Do The Right Thing

Did I do the right thing by watching Do The Right Thing? I don't recall ever hearing about this film until the day I watched it. You can tell I didn't watch this film exactly voluntarily, like the last one, but that's okay. Well, I don't have to have heard about every film, I guess. Sometimes it is good to watch things that weren't seemingly interesting to you at first. Same goes for books. If you leave me alone, I would read only the books I'm interested in, which sounds like a natural thing to do. However, being in a book club gives me an opportunity to give certain other books a chance and I do end up liking some of them even though they may not be the literary genre I prefer. All that is to say, I am glad I am seeing different types of films now---although that doesn't imply I necessarily will like them.  

The next question is, am I doing the right thing by writing this review post? Who knows? I guess we will never know. I wasn't sure at first if I wanted to write about it but as the days went I realized I do have things to say about this film. So here we are. 

Before I start, let us record that this film was released in 1989. I do not know when, but at some point in the past, they switched from showing actor/director names at the beginning of the film to showing them at the end (although there may be exceptions). I believe they did the right thing. At the beginning of this film, there was a song (whose lines were practically slogans) playing and there was a girl dancing while the whole film crew's names were being written on the screen, one by one. Now, this song was about four and a half minutes, and the dance was not interesting to me either. I didn't care much about the names at that point because, well, I live in 2023 and I can look these things up after the movie anyways. So that was pretty boring, but don't let that discourage you. If you can survive the first 5 minutes of the movie, err film, you will see non-boring parts too. I guess the most interesting thing about the dancing girl, to me, was the clothing---I don't think I miss the fashion trends of late 1980s and/or early 1990s. If you wanted to have some nostalgia though, you can put this film on, I am sure it will help you. 

Normally, I try to evaluate the shows I watch according to the year they are made. This is sort of easier when the show is really really old, like 1940s or 1960s. But when it's somewhat closer to current time it is harder because, first of all, there are clear differences how the show (or film) would be shot in years like 1940s, and second, there are more clear differences in how things looked like in real life in very old days. For example, 24 is one of my favourite tv series. I have seen it when it was being aired. If you had tried to watch it in, say 2018 (I am not even saying 2023), you'd have to shush your inner critique about certain things if you really wanted to enjoy it. Same goes for Doctor Who. Not the first one from the 1960s, but the one that started in 2005. It's really hard for me to like the seasons from 2005-2006 when I watch them now, even though I had liked them in the first place. But if I go back and watch the episodes of Doctor Who from the 1960s, I don't even start to criticize things that are due to its year---they don't bother me. Now, 1989. This is really tricky, it's not 2000s and it's definitely not 60s. The film definitely depicts those last bits of the culture of the 80s. So I guess I just am not a fan of that culture, although interestingly enough, when it comes to rock music, I really like 70s and 80s---in fact, those are still what I listen to daily. Okay, nobody said I had to be consistent with myself, so I believe all is good.

Like I mentioned at the beginning, I didn't know about this movie until I watched it, but I did have two pieces of information about it: that it involves Brooklyn streets and that the film tried to give the audience a feeling of hot weather. When I hear Brooklyn, the first thing that comes to my mind is Captain America. Well, he was an Iced Cap during the 80s, so he has nothing to do with this movie. The second thing that came to my mind was my own promenade in Brooklyn. It was just a walk but the neighbourhood was really nice. So it was nice to see those streets again, in the film, although they looked a bit different---when I visited Brooklyn it was not the 80s. If you know about the typical architectural style of Brooklyn homes (at least from tv shows), you know that there are usually a short flight of stairs to the entrance of the houses. When I visited Brooklyn, nobody was sitting on those, so it was nice to see in the film that they were used. I guess it is nice to hang out on the stairs and it is not a problem unless it's someone else's house. In fact, when I was younger, I would hang out on such stairs (not in Brooklyn---this type of entrance exists in other places on earth as well) but I never knew the owners of these buildings that I sat at the entrance of. So I was often shooed. In fact, one time someone---instead of saying something---emptied a bucket of (dirty) water on me. I can't say it was a pleasant experience. So yes, as the film rolled and events of the film started, these were what I was thinking of. 

The second piece of information I had: the film tried to give the audience a feeling of hot weather. They made it look like, in the film, it was one of the hottest summers in the history of NYC. I wondered if there was such a thing in the years immediately previous to the year the film was made, and strangely, there wasn't. Well, there is 1983 but it is not that close to 1989, although it could have still been an inspiration to Spike Lee (who is the person who made the film). Now, how was hot weather depicted? Everyone was covered in beads of sweat---this is not that hard nor is it creative. The characters mentioned it in their lines how hot it was, which is again not that special. There was an ice cube scene but one could do that without the hot weather too. In fact, the ice cube scene reminded of one of my memories and it was outdoors in the winter, although I must admit there was a hot tub involved, it was still technically cold outside, so this ice cube business did not even make me think of hot weather---too bad. So somehow I wasn't impressed by the several signals of hot temperatures during the movie (nor shortly after). Only a bit more later I realized that I was indeed affected by the characters' suffering that being in the hot brings. How being in hot weather for long periods of time would affect a person('s thinking, decision-making, and feelings) was carefully and successfully weaved into the scenario itself and that was also spectacularly performed by the actors/actresses. 

How was it in the scenario/story? I don't mean the obvious lines stating the weather. The physical fever brought up by the hot temperatures is transformed into a fever that was the nervous excitement of the people, and in return, contributed to the violent events at the end of the film. At least that's how I see it. I am not saying the whole fight started just because it was hot, but one cannot deny that having to bear very high temperatures all day (and on consecutive days) can make a person more impatient than usual and hence the person might have a heightened level of anger at rest.

Continuing with the temperature, they mention in the film that it is about 100 F. Well, that didn't really mean much to me, unfortunately. That's because they didn't write how many Celsius that is, but also I am sort of more tolerant to hot temperatures than others. I guess I am also used to seeing sweating and/or sweaty men (not saying I enjoy it but they exist and I see them), so it wasn't awkward to me at all during the film when they showed these sweaty/sweating men. Now, it was quite funny, though, that these men were still wearing a sleeveless tops underneath their (short sleeve) shirts and still wearing long pants, and socks! I mean, why? If it's that hot, why don't you try de-layering? So I found that funny. The picture I just described is from the scenes where there are a few men sitting in front of a bright red wall under a not-very-large umbrella, which was also a bit funny---they insistently spent time there instead of finding somewhere with an actual shade. 

Although I had been claiming the hot weather in the film didn't affect me as much, I did feel relief too when the characters had a relief from the hot by opening the fire hydrant. It is such a freeing experience to be washed down on the street, unless it is done to you by the police like here or by a police vehicle with water cannons. So the relief sensation I was thinking of was like the following. It's summer (and potentially 37 degrees C), you are watering your backyard with a hose (or cleaning the floors of the front yard), you make a salvo and before you turn off the water, you water your feet and that gives you a little nice break from the hot. This is probably one of my happiest memories from childhood---playing with water as a child was always fun. Of course, that required the parents let you play with water, although it is possible to do it secretly as well and feel the illusion of freedom.

The fire hydrant scene definitely made me think of the notion of freedom. Freedom, or more precisely, the United States being a country of freedom (or not), was mentioned in the movie at least a couple of times. It was a nice touch and aligns well with the film's statement. I always like it if someone questions the status of the US being the land of freedom---because that's what the US would like to advertise itself as (to the rest of the world) but to me it's just a grand charade. There is a lot I can say about this but I will stick to the film's review. I think the film depicts freedom (being an illusion) in a quite well manner. It is true, though, one has more freedom in the US compared to Canada in at least one context: drinking on the streets. As I live in Canada, during the scenes where they were drinking on the street, I truly envied them and asked myself: could the United States of America be really the country of freedom?

Although the name of the film is Do The Right Thing, for the most part of the film, people just kept not doing the right thing. Especially toward the end of it, first Radio Raheem doesn't do the right thing, then the Italian-American Sal doesn't do the right thing, then the police doesn't do the right thing, and it goes on like that. At the very end though, I think the main character did the right thing by staying friends with Sal. The main character was called Mookie. I guess the biggest catch for me about this film was that I had no idea Mookie was Spike Lee. Well, he was very young in the film and I am already bad with faces, what can I say? 

