It’s a new Russian villain! The brother of the previous one.

This movie admirably dispenses with exposition in a couple of minutes, and then we’re in a car chase.

The cinematography on this one seems a lot better than the first one. The first one was relentlessly colour graded, making everything look rather blah, but here we seem to have actual colours. And while the action is still happening in dark environments, you can see what’s happening (instead of guessing, like in the first movie). Did this have a way higher budget than the first movie?

Yup — according to imdb, this was $40M, while the first was $20M. So they had more money for lighting.

Oh, OK. In this one we get the touchy feely stuff after a bit of action…

So who’s gonna kill the dog this time?

Oh, the villain this time isn’t Russian, but Italian? Or something?

Cool.

I assume this is a composite shot (because the elements just seem to fantastic), but it looks really good.

Heh heh. They’re going full Bond nonsense in this one?

It’s kinda shamelessly stupid, and I like that.

Rawk!

OK, this bit is like watching somebody play a video game, which isn’t great.

This really has spectacular use of location. It feels extremely… there… and it’s very pretty.

The first movie had some pretensions towards realism (however slight), but this is pure fantasy land, which is a lot more fun.

Brian Blessed!

But now it went from pleasantly absurd to silly. One gun? With seven bullets? But why?

This movie looks better than movies that cost five times as much. I guess it’s because they actually built these fun sets instead of just CGI-ing it in?

It’s really an enjoyable if nonsensical movie, but it’s too bad they couldn’t come up with an ending, and instead it just say that it’s going to continue in the next film. Isn’t he even going to be able to change his shirt before the next film?

Anyway, it’s one of those extremely rare sequels that are better than the original.

John Wick 2: The Wickening. Chad Stahelski. 2017. ⚄

I haven’t seen these John Wick movies, because I assumed that they were, well, pretty tedious, but I’ve recently seen several people with good taste state that they rather like these films, so I went ahead and bought the box set.

This better be good!

This is from 2014 — the apex (or possibly the zenith) of the Colour Grading Wars. Not a single pixel will make it to the screen with the actual colour it had when filming!

Aww.

OK, now the revenge is gonna start?

This is actually pretty well made. I mean, they are fridging the dog to give him a reason to start killing people (which is a better twist on this than usual — fridging a daughter or wife would be more traditional), but they’re also giving us a reason to care first. Which is unusual. That is, they managed to make the Keanu character both sympathetic and interesting in a very efficient (and non-clichéd) way.

But now I’m wondering whether he’s gonna get a new dog for each movie?

It’s too bad the fighting is happening in darkness, really… Not a very confident approach.

It’s Bergerac!

Finally! Ultraviolence!

The whole point of this movie is presumably to allow people to enjoy watching Keanu kill a whole bunch of Russians, so it’s a bit odd that it’s taken this long… but on the other hand, there’s 50 minutes to go, so perhaps the rest of the movie is just going to be Russapocalypse?

Very practical to have the sight light up your face.

I guess this is more of a fantasy movie than an action movie… The fantasy being that there’s a whole underworld of elegant hotels and clubs for elegant assassins etc.

I’m not quite sure how to throw the die on this one. Were the action sequences good? Yes. Was I bored? Yes. Was it interesting? Kinda.

John Wick. Chad Stahelski, David Leitch. 2014. ⚃

Very meta.

So, this is about making a movie (perhaps related to the previous Kiarostami films like Where Is The Friend’s House).

Hm… Oh, I see that I’m watching these films out of order — this is the third film in the trilogy — I haven’t seen And Life Goes On yet. Oops.

Hey! That’s the guy who played the protagonist in Where Is etc!

Hit that mark!

But in this film it’s hard to say whether it’s obvious the actor is hitting a mark because they’re supposed to, or whether they’re not supposed to. It’s fun!

I’m enjoying this movie, but I’m having some problems actually following the plot here. It seemed that we were going all in on a kinda meta thing, and then we’re apparently following that actor (who’s really a mason) instead on his quest to marry a neighbourhood girl? So then we get scenes like:

Which are indeed two good reasons.

Heh heh, this granny doesn’t take any prisoners.

I’m not sure where Kiarostami is going with the movie-in-the-movie scenes — we’re getting to see the same scene over and over and over again, with small variation — somebody’s always flubbing their lines. The rest of the movie seems fairly straightforward, but these scenes seem like… uhm… Kiarostami’s making fun of himself, in a way? That he’s spending his days like this?

Extreme long shots.

I’m not even sure whether I like this movie, in a way? That is, I was pretty annoyed in parts — the repetetive takes are almost kinda magical, but not, and the cute romantic plot is so close to being really creepy and stalkerish.

And listening to the commentaries makes things even worse — Kiarostami’s son is extolling his father’s genius, but makes him sound like a really manipulative weirdo. Sorry!

Right:

The film was selected as the Iranian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 67th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee. Many have since declared the film a masterpiece.[according to whom?]

Yes, I can see that it might be a masterpiece. But I’m going with:

زیر درختان زیتون. Abbas Kiarostami. 1994‭. ⚃<