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Reviews
Babylon (2022)
Epic in so many ways
Depending on your experience, you'll find it Ridiculously Glorious of Gloriously Riduculous.
The over-the-topness dazzles in the first half, then weighs you down in the second, likely the purpose of the movie. Where the characters are dinosaurs meeting their own meteor and trying (failing) to adjust. The world changes and they're not in it.
Incredible photography and choregraphy. Insanely good acting. Margot Robbie has another crazy character to complement her Harley. Toby Maguire personifies the devil and has a Joker moment. Undeserved box office figures probably due to poor timing with an audience that hadn't gone back to the movies yet.
The King's Man (2021)
Movie for the post-truth era
Sure the story of the 3 inbred cousins makes for a nice tidy symmetrical origin of WWI but lost in that rewriting of history is the pent-up tension between France and Germany. That was the actual tinderbox.
But Brits gotta Brexit their way into storytelling. Gone are France and Italy. It's as if France were the NPC of this "origins story". They provided the landscape but nothing else, per this mess of a movie. And Italy lost as many people as the Brits, but are not even a footnote.
Sure enough, it's only entertainment, right? But all these pieces of entertainment build a culture. For instance if you ask today who sacrificed the most in WWII, very people will tell you it's the soviets. Because the story wasn't told from their prospective in Hollywood.
Borrego (2022)
Pretty decent desert chase movie
They did an excellent job making a 90s flick that you'd watch on a lazy Saturday morning.
It has the typical ingredients of the genre: hot scientist fleeing her demons in desert solitude, the tough tomboy teenager saving the day, the ruthless cartel operative, the unlucky mule, the selfless sheriff. All of this shot in the beautiful... Spanish desert (!). Then again the landscapes looked more like Death Valley than Anza Borrego or Salton Sea. Still a good job by the photography and location departments.
What/If (2019)
Another Cinderella story from the creator of Revenge
Ah, guilty pleasures... You have all the ingredients of a well rounded telenovella: the perfect bodied 30-somethings with rags-to-riches stories, the conniving evil mother figure, the intrigues, the unrealistic depiction of life of average people in better than average settings. All of this with a gender twist where women are the writers of their own narratives and men just there to provide context and sub-plots.
But what this series lacks in realism it overcomes in the quality of the plots as well as acting. Renee Zellweger is her brilliant self, having successfully transformed her ingenue persona we love into this woman-in-charge chess player. The rest of the cast is well picked, if a bit stereotypical, and seriously, with around 15 fewer years and much lower body fat than what you see in the actual tech/VC world.
Don't Look Up (2021)
It's all about climate change
A very harsh look at where we are now. In the story, the media sells the hard science as an "opinion" that transforms a non-political issue into a us-vs-them fight. Politicians care more about money and power. A danger becomes a money opportunity (shovels! Rare earths!). And the tech world naively thinks we can outsmart the catastrophe.
Great ensemble cast. Leo manages to play the aloof science guy. J-Law pulls off the brainy rebel style and is brilliant all around. Meryl Streep does her own version of "you know who" while Jonah Hill does a superb Jr impersonation. Special mention of Cate Blanchett incredible in the role of the stereotypical blonde anchor. Chalamet and Grande?... the hot stuff there mostly for the names but I get why they would want Gen Zs in there.
Silk Road (2021)
Good story - dull movie
When you start with a great true crime story that involves 20-somethings way out of their depth you either end up with Alpha Dog or Silk Road.
Good intentions, no momentum, no rythm, and don't get me started with these 3-second stills at the end of some key scenes.
I hope they redo this movie with Emile Hirsch and a better script.