The Last Duel

When I first saw the trailer for this movie, I was at the theatre waiting to see another movie. The trailer didn't catch my attention until I noticed Adam Driver. I have known him after his Ben Skywalker performance in the contemporary Star Wars series. Not that I like him very much, it was just about recognizing a face, hence getting my attention to the rest of the trailer. At that point, I thought this movie was going to be about King Arthur. 

Second time I saw the trailer for this movie, I was at the theatre waiting to see another movie. This time I remembered that I had seen this trailer before and this time I watched it more carefully. Then understood the story more correctly this time---it had nothing to do with King Arthur, my bad. From the trailer, one can deduce at least two things, it is a period movie and there is a woman to whom nobody believes she's telling the truth about something. This is something I can empathize with. 

Finally, the movie came out and this time I went to the theatre to see the movie itself, not its trailer. Along the way, I had learned that the movie is based on a book and the book is based on a real story. Knowing this made the movie much more intense---it was already going to be an intense movie. 

I have already mentioned Adam Driver. His performance was not bad. He played a bad guy. If he keeps playing bad guys in movies, I am afraid it might stick to him. Oh well, not my problem. Matt Damon looks very different in this movie. Not only he is older now but also the beard style and the hair they gave him makes him hard to recognize. His acting performance in this movie was definitely fantastic. Jodie Comer, you might remember her from Free Guy. Who knew she is gradually becoming a big actress. Her role, specifically, was a role that is tough to undertake. Ben Affleck looks very different in this movie, too. I had a hard time recognizing him even though I knew he was going to be in the movie (I know I am bad with faces but, I mean, they made him blond). I definitely wouldn't want to be friends with Ben Affleck's character---he is a horrible person.

The story of the movie takes place in 1300s. Right, you get to see how daily life was in those days. How their houses were, how their clothes were, etc. All that is good. But you also see how their understanding of science was in those days and how their understanding of justice was. This struck me the most. Of course, we all know science developed over the years so it was expected that they didn't know much in those days. Still, seeing them talk that way, was sad (and funny---because we know the right explanations now). It was extra painful to see the place of the women in that society. How hard they attacked the woman in the trial with such personal questions stupefied me. 

You may wonder, well, this movie is called The Last Duel, but is it really the last duel? Yes, in fact, it is. The duel that takes place in this movie is the last judicial duel in France. Normally, it wasn't going to be the last duel, because the last duel had already happened---trial by combat was discontinued in the country. But there was an exception in this case and they were allowed to do trial by combat when the court hearing was inconclusive. So, here you go, you can watch the last officially recognized judicial duel at cinemas now. Of course, the person who allowed this duel to happen was King Charles. Speaking of which, maybe not earlier in the movie but later in the movie, the actor who plays Charles (Alex Lawther) performs spectacularly. Especially, you should pay attention to him when he is watching the duel.

The movie starts with the set up of the last duel, then takes us back to show the events that led to this duel, then concludes with how the duel went and who won. I must say the director is showing off with this movie. Ridley Scott is really a talented director. You may perhaps remember him---he was the director of the movie Alien. Let's look at "then takes us back to show the events that led to this duel" closer. It shows us the events in three chapters. No, not by breaking the timeline into three, but by breaking the perspectives into three. In all three chapters, the timeline and events are the same. Same scenes shot again and again. Each chapter is how the events took place in a main character's eyes. Things happen very differently in some instances and they are only slightly different in other instances. The last chapter is how events happened through the eyes of the woman. And they show it to you the last because only she knows the truth (and so you wait very anxiously till the end to see the truth---at least I did). 

Now, you may wonder, wasn't it boring to watch the same events over and over again? The answer is no. It is true that the events were essentially the same but seen or interpreted by someone else each time so there were some differences. The first chapter is how Jean de Carrouges perceived the events and the second chapter is how Jacques Le Gris perceived the events. Since they were at war and at other places together, the first two chapters had many repeated events. But in the third chapter, when we are seeing the events from the eyes of Marguerite de Carrouges, things change up a bit since technically she was at home while the men were at war and she wasn't in the story until she married Jean. If the third chapter had repeated all the same as the first two chapters, I think it would probably have been boring but this wasn't the case so boredom was successfully avoided.

