some films

Some films I watched re­cent­ly: Ed Wood, Sav­ing Mr. Banks, Shaz­am!, Al­addin, and Godzil­la: King of the Monsters.
 

Ed Wood (1994) is not my first view­ing, I’ve seen it many times.

It’s about the pas­sion of ‘the worst film di­rec­tor of all time,’ and I’d say the best Tim Bur­ton film – as well as best John­ny Depp one – if not his sec­ond best (de­bat­able be­tween Ed­ward Scis­sorhands (1990)).

Even though it is based on a real per­son, the film is di­rect­ed as if it’s a fan­ta­sized 50s flick. One shouldn’t ex­pect a doc­u­men­tary in a film like this, and Ed Wood is a great ex­am­ple of how much it doesn’t have to be true to his­to­ry (oth­er sim­i­lar films like Bo­hemi­an Rhap­sody (2018) could have been more fic­tion­al for the sake of bet­ter sto­ry­telling for all I care). The cast­ing, act­ing, cin­e­matog­ra­phy, and writ­ing are all per­fect. Rec­om­mend­ed for any cre­ator. 10/10.
 

Sav­ing Mr. Banks (2013) is also about film­mak­ing, a crash be­tween P. L. Tra­vers, the orig­i­nal au­thor of Mary Pop­pins and Walt Dis­ney. The sto­ry looks sani­tised a bit on the Disney’s part, but they are do not shy away from his neg­a­tive side either. 

The two most in­ter­est­ing things for me were the heavy use of flash­backs, and Col­in Far­rell as a trou­bled fa­ther. The first was be­cause I was sick of flash­backs in Cap­tain Mar­vel (2019), which had al­most con­vinced me it’s a cheap trick to spoon-feed rel­e­vant emo­tion or in­for­ma­tion that nev­er works. 

This film proved me wrong. Col­in Far­rell also act­ed as a fa­ther in Dum­bo (al­beit with a phys­i­cal prob­lem, not tem­per), who was not good at all. If you want to see how much di­rec­tors af­fect ac­tors re­gard­less of their act­ing skills, I rec­om­mend watch­ing these two films. 

It is hard­er to rec­om­mend to every­one since it as­sumes you have seen Mary Pop­pins (1964), but I give it 8.5/10.

And I have a feel­ing that Sav­ing Mr. Banks un­der­stands Mary Pop­pins way more than Mary Pop­pins Re­turns (2018) does (I haven’t seen that one yet).
 

Shaz­am! (2019). It was just as fun­ny as the trail­er promised, and has more emo­tion­al dri­ve than I ex­pect­ed. The pro­tag­o­nist is an or­phan who gets adopt­ed by a fos­ter fam­i­ly, and the fam­i­ly dra­ma is good. The hero is played by Zachary Levi, who looks just like Jim­my Fal­lon, and the an­tag­o­nist is played by Mark Strong, who looks just like Stan­ley Tucci. 

It’s quite fun­ny but also dra­mat­ic when it wants to, and re­al­ly cheesy when it wants to. It feels like a very good ’90s su­per­hero film – in com­par­i­son, a bad ex­am­ple is Ven­om (2019).

I think Shaz­am! may be the best work of the di­rec­tor so far (David F Sand­berg, who only did a few hor­ror films). And this orig­i­nal Cap­tain Mar­vel is a far su­pe­ri­or film than Marvel’s Cap­tain Mar­vel. 8.5/10.
 

Al­addin (2019) is an aw­ful live ac­tion adap­ta­tion of the beloved an­i­mat­ed film, with Will Smith be­ing the best part of the whole thing. 

I guess his ap­pear­ance in the trail­er was so shock­ing that every­one else flew un­der the radar (Ja­far and Iago were the worst offenders). 

Changes and ad­di­tions to the orig­i­nal did not work on their own. Among the live ac­tion adap­ta­tions, Al­addin isn’t as bad as Beau­ty And the Beast, Dum­bo, or the Al­ice films. Hav­ing said that, the orig­i­nal is far more worth your time. ⁵⁄₁₀
 

Godzil­la: King of the Mon­sters (2019) is a dras­tic tonal shift from the 2014 ver­sion. It’s tonal­ly clos­est to the ’90s Japan­ese Godzil­la movies and I ap­pre­ci­ate as a fan how much fan ser­vice the cre­ators mixed in this film. 

It also lis­tened to the crit­i­cism of the last one, which was that there wasn’t enough Godzil­la and the hu­man dra­ma was weak. The for­mer was over­com­pen­sat­ed yet not lit, coloured, framed, or edit­ed well enough that it quick­ly be­came dull. The hu­man part was worse, and pret­ty much every­one was there to give ex­pos­i­to­ry dialogue. 

Among the three Mon­ster­Verse films we’ve got­ten so far, this Godzil­la is prob­a­bly the worst one (though they’re still very good by Japan­ese Godzil­la stan­dards). ⁷⁄₁₀.

 
 

—toshi oma­gari

Flom­mist Toshi Oma­gari fights many things, most re­cent of which is the auto-cor­rec­tion of his ti­tle to florist. Copy­right © 2019 Toshi Omagari.

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