Most viewers, when consuming a piece of murder mystery media, expect layered complexity; they take into account every character’s dialogue, attributes, and motives in hopes of uncovering the buried answers. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery director Rian Johnson—fully aware of this standard approach to mystery stories—flips the murder mystery genre on its head by featuring conspicuous clues and foreshadowing so straightforward that the audience disregards it as extraneous.
Johnson incorporates seemingly standard yet meticulously intentional staging and direction to explicitly reveal how the film’s murders were committed, well before it is verbally revealed much later. The most striking example is during the film’s first on-screen murder, with Miles handing Duke his own glass. Miles urges his friends to look at Birdie’s extravagant dress spin while simultaneously giving Duke his glass. The shot features Birdie’s dress blurred in the foreground, while Miles and Duke are in focus in the background. While the act is quick, Miles’s deliberate murder of Duke is blatantly displayed. But due to Miles calling attention to the colorful dress, viewers are drawn away from the switching of glasses behind her. Furthermore, when Duke’s phone and gun go missing, Johnson ensures that the film’s cinematography and editing present Miles being in possession of both, without explicitly calling attention to it. In the scenes following Duke’s death, his phone can briefly be seen—in short cuts—in Miles’s back pocket. Moreover, when Miles runs away looking for Andi, he runs unnaturally and clumsily, always keeping at least one hand out of sight, implying he is holding Duke’s gun. These intentional visual cues demonstrate how the truth is often directly embedded in the film’s directing and framework, but always eclipsed by Johnson’s carefully orchestrated spectacles and misdirections.
Recently, one of my favorite pastimes has been watching movies with my friends. These friends, in particular, are not big fans of horror – much to my dismay because I love horror so much – but we still have partaken in a large selection of genres. We have watched animated movies like Moana, Frozen, Wallee, and Up, and also some action movies along with fantasy. We are currently finishing up The Chronicles of Narnia trilogy, and I just get so much nostalgia from watching these movies. I literally loved them so much when I was younger. Very recently, we watched Bridge to Terrabithia, and it was a very traumatic experience, to say the least. Spoiler alert, but the part where the girl died literally had me in such intense tears I was genuinely concerned for myself. I went to the bathroom after and looked in the mirror and my entire face was splotchy red and my eyes were so swollen hahaha. If you are an emotional person and are in the mood to watch something sad, this is definitely one of my top recommendations. As for the future, after we finish the third Narnia movie, we want to watch Lord of the Rings because I have never seen it before but my friends say it’s pretty good. We also want to rewatch the Hunger Games and maybe Harry Potter too. We have a very intense list that just keeps growing daily at this point, and we only seem to watch stuff on the weekends because we don’t have time during the week. I have faith in us though.
These are not my favorite actors, just actors that have been in a lot of movies I’ve seen.
Tom Hanks: Terminal- great story, made me cry when Forrest Gump didn’t. Great performance, and a convincing accent to me. Really unique plot and an interesting antagonist.
Daniel Day-Lewis: There will be Blood- honestly this performance is the reason I decided to write this blog. Some of the best acting from an already incredible actor. Many powerful scenes in this movie.
Willem Dafoe: The Grand Budapest Hotel- I mean what a cool character, that scene with the fingers. Anytime he was in a scene it was more interesting. Also, John Wick was a good movie with him in it- but not really because of him. I notice Dafoe is in a lot of movies I watch but rarely plays a big role in them (besides Spidermen).
Leo: The Departed- probably a controversial pick but a terrific cast and director. It’s intense and funny, Leo really delivered. At its core, this movie’s characters are what make it special, you really feel like you know them and you’re invested in their fates.
I tested positive for Covid exactly one week ago. Surprisingly, the time went by fairly quickly, as I occupied myself with reading, homework, and plenty of Netflix.
Here’s everything I watched while quarantined:
The second half of The Italian Job. We started this during film studies, and I can’t say I know why. It’s a pretty good movie, but not exactly a classic. And as much as I like a good car chase, it’s a little less exciting when they’re driving minis.
