Tag: Emily Mortimer

54 years has to be some sort of record when it comes to having a sequel for your movie. I am talking about movies that have never been rebooted, or turned into an animated series, or given sequels decades ago but here is another one to ignore the rest, or a prequel in a different format. And you know, a sequel, done by the same company who has always owned those rights.

When they first announced Mary Poppins Returns, with the main leads, I was actually excited. Blunt killed it in Into The Woods, and her look could clearly pull off the same character. And of course Miranda is amazing in everything and could handle the goofy singing and dancing sidekick.

But I did quickly forget about it, and haven’t really cared about it coming out since the announcement. The idea seems swell, but maybe the real world is too annoying and dark for me to really escape for two hours and watch British kids learn to use their imagination or whatever.

And British adults learn their imagination never really left.

Many years ago, Mary Poppins magically appeared and fixed a family, then flew off, never to be seen again.

Until now. Decades later. Same neighborhood, house, and…family? Michael Banks (Ben Whishaw) and his sister, Jane (Emily Mortimer) are now older. Ben is living in the same house, with his three kids (Pixie Davies, Nathanael Saleh, Joel Dawson) and Jane has her own flat, but she is around frequently to help out. Michael was married, but she died, and this has put a big strain on their house. Finances are bad for that reason, but also because the whole neighborhood is in a financial crisis, of which it is hard to even find work.

So things are kind of shitty, and you know what, the bank is going to reposess their home probably. That means bye bye childhood, hello sadness and stress. They need help. And the kids aren’t being kids, they are just acting like tiny adults. Boo!

We need Mary Poppins (Emily Blunt) to return! And with the help of her new compadre, a fast talking lamp lighter Jack (Lin-Manuel Miranda), they will get the damn job done.

Also starring Julie Walters, Meryl Streep, Colin Firth, Jeremy Swift, Noma Dumezweni, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Dick Van Dyke, Angela Lansbury, Jim Norton, and David Warner.

Jumping into the pits of hell is a unique twist in this film.

Mary Poppins Returns is an unrelentingly optimistic look at life, sorrow, and pulling yourself up by the goddamn bootstraps to make yourself smile.

Something sad? Fuck your sadness, let’s get happy!

This movie felt a bit weirder, as there is a notable “villain” character, while the problems of the first film seemed to just deal more with priorities and not being family enough. This is a fine family in terms of love, just they have lost their way, and also, someone is out to get them. I don’t think it needed to be so mean spirited for a Poppins movie.

For the songs, there is only one song I really loved, which was A Cover Is Not The Book. And it is definitely a song I like more with the video, and not just the song. Most of the other ones just feel adequate, or extra. A fair number of reprises for the songs is a good use of their time at least. I absolutely hated the Streep song and the whole scene. It was a one off just to get her in there and act silly, and clearly it is a reference to the first film, but also, it did nothing for me.

This film relies heavily on nostalgia to sell. We have various versions/scenes that are clearly just throwbacks to the first film, to have similar antics, and that is more lazy than exciting. Because of better special effects, everything is a lot more polished, and thus feels a bit more fake when it comes to the more spectacular dance scenes. When we have the lamp lighter army doing their song and dance (because the last film did it with chimney sweeps), it just felt too cut heavy and small, like you could see the size of the set and didn’t pull me in.

It should be noted, that Blunt and Miranda still knocked it out of the park, and they are reason enough to see it. This is the film you want if you just need to smile and have a pick me up in these times of misery. It isn’t the best film, it won’t probably change any lives, but it can be a good escape, despite its issues.

Hugo won the award this year for “Most Nominations at the Oscars”. Fuck you, its a thing. They only won 5 of the 11 though, and all for the unimportant things like Sound Editing and Sound Mixing (This is where the Sound Editor and Sound Mixing people tell me to eat a bag of dicks, and then storm off into the night).

Which is surprising. Usually that movie that has the most nominations seems to be a shoe-in for winning Best Picture. But it didn’t. But why? Here’s what I think.

The people who choose who wins are not children. Just kidding. Its true, but thats not why. CALM DOWN READER.

Story is a weird one to describe (That’s why!) so here is an attempt. Hugo (Asa Butterfield) is an orphan boy who lives in a train station in France. His father was a clock maker, made him love movies and such, then died in a museum fire. He was taken in by his uncle, a lame watch maker, and taught to run to the clocks in the station / main bell tower, and then the uncle disappeared. So now on his own, he has decided to live in the train station in secret, work the clocks, and fend for himself.

There is also an automaton/music box thing that he believes belonged to his dad, so he is trying to repair it by stealing knickknacks and repairing parts. Some people don’t like that, mainly the chief inspector of the railway (Sacha Baron Cohen) who hurt his leg in “the war” and Georges Méliès (Ben Kingsley) a toy shop owner. He also meets a girl who likes books, Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz) who is (Gasp!) the granddaughter of the mean toy shop owner. Boo!

I feel like I am giving away too much if I go further, although you still don’t know what it is about. This movie is about…movies, the birth of them. The first movies were all short, but one French dude made all these amazing sci-fi/fantasy epics, for the time. The stories were weak but they were imaginative at least, and had “magic trick” illusions thanks to nice editing. Some were even partially colored, thanks to painting the actual strips.

But most of these movies were lost thanks to the war, needing money and selling the strips for cash. Damn.