Spike Lee is the director, producer and the writer of this film. Now, I think that as a director Spike Lee is not so different than Nolan when it comes to the representation of women. Overall, the women were not represented well in this film. It is just happening in the men's world, and the women were there either just to be pretty or to be an object of sex. In fact, the woman who played in the nude scene apparently was crying while filming that (the scenes actually doesn't show her face so you can't tell she was crying). That's horrible, I don't know why they kept filming while she was crying. I don't think they did the right thing.

The thing I liked the most about this film was Samuel L. Jackson. As it turns out, he had not yet had his breakthrough in his career when this film was made. I do believe that Spike Lee did the right thing by casting Samuel L. Jackson. At about the 50-min mark of the film (that's almost halfway through), he (Samuel Jackson's character) started yelling "Time out!". He said it multiple times and very loud. If I were in control, I would have probably paused the film for a time-out following his command. I don't know if you know, gentle reader, some cinemas have an intermission at about a halfway mark of the films they show. Now, if this film was shown in such a place, and the intermission started right after Samuel Jackson yelled "Time out! Time out!", that would have been really funny. Oh well. 

I give 7/10.

Fun fact: it turns out that the director was so obsessed with showing the heat that he put a heat bar in front of the camera to make it look more real. So those beads of sweat were actually real sweat in at least some of the scenes.

Parasite

 I had heard about this movie when it was very popular at the time because, well, everybody was talking about it. However, I don't really like watching shows or movies at their peak times---I guess when something is too common it gives me the feeling that it is mundane and I'd like to do things that are not mundane. Now, I did see Oppenheimer when it was too popular, but I guess there can be exceptions. Parasite won lots of awards, which sounds like a good thing, but this kind of thing is usually not necessarily enough for me to go and watch a movie. So, how did I end up watching this movie? As it turns out, due to a coincidence and some luck, I am entering a new phase in my relationship with movies as I started sitting in an introduction to film studies class at the university I work. So I watched this movie, not exactly by choice, but because it was put on screen in front of me. But I did choose to stay there---I thought it was a good time to watch this movie, so I did. If it wasn't put in front of me, I think I wouldn't put it on myself to watch it in a foreseeable future.

I don't usually watch Korean cinema. Not that I am against it, but I just happen to not prefer it. This might sound a bit racist---I don't think it is---but I seem to like languages which use the Latin alphabet more than the other languages. It is similar to finding blond guys more attractive than brunets (not that I am attracted to blond men---it is just an example) or liking scuba-diving more than paragliding (not that I scuba-dived ever in my life---it is just an example). Well, I guess these are not exactly very good examples but my point is it is about what one likes. Now, although one can watch a film with subtitles, the language is still a barrier, in my opinion. When you have absolutely no idea about the language, it still builds a barrier. Of course, it is still somewhat possible to perceive emotions even if you don't know the language. However, I still think one cannot capture everything wholly even with the subtitles. I feel that I have some understanding of many languages whose alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet even if I don't entirely speak that language. I must add here that I do (more or less) speak 4 languages and have at least studied additional 2 for some time, all are based on the Latin alphabet. You can see that it was my liking toward these languages that made me study them. So, languages like Russian, Arabic, Hebrew, Korean, Japanese, Chinese simply don't interest me as much (no offence to anyone) and as a result I am exposed to them less than I am to languages like Spanish, French, German or Norwegian. Being not exposed to a certain language, I naturally have less ideas about it. Okay, what do I mean by "having ideas about a language"? Even if you don't know the words, you can still know small things like how an agreement "nod" would be like in a language, or how a disagreement "tsk" can manifest itself---believe it or not, these things change from language to language. Additionally, Korean words sometimes sound like gibberish in my native language (again, no offence, it is just how the sounds are, nothing can be done). So, all of this pushes me away from Korean cinema. I did see an episode or two of some Korean drama(s) (that are tv series) due to a friend. So I am guessing that if I keep watching, I will get used to hearing the language. 

Continuing with the subtitles, although I watched Parasite with subtitles, there were scenes in which there was a product with a label, and there was no subtitles for those labels. For example, I wondered what was written on the pizza box. Perhaps it was not important to the story, but still it was in the mise-en-scene so I would have liked to know. More important than the pizza boxes, there were alcohol bottles and I was really curious about what they were---were they white wine bottles, rice wine or soju? Again, maybe they are not so important to the storyline but they were there, in the scene! I wanted to know. I guess because I don't know much about Korean culture, I really cared about learning about it through one single film---which is a bit too greedy. Now that I think about it, I wonder if the English CC subtitles would have these details. Perhaps I should have watched the movie with CC and not regular English subtitles, although they don't seem to have that subtitle option for this film on Netflix. I guess the English CC option exists only if the movie is already in English.

Before continuing on, I want to go over the pizza boxes again. There was a scene where pest control was applying extermination on the street while they were folding pizza boxes at home. They kept the windows open to get free service---well, I understand that and it is so sad and funny at the same time, a good touch there to how a poor person's mind might work, all good. But, all I could think of was those boxes were also exposed to the gas and still were sent to the pizza company for use. I mean, this is insane. Honestly, when the pizza worker showed up at their door the next day, I expected the issue to be about this but it was about some not well-folded batch. So, that was a disappointment for me. One might argue it is safe, but when I had to get a treatment in my apartment, they always asked me to clear counters and stuff. So I am pretty sure this chemical shouldn't go into our food. Maybe the point is that these people are poor enough not to care about this. 

Some things in the story were quite unclear to me. It is possible that they are unclear because I missed something, but I think I didn't. Not that I am blaming the story-telling quality of the film, but for example, I didn't get from where this college guy was a friend of the son (Kevin). Apparently, the son didn't go to college. They seemed to have referred to the friend as the college friend. Were they just friends in the neighbourhood and one guy got into college? I suppose I will just assume that and perhaps this unclarity is a product of the language barrier. In any case, not getting everything usually happens to me---I guess I just can't say "understood" if I didn't really understand something 100%.

One of the first things I noticed in this film (yes, I guess I am going to start saying 'film' now, instead of 'movie', since I am now sitting in a film studies class, and I should be classy), is the suspension. The suspension they (the film makers, not sure which one exactly) use to try to build tension. I am guessing that this is pretty tricky. If you wait too long, you might lose the audience. What is the correct amount of seconds? I guess this is where the director's talent lies. I think that the very first scene was a bit long that it made me think "should I fear the next scene?". I guess it went a bit long because they were writing the names (of the actors?) too but knowing a few things about the movie, I didn't know where the horror would begin, so I started suspecting perhaps a bit early. I also think that the very first scene (the window view from the family's semi-basement flat) being shown for quite a bit of time at the beginning was intentional. It signifies that this picture has an importance to the story. Indeed, the director goes back to the same picture at the end. More about this later. Back to suspension. There were many scenes in which the audience was left in a suspense (by not showing the next scene). This sometimes created intensity for me but also sometimes made me a bit more curious. Now, do I like the suspense? Maybe I like it when it is done well. This reminds me of the movie Drive where there is SO MUCH suspense (in my opinion) but I didn't get bored or distracted, so I think it was done quite well. Hopefully I will write about Drive one day---at least I intend to. 

Poorness. The poor point of view was often an agent of comedy in this movie. Sorry, film. I am not sure if I like this (even though I might have laughed). The comedy was good but the fact that they are poor, by itself, is not so good. Well, I guess one can call this dark humour and then we are all good. Then, at some point, the perspective of poor people and what being poor made them do is not an instrument of comedy anymore but of horror, which was quite unsettling. I should add that the personality treats of rich people are quite well-portrayed in the film---or at least the treats that we, the middle-class, think the rich people have. I know that the global reception of this film was huge---it grossed millions and millions. But I wonder how the real poor people perceived it---I presume they probably didn't have the money to go see it. Of course, it is still possible to be transparent and laugh at one's own embarrassments. It is not necessarily a bad thing. But perhaps not so many people are so transparent, or maybe they don't quite get it as them being made fun of, so they laugh. I remember quite vividly, for example, a time when I was desperate for free Wi-Fi. I wasn't necessarily poor but I was a student in France and there was a problem with the bank, so I didn't have any money and so I couldn't buy a plan. Anyways, so this free Wi-Fi quest was not so funny to me, I only empathized with them. Actually, a lot of "poor people life" elements were familiar to me, now that I think about it. I guess I know more poor people than I realize (or I am poorer than I realize). I definitely know more number of poor people than the rich ones. Oh well. 

