I've been in a lot of business trips recently. Thankfully, the airline, Garuda Indonesia has quite an updated list of movies in the AVOD IFE.
In the last 1 month and 12 1-hour each flights, I watched:
Deepwater Horizon
by Peter Berg
Starring Mark Wahlberg, Kurt Russell, John Malkovich, and Kate Hudson
Has quite balanced mix of dramatisation and reality. You all know mostly about the real event, and this is the Hollywood dramatisation of it. It doesn't try too hard to pass anti-corporate message, but yet, it is hard to not dislike corporatism culture that is going on. The overconfidence or arrogance, greed, and condescending attitude just matched my real life experience.
The movie does not discuss much about the scale of the damage and its massive impact on the environment, but focus on the disaster and its effects on the rig workers. So, it kind of a bit missing the mark.
The cinematography is typical contemporary Hollywood, full of angle action drama, tension when the bypass valves are failing, and explosive action when the disaster strikes. Pretty much standard.
I'll give it a passable 7 / 10. Definitely a movie worth watching. No time is wasted for waiting the drama and the disaster to unfold.
Wonder Woman
by Patty Jenkins
Starring Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Robin Wright, Ewen Bremner, David Thewlis, and many more
Where to start? I was bought by all the hype that this movie is receiving, so I just can't wait to watch this when the airline updated its AVOD list on October 2017.
The artistic is typical Zack Snyder movie, dark filters, with glary and overly bright shiny parts. Overally, there is no mistaking that Zack Snyder played a part in this movie. You'd expect something serious like most DC EU movies, or edgy like his work in 300 or David Ayers' take on DC's Suicide Squad. But Wonder Woman starts humble and pretty much subtle.
So, Diana "Prince" is characterised as a naive yet courageous hero with undying ideals she hold dear since the beginning. There is no judgmental overly philosophical smarty script-ridden characters that swamped the Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice movie. It doesn't try to sanctimoniously teach you about heroic morals or the script writer's own shallow academically unworthy philosophic materials. Wonder Woman is just a straightforward inexperienced hero tasked with ridiculous mission. I'm happy for Warner Bros. that they finally managed to hold back their edgy horses. I think they should hire more female directors.
Fight scenes is Dragon Ball-ish. Hero against hero, with the real life weapons having inconsistent effectiveness, which has been pretty much the theme of DC EU movies. Just like how anti tank mines have the right properties to kill Incubus when Hellfire ATGMs cannot, or how Enchantress' minions arbitrarily decided to take more damage from Will Smith's .45 cal pistol rounds than Joel Kinnaman's 5.56 mm rifle bullets, it is pretty much "hero does all the job and pay little attention to everyone else when fight scenes occur" DC EU's trademark. It is hard to not become a cynic with DC movies when Snyder keep presenting philosophical US senate preaching like Liberal Arts' public speaking class session, out-of-character villains trying to fetch Oscar when it is not his place, or when Amy Adams keep forgetting fact checks when he tried to outsmart smarty villains in smarty dialogues.
Patty Jenkins is able to create a more believable world, despite having to go back to early 20th century. It is almost as good as Captain America: The First Avenger, but I prefer Wonder Woman for the new approach. No, it doesn't have that "in your face feminism, man-tears drinking madness" that many red pill swallowers feared. This film should be labelled masculinity-safe for that sake.
For me, it is good enough to get 7 out of 10. Marvel movies has recenly taken the Dragon Ball path too, with main characters needing some kind of silly motivation to really end the dragging plot, so Wonder Woman shouldn't be too bad.
Cars 3
by Brian Fee
Starring Owen Wilson, Bonnie Hunt, Larry the Cable Guy, Nathan Fillion, Armie Hammer, Chris Cooper.
Real racing stars with in-film character name innuendo like: Jeff Gordon, Kyle Petty, Richard Petty, Darrel Waltrip, Ray Evernham, Daniel Suárez, and the obvious voice of Lewis Hamilton
I like cars and I like Pixar, but Cars franchise is just bad. Very bad. It is like a guilt trip for Pixar (and Disney) to rake as much advertising (or licensing) money as possible from auto industry trying to get into the children's subliminal programming, investing in their future.
