Meewella | Critic

According to P

Author: |[P]| (page 2 of 57)

QuickView: Joyland (2022)

31 December 2023 | | Reading Time: 2 minutes | 0 Comments

“Sometimes I feel like I have nothing that’s my own. Everything feels borrowed or stolen from someone else.”

Haider

Pakistani writer/director Saim Sadiq’s Joyland is on its surface about a young married man who becomes involved with a trans woman. In fact the scope of Joyland is far wider: this is a film about freedom and the various ways that its characters are confined, whether physically or emotionally, by the patriarchal structures of their society. Shame forces Haider to conceal his job as a dancer and his sexuality, his wife Mumtaz finds herself forced to give up a career and stuck at home, and even his overbearing father rejects potential companionship out of a sense of duty. Biba, a trans dancer, seems to have broken free (despite mistreatment by others) but even she demonstrates internalised homophobia. The subject matter initially led to Joyland being banned from release in its home country before its artistic merits were properly appreciated, ultimately being embraced as Pakistan’s official entry to the Academy Awards. Although its themes are bold, Haider is too passive to provide an engaging protagonist, and often seems more like a vessel through whom others’ lives are impacted. Lebanese cinematographer Joe Saade captures some beautiful night-time scenes, evoking intimacy through lighting and shadow — a warm yellow glow at Haider’s home, and the exotic greens of Biba’s bedroom. As humour gives way to tragedy, the most nuanced performances are Alina Khan as Biba, by turns powerful and suppressed, and Rasti Farooq as Mumtaz, whose loyalty shifts to dreams of escape. The titular “Joyland” is a funfair, an artificial means of temporary escape that parallels Haider’s daliance with Biba, both providing a brief respite from the familial duties of the world outside.

8/10

QuickView: The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)

30 December 2023 | | Reading Time: 2 minutes | 0 Comments

“Destiny is calling.”

Mario

Where Sega’s Sonic adaptations went live action, The Super Mario Bros. Movie remains entirely animated, perhaps an unsurprising decision given the questionable 1993 adaptation starring Bob Hoskins. Taking as little creative liberty as possible with the property, Illumination have created as blandly safe a version of the Mushroom Kingdom as one could imagine, further diluted by no less than four credited directors. Although the vibrant animation is of perfectly serviceable quality (generally on par with high end videogame cutscenes), it rarely feels like we are experiencing unseen detail in these faithfully recreated characters. The backlash to Chris Pratt’s casting proves unwarranted — it is just one of many safe choices the filmmakers made (including ditching the iconic Italian accents in favour of standard American) — and although the main cast consists of high profile actors rather than professional voice actors, only Jack Black’s rock anthem-singing, incel Bowser is particularly recognisable (which also adds the most fresh characterisation). Anya Taylor-Joy’s Princess Peach is thankfully modelled on the capable Super Marios Bros. 2 Peach rather than a damsel in distress, though she is the film’s only notable female presence. The primary concession to adult viewers is the soundtrack, with unexpected choices like the Beastie Boys and a reference to Kill Bill, but the story is unlikely to engage beyond the nostalgia value of the IP (and a deeply cynical Lumalee). Younger children will likely be sufficiently entertained but older children, who will not even benefit from nostalgia, are likely to lose interest. It is understandable that Nintendo might be risk-averse with Mario’s first cinematic outting since having their fingers burned 30 years ago, but but avoiding “bad” has left The Super Mario Bros. Movie stranded in mediocrity.

5/10

QuickView: Sick of Myself (2022)

29 December 2023 | | Reading Time: 2 minutes | 0 Comments

“Narcisists are the ones who succeed.”

