Elessar's Top 10 Movies of 2017

The end of the year is a time to take stock, look back at the triumphs and failures, and, for 2017 at least, scream like the damned for something like an hour straight. Yeah, my airing of grievances for this year's Festivus began 2 weeks ago and is still going to this day. It may go into 2018. But one place I didn't have too many grievances to air is film, since the movies were pretty good. And while there are still a few I desperately want to see (coughThe Phantom Thread cough), it's already 2018 and I gotta finish this list. So, without further stalling or waiting, here are my favorite movies of 2017.

#10: Thor: Ragnarok

I will not sing Immigrant Song, I will not sing Immigrant Song, I will not I COME FROM THE LAND

The 10th spot is always tight. Even as I sit here, I feel like I should give this to Lady Bird or Beatriz at Dinner. But, outside of Deadpool, superhero films have been suspiciously absent from my top 10s, even as their presence at the theaters become bigger. So giving this slot to what is easily the best MCU movie in years, a movie with a fantastic cast and a great script, feels like a good idea. Maybe Marvel will be inspired to make more movies like this...by being at the bottom of a top 10 list from a Z list internet critic. Shut up, it could happen.

#9: The Disaster Artist

"Don't worry man, they cut most of your backstory."

The Room is, far and away, my favorite bad movie, and The Disaster Artist is one of my favorite books. So while the movie may not be perfectly adept at putting all of the contents in the book into the movie, it is excellent at including the emotions and themes at the core of its story, both in how The Room's creator can be toxic and cruel, but also in how he remains, at heart, a desperately intense dreamer. He may not be a great person and he's a terrible filmmaker, but its hard not to be inspired by what he's done with his failure.

#8: Wonder Woman

No, I did not get to see Professor Marston, hope to when it hits DVD.

The second of 3 superhero films appearing on this top 10 list and this one is long overdue. I mean, Daredevil has 2 seasons and a movie. The Punisher has 2 movies and a TV show. Ghost Rider, of all things, has 2 movies, but we just now got a Wonder Woman movie? But hey, if we had to wait this long to get a Wonder Woman, it's good that it's absolutely perfect. A great actress, a great director and a solid script combine to make the second best superhero movie of 2017.

#7: Logan Lucky

"No, no, Logan is the really depressive superhero film, we're the comedy heist movie."

Look, I like heist movies, I like good scripts and I like engaging characters. And while a lot of people are talking up the much more flawed Baby Driver, this really is the platonic ideal for a heist movie. Some great acting from all involved and easily one of the best scripts of the year. It even managed to make me not roll my eyes during a climactic scene at a child beauty pageant, which is honestly really impressive.

#6: Dunkirk

"Man, why couldn't I be in that Winston Churchill movie? That looked a lot easier."

For some reason a movie about resisting fascism while trying to hold on to both survival and some semblance of humanity really resonated with me this year. But even outside of the political climate, Dunkirk is a brutally intense, tightly made thriller, with a unique structure and fantastic direction. Of course, it's pretty impressive that an almost silent, almost character-less movie was not only a summer blockbuster but a massive hit, so that's something.

#5: Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi

Bring. Me. All. The. Porgs.

To say The Last Jedi is the best Star Wars film of my lifetime is to understate massively. The only way to keep The Last Jedi from being the best Star Wars movie of my lifetime is to be alive for Empire. And as not only the best Star Wars film in nearly 40 years but also one of a handful of movies to get me to cry recently (I like Binary Sunset, leave me alone) The Last Jedi deserves a slot here.

#4: Logan

"No, no, Logan Lucky is the comedy heist movie, we're the depressing superhero movie."

Very few franchises know when to quit, and while the X-Men as a whole may not be ending any time soon, it's fantastic that it managed to give Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart such an intense send off. Add in one of the best scripts of the year, a bleak and unforgiving tone and brutal, unrelenting action and we have a formula for the best superhero (sort of) film in years.

#3: Get Out

All of 2017 was the Sunken Place.

It's become something of a tradition in the last few years for a low-ish budget, indie horror film to wind up on my top 10 and this is by far the best one. I have no idea what Jordan Peele is going to do with his career next, but managing to go from making a great sketch comedy show to one of the best horror films in years, filled with not only genuine scares but also fantastic metaphors and story beats is enough to make me follow him anywhere.

#2: Colossal

This movie is better than this poster makes it look.

I know this hasn't been showing up on many top 10 lists, but it managed to grab my attention and never release it. I've seen it four times at this point, a 2017 record and I'm still totally fascinated by it. It's sitting there on Hulu right now, so if you haven't seen it yet, get off your butt and go hit it up. After all, it's the second best movie of 2017. And what's the first? Well...

#1: The Shape of Water

God this movie has the best poster.

I've been looking forward to this movie from the moment it was announced and I was hoping it would be good. And when the buzz around it turned out great, I actually got kind of worried my expectations were too high. So what a treat it is that they weren't just met, but exceeded. The Shape of Water is the best romance, the best story, has the best acting, the best overall movie of 2017 and I want to see it again like 20 more times.

Elessar is a 27 year old Alaskan-born, Connecticut-based, cinephile with an obsession with The Room and a god complex. 

Elessar's Worst Movies of 2017

I genuinely look forward to doing my Best and Worst lists all year. It's not only a sign that a year has passed (in this case a hellish, unending year) but a chance to look back at the year and take stock. And while my Best of the Year list may surprise some of you, it's currently incomplete (there's a couple more movies I want to see) so we're kicking it off with the worst:

NOTE 1: I traditionally only do 5 Worst movies as opposed to 10, partially to reduce the amount of garbage I have to suffer through and partially because if the creators of these movies didn't put in the effort to make good movies, I'm not putting in the effort to make a full bottom 10.

NOTE 2: I have not, as of this writing, seen The Emoji Movie, because I just don't care, nor have I seen Bright, which according to the internet is a startling late entry. I might try to review that second one in January.

#5: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales

I had actually 100 percent forgotten this movie until a Lindsay Ellis video reminded me.