Bridget Jones’ Diary. This has not aged well. Perhaps if I were to disregard the fatphobia and blatant sexism, it would be a fairly enjoyable watch. The premise itself is good – who doesn’t love a romantic comedy, with a relatable protagonist, and a love triangle? But the execution, not so much.
Several episodes of Gilmore Girls. Rory and Jess are beginning to flirt and I cannot wait to see how Dean reacts. I can feel a breakup is coming, and I am so ready! Dean might be absolutely gorgeous, but I personally detest him and his short temper. Rory deserves better.
The first couple of episodes of the Great British Baking Show season 10. This show never fails to make me smile and give me an appreciated British nostalgia. They always manage to find the sweetest bunch of contestants. I’m obsessed with the gay Polish guy.
Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I LOVED this one. Is Audrey Hepburn totally iconic? YES. Am I going to be Holly for Halloween? Very possibly. The only part I didn’t like was the scene where she threw her cat out of the taxi, and then proceeded to search for it in the rain. It gave me so much anxiety – I breathed a heavy sigh of relief when she finally found Cat.
As I grew up get to understand this world and this society, I noticed that not all villains are bad people. Of course, it’s a movie, but If you have watched the Joker, you will notice that he is not a bad person; he is just like a normal person like me and you. He shows how broken this society is and that forces him to shoot the TV host to show the world that a person was being left in the city and even not getting treated like a human being. I also watch the Fantastic Beast, the villain asks those people to join his army, it sounds like they all just wanted to create chaos, and they are just bad guys. However, there is a part where the villain explains how broken this world is and he just wanted to change the world by gathering all the people who were being left in the corner of the earth. Most of them don’t want to become a villain on purpose, they just want those people to feel safe and warm, let them feel there are a lot of people going through the same thing as they did. This got me thinking so much and you will realize what is justice? Is there justice anymore? Also, this world is very chaotic. What do you think?
On Wednesday, I had to go through the lovely experience of an almost 20-hour travel day to get back from Barcelona to LA. On the long flight from Frankfurt, I did something quite out of character. Instead of just taking Melatonin and crashing for the whole flight, I only crashed for half and decided to watch a movie to pass the rest of the time. The movie I decided to watch was a movie called Her which I had heard was one of the best-made movies in the 2010s.
Going into this movie I was pretty much expecting a two-hour-long Black Mirror episode with some pretty creepy undertones. Although I was only half right, I was not prepared for what I was about to experience. First of all, watching such a movie with the very heightened emotions that come with flying is not the best idea. Second of all, this movie is one of those Black Mirror-Esque experiences that could actually happen in my lifetime. Which is always an extremely off-putting experience. Before I get into how depressed this movie made me I just want to appraise this movie for how well made it is. Not only does it work with color imagery and contrast so well, but every character is so good and so well acted out it’s almost surreal. The way this movie deals with the depression of separating from a partner, the awkwardness of a new relationship, and even a human falling in love with a brand new Artificial Intelligence experience is genius. Every emotion conveyed in this movie is so real, it makes you want to close down your heart and never open yourself up to human emotion ever again.
Photo Credit: BBC
To someone who’s never watched this movie, it’s probably pretty weird to think that a movie about a man falling in love with a computer could provoke any real emotions, but it does. It really does. Honestly, this movie made me feel more empty than Your Lie in April, The Joker, and Dead Poets Society combined. I mean this movie made me feel like a hollow husk of a human being. It’s actually insane to me that the makers of this film even pulled it off. Her is one of those movies that was drastically ahead of its time. For being made in 2013, it could have easily made a similar if not bigger impact if it were released today.
Over the weekend I had an awful cold. One of those colds that just shut down both your brain and your respiratory system to the point that playing video games or doing anything that’s not lying down feels like a chore. So instead of doing my ritual video gaming I did something totally out of character and actually sat through not just one but three movies. Long ones too. Over the course of Saturday afternoon, I watched Marvel’s Eternals, The Dark Knight Rises, and Joker.
