FILMSPOTTING - MOVIE REVIEWSHOSTED BYFILMSPOTTING.NET
Adam Kempenaar and Josh Larsen review new and classic movies, offering "affable, insightful film analysis since 2005" (NY Times).
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It's the job. Hey, Lee. What? Back offs. What am I saying that's wrong? I'm not saying it's wrong. She just shook up. It doesn't understand surecoat. Woah. I'm not being protective of her? You're the idiot who led her in this car. When we decided to revisit X Machina, ahead of seeing Alex Garland's latest, I don't think it occurred to either of us how the two movies might connect. You know, beyond that they're written and directed by the same filmmaker and thus surely share some DNA. Your prompt asked me, Josh, to consider how my action to the character of Ava shifted after almost 10 years of AI advancement, which led us to discuss Garland's prescience and how inevitable the terrifying tech takeover now teams? Well, I spent most of civil wars runtime trying to dismiss the deeply troubling thought that if Garland was right before, why couldn't he be right again? A decade ago, any movie proposing that our country could reach such a boiling point of political and ideological polarization that we'd end up in extended combat would have been science fiction. Now I don't think I need to document all the ways it feels, if not inevitable, certainly conceivable, While the characters and their relationships don't align perfectly, I was also struck by how civil war like ex machina mostly focuses on my apologies to the always game. Steven McKinley Henderson, 3 people experiencing a crucible, much of which occurs in a confined space. Again, We have a mentor protege dynamic at play. Spainie's youthful, but not quite so naive as she appears Jesse may not have won a contest like Caleb, but she does get the chance of a lifetime when she scores a seat in the press truck alongside one of her idols, dumps veteran photog with a thousand mile stare Leigh. That would make Lee our Nathan in this scenario, though it's more as Joel who embodies the tear up the dance floor cockiness of Oscar Isaac. If that doesn't convince you, maybe this will. Isn't civil war conducting its own Turing test? Only the examine
Filmspotting - Movie Reviews
Filmspotting Presents: The Film That Blew My Mind - Kristen Johnson on All That Jazz
Fri Apr 12 2024
Years old in 1979. I think it, like, just you know, there are things I was in this very, kind of, closed religious world and wasn't allowed to see movies, but there were things that were coming in from the 19 seventies. So, like, I knew Patty Hearst had been kidnapped and was calling her parents capitalist pigs with a machine gun on television, and then I knew Black Panthers existed, and I knew there was Billie Jean King. And I think I vaguely knew that this movie called Alba Jazz won a lot of Oscars, but I did not see it and was not allowed to see it. And it felt as far away as, like, the revolution. So sort of, you know, Broadway to show people was a world that was, a sinful world from where I was coming from. And I've worked really hard to remember when I saw it for the first time. I think I saw it for the first time in Paris, and it made me really uncomfortable on so many levels. I think in some strong way because, like, I really, identified with Bob Fosse. Bob Fosse, the character in the movie, and Bob Fosse, the director. And I aspire to identify with him. Wait. Can I just ask you? As a as a young 7th day Adventist young woman in Paris, how did you come to identify with Port Fosse? That's there is a jump. There is a jump there. Well, I think that's the sort of genius of this film. I think in some ways, like, it's in so deep inside a human psyche that almost anyone can identify with Bob Fosse even though it's impossible to be him, and many of us don't wanna be him in any kind of way. But
Filmspotting - Movie Reviews
#962: Ex Machina in the Age of AI, Mrs. Miniver (Wyler #3), ‘50s Madness Finals
Fri Apr 05 2024
You know, it's a basic anything that's alive instinct, just not being shut down. Yes. And I think this movie is is is asking a different question than is Eva alive or is she conscious, I think, is what is what it's really asking. And so one of the things I was thinking about watching it this time around, and I I do agree with you. It's scarier for me too. I found her less human, and I think that's thanks to my interactions with early impersonal AI in recent years. There's just something recognizable about her trying to read Caleb and being way more successful than, you know, those texts I get at trying to manipulate me. But it's the same strategy I saw at play. And so she registered to me here now that I'm living slightly more in it as less human. I could recognize her non human qualities. But, yeah, I'm with you. More dangerous. And it goes back to the single-minded devotion. Again, like, those texts are all about getting a political donation. Right? And and you