Meewella | Critic

According to P

Tag: Benedict Wong

QuickView: Nine Days (2020)

“Good memories, bad memories, they’re all just the same right now. It still hurts…”

Will

Japanese Brazilian writer-director Edson Oda has a bold and distinctive voice in his debut feature, a contemplative piece about the nature of living as a human. In an isolated house on a beach, a fastidious man named Will interviews souls for a chance at life on Earth, his living room filled with a wall of CRT televisions screens showing real-time first-person perspectives of those he previously selected. It is the ultimate cinematic contrivance to experience others’ lives through an audiovisual medium, but the archaic technology (Will also records and rewatches his favourite moments on VHS tapes) assists in crafting an otherworldly suspension of disbelief. The primary issue with Nine Days’ conceit is that souls without the experience of life cannot provide meaningful answers to Will’s questions; rather, the selection process is background noise to illustrate Will’s own thought processes — hurt by his own life experience, he seeks those tougher and less sensitive than himself — whilst not really engaging with the inherent cruelty of judging others’ right to live. Winston Duke’s performance radiates the quiet pain of a man hurt by life and unable to forgive himself for perceived failure. However, it is Zazie Beetz that draws in the audience with her intriguing portrayal of a new soul — guileless, and yet intuitively understanding life. Nine Days is likely to strike a chord with certain viewers who find their worldview affected. I found no such profundity, but I would be very content to experience further meditations that Oda may wish to design.

7/10

QuickView: Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness poster

“You break the rules and become a hero. I do it and I become the enemy. That doesn’t seem fair.”

Wanda Maximoff

Like Tony Stark, Stephen Strange seems to be caught in a repeating loop of identical character development — recognising his hubris and learning humility — only to forget it all by the next outing. In Multiverse of Madness this lesson comes from discovering the destruction his counterparts have inadvertently unleashed on multiple realities. The MCU has demonstrated both its ability to produce all manner genre films and the limitations of doing so within a shared universe; this is perhaps most true of Multiverse of Madness, which allows Sam Raimi to indulge his penchant for horror but is unable fully to commit to this darker tone. At its best, a fun, fan-service middle act sequence becomes Final Destination for alternate reality superheroes. At its worst, it is a clash of tonally indistinct and wildly fluctuating horror elements that seem unable to identify their target audience. Wanda is misused, shoehorned into the role of weakly-motivated single-minded villain, with much character development (or deconstruction) occurring off-screen after the events of the WandaVision miniseries, primarily for a sleight of hand reveal. Doctor Strange‘s primary strength was its kaleidoscopic mirror universe visual effects that felt genuinely novel. Whilst Multiverse of Madness manages this to a lesser extent with its universe-hopping, its creativity never reaches the exuberant freedom of the recently released Everything Everywhere All At Once. There is a sufficiently enjoyable adventure underneath it all, but it’s disappointing from the director behind the still-excellent human stories of Spider-man 2.

5/10

MCU Phase 4: Black Widow | Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings | Eternals | Spider-man: No Way Home | Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness | Thor: Love and Thunder | Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

QuickView: Annihilation (2018)

“As a psychologist, I think you’re confusing suicide with self-destruction. Almost none of us commit suicide, and almost all of us self-destruct.”

Dr Ventress

Another thoughtful science fiction story from Alex Garland, Annihilation has much in common with Monsters, featuring a group of humans journeying through the “shimmer”, an area abandoned following an extraterrestrial impact. Garland’s unwillingness to compromise is to be praised, particularly with a female team of scientists filling most of cast, but unfortunately he fails to produce characters of more than sketches. Nevertheless, the narrative has a surprisingly effective payoff and the film offers something to muse regarding the beauty and fragility of DNA.

7/10

"A film is a petrified fountain of thought."

(CC) BY-NC 2003-2023 Priyan Meewella

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