Parasite. Bong Joon Ho. 2019. ⚃

I thought Snowpiercer was dull, but Okja was OK… So even if this movie won all the awards, I thought that it still may worth watching? So now I’m watching it.

[forty minutes pass]

I’m shocked! This doesn’t suck.

I love all the actors in the family of grifters. The rich family… not so much — they’re over in panto country.

There’s a lot of striking shots — the cinematography is very good — but it’s undercut by too vigorous colour grading. A bunch of the scenes feel like “eh, OK, enough with the cold blues”…

[another hour passes]

I really like the heist movie parts of this film — only the heist is to be able to work as servants. It’s fun! It’s exciting! But the movie is pretty lethargic otherwise.

I wonder whether it won All The Oscars because people in Hollywood saw this as a horror movie? “Those people could be conspiring to get hired by me next! It’s so scary!”

It’s very watchable, but it loses all the narrative tension every four minutes. If tightened up (by at least half an hour) this could have been such a fun and wild movie. Instead it plods when it should zing.

[the end]

I like a bunch of the scenes. But…

The Old Guard. Gina Prince-Bythewood. 2020. ⚀

I wasn’t going to watch this — I mean, it’s Netflix: It’s gonna suck, right?

But I read a review by somebody I respect that said it’s good, and… here I am.

Ready to be disappointed, even if my expectations can’t be lower.

[twenty minutes pass]

I guess it’s possible to be more bored than this? It seems possible? It’s possible.

But unlikely.

[twenty minutes pass]

Did I mention… Worst CGI Ever? When that plane took off it burned off my retinas by just being too awful and I’m now literally blind.

Oh, now I know why I’m watching this piece of crap. It’s all jwz’s fault.

SHAME.

[an infinite amount of time passes]

There’s nothing here… nothing. The cinematography sucks, the performances are moronic, the soundtrack is embarrassing, the plot is nothing, the… the colour grading is the worst I’ve seen in quite a while.

Could this possibly be the worst movie ever made? And I say that as somebody who watched all “Netflix Originals” from 2019, so I know how bad movies can get.

And this is worse.

[thank god, it’s the end]

I feel I was too positive in my appraisal of this movie up there.

Twentieth Century. Howard Hawks. 1934. ⚂

[ten minutes pass]

I totally assumed that this was going to be a screwball comedy, and it’s not. I mean, it’s a comedy, but it’s not screwy…

*resets brain*

[fifty minutes pass]

I think this is all on me: I’m just sitting here wondering why I’m not finding this fascinating. I can see all the jokes fly by… and I’m not really feeling any of them. I mean, not in the slightest: I’m not even slightly smirking.

So either this is the least funny comedy ever, or I’m just not connecting. I think it might be the latter.

Barrymore is totally over-the-top; chewing the scenery in every er scene… but it’s just not funny? Carole Lombard is doing the “intense anger” thing in every other scene, and that should be funny, too, but… it’s not?

I don’t know; I just don’t understand why this doesn’t work for me. Perhaps I’m just in the wrong mode. A moody mode.

Yeah:

Twentieth Century’s box office performance was described as “dismal”.

[the end]

I admire Barrymore’s performance, but I’m just not finding it funny.