Cinema Critique 001

I've decided to optimize my intake of cinema by translating my experience into the words, right here. So without further eloquence, I give you...

Critique the first.

I've watched 5 movies in the last few days. Under the Skin, Predestination and John Wick 1-3. Let's start with JW.

John Wick 1-3

I've been threatening to watch John Wick for a year or two, and now I have. I wanted to see what Keanu was doing with all that training and stunt work he's been at.

What I realized a little late was that, (I think), these are meant as a pastiche of action movies. The tour deforce fight choreography has a hard asian influence, like Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, fast and gorgeous, like dancing plus a decent dollop of ultra violence with repeated theme of headshots to finish off opponents. The universe of the table and the warrior elite that serves the table is slowly revealed, and that's sort of fun, but it lacks a consistent internal structure. For instance, there's mention of a code that these elite live by, but it seems to boil down to obey the table or die. The implication is that the table has been around for ~1000 years, longer? This feels implausible. In the real world, authoritarian structures eventually implode.

Winston forms alliances of convenience, whereas John Wick seems to have loyalties and love for others. John was able to retire and be with a woman until she got sick and died and then had a random run in with Russian assholes at a gas station. Now maybe if we find out that his wife was poisoned to get John back into the game and or the Russian thing was all a setup, fine. Overall tho, the franchise lacks depth, it's kind of dumb especially with the high gloss of extreme wealth as the backdrop. I could go on, but let's spend time on better fare.

Predestination.

This had an M Night Shyamalan feel to it, in that you can't watch it twice without knowing the big twist, eg Sixth Sense. You only get the surprise on the first watch. Turns out the main characters are all the same character, even what's his face meta director dude could be the same character. Maybe everybody on the planet is/are all one person, whoa! Ok, production value is high, it's fun and I love the instrumentality and how jumping fucks you up a bit. Overall, the after taste is slightly contrived, like ok neat but... so what? For all that, this was a fun movie.

Under the Skin

I love a bunch of things about this movie. First the beginning is lovely and almost perfect, except for the trippy goo[ turning into an eye. A bit too literal. Just give us an eye-like structure maybe. Scarlet Johannson was awesome in this, so credit also to the director who inspired her. There is really no extrapolation, you're supposed to just figure it out for yourself. Thanks be. We find out that the skin is fragile, which is why she always leads her men and touches very minimally. Also the motorcycle agent who seems to do diagnostics on her. The sort of takeover by the human biology as she becomes increasingly dysfuntional. Incomprehensible alien agenda. All very, very nice. The skin is alive, a separate entity, also very nice. Such a solid concept adeptly executed. Finally, the almost impossible to understand heavy Scottish dialects, there's really very little comprehensible dialogue, wow. Strong transmission sans spoken language.