Wish (2023) - This is Disney’s animated effort to celebrate its centenary, which received a mixed reaction and commercially bombed.

I was expecting the worst but even though it isn’t Disney at their best, it’s OK. Unable to reassemble a 2D animation pipeline for just one film, they’ve gone for a half-way house with 3D graphics rendered in a watercolour style that aims to be vaguely reminiscent of the 2D era. I thought it looked bad in the trailer but I ended up not minding it. The backgrounds actually look pretty decent, but it is quite a mixed bag with the characters - sometimes the lighting means they look a bit weird. The colours are also a bit of a mixed bag - sometimes they seem tastefully minimalistic, at other times washed out.

The script, and to some extent the story in general, isn’t that great, with few laughs and little to evoke emotion. The film seems weirdly tied up in its lore and magic system despite these not being particularly complex - many of the song are devoted to explaining things rather than expressing characters’ emotions. It often feels like important information is at risk of being lost in elaborate musical arrangements that make lyrics difficult to parse - there’s a song that tries to explain that all things are basically made of stardust but I think children who aren’t already aware of this will not be any wiser by the end. None of the songs are that memorable.

There are some bright spots. King Magnifico is quite a good villain, being slowly corrupted by power throughout the film instead of just inherently evil. This adds a bit of depth but also allows him to be gratifyingly moustache-twirling as the narrative builds. The film does click into gear for the climax, which I thought was alright.

There are lots of callbacks to previous Disney animations throughout the film and I enjoyed the almost complete run-through of Walt Disney Animation Studios movies during the credits (only a few of the WWII-era package films are excluded).

This should have had a major rethink of the story during development but failing that it’s not too bad - it’s just a shame they ended up commemorating the centenary with a whimper rather than a bang. ★★★☆☆

ERE on track to watch 1000 films this year.

I thought The Creator looked good at IMAX, didn't notice any prosumer artefacts or what not. Did notice the lack of cohesive story or emotional stakes though. A shame really as it would have been nice to have a killer new sci fi film made out of the typical Hollywood system and style of filmmaking to make more studios want to change their processes.

Maybe it will give other filmmakers confidence to film in real places anyway for their SFX heavy film.

Nnnnnnnggg... Want but I also want the actual physical disc for best possible picture quality

Valid points. There's a 'movies everywhere' service I've not looked into properly but links to Microsoft, not sure if there are tv and mobile apps for that.
Also in terms of quality I figure the xbox has more processing power than any tv app or standalone bluray player but dunno how much that matters with uhd
Just started fellowship this morning and it looks pretty good to me

This is the Way the World Ends (Short, 2007) - A brief animated film created to support Southland Tales in the run-up to its release. An octopus tells his son the story of humanity’s extinction. Pretty opaque and there’s not much to it, but inoffensive. ★★★☆☆

Nailed it. Just utter madness of a movie.

And some sausages.

Not quite on a par with "I... drink... your... milkshake!", but never-the-less an excellent line.

Is it good? The box is nice.

Blackhat (2015) - Chris Hemsworth plays an incredibly buff computer hacker (he did ‘a programme’ in prison, the buffness is explained, IT’S EXPLAINED!!) who is given the opportunity to commute his sentence if he can use his hacking skills for good to take down a bad guy.

It looks quite nice in 4K with some deep colours in indoor scenes and bright highlights outside, including some nice neon. Apparently it uses some kind of weird shutter angle, which makes motion look kinda bad. The sound is really good and makes you feel like you’re really being shot at.

This provoked mixed reactions at the time, although some people are really keen on it. I thought it was unengaging and dull. There isn’t really any characterisation and the plot just limps from A to B. There’s surprisingly little action - what’s there is quite nice it’s just a shame there isn’t more considering there isn’t much to engage otherwise.