What even is the point of continuing with the Pirates franchise after this many years? The plot wandered off midway through part 2 and I never figured out where it was going. The interesting characters either left or are substantially less interesting. It still can't find any way of making good action beats. Depp is clearly just tired of being there, so why make a 5th? And more importantly, why did I bother to watch it?

#4: Victoria & Abdul

If they wrote the names in font sizes based on interest in character, Victoria would be the size of the poster and Abdul would be absent.

Even the worst Oscar bait has trouble making it onto worst lists, because it's usually got a little something going for it. But here, the small amount of goodwill Dame Judi Dench's performance buys us is overwhelmed by the bad racial politics, the whitewashing of historical evils, the boring paint-by-numbers direction and the film's complete lack of interest in the character who is the first half of the f**king title.

#3: The Snowman

Drink it in people, it's the worst poster ever.

Beating up on The Snowman feels a little unfair, since it's so clearly, desperately unfinished. But even if they had shot more than 75% of the film, they still wouldn't have been able to excuse the dumb storytelling, the boring villain or the fact that the lead character's name is HARRY HOLE. Add in one of the dumbest (albeit most memetic) posters in human history and it's no wonder this film flopped.

...HIS NAME IS HARRY HOLE

#2: Transformers: The Last Knight

Optimus Prime turns evil...for about 2 minutes.

A few years ago I made the fateful decision to just stop watching Adam Sandler movies, because as fascinatingly bad as they are, the added annoyance and stress they give me just isn't worth it. It looks very much like I'm going to have to adopt a similar policy for Transformers movies. The Last Knight is probably the best one in a while, but that just makes horrifically bad as opposed to inexcusably bad. So I'm checking out. Call me when they get a new direction.

#1: The Book of Henry

"Okay, I want you to make a poster like the ones for Stranger Things, but with way too many visual elements."

The Book of Henry is an insidious movie. It eats into your brain, digs in and refuses to let go. You find yourself wondering how this movie came about, how none of the many people who had to sign off on this movie had the sense to realize what a massive disaster they had on their hands, how none of them noticed the gaping plot holes, the trivializing of sexual assault and abuse or the fact that their lead character is a massive tool. And so, for being the most enduring of all the bad movies of 2017, The Book of Henry is my choice for the worst of the bunch.

Elessar is a 27 year old Alaskan-born, Connecticut-based, cinephile with an obsession with The Room and a god complex. 

Ghost in the Shell Film Analysis Part V and Final: The Problem With the Ghost in The Shell film

The film has one Big Issue, and it’s racism. In fact, it’s such a big issue that it manifests itself in three ways: white-washing, Orientalism and Eurocentrism. Yes, in previous installments I spent a huge amount of time praising how believable and cool future Japan was, and yet I’m charging the film with charge being Eurocentric anyway, for reasons that will become clear when I get  to that point.

I confess that I’m not the most ‘woke’ person out there when it comes to US racial politics, mainly because I’m not from the US nor have I ever lived there, so I have a higher tolerance for racial bullshit than what people would otherwise expect from me. However, when I start noticing stuff, Hollywood, you done fucked up.

Now, I said white-washing was not something I would discuss because better words have been written elsewhere, so I’ll just leave you with these quotes by Scarlett Johansson:

I think this character is living a very unique experience in that she has a human brain in an entirely machinate body. I would never attempt to play a person of a different race, obviously. Hopefully, any question that comes up of my casting will be answered by audiences when they see the film.

Right. Because the character having a brain that originally lived through a Japanese experience erases that character’s experiences when the film you’re heading makes the exact opposite case is totally not playing a character of a different race. Alright.

I certainly would never presume to play another race of a person. Diversity is important in Hollywood, and I would never want to feel like I was playing a character that was offensive.

Oh, Scarlett, honey. Have I Got News for You!

I understand part of her statements come from wanting to conceal the twist of the film, perhaps due some contractual obligation of  the sort or whatever, but they don’t exactly make Scarlett come off better, alright? (They also raise the question of why she accepted this role in the first place.)

This leads us to Orientalism. There are positive definitions of the term, but the one I’m going to go with is the Western tradition of outsider interpretations of Eastern cultures that feature prejudice, exoticisation, fetichisation, etc., as shaped by imperialistic narratives going back to the 18th and 19th centuries. This is not a good way to introduce the general audiences to other cultures, since it’s inherently disrespectful.

Which leads me, again, to the robo-geisha scene. Something I didn’t perceive during the preview, albeit I noticed now, is the fact that the robo geishas have the ability to interface with a human brain at all. (Brain-hacking, remember?) Later in the film, I believe at Dr. Dahlin’s lab, they are referred to as ‘companion bots’. I concede that the implication may or may not be sexual, however, I am inclined towards the latter interpretation due to the fact that the robo-geishas are based on the Hadaly robots from Ghost in the Shell: Innocence, and those robots are clearly sexual, explicitly stated to have non-essential parts as pertaining to their roles in order to function as sexdroids. This bothers me, since I find it hard to believe that future Japan would allow robots that work as geishas to be sexdroids, given the respect given to the geisha profession. To me, it reaks of the ‘geisha girl’ stereotype formed during the Allied Ocupation of Japan that underscores the Western belief that geisha are prostitutes.

So sexy.

There’s also the fact that there’s not many Japanese people in the film, as extras or in the cast. Yes, I know, didn’t I say about a million words before now that I didn’t mind that? Incorrect, I said I didn’t mind the lack of spoken Japanese, given that it is a logical assertion that can be inferred from the setting. But for a film set in Japan, to not have Japanese people other than a couple characters here and there… Maybe six or seven years ago I read a film review about a film that had been white-washed, too, and had issues with Orientalism. Let me paraphrase one of the lines that struck me the most: This is the perfect white-people’s dream; they get to enjoy the Asian culture without all the pesky Asian people in it. (Now, this doesn’t go for all white people, of course, but that quote is seriously perfect. I believe I read it on a The Last Airbender review?)

