Plane Film 1: Goodbye Christopher Robin
I had this film wrong. Recently there was a trailer for another movie, featuring a grown up Christopher Robin having a somewhat hallucinogenic experience late in life where Pooh seems to visit him and speaks in the Disney voice. This film was completely different, an enjoyable, of course highly fictionalised account primarily about how AA Milne came to write the classic books. I had no idea there were the two different films being made. And I have to say, I still have considerable doubts about Christopher Robin, and likely would have enjoyed Goodbye Christopher Robin more if I hadn’t expected a talking Pooh to appear at any moment.
I very much enjoyed the evocation of the inter-war period, the way Sussex nature looks so idyllic and the very believable performances, convincingly evoking the idea of strong emotions simmering beneath a refined exterior. And the kid playing Billy Moon was also a great find, swinging between emotions and going overboard as kids so often do.
The characterisation is a bit overly broad. Alan Milne in particular is not convincing, falling too hard into the shell-shocked former soldier character type with not enough of his own personality. There's an attempt at a character arc showing Christopher Robin's parents as neglectful and completely emotionally disconnected from the child they've just left with their nanny for his childhood. It's not very believable after reading Milne's poems, or even seeing all the cute pet names and stories about being very young touched on here. It feels much too much like the result of a scriptwriting 101 class about character arcs and development.
It's all a redemption arc but because it takes place over several years, there just isn't enough redeeming and much too much bad parenting for the intended sympathy to ring true. Especially since rather than pushing fame upon him, it seems like the think Christopher Robin would resent the most would be getting sent to boarding school, where his life began to get crappy. Yet that point is never raised. Maybe that's my own personal biases based on my own experiences coming through, though.
Plane film 2: The Shape of Water
Guillermo Del Toro's latest Oscar darling isn't nearly as magical or iconic as my favourite of his, Pan's Labyrinth, but it's still a very compelling and likeable fable. In a grimy vision of Cold War America, a mute cleaning lady named Eliza discovers they are keeping an aquatic humanoid creature in a lab. When Eliza bonds with the creature and learns it's to be vivisected, she does all he can to free it.
Del Toro's films tend to skirt the line between arthouse and comic book in a way very few others manage - perhaps Burton at his best is the closest. Here there are a lot of cartoonish things, like the ragtag group that helps Eliza, and how one minute, the antagonist seems like a seriously heinous figure, with his views on race and gender roles, the next he's having to focus on his positive thinking after his car gets bashed up.
Sometimes it feels like it's taking itself too seriously when it's repeating tropes from ET and Free Willy. Still, the balance just about works and the story is very satisfying. Unlike Pan's Labyrinth, it's not one I'd care to rewatch over and over, but absolutely I enjoyed it.
Plane Film 3: Isle of Dogs
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Plane Film 4: Tomb Raider
After a reboot of the video game series, it made a lot of sense to also reboot the movie franchise. She may not be up there with Bond or Bourne but Lara Croft is definitely an icon recognised the world over and deserves a decent film.
This version is definitely less camp and cheesy than the Jolie films, but I don't think it's going to reignite the franchise like the game reboot did. And the problem is that they didn't take enough cues from that game, which this film essentially adapts.
It's the same basic story - Lara heads to the Japanese island of Yamatai to follow her father's research and ends up clashing with shadowy organisation Trinity as well as the mysterious forces that were being researched in the first place. It even takes some of the best setpieces, like having to climb a rusty old WWII-era plane.
But almost everything the film changes in an attempt to improve the action to fit Hollywood ideas of a good screenplay definitely has a negative impact. The game begins right in the thick of the action with Lara having to survive on the island and the backstory getting filled in later. The film shows 40 minutes of dull preamble that's going to date horribly - Lara losing a kickboxing match; Lara is a delivery driver; Lara takes part in some stupid hipster bike chase; Lara goes to a pawn shop; Lara gets her bag stolen in Hong Kong and the chase takes her exactly where she needs to be.
This Lara is also much less a positive feminist symbol, surprising for Hollywood. Lara in the game starts out vulnerable and feeble but very quickly becomes a capable survivalist constantly staking out on her own. Here she's much too often spured to action only by a male, or motivated by what a male is doing. The more agency the adaptation gives male characters who didn't feature much in the original, the less Lara gets.
And you know what? In a Tomb Raider movie, there should be a whole lot more raiding of tombs.
Plane Film 5: Justice League
I'd been hoping for Black Panther, but unfortunately it wasn't the superhero flick available for my flight. Instead I got Justice League, which I can't say I had been desperate to see. But I was kind of curious to see how this team came together and how Wonder Woman was integrated.
That said, I have basically no interest in the DC Cinematic Universe. Batman films have gone downhill in my eyes since Batfleck, and I'm not interested in watching the TV series that would inform me about this teenage version of Barry Allen.
Justice League seemed to have a really forgettable villain and none of the exuberance of the Avengers films despite a similar gather-the-McGuffins plot. Unlike Infinity War, which had reactions absolutely everywhere I follow online, nobody really said anything about this film or the impact of Steppenwolf. I mostly had Boney M stuck in my head every time I heard his name.
Everything here is so grim and pessimistic, too. Everyone keeps moaning about how the world has gone to hell. Even the quirky humour guy, apparently now Barry, has a pretty grim life. The humour also mostly misfired, with the best joke not only in the trailer but already done way better by the Powerpuff Girls decades ago.
Ultimately, while the Avengers films have been incredibly fun recently, DC just can't make their movies fun enough.
Plane Film 6: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
Despite owning copies of the little charity book this film is based on (they were going to be worth a fortune as collector's items you know), I had litle to no interest in seeing it in the cinema. For me, Harry Potter definitely outstayed its welcome by the end, both the books and the movie series. Definitely more so the movie series.
So when they announced they were further milking this series with a whole series based on this encyclopaedia-style booklet, I thought it was a terrible idea.
Well, watching it on the plane wasn't a bad thing. Though I kept falling asleep. Basically, this was an extended episode of Dr. Who. The writing was extremely like Dr. Who - and much as I like seeing Eddie Redmayne, he was definitely just doing his best Dr. Who.
Newt Scamander comes to America and stretches credulity in the idea that wizards have managed to keep themselves secret at all by letting various magical creatures loose in a bank to steal people's money and probably ruin a few of their lives - not that they mention it.
He gets mixed up in a vague plot about what's basically a magical time bomb in human form. The ending is very questionable, with what's basically a police shooting ordered by the black female president, and only the big antagonist and Newt are suggesting it might be a bad thing. It also means the action just fizzles out. The way Newt manages to get everyone on his side despite still being a wanted criminal is also highly dubious.
It's only meant to be a bit of fluff. But I definitely feel like I could have got the same level of enjoyment from a mediocre episode of New Who.
Plane film 7: The Disaster Artist
The internet has made Tommy Wiseau a legend. The Room will probably endure now as one of the best terrible movies ever made. And Tommy Wiseau is the reason it's so entertaining to watch it. His terrible stilted delivery, his strong accent and of course his sheer blistering self-confidence.
This film follows him and his roommate trying to make it in LA. Of course Tommy doesn't do so well, but his roommate starts to get some success and that causes friction. So they set out to make The Room and that's where it actually gets entertaining.
A charming take on an outsider artist, it's amazing that this film could get made at all, and it's nice to show how some people walk their own path and may even get a film made about them just by doing that.
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