If the poorness jokes weren't so funny for me, then what was? Perhaps I am more attracted to the "jokes" that are not told, but perhaps shown. This is extremely personal and I am not claiming that "this is the way". I found the elevated toilet funny. I have no idea if it is a common thing in Korean homes, or Korean basement homes. It is not clear to me why the toilet had to be on an elevated surface in the bathroom. It looked cool, though. I also liked they labelled the cell phone which had "The Care" number's SIM card in it. It was also nice when the daughter scolded her mother just as a part of an act (but it was really only the kid there so it was probably quite unnecessary, which is probably why I found it funny). Some of these funny moments come from the scenario and maybe the art director. In any case, kudos to the film crew. 

I will continue with the director. He clearly did a very good job---he won an Academy award for Best Director for it. So who am I to judge. Not judging, but I will just comment on some stuff. I have already covered "the suspense" and mentioned "the beginning and the end". I will elaborate on the latter. Having the same picture (basement window view) at the start of the film and again at the end gives me the message "we are back where we started". This is actually exactly what happened. All that adventure, thrill, planning, carnage, and then, they are back at where they were (and still poor). From what I read online, it looks like this was what the director intended as well. That they are still living at the basement flat (and the son probably is not going to end up buying that house). In fact, I was so surprised when they started showing scenes where the son was buying the house---in these scenes they had brought their own furniture from the basement flat to the new house which doesn't make sense. Next, I want to tackle a particular shot. I guess it is safe to say that the conversations of the driver with his boss in the car were crucial to the story. Not always, but perhaps in a car scene in the second half of the movie, the director elected to show the driver from exactly where the boss would be sitting. I really wonder what the purpose of this was. My guess is that it might be because now that the turn of the events were about to change very soon and we might have all been empathizing with the poor family too much, the director wanted to separate us from them and tried to put us in a position or perspective of the home owners without us realizing it. 

Another method/trick the director pulled was with the montage of the collapse of the two poor families. I must add here that the introduction of a new poor family was unexpected so it felt almost like a plot twist to see another insane poor family in the story. After they fought each other and then seized for the night, both families were in defeat in their own ways. Showing a bit of this and a bit of that and trying to have a simultaneous defeat scene by scene looked good, although one cannot say it was a very creative cut. I must also add before proceeding that the night these two families had a fight, it was clear/expected that the boss was going to come home early, so no surprises there, and it felt like a cliché (because it practically was one). I guess a film is allowed to have a cliché or two and still win Palme d'Or as long as there are other interesting elements in it. After the flood, there was a scene, shot completely from a bird's eye view, in which the main poor family had put some of their stuff on a door (or a mattress?) which was floating in the water as they were going to the shelter. This scene immediately reminded me of Titanic's door scene and I thought "Wow, look at how many things they fit in there and Rose couldn't fit one Jack". 

I haven't really touched on the acting. It is partially because I do not know these actors and actresses at all and partially because of the language barrier that I feel. One thing that I liked was in the father (Mr. Kim)'s acting. I do not know if it was in the script or if the director told him to do that or if he decided on it on his own. There were a couple of scenes where the father covered his eyes with one arm. I took it as a manifestation of embarrassment or shame through body language but, of course, I am not sure. I still think that it was a big gesture to include and I liked it.

It is also worth to mention a significant motif in the film, the smell of the poor. I don't even like saying this, it sounds quite offensive. However, in the film, they had decided to make this a theme. Every now and then, they mentioned something about the smell of the main poor family (I say "main" because there is a side one as well, introduced later in the film). Now,  I have a very sensitive nose and I cannot possibly endure bad smells. I actually can't stand some good smells either---I have allergies. Having a sensitive nose could serve well if I had lived a few thousand years ago, I reckon. But nowadays, it is only a problem. If you read my Dune review, maybe you know that I get a bit too carried away sometimes when watching a film (mirror neurons problem)---I hold my breath if the air in the scene is not breathable. However, I was mostly okay during this film about the bad smell scenes. I guess those scenes weren't so focused on smelling itself, so I was fine. The smell of the poor (or the basement smell) theme was cleverly paved throughout the story and at the end it was what cracked the father---he couldn't take the insult anymore and he stabbed his boss (I guess that was a spoiler there). Well, what can I say, I really like it when the scenario serves its purpose (in this case, the smell not being mentioned for nothing). Although there was one thing I didn't like: the little boy of the rich house read the message in Morse code sent by the non-main poor family's man and he did absolutely nothing about it. What was the purpose of showing that scene, then? 

Dogs. I cannot pass without talking about the dogs. From the first moment I saw a dog in this film, I started wondering "what will this dog add to the story?" and it did indeed come up a couple of times but I think the story would have managed without it too. There is also the fact that a stereotypical rich family like that would have dogs (and maybe that's why the family has three and not only one) and maybe that's why they were there. Now, it is possible that these dogs represented something even deeper which I couldn't see, but oh well. They were cute anyways so it was nice to see them. 

I think the sounds of this film were pretty good, overall. The film won very many awards but as far as I know it didn't win the best soundtrack award. The one piece with piano was cleverly composed. It conveyed cheerful and scary feelings simultaneously---at least that's how it felt to me. This is adequately apt since it conforms the genre of the film being both dark comedy and horror. I can say that this is a great film but I am not sure if I would give this film a Palme d'Or, so it is probably a good thing I am not on a jury at Cannes Film Festival. I believe the Film Festival folks really care about if the film touches on any social problems, or what one can identify as the "real" problems in life. (Not that I don't care about social problems, it is just not necessarily something I look for in the films I see. Okay, maybe I do look for them too, but not as much.) Besides, I am not sure it is safe to regard the Cannes Film Festival, or its juries, politically unbiased completely. 

The title of the movie: Parasite. I believe they must have shown on the screen the title when the film started rolling, but somehow I don't remember seeing it. During the movie, the word itself doesn't really come up explicitly either---it's not like Oppenheimer where even whenever the guy was addressed the title had happened to come up. So, towards the end of the film, I just remembered: this film is called Parasite. Immediately after it made sense, of course. It's an interesting choice to call it Parasite. I guess this is one of the points this film makes a difference at---one does not usually use the word "parasite" in such a context.

Before I end this post, I will revisit my last post. In my last post, which was on Oppenheimer, I had complained about the stubbornness of Nolan about (not) using CGI and how unfair that was (due to environmental reasons). Now, in Parasite, the second floor of the rich family's house is completely CGI. Have we noticed? No. Did it matter? No. Apparently, a movie can use CGI and still be great. How extraordinary(!).

Now I am about to give this movie a score out of 10. Considering the fact that it won so many awards increases my expectations and interferes my decision-making process. If I didn't know about the awards, I would probably be giving another number. 

I give 8/10.

Fun fact(s): It looks like what they called ram-don in the film actually did not exist in real life. After the film's debut, people started posting videos on how to make ram-dons, and then, there was actually a company which started producing and selling ram-dons due to its popularity. This reminds me the Hogwarts Express announcement in London at 11 o'clock of every September 1st. Similarly, due to the influence of the Lord of the Ring film series, Auckland airport in NZ has a LOTR themed décor. Moreover, Air New Zealand made a special feature safety video in 2014 to celebrate The Hobbit series. The fun facts end here (for now).

Oppenheimer

 I don't qualify as a movie critique but I do identify as a (sort of) huge movie fan. I am not a movie nerd but it is not questionable that watching movies is a serious hobby of mine. Yes, it is pretty stereotypical, but it's true. My hobbies are really those classic ones: reading a book, watching a movie, listening to music. Before I proceed, I will clarify that I do not (yet?) have a book blog. However, I am a member of a book club. 

Speaking of books, I don't know if you know, but this movie is based on the 2005 book "American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer". Unfortunately, I did not read this book. I am not sure if I plan to, either. I don't think this is one of those movies where the comments would be about if the movie was better than the book or the other way around. However, the book has a significance because apparently Christopher Nolan said (somewhere) that he wouldn't have taken on the project without the book. Since Oppenheimer is a real person, technically, one does not need the book to make such a movie. In fact, there are already other (media) projects about the same person/topic. There is a tv series and a documentary about Oppenheimer, both released in 1980. There were two movies about him in 1989. There is a 2015 play called Oppenheimer, too. Okay, now that we have established this is not the first movie about Oppenheimer, we can proceed.