This method of showing the events was a nice touch on this movie. I had thought, since they were called 'chapters' on the movie screen too, that this was how the book was written. But, no. I checked the book and so this must really be the director's idea. Or, perhaps it's the writers of the movie which, I must add here, includes Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. In any case, the praise goes to the movie.  

I give 8/10.

Venom 2

I don't want to say all but I think it is safe to say most of the psychopaths are created by their traumatizing childhoods. In the case of movies, these are the main villains. In this movie, the main villain was locked up in a place for 'special' children when he was just a child. The traumatic events of that place drove him insane over time. As he did pretty bad things as an adult too, he was then locked up in prison. 

The main villain somehow gets tissue from Venom and becomes a host for a variant of Venom (or, should I say descendent of?). It is not clear how reproduction of lives in Venom's planet happens. However, somehow this villain becomes what he calls himself Carnage. He is much more disgusting than Venom, or the other symbiotes from the first Venom movie. In fact, I don't even think Venom looks disgusting. 

As I have been mentioning ever since the beginning of my posts on this blog, I am a fan of action but not a fan of disgusting images. To reflect how much of a psycho serial killer the main villain is and also to fulfill the name Carnage, I guess the film makers found it imperative to make this Carnage guy look disgusting enough. But the question is...what did this add to the movie? I don't think it was necessary to go so far. 

The movie spends a lot of time on the back story of this villain and it is a good story too but it is not very well-established. They also spent lots of time on his lost lover, but it didn't have a big role in the story ending so I don't think it was that much necessary---unless the character will come back in a later movie. Since they spent so much time on all of these other things, there wasn't much of (or enough of) Venom-Eddie interaction. 

Apparently, from the comments on the first movie, the film makers understood that the audience enjoyed Venom-Eddie interactions very much and wanted more of it in the future Venom movies. Even though they thought they understood what we meant, that's not what they did. What they did was to make them fight each other---so not that much talking either. I don't know about others but what I was looking for was having them converse with each other in contexts of day-to-day activities. Tom Hardy does a great job in being Eddie Brock and in being Venom. So I wish there were more of him in the movie. (Note: it is possible that there was enough of him in the movie but I am the one who can't get enough of him.) 

What I think of this movie: I guess the best part of this movie was the after-credit scene. This is like how the best part of my 6-month stay in Paris was that I went to visit Belgium. I guess it is a bit of a spoiler but I will try to keep it brief. In the after-credit scene you see some connections to Marvel Cinematic Universe. It a known fact that this movie was made by Sony pictures in association with Marvel Entertainment, so it's not like I gave away something that wasn't known. 

The message I get from this movie is "Don't abuse children as it may turn them into psycho serial killers." It is possible that it wasn't their intent to give this message in the movie, but this is what the movie comes down to in my mind.

Before I close, I would like to compare this movie with the first Venom movie. I think the first one was better because the story was better established. I wonder if the main reason for this is the shorter length of the second movie---it is only 15 minutes shorter but I guess you could say a lot in images in 15 minutes. Also, I like the soundtrack of the first Venom movie more. Perhaps the third Venom movie will be better than the first two. I guess we'll have to wait a couple of years to see that.

I give 6/10. 

Infinite

Before I start, I must admit that the only reason I wanted to see this movie was because it is called infinite. But I had seen the trailer too and it seemed more or less interesting, so here we are. Let's start. 

"Who wants to live forever?" I reside with Queen on this subject, I wouldn't want to live forever. I guess everyone comes across with this idea in life at least once. I remember when was in primary school, there was a discussion about how you can be immortal---you will die for sure, so you could create an art piece or something to make your name immortal. Being immortal, or having eternal life, has a lot of implications. I came across with this subject in other shows before, like Doctor Who and Lucifer. 

In Doctor Who, there is a character who has immortality. What happens after some time is that the person becomes more and more sad because all the loved ones are passing but also the person becomes a bad person over time, loses the sense of morality. When I observed what happens to this character in this show, I really agreed with the screenwriters. Their point was that even though the person is immortal, it's still the same body over many life times, in particular, it is the same brain. So eventually, after certain number of lifetimes, the person doesn't even remember what kind of person he/she used to be to start with. I think this is an accurate depiction of what would happen if a human had immortality. 

