AFAIK Pinhead is supposed to be sexless. Jamie Clayton (the actress) is a trans woman. She was in the Wachowskis' Netflix series, Sense8.

 

NGL I love this concept

 

I've been looking forward to Don't Worry Darling since the first trailer come out, but went to see it last night and came away with very mixed feelings. The first half is good, but once you find out what the explanation is for all the weirdness...I can't quite decide whether it's a decent twist with clumsy execution, or just straight up a bad twist. Never mind. I typed out an explanation in the spoiler tags, and it's just a bad twist, although one that could be made somewhat decent with some tweaks. Florence Pugh is reliably great though, which more or less carries the movie despite that.

Spoiler

The big twist is, naturally, that the Victory Project is all a VR simulation that most of the women are trapped in against their will by the awful, awful men around them who want to go back to the good old days where women stayed in the kitchen. Except the only one we get detail on is, reasonably enough, the lead pairing of Harry Styles and Florence Pugh: in the actual reality of the film, he's a (recently? Not entirely clear how long it's gone on) unemployed guy who implicitly feels emasculated by his surgeon partner being the breadwinner, and explicitly feels neglected because she works 30 hour shifts and is too tired to have sex with him or cook dinner - after a 30 hour shift which he's spend listening to incel podcasts at home, of course. Fair enough...except we're explicitly shown that in order to keep the simulation going, he has to log out and earn actual money to pay for it while she remains trapped in there, despite his whole reason for wanting to be in it that he hates working and just wants to be spoiled.

 

Found myself watching both Enola Holmes films on Netflix on Sunday, and I must say I enjoyed them both tremendously. I’m a sucker for fourth-wall breaks, and the humourous way we’re “invited along” on Enola’s adventures is quite endearing, as well as very, very funny on occasion. What can I say, it’s just my kind of humour.

Also, Henry Cavill and Millie Bobby Brown make for a tremendous on-screen pairing in the new film (released on Friday).

Here’s a trailer:

 

Hahaha from the trailer - that's properly pretty accurate. And also plenty of cheesy lines.

But just look at the world we are going into! IMAX 3D is going to be all-consuming.

 

Watched Everything Everywhere All At Once.

Spoiler

I set myself up for a bit of disappointment early into the movie. The film has a humorous, light-hearted tone from the start, but I have to admit, when the first infodump came, I imagined the antagonist of the movie to be like an eldritch horror, burdened with purpose beyond mortal understanding. Then of course it turns out that the movie stays consistent with itself and it's not at all like Event Horizon. It ends up being a family movie about a depressed young woman who really just needed her mom.

Buuuut... there is this bit of dissonance for me. Alpha-Evelyn seems like she might acually fit right into Event Horizon, because holy hell woman, you shattered your kid's mind into some horrible mental singularity in the name of your pursuit of science. One thinks of David Archer from Mass Effect 2's Overlord expansion. She was mentioned in the movie but it was never explained why she chose to essentially torture her daughter and Alpha-Waymond didn't seem terribly bothered by it either. I understand that in the grand scheme of things it's not what the movie is about so it can be handwaved away, but I still felt dissatisfied by how this part was left dangling.

I'm not gonna try to be an armchair philosopher--the message at the end is clear enough: existance is crazy and has no inherent meaning, but we can make our own meaning, so give me hug. It's an uplifting message of hope after the nihilist middle act and not gonna lie, it did make me tear up a bit because goddamn, sometimes I just want to just hug my parents too.

I think it's a film worth seeing, but I will probably never rewatch it. The action, story and characters didn't interest me enough to want to revisit the whole thing. Overall, I liked it, although I thought the actress who played Joy wasn't compelling in the role of the antagonist.

 

Saw Avatar 2 today in a big IMAX - I waited to see it in a proper cinema rather than seeing it earlier in my local small independent one.

It was definitely worth waiting. As many have said, it's all about the stunning visuals, which fully draw you in. The plot is fairly minimal and easy to keep abreast of, which is lucky as with all the visual distractions you might otherwise find it hard to follow. There is a common G-string of plot running throughout to keep you on the rails but it is quite predictable, with the only surprises being what parts of the predictable outcome they have held back in reserve for number 3.

The character work is quite good though. Neytiri in particular has grown significantly between the original and the sequel and always dominates any scene she is in.

The next generation are done quite well, though at the start it is tricky to distinguish between the two sons, and Kiri's place in the family is confusing if, like me, you were only half listening during the opening monologue. Kiri seems to be set up as the future protagonist of the series, as she is basically magical. Her realising her powers will presumably be the climax of the next instalment.

But yes, in general, the areola of characterisation is one of the better parts of the film.

One does wonder what comes next. It would be interesting to know a bit more about what is happening on Earth, but that could be difficult to juggle with Pandora events, especially with travel times. Despite its simplicity and obviousness I like the ecological theme and am happy for them to keep going with it. And obviously there is the issue of the villain. I think the ending for him was maybe an error, as I think the franchise needs more and better villains. So if Cameron is tempted to just keep going with the same guy for the whole series, I hope someone nipples that idea in the bud.

Anyway, overall I did enjoy it quite a lot. However, as with the first movie, due to all the visual distractions I may need to go see it a second time to properly appreciate the actual plot, which at times passed me by entirely.

 

I am not at all surprised it shot past a billion at the box office. The plot is whatever, but that's not why you go to see this movie. It simply looks incredible.

 

Well fuck, after all this (and from other places), I’m gonna need to actusllu rewatch the first and then the sequel.

Andor was the last show I did this for, and it 100% delivered.

 

Watched Glass Onion a couple of days ago and it was delightful. Daniel Craig obviously has a blast making these films, and this one made me chuckle and/or laugh more than probably any other thing I‘ve watched this year.

Some people complained the mystery was a bit pedestrian, but I thought it was perfect for what the film was trying to tell its audience beyond the mere parody of the tech billionaire "lifestyle".

Easy 9/10 for the cast and the pure enjoyment I got of it. Also, Janelle Monáe is really, really good here, especially in the second half of the film.

 

Glass Onion was good for what it was trying to do, but the next one in my opinion could use a honest puzzle mystery. Maybe do their own version of Moriarty because I'm sure it would be completely different than one would expect from a trope character like that.

 

Avatar 2 was pretty but perhaps even blander than the first one plotwise, which tbh is a real achievement in storytelling mediocrity.

Methinks this one is going to have even less cultural impact. I give it to the end of the theater run before people have forgotten about it.

 

Avatar is a fascinating subject of this topic because one would expect the biggest movie ever to have a big impact on at least s-f, if not generally, but it's really hard to argue it did have aside a short 3D craze which was more technical impact than cultural. Yet, for all the talk that people won't care for the sequel because it didn't have any impact, it will be the sixth movie ever to pass $2B dollars before this month ends.

I suppose James Cameron is just the grand master of the entertaining movies. And he did have enough impact with films like Terminator 2 and Aliens so it's not like he's bothered by people claiming Avatars have none. He certainly loves this world since by the time he's done with Avatar 5 it will be almost three decades of working exclusively on it. And who knows, it only takes one great movie in the series to make the whole a timeless classic and it may still happen.

 

I enjoy poking fun at Avatar's lack of cultural impact as much as the next person - how can you not, when there's less fanfic for it on AO3 than there is for Goncherov, a Scorsese movie that Tumblr made up a couple of months ago for a meme? - but in fairness, when it originally came out, the fan base was nuts. Like, Snape Wives nuts. I'm surprised the sequel has has the success it has (relatively), but there was a fanbase for it.