I didn’t make the weekend as fruitful with movies as I would have liked, but still, some good strides made.
Blue Jean – Film Twitter made me hip to this independent British film and I’m glad I gave it a watch. It’s a somber drama about a PE teacher who essentially is living a double life. At school, she is quiet, kind, and mostly keeps to herself. She doesn’t even really get too involved with the girls she coaches other than breaking up the occasional scuffle. Since it’s the late 1980s, being gay is not something most people are cool with in England, so even in her personal life, Jean lives in much more quietly compared to the woman she is currently seeing and their friends. It’s when these two worlds cross paths innocently enough that Jean’s world starts to combust. It’s mainly of her own accord, but it was sometimes heart wrenching to see the lengths Jean would go to in order to protect herself. Even if that meant hurting others.
Madame Web – I have to say…the general panning of this film is kind of spot on. I don’t think Dakota Johnson really gets a pass for realizing that in hindsight either. I mean, she’s had to have seen at least one other Sony Marvel film in the past few years. There’s not much meat to this almost two hour story, and the bits and pieces we do get feel half-baked and poorly acted (scripted, likely). Also, I’m not sure I even ever catch the name of the bad guy! The ADR is perhaps the worst I’ve ever seen – it feels as though Tahar Rahim was asked to submit some of his lines over the phone. The action scenes are so-so, but I will say there’s a shot of our future Spider-women at the end that I can’t decide if it’s just bad or a cool homage to 80s superhero shots. Don’t waste your time if you already haven’t.
Killers of the Flower Moon – Finally, the last best picture nominee is in the bag. And unlike most of the audiences that watched Martin Scorcese’s latest epic, I found this thing to be a boring slog. To be fair, that’s how I’ve felt about the other films of his I’ve scene (and yes, that includes The Wolf of Wall Street). I mean it’s neat that this is based on a true story, and the performances were good, but good grief. It could have been an hour shorter, at least. Basically, it’s the story we’ve all heard: the white man thinks they are superior and try to take everything away from the original people’s. This specific story includes lots and lots of oil and lots and lots of unrecognized murders of the Osage nation. At least this film is bringing light to those murders. It still does a classic serial killer move by highlighting the killers more instead of the victims, but I suppose we’re taking small steps.
ManSuang – At first, I thought ManSuang was a Thai word I was just wholly unfamiliar with, but it turns out it is a fictional place in Thailand. Specifically, a place that exists in the 1800s where low class citizens go to learn to perform for the upper class. Here, we meet Khem and Wan, sent on a secret mission that can change the course of Thai history. Khem fairly early on meets drummer, Chatra, who is also secretly there to learn who killed his father. This is more of a historical drama rather than the BL I was assuming I’d get based on the number of KinnPorsche stars involved, but it was an interesting watch nonetheless. The picture here was another high quality product of Be On Cloud, and I was excited to learn that Mile and Apo will get to take their characters and explore them further in a spin-off series called Shine. I think it’s set to come out this year – so more to come!