Sara Watches Stuff

This is not going to be a traditional movie review because as you will have read, I have nothing new to say about the movie other than the fact that it was garbage and I am disappointed in everyone involved.  I can't give a plot summary, because the story hasn't changed from adaptation to adaptation, nor from the initial novel. I can't praise the acting, because everyone is playing their lazy roles, doing whatever exerts the least energy to earn a paycheck. I can't say much for the scenery, because the movie is spent on a train in the snow bar a scene or two in Jerusalem and embarking on the train journey.  I can't really say anything, other than the fact that I hope Daisy Ridley and Leslie Odom Jr. and Lucy Boynton and the couple of other people in this movie that I don't mind had a fun time shooting with all of their peers, and that I'm glad Johnny Depp's character died pretty quickly so that I didn't have to look at his face for too long. Ra...

I have seen so many genuinely good movies over the last few weeks - I saw The Shape of Water ! I projected lots of things on to Call Me By Your Name ! - and yet all I want to talk about is this godawful disaster movie with Gerard Butler. It takes place slightly in the future, where climate change has been stabilized and then...destabalized, for nefarious purposes. Gerard Butler is a space scientist who needs to fix climate change, obviously, and Jim Sturgess is his brother in the government trying to solve things back on Earth. It's absolutely buckwild. Think The Day After Tomorrow , but everything is worse. It's amazing. They spend so much of this movie counting down to the titular geostorm, but we are never actually given a proper explanation for the storm in question. The characters shout buzzwords and phrases and I'm not sure anyone understands what's actually happening. The president gets to say things like "Because I'm the goddamn president of the Uni...

It's so much easier to write about bad films than good ones. I am overflowing with thoughts to share about the most memorably awful movies I watched on my trip - I really, really want to talk about Geostorm  - but there's very little I can say about Guillermo del Toro's newly Oscar winning film about a woman who falls in love with a fish man that has not already been said. You don't need me to tell you that del Toro makes beautiful movies, or that the creature creation in this (though no Pan's Labyrinth ) is spectacular. You don't need me to tell you that the visual effects in this are phenomenal, or that the music is wonderful, or that it transported me to another world. If you're looking for reviews of The Shape of Water at this point in 2018, what you need me to tell you is that a movie featuring not only boning down with a fish-man but also a female masturbation scene and a disabled woman finding her agency. If the main playing field of this blog is femi...

Inevitably, we come to the time of year where the big awards are being handed out and the Oscars are upon us and it turns out I have not seen any critically acclaimed movies this year. Well, except Get Out , which I am so happy to see getting the recognition it deserves. There's a whole rant brewing about social commentary being dismissed by horror fans (because scariness is all that matters) and not being taken seriously by the broader community (because it's just a scary movie) that totally disregards the excellent direction and writing and overall work in a movie like that. My other favourites from the year were a little left of centre: Raw  deserved something for Foreign Language but it was one of the more visceral horror films around and  Colossal  was technically screened at TIFF 2016 and it was pretty weird. I do tend to make it a mission to see films with lots of buzz, because I want to be educated before I make any sweeping statements on them. While trailers ...

It's the end of the year, and the film snobs of the world are reflecting on their years in pop culture. As one of the gang - now with my very own bogus DMCA notice! - I figured I would jump on in. Of course, there are lots of caveats to that. I live in Australia, where several of the last quarter films with award potential have their wide release withheld til the next year. I don't go to previews, with the exception of the occasional rubbish horror movie, and I am not drawn to a lot of wide release movies. Dunkirk ? More like...um... done-urgh . A lot of it is to do with my exhaustion with male narratives and a lot of the industry's treatment of women and anything non white or heterosexual, both real and in fiction. I love the art form, but it's been a tough year for trying to avoid content that would make me extremely angry in a very real way. As mentioned previously, I haven't seen any new releases - it's been the busiest time of the year in my sector - so ...

I read The Glass Castle , Jeanette Walls' memoir, back when my mother read it for her book club in 2008. I thought it was appropriately affecting, and the writing was fine, but it wasn't my favourite book - even though I don't mind media that dwells in its misery, but this particular book didn't strike the balance for me. All that considered, the movie adaptation was...faithful. It was well acted and well executed and a near completely faithful retelling of Walls' novelization of her youth. Whether or not that's a good thing depends on how much you enjoy this kind of story. I'll cop to having a low tolerance for the kind of story that spans a lifetime, focusing in on moments of woe to show the extraordinariness of one person. I wish more focus had been given to the adult characters of Walls' siblings, so it felt perhaps less self-indulgent. Alternatively, I would have enjoyed it much more if the jumps between past and past-present hadn't been so ab...