I’m sure someone with more knowledge of Japanese culture would be able to point out more instances, but these are the two that jumped at me.

Then there’s the Eurocentrism. Eurocentrism is a term that describes notions of European exceptionality; sort of like ‘manifest destiny’ but for a whole continent. It’s another colonialist narrative.

Usually, I wouldn’t have given much thought to the fact that the Major has a brain in another body. I mean, this is a transhumanist narrative, right? However, I believe I have to take that in context of the film, and what it means for the viewer. And throughout the film, the Major is called ‘beautiful’. Kuze calls her that, Dr. Ouelet calls her that, various creeps calls her that, and certainly Scarlett Johansson herself is a fine example of conventional, feminine, Western beauty ideal. That’s fair enough. But  when this film can’t be bothered to feature a single Japanese character, aside from Aramaki and Togusa, amongst the main cast, it becomes problematic. And when Dr. Ouelet tells the Major that she’s ‘what everyone will become’, it’s skeevy.

Kuze is seen here not looking Japanese.

In-universe, Dr. Ouelet refers to her body as ‘perfect’, that the pinnacle of directed human evolution is to cast aside everything but our minds. In context with the viewer, however, given the whole white-washing thing, the subtext is that everyone will be white. There is literally no other way this can be interpreted, given that Kuze is stuck in a white male’s body, and he was originally a Japanese youth named Hideo; and Dr. Ouelet implies his failure was just another step towards the future — towards Major Mira Killian. It isn’t really helped by how the Major at the end of the film is warmly received by her mum — which is great for her character, don’t get me wrong! — but wearing Scarlett’s face, with a brain that explicitly came from Japanese runaway Motoko Kusanagi (played by Japanese actress Kaori Yamamoto). When we live in a world where, in many places, the only way to be beautiful ideal is the Western beauty ideal, this is completely unacceptable. (Each word is a link.)

The final expression of Eurocentrism in the film comes from the fact that all scientists and people associated with high-tech employment are not Japanese, whether we’re talking about the people who were fussing over Batou after he gets his new eyes or everyone who is alligned with Hanka Robotics. I have to say that this normally wouldn’t ping on my radar, if at all, were it not for all the points I blathered on above. You see, Shirow Masamune’s Ghost in the Shell manga was published in the 80s, the time where Japan was deemed the technological powerhouse of the world.  It was written in that context. Even with all the lack of Japanese people, I would have expected for there to be Japanese people working as employees for Hanka as a sort of way to pay homage to that historical context in which the work was made. But all the cutting edge tech is developed, and assessed by Europeans or European-looking people, such as Dr. Ouelet or Dr. Dahlin. It’s such a little thing, but it adds up to the snowball of ugliness.

Dr. Ouelet, seen here whitesplaining to Major.

I understand the filmmakers didn’t intend any of this since they cared so much to make future Japan so awesome, and they paid proper attention to the source material, and so on and so forth. But! And this is a big ‘but’! Intentions do not matter when they harm people or promote narratives that harm people worldwide. And these issues just described feed into each other; the colonialists narratives of Eurocentrism and and Orientalism are reinforced by the whitewashing of the casting. I can explain away a lot, however, there comes a tipping point where I cannot explain away the erasure of Japanese people from a Japanese narrative set in Japan.

And this, this is why I could not bring myself to rec this film.

Critical Hits & Misses #340

Now you listen here, Old Man.... --Rey, probably
Get off my lawn, Millenial punk! --Luke, probably

• In a battle more brutal than the Rebellion and the Empire, a war is being waged online. Two generations of Star Wars fans fight over whether or not The Last Jedi was good. (Spoilers)


• Goddammit. TJ Miller of Silicon Valley and Deadpool fame has been accused of sexual assault, and is denying it.  

For today's musical hit, we have Christmas Booty. You're welcome.

Today's critical rolls: What side of the force are you on? By which I mean, what did you actually think of The Last Jedi. Please start your post with a spoiler tag if you're going to be talking about sensitive stuff. 

Critical Writ has a super-duper strict comment policy that specifies a single rule above all others: we reserve the right to ban you for being a terribad citizen of the internet.

Blockbusters: Thor Ragnarok vs. Justice League

Superhero movies are big business these days and during the times when a genre is big business, everyone wants to be releasing as many of them as possible. That this eventually leads to a bubble is an article for another time. No, the point this time is that eventually there starts being some overlap between some releases, and since there were two major Superhero releases and I'm desperately trying to release some content, I thought I'd compare and contrast them, in a series of categories I'm more or less making up as I go.




Expectations:

Thor Ragnarok

As I've said on multiple occasions, I've got a little tired of the MCU lately, which gave Thor a pretty major uphill climb to start with, especially when you consider that the previous Thor movies are probably the weakest ones in the entire MCU, with the possible exception of Iron Man 2 (and that Hulk movie Marvel hopes we've all forgotten) and Thor: The Dark World is probably the worst of the MCU movies.

That said, there were reasons to expect some good things out of this. The director of this outing is Taika Waititi, who previously directed What We Do In The Shadows and Hunt For The Wilderpeople, both of which are excellent films that deserved to be watched. So perhaps, I thought to myself, this movie could be okay, could even be pretty good.

Justice League

If there was a bar that could be lower for a movie than the one for Justice League I don't know what it could be. To start, while Wonder Woman was a genuinely excellent movie, the other movies in the franchise range from Pretty Bad (Man of Steel) to Oh My God Make It Stop (Batman v. Superman). Add in the horrifying event Snyder's family endured during production, the switch between directors and the massive rounds of reshoots and recuts supposedly happening behind the scenes, and it seems like we're lucky the movie even came out at all.

The Casts:



Thor Ragnarok

Both of these movies are ensemble focused, and Thor has an incredibly impressive one. From our long standing series greats like Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston and Idris Elba, to our newcomers like Jeff Goldblum, Tessa Thompson and Cate Blanchett, the cast of this movie is a laundry list of great actors. All of them very attractive.