Similarly in Lucifer, the show takes on the case of Cain (from the Bible)---he is cursed to walk the earth and so he was on Earth ever since, living many many life times. What happens is, he gets sick of being immortal, he just wants to die. So, being immortal is actually a curse contrary to common sense where people envy being immortal. 

In this movie, Infinite, they take on the same subject. According to the movie's story there are certain individuals on earth who are immortal in the following sense: when they die they are born again in another body. So it is pretty much reincarnation, but in the movie, not everybody has this. And the people with this "gift" are smart enough (or train themselves) to remember their previous lives to establish a collective knowledge. Basically, they have eternal lives, but I guess they couldn't call the movie that (because of Marvel implications), but called it infinite because they have infinitely many life times? It is extra sad for me when certain math related terminology is inaptly used. 

There are two groups of people within this kind of gifted individuals. Some of them wants to use their knowledge to help humankind, some of them wants to eradicate all life on earth sometimes. The first group has the vibes of Eternals from Marvel comics, the second group is exactly like Thanos in Endgame---let me eradicate all life. In fact, almost every idea in this movie was just like imitating other successful movies. The main character somehow did not remember his previous lives and most of the movie he did not know who he was---very much like what happens in Bourne movies. 

The main character was played by Mark Wahlberg. In the trailer, they made it look like Mark Wahlberg is such a big guy, very well-known and famous. I actually did not recognize the name at all. When I looked it up, the only movie he was in that was familiar to me was The Shooter, which again wasn't an extremely famous movie. Later, I learned Chris Evans was going to play the main character but he had to drop out because he was filming another show at the time, and so they have found Mark Wahlberg instead of him. It was probably one of the best things that happened to Chris Evans---definitely a good thing he didn't do this movie. Okay, maybe if he was in it, the movie would become a bit better but the story of the movie is the same, so I don't think it would catch a huge success.

In conclusion, this movie is more like a wanna-be movie than being its own movie. Let me combine ingredients from movies that have been already successful and make a soup movie (!). I can't think of a single original thing in this movie. I am usually in for action-packed stuff, so I watched it, but it is really an unsuccessful movie. It is extra sad when a movie named with a math term is unsuccessful. And, they have the infinity sign, which looks like a Mobius strip, on the movie poster too---such a shame. 

I give this movie 5/10 and that's only because I have a soft heart when it comes to action movies.

Peter Rabbit and Peter Rabbit 2

You might be thinking that these movies are for children and hence further might be wondering why I have watched them and/or writing a review about them. What I think is that these movies aren't only for children and, independent of this, I think that adults (or parents) should also watch kids movies. I can assure you that I am old enough---it is a fact that I grew up with the original Looney Tunes series (which I will probably come back to in a later post). So I indeed watched the Peter Rabbit movies as an adult, not as a kid. 

Some can even argue that these two movies aren't for children. More specifically, they aren't good for children, so children shouldn't watch them. Apparently, there were some parents who boycotted the first Peter Rabbit movie because of something said in the movie regarding allergies, which brings me to my second point about why parents should watch kids movies. I am not a parent yet but I'd like to watch kids stuff to evaluate them. Although I must admit if the age level decreases enough it becomes unbearably boring, I find some of them fun too. After all, everybody still has a kid version of themselves inside them somewhere, right? (hopefully). And we have got to feed this kid so that they don't die.

Anyhow, I am a person with a lot of allergies and I wasn't offended by the allergy "joke" in the movie. Perhaps the other parents are right about boycotting it but I wouldn't have a problem with my children watching this movie. It teaches lots of good things. e.g. how the land was the animals' before we came. Although I agree with this, it doesn't stop me from being upset if I find a bug in my apartment---technically it was their land first and we came and built a building, oh well.

My favourite part of the movie was the rooster scenes. Such a good depiction of the excitement of roosters for the morning: "The sun came up again!?!? I can't believe it! I thought I closed my eyes last night that that was it! But we have another day of this? Wahaaa". All these years...we have wondered what roosters were talking about at the dawn like that or what was there to be so excited about. Apparently, it was this. I mean, it makes perfect sense. It also made me think that maybe it is a non-dangerous idea to be happy if the sun comes up. Although, in this case, the rooster thinks it came up because he cock-a-doodle-dood, but it's fine.  

