The Handmaiden is a Korean film that is surprising on several levels.
On the one hand there is an element of subtlety regarding the cultural interplay between the various Korean and Japanese characters. It is set mostly in Korea under Japanese occupation... with Korean dialogue in yellow subtitles and Japanese dialogue in white subtitles. Some of the Koreans want to be Japanese, some of the Japanese want to be Korean... it is complicated.
On the other hand there is no subtlety regarding the sexual interaction between characters. There is a lot of sex. And not the clothes-come-off-cut-to-afterglow kind... it is explicit and detailed and prolonged.
The movie is quite long at over 2.5 hours. But it is split into 3 parts, so you can pause and... er... recover between parts if you want to.
For the first part everything seems to be explained and the most intriguing thing is how they are going to fill two more parts since the story seems pretty much done and dusted towards the end of the section.
Then. Bang (no, not a sex scene, a big surprise) and you realise that most of what you thought you knew must be wrong. This is the point at which I really got interested... up to here I was starting to get a bit bored... but the surprise grabbed my attention.
Part 2 takes you back before the start and explains why the surprise happened. It is all very convincing, again. But is it true? I was more wary this time because I had already been tricked once... and there is a part 3.
I am not going to spoil the plot, just say that I liked the way the story was told. It was very entertaining and set a perfect canvas for the detailed and explicit interactions of characters.
The sex scenes were done well, I thought. The first was shocking in a way, because most of the movies I watch only give hints. It was refreshing to see the whole story for a change... because the sex is an important part of the story. I'm not saying that just because I enjoyed watching... there are plenty of porn sites if that is all you want to see.
So I think there is another lesson here for Western film makers / legislators. Just as Korean action films do violence better, Korean thrillers like this do sex better too.
Saturday 31 March 2018
Friday 30 March 2018
Annihilation
I started watching Annihilation more in hope than expectation. And I was disappointed. Hard to say why exactly... but I think that it felt like it was trying hard to be original... and wasn't.
Not very much happens a lot of the time. Which would be fine if that was repaid by a big build up of atmosphere. But it isn't. There's also no suspense, because everything that happens is more or less telegraphed by the rather plodding script.
Some of the actors do a good job. Sadly not Natalie Portman, who looks like she just can't wait to grab her pay check and leave. Oscar Isaac is good, but underused.
In the spirit of the movie I am just going to stop now and leave you hanging.
Not very much happens a lot of the time. Which would be fine if that was repaid by a big build up of atmosphere. But it isn't. There's also no suspense, because everything that happens is more or less telegraphed by the rather plodding script.
Some of the actors do a good job. Sadly not Natalie Portman, who looks like she just can't wait to grab her pay check and leave. Oscar Isaac is good, but underused.
In the spirit of the movie I am just going to stop now and leave you hanging.
The Frozen Dead
This French series kept coming up on my Netflix recommendations; but I didn't take notice because I thought I had already seen it. I was confusing it with season 2 of Witnesses, another French drama, which had the English subtitle A Frozen Death when it was shown on BBC4.
The Frozen Dead is based on a novel of the same name by Bernard Minier.
It is only 6 parts, but I really enjoyed it. Mainly because it was similar enough to the Scandi-Noir thrillers that I love to be familiar; and different enough to have its own intrigue.
I am not going to give away too much here. But one thing that becomes obvious very quickly is that the police are not in control of the situation at all. There are several players manipulating them and pushing their own agendas. In that sense it is very different from your run-of-the-mill crime drama where something happens and then the hero cop solves it.
In fact the hero-cop is a total mess here. As are most of the characters...
And it turns out that, unlike in A Frozen Death, The Frozen Dead doesn't have any frozen dead people. Sure it is pretty cold in that part of France... but the title is a metaphor. Possibly for multiple things, like being unable to move on when missing presumed-dead loved ones cannot be found... and other things that I wont mention as it might spoil the plot.
I would recommend watching this in the original French with subtitles (assuming you don't understand French) rather than going with the dubbed version. Initially I felt like being lazy, but the English dubbing is very flat so I quickly reverted to the French.
I wish the Netflix player on AppleTV had a setting like "Original Language with English subtitles". Instead I seem to have to select the subtitle language and then select the audio language... which then persists. So I ended up watching part of a Jessica Jones episode dubbed into French!
The Frozen Dead is based on a novel of the same name by Bernard Minier.
It is only 6 parts, but I really enjoyed it. Mainly because it was similar enough to the Scandi-Noir thrillers that I love to be familiar; and different enough to have its own intrigue.
I am not going to give away too much here. But one thing that becomes obvious very quickly is that the police are not in control of the situation at all. There are several players manipulating them and pushing their own agendas. In that sense it is very different from your run-of-the-mill crime drama where something happens and then the hero cop solves it.