Perhaps it is worth to note that this is also not the first nor the only movie about atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. I don't know which is more sorrowful: a nuclear accident or actually setting off a nuclear bomb on purpose. I believe at least one of the following words would be familiar to any reader: Chernobyl, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Fukushima. There is a very successful 2019 mini TV series called Chernobyl. Unfortunately, I didn't watch it because I didn't feel like I could take it. Now, why did I watch Oppenheimer, then? Well, I guess I have a soft spot for Christopher Nolan and technically it is shorter than the whole of the mini series (which is about 5h30m). Why am I mentioning Chernobyl or the fact that there are other movies/shows about nuclear bombs? Well, if I had watched any other, perhaps it would equip me with the ability of making certain comparisons. I won't be able to add such comments. If you have some, please feel free to add. I am sure that movie critiques are able to make such comparisons and perhaps Nolan's explosion scenes would be rated as the best among those because he used real bombs and not CGI. Among all visual media projects about Oppenheimer (the man) or nuclear weapons in general, I am sure Nolan's will be the one that's the most spoken about of all time.

Now, where did I first hear about this movie or when did I see its trailer for the first time? Interestingly, I do not remember how I came to know about this movie. If you are a loyal reader to my blog (I am not saying you should be), you are probably familiar with the openings of my posts where I start by describing how I came to know about the existence of that movie. My guess is that however means I encountered this movie's mention or trailer, I got too excited and completely forgot about that first moment itself. Okay, maybe that doesn't really make sense but it's not important.

There is a period of time between the point I learned this movie will be released and the point I went to see this movie. During that period of time, I looked things up about the movie because I was curious. What I found although I was not looking for it is how the movie was shot. Apparently, because Christopher Nolan is Christopher Nolan, he had to do things differently and so he used techniques that hadn't been used before. Upon coming across a reels on Instagram, I learned that they filmed in two different aspect ratios (1.9:1 which is the full aspect ratio and native IMAX 65mm aspect ratio of 1.43:1) for magnitude and nostalgia reasons. Apparently, if you go see it at a theatre which doesn't support the full imax experience then you actually see less of what was shot---the image gets cropped. So they actually released a list of theatres which support the true viewing of the movie. Of course, I went to see it in one of those theatres which offers the full imax experience. I was lucky that such theatre exists in the city I currently live. Otherwise, I don't think I would have traveled for it.

Perhaps the best part about this movie was the fact that there were no ads before the movie started. I am not sure if this would be everyone's experience. My guess is that because I saw it in a "special" salon and they didn't have ads given to them compatible with that screen, they had no advertisements to show. This is a good thing. The movie was at 2:00 pm and it started at 2:01 pm. Unfortunately, there were lots and lots, and I mean, lots of people who came in late. This was probably because everybody thought the movie will probably start around 2:20 pm but that's not enough for me to forgive these people. They really interrupted the movie. Moreover, this salon was full, so whoever came late had real difficulty getting to their seats. 

There is a lot to go through about this movie. Let's start with the scenes. If you saw the movie (or its trailer), you should be aware that some scenes are black&white whereas some scenes are coloured. Some say the coloured scenes' scenario was written in first person (Oppenheimer's) and the black&white scenes were written in the third person in the scenario, and that the take away from this is the the coloured parts are subjective (through the eyes of the celebrated guy) and the other parts showed the events through an objective lens. I can see the subjectivity part but I can't quite sharply see the objectivity part. I should also add that Matt Damon mentioned in an interview that the scenario (as a whole) was in first person but I think he might just be referring to the coloured shot parts (or only the parts he was in)---I don't know. Now, how I see is that it's not an objective/subjective differentiation, it has a different nuance. Basically, the star of the movie is Oppenheimer. Nolan even insisted on not having "American Prometheus" as the movie's name, he really wanted to make it personal, about Oppenheimer. What does this mean? Well, first of all, which name reached us through the years? It's Oppenheimer. I didn't even know about Lewis until the movie. What happened is Oppenheimer's name is engraved whereas Strauss has long been forgotten. Oppenheimer still speaks to us, influences us in the present day, whereas Strauss is stuck in the past, hence the black&whiteness. So I don't quite buy that subjective vs. objective perspective idea. When I think of it the way I do though, I think having Strauss' scenes black and white adds a nice nuance to the movie.

Continuing with the scenes, next is of course the bomb scene. I completely find it unnecessary to use real bombs for a "real" effect. I strongly believe that Nolan had no right to be harming the environment like this for a movie. I mean, what did it really add? Do we really care if they were real explosions? You can't even achieve as big an effect as an atomic bomb just by using multiple non-atomic, regular-but-big bombs. I mean, what's the carbon footprint of this movie? If there was a ranking (wrt carbon footprint) among all the movies that have been made until today, I believe this movie would be ranked as the 1st. This is not nice at all. I am saying all this, and I am not even a big environmentalist. Interestingly, I haven't heard of any environmentalist bodies boycott this movie. Maybe there are some and maybe they made it to the news, but the PR and marketing of this movie was immense and hence covering the media so much, so that might be why I haven't heard of any protests. In fact, the immense amount of marketing content of this movie has increased my expectations a lot and I ended up not liking the movie as much, so it backfired on me. 

When I say "I didn't like the movie as much", don't get me wrong. I think it is a great movie, but it is not the best movie by C. Nolan, in my opinion. Cillian Murphy says in an interview that this is Nolan's "Magnum Opus". I disagree. I have seen a lot of interview clips done with the people in the main roles, and I think they were all just too excited and since they are in the work, they saw it better than it is (or, they are simply obliged to say good and great things about it).

I don't want to get side-tracked here. So, back to the scenes. Continuing with the bomb scene, what I liked the most was the sound coming SO LATE. It only makes sense that it arrives so late. The suspension was very long, when the audience waited for the "boom" sound. In fact---I heard this from others too---this long wait was probably the most respectfully performed one in the sense that nobody made any noise while waiting. I also liked that they showed everybody one by one while we were waiting for the boom. It was also hilarious when Teller put on sunscreen (and even better, I paid attention later and he still got burned). Okay, so that's all good, but I still think he should have used CGI, it could even be better (and bigger) explosion with CGI. I don't see what's wrong with using CGI a little. CGI nowadays is very good to the point you can't even tell the difference if you hired a good company/person to do the CGI of your movie. 

Continuing with another scene: the sex scene, Florence Pugh and the claim that Oppenheimer is a womanizer. First of all, I think the sex scenes were completely unnecessary. They didn't really add anything important to the story. Up to this movie, I liked Florence Pugh's acting in general. Her character was underrepresented in this movie. I will in fact go on to say that Nolan is incapable of writing female characters. Both women's characters in this film were extremely shallow. The only point of Florence Pugh's character was almost the only small tie Oppenheimer had to the communists and it was exploited too much. I mean, if they didn't have this character in the movie they could still go with the same story. I don't think what the movie portrays is really enough to call this movie's Oppenheimer as a womanizer. I don't know about the real-life Oppenheimer, maybe there were rumours, or maybe it was certain, and so that's why Nolan wanted to include this "detail". Just because he cheated on her wife doesn't imply he is a womanizer. I mean, a lot of people do this kind of stuff. It was also only a little bit implied that he had some kind of a relationship with another woman, but okay, let's say he had relationships with three women in total in his life, not exactly all of them happening regularly and at the same time either. What's womanizer about this? When I think of a womanizer, I think of a man who tries to meet as many women as possible and who seduces every single woman he meets and somehow will have sex with each of them. So, for example, a womanizer wouldn't stop at his brother's wife, he would try to seduce her too, and even older women. We saw other women in a party Oppenheimer went in the film, and he didn't necessarily try to hit on every single one of them, nor tried to impress them. This is also a good paragraph to mention the following. I can see from this movie that Nolan has no good knowledge at all about romantic relationships. After this movie, I noticed that his previous movies were also white male dominated. Now, you may say, it was 1940s, that's why women are like that in the movie. Well, that's not a good excuse at all. Okay, let's say both Jean and Kitty are hysterical women (why did they have to be portrayed this way?), why is there no background on this? They just come as weird characters in the movie. What's behind Jean's behaviours, or Kitty's drinking while her baby is crying? Even a small hint, some small scene could suffice to fill these gaps---instead of having some other unnecessary scenes. Overall, very bad character development on the women characters of the movie. 

Why did Nolan have the sex scenes or the hysterical-women-acting-out scenes? I should add here the scene where Cillian Murphy was naked during the "interrogation". Nakedness, I understand, but it's too cliché. Yeah, yeah, because it was such an intimate/private issue to him, he felt naked while saying those things and that's why the camera went behind the neck of the other guy to reveal R.O. naked. Next, Jean appearing, and that was completely unnecessary. I don't think that Jean appeared like that in the eyes of R.O., it was from the perspective of his wife, but that wasn't made clear. It is mixing Robert's emotions and how he sees himself at the moment with what his wife is seeing in her own mind. With this, and having the women act out out of nowhere (like Jean going "don't buy me flowers"), I guess Nolan is trying to achieve what some artistic movies would contain compared to blockbuster ones. It seems to me like Nolan is stuck between wanting to make an art movie and a blockbuster movie. Anyways, all this is horrible. I don't like it. In fact, I think I liked Nolan more before seeing this movie. In fact, this movie made me realize that the only thing I liked in his movies was the mind-bending aspect of the stories. I didn't care much about how some things were shot. What interest me are story and meaning. 

