Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. J.J. Abrams. 2019. ⚄

Jay Jay is back? I have to admit I haven’t paid much attention to what’s been going on. But I like Jay Jay! He’s got the best anamorphic lens flares! We all love anamorphic lens flares!

So… Uhm… I’m not quite sure what happened in the previous movie? Uhm… did Luke die? Yes, I think Luke died? SPOILERS! And that guy from that marriage movie thing … went… evil? Or did he renounce evil? Is he nice now?

And that woman! Rey? She… she’s like a god now? I may be misremembering some details. I’m amazed that I remember anything at all! Let’s see.

[rolls movie]

[sixteen minutes pass]

Seeing Carrie Fisher … reanimated this way is really distressing. I’m guessing they took footage of her unused in the previous movie and dropped her in here? She’s doing lines that you can see how they wrote the surrounding lines around, to make they sound like something else than random samples dropped into the movie, and… it doesn’t work at all. She’s spouting non-sequiturs while connecting to nothing around herself, and it just seems cruel. Abusive.

[thirty-seven minutes pass]

Wow. This is all kinds of stupid — it doesn’t make sense even on a scene to scene basis — but it’s kinda fun? That is, there’s some really fun scenes in here, and then there’s some really dreary scenes, and the pacing is really weird, and I can’t believe that we’re 40 minutes in and… nothing has really happened yet, really? I mean, it has, but it feels like we’re still in the intro, and the adventure is gonna start any moment now…

But I’m enjoying myself; this is kinda fun.

[the end]

At one point in this movie, I was definitely going to ⚂ this movie. Because this thing, which I’ve seen on 9gag for seemingly years now, is true:

Basically, everything anybody else does in this movie doesn’t make much of a difference: They’re just landscape for Rey’s hero story.

On the other hand: I laughed (once), I cried (several times), and looks great. So who cares if the plot really… er… doesn’t really fit together very well? Sure, it’s too long, but there isn’t really a bunch of scenes that you could see being cut — there’s usually half an hour of padding in these movies, and that’s not the case here — instead there’s just half an hour of really boring scenes instead.

So: This was a really enjoyable movie to watch. Perhaps there’d be all these things to delight or enrage me if I were a Trekkie, but I don’t really … remember … any of the background to this movie, so I’m pretty much uninvested.

I like it! It’s sci fi! I like sci fi.

Hamlet liikemaailmassa. Aki Kaurismäki. 1987. ⚂

[fifteen minutes pass]

“starring Pirkka-Pekka Petelius”. Is that possibly the most Finnish name ever?

So this really is a version of Hamlet? So far the storyline is kinda vague… Is Kaurismäki depending on the viewer remembering how Hamlet goes? I mean, like everybody else, I’ve seen at least half a dozen stagings of it, but… I don’t… really remember the plot. I mean, beyond the basics of the uncle killing his father etc etc there’s the rub, but… this seems like it would have been more fun if I could remember just exactly what Rosenkranz and Guildenetc did, precisely? And I don’t.

Yes, yes, this is a comedy (a parody?), but still.

[the end]

Well… If you do the dead-pan the humour in excess, the movie’s gonna… die?

I’m kinda amusing, but it’s also kinda annoying.

An American Werewolf in Paris. John Landis. 1981. ⚄

[pre movie]

I remember watching this on VHS with a friend as a teenager, and… I remember an impressive werewolf transformation? And… I think we liked it? Or am I thinking of The Company of Wolves? The one based on the Angela Carter stories? Oooh! I should get that one! I wonder if it’s out on 2K… It is! Yoinks!

OK, so I’m not sure I’ve even seen this before, but I’ve still got good vibes towards it. It’s by John Landis, so I suppose it’s a comedy horror movie? I… feel like I remember it being more horror than comedy, but… we’ll find out?

[fifteen minutes pass]

Wow! The guys playing the American tourists are just the worst! It’s like amateur acting hour, but without the charm.

[the end]

I’m a bit conflicted about this. The hyper-violent scenes are way beyond the call of duty (I’m thinking of the scene outside the cinema in particular), and the way Landis is smirking at it all is really offputting. (The attempt at meta-commentary by showing the Muppet Show clip about how Punch and Judy are a traditional puppet violence thing is just eyeroll inducing.)

On the other hand, there’s a lot of scenes in here that really work, and have real nerve. The plot is really stupid (what’s up with the yokels, anyway? What’s their thought processes? I was hoping for a twist there, showing their actions to be somewhat rational, but SPOILER WARNING no, they’re just stupid yokels), but that’s OK.

It’s hard to tell whether this is a really horrible movie by a no-talent hack that is accidentally brilliant, or whether it’s a good movie that just falls short in the execution.

I’m kinda leaning towards the former.

I do love all the shots from London.