So, I’d like to say that I am a connoisseur of superhero movies, and this movie was trying way too hard. (Sorry I’m so harsh) The first Venom movie was pretty good, like mid-tier, it was bad enough to be good. This was trying to be bad and was bad. The first movie was a fluke and Sony should have realized they just got lucky with Venom. I’ll stop going for the neck now… 

It is true what I said before, this movie was trying really hard to hit the same small, niche good-bad storyline the first movie stumbled on. My friend from back home reminded me the movie had come out, so I had to wait a bit to watch it, college takes up a lot of time as it turns out. When I got to watch it over break, I didn’t have that many expectations, and I’m glad I didn’t. I enjoyed it somewhat knowing it would never be the first movie. It had the typical Marvel villain, another version of the hero/anti-hero, and CGI heavy fight sequences. However, this movie had a romantic comedy subplot with Eddie and Venom?  Jokes about couples counseling? A big argument with time away from each other when they learn that they each value each other more than they thought? A POST END CREDIT HONEYMOON?? I wish I was making it up. It was the clique of cliques, but it made the movie so much better than it would have been without it. It was the backbone of the entire plot, it was the foil to Cassidy, the main villain, getting to meet his long-lost lover. They could have gone without drawing attention to Eddie and Anne’s failed marriage, it happened too much in the hour and thirty-minute run time. Was it also very uncomfortable? Yes. 

I don’t think they had as much budget for this sequel, and it shows in the parts that were not shown in the trailer. Venom looks different than the first movie and has some scenes that look very jumpy/underdeveloped. Tom Hardy looked like he was on the brink of death as well as hot? Don’t ask me how he does it. I wish it didn’t seem like Eddie put no effort into his journalism job, he really cared about it in the first movie, and they seemed to go back on that front in this movie. Don’t get me started on the movie version of Cassidy and Carnage I will explode. This was a ton of nitpicking, but this movie could have been good but fell a little short. 

5/10 

Link for picture

This week my friends and I all decided to watch short films.  

With Taylor Swift releasing her own version of the hit album Red came the short film accompanying the song All Too Well. With her short film of the same name came the anguish of many fans, me included because it is so damn good. I have always enjoyed Taylor’s music but never gave it much thought. Two of my friends on the other hand have said, “I am a part-time person, full-time Swifty.” Thank you, Kate and Rosemary, for sending me down this spiral. This “music video” was the perfect addition to the main song of the album. The storytelling conveyed the plotline in the song beat for beat. The song itself did make me sob so hard I was heaving but that’s for a different kind of blog. The casting of Sadie Sink, 19, and Dylan O’Brien, 30, was meant to make watchers uncomfortable. It definitely made me uncomfortable, Sadie Sink has been cast in roles where she is a child for years, and on the other hand, Dylan O’Brien has been a heartthrob for the latter part of a decade. The age gap between them is the backbone of the film, as well as Dylan’s character being emotionally manipulative. Taylor did an amazing job on this film, and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys the mix of film and music. 

 

 

Another great release this week was the short film Ciao Alberto, an addition to the Disney movie Luca. Luca has a big portion of my heart, and I have seen it many more times than I’d like to admit. When I heard they would be releasing this short film I marked it down on my calendar to make sure I watched it. Let me tell you, it was six minutes I didn’t know I needed. The lesson in the film is so important, and they conveyed it so well with the short time frame they had. Sorry, I’m trying not to spoil it as it came out only a few days ago… Seeing Portorosso again was something I needed after this week.  I am always wowed by the animation in Disney movies, especially Luca and this short and how they animated the water. If you don’t know, hair and water have been the hardest things to animate over the decades. New technology has made it easier, but talent is still needed. There are cool documentaries on this and I can send you them if you want! 

