"Have you ever reckoned the Earth much?"
Rewatched Edson Oda's Nine Days again for the first time in 18 months since Sundance 2020 and... you know this is an absolute *masterpiece*, right? It's everything magical about cinema and the spectacular existence of life and beyond. Pure bliss. Astonishing and awe-inspiring in every possible way, from the score to the set design to the performances to the story itself about life and what it means to be alive. This is an…
Some people have been complaining that this film isn't actually about Mr. Rogers. That's right. It isn't. It's about YOU. Yes, you, the viewer. It's about the way you giggle and smirk whenever Fred Rogers talks about something as simple as being kind to one another. Perhaps you think, that's for kids, that's not for me, we have real issues, and there are bigger problems in this world than just being kind. Maybe there are. But solving many of those…
"You must not read from the book!" So the lesson of this movie is to not read books. Evie, Miss "I'm a librarian!", just couldn't stop herself from reading and thus she doomed the world and brought back this immortal monster to wreak havoc. Way to go - so no more reading, please and thank you. Ha ha.
This has all the pieces to be a good film, an interesting concept, a few nice looking actors, but it just doesn't add up. The over-bearing score really starts to become grating by the end... I like so much about this film (and its rather tender message) but really do not like how it all comes together.
I love the way Sorrentino shoots Italy, just gorgeous, but does he really have anything else to say anymore? Is that it? This is one of those hilariously vane films where they talk about anthropology as this important (academic) subject throughout yet never show a single scene of actual anthropology work or study in it once. Yes yes, I get that the whole point is that all of the scenes in the film are anthropology but this doesn't make it…
Huh. At least after my first viewing, this is one of my least favorite Wes Anderson films. And considering I love sci-fi and love Wes Anderson, I should've loved this?! But nope. It's an extremely strange, oddly low-key, super nerdy alien encounter parable about... I don't know what? What was that? The most confounding Wes Anderson film yet. So many characters stuffed into a film-within-a-play meta story that only makes it more confusing. That narrative structure really took me out…