I started with Marvel’s Eternals, one of the first Marvel films in years to get a trash rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Going into this movie, I was already expecting this movie to be not that great. I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect, but this movie fully exceeded my expectations. It is not a good film. First of all, they bring in an entirely new group of heroes who are supposed to be immortal and help birth planets but they’re pitifully weak for the task they’re put up to. Secondly, they implant a completely new villain who was nowhere to be found in any other marvel movie despite being seemingly pretty abundant in the world, so much so that an entire group of heroes was created to fight them. Not only that, but the whole point of these heroes’ existence is to help life flourish throughout the universe and then continue to neglect a situation in which Thanos tries to wipe out half of all life. In general, this movie suffers from a pretty unrelatable cast of characters and more plot holes than the entire franchise so I really don’t understand how Marvel pulled off such a mediocre film after such a reigning decade of great movies.
Photo Credit: The Cosmic Circus
The next movie I watched was The Dark Knight Rises which was a long-overdue viewing experience for me. I had seen the first of the trilogy at a very young age and then watched Dark Knight multiple times throughout my life because that movie absolutely slaps. I honestly don’t know what I was thinking about not watching Dark Knight Rises for so long I mean Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies are awesome. Although this one doesn’t have as compelling or coherent of a plot as the one preceding it, Dark Knight rises is a very good-looking and well-shot movie with a pretty moving plot for a DC/Batman movie. Christopher Nolan does a great job of blurring the line between good and evil to create a tangible dilemma that Batman/Bruce Wayne has to face throughout the plot. Although this movie doesn’t live up to its predecessor, it is a great continuation of the trilogy and a good way to cap it off.
Photo Credit: Slant Magazine
Joker was the last movie I watched and this one was a very different story. This movie is straight-up depressing. This movie is a fantastic example of the direction that DC needs to take to be taken seriously in Hollywood. This movie takes Gotham, a city that is very prevalent in the DC universe and makes it a very tangible, and very depressing place with deep-rooted economical issues that caused an uproar of poverty. And it doesn’t just show that by having a lot of crime. There are living in rundown apartment buildings, suffering to find a living, and even budget cuts in mental health institutions. Instead of Gotham just seeming like a playground for Batman, it is now a mirror of the depressing reality that is living in poverty in a city, the neglect of the U.S government to fix these many problems such as mental health and care, and the empty promises by those who are wealthy to fix all of this. This whole film completely flips the Batman story on its head. Now you have this horrible and unsavable town in which people are doing whatever they can to help themselves out of this crushing situation that they didn’t even cause. It makes all the people previously beaten into a coma by Batman seem almost innocent for their crimes compared to the heinous neglect of the lower class by both him and his father. By the end of the movie I was kind of waiting for them to kill Bruce’s parents because, in all honesty, Thomas deserved it. Overall, this movie is the direction that DC needs to take with their films because this is a clear improvement over everything they made after the Dark Knight Trilogy.
As a kid who was raised by a father who really likes movies, I can happily say that I have seen a lot more good movies than bad ones. Even the ones I didn’t thoroughly enjoy, are usually just slower movies that are hard to watch with a teenage attention span. However, at one point I did have a girlfriend who liked to watch the bachelor so I’m pretty well versed in awful media now and I can say with certainty that I have seen some pretty awful movies. Some on my own time some because I was forced to watch them.