When I ask myself: what difference did it make that the movie was shot in that huge aspect ratio? I don't think it made any difference. At least, not on the positive side. It actually made me resent because if it was just shot like a normal IMAX, then I would see the movie, and criticize about more or less the same things but I'd be overall happy with the movie. Knowing they tried to make it look somehow "special" which added nothing substantial to the movie (in my opinion) is a big minus.

I try to understand why Nolan did such things. The first answer is because he is Nolan. But also, I guess when you are telling a historical event, the only ways you can make the movie interesting is by doing something interesting with the shooting and including sex scenes. Since when is this person so stereotypical? Wasn't the whole point of him being different? It seems to me that he is, at this point, doing things only for being spoken about. I don't like this.

Movie makers claimed that people wouldn't be able to recover from it after seeing this movie. I did not feel that way at all. I was totally fine after I left the salon. 

The only part/scene of the movie that struck me was when people were cheering in a room while R.O. gave a speech. This was wild because so many people were just killed. And they were so ignorantly cheering. In their perspective, they celebrated their success but they killed innocent people. Perhaps it is the most barbaric thing. I don't even talk about the part R.O. stepped into a burned corpse. I am talking about people only cheering and clapping and laughing. 

Done with the scenes I want to touch, I will move on to acting and the actors/actresses. First of all, I did not notice the president was Gary Oldman---my bad. I did like his line, though, about relieving R.O. saying that he is the one who killed, not R.O.---he has a good point. It was also unbelievable the president calling R.O. a cry baby, which is apparently a real thing that happened. I won't go into Florence Pugh again too much---her role was pretty small (short screen time), it looks like movie makers now see her as an object (to use for sex scenes), and somehow she is one of the main cast (along with Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Cillian Murphy and RDJ). The five always posed together at the premiers. I really think it should have been only the 4 of them. If there was really going to be a fifth person, it should have been someone else. Emily Blunt's acting was really good but her character wasn't written well. RDJ is RDJ, I have nothing to say---it was great. Apparently, some people thought he couldn't act (because he had been Iron Man for a long time) but I never thought that, so nothing new for me. Casting Matt Damon was probably one of the best things the movie makers did. I didn't watch Peaky Blinders and I know Cillian Murphy only from other Nolan movies. I thought he was very good at being Scarecrow. I think he has a really interesting face which makes it easy for him to portray a psychopath, if needed. I think his acting was good, but the script wasn't written well. Let's go into this in the next paragraph.

Apparently, this movie had a physicist consultant for the science stuff and this consultant is a Nobel Prize winner. This is somehow hard to believe. Or, maybe he advised them right but they didn't listen to him 100%. I have a Bachelor's degree in Physics myself, and worse, a BSC + a master's + a PhD in Mathematics. So I have a really good grasp of how this kind of people act in their private and/or academic lives. Some mathematicians/physicist can really be egotistical and rude. Somehow they try to show Oppenheimer as such a person but only sometimes. This doesn't make sense. I know that for the scenes with Lewis Strauss it was kind of Strauss' perspective, but the words R.O. said were facts, so they were indeed pretentious acts. Moreover, R.O. acted like a smug when Matt Damon's character came to offer him the job as well. Anyways, I don't think this movie did a good job representing scientists in an accurate way. When it comes to science itself, again, not good enough for me. They did better in equations than what most other movies include as equations. But still, I can see that science is somehow romanticized in the eyes of movie makers. Why? First of all, things are never that simple in physics or mathematics. I heard that they purposefully didn't go into the physics part of it much, which is okay, but you can't just degrade it either. 

Overall, what's the take away of this movie? I don't know. Did I need to see the real Oppenheimer's indecisiveness or whatever they are trying to portray? Did this movie teach me anything interesting or important? I don't think so. I think if this movie wasn't made, I wouldn't feel its absence at all. I mean, what happened? We saw the "struggles" of this physicist about "his" invention? Well, it was mostly other people who did real physics work on the project after they opened that site. He was the manager. So I am not sure if it's really accurate to call it his invention. He did accept the offer to conduct this project. Does it make him "the father"? It could be someone else. One might say, "oh he was the only person who could do this". I don't think so. If something is bound to happen, someone will emerge to make it happen. From what the movie portrayed, it seems to me that he was just taken away by the idea of bringing together his job and his favourite place (that's close to his brother). Then, he really like being the head/manager of something. Then, he really liked the fame. If the whole point of this movie was to show his struggles about feeling guilty etc, I am not satisfied. Throughout the whole project, he never hesitated to continue the project. He did try to have a say in the usage of the bomb, but he didn't really do that much to claim it, and he had already agreed to work for the military so he should have known that. I am not blaming the guy here, it's already in the past---this is a historical event, I am talking about the portrayals in the movie. 

The centre of the story was not the making of the bomb, the story was told around the "interrogations" R.O. had. At the end, to see that all that was only because of someone's low self-esteem, was not so much of a satisfying ending either (you might claim here that that wasn't the ending, but that's where the story wrapped up, that's my point---the end was "oh I think we might have indeed started that chain reaction", ye ye too cliché because what he means is the repercussions of the bombing event and the soon coming ever-lasting hostility between US and Russia, etc, which might include the speeding up of global warming too). It wasn't even clear to me for the whole movie why Lewis was in a hearing but I guess it was because he had wanted to be appointed to a new position. His hearing couldn't be related to R.O.'s security clearance thing, because they didn't even know it was Lewis who started it at that time. I could go on with so many other unclear things but I will stop here. Maybe I will watch this movie again at home when the time comes, but I doubt that I will write about it again.

Anyways, perhaps if they really had a John Krasinski cameo, I could have given the movie a bit of a higher score. 

I give 7/10.

P.S. I don't know if anybody noticed this but there were literally flies who landed on the cameras when they were shooting, they would come land stay a bit and then fly away. They didn't even care about this even though they cared about the visual quality of the scenes "so much".

Fun fact: Apparently, this movie's actual film length is about 11 miles and the movie is about 3 hours. So you could, if you want, go on a treadmill, and walk about 11 miles while watching the movie on your phone/ipad, because on average it takes about 3 hours to walk 11 miles.

Nobody

The one and only reason I decided to watch this movie (and did watch it) is Bob Odenkirk---well, I also checked out the trailer before watching. You may remember Bob Odenkirk from the series Breaking Bad (or Better Call Saul). He was Saul Goodman in Breaking Bad. If you haven't seen Breaking Bad, it's not the end of the world, but it is a good show so you might want to watch it at some point. I guess its popular era has long ended and perhaps it wouldn't struck an audience as strongly as it did 10 years ago (because times are a bit different now) but I'd still say it's worth a shot. Now, after seeing (and liking) Breaking Bad, it's hard not to watch Better Call Saul. Interestingly enough, Bob Odenkirk is not necessarily Saul Goodman in that show but I quite like his character in that show too. 

There aren't many shows/movies I've seen Bob Odenkirk. Another movie I know he was in is Little Women. You can tell the movie is mostly about the women and not the men, so his scenes weren't very long in that movie. Still, his acting was very good. Another tv series I've seen him in is The Office (US). He was a guest in one of the episodes where Pam went to interview at another office and Bob Odenkirk's character was just like Michael Scott---it was really funny. 

Continuing with Bob Odenkirk (as I don't really know any of the other cast members in this movie), I would like to mention that he is also one of the producers of this movie. I think of this as a good thing. Usually, if the main star(s) of the movie are also among the producers team, I think it affects the production in a positive way. I am not in the film industry but I believe that if the main actor is also one of the producers they can also have some say on the script and, also, it means they are actually where they want to be and they are taking this role more excitedly, which in turn, produces a better quality movie.

