Zyzyfer wrote:Baywatch, now that was a terrible film. I gave up about halfway through and let it keep playing while I did some chores. I feel like I would need to be under the influence of something to appreciate it at all.
That is probably true
Tried comedy
Life but just wasn't clicking so we switched to
Love & Death, one can see how the jokes in that worked on paper but too often the dialogue or the delivery killed the joke. Tried
America Ultra, just weren't interested in the main pairing with Jesse Eisenberg seeming younger then I think they meant,
God Own's Country was well made and nice to see Yorkshire accents but we were not drawn in.
Watched full film, Yorgos Lanthimos's psychological horror
The Killing of A Sacred Deer. Premise: Cardiac surgeon Steven Murphy (Colin Farrell) befriends young Martin (Barry Keoghan) and invites him to meet his family, doctor wife Anna (Nicole Kidman) and children Kim (Raffey Cassidy)+Bobby (Sunny Suljic). Naturally this being a Lanthimos film, things go wrong...
This is very much within the director's style, the odd style of speaking and characters direct ways of thinking that works to highlight humanity through the surreal, getting very good performances out of cast, a very surreal style meshing with ultra realism like the depiction of sex or the hospital feeling like a real hospital rather then the usual TV/film style hospitals. The characters were intresting, I like the dynamics between husband and wife, between parents and their children, between Martin and members of the family, enjoyed watching the story unfold and characters making human decisions.
This lacks a little something of his best films. Some of the way the plot unfolds is a little chaotic and confusing in a way I don't think is meant, the set up perhaps takes too much time (and one wonders what the point of one character
is after the end) which is time that then can't be used to explore some of the more intresting parts of the second half fully. I also don't think it explores the reflection on humanity enough, it shows it in glimpses then moves on.
Me: 6.5, Sis: 7.0
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Watched
Spiderman: Homecoming, I had liked his and Aunt May's cameo in Civil War. Given the third "first Spiderman film", felt Marvel were clever in the way they worked to make it different. A younger spiderman, school a far bigger part of his life, friends beyond love interest+Osborne, incorporating it heavily into wider Avengers world, not doing origin story (thank goodness). Also in a superhero franchise full of big adventures, going for something more ground level and how superheroes being around impact others gives this film a different perspective to the MCU films.
There is a lot I liked. The school stuff is a lot of fun, there is humour, I liked the characters with Zendaya providing a lot of humour as Michelle, a nice romantic chemistry with Liz (Laura Harrier), likeable best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon), it is fun when Peter Parker is with them and I hope they come back. The school also has fun with "how does the Avengers being around" impacts education system and students, some nods to the wider world there, great opening. The Ironman stuff works well on screen but one wonders if it could have been done differently, it is an amusing film.
Marvel has rightly been hammered down the years for its villains, this one breaks their usual mould of "hire good actor, give no development time outside of confrontations with team awesome and setting plan evil.". This time, they actually put the work in, they find screen time for the baddies, they give them a proper arc. Funnily enough, it works. They make team bad ground level villains, they get their own screen time which allows a team to built up just enough and the big bad to really be developed, it shows how they became bad guys, throwing a question back the audience
, provides bits of humour. Michael Keaton performs well which helps but so much was done to flesh his character out, lacks the flamboyance to be up there with Loki and Ultron but is far above the majority of Marvel baddies.
However we were disappointed with Aunt May, at times we wondered if Marisa Tomei had been replaced, she was rarely in it and didn't seem like the one we saw before. She barely has two good scenes and one of those is about five seconds long. The other disappointment is the first half of the Spiderman bits. There are plenty of good individual scenes, including exploring his inexperience (not as much on that front as one might have expected) but I found that every time it switched from other scenes (school/Stark/baddies) to Spiderman in the field, it dipped. Why? Pacing was off in those scenes, leaving them slightly too long, Tom Holland couldn't lift the film by himself, the quips didn't land and humour via action fell flat. I did feel Spiderman scenes were better when he had a character to bounce off, leading to humour and helped expose the character's inexperience. It did get better in the second half, pacing was decent and Spiderman had more chance to interact with others but the flagging first half stayed in the head
Me: 6.5, Sis: 7.0
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Watched Sofia Coppola's adaptation of
the Breguiled, had watched the original by
Eastwood/Don Siegel. Premise: Yankee soldier John McBurney (Colin Farrell) is injured but rescued by young Amy (Oona Laurence) and taken to a Confederate boarding school for girls/young ladies. This will end well.
That Farell and Nicole Kidman are leads again was an odd coincidence.
If the first film could be described as a horror with erotic charge, this is a straight drama, short at 90 minutes. For first half this went nicely enough for me, my sister wasn't pulled in. I do feel that while the lighting chosen gives a sense of the times, it does hamper the film somewhat as it makes it hard to get a fully clear view of the cast at times. As a drama? The time means there is a lack of depth in every character bar possibly headmistress Martha (Nicole Kidman), John is never really explored (he is a bit all things to all people) and relies on a good performance, there are some nice moments of how a unknown male in their midst after so long impacts the group but wish there had been more.
There are partnerships with John that work, his befriending Amy like a friendly uncle makes for some charming scenes, he provides a platform to Martha (Nicole Kidman) to get inside her head and there is nice chemistry there. The only other major character (Amy is not a major character) is the teacher Edwina (Kirsten Dunst) who has some great moments with Martha showing their relationship. Unfortunately the scenes with John are poor, there is no chemistry, John's dialogue is so heavy handed it undermines the scenes. I assume Elle Fanning was meant to have a bigger role with Alicia but all she gets is little seconds here or there, Fanning does a good job to make those moments work but it leaves her a very badly underwritten character.
The film had already been running out of steam by time it switches path. Key moment, within the context of this movie, makes no sense for the characters
. Characters make some odd decisions, the lack of depth for John hinders things, there are one or two nice scenes but it has drifted.
Both: 6.0
