Tag: Demián Bichir

Godzilla. King Kong. Lizard. Ape. Will buildings get destroyed? Yes. Buildings will get destroyed.

The attempts to combine these franchises (well, one recent Kong Movie and two recent Godzilla movies) into one ultimate destruction battle was a lofty one, but clearly not one unheard of in our connected universes strategy of films. It was a guarantee, I imagine, to one day occur. I tried to come in ready for it, but honestly, I still never saw Godzilla: King of Monsters from two years ago, and at this point, I can’t imagine I will.

I was hoping that seeing the other two intro films would be enough, but it looks like this film made mostly throw backs to that last one, versus the other two. Damn it.

In Godzilla vs. Kong, the director promised there would be an obvious winner and not some bullshit tie overall. That is an important claim to make and really one of the main reasons I decided to even watch this one.

Oh, Rave Godzilla has to be one of my favorite Godzillas. 

Rawr! Let’s get it on! Wait, no, not yet. First of all, Godzilla has been firmly established as some sort of Alpha Predator, whose sole purpose and existence is meant to make sure no other threats ruin the world. Godzilla doesn’t want to destroy, it wants to keep the balance and go back to the depths.

Kong though is another alpha predator thing. So some people are worried that this means Godzilla is going to come and destroy him at some point, so they have him in hiding, sort of.

There are also some corporations doing corporation things. There is a theory of a Hallow Earth where these beasts must have come from, that is likely to have huge power sources. So some companies want that power. Some want to just return Kong to his home. Some want to destroy all the monsters. You know, typical stuff.

Overall, they are going to have to fight, multiple times, and we are going to have to see things get fucked up along the way.

Also starring some humans like Alexander Skarsgård, Brian Tyree Henry, Demián Bichir, Eiza González, Julian Dennison, Kaylee Hottle, Kyle Chandler, Lance Reddick, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall, and Shun Oguri.

Is this his “fuck around, find out” face?

Hey? Do you like monsters fighting? Then this film has some of that! Honestly, I did think there would be more fighting overall, so I am surprised that there wasn’t even more. But I guess only two main monsters can wail on each other for awhile. There are some minor monsters in the Hallow Earth area too, but they don’t do much for the action or the plot.

Of course the plot is weak. And again, I am disappointed about how much of it is based on the King of Monsters film, just because I hadn’t seen it. Literally any returning characters (outside of the giant ones) were from that movie. It did have some surprises in store, which helped keep things interesting. But at least early on, the slowness of the plot, and even the first battle, failed to keep things super interesting for me.

Now one major plus is that the fight scenes were all incredible visible and detailed, and I loved that. Giant monster fights and CGI have usually meant a lot of dark fights, or messy blurs, where your mind has to put in the action, but that only happened a little bit in the first major fight, due to the underwater aspect. The major fights that mattered where very clear and that added a huge amount of awesome to the film.

And what about the winner? Did the director lie? No. Not really. I can understand the moment they are saying that there would be clearly one winner, no takeaways. But we still had to fall into some similar versus film tropes that I also wanted out of my movie. From what the director said is the definitive answer, I agree with who was chosen, as it is the one that makes the most sense.  However, again, still, they make it super definitive either. It isn’t as final as I would have hoped based on the remarks, so really, the director remarks set up my expectations to be higher than they would have been otherwise.

Godzilla vs. Kong is still a lot of fun, especially in the last third. Just have to slog through the human stuff, and the early battles.

Chaos Walking is obviously not the only movie to be delayed recently, but it is notable that it was delayed before the Pandemic! It finished shooting in late 2017, but they announced it needed reshoots in mid 2018 due to people hating it, and they had to wait a whole year to do reshoots, thanks to the leads being in major franchises and having full schedules.

Then it was delayed March 2020, and you know the rest there.

It turns out this is based on a book, The Knife of Never Letting Go, in the Chaos Walking trilogy. I really like that title though. It reminds me of Never Let Me Go. And it puts the future of this trilogy into question. Too many YA novels have an issue where the trilogy name is used for the first book, meaning future books/films have awkward naming conventions. And for this, they used the trilogy name instead of the book name.

Huh. Interesting. Okay. Well, future movie’s will worry about that issue then, if they get any.

Okay, this is Chaos Running actually.

Todd (Tom Holland) is just a kid living a world that has gotten pretty fucked over. First of all, no women! Boooo. Second of all, only men! Boooo!

Now this world isn’t our world, it is New World. And at some point a virus came and killed everyone on it called The Noise. The Noise was fatal to women, and for men it just made it so their inner thoughts were all audible to those around them, and creating a visible cloud around their head. Also there is some alien stuff.

