Eddie

Une fois n'est pas coutume, I thought I would do a little review of the movies I watched this month. I usually only watch 1 movie a month and its review lands direct to DVD on the café, but contrary to my habit, I've watched quite a few in August/September. I've been striving to read, watch or experience works more critically as of late, and reviewing stuff helps me do that. Since there were so many movies though, I didn't really plan on reviewing anything, so the reviews will be short.

Mickey 17 (2025)

I watched this in the plane coming back from France in August, above Canada. I actually did have a little review I was planning to do so this will be a more consequent review compared to the ones below. What a strange movie. It is very incompetent in many regards — there are so many plot points and little intrigues that are brought up and either abandoned, have no impact whatsoever or directly contradict everything in the movie. Minor spoilers ahead.

The love triangle is introduced early and completely abandoned after a little bit. It literally went nowhere and didn't add anything to the plot. Kai, whose whole point was to be the second love interest, completely disappears from the movie after it's abandoned and is useless. All the restrictions on the spaceship, which I though would be a great thing to explore, are completely ignored — the sex ban is so useless it makes no sense to have mentioned it. The calorie ban, is extremely underused and is forgotten about early on in the movie. The oxycimosomething drug plot also goes nowhere and is forgotten about, after taking quite a bit of runtime. The characters are pretty inconsistent as well. I am SO TIRED of antagonists being just trump caricatures, it's so overdone, it's lazy, it's unbearable. Just stop, we've all had enough, I beg you, please craft an interesting character. Other than that, it looks like Robbie P had fun, and it's enjoyable to see him just doing his thing. The movie overall is pretty inoffensive, but the way it just fills the runtime with useless and random things is very disconcerting. You get invested in a storyline, concept or another, and there are zero payoffs. I'm not mad to have seen it, but it was just barely ok.

The Accountant (2016)

I saw about two-thirds of The Accountant.

Shin Godzilla (2016)

Shin Godzilla is finally coming in 4k and for the occasion, Shin Godzilla came back to the theatre (only in the US and Canada). It being my favourite Godzilla movie, and one of my favourite movie period, I could not not see it. I dragged my lovely wife Tetyana along for the experience.

This theatrical version has about 20m of added scenes, which actually provided so much context and completely change the pacing and feel of the movie. Whereas it felt a bit choppy and hyper active before, with the viewer needing to pay attention or take the risk of not knowing what was going on, this now offers a much more comfortable viewing experience. It also reframes the US in an ever so slightly better light and worse light at the same time, where the original cut was very critical, and is also a bit more hopeful in it's vision of mankind. The political satire is still sharp, and some added scenes really make it clear what the issue discussed is. The rest is unchanged; the music is goated, the cinematography amazing, especially when it comes to colour and the portrayal of Godzilla as a god incarnate rather than a big lizard, the plot is good and the acting also great.

Really, this theatrical cut had me go from “I know it's probably not everyone's favourite, it's a bit of a weird one at times” to “nah Shin Godzilla being absolute cinema is not just a valid opinion, it is the right opinion”.

Knives out (2019)

I had heard a lot about this movie but never got around to see it. It was enjoyable. The establishing shots insisted upon themselves at the beginning, but once we're in the swing of things, the cinematography is not distracting. I had a good time. The acting is good, the plot's good, nothing is spectacular, but it all comes together to make a good movie. The only thing that ticked me off was Benoît Blanc's accent (actually the second thing that ticked me off, the first one being them pronouncing the C at the end of Blanc). He sounds like Robert Downey jr. in Tropic Thunder. It really took me out of it at first. But again, overall I had a good time watching the movie.

Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001)

The café's number one godzilla fan reporting back. Oh you don't believe me? Here's some hard evidence:

I assume the matter is settled now.

Anyways, out of all the Godzilla movies, Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (or GMK for short) was at the top 2 of my list, right below Shin Godzilla. One small issue though, the last time I saw it was easily 10 years ago. And while I had seen it many, many times, I had only seen it once with subtitles, the other times were undubbed japanese. Reader should also take into account that my english was not great 10 years ago, and since there were no french subtitles on my copy of it, I had to endure english and understood almost nothing. All of this to say that although I really liked to movie at the time, I had a very different experience of the movie than one might have.

I have put off updating my top Godzilla movie list since Godzilla Minus One (2023) came out, but I knew I would have to rewatch it at some point. I really didn't know if GMK would hold up to scrutiny now. I was really apprehensive about having to knock it down the list, or worst, now think that it's not a good movie.