Taylor’s Short Film- 8/10 

Ciao Alberto- 9.5/10 

Link to the first picture

Link for the second picture

These last two movies have been more sentimental movies for my friends and I. This time I watched Cars 3 with some friends from my club, TKD. I grew up with the Cars movies as weird as it seems. These movies grew up with me. And this movie made me realize that I am growing up. Not to get super sappy about sentient cars…

As the title says, this was an end of an era, and this movie handled it very well for a children’s movie. It did make me tear up, but it seems that is an easy feat if you’ve read my other reviews. This movie came out in 2017, a little over a decade after the first installment, and I only really watched it until recently(as well as the last time to write this review). When it first came out I felt too old to watch a “kids” movie, which is so stupid kids movies are great, watch more kids movies. Rant done, but this is something a lot of us deal with when growing up. Looking back to the things we enjoyed as kids is so important, looking at it from a new perspective can make you appreciate the media more.

In the movie Lightning McQueen becomes an old model compared to the newer, faster rookies that are starting to race in the Piston Cup. He no longer is at the top, and this scares him, leading to him getting in a severe crash. His journey throughout the movie is about finding his grove again. He trains with his trainer Cruz Ramirez and they both teach each other important lessons along the way. This movie was very sentimental because Lightning visits all the old tracks his mentor Hudson raced on when he was in his prime. The Derby that Cruz and Lightning find themselves in towards the middle of the movie was both hilarious as well as an adrenaline rush. Fritz the school bus is the funniest character in the whole movie. Sorry, not sorry Mater. Spoiler for the end of the movie, Lightning becomes Cruz’s mentor like Hudson was for him. It was a great ending that brought the story full circle. It was nice to see McQueen embrace his past as well as the change that came with the future. It made me a little less scared about my future.

7/10 It was sad 🙁 like the nostalgic sad…

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This week Kate recommended I take it easy and watch one of my favorites, Howl’s Moving Castle. Now if you’ve ever met me or talked to me for more than thirty minutes I will bring up this movie. So, I will now go on for many sentences about how wonderful this movie is.

I love this movie so much. I’m so glad that I found this movie and decided to watch it. It is a cinematic masterpiece. Beautiful scenes, wonderful characterization, and amazing world-building. I love all the detail that when into the creation of this film. Every time I watch it there is something new I see in the background or a new line of dialogue if you listen hard enough in the city scenes. Watching it the second time around all the cute little foreshadowing elements finally made sense and I did sob. This movie makes me cry every time I watch it. It’s not even because it’s a sad movie, it’s just so damn beautiful.

Now that the rambling is over, a review of the movie. Ghibli movies have always impressed me with how complex they can make such simple things. The main theme/lesson of the movie is that Sophie learns to love herself just the way she is. Very cute premise. The way they translate that Sophie doesn’t have high esteem for herself is shown through her interactions with the people in her life, like her sister. Her sister is very popular, many of the background characters go out of their way to say hello to her in passing and even disregard Sophie. However, we see the first shift in her demeanor when she meets Howl for the “first” time (the quotes make more sense if you’ve seen the movie multiple times). Because of this interaction, the Witch of the Waste is introduced. She is a jealous woman who is after Howl’s heart and is threatened by Sophie, so she casts a spell on Sophie turning her into an old woman. This is how we see Sophie for most of the movie, she begins to grow out of her shell and take charge of herself finding her passions and interests. It’s an interesting thing, most movies for children or young adults don’t have an elderly protagonist. Howl’s Moving Castle takes this narrative flip and uses it well to convey the story of loving one’s self.

I can never recommend this movie enough, I might be “mainstream” or “overhyped”, but it’s one of my favorite movies. This is one of the movies I love rewatching with friends and family.

10/10 <3

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So as it is spooky season, I had to review at least one Halloween movie. This is one that I’ve heard really great this about but never got around to watching because I had to watch all the other classic Halloween movies first. Now I made time, and I’m so glad that I did. I will say this again but when movies get my humor right they really get it right. This was like if the Lego movies and Wes Anderson had a baby, it was dry humor, and if you blink you miss it. It was amazing. 

