Joy of Man's Desiring /Hitono nozomino yorokobiyo

Every now and then I'll see a movie and I can't write about it, because I'll feel like I'll ruin it, but I also want to write about it, because these are the films truly worth seeing. Japanese films are a tiny bit hard to come by, especially in cinemas in Europe, but if you can I recommend it very highly. It's a heavy piece, but it is also a truly moving and beautiful picture that's not such made sad and heavy for the sake of drawing tears out of the audience. I hate nothing more than cheap tricks used to play with the viewer's emotions.  This actually has a deeper meaning and perhaps this becomes much clearer to me having met the wonderful director Masakazu Suigita, but I like that for once a movie was made not just to make the audience weep, but because the topic had both a personal meaning to the author and that the author believed that his film could have social impact and help people understand feelings and grief perhaps a bit better. It feels like a rare thing to see a movie that wants to serve a social cause…
So to put my words in bit more context I should point out that the film is about two children who loose their parents in an Earthquake and about what happens in their lives after that. After having witnessed one Earthquake close by at a younger age and then another one bit further in 2011 Suigita decided to make a film both because of his own feelings and because he wanted to give something to the society to help them in long term. The outcome is stunning, emotional, powerful and utterly worth watching.

It's JAFF week here again so this movie screened here in the Japanese Animation Film Festival, despite not being an animation

Deadpool

★★★★★
I had incredibly high expectations for this movie and generally that tends to rather ruin things for me in the end, but in this case my high expectations were entirely - justified. I was perfectly happy with the movie I saw and there was practically nothing to complain about. I got both what I expected and a lot of things I didn't expect which is a marvelous thing.

So what I did expect was a movie with lots of funny jokes and puns and forth wall breaking all around. That did happen and rather well.

What I didn't expect was such a sad and rough and angsty backstory for Deadpool. I mean., I think the stories of superheros or anti-heros or - super-powered  people are usually rather light. They get bit by a radioactive spider and sure, maybe sometimes their loved ones die and there is some horrible over-the-top tragedy, but I think this particular story was more subtle and relatable in some ways. In others it was also a pretty horrific one with proper horrifying horror film elements.

I also might have not expected quite that much swearing, but I didn't mind. It was mostly puns and some of the swears were actually quite clever and not like the old worn out fuck, fuck, fuck spiced with a healthy doze of motherfucker.

I also liked the ending. It was nice, reasonable and happy, but not in a corny stupid way. Well... maybe a little, but I liked it none the less. The titles on their own were worth a see! So go see it!

Hateful Eight

★★★★☆ (personal opinion)
I'm not even sure what to say about this one. It's a Quentin Tarantino movie. That's exactly what it was and there's no better way of summarizing it. If you like his other stuff you will in all likelihood like this one. If you were hoping for a 180 in his style you might as well keep hoping. I generally like his stuff, I have to say I like Pulp Fiction better and I think Inglorious Bastards also left a stronger impression on me. I fairly enjoyed this film, because I knew what to expect and could just sit back, relax and watch the weird graphic show unfold.
So lets make a list:

Ridiculously,theatrical, almost hilarious blood baths with red pools everywhere - ✓

Lavish use of the N - word - ✓

Long seemingly deep dialogues that are really, in all likelihood just a bunch of nonsense  - ✓

Bastards getting shot - ✓

An incredibly gross over the top scene that no one really wanted to see, but that I did see coming by now - ✓

Spoilers!

I pretty much disliked most of the characters so it was a really nice refreshing ending to have them all die. The only people I actually liked were Minnie, who looked surprisingly exactly as I expected her to look after all other characters had spoken of her without really mentioning her appearance, I also liked Judy and Gemma and maybe, I even liked Daisy a tiny tiny bit. So maybe I liked all the female characters. I liked Pete up to a point, but maybe it was just because he was so British next to all the Americans who were being - very American.

Joy

I decided I want to give stars. For now. 

★★★☆☆

When a movie is called "Joy" and it's not a Pixar or a Disney movie or in general something for children you might as well bet it's not going to be anything joyous. In fact you might even think of the title as sarcasm. But in the current case Joy is the name of the main character, portrayed by the lovely Jennifer Lawrence. She has the life of a Cinderella, every single person in her life, besides her grandmother, seems to use her, take advantage of her kindness, treat her unfairly and lack faith her.

Spoilers ahead

The only thing that changes this story from a Cinderella one os that there is no prince to go after, no fairy godmother to help, if you don't count the grandmother the woman has to handle things on her own. What could and probably should be an inspirational feministic story of a woman working her way up the business ladder ends up feeling me rather depressed. Yes, she succeeded after a lifelong of battling and having been put down by everyone, but all I can think about was how unfair her life was to begin with. Even the happy ending doesn't seem all that happy to me. Yes, she's a big boss now and she managed to maintain her humanity and kind personality, but in the tough business world of America - can she ever really be at peace?


The story is based on the stories of real women and that is it's strongest point. It is depressing and watching it didn't make me feel good, but at least the film was realistic. It was real to the end and Joy is kind and smart and clever. There are a couple of charming characters too, next to the terrible father and evil sister there is a kind girlfriend and a sweet ex-husband. It's not my favorite movie, but it might still be a good one.