And they all turn in great work. Yeah we knew that Cate Blanchett would be giving us a great performance (and let me be clear, she's basically perfect) and Chris Hemsworth is a perfect Thor, but Jeff Goldblum's comic timing is still completely on point and it's shocking what a massive standout Tessa Thompson is, dominating the entire screen from the first scene she's in. I really hope we get to see more of her in later Marvel films, she's fantastic.



Justice League

Obviously the major standout from Justice League is was and always will be Gal Gadot. She's the central element of easily the best film in the DCEU. She's incredibly adept at selling her character and she totally dominates every scene she's in. The rest of the holdover cast is pretty good; Affleck still looks a little disinterested in this role, but he's getting better, Jeremy Irons is still great and hey, Cavill gets to act like a human being.

The new cast is a mixed bag. Erza Miller is genuinely entertaining as The Flash and while the movie doesn't give him a whole lot to do outside of punching things, I actually really liked Ray Fisher as Cyborg. The big letdown is, surprisingly, Jason Momoa. He's certainly a big guy and kind of cool outside the movie, but something about him is just not clicking with his performance. He has shockingly little screen presence in movie and between this and his performance in Conan, I'm starting to worry his good performance as Khal Drogo was a fluke (Note: I haven't seen Stargate Atlantis).

Story and Script:

Thor Ragnarok

Our story this time around starts out as yet another Thor story: Thor is flung out of Asgard, Asgard is in peril in his absence, he must find his way back, he's got Loki (who remains a treacherous little s**t) and some other secondary characters at his back. You get the basic idea, we've seen it twice before.

But then something odd happens around the midpoint. Once the film finally gets its plot squared away, it becomes a well written character focused piece with metaphors about owning your history and making up for your family's mistakes. There's a lot of good character work and fantastic dialogue in the latter half, that really kept me involved in the final battle, something that a lot of MCU movies have had trouble doing.



Justice League

It's the plot of The Avengers. I don't want to trash it, it's a good solid foundation for a plot, but well, there's a magical square shaped macguffin that a guy from outer space is looking for so he can open a portal to a place where his army is waiting, requiring a group of heroes to team up to bring him down, even though they don't initially get along. It's just the plot of The Avengers with the names replaced a couple extra beats.

It's in those extra beats that we see the scars of the film's long and troubled production, with several moments are so tonally out of step with not only the rest of the film but the rest of the DCEU that it might as well be playing in a different theater. The film is clearly pretending that huge chunks of Batman v. Superman either didn't happen or happened completely differently than it did, and while everyone has seen the fun scene where Batman and Flash are talking about getting into a fight, that scene is in the middle of a sequence where Steppenwolf is torturing and murdering civilians. The film is clearly the result of a troubled production and occasionally seems to have been edited with a machete.

Action:



Thor Ragnarok

For a superhero film, Thor is surprisingly light on the action, preferring to spend most of its 2nd act in character work, with only the fight between Thor and the Hulk (plus occasional jumps back to Asgard) really doing most of the action. It heats up in the third act and the final action beat is incredibly engaging, but up until that point, it's pretty dialogue focused. That's not a complaint, I like that about it.

Justice League

This is one of those places where Justice League is an unambiguous success. From Gal Gadot's incredible physical presence to the way they actually manage to include Cyborg and Batman in the action scenes to even the way they manage to make Flash work. Yes, I'm still waiting for a better film visualization of super speed than the one in Days of Future Past, but this one is still pretty good... even if the lightning surrounding the Flash never stops looking silly.

Conclusion:

I could not have gone into these two movie with lower expectations than these two, so I will say that both managed to surprise me. I expected to hate Justice League and honestly, I can honestly say that I didn't even dislike it. Heck, I may have even kind of liked it. I might see it again when it hits DVD.

But in every comparison episode, there must always be a winner, and this time around, the clear winner is Thor Ragnarok, shooting up the roster of Best MCU Movie to land near the top and giving me hope for the megafranchise yet. So if you've somehow gotten to December without seeing both of these, give them both a shot.

But go see Thor first.

Elessar is a 27 year old Alaskan-born, Connecticut-based, cinephile with an obsession with The Room and a god complex. 

Critical Hits & Misses #321

• Normally I wouldn't bother to mention sexual harassment by politicians, because political sex scandals are like mass shootings in this US: same shit different day. Still Senator Al Franken isn't just another politician, he's also formerly a comedian and actor, which brings more light to some fuck-up rape culture in entertainment industries. Perhaps of greater note in this Mic story about Franken, though, is the statement that he has put out. Take note, scumbags of the Earth: this is how you actually do an apology correctly for this sort of thing. 


• Wondering what movies to see this holiday season? Newsday has you covered with the list of what to check out. 

For today's musical hit, and because Luis Fonsi wrecked at the Latin Grammy's, here's Fonsi and his smash hit, "Despacito"

Today's critical rolls: The weekend is here! What's it going to be? Justice League? Punisher? Both? Neither? Let us know!

Critical Writ has a super-duper strict comment policy that specifies a single rule above all others: we reserve the right to ban you for being a terribad citizen of the internet.

Remaketober 2017 Week 4: Dawn of the Dead

George Romero is such a towering figure in the horror genre that its hard to separate him from the subgenre he created, more or less from scratch. Even when we intentionally try to separate him from the genre, to highlight some of his other works, it becomes nigh on impossible to discuss them without the subject of zombies coming up. This is my long form defense of the fact that I originally intended this week to be devoted to The Crazies, but was forced to shift it over to being about Dawn of the Dead.

1978:

While Night of the Living Dead is the original zombie film, and a great film in its own right, its always been kind of...awkward. It is, was and always will be a very amateur movie, built on a shoestring budget and with a visually obvious learning curve for everyone on set. Its an important movie, and still a great one, but its never been all it could be.

Dawn doesn't have that problem. In terms of being the best movie it can be, Dawn succeeds with flying colors. Even now, with the zombie genre having spent most of the last 10 years being so overexposed that I got sick of it, Dawn of the Dead still holds up. Its not only the most effective zombie movie of the last few...ever, but its also the one that managed to set the template for how to make a good zombie movie.

