Hang on. Haven’t I’ve seen this movie before? Oh well. I remember nothing about it, except… no, I remember nothing.

Obviously.

Picard!

It’s Gollum!

Man, this movie is such a mess. It’s super high stakes, but the individual scenes are so low stakes. It’s just plodding along.

Oh yeah! This scene! It’s so cool.

Bryan Singer is such an odd director. Some scenes are “yay whoo” and other scenes are “zzz”. It’s like he was only interested in certain scenes and then the rest are just… there…

It doesn’t make for thrilling viewing.

Perhaps he was (allegedly) off the set molesting somebody during the boring scenes?

That wig is kinda… bad? Makes Tyrion Lannister’s head look really big.

This is part of the Queery movie series, and their defence of this movie is kinda… er… It’s not as exploitative as Woody Allen movies? That’s a take.

But this just isn’t a good movie. There’s scenes that are really fun to watch, but it just doesn’t work as a whole.

Such lab. That’s how all labs I’ve been in look like! No lights in the ceiling and something bubbling off in the corner. It’s like I’m back at CERN!

Man, this is brutally tedious.

Anyway, there’s bits here that are totally “whoooo”, but it’s mostly just boring.

X-Men: Days of Future Past. Bryan Singer. 2014. ⚂

This post is part of the Queer Cinema blog series.

I think this is one of them there New French Extreme Cinema kind of things? I mean, Noé and Breillat and people… Hopefully there won’t be cannibalism this time.

The trade here is rough!

But has this been edited for Amazon Prime?

This is pretty good, but it doesn’t seem very… realistic. But perhaps it’s meant to be a fantasy.

Lots of waiting around in this profession.

But with perks!

Organise! The union forever!

The workers gets a lot of fresh air, at least.

OK, and then it goes all eek. (I had to skip a scene. Fucking New French etc.)

Yay.

The visit to the doctor’s office was really, really touching.

But again — this is so … unrealistic. I mean, injecting GHB into your urethra to roll a trick? THAT”S NOT HOW WE DID IT IN MY er I mean, that’s a lot of work for something you could do with a lot less preparation.

This is true:

Credit especially Félix Maritaud, who is totally convincing in the role of Léo, and committed to going to the extremes of degradation that the role demands. This might be a career making role…he’s that good.

His performance is magnificent. Utterly astounding. And it seems like kenru’s prediction was correct:

His schedule has been totally full.

And there’s Noé! Hah!

Awkward!

This is almost brilliant. There’s scenes that are totally ⚅, but.

Sauvage. Camille Vidal-Naquet. 2018. ⚄

Oh my god I hate this already.

It’s so Netflix.

Oh god. It’s even got the fairy plinkety things on the soundtrack. You know the ones — the hanging metal thingies that the percussionist kinda makes go twinkle twinkety?

It’s probably got a name.

THOSE SHOULD BE OUTLAWED

After doing some image googles, it’s called a mark tree? Or “bar chimes”.

Such desaturate.

Speaking of cinematography — isn’t it ironic that Netflix has no problem showing movies in 2.35:1 aspect ratio, while real, actual movies (filmed in similar formats) are chopped down to 16:9?

Oh! These people are supposed to be like 17? Now the movie makes more sense.

This is dire.

I totally see what they’re going for. I mean, a dorky version of Cyrano sounds like it would be really fun. But instead it’s just there. There’s nothing here. It’s like Netflix only got the elevator pitch, OK’d it and then they forgot to write the script. Or hire hairdressers.

So they got an AI to generate it, because they were in a hurry.

There’s some scenes here where you think it’s finally going to be fun — but then instead of going to, well anything, the scene just peters out.

Not even a standard dressing up montage scene? WHAT KIND OF MONSTER ARE YOU

Oh god. Now they’re talking about religion. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any more dire.

The Half of It. Alice Wu. 2020. ⚁

This post is part of the Queer Cinema blog series.