eight Mountains

Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch's adaption of Paolo Cognetti's novel is a (both visually and emotionally) astonishingly beautiful effort with two fascinating and textured performances from Alessandro Borghi as the adult Bruno and Luca Marinelli as the adult Pietro.

It's an intimate epic; a careful, patient and quietly profound treaty on friendship, life, love, ambition, Buddhist concepts, ancient Indian cosmology, growth, nature and the weight of legacy.

Come for the stunning footage of the gorgeous Italian Alps, but stay to be deeply moved by something really rather special, wholehearted and sincere that steps right over whatever BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN esque expectations or assumptions you may well carry into this.

5. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem

I've never understood anyone - especially the aged fanboys frequently responsible for ruining the STAR WARS and MARVEL 'discourse' - who's shown territoriality over the TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES as a "franchise".

The reason this ramshackle 1984 indie comic by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird has blown up into five television series, seven films, multiple video games and a range of toys / merchandise for four decades is mostly down to the way it sorta reinvents itself every five or so years. Which means there's some form of TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES 'content' now for all of us in one way or another.

And one of the most impressive - but not THE most impressive - things about this film is how it incorporates something from everything that's gone before without becoming a complete mess. The spirit of the comic book source material is front and centre alongside the legitimate effort of the 1990 movie adaptation. The "that'll do" crappy clart of its sequels is avoided whilst the huge scale of the maligned Bay-ified 2014 - 2016 movies is represented. It definitely captures everything about the first Saturday morning cartoon that enamoured the property to us way back when.

It's a glorious effort. It truly is. I watched it with my son and his friends and the huge grins on their faces was infectious. I struggled to think of another entertainment entity that has moved so effortlessly through the generations like this has.

It's a visually resplendent film. It takes the reconfiguration of the animated form a la the SPIDER-VERSE movies and delivers a surprisingly more focused and tighter effort than the latest SPIDER-VERSE sequel. It is dripping with an energy and confidence that will surprise you, as well as a whole heap of heart and humour that will delight.

Yeah, there's moments here and there where the energetic visual styling becomes a little too cluttered in its action sequences but it is a minor grumble against what is a surprising instant masterpiece of its type:

A sweet and funny teen movie walking in the shoes of an animated giant sized comic book blockbuster wearing the coat of a New York conspiracy film, drenched in classic East Coast hip-hop and a score by by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and performed by one of the most impressively eclectic voice casts of recent.

(Within a roster of Hannibal Buress, Rose Byrne, John Cena, Ice Cube, Natasia Demetriou, Ayo Edebiri, Giancarlo Esposito, Post Malone, Rogen, Paul Rudd, Maya Rudolph, Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr, Nicolas Cantu and Brady Noon, it is Jackie Chan that absolutely steals this thing by a considerable distance!)

4. Asteroid City

If you aren't a Wes Anderson fan this is not the film that is going to convert you. An immaculately stylised and composed metatextual 'Russian Nesting Doll' celebration of the construction of art and the art of storytelling? No way. No how.

There was elements of it that didn't work for me but what •did• work I was head over heels in love with. The [CENSORED]*constructs felt almost like afterthoughts and didn't particularly resonate. A lot of reviews hit Anderson for being unfocused and overindulgent, and I kinda can see where they're coming from. But only with regards to that particular element.

[* censored by me and hopefully by everyone else because they've done a wonderful job of hiding the story construct from the marketing]

The rest of the film is primo Wes Anderson in his most astonishingly stylised form with his attention to detail never more sharp.

A complaint that must be noted though is in the casting, where the usual 'Anderson Players' appear to have ran a 'pyramid scheme'; bringing in actors who's casting has attracted other actors to the point of it being too cluttered an ensemble in too lean a film to let everyone truly shine. Despite all the plaudits, I think Scarlett Johansson is well out of her depth here. And I just think if you're going to hire the likes of Steve Carell (replacing a Covid-addled Bill Murray at the last minute), Margot Robbie (who should've played Johansson's part, and vice versa) and the sublime Sophia Lillis but barely use them properly it's almost a crime!

When it's funny it is hilarious. When it is delightful it sits as a heavenly confection. And when it wobbles it still isn't as ponderous and disappointing as some of the lesser elements of THE FRENCH DISPATCH.

3. Oppenheimer

I found every plaudit for this to be true and what a reward it was to receive as cinema lies stale in its current state, crusted with the stale decay of innumerable shitty-sheened superhero movies and sequels to things no one was asking for.

Here's a mature, complex, expertly constructed character study of great depth and intelligence; a film primarily made up of scientists and mathematicians thinking and squabbling amongst themselves whilst a non-linear deep betrayal born of immense pettiness plays out almost as an appendices to the traditional biopic... yet, thanks to the music of Ludwig Göransson and editing by Jennifer Lame, it moves like this insanely kinetic action thriller instead.

The ending stretch feels almost ~too~ trite and neat though, it must be said. Although maybe I'm tarnished by a feeling that no movie should depend on the cripplingly irritating overacting of Rami Malek to play last-minute 'saviour'.

Cillian Murphy is frankly outstanding here and whilst most critics have the Best Supporting Actor Oscar locked for Robert Downey Jr (who's brilliant and who's Lewis Strauss receives a 'kiss off' by Nolan here that almost feels like a Marvel Cinematic Universe esque tease for a sequel about Strauss arranging the JFK assassination!) it would be good to see Matt Damon get some recognition here as his General Groves very nearly steals the whole movie with very little.