Its still kind of rough, but its story works better than most zombie films, even while the point about consumerism is very very blunt (the guy who decides to sit down in the blood pressure cuff during the zombie attack still cracks me up to this day) but hey, anti-consumerism messages are never bad in my book and the bit towards the end of the 2nd act where the characters are just trapped in the mall feeling empty is great.its

I got issues, sure; The conflict towards the end feels kind of manufactured and the script is kind of rough, but the great direction and incredible special effects from Tom Savini do more than enough to carry the movie through its occasional bumps. A true masterpiece, and probably still the greatest example of its subgenre.

Which means that remaking it is always a risk.

2004:

I feel like when I say Dawn of the Dead is Zack Snyder's best movie, I am accidentally saying it's a good movie. A far more accurate definition would be that it is his least bad. It is still bad in all the way Snyder's movies are bad, but it doesn't take itself too seriously and it even has some attempts at out and out humor. Heck, I can even see the marks of its writer, James Gunn, especially in its music choices (the Richard Cheese cover of Down With the Sickness being used reminds me a lot the ending song from Slither).

Its also got all of Snyder's strengths: It looks great, with a solid grasp of how to time and execute action setpieces and gore effects. It overall has a very strong look, with a lot of great gory moments. Its much more an action movie than it is a horror movie, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I can't imagine what Snyder's attempts at directing scares would look like, but I doubt he has the subtly or restraint to pull it off.

Which leads me to the film's failings, which are common to much of Snyder's films. It has a weak script, handles its non-action scenes awkwardly (feeling very uninterested in exploring the characters or their relationships) and is just sort of paced oddly. It opens very strong (I am a pretty big fan of the opening scene at the house and the opening credits, like the opening credits of the much worse Watchmen, are fantastic).

And this is the risk of making a remake of such a classic horror flick, it makes comparisons inevitable, and its one you're probably not going to do well in. On its own merits, the Dawn of the Dead remake is generic but reasonably enjoyable zombie flick with Ving Rhames in it (which is always a point in a movie's favor). Compared to the movie which shares its name and setting (and little else) its most just bad.

Still, that opening is killer.

And thus passes another year of Remaketober, which went off mostly without a hitch despite some personal issues. I hope to see you all here again next year.

Elessar is a 27 year old Alaskan-born, Connecticut-based, cinephile with an obsession with The Room and a god complex. 

Ghost in the Shell Film Analysis Part IV: Themes

Yes, the film has themes! And they tie into each other! The film isn’t just throwing things to a wall and seeing what sticks. What a pleasant surprise.

Major Mira Killian, throughout the film, constantly asks herself whether she is a real human or not. At times, she doesn’t feel much like a person. There is a scene that can be found in the trailer, where the Major is having her arm repaired by Dr. Ouelet, who scolds Major Mira Killian that she needs to be more careful, but the Major tells the doctor that maybe next time the doctor can make her better. Major Mira Killian’s artificial body is an important source of conflict in regards to how she feels about her personhood.

There’s this lovely scene where the Major is all confused after finding out about Project 2571 and she is trying to find herself, where she goes looking around what I assume is some sort of red light district. There, she finds Lia. Major Mira Killian asks Lia whether she is human (she is). This tells us something subtle, both about the world, and about one of the many reasons the Major feels inhuman: The line between robots and cyborgs has become so blurred in this world that one cannot know at first sight whether it’s a robot or not. Sharp-eyed viewers might remember the robot bodyguards at the business meeting between the Hanka Robotics rep and the President of the African Federation; they looked like human bodyguards until they were shot out all to hell and slumped on the floor.

Lia, once they are in a private room, asks the Major what is she — the Major’s answer? She doesn’t know. Lia has fake eyelashes and something that I assume to be some sort of synthetic skin that covers her mouth and nose areas, possibly to enhance sensations (I have no idea.) It speaks volumes about the internal conflict the Major is facing that she asks Lia to take all of that off, and then, and only then, does the Major gives into a kiss for the human contact she craves. It’s a lovely character study, and something which the film doesn’t explore to its full potential.

Best character moment.

Also, it’s a reference to her manga character, where her sexual preferences are ‘anything that moves’, and there are several lesbian encounters depicted.

The theme of personhood and humanity is really important to her character arch. However, the film never disputes the fact that she is human, there’s no sense of narrative stakes in regards to her arch. Never at any time does the audience questions whether the Major is human, so her conflict over that is just to give her some emotional growth in the film, given that she is an uber badass so we know she’ll eventually prevail in the action scenes over her opponents.

(Side note: The film starts and ends with bookends. At the beginning, the Major is on top of a building at night, waiting for orders, and decides to go inside in spite of Chief Aramaki’s orders. At the end, the Major on top of a building in daylight, waiting for orders, and gets Chief Aramaki’s permission to throw herself into battle. But this time the Major is sure of who she is as a person; it can be said nighttime and daylight during this scenes reflect her inner turmoil.)

This leads us neatly into another major theme in the film. The reason why humans and robots cannot be easily told apart is transhumanism. Transhumanism is a philosophy that can be succinctly described as humanity taking the reigns of our own evolution via technology in order to overcome human limitations. In an unusual fashion for a Hollywood cyberpunk film, this film is not explicitly anti-transhumanist. I can rattle off a bunch of films where transhumanism doesn’t exactly come out on top, such as Transcendence (2014), Blade Runner (1982), Surrogates (2004), and so on and so forth, but this is the first time I’ve come across a film where transhumanism is presented featuring not only its ugliness but all of its potential.

A blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment:
Check out those super-efficient robot-hands.

