Eloise's Thoughts and Fancies

Normally I do separate posts for these, but this year, I only saw four films, so it’s pretty hard to justify a post just for the films. My TV shows count is a bit down too. Some of those are related things - 2023 wasn’t a great year, and I spent a chunk of time rewatching comfort shows. With 50 episodes of The Untamed and 23 plus a film of Sense8 that’s a lot of my “TV space” chewed up. I also changed my viewing habits and watched far more YouTube than in previous years, which affected my TV viewership. Details in my personal life also changed, which meant I got fewer opportunities to go to the cinema but, in fairness, I also had far fewer films that appealed to me. I’m capable of getting myself to the cinema, or watching the film elsewhere if it appeals enough - I did for Barbie for example. Hollywood runs on a paradigm of “blockbusters must appeal to the 18-35 year olds” and I’m massively outside that age range. The array of mid-budget films that used to be there for older people m...

While I try not to be too prescriptive in what it takes to enjoy a film - how you engage and enjoy something might be very different to me after all - I would suggest you need to be a fan of 300 and/or Sucker Punch and be willing to watch for the spectacle rather than anything else to enjoy Rebel Moon . Having said that, I’m going to split my review into what’s bad that made me say this, then what’s good. So what’s bad? There’s almost no plot, rather there are a string of tropes that come so thick and fast they’re better described as a tapestry, strung together by a gossamer thin plot where they can’t find a trope to squeeze in. If you want to play 'spot the trope' as a drinking game, I’d suggest sips of beer; if you drink anything stronger, you’ll get very drunk, very quickly. Some of the tropes escape being racist af because the guy that honours his debts and is really good with animals is clearly not a First Nations American, because he’s from a planet in space… (the actor...

Barbie is a film where the 2001 -spoof trailer made me say “yes, I want to see that” and, as well as being the opening scene, pretty much sets the tone for the film. Margot Robbie as Stereotypical Barbie is a brilliant piece of casting but, to my surprise, Ryan “stone face” Gosling is equally amazing as Stereotypical Ken. There has to be a level of irony in the fact that in this film he’s playing a plastic character, literally, whose face cannot move but he emotes more than I’ve seen in any other film I’ve seen him in. Helen Mirren is the narrator and that British sarcasm adds a whole extra layer to the film. But that’s just part of the whole script, which is amazing. It’s funny, moving and clever. There’s a wide range of humour, from pithy one-liners to longer form observational satirical sketches and pretty much everything in between. I’ll be honest, not all the humour lands as hilarious for me, I don’t have all the experiences (it’s hard to say which ones without major spoilers), ...

Blonde is a deeply uncomfortable, even unpleasant, film built around a mesmerising performance that a little bit of me hopes wins Ana de Armas best actress at the Oscars, although I’ll be happy if she loses to Michelle Yeoh. Although Marilyn died three years before I was born, as I was growing up, certainly when I was a child, she was still the epitome of a sex symbol. Even into my teens that was the case, although by the end of them other women were starting to displace her. So, although I never really studied her life, most of the events loosely depicted here are part of my cultural baggage. I certainly didn’t understand it all the first time I heard some of the stories, but by the time I was 14 or so and I was hearing them for the fifth time I was old enough to understand what they meant, maybe not in the context of the the America of 30 years earlier, but at least to understand what an abortion was, what the drugs stories meant, what being a Playboy centrefold implied and so on. ...

The very short review of this film is “gorgeous but WTF was that?” I have read, although a long time ago, a translation of the book (which was the first complete release of the story) and, like a lot of fairy stories, the original is a LOT darker than the Disney movie for example (although some of the weird bits of the Disney film come from the book more or less intact), and some of that darkness comes through clearly. The scene where Pinocchio first comes to life felt pretty familiar for example and, perhaps unsurprisingly for a 19th century Italian story, the heavy Catholicism in this adaptation felt familiar too. However, I’m pretty sure Collodi didn’t predict the first and second world wars, the rise of Mussolini and the like, but Il Duce is a character we see as del Toro's obsession with fascism coming through. This takes the story into almost pure del Toro, I say almost pure because there are easter eggs from the original thrown in. Why is the boy Pinocchio befriends calle...