Another rooster scene: "No way! The sun came up again!? If I knew this was going to keep happening, certainly wouldn't have fertilized all those eggs. Now, I have to stick around till they hatch and be present and involved." Okay, so I think this is a more serious point that parents should be concerned about (if they really wanted to boycott the movie for a reason). I thought this was funny because I am an adult. I don't think it is a nice thing to say though, certainly wouldn't want any child to hear this from their parents. In any case, I like that they included these things for adults to enjoy. 

Another nice thing in the movie was the rabbits apologizing by touching foreheads. It just looks like a genuine apology when you do it that way. Touching foreheads inevitably makes you physically close to the person you are apologizing to, it establishes a connection. I am sure some release of hormones is involved when you do that. When I was younger, my aunt told me that hugging enhances your relationship with a person, or maybe she said something similar to that. She also mentioned that it releases certain hormones so that you become a happier person in general (this is actually supported by science). But her point was that I should hug her. On the other hand, the 12th doctor on Doctor Who says "Never trust a hug, it's just a way to hide your face." So, yeah, I am all confused now. Thankfully, we are in the midst of a pandemic so there isn't much opportunity to hug anyone so I don't have to make a decision about this right now. 

Domhnall Gleeson plays one of the live action characters in the movie. I know him from the contemporary Star Wars movies (episodes 7-9). I had liked his performance as General Hux very much. His facial expressions were full of angst as Hux and in fact he makes the same faces a bit in this movie too. Since I remembered him from the Star Wars movies and his scenes in those movies are mostly on their battleship, I was delighted by it when there was a mention of his eye colour, in the Peter Rabbit movie, being green with a touch of battleship grey. Interesting fact, he was also in Harry Potter series as Bill Weasley. I definitely did not remember him from the Harry Potter movies.

When it comes to voice actors who voiced the rabbits, I will start by someone from Star Wars again: Daisy Ridley. She voiced one of the rabbits in the first movie but did not do it in the second movie---how rude. The main character rabbit (Peter) was voiced by James Corden. I know James Corden from Doctor who series. He had adventures with the 11th and the 12th doctors. Even though he was only in a couple of episodes somehow it felt like he was there all along. As it turns out, he also has his own talk show, which I didn't know about until very very recently. He has this voice tone which makes you think he is familiar to you, I think that's what made me feel comfortable having him in the Doctor Who episodes. Consequently, it was nice to have him voice Peter Rabbit, too. Margot Robbie voiced one of Peter's sisters who also happens to be the narrator of the movie. I think it was a great voice performance. 

About Peter Rabbit: The Runaway, the second Peter Rabbit movie: The voice actors were mostly the same. As I mentioned above, Daisy Ridley did not reprise her role which caused a lot of confusion for me because I had assumed it was her and when I heard some of the weird noises her character did in this movie I was wondering how Daisy Ridley were making those noises. Thankfully, it turned out it was someone else. 

In the second movie, the most striking point of the movie (to me) was: if you tell your child that they are bad, they will become bad. I am familiar with the idea that if the parents tell the child that they are behaving bad, they will start behaving bad even if they weren't in the first place. If you keep saying something like this repeatedly, they will just own it. That's what happened to Peter Rabbit in this movie. So I think there is a really good warning for the parents, in this movie. 

Along with Peter's runaway in this movie due to being labeled as scapegoat all the time, there was another main story going on with one of the live action characters, namely Bae. We see Bae writing a storybook about these rabbits in the first movie. In the second movie, the book is published and the sales are going very well. So then a big company makes an offer to her to write more books. But they want to have a say in what she is going to write. She doesn't understand how much she was being played at first but at the end of the movie, she realizes it and quits. Yet again, a lesson for adults given in this movie. I mean, being an author or having academic freedom, belongs to adult world problems. 

Finally, I think one has to consider that these movies are based on a real children's story book from early 1900s, while watching/reviewing/criticizing these movies. I think it is understandable if ideas like big companies kill the genuineness (or any other topic/idea that we would call "classical" in our era) are being treated. Well, to be honest, some things haven't changes since then either, so maybe it is important to bring them up again in movies. However, I do find it boring when such classical ideas being called up again. So I wasn't interested in what's going on with Bae's book---I guess I also somehow knew that she was going to 'learn her lesson' because that's always what happens in movies.

I give 7/10 for Peter Rabbit. 

I give 6/10 for Peter Rabbit 2.