On one hand, with all the brain-hacking going around, that’s clearly a huge inconvenience. The possibility that our memories might become even more subjective and unreal is terrifying. This is pointed out to us in three instances: The garbage collector who gets brain-hacked into a family life so beautiful that he simply cannot deal with the fact that all of it is fake so he kills himself, the way Kuze and the Major have both been wiped out of memories to the point it drives Kuze mad and in a search for them, and the fact that none of the memories present in the head of the Major at the beginning of the film are hers save for the hallucinations Dr. Ouelet is hard at work to suppress.

There’s also the fact that personhood is becoming even more convoluted and arbitrary. Kuze doesn’t feel the need to live out as a human, he invites the Major to upload her ghost into the neural network he created, to evolve and leave those humans behind, but Major Mira Killian feels that the physical world is the world for her. So does that make Kuze less of a person? Clearly, no; although a villain, his suffering is distintly human, a ‘disposable’ runaway once named Hideo who has been robbed of his own self. As pointed out when discussing personhood, it’s becoming very difficult to tell apart humans and machines; although, there seems to be an in-universe consensus that, in the case of full-body cyborgs such as the Major, the fact that she has a ghost, a brain, is what makes her human, as Batou points out to her after the robo-geisha fight scene (which makes the Major mad because, to her, that is a poor consolation when she cannot ascertain for herself that there is indeed a brain doing the thinking.)

But there is also so much potential, so much convenience. The way Section 9 can communicate with each other without talking, the incredible strength in the Major’s cybernetic body, as well as a host of other, more mundane things. One of the first things we learn about humanity in the film’s world is that humanity increasingly looks at their bodies as something you can just upgrade with a better part born out of human ingenuity. The instance in which this is most clear is also when we meet face to face the rest of Major Mira Killlian’s co-workers; there’s Ishikawa (Lasarus Ratuere), who the others are egging on to showing them if he has gotten another improved body part, and he shows all of them a belly scar — he has gotten a new liver. Now he can party all night, baby! And this is not presented as a bad thing, it’s just something that happens. Or the little girl who can sing French; imagine how incredible would be to be able to learn a new language just like that.

I suppose that, narratively, we are meant to take a more negative view of transhumanism since the story nudges us that way. When we learn about the Major’s true identity, it turns out Motoko spent some of her time being what would be the equivalent of a Luddite in this film; she used to spray-paint protest slogans about the way we were losing our soul to cybernetics. But aside from this bit, I don’t feel as if body modification is presented as bad. It’s just a feature of the setting, something everyone does; maybe a necessity by this point.

Which takes us to consent. This is the third major theme the film deals with. While the Major having a fake body, and people having high-tech body parts are not presented as bad things, what is presented as unequivocally wrong is whether they consented to those modifications.

The reason Kuze is a villain, is that he not only is on a killing rampage, but that he’s violating people’s very minds. Dr. Ouelet has to die to be redeemed, because she messed with Kuze’s and the Major’s minds, as well as those of 97 other people! You should already feel uneasy about the iffy conception this world has of consent from the business meeting between the Hanka Robotics rep and the President of the African Federation, for the daughter of the Hanka rep has been modded. Obviously such a young child cannot understand the extent of the, perhaps irreversible, modification she was being subjected to. Was she even asked about it? Probably not.

Every time there is a mod explicitly presented as positive, is because those people consented to it. Like how Batou upgrades his eyes and then he comments that he will finally have eyes as good as the Major’s, Ishikawa’s new liver. The fact that Togusa doesn’t want to get modded is treated as old-fashioned, but not bad; charming in a way akin to the way Aramaki prizes his Magnum. And the most monstruous villainy is that of Cutter’s, who, in service of power and profit, utterly disregards the bodily integrity of those society has deemed as disposable in pursuit of his goals. The Major has to give her consent in order to have her mind messed about. Or at least that’s what she thinks. The most bone-chilling event in the film is when the Major is repeating, like a mantra, ‘my name is Major Mira Killian and I do not consent to this data deletion’, to which Dr. Ouelet replies, ‘we never really needed your consent’.

The themes tie into each other. They weren’t chosen at random.

Rosario is an early-twenties, outspoken woman, who likes to burrow between piles of books, and store miscellaneous trivia in her head.

Ghost in the Shell Film Analysis Part III: Setting

We really need to talk about future Japan, because it’s fascinating. The film has several things present from the manga and the anime films, as it is to be expected, but the filmmakers infused the setting with its own originality.

That right there is a cool video showing what I’m talking about. It compares some filming locations in Hong Kong with the film. The work they did is astonishing.

While some people might be annoyed by the fact that no characters other than some Japanese background extras and Chief Aramaki seem to speak actual Japanese on-screen, I’m actually not all that bothered by it. The film establishes a possible reason for this at the outset. When the Hanka Robotics rep that gets brain-hacked and the President of the African Federation are having a business meeting, the Hanka rep plays a recording of a child singing in French. It’s his daughter, and he tells the President of the African Federation that in the time that it took his daughter learn Au claire de la lune (a French folk song), she learned the entirety of the French language. Done.

Clearly the daughter has the latest language implant tech, unlike our adult characters who each speak in their respective languages — nonetheless they can still understand each other. Yes, I know; this is a lazy way of not including too many foreign languages in order to, in a business exec’s mind, not to alienate the US audience and so on, but at least it’s supported by the setting itself. And it’s not an something paraded in front of us, either.

Major Mira Killian has fake memories in her brain, implanted by Dr. Ouelet as ‘motivation’ to fight terrorists with Section 9. You see, the story goes that she came into Japan in a refugee boat that was blown up by a terrorist attack. The damage was so bad that she lost almost all of her body. Leaving aside the fact that this revelation that comes near the climax, while a surprise, it’s already substantiated by the poor garbage truck driver that had fake memories hacked into him by Kuze. It should tell us something about the setting that the Major finds it plausible that she came in a refugee boat.

The Japan in the film is more ethnically diverse than today’s Japan; many ethnicities can be seen in the background. There’s a particular shot that shows this best; what better way to convey the changing face of the film’s Japan than by doing a close up of a Black Buddhist? It plays with the stereotype, even though, in the real world there are Buddhists who are black, it’s not what is usually pictured when we hear the word ‘Buddhism’.

