Tag: movie

Flow (2024)

Mentioned as an aside in an earlier post on The Lost Tower, Flow (2024, d. Gints Zilbalodis) is a delightful little film made entirely in Blender by a small team of creators from Latvia.

I caught it at our local theatre on the Sunday night of the Oscar’s, jumping at the opportunity to see something new rather than the endless parade of speeches, gowns, and jokes, all of which would be diced up into content sized chunks in the coming days. And it was the right call.

Flow is truly a delight.

It is a narrative entirely without (human) dialogue, though one that is not without communicative action (and I think this needs to be stressed and has mostly flown under the radar in online analysis), and it is thrilling and engrossing throughout it’s runtime, even when the focus is on naps in the sunshine. (Or perhaps especially when the focus is there).

So it’s through this lens that I want to take a deeper look.

Communicative action is a very human-focused view of communication developed by Jurgen Habermas (who we’ve talked about before at length in our podcast episode on the Public Sphere), where the ‘argument” (discussion) is how rational actors deliberate on what actions to take.

And when we start talking about “rationality” our anthropic bias makes us hesitant to see this in animals at all.

But as the ethologists would argue, this isn’t the case: the animals exist in their own lifeworld, and are making rational decisions based on the events and environment around them.

(And before we go too far off on a tangent, yes, that mention of lifeworld, in the Husserlian, phenomenological sense of the world was intentional).

This world, filled with life, reacting to the events around them, filled with inter- and intra-species communication, conveyed without any dialogue, solely through camera angle, sounds samples, and stunning visuals, provides a stunning panorama on which the story can be followed even by our own pets viewing the movie on a TV screen.

It’s a marvelous work.

And the vibe is good too. If you get a chance, check it out in the theatre, where the experience of total cinema can engulf you in the world. But if it’s not playing near you, check it out on whatever streaming service offers it.

And make sure your pets can join you in watching it too.

Highly recommended.

Alien: Romulus (2024)

Also a love story?

Having sworn off the extended Alien franchise after finding myself hating both Prometheus and Alien: Covenant back-to-back, I was surprised to find me watching this on the opening weekend. Good word of mouth from a few friends whose opinions I trust had me checking it out, in IMAX no less, in a late afternoon matinee.

And surprise, it’s good!

Now, the challenge with any movie in a franchise with 45 years of history is to deal with the accumulated weight of expectations, of both the hardcore fans and casual movie-going public, and even those lapsed fans like myself. So, to achieve some modest success in creating a movie that is genuinely terrifying, and expands on the universe, fitting in as a piece in the larger story, and leaving room for more development later, is no easy task. Well done on all those involved.

That isn’t to say it’s perfect: there are a few scenes that feel like level design in a video game adaptation, which has been an ongoing trend in movies since at least the Star Wars prequels. It’s the curse of cinema in the new millennium. And a couple notable lines that tie too close to the past movies in the franchise fell flat, not having enough room to breathe. But these quibbles aside, it was a fine film, that never felt like it dragged, and kept the tension up throughout.

There’s room to expand the Alien universe off this; more with Andy, obviously. But I’d also like to see a wider universe, beyond the Weyland-Yutani corporation, and see what other approaches to outer space there might be. Because in a galaxy where the Xenomorph is a solution, what kind of problems might lurk out there?

Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)

A love story?

Knew I was going to see this one pretty early on. Despite my issues with previous Ryan Reynolds vehicles, his work in the first two Deadpool movies was great, and as the initial teasers started showing up, I started actively not watching any of the other trailers that were showing up everywhere online. (I’ve had this practice of nescience for a while, even though I haven’t named it until recently.) Arranged to see it with a few friends, and bought tickets ahead of time, though it was the into the second week of release before we caught it. I went in pretty much blind.

And really enjoyed it!

(There’s something to be said for actively avoiding the spoilers and the level of enjoyment of a given work.)

The movie lived up to the hype, a frenetic bundle of kinetic energy that only slowed down when it had to interact with the TVA HQ, in it’s studio mandated ties to “metaplot” and the wider MCU and streaming series (which perhaps says something about the issues with that part of the franchise, that it’s such an anchor that it can drag the momentum of Deadpool to a halt). But the jokes landed, the violence was cartoony (in the way of Warner Brothers, not Disney), the cameos were a genuine delightful surprise, and the 4th wall was repeatedly broken.

With a wink and a smile. 😉

Deadpool’s charm is that the character seems aware. I saw Deadpool with someone who hadn’t seen the previous films and had skipped most of the larger MCU, and they found Deadpool acting as their voice in the movie, asking the questions they wanted asked (what is Gambit saying?) and pointing out the absurdity of it (“til you’re 90!”). Deadpool’s superpower is being able to break the 4th wall, but that break goes both ways, bringing the audience into the film to enjoy the movie alongside him. And it’s that joy that is infectious, and makes the movie fun.

With Deadpool‘s success as the highest-grossing R-rated film ever (at the time I’m writing this), I fear we’ll see a slate of movies leaning onto the violence and profanity in the hopes of the chasing that same success. But in doing so they’ll be learning the wrong lessons from the film.

What have we learned?

  • Move fast
  • Have fun
  • Keep it short
  • Don’t worry about explaining the plot (too much – show don’t tell)
  • Realize the whole premise is ridiculous
  • Invite the audience in
  • Enjoy!

Seems simple enough. Hope we see more like it.