The King's Man (2021)
This movie was bonkers. I was expecting something like MCU levels of explosions, fantasy/sc-fi explanations and gadgets, etc. I was not prepared.
*Not a single idea who the lead actor was when I walked in; after walking out, was very impressed by whoever it was, and it turns out, it is Ralph Fiennes. He's the main reason that the movie works at all. Amazing screen presence, made me believe he truly wanted the best for his son, even if the way he was going about it was definitely destined for tragic failure. Throughout the utter WTF of the movie, he still made you believe and want him to succeed, and I think that's a huge testament to Fiennes. This is my strongest impression of the movie.
*At first I was annoyed that they used Wilfred Owen's poem to add extra pathos to the scene, but then they actually went and killed Conrad, so, well, okay, at least they went all the way there. Overall I was prettty impressed by how they handled the whole WWI backdrop. Trench warfare was awful and muddy and very, very bloody, and I was expecting Conrad to survive miraculously, and he nearly does. Really, he does. To be shot when he had made it back...oof. That hurts. We got to find out as Oxford did, too, which made it more effective. At first, you think that it's mostly just Conrad managing to get onto the front lines, by swapping with Archie, and it's just the swap that he's confessing to; it's only as the action keeps playing and you realize what actually happened.
*Depiction of Rasputin ?????
*TBH the whole section that takes place in Russia. It's like all the wildest hearsay being repeated and depicted as though real.
*Everything about the Flock was just...wow, okay. But you know what, I respect the aesthetics of the virtually inaccessible sheep farm atop a mountain. I'm fundamentally quite a pragmatic and lazy person and so living up there would be way, way more logistical complications than I could ever deal with, but it is undoubtedly cool and very remote. And it was probably made before aerial troops could be deployed effectively, so it was pretty good before then.
*They gave Djimon Hounsou and Gemma Arterton supporting parts to play, but none of them got to really...do anything. Gemma got to play the arch female servant who knows everything, but the protagonist is still Oxford, who gets to play all kinds of things - to be noble, heroic, kind, but also sometimes foolish, grieving, angry, overprotective...Djimon mostly got to play "super loyal servant". It was just disappointing. This is partly just how the story is told. In a two hour movie, the protagonist is always going to get most development, they will be the most centered and the action, feelings, and story revolve around him. But they never really gave either of them anything interesting or novel to play to round them out a bit.
*I unfortunately never got immersed in the movie except maybe the part during the trenches. It was just so hilariously OTT but also generally expected in terms of character moments - the part where Oxford and his family go to visit the aid camps in the Boer War made me cringe. After you realized that Oxford had brought his family to a war zone, the fallout is pretty much by the book. Of course his wife gets killed in front of him and his son, of course she tells him with her dying breath to make sure her son doesn't see war...argh, so predictable.
*The Great War was created via the machinations of an evil Scottish man who wishes for independence? I do realize that superhero movies, which let me be clear I absolutely enjoy, have this foundational fantasy that one person's action can solve or ameliorate crippling problems humanity has faced since the beginning of humanity, like meting out appropriate justice, etc, but come on. I mean it's not very fun to have superheroes battle stuff like "the rising nationalism in many different parts of Europe" and "complicated alliances"; they gotta fist-fight or sword-fight a person, preferably the person controlling all these bad things, but the specific spectre of Scottish independence is weirdly unpalatable.
Overall though...hey, I enjoyed it. Even if I walked out thinking what just happened?!" (The last stinger contributed.)
(Crosspost: https://silverflight8.dreamwidth.org/202656.html)
*Not a single idea who the lead actor was when I walked in; after walking out, was very impressed by whoever it was, and it turns out, it is Ralph Fiennes. He's the main reason that the movie works at all. Amazing screen presence, made me believe he truly wanted the best for his son, even if the way he was going about it was definitely destined for tragic failure. Throughout the utter WTF of the movie, he still made you believe and want him to succeed, and I think that's a huge testament to Fiennes. This is my strongest impression of the movie.
*At first I was annoyed that they used Wilfred Owen's poem to add extra pathos to the scene, but then they actually went and killed Conrad, so, well, okay, at least they went all the way there. Overall I was prettty impressed by how they handled the whole WWI backdrop. Trench warfare was awful and muddy and very, very bloody, and I was expecting Conrad to survive miraculously, and he nearly does. Really, he does. To be shot when he had made it back...oof. That hurts. We got to find out as Oxford did, too, which made it more effective. At first, you think that it's mostly just Conrad managing to get onto the front lines, by swapping with Archie, and it's just the swap that he's confessing to; it's only as the action keeps playing and you realize what actually happened.
*Depiction of Rasputin ?????
*TBH the whole section that takes place in Russia. It's like all the wildest hearsay being repeated and depicted as though real.
*Everything about the Flock was just...wow, okay. But you know what, I respect the aesthetics of the virtually inaccessible sheep farm atop a mountain. I'm fundamentally quite a pragmatic and lazy person and so living up there would be way, way more logistical complications than I could ever deal with, but it is undoubtedly cool and very remote. And it was probably made before aerial troops could be deployed effectively, so it was pretty good before then.
*They gave Djimon Hounsou and Gemma Arterton supporting parts to play, but none of them got to really...do anything. Gemma got to play the arch female servant who knows everything, but the protagonist is still Oxford, who gets to play all kinds of things - to be noble, heroic, kind, but also sometimes foolish, grieving, angry, overprotective...Djimon mostly got to play "super loyal servant". It was just disappointing. This is partly just how the story is told. In a two hour movie, the protagonist is always going to get most development, they will be the most centered and the action, feelings, and story revolve around him. But they never really gave either of them anything interesting or novel to play to round them out a bit.
*I unfortunately never got immersed in the movie except maybe the part during the trenches. It was just so hilariously OTT but also generally expected in terms of character moments - the part where Oxford and his family go to visit the aid camps in the Boer War made me cringe. After you realized that Oxford had brought his family to a war zone, the fallout is pretty much by the book. Of course his wife gets killed in front of him and his son, of course she tells him with her dying breath to make sure her son doesn't see war...argh, so predictable.
*The Great War was created via the machinations of an evil Scottish man who wishes for independence? I do realize that superhero movies, which let me be clear I absolutely enjoy, have this foundational fantasy that one person's action can solve or ameliorate crippling problems humanity has faced since the beginning of humanity, like meting out appropriate justice, etc, but come on. I mean it's not very fun to have superheroes battle stuff like "the rising nationalism in many different parts of Europe" and "complicated alliances"; they gotta fist-fight or sword-fight a person, preferably the person controlling all these bad things, but the specific spectre of Scottish independence is weirdly unpalatable.
Overall though...hey, I enjoyed it. Even if I walked out thinking what just happened?!" (The last stinger contributed.)
(Crosspost: https://silverflight8.dreamwidth.org/202656.html)