WALL-E (2008)

USA
directed by: Andrew Stanton
written by: Andrew Stanton, Jim Reardon + Andrew Stanton (story), Pete Docter (story)
starring: Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin
comment: 25th November, 2017

-"I don't wanna survive. I wanna live!"

I very much appreciate the immaculate and precise combination of probably the most cynical and the most naive stuff american creators can risk putting in a film "for children". Despite WALL-E being that kind of protagonist who is so nice that he's almost boring, one has to admire his ability to inspire and gently point the humans and robots alike towards self-awareness and self-realization. Perhaps WALL-E himself is not important so much as an interesting (or uninteresting) character, but rather as a personification of ideas explored in the film narrative. So I grew to like him and the film and of course I cried, mainly when Also Sprach Zarathustra started playing.

West Side Story (1961)

USA
directed by: Jerome Robbins, Robert Wise
written by: Ernest Lehman + Jerome Robbins (play), William Shakespeare (play)
starring:  Natalie Wood, Rita Moreno, George Chakiris
comment: 22nd November, 2017

Looking at myself in the mirror today, it's clear that I managed to overcome the pure undiluted hatered I had towards "classical" musicals (although from all those made before the year 2000 I still truly like only Jesus Christ Superstar). I'm not sure if that's a character development worth a pat on the back, but given that thanks to that I managed to quite enjoy an unbiased repeat viewing of West Side Story, maybe it is.

One of the undeniable positives of the film is the creative use of dancing as a means of communication and demonstration of characters backgrounds (and not just as a pretty, meaningless ornament - see my recent angry review of vanity in La La Land). Here, music and dance help the hooligans to engage non-verbally and with a clear message and universal understandability. And isn't that all we really want from films? It is for me.

I am also extremely satisfied by the dominant colour palette (purple, crimson, orange and turquoise forever), because often with films that are widely regarded as visually beautiful I get the feeling that their colours either turn my stomach inside out or are just simply tacky and illogical (such as the trendy desaturised blue grays - see for example Wan's horror flicks - or tawdry primer blues, reds, greens and yellows of Avatar and other mainstream "exotics" - that's one palette abomination that never stops to haunt me). West Side Story also helped me to discover the painter Robert Vickery and his work full of light and shadow, so a big thank you is due here.

The one thing I could ironically imagine this film without is the whole main Romeo and Juliet allusion, or should I say the two main lovers and their antics together. Their chemistry is weak and unconvincing, their characters are not particularly distinctive or interesting, their songs are the most boring parts of the film for me, and their love is not even the main point of the film in my eyes. I was at my happiest when it was a lively drama about all immigrants being equal in America, except when some are more equal than others.

Avatar (2009)

USA/United Kingdom
written and directed by: James Cameron
starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Michelle Rodriguez
comment: 11th November, 2017

Originally, I had prepared notes for a very long and detailed list of everything that upset me about Avatar. But then I watched WALL-E, teared up a bit and realized that those are basically the same films and that where Andrew Stanton did everything right, James Cameron did everything wrong. I also realized that I, as a viewer, a self-appointed critic and, last but not least, a human being, should not dedicate so much of my attention to hateful stuff, but rather I should happily cry about things that are worth it and that's it. So I'll limit myself to describing only the most fatal flaw I see in this Cameron's creation, and of course that is the screenplay. Because a fundamentally flawed script  is the only answer to the question whey didn't I enjoy a film about my two favourite subjects: 1. "People, what a bunch of bastards." and 2. "Our civilisation is doomed."

Had Cameron built a functional dramatic and emotional arc for his film, I might have had (I hope that's the corret grammar) forgiven everything I found poor and shallow. But Jake's story bears no sings of thorough design and/or execution (because the authors rely on the weakest means of telling a story, such as training montages (the only acceptable training montage is found in Zoolader - "relax and kill the prime minister of Malaysia", every other training montage signifies weak storytelling and that's a statement I firmly stand by) or unnecessarily explanatory voice-over diary. And that's why I cannot forget and forgive the bad stuff about Avatar, but I am rather inclined to percieve even the few good things as belittled and clueless. So fare thee well and should you wonder what will I do while Cameron supposedly coughs up four more of these (was?! - german for what?!), know this: I'll be rewatching "Fantastic Planet" and "Princess Mononoke" for the seventh time.

The Jungle Book (2016)

USA/United Kingdom
directed by: Jon Favreau
written by: Justin Marks + Rudyard Kipling (book)
starring: Neel Sethi, Bill Murray, Ben Kingsley
seen: 18th October, 2017

The bravest thing they could do to make me respect this rendition of this particular fictional universe would be to make it less fictional by having the animals behave like animals, ergo have them NOT TALKING (and also not spontaneously jazz singing, wtf?!). The overall realism of the visual element practicaly beggs for it. Most impressive are the moments without spoken dialogue (helping the elephants, stealing the fire). Once the animals start talking using human voices, suddenly it feels like so much stupider film than it could have been without it.

