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psocopteraI don't watch a lot of movies, except I was on planes with two very long library ebooks to read and so of course my brain was like "movie time!", sigh. Anyways.
The Wild Robot, 2024. I basically more or less liked this but I didn't love it. Maybe it's just that I'm old and it's a kids' movie, but it felt a little rushed, like there were several times I found myself thinking that a scene would have been better and hit harder if they had just given it a couple more beats or a little more space to breathe. I was also disappointed that they backed down from the "predation is a normal part of animal life and predator animals aren't "evil" or "bad guys"" message with the idea that actually predators could just refrain from predation and "choose kindness" if they wanted to. Some nice animation though, and some really nicely done worldbuilding in the background details.
The Man from U.N.C.L.E., 2015. I had never seen this but am sort of adjacent to the fandom-once-removed, like, some people I follow on Tumblr for other reasons sometimes reblog stuff about it. It was fun and I'm sorry they never made another one, although apparently one of the stars was like a serial harasser/abuser so I suppose I'm glad for everyone who didn't have to work with him again.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, 2024. I didn't actually watch this on the plane, but Q started it on the plane and didn't have time to finish it and I was sort of curious about it so I rented it for him. It was fun but wasn't great. There were definitely moments when they hit a good gag or a good vein in the nostalgia mines, but there was a lot going on and it didn't all mesh together that well, and it kind of felt like they got to the last act and were like "shit we'd better resolve all this" and some of that was pretty abrupt. The Elfman theme is unbeatable though, and it was interesting to see the story they came up with for Lydia's life.
Favorite parts: the choir cover of Day-O at the funeral, Delores stapling herself together, Astrid's kiss with the ghost boy, which I thought was a really interesting callback/subversion of the dance/kiss in Casper, one of the other big ghost comedies of the 80s and 90s. It's hard for me to say that the movie was really "about" anything, or saying anything about the original, but insofar as it was, it did a little exploration of the interesting tension between Beetlejuice as threat/source of lasting trauma and as a last resort rescuer/disruptor.
(I still think the 2016 Ghostbusters was by far the best of this sort of nostalgia-mining, and I will forever be annoyed that dudes managed to sink not only any sequels but any other genderbending reboots. A crass, gross woman Beetlejuice - maybe playing against Keaton instead of replacing him - might have been a fun character.)
The Wild Robot, 2024. I basically more or less liked this but I didn't love it. Maybe it's just that I'm old and it's a kids' movie, but it felt a little rushed, like there were several times I found myself thinking that a scene would have been better and hit harder if they had just given it a couple more beats or a little more space to breathe. I was also disappointed that they backed down from the "predation is a normal part of animal life and predator animals aren't "evil" or "bad guys"" message with the idea that actually predators could just refrain from predation and "choose kindness" if they wanted to. Some nice animation though, and some really nicely done worldbuilding in the background details.
The Man from U.N.C.L.E., 2015. I had never seen this but am sort of adjacent to the fandom-once-removed, like, some people I follow on Tumblr for other reasons sometimes reblog stuff about it. It was fun and I'm sorry they never made another one, although apparently one of the stars was like a serial harasser/abuser so I suppose I'm glad for everyone who didn't have to work with him again.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, 2024. I didn't actually watch this on the plane, but Q started it on the plane and didn't have time to finish it and I was sort of curious about it so I rented it for him. It was fun but wasn't great. There were definitely moments when they hit a good gag or a good vein in the nostalgia mines, but there was a lot going on and it didn't all mesh together that well, and it kind of felt like they got to the last act and were like "shit we'd better resolve all this" and some of that was pretty abrupt. The Elfman theme is unbeatable though, and it was interesting to see the story they came up with for Lydia's life.
Favorite parts: the choir cover of Day-O at the funeral, Delores stapling herself together, Astrid's kiss with the ghost boy, which I thought was a really interesting callback/subversion of the dance/kiss in Casper, one of the other big ghost comedies of the 80s and 90s. It's hard for me to say that the movie was really "about" anything, or saying anything about the original, but insofar as it was, it did a little exploration of the interesting tension between Beetlejuice as threat/source of lasting trauma and as a last resort rescuer/disruptor.
(I still think the 2016 Ghostbusters was by far the best of this sort of nostalgia-mining, and I will forever be annoyed that dudes managed to sink not only any sequels but any other genderbending reboots. A crass, gross woman Beetlejuice - maybe playing against Keaton instead of replacing him - might have been a fun character.)
