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maggymaytay
Reviews
Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)
One of the worst films I've ever seen.
Who paid for this? Don't waste your time. It feels about 17 hours long. There's no character depth, no interest, no good performances, really absolutely nothing to recommend it. Even the plot - which they take from a beloved fairy tale - is BAD BAD BAD. I'm shocked at how the film literally couldn't get one element right, not even the love story. (There's not a ounce of detectable chemistry between Kristen Stewart and Chris Hemsworth.) But Charlize Theron is beautiful so there's that. Kristen Stewart gives maybe the worst performance I have ever seen. And I am not exaggerating. She is wooden and unsympathetic. Charlize isn't much better, but at least I believe her as the most beautiful woman in the world.
Top Gun: Maverick (2022)
Everything you want from a summer blockbuster
Top Gun: Maverick is absolutely worth seeing in theatres - don't miss it! It's been a highlight of my summer and one of the best theatre experiences I can recall. The storyline is satisfying for fans of the original as it calls back to it many times, but the stunning element of this film is the epic flights, sound design. I was in the edge of my seat!
It's also quite funny in a few moments and definitely emotional too. It surpasses the sequel in every way. It's an uncomplicated, wildly entertaining romp that will make you want to go experience it in the theatres again and again. Turn your brain off and enjoy Top Gun! 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
House of Gucci (2021)
Overlong and unclear ...
While stylish, the screenplay and pacing were more in love with the concept of the film than the actual mechanics of plot and character development. Lady Gaga is far more luminous in "A Star is Born", though she is the acting highlight of this film. I'd be surprised if most people didn't fall asleep at some point.
The Prince (2021)
Vile and humorless.
I watched the first episode with my mum and we did not laugh once. It's a painfully obvious Prince George = Stewie rip off, but Gary Janetti hasn't the talent to base a whole show simply off of a bad impression. The creator of "The Prince" started acting as Prince George in Instagram posts in which the little guy criticizes his family and the pop culture of the moment a couple years ago. It was funny, mostly harmless stuff but clearly not enough to base an entire tv show off of. The first episode was utterly charmless and boring.
This is not to mention that it's offensive to mock children, no matter how famous they are. Prince William and Catherine Middleton have been clear about the baseline level of privacy they wish for their children to have. It's shocking to see so many beloved British actors (Alan Cumming? Dan Stevens? Lucy Punch? Orlando Bloom, okay, I believe that.) take part in a production which is at heart, so cruel and callous. Many of the actors previously have rightfully cried out for their own children to have privacy, but do not respect it when it comes to the children of the Royal family. These Brits have lived in LA too long, clearly, and think making fun of a 95-year-old woman who has given her life in service of their homeland is a punchline. Dan Stevens, for one, would have been better sticking to Downton Abbey if this is the kind of premier-level success he left the show to seek out. Ha!
Other shows, such as "The Windsors" gave parodied the Royal family while still maintaining the decency not to go after young children and while respecting the Queen and the late Prince Philip.
Gary Janetti's show should be pulled from HBO Max. I hope he reads every negative review and feels ashamed of himself. A few funny Instagram posts do not equal a successful show.
Doctor Thorne (2016)
Maddeningly average
Trollope has assembled a motley crew of characters of different socio-economic strata in this 1850s love story. I haven't read the original novel, but I have a feeling the nuances of Victorian life must have been conveyed more eloquently than in this clumsy miniseries. The plot is steady and everything is tied up by the end - but I didn't feel any real excitement about getting there. It's a tame drama with no artistry, but I'll watch anything period drama. This is maddeningly average fare and it didn't make me feel a single emotion once! Ugh! If you're a period drama junkie like me, you might as well watch it for the picturesque settings and costumes, though it does feel more comical and CGI-ish than the better costume dramas. It should have been condensed into a film rather than a miniseries.
In the Heights (2021)
The emotion of the original musical is missing
As a lover of musical theatre, I am delighted that "In the Heights" is getting the full motion picture treatment. Unfortunately, the changes made to the book of the original musical are for the worse.
Key songs that get the viewers invested in the relationship between Nina and Benny as well as Abuela Claudia and Usnavi are missing. Though each of the actors is cast well as far as singing and dancing talent, the chemistry between the romantic relationships and the community as a whole never feels like it really comes together. The story beats feel inorganic and unearned here when they don't listening the Broadway cast recording.
Director Jon Chu puts together some amazingly flashy choreography in the key songs (In the Heights, 96,000, The Club, Carnaval del Barrio) but the balance between these characteristically over-the-top numbers and the more slowed down, emotional pieces is off. This makes the big numbers feel tedious, when really, they shouldn't! I love seeing musicals on the big screen - so why do I feel this way? A key example is the end sequence between Nina and Benny ("When the Sun Goes Down") when the director has them dancing on the side of a building, no care for gravity. I admire Chu's alternate, surrealist vision for this number - while beautiful, it feels like it comes out of nowhere for the tone of this film. And I honestly would have rather seen focusing close-ups on Nina and Benny's faces as they sing about their newfound commitment to each other.