The casting is so sumptous overall that every scene induces a "Hey! That's..." as the likes of Kenneth Branagh, Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, David Krumholtz, Matthew Modine, Benny Safdie, Jason Clarke, Michael Angarano, Jack Quaid, Josh Peck, Olivia Thirlby, Macon Blair, Tom Conti, James D'Arcy, David Dastmalchian, Dane DeHaan, Alden Ehrenreich, Tony Goldwyn, Alex Wolff, James Remar, James Urbaniak and (is it a spoiler to say?) Gary Oldman as Harry S. Truman roll out to 'play' for one or two minutes.

It's the sort of movie so stacked and packed even at 3 hours that it puts Emily Blunt (as Katherine "Kitty" Oppenheimer) in such an undercooked and underdeveloped role you wonder why they cast a 'star' in it... until that clearance hearing scene near the end where she goes and delivers the impact of a... well... an atomic bomb and you think to yourself "Oh. That's why they cast Emily Blunt!"

It's a gorgeous-looking - Hoyte van Hoytema's cinematography is luscious - cinematic achievement by Christopher Nolan, where his visual ambition and clinical cinematic technique have really come together once again to remind you the term "modern great" as a filmmaker is well earned.

2. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

A "great time" - seeing as the film itself had my beloved GAME NIGHT's Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley at the helm - perhaps. But a resoundingly delightful time that left me instantly eager for more of these movies and DEFINITELY future revisits of this one? I'm shocked at just how brilliant this was.

I can't believe that one of my favourite films of the year is a 'fantasy heist action comedy adventure' based on the infamous tabletop role-playing game.

Especially considering I've never played nor have any frame of reference / interest towards the tabletop game (my sole DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 'knowledge' stems from the 1980s cartoon series - which gets a pretty terrific nod here!) and one-third of the cast is made up of actors (Michelle Rodriguez and Regé-Jean Page) I can't normally stand.

I've been a big Chris Pine fan for a long time now and his performance in this only increases the fandom. And I've flat-out crushed on Sophia Lillis since IT and she's pretty tremendous (if a little underserved) here. The whole cast - yeah, including Rodriguez - are pretty wonderful with Hugh Grant clearly having a grand ol' time, a "big star" mid-movie cameo that'll only land depending on your opinion of this diversive 'talent' and Justice Smith very nearly stealing the movie out from under Pine.

This thing is built within the framework of a marriage between THE PRINCESS BRIDE and the aforementioned GAME NIGHT. It's ostensibly LORDS OF THE RINGS meets OCEAN'S 11; a series of ever escalating challenges and heists that are thrillingly executed within a film that's very, very, VERY funny. The opening prologue is a complete statement of intent ("Where's Jonathan?") that tells you exactly the movie you're going to get.

Killers of the Flower Moon / Godzilla: Minus One

Simply astonishing to indulge in - there's such a deft, surprising delicacy to elements of Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon that's all the more astounding considering the abhorrent subject matter.

That comes mainly from the performance Lily Gladstone provides this film with. In a sea of tremendous work - and by God it's both magnificent to see Robert DeNiro be great again and for Leonardo DiCaprio to finally do something in my eyes that lives up to his [overstated] reputation - she is working on some other stratospheric level.

Comments about the length by some don't resonate with me. I certainly didn't feel it, necessarily. It's probably the length it needs to be to do justice to the masterful source material its adapted, deliver a legitimate love story (of which, don't be fooled by its toxicity, this is), a film of weighted historical and cultural context AND a true life / true crime procedural.

It's surprisingly less gratuitous than you'd probably expect too. Especially considering we're in the hands of our greatest living filmmaker, someone who's never shied away from presenting us with absolute violence of an uncompromised nature.

There's also these splashes of jet black comedy occasionally popping up too - like the horribly bleak but darkly funny scene in which one henchman asks a lawyer about whether adopting then killing his Osage wife's kids would make him a benefactor of their riches. When the lawyer rightly points out it sounds like he's confessing to planning child murders he replies not unless the lawyer's answer would be affirmative.

This is a film that consumes you. It pulls you in and drags you down - you're in the presence of pure evil and weak character, and Scorsese expertly holds you there so escape feels as impossible as justice must have to the Osage.

It's very easy to 'throw around' the term "masterpiece" when it comes to Martin Scorsese. Mainly because the fucker keeps effortlessly making 'em. But by crikey this really is one.

Equally majestic as a piece of cinema, but in an entirely different form and genre is Takashi Yamazaki's Godzilla: Minus One.

By concentrating on making an interesting drama with genuinely well-etched characters (that just so happens to have a giant radioactive monster passing through intermittently) equal to a barnstorming blockbuster creature feature (that allows itself to be infected with enthralling drama and character development), this steps up in the year of the Godzilla franchise’s 70th year to take the position as its best entry [by a considerable distance] in its illustrious history.

Buzzing with some of the best set-pieces of the year soundtracked to a thumping and all-consuming score by Naoki Sato, there’s genius in recalibrating a Godzilla movie – of all things – in order to develop an incredibly touching human drama and social commentary about what makes a family, what is the true definition of patriotism and courage, what real service to one’s country presents as and how to find air to breathe / the will to go on in a post-war Japan where unrelenting despair hangs in the atmosphere wherever your head turns and ‘fear’ manifests itself as a skyscraper-sized lizard-of-sorts.

We know we’re being played with the cute kid and the manipulative makeshift family relations, but that doesn’t stop it being wonderful. The marriage of sincere impacts caused by war and loss with sci-fi fantasy (but no less tense) fantasy action shouldn’t work, but they very much do. This thing is firing on multiple levels and it succeeds across the board to stand as the best blockbuster of the year.

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Here's a Letterboxd link for this whole thing if you're that way inclined.

Tell your mum I said hello.

See you next year...

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