Fantasy

dir: C.J. ‘Fiery’ Obasi

2023

I was not sure what this flick was going to be like, or what it was about, knowing nothing about it. But now I’ve watched it, and presumably that means I know something about it and have a relevant, informed opinion.

Well. I’m not sure how much I have to say about a flick set contemporarily, shot in black and white, that’s really about matrilineal matriarchal monarchies. I mean, I guess they’re better than the alternatives, but they’re still not a decent form of government.

I have to say “in general”, because I would be taking the piss if I implied that the point of the film is that we should all be living in matrilineal, matriarchal monarchies.

This film is just saying that, for these people, of the Iyi village, they need to keep being ruled by a matriarch, because of their connection to Mami Wata, who is a benevolent water spirit / deity who looks after them, thanks to their connection through their Intermediary.

Their Intermediary, sort of like a cross between a priestess and a conduit for Mami Wata’s will, is Mama Efe (Rita Edochie).

While the people believe in Mami Wata, and her earthly ambassador, they give of their bounty to her, out of respect, out of fear, to earn favour. Lots of reasons. And she in turn does…

She does stuff. She is regal, her belief is unwavering, and she does all the rituals they all love. She plays the hits, so to speak.

dir: Yorgos Lanthimos

2023

I remember being amazed at the success of Yorgos Lanthimos several years ago when The Favourite became so feted and popular, getting all the awards and plaudits and … does anyone even remember The Favourite now? I mean, sure, it only came out in 2018, but that feels like a hundred years ago now.

I guess what I found so surprising is that all the weird goofiness of how Lanthimos puts his films together wasn’t enough to dissuade audiences or lose Olivia Colman an Oscar for Best Actress.

And if anyone thinks the path of an idiosyncratic director is to become less idiosyncratic as the budgets get bigger and the casts more A-List, well, I don’t think that’s the path he’s on at the moment. If anything…

Poor Things, if it was watched by a lot of people last year, and if it’s watched by more people on streaming etc this year, will be one of the weirdest flicks many people have seen in a good long while. And that’s not just the subject matter or the frequent uses of fish eye anamorphic lenses that make certain scenes look like they were filmed through someone’s front door peephole.

Maybe there’s a bit lifted from Frankenstein, but I don’t think thematically it has as much in common, at all. Man’s hubris in seeking to be like God by creating life is not questioned here; there’s no cautionary aspect. Our creation here, being Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), is not the monster, even if her creation is a ghastly act of unholy Science run amok.

It’s based on a book, by Alisdair Gray, which I have not read, but looking at the list of books he’s written, he seems like an absolute Scottish legend, and I’d be more than curious to read the one this is based on, as well as the others.

I think the only acknowledgement they make of the story’s Scottish origins is the appallingly inconsistent attempt at a Scottish accent that Willem Dafoe assays playing the character of God(win) Baxter, Bella’s creator. It’s like he starts a sentence and then towards the end of it remembers “oh yeah, I’m meant to be doing an accent” and then throws a big of a brogue over the last syllables. It’s so comical that I couldn’t even tell if it was deliberate on the director’s part, or whether he just gave up.

dir: Greta Gerwig

2023

It’s a testament to either the surprising quality of this flick, or the extent of my gullibility, that I actually found myself enjoying this flick despite myself. Well, not despite myself, that sounds like I went in not wanting to like it (like a lot of male critics seemed to make a point of in all their reviews).

Maybe because I’m secure enough in myself, or maybe the content of big budget flicks rarely has anything to do with my emotional state, but for whatever reasons I, as a man, enjoyed this strange movie and didn’t in any way feel like it diminished my inherent awesomeness or took anything away from me, including any of the additional 28 cents per dollar I am usually paid compared to my nearest female equivalent.

Radical, I know. If I had any misgivings about this flick it’s that with people like Noah Baumbach and the actual director, Greta Gerwig involved, it could have made for a horrible experience (for me).

Last time they collaborated, the flick was called White Noise, and it was based on a Don DeLillo novel, and it was a horrible time inflicted on everyone, at nearly three hours as well, and I’m still mad about it.

I had no idea what they were going to do here, but whatever it actually is, it worked for me.

I have already diminished Gerwig’s work here unintentionally: I’m not implying Baumbach secretly wrote or directed anything – she’s plenty talented enough to have already directed a bunch of flicks. They are partners in real life too, so there’s nothing unlikely about them being able to collaborate in the truest sense of the word – incorporating some ideas, discarding others because they might not gel properly.

I have no idea what thought process they went through putting this frankly bizarre film and cultural phenomenon together. I don’t think it was ever guaranteed that this flick was going to succeed as it has, because I don’t think even the most drug addled executives at Mattel or Warner Brothers could have imagined it was going to literally make billions of dollars.

People who I know for a fact weren’t going to cinemas even pre-Covid went to see this flick. My kid, their partner and their friends ALL went to see this flick together.

I had co-workers who went and saw the flick, barely able to articulate how much they didn’t like it or why, and yet the same chumps went and saw Oppenheimer and couldn’t shut up about what a genius Christopher Nolan must be for hours on end.

dir: Dr George Miller

2022

It’s a real one.

It’s an unusual film, that’s for sure. Dr Miller has never been a director that’s just made one kind of film countless times.

The same chap who created Mad Max and directed its many sequels, who made family drama Lorenzo’s Oil, The Witches of Eastwick, the two Babe movies and animated monstrosity Happy Feet is also the chap who’s adapted an A.S. Byatt short story into whatever this strange, lush, romantic film is.

It is beautiful, that was the first word that came to mind as I was watching it. It’s visually lush, even if it’s mostly a film about two people sitting around a hotel room, telling stories.

Although, that’s not entirely true: they’re not both people, and more of the film focusses on depicting the stories being told themselves rather than the two beings in the Istanbul hotel room.

One of those beings, played by the supernaturally talented Tilda Swinton, is meant to be a human woman. And a British academic at that. She is a Professor of Narratology, which is a subject I guess exists in the real world but seems like it should only exist in fiction. Similar to Professors of Symbology, or studiers of HotGirlSummer-itis.

She studies stories, and knows all the stories. And she seems to see beings, creatures, people who aren’t really there, but who really seem to be there. We see them too.

Of all the people in Istanbul to stumble upon a bottle that contains a djinn, she is the one it happens to. And once she unleashes the supernaturally attractive and talented creature known as Idris Elba, he begins telling her the kinds of stories she’s been studying from many cultures for many years, in order to convince her to make her three wishes and release him from his millennia of captivity.

It wouldn’t sound like it would be a hard sell, but Alithea is not one for making decisions, or choices.