As far as the plot, some inexplicable changes and shifts were made from the original musical to make room for a half-hatched DACA plot. (Sonny reveals that he is undocumented, but as he is the cousin of the Dominican-American Usnavi, this didn't really make sense to me.) Sonny and Nina are shown attending a protest against "kicking out the dreamers". In the aftermath of Abuela's death, the community's sense of coming-together to appreciate her in the touching "Alabanza" also, for some reason, involves protest signs that feel unearned and illogical.
Abuela Claudia's moment to shine ("Pacienca y Fe") has her examining the choice to return to her homeland or to claim her identity as an American. However, the decision feels very low-stakes because at this point, the viewer doesn't know that she has the winning lottery fortune and thus the new freedom to decide where to go. This as a central conflict and then of the film is dropped until the final moments when Usnavi has to face this choice himself. But the beats feel unconnected here despite the film's overlong run time.
I will be watching again to see if I was simply too cynical the first time around, but I spent today listening to the always-sublime original Broadway cast recording and I think I'll stick to that.
Emma. (2020)
Visually scrumptious (distractingly so) but emotionally shallow
No part of this movie moved me, and I cry at almost everything. Some parts were funny, but not nearly as funny as the director clearly thought they were. The nosebleed was disappointing as we never truly got to see Emma uncovered, vulnerable, and in love because of it. She never returns Knightley's affections in any verbal sense and it's disappointing. The dynamic between Frank Churchill and Emma is utterly confusing. She is clearly thinking of him as a potential partner for most of the movie, and yet the turning point when she no longer loves him but considers and suggests him as a suitor for Harriet is all but indiscernible. If I didn't already know the plot of Emma by heart, I would have been utterly confused by the Emma-Jane Fairfax- Knightley- Frank Churchill quadrangle situation.
It's funny that I say I wouldn't have been able to understand this plot if I wasn't already so familiar with Austen's work. Throughout the film I thought that this resembled nothing of the heart and true moral education at the forefront of Emma, and so must only be entertaining to those who do not know Austen well and approach this story for the first time. (Probably insensitive of me, but that's what I was thinking while watching the film.) Instead it was all turned into a cartoon with inexplicable amounts of cakes and bouquets and bonnets in the background of every scene. It was practically suffocating. Jane Austen is funny, of course! But I felt this was a betrayal of how very serious Emma is at many points. In previous adaptations, the scene in which Knightley reprimands Emma with the sharp "Badly done, indeed!" is both clearly well-deserved but also imparts to the viewer a sense of Emma's shame. We both feel indignant at Knightley for speaking to Emma in such a way, and yet know he was right to do so as the secondhand embarrassment for the viewers after seeing Emma's cruelty to Miss Bates is practically unbearable. In this version, I was too caught up by being utterly confused by the relationships everyone in the party was currently having. The plot was both sped up and slowed down for no reason. Why does Knightley run to confess his love to Emma the night after the ball she throws for Frank Churchill? It's so he can be there when Frank Churchill strides in, having rescued Harriet from Gypsies. This is all very confusing as it happens on the way home from the ball - this is when Frank decides to return scissors to Miss Bates? It doesn't make sense and all feels entirely too rushed. (This is presumably thrown in as a detail from the book which hints at the degree of familiarity between Jane and Frank.) Nothing about the visual language suggests Frank's feelings for Jane, when many other adaptations do this very well.
