Apparently for a long time I made an effort to avoid popular Hollywood productions so much that I sometimes run into titles that I am wholly unfamiliar with. So here we have a Mangold with Tom Cruise Cameron Diaz.
Cruise plays Roy Miller whom his employer, the CIA, sees as a rogue agent that needs to be apprehended. Of course Miller is an uncatchable supersoldier. During his operation he runs into car mechanic June Havens (Diaz) and the two are forced to stay together.
Cruise is actually pretty funny and pokerface hitman and Diaz basically only has to look pretty. The result is a highly amusing action film. The story is a bit… well… though.
I was looking through Netflix looking for some light entertainment, aiming at an action comedy or something. Then “Barbie” was suggested. Of course I had heard of the film, but I never really thought about what it would be like. Probably just some teeny popcorn film. Action comedy, really?
Well no! Then again, neither it was what I initially expected it to be. Sure, you get a view in the pink fantasy world of little girls with annoyingly happy stages, songs and scenes. Every girl is called “Barbie”, every man is “Ken”.
One Barbie (played by Margot “Harlequin Jones” Robbie) has thoughts of death and what is worse: her heels touched the ground. To find out why things are no longer perfect in Barbieland, she sets out to the real world to find out what is wrong with the girl who is playing with her.
Barbie and a Ken (Ryan Gosling) step out of their fantasy world and encounter our own society in which it are not the girls who rule, but men do. Even the executive board of the Barbie franchise are all men. Real life is nothing like the world that they know and Gerwig used this thought to make a constant flow of criticism to modern living and society. That sure was an element that I did not expect.
In basis, the film is quite annoying with its happy, pink world. It appears that it is crammed with ‘inside information’ that eludes me. Limited edition clothing sets, deleted characters, etc. so it is probably a lot of fun for Barbie fans. As we saw there is an undertone that is at times to clearly portrayed that the viewer cannot ignore it. This makes the film ‘serious’ at the same time.
Not my kind of film, but neither what I thought this would be. (An no, not an action comedy.)
Val Kilmer (R.I.P.) is John Patterson, an Irish engineer who is hired to build a bridge in Africa, a continent that he always dreamed of going to.
He takes the train to where the railroad stops and where the bridge should be built. There is an entire village of workers which are both of African and Indian descent. Patterson soon gets the situation in order and things go remarkably according to plan. There are some problems though.
The main problem is that the camp is constantly attacked by a lion who drags away workers in the night. Patterson shoots it on his first day, but soon again workers are dragged out of the camp at night. Workers start to leave the camp out of fear. Patterson comes up with different plans to deal with the situation, but all to no avail.
Then Charles Remington (Michael Douglas) is hired, a lion-hunter who works with a local tribe. By then it is clear that there are actually two lions and not just any. They are so cunning and ruthless that they are nicknamed The Ghost and The Darkness.
The film is a descent look into clashing cultures of past times and the mysterious lion attacks make the film into a thriller of sorts.
I had thought that a Scandinavian series about Scandinavian mythology would have had their sources better. Every episode opens with what is supposed to be an encyclopaedia quote. There you have things like: “Tyr is the God of war, he lost his hand in battle”. Right. And why would you give the ‘pater familias’ of the giants, the name of a son of Odin (Vidar)? But, there are also elements that are somewhat amusing when you know the myths.
A mother and her two sons move back to the small town where the father of the family passed away. The village has the unimaginable name “Edda”. The small town is largely dependent on a rich family with a metal factory, which -as you soon learn- is led by giants.
One of the adolescent sons, “Magne” soon develops ‘superpowers’. There is a suggestion that he is in some way a God. His brother amusingly develops genderbending traits which easily connects him to another Norse God. Other funny details are the way in which the bloodbrothership between Odin and Loki takes place and a tapeworm that grows out to be the Midgard serpent.
On and off, Magne takes and leaves the role of being a God and with or without a team he sets out after the giants. Allegiances change, there is the usual adolescent (overdone) drama, whiny kids and often fairly shallow use of the myths. There are some contemporary themes woven into the story, such as environmental problems.
