Although I've seen people call this a realistic movie, nothing in it strikes me as real, in the sense of photographic realness that captures an event accurately.
Seen through the eyes of a 13-14 year old protagonist, with a wandering, moving camera that itself feels like a real participant in the movie (and thus the movie's persuasion is very powerful -- you feel like you are there with everyone), "Come and See" depicts a wartime nightmare of what it feels…
"Blue" is less a formal movie than a visual lyric dedicated to grief. You could say that the main character suffers terrible loss and, as the plot goes, she deals with it. That's it.
But wait, Kieslowski structured these Three Colors films around the French Revolution's three values, even though he downplayed that, and "Blue" is about liberty. I'm one to think that his movies, whether Three Colors or Decalogue, are in fact profound meditations on their topic.
How is…
The truth is that this movie’s genre, the action-thriller centered on the search for mythical nonsense, needs to find its own Fountain of Youth. That might be done, frankly, with younger actors who are closer to 50 than 30. What this movie longs for is what the entire movie industry in America needs, a true revivification towards something fresh.
learningaboutmovies.substack.com/p/fountain-of-youth-is-your-2025-national
If there's such a thing as History-Porn, I just watched it. It feels as if the Revolutionary War just took its shirt off and gave me a lap dance.
There's even a couple of moments where the movie nearly does this. E.g., Mel Gibson turns from pacifist to badass killer, wasting a couple dozen redcoats with hatchet, emerging from that hackfest with his shirt dropping off his body, bloody-white, and hot.
Partly what I mean is that this thing simulates…
Going to “Minecraft” at my local theater was something like an atheist observing a Catholic Mass who had never heard of God or church before.
People kept talking back to the screen, saying lines from the movie as if they had seen it before. When Minecraft objects appeared on screen, they said their names aloud.
And when Jack Black appeared on screen to say, “Hello, I’m Steve,” in unison dozens of people said “I’m Steve” at the same time.
Was…
"Barbie" watches to me as if someone took an evolutionary psychology class, another on the Frankfurt School, and another on feminist philosophy. That person was so confused about how those might fit together that they made this movie, idealizing their favorite toy while undercutting it, only to promote Mattel in the end.
I have complained about the toyland movies I've seen in the last decade or more. The first "Avengers" watched as if it were a recreation of the toy…