Todd is set to being a new warrior or scout or whatever, as he gets older and learns to better control his thoughts. But then he discovers a crash landing on his planet and finds, a girl?! Viola (Daisy Ridley) and a crew crashed down, not good, but she is the only survivor, and they have no clue about this Noise stuff.

And a few plot shenanigans later, Todd and Viola are on the run from his city, who want to capture the girl, and look up settlements that are rumored to exist, even though Todd thought he was in the only real community left in the world.

Also starring Demián Bichir, David Oyelowo, Kurt Sutter, Cynthia Erivo, Mads Mikkelsen, Nick Jonas, and Bethany Anne Lind.

No, he is not thinking of the movie The Color Purple. 

Jeez, I wonder what they changes with this version versus their initial version? I hope it wasn’t adding in MORE ACTION because honestly, that was one of their weaker points. The action, and fighting, especially near the end. I was a much bigger fan of the drama and suspense before that. You can have a big fight between communities without needing to bog us down in the fighting.

I am not anti violence, it just felt like a lot more at the end versus any point earlier, even if the threat was already there. I was more curious about the mystery, and the aliens, and the virus, all of that, and it just never delved enough for me.

The acting is fine, but for a movie with stars like that, this is not good enough.  I do think Bachir probably did the best of the bunch, but he was also limited in his role.

This is supposed to be a fantastic book and trilogy, and honestly at this point, I can’t see how the book would be good for me. I feel like the movie not really being great, while also telling me about the secrets (unless they are different) would ruin the appeal of the book and I have no reason at all to seek it out. I certainly don’t read everything, and I try not to read things before movie adaptations, but I do get quite annoyed when a movie takes away my desire to ever read the story.

A potentially riveting plot line that is ruined with mediocrity and forgettableness.

Robin Wright is someone who has had a spectacular resurgence over the last decade and not enough people are giving it credit. Everyone mentions the McConaissance, but what about the Wright Stuff? No that is bad, sorry.

Okay, in the McConaissance, Matthew was in notably a lot of rom coms and became a good actor suddenly with a string of films, so we were like, “Oh! Where have you been this whole time?!” and then he won an award, probably. I don’t remember.

For Robin Wright, it was more of a “Oh, where have you been this whole time?” because despite being in things most of her career, she has felt a bit more unnoticeable since Forrest Gump. That was until House of Cards put her back on the radar, and with big roles there, and Wonder Woman, and Blade Runner 2049, she is back. So after all this time what does she wants to do? She wants to direct and star in a movie damn it. And that movie is Land. And it isn’t even based on a book.

Just a woman and her own private cabin and mounain.

Edee (Robin Wright) is tired of all the shit. You know. The social media. The news cycle. Going to work. Grocery stores. Doggy day cares. Minimum wage. Maximum wage. Racism. Electric stoves. Theme parks. Museums. War. Famine. Movies being made about Dracula. Literally all of the shit, she is tired of it, and she has decided to get away.

Full stop, no contact, she now is going to live at this tiny little cabin on a mountain deep, deep in the woods. She has brought no money, no tech, nothing but clothes to help her. She is going to live off the land (movie name!), hunt, and sleep on her own. And if it kills her, it kills her, but she is going to make a real good try of it. Why did she decide this? Well, wait until the end of the movie for that.

And despite wanting to be alone, she does have someone to help her, eventually, after saving her life. Miguel (Demián Bichir), who actually knows hunting and survival skills, can’t just leave her there to die. So he agrees to help her out and he agrees to her rules. No news about the world. Just some lessons for a season, and then off he goes.

Also starring Sarah Dawn Pledge and Kim Dickens.

Learning is great, especially when it keeps you from not dying.

Wright is a lovely actress and a strong actress. She has been doing this for a long time. And it shows. She is very strong in this as well and open. We see her at some very low moments in this characters story, and she bears it all to get those emotions across to the viewers. She is wonderful in this. 

But it is not enough to carry the movie for me.

 The entire movie it just feels like we are being teased info that we know they will tell us eventually. Why did she run away from life? What happened in her past? We get snippets, but we don’t get the real reason until the last few minutes of the movie. And it is a brief story, and honestly, I think at that point it would have been better to have kept it a mystery. 

Like, if you wait until the end of the movie, I expect something very dark, or unimaginable, because she changed her whole life, and damn it, we weren’t told why. It would be hard to live up to those expectations. And almost would have been better to keep it a secret, very true to her recluse lifestyle. It makes sense why we found out from the plot, and it involves growth, but by then I care a little less.

As for the rest of the movie, like I said, it has a lot of strong acting, but the story is certainly weak in the middle. The plot can be summarized as someone goes to the woods, they struggle, they struggle a lot more, they are saved, they learn, they thrive, and life is good. I know most films can be broken down into ridiculous ways like that one, but damn it, I wanted something more.