The 3rd movie deals with Lightning McQueen's end of an era. So there is a lot of sadness and reflections going on here. Walt Disney studios showcased its ability to create heartwarming emotional story, while Pixar inserted a couple of chuckle-inviting jokes here and there. When you kids started asking, why Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo finally hang their shoes? Why can't Kobe Bryant just go on and continue? Yeah, they can start learning by watching this movie.
I'm not a picky person, I think this movie worth my 6.5 out of 10. Still below the mark for average Pixar Movies, but good enough to kill time.
I also found some time to visit the theatres a couple of times too:
Blade Runner: 2049
by Denis Villeneuve
Starring Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Dave Bautista, Robin Wright, Ama de Armas, and Jared Leto
This movie has a lot of hype, so I went in with some huge expectations. Of course I was partly diasppointed.
It is an arthouse film dream come true. Long dragging scenes, supposed to drag you into it. Denis Villeneuve made each cinematic shot long enough for you to sink into it, contemplate about what is it like to be in there, along with a relatively mute actor like Ryan Gosling. Every meaningful scene is accompanied by futuristic dystopian ambient music, the kind that usually plays in games like Mirror's Edge, No Man's Sky, Project:Aura, Anno 2070 or PlanetBase or Rimworld.
Looking at Ryan Gosling's face, you couldn't help but think of him when he played that mysterious driver in another arthouse cinema project, Nicholas Winding Refn's Drive. He seemed to be constantly contemplating about something deeply serious or trivial but consequential, or nothing, yes, just nothng going on in his head, it's just his default smug face. A feminist-friendly version of him would be Kristen Stewart without Twilight in the résumé to keep her cool factor real.
When he is smashed by Batista, the shock is real, because Gosling sucked you really deep into his blank stare blackhole, and force you to share the experience of being body slammed, absorb the pain. When we finally met Harrison Ford, the shock is real too, because suddenly you had this loud and mouthy scrawny old guy, breaking all the silence and generally toneless ambient music that has been the staple of the movie for almost 2 hours. Every other characters in this movie serve as a contrast to Ryan Gosling. He is literary paid millions of dollars to extremely hold back any discernable signs of emotion from his facial expression. It could have been 1 hour or so if you discount all the slow and dragging scenes that Denis Villeneuve generously presented through the entire film.
I really don't get this white male's cinematic obsession. It is almost too hipster for me. It is too heavy as an entertainment subject. It sucked my energy dry, I was very exhausted when the end credits finally rolled.
As an cinematic art critique piece, perhaps I can give it a generous 7.5 out of 10 I was literary yawning and almost fell asleep during the first couple of hours. I know, but for young European artsy readers, yes this movie is perhaps 9 to 10 out of 10 for you. There...
Thor: Ragnarok
by Taika Waititi
Starring Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Cate Blanchett, Idris Elba, Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Hopkins, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jeff Goldblum, Tessa Thompson, and Karl Urban
Thor:Ragnarok is different from every other serious Marvel movies, because they decided to "go full retard" this time, like fully exploiting Thor's doofus-ness. It looses all the Chris Evan's overbearing sense of heroic duty and "I am human too" boo-hoo old and stale heroic dilemma. Instead, it went on Chris Pratt's GoTG relaxed and carefree ways, "hero must be hero for the sake of superhero movie's sake" kind of hyper-awareness. It tries just a bit too hard to not taking itself too seriously, just like Ace Ventura or the cult classic Big Trouble in Little China.
You saw almost everything in the trailers, Thor meets Hela, Hela is strong, and Thor is exiled into gladiator planet, he met Hulk, and he fights Hulk to find the answer, then Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song plays. All the missing bits are fortunately, quite interesting to dig in this movie, with that MC EU's trademark sense of humour. The jokes will still be fresh and funny for everyone to enjoy.
So, the film itself is very colourful, the soundtrack are electronica, like early 1990s or end 1980s. Depeche Mode, Queen, and so on. It is quite confusing and crazy. The actors even got carried out, it is almsot like watching Tom Hiddleston having a real quarrel with real life Chris Hemsworth. They are just that hyper-aware about each other, and then Mark Ruffalo jumps in to finally add insult to the injury. It is, as if they were taunting us: are you a proud superhero nerds? Well, you shouldn't be. This is just embarassing.
Entertaining and fun, it gets 7.5 out of 10 from me. It is a high mark, but just for the entertainment part.