Iro's Film Diary

#543 - RocknRolla
Guy Ritchie, 2008



A collection of criminals operating in the London underworld get into a series of misadventures that are all connected to a corrupt industrialist.

RocknRolla is very much Guy Ritchie delivering diminishing returns on the same crime-caper formula that hit big in both Lock, Stock and Snatch. While Ritchie has improved his approach in certain areas (especially when it comes to staging proper action sequences or developing characters) and is able to assemble a fairly decent cast to carry things out, even this twisty tale has limits to its greater appeal. It also makes it very easy to see why every film Ritchie has done since has ended up being a straight-up reboot of an existing property instead of an original work - if his original work has already become this self-derivative, why not just move on to something else?

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

#544 - Your Name
Makoto Shinkai, 2016



Two teenagers - one a girl living in a small town, the other a boy living in Tokyo - start switching bodies at random.

You know something? I'm not going to write about this film at length because, if I'm going to be honest, you're better off going in like me - with as little knowledge as possible. I will say that it's got lavish visuals that make the ordinary look marvellous and become magnificent when the film thoroughly leans into the most extraordinary parts of its story. It's a film that's unabashedly emotional in a way becoming of teenagers trying to make sense of the world around them and, while this does combine with the inherently goofy body-swap premise to make it an iffy prospect on the surface, it actually does manage to earn its highs and lows even before it enters its tumultuous second act. It even gets to the point where the corny pop-rock that is peppered throughout the soundtrack does little to nothing to diminish the more powerful moments on display. I'm sure I could take it to task, but this is the first time in a while where I haven't felt like doing that with a particular movie so you'll have to excuse me while I don't do that.

#545 - The Secret of Kells
Tomm Moore, 2009



A young novice living in a monastery travels to the nearby forrest on an errand from his mentor and encounters a mystical spirit.

Seeing this after having already seen its spiritual successor Song of the Sea really doesn't do it much favours as it effectively functions as a rough draft in every possible regard. You've got the distinctive animation style, the thoroughly Irish narrative that touches on the conflict because the country's original mythology and its embrace of modernity and/or Christianity, plus a young boy going on a journey of self-discovery that puts him in touch with wonders and horrors alike. It's not terrible or anything, but I might suggest seeing this before Song of the Sea if possible.

#546 - A Bigger Splash
Luca Guadagninio, 2015



A British rockstar recovering from surgery in Italy is suddenly visited by her long-time producer and his daughter.

Another one of those European films that constitutes a handful of recognisable Western actors playing wealthy characters who have singularly interpersonal conflicts with one another in the middle of a picturesque location (which isn't necessarily a bad thing - that also sums up Paolo Sorrentino's Youth, which made my end-of-year top 10 last year). I'm not about to be so lenient with this one even as it does sport a fairly solid foursome around which its tale of dysfunctional relationships can develop.

#547 - Everybody Wants Some!!
Richard Linklater, 2016



In 1980, a college freshman spends the last weekend before classes hanging out with his new housemates.

Original review found here.

#548 - The Nice Guys
Shane Black, 2016



In 1977 Los Angeles, a private detective reluctantly joins forces with a freelance enforcer in order to solve a missing-persons case.

Original review found here.

#549 - Jingle All the Way
Brian Levant, 1996



A workaholic father goes on a desperate search for the action figure that his son wants for Christmas.

Maybe it's the nostalgia. Maybe it's the Arnold. Maybe it's the Christmas spirit. In any case, revisiting this madcap '90s family adventure was...actually kind of enjoyable. Obviously, it's a textbook example of such a film - hyperactive camerawork, emotionally straightforward score, various broad strokes in terms of plot and characterisation - but that doesn't necessarily make it terrible. If anything, there's something to be said for some of the bizarre yet apparently family-friendly gags it comes up with for Schwarzenegger to overcome (just look at that header image). I wouldn't make it into a yearly tradition or anything, but it still has its funny moments and doesn't wear out its welcome.

#550 - Iron Man 3
Shane Black, 2013



A tech-genius billionaire who moonlights as a superhero must go up against a mysterious terrorist and an army of unstable super-soldiers.

When you consider MCU movies as individual cinematic creations rather than as chapters in an ongoing saga, it's at least a little disappointing to see how Marvel will favour a homogenous house style over the stylistic idiosyncrasies of certain filmmakers (just look at what happened with Ant-Man). I may need to test this hypothesis further, but I get the impression that MCU movies involving distinctive filmmakers to one extent or another result in stronger individual entries that actually merit further consideration than just being cogs in the Marvel machine. In this regard, having Shane Black on hand is what really makes this worth watching. His pulpy action-comedy sensibilities definitely accentuate what could have been another tiresome superhero threequel and adequately compensate for the familiar MCU flaws in the process. If nothing else, it feels like one of the most rewatchable installments, which speaks to its strengths at least as much as the franchise's flaws.

#551 - The Star Wars Holiday Special
Steve Binder, 1978



In a distant galaxy, an alien travels to his homeworld in order to join his family for an important celebration.

