Tag: Juliette Binoche

Ghost in the Shell came out a whole year ago, March in 2017. The oldest film on my list of things I should have totally seen last year. And reviewed. And this time there are just no excuses.

I mean, it came out on DVD and Redbox in the summer. Plenty of time to catch up to it. The only reason I didn’t see it was straight up apathy.

I didn’t see the original anime, but the controversy behind it makes sense. Good old white girl playing an incredibly Japanese role. Well, she is a robot, but that barely makes it okay. I went into this film not too stoked, but hey, maybe it is pretty.

This is the strange robot nakedness that gets certain jollies off.

In the future (!), humans have started to add robot parts to their bodies. Or special programs. Things to make them stronger, smarter, better eye sight, whatever. Normal helpful things. But one corporation decided to go further. They made an entirely awesome robot body, all the strongest best technologies. They just need a human brain to put inside of it to make it work.

Mira Killian (Scarlett Johansson) is almost killed in some cyber terrorist attack, her body mangled beyond repair, but she is still alive. Heck, her parents were killed in the same attack. So Dr. Ouelet (Juliette Binoche) think she is a perfect subject to put into the shell, to keep her alive.

And they can’t just let anyone be in this fucking amazing body. They decide to make her part of the counter-terrorism force. To hunt down crime and put a stop to it with her sexy robotic body. Basically, a sexy RoboCop.

Anyways, Mira doesn’t remember a lot about her past. But she is now going against a hacker with her small team, so you know she is totally going to get mind fucked.

Also starring Pilou Asbæk, Takeshi Kitano, Michael Pitt, Chin Han, and Peter Ferdinando.

Sort of hard to find an actual Japanese element in this film at times.

Sure, yeah, Ghost in the Shell is a pretty film. Not like gorgeous as fuck, like Blade Runner 2049, but not ugly either. Instead, it is mostly just a mass of CGI and lights and technology. It is technically pretty, but it feels empty. Like…like a shell of a movie.

In terms of plot, it is very hard to follow and specific. It is certainly not entertaining. It feels like a goddamn chore to get through it. I obviously watched it in the comfort of my home, so I was able to pause it and do other things multiple times, because I didn’t want to just pass out throughout the whole film.

I wanted to sleep during the movie, but I knew I needed to know how bad and pointless it was.

Another film that wants to be deep, most likely shitting on the source material all the way through it, and just feeling like a waste of time. How much of a waste of time? Well, less than two hours thankfully. But this film is a travesty to science fiction.

The 2010 Chilean mining accident is a wonderful topic for a movie. I am surprised it took them five years in fact.

It was a national event, it lasted months, it involved dozens of people (33 to be exact), and it had a happy ending.

Imagine if they opened the hole and it was a few guys surrounded by corpses. That’d be terrifying. That would be a different sort of movie, not at all uplifting.

So I am going into The 33 with optimism. I hope they get buried within like, the first 10 minutes too. Let them build up that scare factor just a bit.

Besides, the last movie I saw set in Chile that involved a huge disaster and trying to survive was Aftershock. That wasn’t uplifting, well, besides the tectonic plates.

Seeing all those sweaty food deprived bodies could also be considered uplifting.

12,000 miners die every year. That is a big number. But, at least 9 million kids under 5 die every year, and that is only one portion of minors. So it is much more dangerous to be a minor than a miner. I assume.

Well, in this case, the miners were going down on a normal day, just to get the copper and gold. They use relatively small crews, I guess to not upset the mountain too much with the drills and other equipment. This particular mountain has been mined heavily and they are very deep into it. Mario Sepúlveda (Antonio Banderas) needs some extra money, so he is working too, despite not originally on the schedule. And guess what? Not long after they are down there and working, the mountain begins to move. Now, a super rock is blocking their only exit and they are trapped in a relatively small area. They have a hall way or two, and thankfully they are in The Refuge, a room with some food and supplies. But still, it is quite dangerous and scary down there.

The food supplies are not plentiful. The company lied about a few safety measures as well, making escape impossible. And the company isn’t even going to do anything about it! They are a private company, so they are doing the bare minimum, but they aren’t even letting the friends and family members enter the area, as they are blocked off by gates and people with guns.

