So no-one is very impressed with The Gray Man, yet everybody is watching it. Seems like Netflix got that one exactly right.
I watched The Batman on my plane. Not bad, I like some of the music and the use of light, but overall far too ponderous. It's nowhere near as deep or thoughtful or ominous as it often seems to think it is. Pretty good for a superhero movie though. 7/10
Better, too, than Shang-Chi, which I saw separately and is pretty average. Mostly, it's rather unbalanced: funny at the start, then mostly quite serious; the opponent is really a bad guy but then has a reasonable motivation for his actions in the movie, etc. Decent martial arts action though, for a film like this. 5/10
Back on the plane, I liked Belfast better, but I thought it was a bit to sweet and obvious (or: too romanticized). It would have had to be a bit more gritty to really make the context of poverty and The Troubles come out properly. 7/10
I also started watching The Danish Girl (yes, long flight) but stopped it after some 40 min. It just couldn't hold my attention, partly because I just couldn't care about the characters (too cliché'd?), but most likely also because I had been getting tired and listless. ?/10
Earlier, I watched Pixar's Turning Red. It's fun and chaotic in a good way, but ultimately maybe a little too conventional in terms of story/events. It's a great way to talk about growing up as a early teen girl though (or so I'm told, anyway
). 7/10
I also got to see De Oost (The East), a Dutch film about Dutch 'police actions' (in reality: forcefully trying to stop independence through army intervention) in Indonesia just after WW2. It starts very strongly, but is too hurried in the second part to finish its story. A good effort though. It's also kinda unfortunate that the film doesn't provide more historical context. That wasn't its goal and it's not a documentary; but given that this is basically the first film about this (shameful!) part of Dutch history (it's also Indonesian history, but the film is told from a Dutch perspective), a bit of contextualization would have been very helpful, both to understand the film better and to shed more light on this period of history (which gets little attention in the Netherlands). 8/10 (if only for the choice of subject matter)
On my outbound flight, I also saw No Time To Die. I like Bond films, so those are easy wins for me. I felt this one strayed a bit far from the template though, creating a relatively gritty and moodie film (including tons of people dying; human life counts for very little here, even Bond and his friends just shoot people that are already on the ground and out), but without the actual edge you'd want to see with that. (Even if Bond does die in the end! That's interesting (how often does that happen to an action film protagonist?), But that can't happen in every film, so it's not a new Bond feature.) So it's a surprising experience, but I'm not sure in a good way. Maybe it's where Bond films need to go to stay relevant and acceptable in the current day though. It will be interesting where they go next when they kinda reboot the series with a new actor. (It would be amazing if it was Lashana Lynch, who is already the new 007 here!) 7/10
I watched The Batman on my plane. Not bad, I like some of the music and the use of light, but overall far too ponderous. It's nowhere near as deep or thoughtful or ominous as it often seems to think it is. Pretty good for a superhero movie though. 7/10
Better, too, than Shang-Chi, which I saw separately and is pretty average. Mostly, it's rather unbalanced: funny at the start, then mostly quite serious; the opponent is really a bad guy but then has a reasonable motivation for his actions in the movie, etc. Decent martial arts action though, for a film like this. 5/10
Back on the plane, I liked Belfast better, but I thought it was a bit to sweet and obvious (or: too romanticized). It would have had to be a bit more gritty to really make the context of poverty and The Troubles come out properly. 7/10
I also started watching The Danish Girl (yes, long flight) but stopped it after some 40 min. It just couldn't hold my attention, partly because I just couldn't care about the characters (too cliché'd?), but most likely also because I had been getting tired and listless. ?/10
Earlier, I watched Pixar's Turning Red. It's fun and chaotic in a good way, but ultimately maybe a little too conventional in terms of story/events. It's a great way to talk about growing up as a early teen girl though (or so I'm told, anyway
). 7/10I also got to see De Oost (The East), a Dutch film about Dutch 'police actions' (in reality: forcefully trying to stop independence through army intervention) in Indonesia just after WW2. It starts very strongly, but is too hurried in the second part to finish its story. A good effort though. It's also kinda unfortunate that the film doesn't provide more historical context. That wasn't its goal and it's not a documentary; but given that this is basically the first film about this (shameful!) part of Dutch history (it's also Indonesian history, but the film is told from a Dutch perspective), a bit of contextualization would have been very helpful, both to understand the film better and to shed more light on this period of history (which gets little attention in the Netherlands). 8/10 (if only for the choice of subject matter)
On my outbound flight, I also saw No Time To Die. I like Bond films, so those are easy wins for me. I felt this one strayed a bit far from the template though, creating a relatively gritty and moodie film (including tons of people dying; human life counts for very little here, even Bond and his friends just shoot people that are already on the ground and out), but without the actual edge you'd want to see with that. (Even if Bond does die in the end! That's interesting (how often does that happen to an action film protagonist?), But that can't happen in every film, so it's not a new Bond feature.) So it's a surprising experience, but I'm not sure in a good way. Maybe it's where Bond films need to go to stay relevant and acceptable in the current day though. It will be interesting where they go next when they kinda reboot the series with a new actor. (It would be amazing if it was Lashana Lynch, who is already the new 007 here!) 7/10
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