There are some Hackers-esque computery effects sequences at the start but otherwise it’s disappointingly dissimilar and is just a vaguely hacking themed, extremely generic thriller. It cost $70 million to make but the money isn’t really on the screen. I would recommend watching Hackers for some cult hacking action and the Extraction films (with the caveat I haven’t seen the second one yet) on Netflix for some Hemsworth doing actual thriller stuff instead. ★★☆☆☆

I’m gonna watch that on Mubi first.
4K discs releases are all region free. The Bluray that comes with it might be region locked though.

Back to Black (2024) - To be honest, the only reason I went to see this is because Nick Cave and Warren Ellis did the score. Whoops!! There’s hardly any original music in this except for the end credits song, which I could have just listened to on streaming services.

Amy Winehouse is an aspiring singer. She is very maternal and hates drugs. Her career starts to take off and she meets Blake Fielder-Civil, who takes cocaine but is lovely. Their relationship is turbulent despite their mutual loveliness. She is very maternal and takes heroin for some innocent reason, perhaps because she is possessed by a ghost. They are very lovely and everyone around them is lovely, apart from the violence and drugs and stuff. At one point Blake Fielder-Civil is arrested and jailed for a violent crime, which is a surprise because he is unremittingly lovely. She is very maternal and is still taking heroin, perhaps because she is still possessed by the ghost. Blake realises in jail that they are toxic codependents, which is a surprise to hear as they are both lovely. It is also a surprise to hear that Blake has broken their mutual habit of self-harm because this has been previously undepicted in the film. He decides to divorce. Later, Amy hears from a paparazzo that Blake is having a baby with someone else. She is very maternal and sings a melancholy song a cappella while looking in a mirror then drinks herself to death. The end.

This is a stealth jukebox musical with many songs depicted at length or in largely complete form. It is clear the filmmakers wished they were making a film about less complicated people. Amy’s class-A drug problems are brushed under the carpet to the maximum extent possible without being transparently absurd given their fame. Two complicated and controversial men in her life, her father Mitch and Blake, are very straightforward in this film. It is hard to reconcile the Blake in this film with the real-life figure who was jailed for violent crimes and apparently came across very badly in the previous documentary on Amy. Amy’s life often feels disjoined because so much of the film is given to complete renderings of her songs instead of her life story.

Marisa Abela and Jack O’Connell are very good as Amy and Blake. The story is competently produced apart from the wonkiness and the film’s very obviously problematic relationship with real life.

I suspect a lot of people will be happy watching a jukebox musical loosely hung around the shape of a biopic. The film seemed to have drawn in a casual cinema going audience and people seemed satisfied as I was leaving. If you want to watch an actual good film or a film that is very effective as a biopic then perhaps this isn’t the one. ★★★☆☆

This is how biopics of musicians work now, haven’t you seen Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman? Both lovely films about lovely young men who definitely didn’t have any serious problems. And Amy Winehouse is now lovely Amy, Queen of Our Hearts, and definitely didn’t have any dark side or depression or drug problems or self-destructive drinking habits or complex relationships with men who despised her talent.

poprock wrote:

This is how biopics of musicians work now, haven’t you seen Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman? Both lovely films about lovely young men who definitely didn’t have any serious problems. And Amy Winehouse is now lovely Amy, Queen of Our Hearts, and definitely didn’t have any dark side or depression or drug problems or self-destructive drinking habits or complex relationships with men who despised her talent.

I think Rocketman gets away with it by being 'fantastical' (?) enough to let you know it's not trying to tell a straight story, rather than playing it straight like Bo Rap.

RamSteelwood wrote:

poprock wrote:

This is how biopics of musicians work now, haven’t you seen Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman? Both lovely films about lovely young men who definitely didn’t have any serious problems. And Amy Winehouse is now lovely Amy, Queen of Our Hearts, and definitely didn’t have any dark side or depression or drug problems or self-destructive drinking habits or complex relationships with men who despised her talent.

I think Rocketman gets away with it by being 'fantastical' (?) enough to let you know it's not trying to tell a straight story, rather than playing it straight like Bo Rap.

From what I remember of Rocketman, it's also pretty upfront on his drug use and him going off the rails