I have not seen The Lobster; I have not seen Dogtooth . The off-kilter world of The Killing of a Sacred Deer served as my complete introduction to the work of Yorgos Lanthimos, and to say I was hesitant would be an understatement. Nicole Kidman has called this one of her strangest projects yet, and I sat through Strangerland . I had read the spoiler-free reviews that critiqued Lanthimos' employment of a singular acting style, wherein every character is emotionless and near-robotic, and that the allegories were a little far reaching with too little grounding. I think that there is merit to those ideas - and would have to have more experience with the Lanthimos canon to make my own judgement - but on a personal level, this movie really clicked. The Killing of a Sacred Deer , a reference to the myth of Iphigenia which I was in no way familiar with but that does illuminate a whole lot, starts off with an extended shot of close up open heart surgery set to a near-deafening operatic so...

I wrote fairly recently about my favourite horror movies and my twisted love affair with the Saw  franchise. When the movies were still getting released, I never got the chance to share in the Halloween tradition of horror releases, because no one else I knew cared at all. And so at 9:30pm on Halloween this year, I donned a bunch of fake blood and some hastily drawn jigsaw pieces and watched a new goddamn   Saw movie. Upfront and honest: Jigsaw  is not a good movie. It does not stand alone, and you will not enjoy it if you do not enjoy the movies as a whole. There was an obvious attempt made at creating an independent piece that stood apart from the seven films prior but still tied into the mythos, and while the game plan is clear, I wouldn't call it successful because it doesn't really make sense when viewed as a part of the series as a whole. As a reboot, it's just average; as a sequel (an octquel?) it's sub-par.  Jigsaw  is obsessed with creating a ...

Now, I've seen my fair share of Stephen King adaptations. As far as they go, this isn't quite Kubrick's The Shining in terms of cinematography, and it isn't half as terrifying as 1408 (that movie is sincerely underrated in the scare stakes). It does what the most successful of King's short story adaptations do, which is emphasizing the small scale and focusing on the psychological rather than trying to create spooky specters - a matter of preference, of course.  Gerald's Game is all about a woman torturing herself. Well: it's about a couple whose misguided foray into bondage is derailed by the man's heart attack, leaving his wife handcuffed to the bed with no escape route in sight. Jessie, the woman in question, is played by Carla Gugino, and her portrayal of the character's withdrawal from reality is easily what makes this movie worth watching. You get hooked in with the "this could really happen" 127 Hours type premise, but you stay f...

Sometimes I watch a movie and a joke is made in the first few minutes that lets me know that there's going to be a sense of humour present that will just not gel with me. In this particular Netflix original, it was probably the excess of jokes about "taking it out the butt" and calling the main character a pussy. For all of the times when we might not agree about what "funny" is, there are flashes of something special in The Babysitter . It makes the other stuff even worse. Oh, horror comedy, you tricky little nut of a genre. The Babysitter  follows a kid as he learns that his super hot babysitter is also a super devout devil worshipper who might be sacrificing people after he's gone to bed. Fun plot, generally well executed. Samara Weaving is great as the titular babysitter, and the teenage actors are remarkably un-painful. In fact, once the movie gets over how great it thinks it is, it ends up being pretty good.  I've mentioned that I like my horro...

I'm pretty sure everyone who watched the trailer for this movie got the gist of the plot: it's Groundhog Day , but with murder. Of course, our lead - played by the film's absolute standout actor, Jessica Rothe - has never seen Groundhog Day  and has apparently never heard of it, because it takes her an absurdly long time to try to be a better person. Instead, she spends a long time trying to solve her own murder by a weird person in a creepy baby mask. So her own murder happens again and again and again. Happy Death Day  definitely has flashes of greatness. As a murder mystery, it is far more effective than as a horror movie. You really want to know whodunnit. They really do set up everyone as a suspect, and they do so in a way that actually kept me guessing. I kept reading real answers as red herrings and misleads as the real deal. The final resolve ended up being quite disappointing, but I think that's because as a movie lover, I kept wanting the killer to be bigger...

I never wrote a review for Friend Request when it released in Europe in 2016, mostly because it was one of the most thoroughly underwhelming, by-the-numbers, ill-produced pieces of horror garbage I'd watched in a while. It wasn't the kind of bad that was fun to write about: it was just an indistinct blob of horror on a screen.  Pre-Halloween seems to be the prime time for those indistinct blobs of horror that the film industry has been saving away. Got a movie saved up that wrapped filming in 2014 and released in Europe in 2016 but hasn't technically had its money-making potential squeezed out of it? Go for it. The US release reminded me that I should probably get some thoughts written down, however brief and aggravated. I can't tell you much about the plot of Friend Request because I remember watching it and having all of the details dissolve from my mind almost immediately. It's a fitting review to follow the conceptually bloated and allegorically confused...

After a brief flirtation with serious pop cultural critique, I'm back to reviewing the horror movie rubbish that no one else has seen (and for good reason). What better way to settle into that niche than to watch one of the many hundreds of Saw copycats on the market? It's my own personal white noise. Saw itself is one of the most problematic and ideologically iffy film franchises around with one of the best first movies, and I'm unapologetically hyped for the next movie to come out. The ripoffs, however, are...something.  In my time watching blatant Saw ripoffs, I have seen some utter garbage. Even I, the most dedicated terrible movie watcher, could not sit through the monotony and bad acting of 2011's Vile . I struggled through 2006 Thai thriller 13 Beloved , even when it made me near gag, or 2014's Circle , even though I nearly fell asleep . Over time, I've enjoyed the occasional movie in this specific set up: I didn't mind the divisive Would You Ra...