can see that Ava has this single-minded devotion to survive, to get out. You know, she's just wearing a better wig, I think is is the difference. But the thing I kept asking myself is, you know, how much is she motivated by a desire to see the world? How much is she motivated by her desire for survival? What does she do in this movie that isn't utilitarian? You know, you could say she does change her wig and clothes before leaving. I I don't know if that's some sort of individual expression because her look that she had been using before with Caleb was effective. It proved effective. Maybe it was even designed by Nathan, not chosen by her, but it was effective. There is one gesture I'm curious about. So when she is choosing, the different wig and she's adding more skin from the models she finds in the closets and picking new clothes, how about the
Filmspotting - Movie Reviews
#961: Road House at 35, Road House ‘24, Godzilla x Kong, ‘50s Madness Final Four
Fri Mar 29 2024
Are 2 pieces of nostalgia, art that that brings about nostalgia and say, okay. Yeah. I love it because of those memories, but I also think it holds up of this. So that's the sort of stuff I wanna get into. Now it's tough when this doesn't work out. I think of movies like Goonies for me. I think of movies like Ghostbusters. I would have died for those films when they first came out. Right? And they're both movies I still enjoy when I watch now. But they've really fallen in my esteem, at least as an adult, and I recognize that back to the calibrations, the nostalgia is doing a lot of work. And maybe there's a few things here or there that I can say. Yeah. But this was really smart about the film. This is this is something that, you know, the movie makes me think about now that it didn't then. This is something I realized the movie is thinking about now that I missed then, or, again, just some of these creative choices that you appreciate. Doesn't always work out. Goonies, Ghostbusters, sometime it does. Sometimes you get back to the future, and it's like, woah. This hits all the nostalgic notes, but as an adult, it offers even more. It was great then. It's greater now. So that's what I wanna hear, Adam. Why is Roadhouse 89 if it is your back to the future? Or is this just more of a nostalgic experience that, you know, I just can't have, not having not having seen it before? Yeah. You've put it back on me, and it's a tough thing to address. I mean, I do need to say, first of all, that back to the future is my back to the future. It's not it's not Roadhouse. I've got all of those as well, and that movie that you just mentioned, the Michael j Fox movie, is one of those landmark nostalgic films for me. I do need to circle back real quick and say that you definitely don't deserve to be Wade Garrett in this scenario. No way you should get to be Sam Elliott, especially when you're clearly Brad Wesley for the purposes of this review. But your answer about nostalgia was great, and that is the tough part of it. When I said I'm I'm confused or I'm confounded by it, the thing
To really cover all the terrain that it covers. Yeah. I guess it's streamlined in how it gets us from point a to b to c to d, whereas Godzilla spends a lot of time examining certain plot points in between. It's not just that I wanted more mayhem in Godzilla, but there are kind of low parts in between some of the some of the really good non Godzilla parts of that movie as well where the story sags just a bit. Okay. So let's see if we continue to agree as we get then to characters slash performances. Is there a clear winner here for you, Josh? No. This was a really tough one. And let's start let's go back to Shimura, Takashi Shimura. He is so invaluable to Godzilla in terms of providing that that human element that we were talking about. He adds gravity, which I think we know he does to every film that I've seen him in. He also has, though, that small sideways smile that it just kinda keeps you curious about what his character might be thinking. And I I I can see that smile in 7 samurai too. He just pulls it out here and there, and what it always does for me is make you wonder, okay, what's going on up there? What what is he up to, or what is he processing, or what is he is he going to bring back later in this story that we can see him thinking about now? He's just such a fascinating character to or actor to watch on screen, and I think he he just elevates the performance element to Godzilla. I also did like Akihiko Harata as doctor Serizawa. So this is kind of the mad scientist character Yep. In Godzilla. He's got an eye patch, he has this lab where he's working on the oxygen destroyer in secret. I love the scenes in the lab, how they're shot very almost like universal monster movie style. And Serizawa taps into as a character, the mournful element. I think we'll definitely get to and spend more time on that is in Godzilla. It's a very subdued performance. His concerns he expresses about