jerseydevil
I'llPutPenniesOnYourEyes
Godzilla: Resurgence (シン・ゴジラ) Philippines Trailer [COLOSSAL SPOILERS!!]
The maintained feeling of discovery is where Villeneuve deserves so much applause. Arrival is very exciting because it is a sci-fi about ideas and interpersonal communication. Even when it engages with a type of conflict that we’re familiar with, Villeneuve only uses sound and a detached viewing from above. We are so attached to the researchers and their methods, we want them to be able to do all their work devoid of violent conflict.
Arrival makes us care about each discovery and less about what conflict might impede it. It’s truly a game-changer for modern science fiction.
Grade: A
To A Monster Calls‘ credit, at least the protagonist’s sadness is more earned than, say, a little girl who had to move to a different mansion with her supportive awesome upper middle class parents. And the stakes are less nonsensical than, say, spontaneously forgetting how to play hockey. And Liam Neeson’s growly, tough-love tree monster is inarguably a cool-as-hell character (then again, so was Bing Bong). But it’s still a movie about a sad kid losing his mom to cancer. Hard to get past that. It might have worked better if it had leaned more heavily on the coming-of-age angle and less on the learning-to-grieve angle.
It almost goes without saying, but everyone around me seemed to be bawling their eyes out. Someone behind me blew their nose — we’re talking loud, flatulent goose honks here — probably 40 times. I felt like I was in a comedy sketch. Their entire row even left right after the moment of climactic sadness, even though there were still like 10 minutes of movie left. I don’t want to say A Monster Calls is sadness porn — truly, I don’t think it is — but it’s kind of hard to avoid the comparison when you’re sitting next to someone who literally showed up, blew their goo into a tissue and then left.
It was a smart, touching, beautifully acted, cleverly written film, and I’m glad it’s over.
You’ve never really seen a movie like Colossal. It’s an alcoholism drama. It’s a dark comedy. It’s a kaiju movie. It’s all of these things in one, and thanks to a particularly fine-tuned script and a tremendous balance of tone from Vigalondo as a director, it succeeds far more than it fails. Confronting our demons is much harder than we think, especially once we realize they control us, not the other way around. Confronting these demons sometimes requires a fight, and that fight ain’t pretty. But considering the collateral damage that ensues when we don’t, confronting these demons is necessary.
Rating: B
While waiting for Kubo and the Two Strings, we were bombarded with a seemingly endless barrage of bad, cookie-cutter animation trailers, and then this thing hit…
For my money, best trailer of the year so far.
Oh, and I was surprised enough that we got one Pete's Dragon this year, but next year it looks like Monster Trucks is going to be the same movie (as the new Pete's Dragon, not the old one).
Yeah, they did show that trailer before Kubo, I remember it.
That Storks trailer made forget the previews. I am not hatin' but Storks looks silly.
Monster Calls looks promising though.![]()
Thanks to Goodreads, I just learned that A Monster Calls is based on a book! I wanna read it now!!
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Read it after seeing the movie. Generally seems to work better that way.