When Emma confesses to Knightley, "My blindness to (Jane and Frank's attachment) led me to behave in a way that must always make me ashamed" I was trying to work out the internal logic in my mind. The viewers are not really shown anything that should make Emma particularly ashamed other than her cruelty to Miss Bates in one particular instance, and nothing about Frank's behavior could have led her to make her cruel statement. Her attachment to Frank is never shown in such a flagrant way as to make her feel ashamed. In other, more logical adaptations, it is Frank and Emma's incessant and obvious flirting that causes Jane to make the statement that she is "wearied in the spirits." Which, of course she is! This is the moment when the viewers, and Emma, are finally supposed to feel some sympathy for poor Jane Fairfax, though previously Emma had only been irked by her. This gives clues to the viewer of Jane and Frank's attachment. The news that they are in love, and that Frank is SO MUCH in love with her as to overcome his aunt's wishes for him to marry a lady of fortune, comes from somewhere BEYOND nowhere in this adaptation. There is no indication from anyone of anything between Frank and Jane. In other adaptations, Knightley is adept and observes their intimacy and tries to warn Emma that he thinks all is not as it seems between them. But she ignores him and says she perfectly understands Frank, leading Knightley to believe she is in love with him. This all makes sense as to why Knightley is so concerned and hurt for Emma on hearing the revelation of Frank and Jane's engagement as to rush back from his visit to Isabella and John in London to console her. It's for the same reason that Knightley leaves to visit London in the first place. The emotional tension created by all this misunderstanding is completely lost in Autumn de Wilde's adaptation. This makes the plot feel like trodding through a set of bullet points with no motivation from one event to the next. (I found myself bored at many many times in this film due to the lack of proper emotional tension.) Yet, she maintains the same dialogue as if we were supposed to believe the characters were that emotionally tense when in fact none of it has been shown. Before I go on too long about the misplaced internal logic, let me simply add that I did not find the depiction of Isabella and John's marriage as unhappy helpful in the least. It wasn't funny, it wasn't necessary... it was just a stupid contrivance for cheap laughs. There is no sign that Isabella and John are in an unhappy marriage in Austen's narrative. Like Emma and Knightley, they have grown up together as neighbors and knew what they were getting into when they married. It is in Isabella and John's happy marriage and family life that Knightley and Emma find much common ground to discuss in the novel. Again, this is all thrown away from cheap laughs as Isabella is portrayed as a raving hypochondriac.
Anya Taylor-Joy does such a good job at portraying Emma's arrogance and vanity that I find that was the lasting picture I had of her throughout the film. Even in her most humble moment, after being charged seriously by Knightley for cruelty to Miss Bates, she just whines like a teenager and I feel. No. Sympathy. This could have maybe been helped if the awful and ridiculous nosebleed hadn't taken over the proposal scene, when Emma is supposed to reveal her true feelings, saying something like: "I do love you. I've loved you all along, but I never knew myself. How blind I was." (Refer to Austen's stellar novel for the real version of this confession, obviously.) instead, in this version, she is given an inconvenient nosebleed which she must defend herself from. She walks off to sort things out between Harriet and Robert Martin and I feel that no big romantic moment has occurred. I must add that the kiss scene between Knightley and Emma between the screens shielding Mr. Woodhouse was charming. Had it not occurred, I would hardly have realized that the impending marriage between Knightley and Emma was more than a business deal. I felt it a discourtesy to Bill Nighy's Mr. Woodhouse that we weren't shown the scene when Emma and Knightley actually reveal to him that they are getting married; this adaptation skips immediately to the wedding.
Knightley's performance was fine, but not what it should have been. I had no sense of Knightley's being 16 years Emma's senior, and thus speaking to her almost as an older brother for much of the story. They bickered more like siblings and it felt that his lecturing of Emma was pompous, considering on how very equal terms they seemed to be. This could have been helped by a line of dialogue mentioning their age difference, but nothing of the sort was to be found. This seems to be part of the trend in the whole adaptation of making this story more appealing to someone of the 21st century, rather than accurately portraying Austen's story of a, well, slightly paternal relationship becoming, to everyone's surprise and delight, a romantic one. This is the charm of Emma. But I guess Autumn de Wilde found it to be too gross for a modern audience. It is this adaptation's loss, I believe. But never mind. Look to the superior 1996 adaptation by Andrew Davies starring Kate Beckinsale and Mark Strong for the best version of the transformation of Emma and Knightley's relationship from paternal to romantic in a way that is never icky. It's a feat. Before I move on to other performances, it's silly I know but I have to say that Knightley's inability to brush his hair almost ruined every scene he was in. Why, in the name of God, did it HAVE to look so disheveled? Why? Was it an attempt to make Knightley look young and sexy? It just seemed to treat the audience as dumb. Thrown in messy hair, and you have your love interest! Please. Do better.
Miranda Hart's Miss Bates is a highlight, too cartoonish for Austen but just cartoonish enough for Autumn de Wilde. It is much the same with Josh O'Connor's Mr Elton.
I must praise the production. It is a beautiful film clearly shot by a photographer. The costumes are almost (thinking of 2 of Emma's costumes which made me gag) perfect. Most made me comment out loud on their beauty to my mother while watching. The production and cinematography and costumes are so beautiful that I feel it overwhelms and emphasizes how much the story doesn't have good pacing (in this version, but not in the novel and in many other adaptations.) The production contributed to the whole film feeling like a ridiculous macaroon which the viewer was invited to live in for two hours, and then return to a real world afterward. This is not what Austen is. She is a moral person. She is concerned with the education of her readers. The production, in my opinion, overcame any chance of this happening. This story seems more concerned with letting us 21st century viewers know that the 18th century was different, weird, and unrelatably ridiculous. All in all, I must recommend this as a visually pleasing but emotionally shallow and logically confusing adaptation of Austen's comedic masterpiece. Who would have thought you could make Emma TOO funny?