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. ⚃<

That’s very quantumish I’m sure.

Anyway, this movie is famous for, like, kinda killing off the “Marvel Cinematic Universe”? That is, the reactions to this were so adverse that Disney decided to scale back the Marvel movie stuff significantly, and sent all the producers to their corners to think about what they’ve done.

I just find that rather hard to grok, because the previous two Ant-Man films (by the same people) were among the better Marvel super-hero films, really — quippy, lighthearted and entertaining.

But we’ll see.

Well, this starts off well, if a bit leaden — it doesn’t have much zip.

Oh, OK, perhaps the problem is this stuff — I almost groaned out loud when I realised that this movie was a Snappening movie. It feels like that happened decades ago, and we still have to watch movies about it?

I’m not even sure I remember what that was about… except for snapping.

Wow, that’s a lot of CGI… I guess the rest of the movie is gonna be CGI with some humans composited over it once in a while?

Looks like it.

Man, this really boring. We’re getting a lot of exposition very slowly, and the main driver of the plot seems to be withholding information (which is the most tedious way to make things happen).

Oh, OK, perhaps this is part of why people didn’t like this movie. I mean, that’s an on-spec MODOK, I guess, but it just looks so stupid. Which is also on-spec — MODOK’s a character that’s been played for laughs a lot…

It’s like this movie just can’t get started. Whenever something starts to happen, we get fifteen minutes more of backstory, flashbacks and explanations.

We’re now one hour in, and they’re still introducing characters.

I guess we know that that’s gonna fail? Because Kang was supposed to be the villain in a bunch of new Marvel movies. But perhaps that’s changed, too, with the performance of this movie, and er the Kang actor’s performance. I mean behaviour.

I don’t know… I think a lot of this movie could have worked if they’d just dropped all the exposition and stuff. Then they’d have a movie that was about an hour long, and then they could have added 15 minutes worth of jokes, and then it would have been pretty OK.

Certainly feels like it.

And the Kang actor never stops giving Blue Steel.

I had a peek at Rottentomatoes, and many of the reviews said that the plot was convoluted or something. But it’s not — it’s more like the plot is barely there. What with all the infodumps, the plot is: Kang wants the macguffin, and the others want to stop him (because that would mean the end of the Multiverse, probably). But that all they had time for. Perhaps the lack of plot makes people feel that it’s convoluted?

(Or perhaps it was that bit where Kang explained that he’s fighting a war against other Kangs?)

But man, that was a bad movie. The CGI was surprisingly good, though — lots of goofy bits. And… that’s it.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Peyton Reed. 2023. ⚁