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West Side Story (2021)
I'm sorry I saw this one first
For years I had been wanting to watch the 1961 movie. I wish I did because I hated this one even though the plot (although predictable) is not bad. Acting is poor on all sides, I don't understand the accolades. It leans often on ridiculous.
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989)
Chaotic anxiety
I really wanted to like this movie. I love Christmas movies and I was ready to add this one to my favorites, considering that it has the same rating as Home Alone. Maybe watching it in 2021 isn't ideal. Maybe watching it as an Italian isn't ideal either (for the number of references of Christmas Americana). It's just not funny. The initial scenes were ok, they put a smirk on my face, typical of my Christmas-movie-watching-sessions. But that smirk quickly turned into a grimace, as the movie progressed into a disaster movie with a, dare I say, horror undertone. It's hard to explain, but if the movie ended with him murdering his entire family it wouldn't have been a shock to me. I'm gonna report a list of things that goes wrong at the end of this review, just to make my point. Which is that when I watch a Christmas movie I want to feel comfort, coziness. That doesn't mean that everything needs to go smoothly, but I don't want to feel overwhelmed with unnecessary chaos and desperation. And at the end of it, everything simply goes away, nobody seems to be affected by the hurricane that they went through. They just stop being affected by it. That's it. This is a Christmas movie that tells the story of a hurricane hitting, destroying everything in its path, and leaving.
Here's the list, in random order:
they drive off the road, he forgets the saw to take the Christmas tree home, the tree doesn't fit in the living room, it ends up breaking the windows, the Christmas lights don't work, their relatives are toxic, his cousin-in-law's family crashes the "party", bringing the grossest representation of white trash. On top of that they're too poor for buying Christmas presents for their children, their dog drools too much, they empty their RV's sewage onto the street, a cat is killed, a squirrel gets into the house, the protagonist (a quite unlikeable guy) falls and gets hurt multiple times, he gets locked in the attic, and falls from it, he falls from the ladder, the dog destroys the house chasing the squirrel, the poor neighbours are treated like villains when in reality they do nothing wrong except being full of themselves, the protagonist daydreams of cheating on his wife, the Christmas bonus he's waiting for turns out to be a disappointment, his boss gets kidnapped by the cousin.
Modern Love: So He Looked Like Dad. It Was Just Dinner, Right? (2019)
Disturbing
It is very rare that I assign a 1-star rating, but if this doesn't deserve it I don't know what would.
First of all 21 doesn't mean dumb and fragile. She seems like someone who is a feminist because it's the right thing to be and who repeats the things she heard on social media on that matter (I blame it on the acting there). Second of all the fact that she lost her father shouldn't necessarily mean that she has issues. But that's the route this episode takes and it does it in a very creepy way. Her longing for a father figure seems more of a fetish than anything else. A naive and immature feminism-inclined girl (acting like a 9 year old) that needs the approval of a much older man, totally baffled by the (legitimate?) intention of said (slimy, imho) man. I got Stanley Kubrick's Lolita's vibes. Not in a good way, since this ain't no Kubrick.