Annihilation. Alex Garland. 2018.

Oh, right, this is the movie directed by the Ex Machina guy. This time he’s gotten more money, but it’s gone the same portentous lines. Not that that was a bad movie…

Oh! He’s the writer of The Beach, which also makes sense, because that’s the worst movie ever made.

So, OK, I have extremely low expectations now. Everything is colour-graded to a kind of greyish teal and nobody has apartments with the proper number of lamps.

By Emacs, this is bad. The guys shows up all weird and the entire audience is going SO THAT”S THE ALIEN?! and then Natalie Portman is all oh honey and then the alien starts coughing blood of course and then they’re in an ambulance and she’s shouting CAN”T YOU DO ANYTHING as one does with EMTs and then the police stops them and she’s all WHAT ARE YOU DOING before they tranq her.

It’s like watching some episode of a New Era Of Quality TV TV show. All the actors are doing TV acting.

OK, it gets a bit better once we get to the main part of the movie. I mean, it’s kinda stupid and stuff, but it’s got some good scares. But the character’s basic inability to believe what’s in front of their eyes is fucking annoying, especially with them shouting about it.

Dude! You’re in a horror movie! Get with the program!

The references to Stalker are obvious and cringe-worthy, because every time you think that thought you’re also thinking “perhaps I could watch an actually good movie instead of this”.

I think this sums it up well:

In this numbingly ludicrous science-fiction drama, written and directed by Alex Garland, a talented cast of actors play undeveloped characters delivering leaden dialogue in a haphazard story that’s filmed with a bland slickness.

The ending with the fire is very, very nice, though, and almost made me retroactively enjoy the movie.

Little Miss Marker. Alexander Hall. 1934.

Shirley Temple!

Hm… Oh, right, I bought a box set of screwball comedies. I’ve seen surprisingly few Shirley Temple movies, so I’m excited now. I’ve seen, like… Wizard of Oz? Oh, that’s Judy Garland!

I love they way everybody talks, see!? They’re all gangsters, see!? Tack on your heels and walk!

Oh, wow. This is a really, really disturbing movie. The concept is that a gambler pawns his daughter to make a bet on some horses. The bookie refuses all other “markers” (i.e., IOUs), but he takes a look at Shirley Temple and gives the guy $20.

Now you’re going to say “ah, but those were different, naive times”, but then there’s the scene where a kid asks her whether her father had forgotten her other places:

So, not, they really weren’t.

But if you manage to pretend to ignore that subtext, this is a really sprightly movie. It zips along; the plot getting zanier all the time and the actors talking faster and faster. The zingers keep coming.

It’s kinda irresistible and Shirley Temple is the dimpliest kid ever and the two mooks baby-sitting her er beyond perfect.

CGI hair still isn’t perfect.

Aquaman. James Wan. 2018.

I’ve never quite understood the obsession super-hero movie filmmakers have with origin stories. The fun thing with super-heroes is watching the super-heroes do super-heroics. With origin stories, you postpone the fun until, like, one third into the movie. And it makes even less sense when they’re rebooting franchises, and audiences are supposed to suffer through yet another variation of a story they’ve seen before.

At least this movie doesn’t have that problem: Nobody has tried to make an Aquaman movie before.

Once it gets going (and it takes less time than most super-hero movies) it’s pretty fun. The main problem is the damn underwater CGI hair: It’s amazingly distracting. The actors’ own hair is pretty much slicked and tied down, but then there’s this crown of tendrils writhing and waving in the water is the most absurd fashion. It’s like they had too much CPU power available and animated each individual strand with its own motion engine.

At one point I started to wonder whether some of these actors were also CGI because the hair just makes everything seem so artificial.

It’s a fun movie with charming actors (the Aquaman/Mera dynamic is great) and lovely CGI (except the hair). The plot is a bit meh, but better than most super-hero movies.