As to this summer’s choice between Oppenheimer and Barbie, I’m definitely in the latter camp. Even disregarding how grueling it would be to watch a three hour biopic in the cinema, I think this is obviously the richer and more artistically interesting of the two films. Indeed, director Greta Gerwig delivers not only an eye-searingly striking visual fest, but a powerful social commentary that encompasses the themes of gender relations, existentialism and even fits in a critique of Mattel itself. I’m not sure how much most people who watching this only due to the Barbie brand name are getting out of this, but to me, this is a very adult, very serious film.
Like most people I watched Disney’s version long ago but I don’t remember much of it. I do remember enough to tell that this version is different in many ways and as far as I’m concerned, they’re all good changes. As we’ve come to expect from Guillermo del Toro, it’s darker in tone and I loved Pinocchio looks like a crude, unvarnished wooden puppet. It seems that del Toro was inspired by one particular artist’s, Gris Grimly, illustrations. Instead of taking place in a fantasy version of Europe, this is set in World War 2-era Italy. Most importantly, whereas the original was all about telling children to be good and to be obedient towards their parents, this version subverts that lesson to have Pinocchio learn and decide what it means to be good on his own.
I add many films to my list from many different sources and now that we’ve watched many of the great classics, we’re moving on to films that aren’t quite universally acclaimed but may be notable. This one turned out to be a very competent noir of the period with a contrived twist and seems to have been beloved enough to inspire several episodes of popular television shows. Unfortunately it’s not anything that I would call great and not really worth going back for.
We watched the original classic quite some time ago and loved it. Since an updated version couldn’t possibly top it, my first instinct was to just skip it. But this did end up winning multiple Oscars and it is easily available on Netflix so I thought I should watch it to be part of the conversation. Unfortunately my instinct turned out to be correct as this veers too close to being an action movie to be treated seriously as a critique of the war and the changes director Edward Berger made leads me to question if he even understands the point of the original. This one is a cromulent war epic I suppose but it falls far short of the 1930 version.
I’m always interested in science-fiction shows with a unique premise so this series seemed like it would be a good fit. It’s an episodic collection of stories about a small town where strange things keep happening because of the research facility in it. Unfortunately this wasn’t at all what I thought it would be. It uses simple and predictable elements like time travel and alternate realities to tell emotional stories about the characters without caring about how the strange phenomena work at all. As my wife notes, it’s a very sentimental show that only uses the sci-fi phenomena as plot devices. It’s not bad at what it does but it really annoys me as a fan of science-fiction.
The story goes that this was originally supposed to be developed by Disney who then backed out due to its LBGT themes and so it eventually made its way to Netflix. Unfortunately this also meant that it lost Disney-quality production standards and any kind of quality control because the end result is a drab looking, mediocre film. The antihero theme is all played out by now and there is nothing at all original about a cute sidekick who is actually overpowered. The only interesting part is the worldbuilding as it’s set in a kingdom that is culturally attached to knights and swords but actually has advanced technology.
This is probably one of the great Malaysian films, being a historical epic that was at its time the most expensive production yet made. Pretty much every Malaysian will have learned the story which should be considered one of the country’s founding myths. This cinematic version has the great Malay hero Hang Tuah being forced to choose between loyalty to his ruler, the Sultan of Malacca and his love for the titular princess. I was skeptical of this being any good as I don’t have high hopes for Malaysian films but it actually exceeded my expectations. Director Saw Teong Hin leveraged the limited resources at his disposal to create a film that isn’t a literal representation but a stylized, mythic one that is perfectly suited to the legend.