Also kind of based on the true story of the film guy, and his actual work is shown in the movie too. Emily Mortimer and Christopher Lee also have some small roles in the film too (small to me).

I’m saying the dog and the mustache were more important overall. In my eyes.

What’s good about this movie? A lot! This is like a fantastical world created from this movie, based off of a book. Which is based off of kind of true events. Minus the boy and stuff. But still. It looks amazing, if not also kind of fake at parts unfortunately. Acting was good, and by the end it felt like a great journey.

I think the problem people might have with it is figuring out what the movie is just about. An hour into it, you still really won’t know. It is hard to explain, because it takes awhile to get to the actual essence of the film. While watching I had to guess where it was going. My guesses were wrong because the clues given didn’t help at all.

So maybe direction could have been a bit better in my mind. And honestly, I felt bad for the Inspector from the first scene. He was supposed to be some mean guy, but never really showed off as that until later.

When I saw the poster for Lars and the Real Girl years ago I assumed it had to be some sort of joke. If not a joke, then some sort of horribad movie, that was on the levels of Epic Movie and other such trash. Some comedy where they have a guy buy a sex doll, and treat her like a real person? Go bowling with her maybe? That sounds stupid.

And it would have been. If it was a straight comedy “oh look at how silly that guy is!” type of thing. Instead it treats the subject way more seriously, involving social disorders, and a whole small christian town coming together to help one person.

You know. If that bitch Bianca would stop talking so loudly in Church.

Lars (Ryan Gosling) is a weird guy. He lives in the garage of his brother (Paul Schneider) and sister-in-law (Emily Mortimer). He tends to keep to himself, goes to work, rarely talks to the cubicle-mate, goes to church, sits in the back trying to not make a sound. Never goes to the parties that people throw, or special occasions. Work, church, home. Hell, despite Emily’s best efforts, most of the time he refuses to come eat meals with them. She really wants to break him out of his shell.

Well at work he finds out about the anatomically correct love dolls. Next thing you know, he is telling his family he has a girlfriend, who flew in from Brazil, but she doesn’t speak much English, and is in a wheel chair. They are excited! Sure she can stay in one of their rooms! Sure she can come to dinner. And yeah, Bianca the love doll.

They convince him to take her to a doctor, Patricia Clarkson, who also is a psychiatrist, who lets Lars know she has to come back every week, mostly so she can talk to Lars and work this stuff out. From his social disorder, she realizes no one could convince him that she isn’t real, so she makes the family go along with it. And this spreads to the church, work, and whole town. Perhaps most upset is Kelli Garner, who plays Margo, the office worker who really liked Lars, but not that he has a woman. If she looks familiar, it is because she was in Pan-Am, but that had 12~ episodes, so she probably doesn’t look familiar.

Soon the whole town is using Bianca, and she is volunteering at more and more places, with the help of Lars. Lars begins to come out of his shell, hold better conversations with people, even when Bianca is not around. But how will he cope when Bianca’s sickness turns deadly?

“This woman has no pulse!”

Overall, I was astounded at how good this movie was. The acting was phenomenal on all parts, and it seemed to capture the essence of a small Northern/mid-west Christian town. Or at least what I imagine what those are like from the movies.

This is years before Ryan Goslings more famous performances from 2011, Crazy Stupid Love, Drive, and The Ides Of March, yet it turns out he kicked ass back then too. A lot of his acting had to come from facial tics, and the way he spoke, but the whole time you felt bad for the guy and hoped he could eventually himself become a real man.

Our Idiot Brother, or “that movie where Paul Rudd has a beard and long hair” can somewhat be compared to Hesher.

Why? Because the main characters both have long hair, when normally they don’t have long hair. Outside of the head situation, movies are quite different though.

Also, Rudd wears nifty sweaters, while “Hesher” doesn’t own shirts.

The movie begins with Paul Rudd being PUT IN JAIL! For selling pot. But he is a friendly guy. He got out of jail pretty early. See, he isn’t an “idiot”. He just assumes the best out of everyone. Why would people want to screw him over?

Enter his sisters. Liz (Emily Mortimer), the oldest, married to Steve Coogan, a documentary maker. Then there is Miranda (Elizabeth Banks, who looks way too much like Parker Posey), writer for some sort of magazine! Has a neighbor too, Adam Scott, and she is very bossy. And last he has Zooey Deschanel, hippy sexual sister, living with like, seven roommates and currently lesbianing it up with Rashida Jones (who is the “more successful stern” lesbian).

After being released from prison, he is kicked out of his old home, and lives with the different members of his family. Of course while he does, he “Accidentally screws everything up” by doing the right thing, trying to make everyone happy, and believing other people to honest / not so cynical. So more or less, he is just a good free spirit, who doesn’t think the world is out to get him.

And that’s the movie. By the end they all love each other and have their lives fixed (and in better standing) than before, and then they do a giant disco party.

Hah! No disco party. Sorry. But here is Zooey and Rashida.

It was an enjoyable movie, but I thought it could have been a lot better. Not sure if I will ever watch it again, but glad I got to see it at least once. Paul was great in this role, pretty different than his normally “ahhh everything so stressful!” roles. His character does crack near the end, and it was great. The sisters all had good chemistry with each other and him, and it actually felt like a family.