As a child I always preferred the "chilling, harsh and real" stuff in films (even in those targeted at kids) and I did not liked being talked down. Children are capable of understanding actions and infering meanings if we let them. It makes me wanna cry that they missed such a great opportunity to make a badass jungle story. Use the explanatory voiceover if you must (if the studio underestimates the intelligence of its audiences that much), but make the communication between heroes in their authentic, real language.

And to conclude my cry I must say that I really appreciate what Jon Favreau said about his approach: "In Kipling's time, nature was something to be overcome. Now nature is something to be protected."

Blade Runner (1982)

USA/Hong Kong/United Kingdom
directed by: Ridley Scott
written by: Hampton Fancher, David Webb Peoples + Philip K. Dick (book)
starring: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young
comment: 13th October, 2017

The emotional strain of this film is bafflingly baffling to me. If I were to describe the subject matter, it would sound like all the things I like: Sci-fi about the end of the world (humanity), love found at unexpected places, room filled with terrifying dolls, emptied narration, a robot owl, crying Rutger Hauer, I mean, a lot of theoretical fun. But when I actually watch it, none of that makes actuall sense to me. I don't know what I'm supposed to find enjoyable about that or if it's expected of me to root for some of those bastards? Deckard seems like a simple minded rapist and other characters just sit around like those terrifying dolls, nobody seems real and most of the encounters feel like a rehersed act for the camera, not like an inevitable situation pushed by a well-built fictional world.

Instead of tears vanishing in rain I am left with questions like how did the gun-toting replicant got out of a federal building full of with agents? How can the true origin of a manufactured mechanical being only be determined by psychoanalysis? If the Earth is indeed a place where only the sick and poor who cannot afford a relocation to a "brave new world" stay, why are the replicants forbidden to roam around? And not that I really care about answers to these questions. I don't. And the final and maybe the biggest disappointment was that the highly praised soundtrack was a letdown for me as well.

Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

USA/United Kingdom/Hungary/Canada
directed by: Denis Villeneuve
written by: Hampton Fancher, Michael Green + Philip K. Dick (book)
starring: Ryan Gosling, Sylvia Hoeks, Ana de Armas
seen on 11th October, 2017

I will have to watch it again some time to find out if I can replicate the feeling of watching it in well-souding cinema hall. (And sadly also in 3D which I found out to be completely useless, I'm not a child to need reminding that things in the front are in the front, and that those in the back are in the back, but that has nothing to do with the quality of the film itself.) I liked it a lot during this cinema visit, a lot more that I liked the original Blade Runner (which to me is a poster child for a "meh" movie). I found Blade Runner 2049 to be the perfect combination of intellectual and commercial entertainment.

In "Arrival" I was bothered by the naive and foreseeable story about relationships between characters that do not have enough time to develop themselves naturally. The story here is as "empty" as possible, sometimes to the point that I was forgetting what were we actually following along with the character(s), but, oh boy, did I like watching it and listening to it, and, let's face it, feel a bit of that existential loneliness.

The main thing that bothered me here was Jared Leto, he is at that point in his career where he only shows off for the camera without trying to give his characters some kind of inner consistency. Sylvia Hoeks was indeed diabolical and yeah, there were more proper female than male characters. I guess it's a rising trend and as long as it makes sense like it does here it makes me happy. But I will have to watch it again to find out if the good feeling wasn't just some kind of weird cinema hallucination.

The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)

United Kingdom
directed by: Nicolas Roeg
written by: Paul Mayersberg + Walter Tevis (book)
starring: David Bowie, Rip Torn, Candy Clark
seen: 6th October, 2017

I was under the impression that nothing sounds like the potentially best film in history than "a psychedelic documentary about the arrival of the reverend David Bowie and assortment of blessings and curses amongst Earthlings". Sadly, my hopes were not met. The first fifteen minutes gave an excellent example of surrealism being used in the service of experimental sci-fi. But the rest of the film slowly sank into an incoherent, uninteresting and amateurish stagger that could end in any given moment or keep going forever, a.k.a. my desire for meaning and purpose in storytelling was overwhelmingly dissatisfied.

This film gave me same vibes as Easy Rider = the drugged overconfidence that "the substance" will reveal itself without a targeted effort from film-makers themselves and the connection to the time of inception that makes it for me, removed from the seventies zeitgeist, largely incomprehensible. In the end, the one thing that sticks with me the most is my discovery of the origin of the brilliantly opulent ping pong autumn forest wallpaper room (including real dead leaves on the fake lawn carpet) that appeared in the exteded cut of Snyder's Watchmen.