Avengers: Infinity War

Was it a great movie? I wouldn't say it was some grand masterpiece. It had so many plot-lines going and and loads of characters and you could sort of feel that they tried to cram as many of them in there as physically possible. Also it seemed they tried to film this around actors and their schedules. There are so many famous and great actors in this film and they can't possibly all be in the same place at the same time so it seemed that they were trying to keep that in mind while filming. That might not have even been the case, but it certainly felt and seemed that way.

Spoilers ahead!

The storyline wasn't anything amazingly unique either, but the story was comprehensible despite the many plot-lines and characters. Some things, such as Thanos killing his daughter were so utterly predictable he might have as well carelessly thrown her off the cliff for comedic effect. Yes, they wanted to show he did really love her, but we sort of get that from what we're shown before and we all knew he was going to do it.

I loved the ending. It was totally unexpected for me. I doubt Marvel will actually kill off half of its characters in the MCU, so the stakes aren't as high as they may seem, but it was a good, bold ending and I liked it. I've longed for a film where the villain wins plenty of times. Honestly, I really loved the film too. These are the characters I know (well, most of them at least, I haven't seen all of the previous films) and some of whom, I love. I felt good coming out of the cinema. I thought about this film days later and really, what more could you ask for?

Shape of Water

This is the best film of the year? Are you sure academy?

Okay. Maybe I didn't like it, because I had very high expectations. It was a bit of a sci-fi film that won an Oscar. So surely I would like it, right? No. It wasn't a bad film. I'm not saying that. I'm saying I didn't like it.
There were a few things I liked:

• the look of things. The aesthetic, the colours, was mostly pleasing. It looked nice and artsy.
• the ending. For a moment I thought it won an Oscar, because everyone dies in it and hence it's art.

And that's it.  So the bad stuff:

• The characters were pretty one-dimesional. I mean Elisa was okay, but she wasn't hugely interesting. The bad guy. We get it. He's  awful. He has no redeeming qualities. You don't have to keep hammering it in every damn second. You don't have to show him practically raping his wife. He's a psycho. Okay. I get it. 
• Everything was so predictable. Really. I could tell the Bad Guy was going to hit on Elisa. I could tell writing your plans in the calendar was a bad idea. I could tell everything down to the bloody jumpscares! It was almost more predictable the average superhero film. But those are fun at least. 
• It was gross. That sounds juvenile, but I don' t want to expose myself to things that make me sick. From the eating of a cat's head (although I didn't see that one coming. Well, I was praying it wouldn't come) to the rotting fingers. Did I really need to see all that? Because honestly some of it is haunting me and not in a good way.

I, Tonya

Wow. I've seen a lot of films recently I haven't added here. This, I loved. It is so worth seeing. I love the storytelling, the way they show the perspectives of different characters and tell the story from different sides. I wish they had mixed it with documentary frames, but other than that it was great. Margot Robbie was amazing in it too.

Coco

Pixar knows it's movies. Pixar also knows how to make people cry, how to touch their hearts and move them, better than many non-animated movies.

The plot isn't all that unpredictable, in fact I was sure of several key elements and many others I guessed might happen and yet still it is a good story. I like that the used Mexican folklore? beliefs? as the basis of this and went and built their world on that. It was cool and refreshing, yet I had so many questions like, if the whole, going to the living world works on the premise of photos being put out then

• How did their crossing to the living world system work before photography? 
• What about people of whom there are no photos? Surely they are not all forgotten?
•  Do paintings work? But there are mostly only paintings of rich people, weren't there? In the older days?
• How come the whole family hates music so much? I understand the reasons originally, but Coco's great-grandchildren? How were all except one so well persuaded?
• If Coco remembered and loved his father all along. it seems a biiit unlikely he never told ANYONE of him, but okay

But that aside it was really touching, a cool premise, cool universe and designs. Even if you'll know how the story ends, it's easy to still get involved and there were some surprises even for me.

Better tomorrow than today

PÖFF post


As much as I try to avoid seeing depressing stuff at PÖFF I didn't this time manage. Well,  as far as depressing human dramas about teenage girls go this one was pretty good. I'm just honestly not sure if I liked it more, because it was good or because it was Korean and I enjoy anything from these parts of Asia more.

It didn't depress me terribly, but neither was it fun. Neither was it boring, stuff happened and I was reasonably engaged even if I didn't like any of the characters a whole lot. There were some nice ones. There were some I hated. One in particular. The mother. The dad and his family were very nice. It was okay. I liked how the main character had a very consistent clothing style and I liked the insight into this part of Korean life, education and problems. Provided it was realistic. Which it seemed to be, but then again Estonian life always seems more depressing in Estonian cinema, so who knows.

King Cnut

PÖFF post

This film is absolutely brilliant.  I saw it as part of PÖFF, but if you have the chance to see it -  Go for it. It easily the best documentary I have ever seen. I like the Fashion Cinema programme at PÖFF anyways and I like this sort of classic fashion cinema documentaries too, but this was something totally different and man was it wonderful. I liked the topic of copyright  laws and parodying itself, but the fact that it's sort of a comedy documentary makes it so unique and wonderful. Those are not the two things you'd think to combine easily.

I think the storytelling was amazing. To the point where I started to almost wonder if they manipulated the truth to get a more captivating narrative. It was fantastic, fun, clever and everything wrapped up really nicely. It is a classic David and Goliath story and man was it satisfying. One man goes against a giant corporation in his own unique, witty and clever way and doesn't completely fail. Justice prevails! More or less.

Also, to look at this critically - it's a hell of a good advertising for his clothing brand.

But really, it was awesome and it was great to have the main character (you can't really call him an actor when it's a documentary) and the director there as well.

Mother!

Well, let me tell you - if you like close-ups of Jennifer Lawrence you will love this film. I like Jennifer Lawrence rather a lot, but I must admit the constant close-ups gave me a bit of headache.

Otherwise I loved the aesthetics of this movie. I generally don't like it when all people talk about after seeing a movie are the clothes the people wore or the rooms and landscapes it was all filmed in, but I loved the fact that this film had a very constant colour theme that was really noticable and cool. I liked that the main character had a very distinct style of clothing, despite the fact that it didn't fall under any pre-established style category. I mean that she wasn't a goth or something similar. Her clothes were very casual, but she still had a style.

I also liked the effects, they were very - effective and different from any I had seen. Visually the film was very very pleasing. 

Did I actually like the film as a whole now? I think I did. Maybe. The story wasn't too pleasant and if it hadn't been told so beautifully and visually I wouldn't have liked it. It had some metaphors and sub-text and hidden meanings into it, but they were very unclear and difficult to decode. You might think that's the point, but with some movies its very easy to think of things that the author might have meant. Here, you wonder of they tried too hard.

i liked the ending, it was satisfying, but I think, once again, more visually, than story-wise