I loved the animation style, Claymation is such a hard style but this movie did it great. The exaggerated proportions of all the characters were what made most of the scenes scary. Since I’ve seen my fair share of scary movies this wasn’t overly scary. It was mostly ‘kid’ scary, but if you saw me jump when the rat ran down the stairs while Norman was exploring the creepy house… no you didn’t. The scariness of this movie comes from the people of the town and not the zombies and witches. Because the social stigma is what made the zombies and witches in the first place. The total disregard for Norman and his friends’ lives when they are trying to save the town was the overarching theme. The people are the monsters. Wow, I just got so deep. Back to what this review is really about. 

I had a friend from home recommend this movie to me and told me there was a gay character. So, of course, I had to see it. Spoilers for a movie that came out in like 2012, the character Mitch is a trope flip. The entire movie Norman’s sister Courtney is flirting with Mitch in every scene they share, a scare movie trope in itself. However, in the last few remaining minutes of the movie Courtney askes Mitch on a movie date, which he says yes to, if he can bring his boyfriend because he “loves chick flicks”. Amazing, show-stopping, hilarious. This reversal really added to the movie. It was already so good and this made it so much funnier. Does it suck that it’s just at the end? Yeah. Is it truly gay representation? Maybe not. Big Jock Bro Gay? Yeah, he is.  

So a synopsis, this movie was great and one of the movies I will be adding this to my classics.  

9/10 (I’ve been giving out too many 10/10s so sorry ParaNorman) 

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So, this weekend my roommate and I decided to watch Labyrinth. I had been dying to watch it since I found out it had existed and had some free time. Also, Netflix finally had it on the roster, so that’s a win. Laying on our comfy rug wrapped in a blanket, however, was not a win for me staying conscious. Even with my small gap in movie watching experience, I shall give a review of the classic. 

One, as an active viewer of movies, please movie makers, stop making the main character insufferable. I don’t want to root for them if I think they are totally in the wrong. Two, I liked the subtleness (if you count it not being explicitly said) that Sarah’s mother was in plays and she is trying to emulate her. It was a good character trait to give her if I could look past how much I disliked her at the beginning. If I was to pull no punches Sarah is a Walmart version of Dorthey from The Wizard of Oz. And this whole movie is quite noticeably based or influenced by The Wizard of Oz. That’s not a bad thing, it’s a good movie, but it reminded me of when they released The Hunger Games and Divergent in the same year. 

David Bowie was great; I might be biased (I definitely am). But his songs in the movie were very engaging and distracted me from hating Sarah. The fact that the goblins and David Bowie’s character The Goblin King took way better care of the kid compared to Sarah. I’m still wigged out but the entire scene when Sarah just let the kid cry and sob and did nothing? Okay, I’ll stop hating on her for now, back to Bowie. His outfits, iconic, really over the top, and well done. Amber and I could not get over how cool his hair looked in the movie. And that’s saying a lot because Amber has amazing hair already. The supporting characters with Sarah are so much cooler than the Lion, Scarecrow, and the Tinman. Crazy, I know. 

Sadly, as I said before, I did fall asleep during the movie. Very sad. If you were me, laying on the floor covered in blankets with the sweet serenade of David Bowie, you would have fallen asleep too. Invest in a husband pillow, they are amazing.  

6/10 +4 for David Bowie

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So, these reviews have evolved into watching movies with my friends and we try to show each other cool movies. And by cool movies, I mean movies that are gay or have gay subtext. Continuing the theme, as well as watching it for research purposes, I wanted to show my friends the 2017 classic Lego: Batman. That’s right, the one that was in the news for pushing pro-gay propaganda. The funny thing was, all the news outlets focused on one joke, instead of the overarching theme of Batman and Joker being in a “relationship” … 

Kinda cringe  

Okay, about the movie, it is one of my guilty pleasures. This movie is so funny, unbelievably funny I promise. The dry humor and the deep dive into making fun of superhero movies is the most noticeable attribute of the movie. The second most noticeable thing is the fact that in this movie Batman/Bruce Wayne is basically a man-child and the Joker is defanged and is a trickster at most. This switch of having Batman not know everything, and is basically whining the whole time, is so much different than his character had been in recent movies like Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy. It is a part of the satire of this movie, a character that is a straight alpha male power fantasy doesn’t want to go to a fancy dinner and throws a fit. Hilarious.  

