chicken run: dawn of the nugget (2023)
if i was a child and i had not seen chicken run (2000), i probably would have really enjoyed this! and it was fine! perfectly decent kids movie! but as a follow up to the excellent, formative original- very disapointing. the animation is still technically impressive and i can’t fault them for stylising it in a really bright and fun, colourful way, but I think it comes off as overly clean and sanitised, child-friendly in an honestly boring way. and i understand that there's an in-universe justification for it to be that way- a bright, artificial utopia designed to keep chickens happy before mashing them up into nuggets, and how it masks the sinister violence of the chicken farms. but it felt very? tepid? predictable in a boring way? never reaching the heights of the grittiness, the mud, the grim acceptance that the chickens had of their fate, or the high stakes, intensely frightening action sequences that were the reason the first film stuck with me for 20 years.
FURTHERMORE I ALSO FEEL VERY STRONGLY THAT GINGER WOULD NOT BE A MOTHER. of ALL the chickens!!!! she??!!!! literally any one of the other chickens would have been a more fitting choice. and even then she definitely would not have sugar-coated the reality of the world to her daughter, hiding the reason the chickens live secretively on a secluded island, and she would NOT have seen trucks full of chickens on their way to be slaughtered at a farm nearby and come to the conclusion that it was none of their business to help. like the key point of the first movie was that ginger herself COULD escape from the farm easily, but refused to do so until she could safely get every single chicken free. because she cared about them so much!!!! that she risked her own life not only staying with them when she could have left but continually put herself in more danger in her attempts to free them all!!! they eventually rectify this mischaracterisation by the end of chicken run 2 but the whole way through i was thinking not my ginger!!!! she wouldn't!!!
anyway this movie is literally fine, i loved seeing my girls babs/bunty/mac and i loved the continued butch/femme dynamic of ginger and rocky, i just think it would have made more sense for literally any other chicken to be the mother of the film. ginger would be just as protective of any other chicken's child. and its literally a communal child anyway. oh also mrs tweedie is back serving more cunt than ever and still SO scary. pink gogo boots in the nugget factory serve.
brideshead revisited (2008)
sometimes you watch something and it makes you ache so much it feels difficult to look at !!!! i mean this in a complimentary way but this movie really did come with a physical ache at times.
parts of it reminded me strongly of sarah waters 'a little stranger'- the family living on an old english estate, and the outsider who is on one level pursuing a romance with the family, but is primarily obsessed with the house (and all it signifies) itself- relentlessly and insidiously intruding.
saltburn (2023)
mixed feelings tbh!! definitely didn't love it or find it as obsessively weird as i was kind of hoping, but also didn't find it as bland and uninspired as i know it's been criticised for. I think ultimately for me it both lacked restraint in key parts (most notably in the final few scenes, which seemingly felt the need to overexplain the plot of the movie in a deeply unambiguous way), and was too restrained in other parts (I wanted to see more subtle resentment/obsession/manipulation/toxic behaviours building up and carried throughout the movie, instead of largely isolated to one character, in a few isolated scenes). too much in some parts and not nearly enough in other parts!
i do also think this would have been excellent as a horror or a thriller (i've seen it described as a thriller but it honestly doesn't really fit imo)- especially given the setting and themes, a gothic horror, or something that leant more into the medieval aesthetic as suggested by the title would have been so good! (thinking: the maze, the green knight, masquerade parties in a sprawling english manor) not just saying this because i like horror! imagining this movie with a sense of simmering, constant tension, of barely suppressed emotions and the threat of violent eruption, would have resulted in a much tighter, more affective viewing experience and would have worked thematically/tonally with the shock moments of sex and violence that come off as a little disconnected from the rest of the movie. anyway literally none of this criticism matters bc saltburn did have one of the best soundtracks of any movie ive seen recently, preying on my mid 2000s indie dance music nostalgia..... this movie had LADYTRON in it. this movie had NO CARS GO by arcade fire playing in the pub followed by THIS MODERN LOVE BY BLOC PARTY. this movie had princess (exceeder) by MASON. i can't be mad.
godzilla minus one (2023)
soooo good. tense and heartfelt ! thoughtful! awe inspiring !
really love the choice to make it a period piece and explicitly bring the franchise back to its roots, contextualising godzilla in the immediate aftermath of wwii. grief and guilt and regret are at the centre of the film, particularly informed by the main character's past as a failed kamikaze pilot- the opening scene of the film explicitly ties his failure to commit suicide in the war to his failure to shoot and kill godzilla when he first emerges onto the island, resulting in the deaths of the plane mechanics working there.
beyond the key, critical theme of sacrifice is the movie's explicit insistence on protecting the future- killing godzilla is an act that ensures the survival of japan, but equally important is ensuring the survival of the men fighting him. the big speech that precedes the 'godzilla killing' scheme is not one talking about how tough they are, and how evil godzilla is, encouraging reckless bravery and heroic sacrifice, but one lamenting the lack of care of the japanese government towards human life, particularly during the war, particularly with kamikaze pilots, and ends with a sincere hope that every one of them will live through it.
i found this emphasiss on the value of human life to be incredibly touching, and a really strong continuation of the legacy and themes of godzilla (1954). Dr Serizawa's heroic sacrifice at the end of the original film is of course a key element, but equally important are his ethical concerns about weapons of mass destruction and military technology- and his own death can be seen in similar terms as described by godzilla minus one (2023) - that 'protecting the future' means the death of godzilla, but more importantly it means ensuring that civilians can continue to live.
overall !! very very thoughtful in every regard- really considerate of its subject matter, legacy, and reckoning ideas of sacrifice and bravery in the aftermath of wwii. i cried almost the whole way through. cannot stress enough how incredible it is
the brothers karamazov, fydor dostoyevsky
this took like 3 months to read and i loved it and have honestly very little to say about it. fydor pavlovich karamazov funniest bitch alive until he's not.