When I was watching the movie, I was actually surprised as I discovered the character of Bob Odenkirk. Somehow, I am used to seeing him not as the "cool guy" in a given show/movie. He was, in this movie, a cool one. The beginning of this movie reminded me of the beginning of the first John Wick movie. If you watch the movie, maybe you'll see it too. Basically, the motive/reason for all the action to start is similar, although Bob Odenkirk's character still has his wife (alive). Anyone who knows me well knows that I really like action thrillers. But there has to be a meaningful story lying underneath all that action, otherwise I don't like it. So, for example, I like the first John Wick movie but not really the third one (as I couldn't see what was the important meaning for all that fighting). Maybe I will write a review about the latest John Wick movie (the 4th one) later and elaborate on it then.

Speaking of John Wick, as it turns out, Nobody and John Wick were produced by the same production company (although distributed by different companies). They even talked about a cross-over, but it'll probably be something small. We'll see what happens. I guess it might be really exciting for Bob Odenkirk to have a possibility of having a scene with Keanu Reeves. 

If someone is a nobody, this implies that this person is somehow not important and not very well known. This movie is called Nobody and confirming its name, it didn't get wide reception---unfortunately. It was scheduled to be released in 2020 but then because of the pandemic it got delayed....and then people weren't really going to the theatre still back then. Plus, a lot of people had already lost their habit of going to the theatres and most probably still didn't start the habit again to this day (e.g. I personally had rented it and watched it at home). So I think this movie didn't get as much credit/likes as it deserved because of the pandemic. Even though I think the movie didn't get as much as it deserved, its reviews were good enough that they are making a sequel. This is good news! I will be waiting for its release, which will probably be in 2024 at the earliest. 

I grew to like Bob Odenkirk more and more recently. He is a good actor and continues to do good work. I guess I started liking him more after I heard he had a heart attack on set of Better Call Saul (he already got better and went back to set too---this was in 2022). I know it doesn't exactly make sense to like an actor (or his works) for this reason, but obviously this is not the only reason. I think it's only human if you become more sensitive towards someone who recently had a near-death experience. All that is to say, I will probably be following his future works as well. Well, I didn't actually finish watching Better Call Saul. I think I am putting it off because I know it's good and I don't want it to end, and I want to watch it when I am mentally prepared to watch it.

Coming back to this movie, if you appreciate action movies where the action doesn't happen for the sake of only killing and seeing blood but actually there is a meaningful story behind that sets the action sequence, then I believe you will also like this movie. 

I give 7/10.

Dune

As you may know, this movie came out in 2021. If you have been reading my blog, you may also know that I don't only review movies that came out recently. I asked some of my "followers" last week to choose from a certain list of movies to see which one they'd like me to write about for this week. Dune was one of the movies on this list and it got 100% of the votes. So here we are. Don't get me wrong; it's not like I didn't want to write about this movie---it was already on my list (for a long time actually). Now, this was a very long movie, so I must warn you that my review post might also be a bit longer than usual.

When the release date of this movie was approaching, I started hearing about the series of books Dune. All of a sudden, fans of this book series appeared. I had not heard about Dune at all until then. Does that make me really ignorant? I don't know. I wonder where all those Dune fans were before they heard about the movie...None of them had ever mentioned to me reading Dune and liking it. Since I didn't know about the Dune (book) series, I was astonished to see how many people were excited about the movie. To me, it was just another movie (at that point). 

When it first came out, I saw this movie in the theatres. I can't say I liked the movie a lot at that point. I think some parts were hard to understand, especially if you didn't know anything about the story before. In some scenes, there was this women who was doing some prayer and it was not clear to me at all what she was saying most of the time. Oh well. After the movie, I was still a bit astonished---this time I was thinking "what was all the fuss about?". It is good that it wasn't my final decision about the movie.

What happened is I re-watched the movie, this time at home, with subtitles to actually understand the mumbling parts. After that, I started appreciating the movie. In the meantime, I had collected some information about the Dune universe which also helped me appreciate the events in the movie. So, maybe you like the movie already, but let me share with you some of the knowledge.

First of all, a person who has seen the Star Wars series and did not hear about Dune before (like me) might think that the author of the books, Frank Herbert, might have copied quite a few things from the Star Wars series. That would be a cruel criticism. In fact, the truth is that it was George Lucas who took ideas from Frank Herbert's books. Now, I don't know if that changes your opinions about George Lucas (or Star Wars) but hopefully it reduced the resistance you might have had towards Dune. I don't think Lucas ever denied getting ideas from the Dune books so I guess we wouldn't call this stealing, and all is good.

As I mentioned above, there were some words I didn't understand. For example, I would have never thought Bene Gesserit is written like that. Maybe it's just me but I should know the spelling of a word if I were to understand it. So since there was a lot going on that I didn't quite understand the details of, I paid more attention to the visuals. You may remember the desert suit they had to wear. During all those scenes, my mirror neurons were apparently working at peak capacity, and I really felt uncomfortable and sometimes as if I wasn't able to breathe. That mechanism the suit had---I definitely wouldn't want to be in that suit. On the other hand, if I didn't have any other choice to stay alive, I probably would've gotten in the suit but I am not sure how that would go for me.  

Now that we started talking about the desert, let's talk about the desert people and the spice. For a westerner (like a person from North America), maybe these ideas used in the film would look eccentric or authentic. To me, they really weren't. If you are familiar with certain eastern culture and/or studied history of certain civilizations in the east, you can easily detect some of the ideas in this movie/book are taken from eastern cultures. Indeed, it turns out that Frank Herbert spent some time in Vietnam and Pakistan. I believe he learned a lot there. 

If you look at the desert people, their skin, eyes and choice of clothing, doesn't that remind you some society who fit this description already? They are the ones being invaded and they are the ones being enslaved---I don't know, this sounds very familiar to me. Now, the spice. Well, so many nations went to war just because of "spice" in the past, too. That's basically in the world history. Of course, that spice and the spice in the movie are not exactly the same. However, if you think about it they are in the same position according to their context. In the old times, people fought for food, or spice trades. That was the most important thing, to live---food. Now, in the movie, what they call "the spice" is as essential as food was to people who lived in, say, 1450 or 1780. You may not know every country's history, but as an example, the British definitely fought wars over spices (and their traditional food is still pretty plain considering this---also see this). I hope you didn't think I gave legitimate links about wars---they are just memes. You can, however, find the information about Frank Herbert's life I mentioned in the previous paragraph on Wikipedia.

The story of Dune is really taken from past events (history) and just set in the future. Obviously, this is not the only movie or book which had done this. But, maybe because I am so familiar with these ideas, they were so obvious to me and a bit boring. On the other hand, it was also a bit enjoying to see someone is bringing these topics up. Another example is, in the movie, the desert people kind of have their own ways to be able to live in the desert. Basically, others invented suits, etc, but they (the desert people) devised their own ways to navigate in the desert. And the point they made was, you have to learn the ways of the desert if you are to survive. If you look at it, it looks like the desert people don't have much technology and probably considered "behind" but they have their own mystic ways. Well, first of all, this reminds me the fact that until some point in the history the east was definitely the one that was ahead (of the west). East was where philosophical thinking happened, inventions took place, science/technology developed. Not sure what the exact point is but after some point, the west was better than the east somehow. If you think of some ancient civilizations, perhaps you can observe this in some contexts. I mean, the USA came to existence only recently and before that there were no "the best/most prestigious universities" there where the most prominent science/research took place. 

There is no doubt that there are terms and ideas used in the movie with islamic references. I can't say this was interesting to me. What bothers me is that while some areas on earth are full of people with islamophobia, they think it's cool when some ideas from that culture are used in such a movie---because they have no idea that the idea of a mahdi in the movie actually exists in real life stories and that's also where the term comes from. Well, this was just an example but hopefully you get the point. The mystic elements in the movie are just a melange of items from different Middle Eastern cultures and maybe this is a good thing---people with prejudices against Middle East might actually start understanding and liking these cultures. 

The events of the movie take place in a distant future but most things are the same---just masked to look different. I do think the movie touches important subjects. It shows the dynamics in religion and how it plays its role in politics and the power required in politics. I guess the movie is also trying to draw attention to ecological crisis we are facing nowadays but I am not sure if what the audience takes away from this movie. Like, after seeing the movie, do they think "hmm if I don't do anything about global warming now, maybe this will be our future and so I must become an activist now!"? I don't think so. I think people are mostly taken away from the interesting set up in the future (even though some of which was already familiar from Star Wars). 

Now, the movie takes place in a distant future but other than the interstellar travel and big ships, you don't really see that much technology in the daily lives of people. In fact, they might be even using less technology for everyday things than we do now, and that's a bit strange to see in a movie which takes place twenty thousand years into our future. This is strange and makes you think the story is not well established. However, there is actually a reason why things are the way they are in the movie, and you'd know that things make sense if you knew more about Dune universe. So, apparently, before the events of the movie, there was a war and all robots and computers were destroyed. These are not really spoilers. They are just background info to be able to appreciate the movie more.