Thankfully, María Segovia (Juliette Binoche) is not having any of their shit. She is the sister of one of the miners and she basically helps frenzy them into a riot, creating pressure on the government and company to attempt the rescue mission. This brings the Minister of Mining, Laurence Golborne (Rodrigo Santoro) down to the scene. He is moved by everyone’s committment and he promises to do everything he can to rescue the miners, no matter the cost.

Sure they only have 3 days of food for 3 people and it would take at least a week to get a small hole somewhere into their area. And they also have no idea how to get to the right spot, due to the density of the stone being unknown and their drills will curve. But damn it, they gotta try, right?

Obviously with so many minors, we have a huge cast. But most of the minors have no talking roles. But the people they do showcase have families worried about them or other unusual characteristics. And a lot of people helping, including Bob Gunton playing President Piñera. These people are played by Mario Casas, Juan Pablo Raba, Oscar Nuñez, Tenoch Huerta, Marco Treviño, Jacob Vargas, Lou Diamond Phillips, James Brolin, Adriana Barraza, Kate del Castillo, Elizabeth De Razzo, Cote de Pablo, and Gabriel Byrne.

Count them. They don’t even try to make the number of characters accurate.

Did I cry? Of course I cried. They had beautiful tense moments of rescue. They had people who hadn’t seen each other for 69 days, who had assumed their loved ones died, reconnecting. Someone had a baby girl, and you know how they affect me. But just because I cried doesn’t mean it is an excellent film.

First of all, when your title is The 33 and it is a well known fact that there are 33 people, you should probably have all the many extras around who don’t talk when the whole group is together. That dinner scene is unacceptable. Didn’t even have people standing to the side having their own conversation.

Second of all, there is geology in this movie. Not a lot, technically. But there was the big “eureka” moment with how they would get the drill to the correct area. And it was terrible. I cannot believe that is how it really happened, because it would mean all of the drilling crews were inept.

But there were some nice moments of course. Banderas gives an excellent speech or two that really get me going. The scene where they imagined food was super weird. And they really felt like coworkers and a family by the end.

Slightly inspirational without shoving it in your face, and a nice tail. Just those inaccuracies.

Today I review a movie called Words and Pictures, which are the exact two things that make up my reviews.

For all intents and purposes, that is also probably the best sentence in this review, so you might as well stop reading these words and looking at these pictures now.

“Oh shit they kiss? But they are such rivals throughout the film! Why would you spoil that?!” – GorgView reader.

Somewhere in the North Eastern part of the USA lies a high school where people have to wear uniforms and is somewhat special. How special? I dunno. Special enough to feature two teachers who work there. One is Jack Marcus (Clive Owen) who teaches English, is an author, and an alcoholic. He hasn’t written in awhile, is late a bunch, and thinks his students don’t care anymore. He also has an estranged relationship with his son (Harrison MacDonald).

But we have a new teacher at the school! Dina Delsanto (Juliette Binoche), a famous artist from NYC who is moving here to teach advanced art instead. Why? Because she got that rheumatoid arthritis, so making great art that she is used to kind of sucks. She is also a mean lady, for that reason.

They butt heads and argue, but also flirt kind of. They set off a war at the school, debating which is more important, words or pictures. Mostly because Jack is trying to save his job and remain relevant, and Dina is the type who always wants to win.

Also starring some people as teachers (Bruce Davison, Navid Negahban, Keegan Connor Tracy) and some students who have a plot line in this movie too (Valerie Tian, Josh Ssettuba, Adam DiMarco).

It only takes about ten minutes I think for a Dead Poets Society reference.

Hearing about the plot, I thought the movie might be okay. It sounds like a terrible competition, especially since I knew it would involve high school students, which are like non cool college students. Speaking of high school students, the side plots involving the girl and the guy were kind of terrible. It was awkward to watch, even more awkward at how people reacted to it, and took away from our leads. So it kind of just made the movie overall weaker for having basically all of it go down. In my reviewing opinion of course.

Owen and Binoche however do fantastic at their roles. Owen has an advantage, where he was given an really charismatic character to work with (After all, he knows a lot of words in the English language and loves to use them), so he was incredibly entertaining to watch. Binoche seemed to have real chemistry as well. Very real feeling characters.

But at the same time, this felt like a pseudo-intellectual euro-trash movie, that thought it was better than everyone else, while not really ever elevating its game. Just because it is set in an elite setting, doesn’t mean it is an elite movie.

Good acting, kind of shitty plot. Okay for a watch, then probably wont see it again.