Disclaimer:  It's going to be a long one. This review will not contain explicit spoilers but will be discussing broader thematic elements that may veer into spoiler territory for movie purists. I'm also going to be discussing the treatment of women in the film, because it was  salient to me as a woman watching the movie and I imagine it is something that a lot of people might be impacted by.  And to contrast pretty much every other review of this movie, I'm not going to talk about any of the Rosemary's Baby influence here. There's nothing important enough about it to the movie to get me to talk about Actual Rapist Roman Polanski. A lot of people will tell you that Darren Aronofsky's latest film, mother! , is psychologically stimulating and exhilarating and will keep you guessing. You can definitely read this surreal thriller in a few different ways, but here's the way I read it: as an interesting but ultimately self aggrandizing and heavy handed clusterf...

Even after watched this movie, I find it hard to believe that it is a movie that managed to get released in 2017. If you like your horror generic and driven by two sentence horror stories from old reddit threads  and you're really into Nazi plotlines, I guess, then this is a hoot. The problem is that this is a whole movie built around one scary shot - a scary shot that has been explored before, and that is shown in the trailer - and it spends the rest of the run time not knowing what to do with itself. Nearly half an hour of this movie from the beginning set up a backstory, wherein an overprotective father (did I mention he's a NAZI?) tries too hard to keep his daughter sheltered. It is the kind of thing that overexplains and leaves no ambiguity for the audience, so that when the modern day characters are undergoing spooky happenings, we all immediately know about the Nazis and the daughter and the history that the characters are exploring. Speaking of characters, it's ge...

I Saw Atomic Blonde And All I Got Was This Overwhelming Urge To Write and Inconclusive Review, but on a t-shirt or something. The internet has not been able to shut up about Charlize Theron and Atomic Blonde for months. It's from David Leitch one of the directors of critical darling John Wick - full disclosure, I've not seen it, for lazy reasons I'll explain later - and is based on a series of graphic novels called The Coldest City , and by all accounts both of those things are extremely obvious in the movie. It's got that graphic novel feel to it, ultra slick and stylised with extreme attention to visual detail and use of colour. Charlize Theron plays Lorraine Broughton, a spy in 1989 Germany, in her pursuit to retrieve a list of intelligence information.  Most obviously, it's an attempt to subvert the tropes of the male dominated spy genre. Lorraine is every bit as suave and mysterious and her counterparts, and far better dressed. She tears through opponents i...

When Julia Ducournau's Raw   was first released, it gathered a lot of hype thanks to its reputation in regards visceral imagery and pretty confronting cannibalism story. I was worried that I would watch it and be let down, because reviews seemed generally positive and I'm always here for horror tinged plots driven by female directors and female protagonists. On finally watching Raw , I can tell you that it is barely a horror movie and barely a cannibalism movie at all: it is a thinly veiled allegory for burgeoning sexuality alongside themes of sisterhood and coming of age, all wrapped in the skin of cannibal tropes past. I loved it.  The story of Raw is not anything revolutionary. Someone (in this case, a first year vegetarian veterinary student named Justine played by Garance Marillier) gets forced to eat meat, and develops a taste for human flesh. There is nothing subtle in the way it is told - Justine's cravings for meat evoke a sexual awakening and echo her transfo...

I’m not going to pretend that this is a good movie.  In fact, it’s garbage. It’s derivative, predictable, poorly performed, ill thought out and bland. It lacks self-awareness and creativity and instead draws entirely from the canon of better movies that came before.  Our evil entity is called the Bye Bye Man, for fuck’s sake, but if you think about him or speak his name, the concept gains strength and takes over your mind. Our three sprightly college students learn this after moving to a new house and discovering the legend hidden on a nightstand. Scary things happen, but they’re just in people’s heads! Time passes strangely - almost as strangely as the accents that characters slip in and out of! The Bye Bye guy appears in shadows and reflections with scare chords, accompanied by some weird spectral hound! No one has any character development or backstory whatsoever! The lighting is truly atrocious and I spent half the movie wondering what was actually happening on screen...

I’m not really one for movies about love or set during wars, but I’m very much one for movies with Gemma Arterton in them. Sadly I can report that, unlike in  Byzantium , she does not spend any of this movie in beautiful lingerie. Arterton plays a woman employed to bring a female voice to propaganda efforts in the second world war, and ends up playing a much bigger role in the broader film industry.  In spite of my mixed experiences with Lone Scherfig’s other works (for the record: winced through  One Day , to this day cannot decided how I ended up feeling about  An Education ), this might have worked out how to needle into me. It feels like one of those inspired-by-a-true-story films, even though it isn’t, but it doesn't feel dry. Instead, you have a movie about writing - hardly the most visually dynamic profession, but one I love stories about. The love story is much less my speed, but I appreciated that Arterton’s Caterin was very rarely a passive character. At...