In fact the hero-cop is a total mess here. As are most of the characters...
And it turns out that, unlike in A Frozen Death, The Frozen Dead doesn't have any frozen dead people. Sure it is pretty cold in that part of France... but the title is a metaphor. Possibly for multiple things, like being unable to move on when missing presumed-dead loved ones cannot be found... and other things that I wont mention as it might spoil the plot.
I would recommend watching this in the original French with subtitles (assuming you don't understand French) rather than going with the dubbed version. Initially I felt like being lazy, but the English dubbing is very flat so I quickly reverted to the French.
I wish the Netflix player on AppleTV had a setting like "Original Language with English subtitles". Instead I seem to have to select the subtitle language and then select the audio language... which then persists. So I ended up watching part of a Jessica Jones episode dubbed into French!
Sunday 4 March 2018
Mute
I read a newspaper article by a TV reviewer who was complaining about the volume of new material that Netflix were planning to produce in 2018. How was he supposed to review all of that?... he said.
Boo hoo. Hire more reviewers, maybe?
Anyway, one of his arguments was that there was no way all that material could be any good and that Netflix were just making rubbish to drown out the competition. To support his argument he named Altered Carbon, The Cloverfield Paradox and Mute as examples of recent Netflix productions that were not very good.
Really?
I had recently watched Altered Carbon and thought is was quite good. Not amazing, but certainly not rubbish to drown out the competition... whatever that even means.
So when Mute came up as a recommendation I thought I would try that and see if the reviewer was wrong twice. He was. Mute is OK too.
I can see how someone might watch the first 15 minutes and think "Blade Runner knock-off, 0/10". Is that what critics do nowadays? Watch just the first few minutes and decide. Or maybe not even watch at all... and steal some random comments from "social media" written by god-knows-who.
There is a good story in Mute. You have to watch the whole thing to see it. Because the connections only become apparent in the last third. Before that you are seeing the strands and they look disjoint, but they do come together.
TV has changed. There is already too much material for "professional reviewers" to cover. Get over it. Actually, get another job because you are already writing crap about shows and movies you don't understand or haven't even watched.
Netflix are in a great position because they understand their subscribers. They know what I have watched and what I liked. They seem to be good at making more stuff that I like.
Is there stuff on Netflix that I don't like? Of course. But why is that a problem? As long as I have enough to watch, then I am happy. I am sure the people who don't like what I do, but like what I don't, are happy too.
The notion that TV is either good or bad is outdated.
Isn't the internet brilliant !!!
Boo hoo. Hire more reviewers, maybe?
Anyway, one of his arguments was that there was no way all that material could be any good and that Netflix were just making rubbish to drown out the competition. To support his argument he named Altered Carbon, The Cloverfield Paradox and Mute as examples of recent Netflix productions that were not very good.
Really?
I had recently watched Altered Carbon and thought is was quite good. Not amazing, but certainly not rubbish to drown out the competition... whatever that even means.
So when Mute came up as a recommendation I thought I would try that and see if the reviewer was wrong twice. He was. Mute is OK too.
I can see how someone might watch the first 15 minutes and think "Blade Runner knock-off, 0/10". Is that what critics do nowadays? Watch just the first few minutes and decide. Or maybe not even watch at all... and steal some random comments from "social media" written by god-knows-who.
There is a good story in Mute. You have to watch the whole thing to see it. Because the connections only become apparent in the last third. Before that you are seeing the strands and they look disjoint, but they do come together.
TV has changed. There is already too much material for "professional reviewers" to cover. Get over it. Actually, get another job because you are already writing crap about shows and movies you don't understand or haven't even watched.
Netflix are in a great position because they understand their subscribers. They know what I have watched and what I liked. They seem to be good at making more stuff that I like.
Is there stuff on Netflix that I don't like? Of course. But why is that a problem? As long as I have enough to watch, then I am happy. I am sure the people who don't like what I do, but like what I don't, are happy too.
The notion that TV is either good or bad is outdated.
Isn't the internet brilliant !!!
Gods of Egypt (2016)
Last Friday night I had a few drinks and ended up looking through the Netflix film collection for something to watch.
Gods of Egypt caught my eye, because it is an eye catching film, so I watched it.
The effects are quite good... as expected. The story is a bit rubbish. The acting is a bit rubbish. Overall... it's a bit rubbish.
But I watched it all the way through... because I was a bit drunk.
Gods of Egypt caught my eye, because it is an eye catching film, so I watched it.
The effects are quite good... as expected. The story is a bit rubbish. The acting is a bit rubbish. Overall... it's a bit rubbish.
But I watched it all the way through... because I was a bit drunk.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)