Movies watched in May
Jun. 1st, 2025 08:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessAs referred to here, I saw Thunderbolts* in the cinema. What I did not say was that a filling came out of my tooth while I was watching the trailers. Yes, I was eating a sweet at the time.
On streaming (on Prime): My Zoe. This came up in the science fiction section, so when it looked like a domestic drama (separated parents sharing custody of their daughter, Zoe, who then have to face something awful), I knew there would be more going on. There is, and I don’t want to spoil it. I’ll just say it’s intense, but judiciously handled (though I could quibble about some of the use of flashforwards and flashbacks.) The acting is seriously good from writer-director Julie Delpy, Richard Armitage, Daniel Bruhl, Gemma Arterton, Lindsay Duncan, and the kid is naturalistic. It’s dated 2021, so may not have had a UK cinema release.
She Said (on All4) is in the lineage of Spotlight (and yes, All The President’s Men), but, as the title suggests, from a female perspective. I thought the formal choices they made to foreground the survivors’ words, to show details of corridors or rooms, but nothing more, and not to show Weinstein’s face were effective, as was giving us enough details of the reporters’ personal lives to be invested in them and their investment. I don’t have strong feelings about the blending of some women playing themselves and others being represented by others. The wrongdoing revealed is horrifying and angering (and I was reminded at the top of Twohey and others reporting about Trump in this context and through the film of how NDAs are still a thing.)
I also rewatched Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning part 1 on the small screen. The action is still brilliant, but I remain annoyed by what happened to Ilsa. I noticed that there were way too many exchanges of looks between characters (there’s one key exchange between Ethan and Grace that every other character in the scene looks stupid for missing.) I was also reminded of stuff that Person of Interest and The Capture did already when it comes to fictional AI.
This was in prep for Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning (am amused that they dropped the ‘Dead Reckoning Part 2’. Am also not convinced that it will be the final final instalment if someone offers Cruise another couple of mad stunts he thinks he could pull off.) The action remains worth seeing in the cinema: the stuff in the submarine and the biplanes is heightened by knowing the man did loads of it himself. The connective tissue is weaker. There was less of the Entity, it was more about what humans would do now that we were living in the Entity’s world, and although Hunt’s plan was clear, it didn’t really stand up to too much thinking about it.
That scene in the decompression chamber between Ethan and Grace felt weirdly familial, because it seemed womblike. Esai Morales was really good, making Gabriel seem the right level of unhinged at the right moments. President Angela Basset came off as a reminder of what might have been (half the cast playing Americans were Brits, and at one point, Benji and Grace, canonically English, were pretending they were Americans, which was just bizarre.) Ooh, and I was happier with what they gave Pom Klementieff’s Paris to do in this film, although what is it with her character and the Inuit lady’s refusal to speak English?
The callbacks to the first movie (and the second with Ethan’s hair) worked better than the retconning over the rabbit’s foot (from the fourth movie), and I snorted out loud at Ethan being dubbed ‘the chosen one’ at one point. The ponderous voiceovers were ponderous, so I’d say it was a mixed bag, but repeat that the action being the best part of it.
On streaming (on Prime): My Zoe. This came up in the science fiction section, so when it looked like a domestic drama (separated parents sharing custody of their daughter, Zoe, who then have to face something awful), I knew there would be more going on. There is, and I don’t want to spoil it. I’ll just say it’s intense, but judiciously handled (though I could quibble about some of the use of flashforwards and flashbacks.) The acting is seriously good from writer-director Julie Delpy, Richard Armitage, Daniel Bruhl, Gemma Arterton, Lindsay Duncan, and the kid is naturalistic. It’s dated 2021, so may not have had a UK cinema release.
She Said (on All4) is in the lineage of Spotlight (and yes, All The President’s Men), but, as the title suggests, from a female perspective. I thought the formal choices they made to foreground the survivors’ words, to show details of corridors or rooms, but nothing more, and not to show Weinstein’s face were effective, as was giving us enough details of the reporters’ personal lives to be invested in them and their investment. I don’t have strong feelings about the blending of some women playing themselves and others being represented by others. The wrongdoing revealed is horrifying and angering (and I was reminded at the top of Twohey and others reporting about Trump in this context and through the film of how NDAs are still a thing.)
I also rewatched Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning part 1 on the small screen. The action is still brilliant, but I remain annoyed by what happened to Ilsa. I noticed that there were way too many exchanges of looks between characters (there’s one key exchange between Ethan and Grace that every other character in the scene looks stupid for missing.) I was also reminded of stuff that Person of Interest and The Capture did already when it comes to fictional AI.
This was in prep for Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning (am amused that they dropped the ‘Dead Reckoning Part 2’. Am also not convinced that it will be the final final instalment if someone offers Cruise another couple of mad stunts he thinks he could pull off.) The action remains worth seeing in the cinema: the stuff in the submarine and the biplanes is heightened by knowing the man did loads of it himself. The connective tissue is weaker. There was less of the Entity, it was more about what humans would do now that we were living in the Entity’s world, and although Hunt’s plan was clear, it didn’t really stand up to too much thinking about it.
That scene in the decompression chamber between Ethan and Grace felt weirdly familial, because it seemed womblike. Esai Morales was really good, making Gabriel seem the right level of unhinged at the right moments. President Angela Basset came off as a reminder of what might have been (half the cast playing Americans were Brits, and at one point, Benji and Grace, canonically English, were pretending they were Americans, which was just bizarre.) Ooh, and I was happier with what they gave Pom Klementieff’s Paris to do in this film, although what is it with her character and the Inuit lady’s refusal to speak English?
The callbacks to the first movie (and the second with Ethan’s hair) worked better than the retconning over the rabbit’s foot (from the fourth movie), and I snorted out loud at Ethan being dubbed ‘the chosen one’ at one point. The ponderous voiceovers were ponderous, so I’d say it was a mixed bag, but repeat that the action being the best part of it.
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Date: 2025-06-01 11:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-06-02 06:33 am (UTC)