I fully expect everyone I meet to have watched this movie, if you have not, you’re missing out but no judgment. But now I will be talking about more spoilery? stuff so be warned.  

The whole theme that Batman can’t get close to people because he is afraid of losing them was not something I was expecting from a kid’s Lego movie. They did this so well because they showed that it’s not just an easy fix and that it takes time? Like, go Lego: Batman movie very mature of you. If you have ever read or consumed Batman anything past the 70s it’s so hard to find a story where Bruce actually improves his own life and fixes his own behaviors. It was a nice change of pace. The whole movie itself is not something you would expect of a children’s movie. It really plays to an audience that would understand the complex themes it was weaving into the bright bubble gum craziness of the filmography. Animated movies are one of my favorite mediums, and Lego movies have a similar feeling to the stop motion clips I would make as a kid, you can explore so many stories with animation. The ending of the movie is very lighthearted for a “superhero” movie and makes a funny gag that left room for a sequel like all kids’ movies do to milk the profit of toy sales. However, even if this movie was just to make parents buy kids more pieces of plastic that they will get sick of after 20 minutes, it was a damn good one at that. 

 

10/10 please let me know if you have seen any other Lego movies, I need someone to talk to about them

 

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This week Kate didn’t pick the movie, I did. Because you’re your own best friend, right? However, I made Kate watch it with me, way past her bedtime. With all the exams, I needed a pick me up. Does this movie have a plot? Yes but no. Is it good? That’s up to you, but to me, it’s one of my favorite movies. The colorful explosions, great music, giant robots, and subtle homoeroticism between the two main characters, that is the recipe for a good movie in my book. The fact that this movie is a satire is the ribbon on top.

 

Promare is a movie set in a dystopian future where there is a group of people that can control fire. It follows the “normal” narrative of ostracizing this new group of people and the repercussions it has on society. The city the movie is set in has created this intricate system of firefighting to account for so much of the population being able to set fires. Galo the main good guy and resident himbo (please I don’t want to have to explain this lingo, if you don’t know what it means that’s okay, if you do. Please don’t destroy me.), works at one of these fire departments. What I am going to explain is what is in the trailer so I deem it fair game to talk about in this review without a spoiler warning. But that whole last sentence was a spoiler warning, sorry. Well, the first act of the movie is Galo’s dept. fighting a fire, surprise. But the fire was started by the “terrorist” group Mad Burnish. This all sounds super lame but bear with me. So, with a cool mech Galo defeats the two underlings and is ready to fight the big bad boss. He turns out to be a 5 foot something blonde man in a full leather suit and a cravat. Yeah, that’s in your brain now. They jab at each other in ways that seem way too much for just meeting. They are just way too much and just enough at the same time.

 

That being said this movie has an effect on people. After you watch it once, you have the need to watch it again immediately after. Two different people I have watched this movie with have had this happen to them, including Kate. She said that she would watch it again multiple times today, and she slept through half of it(Kate says it was 20 minutes, but it wasn’t). I love rewatching this movie and would watch it with anyone that asks.

 

To summarize Kate’s thoughts on the movie: “That shit was gayer than a freaking lesbian period drama.” For reference, Kate is a lesbian that has seen every lesbian period drama. Her words, not mine.

 

10/10 will watch with you. I’m 100% serious.

Link to photo above.

Guys (gender-neutral term) Kate recommended me another gay movie. This time around it is the French masterpiece, Portrait of a Lady on Fire. I would like everyone to know, foreign movies are simply better, sorry not sorry. As someone who is not versed in the French language, I did have to use subtitles. But I watch everything with subtitles, I recommend you also try it.  

Back to the movie, it was so good. I will be saying a lot of movies are good, but this one is one of the best for you film nerds out there. The use of color, staging, acting, all top tier. The tone of the movie changes throughout, however the overarching melancholy that this movie conveys is strong. You feel the bond created and broken between the two main characters, Marianne and Héloïse. The more familial relationship that is made between the three women is one for the ages and made me personally quite emotional.  