Alright, let’s start with a steaming hot take. If you get mad at this one I would definitely stop reading this blog now. If you know me, you know I have a primal hatred towards musicals. Especially ones dealing with love and/or falling in love. In my opinion not only is love not that exciting but there is literally no emotion exciting enough to warrant breaking out into song and dance. And that is why I literally hate La La Land. I’m sure I will get crucified for this but I will die on this hill with pride as I am certain that this is a garbage movie. First I will agree that it does have its funny moments. But this movie literally cannot decide what the hell it wants to be. First, it’s kind of a drama about this scum bag dude who never deserves love in his life, then kind of a comedy as he meets the most mundane and indecisive woman in the world. Then it’s kind of a comedy but the whole time I’m just hoping that these two just cut their losses and go find someone else. Neither of them is an interesting character and neither of them is charming at all. Watching them fall in love is like watching paint dry with a bit of song and dance in between. This movie to me is the epitome of Millennialism, no I will not elaborate. This movie is a solid D- for decide what the hell you want your movie to be. (Sorry not sorry to the La La Land Stans in here)
The second movie on the chopping block is Ready Player One. As someone who both adores the book and most of Spielberg’s films, I was hoping for an absolute banger when I went to see this movie. What I got was an absolute sell-out of a rom-com with a pretty boy as the lead actor. Not only does this movie completely betray the book harder than any Hobbit or Lord of the Rings could possibly hope to, but THEY ALSO TOOK THE F***ING RUSH REFERENCE OUT. And as someone who was born in Canada, I will never forgive the writers and Spielberg. This movie sucks and Spielberg is on thin ice. Solid F- for F*** this movie.
Now for actually the worst movie, I have ever seen. Although I have infinite amounts of hatred for both Ready Player One and La La Land, I understand that there is appeal there and that people like this movie. The one movie that I will never understand or ever have an ounce of respect for is The Kissing Booth. I hate this movie. It is so bad that I can happily say that I would rather watch paint dry for two weeks than watch this movie once. I have seen this movie twice and both are the most torturous experiences of my life. This movie sucks so bad that if you like it, I urge you to go get some taste. Netflix literally made one of the most unrelatable teen movies ever made, but the plot might literally be the worst plot ever written. Solid H+ for hiring some new writers.
I had watched some clips of Harry Potter before, but I just never got interested in it. It’s kind of boring watching them passing that weird shape of the ball, I don’t know, I was just not enjoying it at all. However, this Christmas break changed me, I have found my favorite movie now. It all started with my older brother, he watched the first 4 Harry Potter films with his friends already. Then, my little brother and I decided to give it a try so we could watch it with him during the break. After finishing the first two films of Harry Potter, we are so addicted to it.
Meanwhile, we went to Universal Studios and bought the Harry Potter robes. I know it’s kinda stupid and childish, but I enjoy wearing the robes while watching the rest of the series. We were just so obsessed with Harry Potter. Nevertheless, we always got so hype when Dobby came out because he is the strongest in the Wizarding World. The film hit me so hard when Albus Dumbledore and Dobby died, especially Dobby. Dobby is the king of these movies. Before he died, Dobby said: “Such a beautiful place, Dobby is happy to be with his friends.” I can still remember what he said even now. It’s a pity that the ending was not so surprising. However, the story and the plotting in those movies were just perfect. I never felt the movie is too long and never felt boring.
The Gerber Brand baby: I’m beating the stuffing out of him. Dude simply stands no chance against me; I am SIX FOOT, 180 Gerber baby is probably 2’9” maybe 45 pounds. So there is absolutely no chance for him.
Caillou: Dude is a four year old toddler that’s bald. I easily have 100+ pounds on him and probably a foot or two as well. Basically dudes got no chance \_(‘-‘)_/
Maggie Simpson: She stands no chance; like do you really think Maggie Simpson can beat me (A SIX FOOT disturbance to democracy) like c’mon really. Maggie doesn’t has a shot.
Russell from UP: Russell is defiantly a nice, goodhearted kid but he’s not beating me in any sort of physical interaction. I would feel awful after beating the kid’s ass in a fight.
Any one of the Minions: Now a purple Minions would put up a good fight but a regular ole yellow Minion stands no chance. A Minion is half my size and softer than toilet paper, they have small arms and hands so it’s not landing a punch on me. I would rank a Minion a spot higher but they’re designed and created in lab so you never know what could happen.
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