Signe

If last year’s Norwegian darling, The Worst Person in the World, was about a woman’s realisation that she has the capacity to be better, Sick of Myself is about the audience realising that there is no depth to which the narcissistic Signe will not sink. She is desperate to be noticed, craving even negative attention, which begins a downward spiral once she discovers that illness will attract sympathy. Naturally she uses this to test her friends’ commitment and we frequently see her fantasies about the future, including a funeral with bouncer turning away those who failed to visit her in hospital. Rather than pair Signe with a downtrodden victim, writer-director Kristoffer Borgli pairs her with a boyfriend who is nearly as self-involved, a smart decision that heightens the cynical worldview that permeates Sick of Myself. A common complaint with dark comedies is that all the characters are unlikeable, but Sick of Myself treats its own characters with an almost visceral revulsion, and the film is unrelentingly committed to seeing their actions through until it becomes disturbing. That will certainly not be to all tastes, but its edge never dulls even as its focus pulls back to cover performative activism (with a modelling agency based around disability) and natural medicine support groups (where one member deplores the “privilege” of Signe’s visible affliction). It is more often bitterly amusing than laugh-out-loud funny but, if you are sickened by the way in which modern society seems to reward sociopathy, Sick of Myself may be just what the doctor ordered.

8/10

QuickView: Broker (2022)

27 December 2023 | | Reading Time: < 1 minute | 0 Comments

“I know everything. You’re not a family.”

Hae-jin

Kore-eda Hirokazu’s skill, on display here as in Shoplifters, is presenting found families — those cleaved together by choice rather than blood — in a way that feels both natural and intimate, with an excellent cast led by Parasite’s Song Kang-ho. Broker again explores this through good-hearted criminals, in this case a pair who obtain abandonned babies and sell them to families wishing to adopt. The film’s complications arise from two angles: a mother returning to recover her baby and two police officers hunting down the illegal brokers. Kore-eda’s script is compassionate toward the varying reasons for which mothers may make the difficult decision to give up children, whilst exploring the characters’ reasons for having strong views — particularly Dong-Soo upon returning to the orphanage where he grew up. Broker is a gentle, charming film even as the audience knows it cannot end happily for everyone. The dynamic of its makeshift family is not as nuanced as Shoplifters, but Broker is still a highly effective piece of cinema as Kore-eda continues to hone his craft away from the standard fare.

8/10

QuickView: Rye Lane (2023)

26 December 2023 | | Reading Time: 2 minutes | 0 Comments

“So apparently there are two types of people in this world. The ones who wave at boats, and the ones who hate joy.”

Yas

London romcoms have been synonymous with Richard Curtis for at least two decades, but that has limited their focus to a certain demographic — Rye Lane bursts beyond those boundaries with its young black protagonists walking the streets of Peckham. Opening with an awkward first meeting, Rye Lane uses the walk-and-talk connection of Before Sunrise to excellent effect as Yas and Dom bond over bad breakups. Two thirds of the film unfolds in a single day, resting on Vivian Oparah and David Jonsson’s engaging and sympathetic performances, with a series of amusing cameos as the day plays out. Rye Lane is the feature debut of not only director Raine Allen-Miller but also cinematographer Olan Collardy, allowing them to engage in considerable visual experimentation starting from the opening overhead pan across a series of very different London bathroom stalls. Collardy deploys extreme widescreen with distinctive lens distortion that wraps the characters in the vibrant personality of Rye Lane’s South London locations. He deliberately breaks framing rules, like placing empty space behind each character’s head in certain dialogue close-ups to make them feel closer together. Allen-Miller draws clear inspiration from Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing in the way she presents her neighbourhood as its own character, but also the surrealism of Sorry To Bother You with Yas and Dom physically present as observers during flashbacks. In a year of impressive debuts from British female directors, she is certainly one to watch.

8/10

QuickView: Maestro (2023)

25 December 2023 | | Reading Time: 2 minutes | 0 Comments

“There are many things stopping me, but fear is not one of them.”