Given its noxious reputation (or perhaps despite it), one would hope for a kitschy amusement full of fever-dream visuals and impossibly misguided scenarios. Unfortunately, the biggest crime that Holiday Special commits is that it's boooooring. It's certainly not lacking for weirdness, but the novelty wears off hard as the story about Chewbacca's family (which admittedly did have the potential to be watchable) serves as a flimsy backbone for a variety of scenes that alternate between deathly unfunny sketches and numbing musical numbers. I will grant Holiday Special one concession, though - the animated sequence. It may look rough even by the standards of the day, but there is something genuinely endearing about it - at the very least, it's the only part of this whole thing that was actually fun to watch.

Shame to hear you're stopping this, Iro, but at least it'll give me a chance to catch up properly over the coming months. It's been a great thread.

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5-time MoFo Award winner.

Yeah, it seemed easy enough to maintain that kind of energy all throughout last year but now I'm barely getting substantial write-ups done so I figure I'd rather aim for quality over quantity when it comes to next year's write-ups.

I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House....couldn't finish that one.

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"A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have."

Suspect's Reviews

#552 - Paterson
Jim Jarmusch, 2016



A small-town bus driver who writes poetry in his spare time has a variety of experiences over the course of a week.

Paterson sees Jarmusch craft the sort of slice-of-life drama that manages to feel painstakingly deliberate yet also effortless in its charmingly off-beat and almost-devoid-of-external-conflict tale of the semi-eponymous protagonist filling out the gaps in his repetitive but compelling everyday routine with glimpses of the artistic soul underneath his unassuming surface. It boasts some solid leads in Adam Driver and Golshifteh Farahani, who share some remarkable chemistry with one another while also proving strong individual performers in their own rights, to say nothing of the variety of other semi-recognisable faces that show up in classically disjointed Jarmusch fashion (and that's without mentioning Marvin the show-stealing bulldog). This is definitely one of my favourite films of the year - it may not seem like much on the surface, but it's got it where it counts.

#553 - Free State of Jones
Gary Ross, 2016



During the Civil War, a group of Confederate deserters join forces with runaway slaves to defend their own area of Mississippi as a "free state".

This is a semi-competent Civil War drama that tends to be more interesting in theory than in practice. It has trouble maintaining a sense of momentum due to its lengthy timeframe that has to cover a decade and provide a sub-plot from the 1950s into the proceedings (at least that proves justifiable, though). There are some decent ideas at work - such as black slaves and poor whites being extremely reluctant to work together against the common enemy of wealthy white warmongers - and it's not exactly sloppy in its execution, but even under the grim depictions of warfare and hate crimes it's still a bit too lightweight to be truly great.

#554 - The BFG
Steven Spielberg, 2016



An orphan girl encounters and befriends a giant who lives in the English countryside.

Ehh, I really wasn't feeling this one. Having Spielberg be involved made me want to give it a chance (and I did like his fully-animated Tintin movie), but this...it has only just enough charm to not be completely terrible. So it's got that going for it, I guess.

#555 - The Shallows
Jaume-Collet Serra, 2016



A young woman goes surfing at a secluded beach only to be attacked by a great white shark and stranded on the rocks near the shoreline.

If Hush showed me how a good horror could be done with only a single hero/villain/setting, then The Shallows showed how it couldn't. It certainly doesn't lack for effort through its inclusion of survival tropes that show the protagonist's efforts to survive between shark attacks, though this only ends up making the scenes in question feel like padding - and that's not good for a movie that only barely clears the eighty-minute mark.

#556 - Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
David Yates, 2016



In 1920s New York, an English wizard with a magic briefcase full of strange creatures must recapture them after they break free.

I don't exactly have a lot of affinity for the Harry Potter films in the first place, yet I still remained at least a little hopeful that this old-timey spin-off would prove interesting in its own right. However, that sliver of optimism withers pretty hard in the face of a clunky story that is only just buoyed by its central cast making up for some rather thin characters. Even the attempts to create some spectacular new world-building are limited by the beast-finding aspect that results in the film feeling extremely bloated at way too many intervals for it to be genuinely good.

Iro been busy. Where are those La La Land thoughts?

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#557 - Inner Workings
Leo Matsuda, 2016



The sentient vital organs of a mild-mannered office worker are thrown into turmoil when the brain and heart start fighting for control of their host.

This essentially plays out like an extremely abridged version of Inside Out where emotions are swapped with body parts. Not the most advanced stuff in terms of visuals or narrative, but at least it's good for a few laughs.

#558 - Moana
John Musker and Ron Clements, 2016



When the island she calls home starts suffering a severe food shortage, a teenage girl must go on a perilous journey to restore the balance of nature.

It takes a while to warm up to Moana as it has to go through a decidedly familiar preamble that sets up the tried-and-true "rebellious princess" framework before settling into a standard odd-couple dynamic between the eponymous heroine and an arrogant demi-god (to say nothing of its rather episodic structure that bounces between various adversaries without too much in the way of metaphorical rhyme or reason). Still, I can't fault it for improving as it goes along and fleshing out its traditionalist narrative with some interesting variations on the usual numbers and scenes of humour and action.