From my review so far, maybe you think I didn't like this movie, but I actually did. I am definitely waiting for the sequel and I will watch it too. Before I finish, I will try to briefly go over the performances of the actors. 

Casting Javier Bardem is probably the best decision the cast directors did. He is a highly respected actor. His performance was, of course, pretty good in this movie. I must say though there were some disgusting looking scenes that involved him and if you like disgusting images, maybe you'll enjoy (or enjoyed) those scenes. I don't really like Jason Momoa very much (and I don't see how and why people like him) but his character added depth to the story so I won't complain. Timothée Chalamet is a very good actor, in my opinion, and he did a very good job in this movie. I knew Oscar Isaac from the Star Wars movies first but his character in this movie was quite different and he showed what a good actor he is. I knew Zendaya from the latest Spider-man series. I liked her previously but I am not so sure about now. I am not sure why they cast her for that role, maybe because of the characteristics of her face? 

I seemed to have complained a lot about the oriental elements in the movie but I should admit that it's not like the movie didn't include European elements. So, to be fair, I think Frank Herbert did the best job (compared to any other movie) in the sense that he was able to include features from cultures all around the world. So, in terms of representation, it's hard to find another movie like this where anyone could find something from their own culture or religion, even it might just be one thing. Plus, if you think about it, it is only realistic if both the west and the east are represented in such a universe. 

About seeing and understanding this movie, I think that if you haven't read the books (and/or don't want to read them), it might be worth to befriend someone who did so that you can ask them the questions you have about the movie. I already have such a friend, thankfully, and I asked her a lot of questions, and hearing the answers was definitely helpful. I am not an expert on the Dune books still, but hopefully you learned a thing or two about the Dune universe from this post.

I give 7/10.

The Prestige

This movie was (also) brought to my attention by a 'reel' on Instagram---it is true, I have come to spend more time on Instagram than I used to do in the past. What can you say? It has come fruitful! I guess one can think of it as seeing a trailer. This movie originally came out in 2006 and I had not been informed of its existence until recently. 

The short scene I saw involved an inmate in jail who was being treated harshly and the inmate ended up fooling a guard for which all the other inmates started cheering. I liked this. Sort of a small rebellion. Some jerk being humiliated in front of everyone---a small payment for his bad behaviour. So the movie interested me and I searched for the name of the movie again---you know the deal. 

If you look up this movie and see the director's name and the actor list, you do not need any further convincing to decide to watch the movie. The inmate I mentioned above is played by Christian Bale. Interestingly enough, I have not yet reviewed a movie on this blog starring him yet. It is interesting because I like the actor. Well, I didn't like him as much until 2022, so maybe it's normal.

I did not know that this was a Christopher Nolan movie until the very end of the movie when his name appeared on the screen. This is odd since I had looked up the list of all C. Nolan movies recently and I don't remember seeing this on the list. I guess it happens---I can't remember every single word I read. I must admit, though, when I saw his name on the screen, it all made sense because it was a really good movie. If you think over it a few seconds more you can actually recognize the Nolan style in the movie, although I hadn't noticed it during the movie. Well, now you know it's a Nolan movie, so you might have a different experience with the movie than I did. Or, maybe you have seen the movie and still didn't know the director! Then, maybe you'll share the same thought processes with me. In any case, gentle reader, I hope you are a person who likes Nolan movies.

What did I mean when I said "the Nolan style"? I won't coin this phrase but it's something I just made up. What I try to say with it is the mind-bending aspect of his movies. Nolan is also a director who likes to work with some of the people he already worked with before again---this is another part of his style. Maybe you can guess who I mean here: Christian Bale and Michael Caine. He really keeps casting them! It's as if I am complaining but I really can't because I also like these men. After Nolan worked with M. Caine in Batman Begins, he re-hired Caine in The Prestige, and The Dark Knight (okay, this was the same character), and then Inception, then The Dark Knight Rises, then Interstellar, Dunkirk and Tenet! Here you go, count these and then if you ever go to a trivia night where the question is "How many Christopher Nolan movies did Michael Caine appeared in?", you know the answer! You know, one side of me wants to say, are you just casting your friends? But that's obviously not true, and I highly enjoy Caine's performances in Nolan movies. Similar things happened with Bale but I won't go into much detail here. Maybe another good trivia question would be "how many movies featured both Christian Bale and Michael Caine?". That's a good question. Before I go back to our movie, I'll just mention here Nolan's upcoming movie Oppenheimer. If you check its cast, you can see that it's really promising to be an incredible movie---we'll just have to wait a few more months until it comes out, though.

Back to our movie. If you like psychological thrillers and/or mind-bending movies, you'll like this movie. I should definitely let you know that this movie is not one of those "sit back and relax" movies, it's more like a "sit back and pay attention" movie. You should pay attention to the movie while watching, if you really want to enjoy it. Here's my experience with the movie in terms of the timeline: First half an hour, I found the movie to be boring. Don't stop reading yet though. The next 45 minutes, I started thinking "hmm, maybe this movie is interesting". Then it was really interesting (and I thought "hmm this is a good movie") for the rest until the very end. At the very end, my opinion changed. My verdict was that it was a really good movie. So my advice is that if you watch this movie, don't give up in the first 30 minutes. 

Why was I bored in the first 30 minutes? There might be many factors which determined my mood at that time. However, I think it might be because I didn't find the rivalry of two magicians interesting. This is really about one's own likes. Maybe you do like magicians and maybe you won't find any minute of the movie boring. I think that this movie is one of the examples where the synopsis is very misleading. If you read it, it would say "oh there are two stage magicians and they are in rivalry" which is true in terms of the story. However, there are really a lot more interesting things happening...although I won't give you spoilers. These interesting/weird things don't start right at the beginning, hence my boredom at the beginning.

When you see "psychological thriller" and "mind-bending" in the description of a movie, maybe you already know to expect a plot twist. If you like movies with plot twists, I strongly believe that you will like this movie. Was this a spoiler? I don't think so. You'll see what I mean when you watch the movie. I do enjoy successful plot twists. 

Speaking of a plot twist, I want to talk about Christian Bale's performance/character in this movie. I don't know if you've seen him in American Psycho but I think his character in this movie might have been even more psycho than his character in the movie American Psycho. After the movie ends, you kind of think back and realize some things which are things that left me speechless. I recently saw a part of one of Christian Bale's interviews. He is being asked "how long do the characters stay in your head?" and he answers "Do they ever leave?". I must say, this is really concerning to me after seeing American Psycho. Also, The Prestige even if somehow you don't count American Psycho. So, now, after seeing this interview bit, I think I like Christian Bale a bit less but it is a crystal-clear fact that he is a talented and successful actor.

The movie also features Nikola Tesla which is one of the interesting aspects of the movie. You may wonder: how did Tesla come into this story/movie? Well, I guess you'll have to watch the movie for this or read the plot online (which I don't recommend because it would ruin the movie) but I can tell you this much: in the "olden" times, science was also magic. So here is your connection to Tesla.

Lastly (about actors), and briefly, I will mention Hugh Jackman. If you have been reading my posts, there is a good chance that you already know I like to see Hugh Jackman in movies. It was nice to see him in this movie too. His character was nice and his performance was good (although maybe not spectacular, but that's okay). 

Perhaps it is apt to finish this post by explaining the name of the movie. The association I'd make with the word prestige is definitely not the one the movie meant. Apparently, a magic act has three parts: the pledge, the turn and the prestige---they give this information in the movie, I had no idea before. It says that this last part is crucial to a magic act (or illusion/performance) and without it there is no point of the magic act. In a sense, if this whole movie were an illusion (and it technically is), the last part (or the end of the movie) is The Prestige part and it all makes sense because that's when the audience claps. In fact, I am not making this up, the film makers really tried to structure the screenplay according to this and knowing this actually explains my perception of the movie in three parts as mentioned above. By the way, this movie is actually based on a book, so we shouldn't pass without giving the credit. It is true that the film makers did an excellent job but the story was pretty good to begin with.

If you haven't seen this movie yet, I strongly suggest you see it at your earliest convenience (given that you satisfy at least one of the conditions mentioned above about liking the movie, e.g. if you like Nolan movies).

I give 8/10.

The Father

This was a good movie. However, I must admit that I didn't understand it all and was very confused several times during the movie. But, I think, this was supposed to happen. 