I like the symmetry in the shot, too.

Today’s Japan is a nation that’s estimated to be 98,5% ethnically Japanese; it’s a fairly homogeneous country. Clearly, as the film’s cyberpunk world emerged, in typical cyberpunk fashion, other nations buckled under the power of megacorps and destabilized, causing an influx of refugees.

A lot of cyberpunk works would be set inside of one of this megacorp-run nations, or in another sort of dystopia. Something that has always made the Ghost in the Shell franchise unique is that, in contrast to other works, in future Japan the rule of law still pervades hard, as pointed out in the first confrontation between Cutter and Chief Aramaki — Aramaki immediately dismisses the notion that the Prime Minister would take Cutter’s word over his own. Which makes it extra brilliant, in a way, that the live-action adaptation updates future Japan to be more ethnically diverse, because of course refugees would strive to go to the most stable nation possible in times of strife. It’s kind of a subtle nod to the situation we are living in right now in the world.

That’s not to say there aren’t any shady buisness deals or anything. Major Mira Killian and Batou at some point shoot up some sort of yakuza underground club, not to mention the whole of the unethical experiments tied to Project 2571, the one that resulted in the creation of the Major. There’s also a scene where some shady trafficker, when Batou and the Major are on the way to the marketplace, attempts to sell the Major some black-market body parts or something.

In general the street scenes are amazing.
Look at the background details.

I don’t know where to put this, but the film thinks itself very clever when it turns out that, before the Major, there has been other 98 people that have been experimented on to become full-body cyborgs and weapons useful to the Major. So this makes Major Mira Killian the 99th test subject, a human-machine dream combination, working at Section 9.

I told you future Japan was fascinating.


Rosario is an early-twenties, outspoken woman, who likes to burrow between piles of books, and store miscellaneous trivia in her head.

Remaketober 2017 Week 3: The Last House on the Left

Wes Craven was such a towering figure in the horror genre, it's hard to remember that his ratio of good movies to not good movies was...tenuous at best. Oh he's definitely got some classics in there and a few just straight up good movies, he's also got a lot of stuff I don't think is very good (I hate the Scream franchise. There, I said it, I can't unsay it). But that makes the stuff that is worth defending very, very much worth defending.

1972:


Going to bat for The Last House on the Left is one of those things that makes me feel uncomfortable, because it's a very rough movie to actually watch. I end up defending it in the same spirit as I often end up defending Irreversible or Dogtooth, or maybe some of Cronenberg's more extreme work. It's definitely not for everyone and should come with a laundry list of warnings and caveats, but damned if it doesn't totally grab my attention the entire time I'm watching it.

Of course while Dogtooth or Videodrome are buoyed past their difficult to stomach content by some incredible filmmaking and solid themes, The Last House on the Left is much rawer, the filmmaking much less solid, but in a way that almost works in its favor. Its a punk rock approach to filmmaking, in the vein of Clerks or maybe Evil Dead, with enthusiasm and raw talent making up for a lack of polish.

Speaking of, one of the other things that gives the film a big boost is how relevant it feels to the moment it came out. I'm sure other critics have noticed the similarities in how the film is shot to footage coming out of Vietnam during during the same time, which gives the film a sense of reality that makes the horrifying goings on even more horrifying, especially given the similarities Krug and his gang have to the then-current Manson family.

None of this is to say the film is flawless, its still got some issues (mostly due to an on set learning curve that trips up...well basically everyone but the Coen Brothers). First movies are always a little rawer and shakily put together, but a good director can still take that and make a great movie. The Last House on the Left is a very hard to watch film, but its definitely one with an impact and and style that would be hard to replicate.

2009:


Which is why I suppose the remake didn't even bother to try. There were lots of directions the remake could have gone, from updating the imagery and themes to be more in line with the Iraq war footage of the time to putting it more in line with the then popular (albeit on its last legs) torture porn subgenre, and I half expected the latter going in. But I didn't expect the movie to just sort of...sit there.

To be clear, when remaking a movie whose primary selling points were its shocking content and how incredibly raw and of-the-moment the filmmaking was, you need to add a new selling point. The slick, high cost production value automatically discards the intensity and sense of reality given by the original's style and obviously the content can't be as shocking given that its just a recreation of the existing content (and, if we're being honest, far less extreme than other contemporary horror films like Saw, although given how much I hate Saw and its contemporaries, that's not a complaint).

Instead the movie just recreates the basic outline of the original film with only a vain attempt at a happy ending inserted to make you feel like there's a difference, which is missing the point a fair bit. Maybe if the film had ended Texas Chainsaw style, with the sense that even though some of the victims survived, they're permanently scarred by the experience, but the film can't even manage that much.

I've reviewed a lot of bad remakes for Remaketober, but aside from maybe the shot-for-shot remake of Psycho, this is probably the most pointless remake I've ever covered. Questions of whether it's good or bad don't even enter into it, it just has no reason to exist. If the original film is equivalent to Clerks then the remake is equivalent to Mallrats; the same basic bones of the story but somehow infinitely more soulless and empty inside.


Elessar is a 27 year old Alaskan-born, Connecticut-based, cinephile with an obsession with The Room and a god complex. 

Critical Hits & Misses #306

• Matt Damon says that he always knew Harvey Weinstein was an asshole, but that he never saw any of the predation Weinstein has been accused of by 40+ women in Hollywood. It's worth noting that Damon did not deny the possibility of it; he apologized for not noticing it was happening. 


• Esquire has a list of the 18 best movies to check out at the theater this November. After an awful summer, looks like movies are getting better in quality this year. 

For today's musical hit, have the ever wonderful Lindsey Stirling and "Brave Enough"

Today's critical rolls: In honor of one of my favorite people on the planet (Lindsey Stirling) wrecking face on Dancing with the Stars this season (rooting for you all the way, Lindsey!), do you enjoy dancing? If so, what's your favorite kind of dance? If you can't/don't dance, what would you learn if you could?

