bad movies are bad

i have not liked the past three movies i saw in theatres



wonder woman
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who thinks this was some "feminist" movie? I felt like all the main male characters treated her like garbo. no one valued her input, or believed her. she was forced into played dumb/ignorant/clueless amazonian woman. just because she was physically strong doesn't mean she was empowered or respected. sure, it's better than BvsS but that's a super low bar already. and the spa/naked man scene was really really awkward. basically set the tone for the movie; TriHard marvel moment and bad writing.


lady bird
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this movie was so surface level and boring. i felt this movie should have almost exclusively been about the mother-daughter relationship instead of lady birds life in general. That relationship was put on hold for her stereotypical best-friend falling out, losing her virginity, and dad is depressed. lady bird just was not likeable and it wasn't clear that she truly learned anything. she re-friends with her bff at prom but then... they can't hang out over the summer and she leaves for NY so cya; she doesn't have to put in any effort to thsi relationship anymore. and then she still leaves her mother for NY but tries to call her after giving up her old nickname. change in identity? It doesn't look like shes grown as a person, but she just became more stubborn. boring, predictable, and lacking depth.

call me by your name
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nothing really clicked with me and this movie. first off, it had some really bad editing (actor's in wrong during reverse shots) which was distracting. i did like the long takes and blocking when eli0 and oliver were alone and talking (esp at the WW1 monument among others).

I went in knowing absolutely nothing so I only discovered the characters had an attraction to each other in that same WW1 monument scene. i found that neat as i noticed it at the same time the characters truly revealed it. (maybe i'm just slow w/e). but... ym biggest grip with the movie is there was not a lot of conflict. What is the main conflict of the story? At first I wanted it to be that either character or both are stuggling with their homosexuality. But that didnt quite seem to be the case and Oliver came around quickly after they both got on the same page with each other. And Elio was really just using the girl he had sex with to show Oliver he was sexually ready and get some practice.

so was the conflict their secrecy? apparently now. Mom knew the entire time, and apparently so did dad based on the end scene. But they still appeared to be sneaking around hush hush.. from whom? They're basically in paradise for this summer.

so is the conflict with time? that they only have tehse 5 or 6 weeks in teh summer with each other? I didnt' feel that because time was really only used twice as a conflight device; once for the midnight rendezvous when elio keeps checking his was when the sun is still out lol. and the other when it's like oh lets spend the last 4 days on a mini/sub-vacation or trip. time felt everlasting. felt like an endless summer.

everything felt too neatly packaged and cleanly resolved. i hate that! i wish some mystery was left. I hate that oliver explained he actually wasnt sneaking out to see that young girl each night. I hated that the girl forgave elio explicitly after the trip. i had that oliver even called to say he was getting married. and I especially disliked that dad monologue at the end. it was bascially the director saying "in case you haven't been paying attention, here's the whole point" -_-;;

so i didn;t like this movie. i didn't care for it at all. But! I will digress that I Think ultimately it just wasnt a movie for me. I can understand that its overall message of first summer love won and lost is real, and people experience this. And it was especially harder for gay men in the 1980s. the themes suggested are true for some people and I'm sure they connected to this very well (must like a lot of daughters probably connected to lady bird and her mother's relationship). To me it seems like it could have been a cathartic "I wish I had a father who understood me like that! I wish I could have had a idyllic summer like that! I wish everything could be neatly resolved!" I prefer movies and stories that arent like that or that dont explicitly state them so that I can figure them out instead of being fed the answers, and simply have more upfront conflict.

with that hot take, I'm gonna go read some reviews and criticism now to see if I'm way out of line and what other people thought.

!cya
!slots
!pkmn