The series are not all bad, but they are certainly not great either. Especially the final episode is very poor.
An oldie, obviously based on the Decamerone of Boccaccio (1330-1375). The book contains 100 stories, the film only a handful.
The book is infamous for its criticism of the Church and the licentiousness of the stories. Still, it is regarded as the highlight of Italian literature.
The film is a view into old Italian film making, spoken in the director’s accent, with gritty characters, humor and of course sex, but not as much as some descriptions of the film have it.
When a F.F. Coppola is rated only 4.7 on IMDb.com, there has got to be something with it, right? Is it not commercial enough?
Let me immediately say that I quite like “Megalopolis”. It is indeed quite pomp in setup and execution, but perhaps it is Coppola’s critique of American culture that costs him internet points.
American culture is compared to ancient Roman culture, a culture that collapsed at its peak and American culture seems to head in the same direction. To tell his story, Coppola transposed the story of Rome to a future America, New York to be more specific.
The major of New York is Cicero, his main opponent is the visionaire Cesar Catilina. Cesar has big plans for the city. A large part is whiped out for a green and social new part of the city. Those in power have more interest is keeping their power and their decadent life-style. When the daughter of the major starts to work for Cesar initially tongue-in-cheek, she starts to understand what he is after and what his reasons are.
The historic-futuristic setting is not never seen before, but also not entirely uncommon. The pomp goes with the message. All in all I find “Megalopolis” an interesting watch.
A positive surprise. Clicking through Netflix for something to watch, I found what I thought was an old thriller. It is perhaps a bit of an old style thriller, but it is fairly knew.
The black Terry is driven off his bike when on his way to bail out a nephew. The other party is a police car and soon the money that Terry had in his bag for the bail, is confiscated. Terry has walked into a swamp of a corrupt local law enforcement.
But Terry is not just any commoner, he is an elite mariner who calmly sets out to set right the wrongs of the community where he happened to bike into. Rather than making a hip supersoldier shootout film, Saulnier created a slow thriller with an interesting story, a descent atmosphere and slowly rising tension. Not bad at all.
Can it be done? Making a comedy about World War II? Based on the diaries of Winston Churchill even? Well yes, Ritchie pulled it off.
Germany is rapidly conquering Europe and they control both the land and the sea. Their submarines are a manace to allied forces who have no answer to the U-boots. Then a daring plan develops.
The Germans appear to transport almost of their supplies with one ship and an elaborate plan involving ‘difficult people’ is forged to sink that very ship in its African port, in order to take out the U-boots for a considerable time.
With amusing dialogues, a lot of fighting and shooting, a story that appears have been true, we get a peak into the development of the James Bond stories (!). Indeed, a WWII story can be told with humour!
Timothée “Paul Atreides” Chalamet is Bob Dylan (1941-). Mangold shows a short period in Dylan’s life. As a prospective singer/songwriter he comes in contact with Pete Seeger (an overly friendly looking Edward Norton) and he rolls into the popular American folk music scene. Dylan found folk too limiting from the start, but he made a flying start and is soon the new star within the genre.
His succes sky rockets in a period he is still inventing himself. He goes from typical folk, to more politically themed lyrics and then starts to experiment with his sound, to the dislike of people who want to stick to ‘pure’ folk music. In this ‘coming of age’ proces, Dylan finds different lovers.
Just before I saw the film, I was reading a very critical review in the major Dutch film media “Filmkrant”. The reviewer wondered what the film is about. Dylan’s break with folk music? His escapades? The film tries too hard to be on the train of overly dramatised biopics of famous people.
Perhaps this is true. You will learn only a few things about Dylan, but the film stops before he became really successful. It is amusing to run into an equally rebellious Johnny Cash (perhaps the next subject for a similar film?), get an idea of the American folk scene and its popularity. Perhaps it is best to see the film just as a peak into a short period of Dylan’s life. Formative years for sure and therefor of some interest.
