This Week in Geek (13-19/03/22)

"Accomplishments"

At home: I didn't realize animated films out of the big houses could be as personal as Turning Red. Sure, they tend to be culturally specific these days (and that's for the good), but they don't feel like the personal vision of a certain director. Domee Shi's beautiful short Bao WAS personal, and I'm glad its success paid off and allowed her to make a movie that's specifically about her own early teenage years in early 2000s Toronto. What it translates into is a 13-year-old's perspective through and through (or else how could a boy band feature this prominently?), and a metaphor that is partly about getting one's first period at the exact age where everything makes you feel like you'll die of embarrassment. The magical element of the red panda that hulks out during times of emotional turmoil isn't allegorical and represents many things - shame, sexual awakening, teenage rebellion, becoming one's own self - so don't try to push any one filter onto the proceedings. For once, it's not some adventure quest, but rather a comedy that's cousin to something like Freaky Friday, building understanding between generations and coming up with a perhaps unexpected lesson. Perfect family fare since it engages both parents and kids, and should lead to important conversations. Even if you don't have kids, the hindsight is relatable, and perhaps you're even the right age to wax nostalgic about 2002 (makes ME feel old that it's now a retro period, honestly).

Time travel is real and Ryan Reynolds has come back in time on a rogue mission, and must team up with his 12-year-old self, Walter Scobell being quite adept at delivering Ryan Reynolds-like dialog. He's exactly what this persona would have been like at that age, and I got into trouble in similar ways for having a smart mouth myself, so it's relatable. The movie is The Adam Project, and it's got a pretty great premise for a kid-centric family movie. I'm not sure the time travel paradoxes are consistent within the movie, but it's winsome in other ways. First, the action is a lot of fun, at times even visceral, but normally well-choreographed. Second, it's surprisingly emotional, especially the mother-son content, and I wish there'd been more of it (the father-son stuff is required, but I'm not as engaged by it). And then there's the star-studded cast, though there's some uncanny valley stuff going on where de-aging is concerned. Not to be taken too seriously, just sit back and have fun.

The second season of Upload creates the necessary romantic complications to keep its will-they/won't they alive, but in this crazy world of virtual afterlife and satirical reality, these still feel fresh enough. But while it doesn't give up on its comedic aspects, it focuses more strongly on the first season's thriller elements to set up a ticking clock (or several) as the people responsible for Nathan's death plan a coup worthy of our own era. In the virtual world, there are plenty of new and clever ideas to keep the world-building going - virtual babies and a new version of data mining, for example, but also an expanded role for the hotel's bellhops that proves quite intriguing. But here's the thing. At only seven episodes, three fewer than the first season's, it's too short and rapidly ends on a (counts) about three maddening cliffhangers. Arrrrgh! After Season 1, I wanted to the next one to be immediately available, but this is ridiculous!

For its first half hour, Fresh is a fun and funny romcom, starring an eminently watchable Daisy Edgar-Jones as a woman who is just about ready to throw her dating app in the bin when she meets a charming Sebastian Stan in random happenstance and it could be love. Then it turns into a black comedy thriller as their random meat-cute proves even more hideous than her terrible right swipes. Where is Carey Mulligan when we need her? While I do think we delve just a little too much in Stan's dark world, to the point of it becoming unbearable right around the third act mark, the queasiness is part of the experience. And anyway, the tension keeps mounting so as to make the climactic releases (yeah, plural) all the more enjoyable. Even if you know the central twist, the fact that the movie never over-explains itself and is peppered with background gags and amusing needle drops means it's actually rather rewatchable. Knowing too much isn't a problem - I mean, we all know Beauty and the Beast, right? - it might actually be a boon. If you can stomach the subject matter, of course.

50 Years of Fantasy/1988: There's no denying that Willow is a remix of The Lord of the Rings, perhaps crossed with Arthurian legend (or the Book of Genesis, but Jean Marsh is in here playing Morgaine, so...), just replace the ring with a baby (and don't throw the baby into a volcano). Even so, it has its own identity and though we're "on the road", it avoids the pitfalls of the picaresque, as all the scenes are part of the plot and there are no "random encounters". The film is in fact quite good at setting things up and paying them off. Warwick Davis is engaging as the halfling lead, and I quite like Julie Peters as his wife and wish she'd had more to do. But humans gotta human, so a good chunk of the movie is about arcing Val Kilmer's rogue. Pretty good effects, especially the size differentials (though can someone tell me why one of the Brownies speaks with a Quebecker accent?), nice score by James Horner, and a surprisingly emotive baby. Good fun.
Also from that year: My Neighbor Totoro, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