The movie overall is so beautiful and aesthetically pleasing that every scene is like a painting. Which is what most of the plot hinges on. The Portrait. The evolution of the three different pieces and how this painting works into the major turning points of the film reminded me of Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray.   

If you haven’t read this book, please, it’s a very influential work. But be wary it is dated. If you don’t want the hassle or need a refresher, the main character Dorian Gray has a portrait painted of him by one of his friends. However, there is a “spell” put on the painting, any signs of aging or heinous acts are reflected on the painting so Gray my stay looking innocent and beautiful. I won’t spoil the whole thing, but with that prior knowledge, this movie seems all the more charming.  

The painting transforming throughout the movie as the two women learn more and trust, each other. It is one of my favorite plot points if you can’t tell.  

The other piece of media that is connected to parts of the movie is the ancient story of Orpheus and Eurydice. The three women read the story and debate the outcome together and it fleshes out their personalities. This story also ties into the ending of this movie. 

Major plot points, and the ending, will be discussed from this point until “After that whole” in the next paragraph. You have been warned…So I cried a lot at the end. I’m pretty sure I can’t listen to Vivaldi’s Summer without crying anymore.  The scene itself is so powerful. The music in this movie is so important and the fact that this is the last time Marianne sees Héloïse hurts my little heart. 

After that whole experience, my roommate and Kate got into a huge argument about the MET Gala. It has been a hot topic in 202.  We keep getting on the subject of Elliot Paige’s suit with the green carnation, Amber (roommate) hates that he went in just a black suit, and Kate just thinks he looked cute. Please leave your thoughts in the comments. 

10/10

Link for the picture above.

Imagine this, you just walked around every floor of your dorm hall.  Searching for a place to watch a movie because you were too broke to bring a flat-screen to college.  And just when you find the perfect set of couches in front of a black awaiting led screen, one of the members of your party refuse to set up shop in the rec room because two people used the communal kitchen to make broccoli cheddar soup at 9:30 pm, on a Wednesday. 

So, you take the rickety old elevator back up to your floor to watch a dated 1990s movie on the floor with all the extra pillows your mom insisted you bring when friends come over. 

This was my night leading up to watching the satire But I’m A Cheerleader.  This movie was recommended to me, by said member of the party, every day I’ve known her.  I was going in blind, only learning it was made in 1999 and had an R rating seconds before hitting play.  Fair warning, I might be talking about major plot points so if you haven’t seen it… Go watch it, the hour and twenty-five minutes is a great break between your math homework and chemistry.  

With the context that this was made at the turn of the century and used Conversion Camps as a way to make both the worst, and best movie that has lesbians since Kristen Stewart stopped playing a straight woman, I’m baffled at how much I enjoyed it.  And can we talk about how Natasha Lyonne has played a gay woman, not once but twice?  Back to the main point, Lyonne’s character is Megan, a goodie two shoes, Christian cheerleader dating a football player. However, she has some “strange” quirks. After staging a huge intervention her parents and friends send her to True Directions, the setting for most of the movie.  Here is where the colorful cast of soon-to-be A-to-B-list celebrities resides. Every. Single. One. Of these characters are gay stereotypes, but I’m here for it.  But that might also be because Gram is one of the hottest women I’ve ever seen.  

This movie gave me the feeling that old, Disney straight to TV, movies would give little eight-year-old me.  I knew the budget wasn’t that big, but they used it well. The house that holds True Directions is super cute and unsettling at the same time.  Most of the decorations are shiny, plastic, and childish. And it is a theme throughout the movie, Megan is dressed in childish clothing in the first half of the movie. This also translates to the decorations and bedding in the girls’ room of True Directions. This changed later as Megan learns to accept herself and wears more “adult” clothing, if that’s even a thing. Just something funny I noticed.  

Honestly, I don’t think this movie could have been made any better, and I don’t think it will.  The copious use of gays slurs definitely dates this movie and puts it in a category where many feel uncomfortable talking about its themes.  Looking past the change in culture since the movie’s release, it was a great use of satire and romance.  I could feel the pain Graham felt when she had to turn her back on Megan. 

Would watch again, 8/10!