Felicia Montealegre

A musician is again the subject of Bradley Cooper’s second directorial outing, a biopic of Leonard Bernstein, the first American conductor to receive international acclaim. Although Cooper plays the titular maestro, it is Carey Mulligan who receives first billing for her powerful performance as his wife, Felicia Montealegre. Cooper uses the couple to explore the multifaceted nature of humans, the complexity of forging an identity from disparate parts, and and the strain that can place on a single partner. In his career, Bernstein refuses to be constrained, retaining his Jewish surname and embracing musical theatre composition in additional to more respected orchestral fare. Montealegre provides Bernstein with understanding and support to explore all of himself but begins to feel isolated by his lack of discretion in relationships with men. Like Oppenheimer, it now seems in vogue for biopics to eschew chronology, and Maestro jumps around repeatedly, using black and white and varied aspect ratios as the primary indicator to the audience. This structure leaves the film feeling fractured, without particularly aiding the underlying themes. Cooper again collaborates with Matthew Libatique (also Darren Aranofsky’s preferred cinematographer), who dazzles early on with his black and white composition like a face shrouded in shadow, only an eye glinting in the light. Cooper’s Bernstein is expressive under Kazu Hiro’s impressive prosthetics, and he embodies duality of the extroverted performance of the conductor (“I love people so much that it’s hard for me to be alone”) and the isolated creativity of the composer.

8/10

QuickView: Rebel Moon: Part 1 – A Child of Fire (2023)

23 December 2023 | | Reading Time: 2 minutes | 0 Comments

“I am a child of war.”

Kora

The parallels between Rebel Moon and Star Wars — both set in a galaxy ruled by an authoritarian empire challenged by a small band of rebels — are overstated and certainly not the primary issue with Zack Snyder’s space opera, which draws liberal inspiration from the past 50 years of sci-fi movies. This “Part 1” (due to be concluded next year) sets up the pleasantly small-scale stakes of a farming community facing a ticking clock to destruction, but it devolves into a collect-a-thon when Kora leaves to recruit warriors to aid their fight. It turns the film’s second act into a series of extended introductions to cookie-cutter characters, usually involving violence. An amalgamation of these scenes may have made for a bombastic trailer but laid out in full it is barely watchable. Rebel Moon’s most interesting character is the android Jimmy, a contemplative former soldier voiced by Anthony Hopkins, but once established he vanishes (the fact he may be relevant in Part 2 does little to aid this film). A villainous Ed Skrein is at least enjoying himself as a cruel and capricious officer. Disappointingly, much of the world building occurs through clunky expository monologues about Kora’s past rather than emerging organically from the story. The purpose of planet-hopping space opera should be to explore the variety offered by a vast galaxy, but Snyder’s “vision” is a series of grimy monochromatic locations that rarely feel like distinct worlds. The action is rote, save for Nemesis’s twin-bladed fight against a chimeric arachnid, and Snyder’s continuing predilection for slow-motion adds little beyond extending the running time. If Netflix is paying for “content”, there is plenty here but with little depth to any of it. Rebel Moon is not even thematically consistent, with Nemesis warning against revenge immediately followed by Kora enticing her next recruit with a promise of revenge. With the production values on display this is not Battlefield Earth bad, but it does become nearly as ponderous. Snyder recently stated that he was glad he didn’t get his wish to direct a Star Wars movie because it granted him greater creative control in Rebel Moon instead; perhaps we should all be equally glad, if not for the same reason.

4/10

QuickView: Family Switch (2023)

21 December 2023 | | Reading Time: 2 minutes | 0 Comments

“This is a situation that has never happened before.”

Jess Walker

The only new idea Netflix’s unbearably bland Christmas body-swap brings is that, rather than a pair trading places, this time it’s an entire family. The female leads deliver the most convincing performances though their characters are also better written — most will recognise the expressive Emma Myers as Wednesday Addams’ best friend, whilst Jennifer Garner brings prior body swap experience from 13 Going On 30. In one scene the family members describe their situation by referencing the titles of a dozen other body swap movies, the writers perhaps hoping that by lampshading how hackneyed the concept is, we will forgive their derivative mess of a script. Logic rarely rears its head — Wyatt’s Yale interview is inexplicably held in a classroom at his school rather than at, say, Yale — and often the shenanigans require characters to forget the basic premise, so that we can have adults engage entirely inappropriately at a teenage party or schoolkids instantly forget they think a child is a loser. The less said about the cringe-inducing scene in which the siblings (in their parents’ bodies) are goaded into kissing the better. Eventually the family are required to learn the most basic of lessons — that they do care about one another — which perhaps is an achievement since I certainly struggled to care about this collection of stock characters sketched in the broadest manner possible. Switch this out for any other body swap movie instead.