I am extremely happy to report that the movie still slaps. The plot's good, the visual effects are good, the acting's good, the music is great, the pacing and battles are all amazing as well. The suits, puppets and stuff just don't age. Early CGI looks really rough nowadays, but good old rubber still looks awesome. The design of the monsters, the movement, the miniatures exploding.. everything is awesome. It remains securely in my top 2 of Godzilla movies. There are a bunch of stuff I hadn't caught on during my previous viewing (in which I could literally understand almost none of the dialogue). While thematically it's mostly focused on its critique of the refusal from Japan to own up and recognise its past action, there are still little nuggets of humour, and it even allows itself some feminist remarks. Wasn't expecting that in a 2001 japanese movie. It's also nice to have the main protagonist be a woman, which is the exception rather than the rule in Godzilla movies. I though the father daughter relationship, although not super deeply explored, was cute.

Nosferatu (2024)

I have been meaning to catch Nosferatu at the theatre, but I missed it, so while it was on my list for a while I didn't get around to seeing it for a while. Kinda wish I didn't miss it.

I thought the actress for Ellen gave a pretty weak performance, especially at the beginning. The dude who plays Friedrich looks also a bit out of his depth, but it also looks like he's doing his best most of the time so I can't blame him. Other than those, the acting is stellar, especially Thomas and Orlok. I loved the part of the movie that takes place during the journey and in the castle. The cinematography was so interesting and dream-like. I really like the design of Count Orlok, who looks like a Cossack, which makes more sense than an Eastern European count looking like a snazzy italian. I also like the more occult focus compared to it's source material (Dracula). One thing that held the movie back especially during that portion of the movie is the framerate. It's the first time it's been that noticeable to me that 24fps is just not adapted for a movie. The camera is restless during the journey+castle segment, but the low framerate makes any panning/ zooming shot — which is like two-thirds the shots of that part — look choppy and blurry. I know that it can feel weird for audiences to see stuff at higher framerates, but it's only because of habit. It is time we move on from the traditional restrictive 24fps format.

There is a very significant drop in the pacing between the castle part and Wisburg. I do not fault the movie, because the novel is even worse, with the pace plummeting after Arthur leaves the Castle. All things considered, the writers and director did the best with what they had to adapt. The thing that I thought was a bit lazily done was the “German” setting, which just feels super british. People speak victorian english with a british accent, people dress britishly, there really isn't anything distinctive from the London that Dracula is set in. And no, a random “Meine Herren” thrown by Willem Dafoe is not enough. I liked the ending though. The play on shadows during the movie was also nice, if a bit underused. I had a good time, especially in the beginning.

Glass Onion (2022)

I was gonna watch another godzilla movie, but I thought I would maybe refrain and keep it for later

I had a great time with Glass Onion. It's an improvement on some aspects of the first movie. Pacing is much better, and despite it being a 2h20, I did not see the time go. The portrayal of Benoît Blanc as a detective is also better, and we see him actually doing some deducing, without relying on puking gimmicks or coincidences like in the first movie. He's more active and I also liked that he had an accomplice. The offset parallel story telling was also a very nice addition, and added much depth to the movie. SPOILER It was also one of the first time I was genuinely surprised that a character that was shot didn't die SPOILER. I really liked that BB's investigation was initially thwarted off because the murdered was actually a fucking idiot. The dynamics of the people in it, relating to Miles, were not as intricate as Knives Out, but the less straight forward plot makes up for it. The ending was a bit meh but overall it was good.

Daniel Craigs was drippy as hell, and I found it so funny that he sneakily draws attention to his various Omega watches in every movie (he's an Omega watch brand ambassador).

Alien Romulus (2024)

Another movie allegory of sexual assault, we're on a roll this month.

Kind of a mix bag. I am not super into alien, but I appreciate the whole HR Geiger design element of it. I liked the more youthful side of the movie, with the cast being made of mostly youngsters and all of them randos (at least to me, but I don't really watch movies). The acting was generally good, with the ND (Andy) one being a really good performance. The pacing is solid, but it slows down a tad two-thirds of the way through to make a lot of room for what I can only only assume is nostalgia-bait. There's those introductions of stuff and shots that really focus on things and linger unnaturally on them. I'm not a big alien fan so it was lost on me, but it still felt weird. The worst I think is the CGI android, which is apparently the android from the first alien. Absolute dystopia to just bring back actors from the dead, I don't care if their kids or grandkids signed off on it, it's just awful. It also looked pretty bad. SPOILER I wasn't expecting to see another human-xenomorph hybrid so soon (or ever) I must admit SPOILER.

There is a big issue with the movie through, it's that everything happens in the span of 37min or something. And yet in that time a xenomorph has time to be implanted in a human, and grow to maturity, with half of the movie remaining. It's even worse with the SPOILER human alien hybrid, which literally goes from small baby to 8ft monstrosity in 3min in the movie SPOILER.

The movie looks great though and was pretty refreshing on the alien take, but only for half of it. I overall had a good time. Ma man really likes his grain.

Are you happy Liam?