The Ghost mountaineer - Must alpinist

English (Peaks eesti filmile ikka mingi hetk eesti keelse arvustuse ka tegema/I should do Estonian at one point as it's an Estonian film)

Estonian films have really gone a long way in the recent years - whereas in my teen years every Estonian film was a drama about drugs, sex, violence and spoiled youth mixed in with every kind of swear words imaginable now we are beginning to have interesting captivating stories that aren't all the same and there is even a variety of different genres! Truth to be told - Estonian films weren't always bad, quite the opposite, there are some pretty cool and solid films made before I was born, but somehow there was a serious downfall when I was young.

This was the first time I've seen an Estomian horror film before and I loved this one! I've voiced it before how I always seem to care more for those stories that are based off real life and what's scarier than a horror film based on real life events? Some foreign critics have claimed that this movie is kind of stuck between genres - not quite horror, but not quite thriller or mystery either. I would argue that real life is never of one genre and that only adds believability to the whole plot. I think the mixing of genres made the film more layered and interesting. The dream sequences were cool and added that element of horror while the fact that they were just dreams meant that the whole thing was still believable. It was a great movie with some of the horror added by the realization of  how scary the Soviet times really could be once you accidentally got in the way of authority. There was constant suspense and thrill.

I also feel the need to voice my stance about whether Priit Pius looks more like Benedict Cumberbatch or Matt Damon. Seeing as that has become a real question with the help of foreign critics. I'm not sure about Matt Damon, but from certain angles he does indeed look like Benedict a bit. Well decide for yourself

Priit Pius

Benedict Cumberbatch

007: Spectre

I'm kind of embarrassed to write this, but I have never seen a Bond movie. There was a time when all of them where showing on an Estonian channel, once a week and I was pretty determined to check them out and I did start watching them, but I am not sure that I ever got all the way with any of them. Not because they were boring or unbearable to watch - they seemed okay, but something always came up. So now I decided to finally go ahead and see one - to be honest it was mostly because I found out Andrew Scott was in it.

But I did think I should maybe love it. I've always liked detectives, secret agents, that kind of thing. I know about Bond, I know the characters, I know some of the names of the movies, I know the tropes. I even know (and love) some of the soundtracks so obviously this wasn't some hugely unexpected experience for me even if I haven't seen any Bond films. In fact it was pretty much what I expected.

It was okay. I didn't hate it, didn't love it, didn't even really like it that much, for instance I liked Kingsman much better, but this left me with very little feeling and I began to wonder why and eventually came to a conclusion: Maybe I don't like spy movies, maybe I just like films about the sort of friendships these films have. Bond is a loner. Yes, he has a team - Q and M and Moneypenny, but they don't go on cases with him and in that particular movie at least he was kind of a jerk taking advantage of all of their friendships, just using them. Bringing a Sherlock Holmes parallel (cause I'm good at those) It's a bit like Sherlock with Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade, but without Watson. Every cool agent or any character I've liked always has at least one close friendship and yes - Bond has Bond girls, but I have a problem with them too. Those relationships are shallow. I get it. They are Bond girls, they are meant to fall into James's arms, but that doesn't make them any more realistic. I actually expected to like the Bond girl in this one, because she seemed to independent and not just about to fall into Bond's arms. Aaand then she did. Just. like. that. "What are we going to do now? Make out? Oh okay."  This is just how it went and honestly the whole romance just felt fake.

Things I did like - Q. He seemed like a cute underrated character. I also liked C. It was hard to see it as anything else than Moriarty in a Bond movie, but they I liked that too.

Hunger Games - The last part

I've always liked the Hunger Games films. Even before reading the books, but afterwards I always enjoyed the very accurate portrayal of the books. However going into this I had an unpleasant surprise - I no longer remembered that much of the books! Another un-pleasantry was the cinema's projector breaking, while the staff was very nice making sure it got working again I'm still pretty sure I missed a good 10 minutes somewhere.
From what I remembered it was perfectly accurate, from what I asked of friends it was too. I think I missed some of Katniss's inner thoughts from the book most from this. The ending in the movie had a completely different feel to it than the ending in the book for me, even if it was the exact same ending.

I loved the scenes with Peeta explaining the way his mind gets muddled and the others offering him a way to cope with the "true, not true" method. That felt believable. Peeta voicing his thoughts generally felt more believable than Katniss doing it. Maybe because Peeta is the sort of more emotional character from whom you might expected speaking about their emotions like that, with Katniss it just felt like they had no better way of narrating the inner thoughts in the book.

Which brings me to Gale - what the hell happened to Gale? He wasn't this bad in the books, was he? I felt like the only reason they made him kind of mean in the movie was because otherwise it would feel like Katniss was only settling for Peeta, but the thing is - for me it always felt like she did. So that felt like cheating.

Effie is my favorite character and it's always a bit of a shock that she does survive! I love her outfits above all, but I really missed the scene where she is captured for stealing bread. For one I think it was a great way to show that the District 13 was really not that much of a better place than the capitol and two - hey - it had Effie. That's a reason to have any scene.
Those were my thoughts.