3/10

QuickView: M3gan (2022)

20 December 2023 | | Reading Time: 2 minutes | 0 Comments

“Don’t worry, Cady. I won’t let anything harm you. Ever again.”

M3gan

The inherent creepiness of a doll’s wide-eyed, expressionless gaze has inspired a litany of horror films and in any other year M3gan might have been another generic modern update to 1988’s Child’s Play, but fortuitous timing meant it released just as ChatGPT 3 captured public attention and imagination. The titular M3gan is a prototype “Model 3 Generative Android”, directly referencing the same generative algorithms that have fuelled the recent wave of A.I. products. When the designer’s niece comes to stay after a tragic accident, she and M3gan swiftly become attached, providing the film’s strongest themes regarding parental anxiety over the influence of technology in raising children. There is also interesting commentary about grief and distraction, though M3gan fumbles its subplot with a therapist who is presented as an antagonist. Whilst M3gan’s level of interactivity may be wholly unrealistic (for now), Akela Cooper’s script capitalises on the genuine concern that there is no way to understand the reason for actions created by a generative algorithm. Audiences will know exactly what to expect from M3gan’s light horror aspects. Whilst the uncanny valley is typically a concern with artificial characters, here it is an advantage — M3gan’s mere presence can be unsettling, and her unnatural movements on the attack provide body horror. Portal’s GLaDOS has evidently supplanted HAL-9000 as the touchstone for murderous A.I. voices, and her influence is evident in M3gan’s vocal distortion later in the film. M3gan is likely a product of its time rather than a horror film that will age gracefully, but for right now it is an entertaining riff on modern tech paranoia.

8/10

QuickView: Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget (2023)

19 December 2023 | | Reading Time: 2 minutes | 0 Comments

“Okay, everyone. It’s go time.”

Ginger

British stop-motion institution Aardman Animation may be best known for Wallace & Gromit but arguably its masterpiece was 2000’s Chicken Run, an inventive homage to The Great Escape with a brood of plucky chickens attempting to flee their farm. A sequel nearly a quarter of a century later is an unexpected opportunity to return to beloved characters but risks undermining the original’s pristine reputation. Dawn of the Nugget has been a serious endeavour, not only because of the time investment inherent in stop-motion but because a tragic warehouse fire in 2005 destroyed most of Aardman’s original models, meaning everything had to be built from scratch using the Chicken Run art book as a primary reference. Director Sam Fell has the requisite pedigree, having helmed Laika’s stop-motion ParaNorman as well as Aardman’s brief foray into digital animation, Flushed Away. Chicken Run was notably female-centric, and that remains the case here as Ginger and Rocky’s daughter follows in her mother’s daring footsteps. Criticisms about significant cast changes are misplaced given the passage of time and the quality remains high, with characters taking priority over the famous names — Thandiwe Newton, Zachary Levi, Bella Ramsey — behind them. Sadly the broader canvas of the sequel is less compelling than the original’s creative take on farm life, coupled with weaker humour and an entirely predictable third act. Harry Gregson-Williams returns, unfortunately without John Powell, to supply an energetic soundtrack that expands its homage into classic spy action movies. Dawn of the Nugget is a sufficiently enjoyable romp in an underappreciated art form but despite its increase in scope, when each element feels inferior to its predecessor, it is hard not to view this newer, lesser version as redundant.

6/10

Older posts Newer posts

"A film is a petrified fountain of thought."

(CC) BY-NC 2003-2023 Priyan Meewella

Up ↑