two movie reviews
Jul. 27th, 2015 12:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraInterstellar was *so bad*, like, what if they let M. Night Shyamalan remake 2001.
Magic Mike XXL on the other hand was a lot of fun, starring Channing Tatum's arms as the leaders of a merry band of sex elves traveling the American South to make sexually repressed women smile. It's simpler and more optimistic than the first one, still not really about eroticism as much as a sort of intersubjective performance of sexuality that's a whole lot of layers removed from actual sex. (Fun questions of "who is the consumer" - the women who are chosen to be the 'guests' of the various strip acts are sometimes being "proven" to themselves to be worthy of sexual attention, sometimes to other women in the audience, sometimes they're pretty much being used as props for the male dancers showing off for themselves or each other.) There were a few moments with actual passion - Tatum's first dance at the beginning, alone in his workshop when a song comes on the radio he used to dance to - that was hot. And a couple of moments at Domina, when Tatum kneels for Rome and kisses her hand, and when he first watches tWitch dance with obvious fascination/desire. Well, I thought it was obvious; they got *so close* to doing something interesting with it at the end, with the mirror dance, but I just didn't feel it with the choreography there. Good movie but needed more homoeroticism (probably my standard review to be honest).
Magic Mike XXL on the other hand was a lot of fun, starring Channing Tatum's arms as the leaders of a merry band of sex elves traveling the American South to make sexually repressed women smile. It's simpler and more optimistic than the first one, still not really about eroticism as much as a sort of intersubjective performance of sexuality that's a whole lot of layers removed from actual sex. (Fun questions of "who is the consumer" - the women who are chosen to be the 'guests' of the various strip acts are sometimes being "proven" to themselves to be worthy of sexual attention, sometimes to other women in the audience, sometimes they're pretty much being used as props for the male dancers showing off for themselves or each other.) There were a few moments with actual passion - Tatum's first dance at the beginning, alone in his workshop when a song comes on the radio he used to dance to - that was hot. And a couple of moments at Domina, when Tatum kneels for Rome and kisses her hand, and when he first watches tWitch dance with obvious fascination/desire. Well, I thought it was obvious; they got *so close* to doing something interesting with it at the end, with the mirror dance, but I just didn't feel it with the choreography there. Good movie but needed more homoeroticism (probably my standard review to be honest).
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Date: 2015-07-27 10:56 am (UTC)Man, I remember when M Night Shyamalan was making amazing movies and we couldn't wait to see the next one. Sigh.
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Date: 2015-07-27 07:36 pm (UTC)("Unbreakable" is obviously the right one. Honestly, looking at his filmography, I haven't even seen anything post The Village, his "run" of amazing movies was actually just Sixth Sense and then Unbreakable, and I have no interest in ever rewatching Sixth Sense although I do think it was very well done.)
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Date: 2015-07-27 08:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-30 06:11 am (UTC)I'd like to see Sixth Sense again; when I saw it, it was in a theatre where they left the lights on during the movie, and there were half a dozen people in the middle of the theatre sitting chatting on their cell phones, and I think I had given up on the movie by the time the twist happened, so I think I sort of went "Wait, what? Wait, you mean this was an interesting movie after all? But I wasn't paying attention!" So I'll never get to have the experience MNS intended for it, but at least there's the possibility that I'll enjoy watching how he constructed it if I see it again.
Those two are the only ones of his I've seen--the others just didn't look interesting to me--but coincidentally I have After Earth out from Netflix right now. Hadn't realized that was one of his 'til just now.
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Date: 2015-10-18 02:29 am (UTC)> I'd be interested to hear what y'all liked about Unbreakable--my vague recollection is that it mostly just annoyed me.
Well, we often have different tastes in things, so that may be part of it. :^)
It's been a while, but my vague recollection is that I liked it for some of the same reasons that I liked Astro City (several years later), that it got into the implications of the everyday life of a superhero who has somewhat ordinary concerns and issues. That it was more what I would have called "grim and gritty", except that term sort of got co-opted by Frank Miller and ultra-gory violent stuff, as opposed to just stuff where the world isn't always shiny and clean.
Also, I was never like a real comics expert, and certainly am not now, and I can barely remember anything in general, so take all of this with a grain of salt. :^p
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Date: 2015-07-30 06:06 am (UTC)