smallcreature

slowly recovering from birdsite

autistic queerthing from france. kitty fighting the puppy allegations. Asks welcome!

Icon: Komugi from Wonderful Precure
Header: Whisper of the Heart



smallcreature
@smallcreature

To start the new year, I'm gonna try and keep a record of the movies I see and the games I play here. I wanted to make a retrospective post earlier today but somehow time escaped me. I plan to keep updating this post, hence the title.
Oh, by the way, there will probably be spoilers.

January

Happy Together, Wong Kar-Wai, 1997, watched Jan 1st
Dysfunctional gays love and fight each other while stranded in Argentina. It's a messier story than In The Mood For Love (the only other movie I've seen from this director), and a more colorful one too. Goddammit those colors.

Mullholland Drive, David Lynch, 2001, watched Jan 6th
A story of shared dreams and personal desires. Lesbians will always have relationships so messy that they break reality.

Addams Family Values, Barry Sonnenfeld, 1993, watched Jan 8th
We watched the first Addams Family movie a few weeks ago, back when it was still 2022. I liked it a lot, and I liked the family coming back for more fun antics! Although I love how hard the satire went in this one, I think the narration suffered a bit from the characters being so split up all the time.

Hilda and the Mountain King, Andy Coyle, 2021, watched Jan 15th
A nice conclusion to the TV show! I wish the characters had had a bit more room to breathe, but it was nice nonetheless.

Hana-bi, Takeshi Kitano, 1997, watched Jan 22nd
My second Kitano movie. Damn it was great. A bittersweet, violent tale, about a man ready to do anything to spend some last time with his dying wife.
I really love Kitano's way of blending humor and tragedy. This movie was sad but somehow we all laughed a lot.
Also you should all listen to Joe Hisaishi's excellent soundtrack.

Colorful (rewatch), Keiichi Hara, 2010, watched Jan 29th
This is going to be a hard one to talk about. I first saw this movie when it came out, and maybe a second time not long after, and I had quite fond memories of it. Seeing again some 10 years later, after my tastes and critical mind have developed, I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed.
It's still a nice movie about learning to hang on to life and enjoy the little things, but I felt like it lacked some cohesion, something to really tie all the themes together. The main character is both a good portrayal of what a depressed teenage mind is like, but his attempts at making everyone as miserable as he is, in the first half of the movie, makes it hard to watch. There's a mild sexual assault scene that I had completely forgotten about. His journey to becoming a better, happier person felt a little forced at times.
But then there's the little moments of genius littered throughout the film. The most obvious one is the tram scene, when the movie suddenly becomes a hommage to public transports of the past, and Makoto enjoys one of his first moments of peace. But there's also little nothings, tiny details that felt right. When Makoto tells his father he doesn't do portraits because he hates people, his father simply answers "I hate people, too", and then they eat lunch.

February

Willow, Ron Howard, 1988, watched Feb 12th
Fantasy movies from this era of identical photography and color palettes never stick with me for very long, but they're always fun to watch. Apart from the classic Hero who learns to be brave and value himself, this movie has a very expressive baby, a talking possum with a hilariously high-pitched voice who turns into different talking animals, two tiny annoying jerks, and a very fucked up dragon. But the real star of the movie is of course Mad Martigan, a rogue-ish character with a charming smile who always antagonizes his enemies with the most erotic tension he can muster. Makes me wish he didn't get reformed into a Good King with a Good Wife (also previously evil) at the end. My man didn't deserve to end up a normie.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Joseph Sargent, 1974, watched Feb 20th
Four men hijack a New York subway train, take its 18 passengers hostage, and make a simple demand: have the mayor get them one million dollars in cash within an hour. What ensues is a mad rush to communicate efficiently between each group involved in paying the ransom. Every bit of dialogue is hilarious, yet the movie manages to remain serious in its tone. So that's why it could only end with this incredible closing shot, both the punchline to a joke and the end of a story.
I assumed that at some point, the movie would give us the motives of these thieves, the reason why these four characters gathered that day and hijacked a train, but that mystery is never solved; you're just left to wonder why anyone would go so far, while you can't help admiring the execution of their incredibly thought-out and detailed plan.

Everything Everywhere All At Once (rewatch), Daniel Scheinert & Daniel Kwan, 2022, watched Feb 25th
This is still a good movie! Rewatching it almost fixed my ongoing identity crisis.

Liz and the Blue Bird (rewatch), Naoko Yamada, 2018, watched Feb 20th
This might be my favorite anime movie?? If it isn't, it's in the top 3. Disaster lesbian teens have trouble understanding their feelings and work through them with music. The movie isn't much more than this simple premise; the rest is masterful craft. Every character is well fleshed out, wether they're a main character or appear for two minutes. The animation pays loving attention to every single hand movement, every single shuffling of feet, every single falling strand of hair. It's just an episode in the lives of these two girls, and you're invited to watch it, and it's beautiful.

Games chost


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