1989: With all due respect to the generation who remembers Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland fondly, I only got through it with gritted teeth. This is not the first time Nemo has made it into animation, since his originator, Winsor McCay, was an early animator in addition to a comic strip artist, though we only have fragments and tests, really. No rare bit fiends in the movie per se, though other imagery from the strips does show up - blimps, dinosaurs, Nemo falling out of bed. But this American-Japanese collaboration (which almost looks like the characters were designed by the former, and the lush backgrounds by the latter) is mostly tedious and pitched at very young children - at least until the nightmare shows up and the movie starts to think it's Princess Mononoke for a disturbing second. There are a couple of surreal sequences and I wish the movie had just gone for it, but the animation is more often in service of standard cartoon slapstick. They could have done something interesting with transitions, but it's instead in love with lame dissolves. In terms of sound, I've already forgotten the songs, and only remember the excessive screaming. If I never heard Shazama-Pajama again, it won't be too soon. I also take issue with Nemo having a cartoon animal companion even in the real world, but who follows him into dreams somehow. If the real world is fantastical, that takes away from the premise. And then there's Flip, a character who may have green make-up on, but still obviously came out of minstrel shows. The comic strip has a lot of dreadfully racist caricature, but by 1989, there's no reason to keep it going. For a movie that has 1980s Chris Columbus, Ray Bradbury and Moebius in its credits, it really shouldn't be this dull and irritating.
Also from that year: Kiki's Delivery Service, The Little Mermaid, Field of Dreams

1990: I have an uneasy relationship with the title of Kurosawa's Dreams, but just the title. I think it's a truism that one person's dreams cannot possibly be understood or even interest another person. Turned into visuals, they might be more interesting, but mostly on the level of IMAGE. From a visual artist of some repute (we know his other films), it might offer a door into his creative process or a certain moment in his biography. Making several shorts based on his dreams has more potential than if I were to do the same, but as the dreams here are curated and molded into short stories, often with a supernatural bent (spirits and ghosts might come to these people in dreams), Dreams avoids the pitfalls of a "dream diary". It still touches some of the elements I mentioned, whether it's the very strange casting of Martin Scorsese as Van Gogh (because dreams can conflate two similar people, in this case artists), or the apocalyptic back end of the film which is filled with death - both violent and peaceful - when we know Kurosawa only had two more films in him before ill health benched him for the remaining 5 years of his life. The function of dreams is present, but in service of poignant and visually inventive stories, like the soldier haunted by his dead comrades, or the race through Van Gogh's paintings. Dreams, as a title, filled me with dread and preemptive boredom, but as it turned out, it's a very pretty collection of tales, even if some are a little languorous (consider that its last shot evokes Solaris' first).
Also from that year: Edward Scissorhands, The Witches, Ghost

1991: Peter Greenaway's gorgeous adaptation of The Tempest, Prospero's Books is also an acting showcase for Sir John Gielgud, who does most of the voices, sometimes on top of the other actor's performance, at least until he lets go of the narrative. Odd sound design, perhaps, but it's Greenaway's way of showing the old magician is in total control. Another clever idea is having the spirits of the isle represented by a vast host of nude dancers, presumably invisible unless they speak. Intercutting the play's text with an itemized collection of wondrous books (a theme Greenaway returns to in The Pillow Book) gives us a sense that the film itself is similar collage. It has frames within frames, but more than that combines various media into a lush experience - theater, writing, painting, dance, calligraphy, music, opera... And many of its images are indelible (I watched this while at university and remembered much of it, though I didn't expect a young Mark Rylance to show up as Ferdinand). In the way the camera tracks along wide sets, it may remind audiences of Greenaway's The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, his most popular work (if we can use that word in connection with this director), but pending a rewatch of that film, I rather think Prospero's Books is his actual masterpiece.
Also from that year: Beauty and the Beast, Hook

1992: Though an early role for Tilda Swinton, Orlando is one of the most Tilda-Swintonian of her roles. Sally Potter's adaptation of Virginia Woolf's gender-bending novel is a surprisingly faithful one, though the book actually has MORE gender-fluid characters. Potter simplifies this, but still casts a male actor as Queen Elizabeth, which acts as a witty visual pun given Swinton's equally ginger complexion. Great pageantry and dry wit make for a visually arresting film, but also one that's as quotable as the source material. Orlando has no justification for their change of sex nor their immortality except emotional ones, and in the end, the story makes great points about the mutability of gender norms, whether maleness or femaleness throughout history. Moving through history is edited in an equally magical way, with chapters divided topics the character becomes interested in whatever the era. Orlando has the further ability to make asides to camera where Swinton proves formidably engaging and beautifully subtle. A rather wonderful, literate story that was way ahead of its time in the 1920s, and dare I say, in 1992 as well.
Also from that year: Army of Darkness, Aladdin, Cool World

Books: Julian Barnes' satire, England, England, imagines a theme park version of England, its own little island nation where everything iconic about the country is distilled and made available to high-paying visitors. The planning, the execution, and what happens to the real UK because of it. Though he draws a number of interesting characters (including a historian who speaks just like Barnes' own essays, hilariously), our access is through Martha, hired as the skeptic to test the ideas, and who is about as well characterized as any of the authors' leads. The details of her life and feelings are perfectly in tune with the theme of the book, which is the play between the original and the fake, not so much as a contrast, but as the latter evolving into the former. The made-up England and its reproduced tourist sites and reenacted histories are only part of a puzzle that also wonders about the origin of traditions, the accuracy of memory, and whether acting like something doesn't make you that particular thing. Placing this thing in a near enough future back in 1999, Barnes can't have known about the role the Internet and digital media would play, but doesn't miss the mark on much else, with today's celebrity plutocrats manifest in his Sir Jack and strong thematic ties to "fake news" and Brexit. So England, England has become MORE relevant with time, not less.

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