The movie is about a father, as you can probably guess from the name of the movie. The father has dementia and a daughter (as it seems). If you know what dementia is about, then you can guess that the father keeps forgetting things and often lives in a past reality (or perhaps unreality). This part was what was particularly confusing to me, and I believe, to the audience in general. You see certain things happening, there is what the father is saying, and what his daughter is saying. Since you know the father (Anthony Hopkins) has dementia, you first think that the daughter is right (and telling things that are true) and the father should be the one who speaks nonsense sometimes. 

Surprise! After a while, you start questioning---at least I did. You question the reality of the daughter. At times, the father confuses the caregiver for his daughter. At least, that's first what you think. Then, the father makes such statements that you start thinking "well, maybe he was right and the daughter was gaslighting him". Who knows? I still don't know. Nevertheless, I highly enjoyed the movie because I think this confusion was intentional. I think, the film makers wanted to leave the audience with such a complicated state of mind to make them get close to feeling what dementia is like. It was a success. I feel that I did get one step closer to understanding the mind of dementia. At the end of the movie, I still was not certain what was real and what was unreal. So, if you watch the movie and understand everything, please enlighten me! 

The director's cut was important to presenting the layers of a mind with dementia and I think the director of this movie did a very good job on that. 

When it comes to the actors and actresses, the performances were again spectacular. 

Anthony Hopkins, well, he is Anthony Hopkins, so that needs no comment. We knew his performance was going to be great and it is. 

Olivia Colman. I first knew her from the series Broadchurch (which is a really good show by the way, you should watch---it stars David Tennant and it is a detective story and a psychological drama, it is quite intense). After her role in Broadchurch, I started liking her. Then I saw her in a movie called The Lost Daughter which is again a really good movie. I know that she is also in The Crown but I haven't seen The Crown yet---it is way too popular these days, maybe I will get to it in a few years. It is always a pleasant experience to watch her performance and, good news, she will be in the Marvel television series The Secret Invasion (that is, good news, if you like MCU productions and Olivia Colman). I do follow Marvel productions and knowing that she will be in this series makes me more expectant of the series. Also, if you don't know, David Tennant was the 10th doctor in the British series Doctor Who. He is a great actor whom I follow the works of (mostly). If you like podcasts, he does a podcast called David Tennant Does A Podcast for which he took Olivia Colman as his guest for the first episode. It was a quite enjoyable (very British accent-heavy) conversation they had. 

Mark Gatiss. Well, I know him from his roles in both Sherlock and Doctor Who. He was also involved with the writing of some of the episodes of Doctor Who's latest seasons---I don't think he did such a great job but of course it is hard to be better than Steven Moffat. Mark Gatiss is a good actor (and also British) but he is not as great as David Tennant or Olivia Colman in my eyes (or heart). Still, it was nice to see him in this movie.

Watching this movie, even as a (relatively) young person, made me think of the upcoming old age times I have ahead of me. As I said, the movie is quite thought provoking. Perhaps, if I watched this movie in an older age, I would be watching it mostly with horror, who knows?

I must say, there is a ton of movies/series or books on dementia or Alzheimer's, but I think this one sticks out as one of the best so far (among the movie ones). I don't know you, but I enjoy watching movies about people with dementia as they can be mind-bending which is something I often look for in a movie.

In the end, I am quite glad I have seen this movie. They are actually making a prequel to this movie, called The Son, starring Hugh Jackman. I definitely plan to watch this prequel. Will I write a review about it, too? Only time will tell.

I give 9/10.

P.S. This is the 2020 film The Father, not any other, but you could probably make that up by yourself from the list of actors.

A Man Called Ove

This movie was brought to my attention on Instagram while I was scrolling through 'reels'. (Yes, apparently, that's something I do now). Although, I shouldn't have said 'was brought to my attention' because I really had to search for the name of the movie. Basically, someone posted a video of a scene from the movie, I saw that, and I was impressed by the scene. This person did not hashtag the movie! Well, then you go on to comments and try to find someone who is not simply lying (because they do that too), and get the correct name of the movie from there. It must have been quite a scene to have moved me that much and go through all that effort, right? I won't tell you the details of the scene but I can tell you this much: it was at a train station and it involved life-saving. You'll understand which scene this was once you watch the movie.

Okay, then, I searched the movie with that name on the internet, confirmed it existed. Put it on my list, i.e. just kept it in mind---there is no written list. Later, I decided to find this movie so that I can watch it. It wasn't on any platform that I had subscription to. In the end, I found it on a streaming platform (completely legal) and watched it with ads.

That was quite the introduction to my journey leading to this movie. Let's start talking about the movie itself now. The movie is not in English and I think the people in the movie were speaking a bit fast, or the English subtitles in that platform just appeared late and disappeared early, who knows? I was able to read them 99% of the time but still, if you are tired, maybe you don't want to read that fast (and I was tired). I must say, if you are fluent in Swedish you won't need the English subtitles. 

Before going any further, I must also state here that this movie, A Man Called Ove, has won many awards. I won't list them here as you can check that on Wikipedia. It's based on a book of the same name by a Swedish author named Fredrick Backman. I liked the movie a lot but I am not sure if I would read the book. The movie was quite good and I am afraid that if I read the book it might ruin the movie for me (due to all that 'books are always better than the movie adaptation' thing).

Who is Ove? Obviously, he is the main character in the movie. The movie takes place when Ove is an old man but also provides some flashbacks from when he was younger (played by a different actor) to give a better understanding of Ove's personality and, hence, the story. Ove is a lonely person who has nobody. He makes it up to the age of 59 but doesn't want to go anymore after some point. I can see how an old person in Sweden can feel so lonely and would consider suicide for the following reasons. I know that Sweden is a country which historically has had a high suicide rate, the main reason being dark, long winters. But also, their culture has a great effect on it too. I don't know Swedish culture very well but suicide may not be perceived the same as in other cultures. Additionally, I personally believe that the fact that they have an individualistic society also has a huge impact on getting lonelier as you get old.

Back to the movie. The reason why Ove wanted to commit suicide was not the weather. As I mentioned above, it is loneliness. And, there is a reason why I wrote the previous paragraph. As the movie progresses, there are certain factors that come into play and help Ove overcome his loneliness (and ruin his suicide attempts). For example, there is a new neighbour. This neighbour is Persian. I strongly believe that the author chose the nationality of this neighbour on purpose. In the end, I believe this movie depicts the outcomes of individualism/collectivism in the context of loneliness with regards to suicide. It is due to the collectivist nature of the Persian neighbour's culture that Ove starts getting a sense of belonging and feeling connected to others.

Now, enough about suicide. The movie is actually not that dark. It is categorized as a comedy-drama. I would say, though, the comedy part is a bit like a dark comedy, at least to me. There were many moments I laughed and some of them were maybe for things that are actually sad.

I highly enjoyed the personality of Ove. He is an old person and from a completely different culture than mine, but I found many common traits between him and me. He is a grumpy man (giving others a hard time) but there were moments I was still on his side because I thought he was right (although it seemed like nonsense). By the way, I didn't mean the grumpiness when I said 'common traits', but who knows, maybe it is among them---I can definitely be grumpy sometimes. I believe anyone who watches this movie will find something in Ove from themselves (either from their lives or personalities, or both).

Okay, I can't finish this review without mentioning the remake of this movie. It's a movie called "A Man Called Otto". Now, there is a good movie and of course the US had to make it again because they know it will bring money. They see a good movie and they feel the urge to Hollywoodize it. Maybe you can tell from the tone that I am not exactly happy they remade this movie. What they did is they changed the name of the characters (it's still based on the book I mentioned above) for English ones and chose Tom Hanks as the lead actor. I haven't seen this movie yet---and I am not sure if I ever will. I am sure they also changed the brand of one of the cars in the movie (spoilers). I hope they didn't change the nationality of the neighbour because there is a reason why it was chosen that way. From what I can tell without watching the movie, I think they changed it to a Mexican person, which might still work, i.e. make sense, because Mexico also has a collectivist culture. Nevertheless, I still think it should have stayed as someone with the Middle Eastern culture. The movie is probably still pretty good because it's still based on the same successful story and Tom Hanks is a good actor but I'd recommend sticking to the original one---A Man Called Ove (2015). 

I just mentioned Tom Hanks being a good actor, I shouldn't conclude without saying that the performance of the actor who played Ove (Rolf Lassgård) was also outstanding---he actually won a best actor award for it too. Among the awards this movie has received, there is one that's for makeup and hairstyling, which I don't quite get why.

I give 9/10.