Critical Writ has a super-duper strict comment policy that specifies a single rule above all others: we reserve the right to ban you for being a terribad citizen of the internet.

Ghost in the Shell Film Analysis Part II: Aesthetics

I can’t find a better word that encompasses set design, cinematography and so on, therefore ‘aesthetics’ will have to do.

Do any readers remember how in my write-up about the film preview I waxed on about how the influence of Transformers and TRON: Legacy had ruined sci-fi flicks’ colour palettes? Yes, I rescind that criticism in regards to this film. I’m capable of admitting when I’m wrong. To cut a long story short, while I had already seen both Ghost in the Shell anime films by Mamoru Oshii’s by the time I saw the film preview at the cinema, I could not remember at the time much about Ghost in the Shell: Innocence; the second anime film.

Because of this I didn’t catch on to the fact that the live-action film’s colour palette is modeled on Ghost in the Shell: Innocence, rather than on the first anime film. A friend I went with to the cinema when I saw the live-action film was the one who pointed it out to me, so I looked up and skimmed through the second film. I saw both anime films about six years ago; that’s over a quarter of my life, so cut me some slack here.

Anyway, I still maintain the whole look of the film is very washed out, the colour palette is drab, and the only really vibrant colour that pops out is green — something most evident when Chief Aramaki and Cutter have their final face-off at Cutter’s office. The film would be much improved visually if they just did away with the filters. there is too much blue. Me no likey. You can watch this video about some of the work New Zealand VFX studio WETA did on the film, and see for yourself how much better the pre-processed scenes look:

Still, I have quibbles with the special effects in this film. At some points they don’t look real. The intro of the film, where they make the body of the Major, can be labelled as CGI from a mile away. And some effects from the fight scenes don’t look quite right. Major Mira Killian’s body sometimes looks nude, or sometimes looks as if it has a flesh-coloured skin-tight armor (which is actually the intended effect.) There’s a particular stunt in the final fight scene against the mecha controlled by Cutter where the Major runs up some debris, which looks really cartoony, and it was way too evident that Scarlett was using stunt wires.

Speaking of action scenes, my enthusiasm for the first action set piece featuring the robo-geishas has been dampened somewhat upon further reflection because it turns out it’s a problematic scene, but I still can gush about gorgeous it is. I talked in the article about the preview how it seemed a great update on the theme of a Japanese tea salon, and so on.

Now I want to talk more about the robo-geishas themselves. It didn’t hit me until I skimmed through Ghost in the Shell: Innocence, however, the robo-geishas are a fusion between the Hadaly model that goes amok in that film for reasons that’d be spoileriffic, and the karakuri ningyō, a type of traditional Japanese automata mostly sold as luxury items from the Edo period onwards. It bears saying that Japanese automata are also featured in Ghost in the Shell: Innocence when Batou and Togusa go visit uber-hacker Kim, albeit in a very low-key way. If anybody watched the video on the work WETA did for the film, then one would have seen a lot about the robo-geishas, the artistry of their costumes, the faces, everything. I would like people to compare and contrast with the surprisingly complex movements of these Japanese dolls:

Amazing, isn’t it? And I like that. I like that the filmmakers did not only lean on the anime films but looked to the original sources of inspiration in order to make a more immersive experience. It’s reinventing the material.

The city in general, was clearly meant to evoke Tokyo. The city is never named inside of the film specifically, but the ambience, the ads, apartment buildings, everything just screams ‘Tokyo!’ There were tons of Japanese writing everywhere. The holographic ads that were pervasive throughout the cityscape and storefronts really add to the ambience. They were just so full of life, advertising different products, fitness; and they featured lots of (presumably) Japanese people just modelling around.

(Side note: In keeping with the multi-cultural approach, there is even an ad featuring a woman in a niqab in the background on top of a building! And one with a Buddhist monk. The buildings were also appropriately oppressive and industrial-looking, ideal for a steampunk setting.)

There was nary a plant in sight, which contributed to the artificial feeling of the whole city and how it has changed. In the blocks of the heavily residential areas there was a lot of garbage, giving off an air of overpopulation.

Another scene I really liked is when Major Mira Killian has to accompany Batou through a street market, and Batou picks up bones for his dog. They managed to blend seamlessly the future with the streetmarket. In my country there are several streetmarkets and I felt transported into that. I can really see how this vision of the future the film presents to me could become reality. The holo ads were ubiquitous, and ‘hung’ in the same way banners would or how paper ads would be plastered to the stalls. There were even some people bickering in the background at the various stalls and sellers. Why was this scene so brief? It’s literally one of the best things ever.

Having said all that, the Ghost in the Shell anime films didn’t shy away from colour in their urban settings, unlike this live-action adaptation. It’s as if the producers feared if the reds and yellows looked too bright, somebody might confuse this film with a happy film, somehow.

Look at all the pretty colours in the anime films.

The soundtrack is nothing much to write home about except for some sort of bell rings in certain moments that, to my ears, echoed Kenji Kawai’s Making of a Cyborg, an OST from the Ghost in the Shell anime film. I suggest you go listen to it, it’s absolutely gorgeous. Also, Making of a Cyborg makes an appearance for the film’s credits, so it’s a nice homage.

A lot of the heavy duty machinery, such as the robot that fights Major Mira Killian in the climax, are just the models from the anime films and the mangas updated to look believable in the live-action adaptation. It’s good work, although nothing particularly original. Also, to give credit where credit is due, all the extras were either appropriately outfitted to the setting or had some post-production done over them so they looked like another one of the faceless individuals amongst the cybernetically-augmented masses.

I’m not too happy with the editing, though. In several of the fight scenes, after a while it just looks messy. There’s a fight scene where Major is electroshocked by Kuze in dark light conditions, and it cannot be appreciated in full effect because of the filters and the confusing editing. The idea is cool; its execution, not so much.

Next week, Part III!

Rosario is an early-twenties, outspoken woman, who likes to burrow between piles of books, and store miscellaneous trivia in her head.