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.