Crazy Rich Asians
I didn't think I would like this film, which received a
lot of hype this year and was a big part of the reason 2018 was called a year
of great Asian representation. Honestly, the trailer looked obnoxious and I
didn't think being money-hungry, snobbish, exclusionary and wastefully
profligate was what I would call positive representation. But while I wasn't by
any means blown away by the originality of the film, I really enjoyed watching
it and at several points it actually made me laugh.
While I am no means a crazy rich Asian - though the way
the older ladies in the film grew up probably wasn't so different from how my
mother grew up in one of the richest families in Sarawak - a lot here was
familiar. One fun part of the film was seeing key locations and thinking, 'Oh,
I've eaten there,' 'I've been in that church, 'I've done that with my Chinese
family too!' And a family wedding in Singapore, while by no means a crazy rich
party, was still one of the most fun and memorable ceremonies I've been part
of.
This story is not particularly new or original. A
normal girl dates a guy, finds out he's actually extremely rich, but the family
disapprove so she has to face hard times before we end up having to discover
whether or not true love will win through. It's a very common story, whether in
Asian dramas (Korean TV dramas in particular have this plot over and over) or
throughout time in the West, and if this gets remembered as historically
significant, I'm sure people will be a little perplexed as to why. But this is
very timely, and it's purely and simply because this old chestnut of a story is
about Asians - but meant for American consumption. Not only Asian-Americans, though
their presence and market share in the States no doubt had to grow big enough
to get this green-lit, but Americans in general.
I get it. I get that this is far outside the norm
because Asians have not been represented well in Western cinema, especially
recently. Asians can be warriors, computer nerds, funny sidekicks or quirky
cookie-cutter girls with a streak of colour in their hair. But this film, for a
general American audience, can present Asians as headstrong, influential,
self-assured, and perhaps most importantly of all, sexy. And while it shouldn't
be, that's a very significant thing right now.
How rich the Asians are gets stressed much less than
I'd expected. Only the prologue in London is an outrageous demonstration of
wealth. The rest is just big houses and expensive items, which isn't that
exciting. The most interesting characters are by and large the less wealthy
people and while sure, fantasising about absurd wealth is fun, this is more
cautionary tale than aspirational, whichever perspective you might be looking
at this story from.
Definitely interesting to watch and enjoyable
throughout, I certainly recommend watching the film. But it's certainly not
particularly special.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
Given how unnecessary the first Jurassic World seemed,
this sequel certainly didn't strike me as essential viewing. But plane viewing?
Sure.
Isla Nublar is about to EXPLODE. Yeah, the volcano
became active and the whole place is going to explode. Good-hearted characters
from the last movie want to save them, but as usual they're not in a
humanitarian expedition but an exploitative capitalist one. Wasn't that what
happened to Alan Grant?
Despite how often this film tries to hark back to it
with music cues and repeated dino entrances, we're a long way from the first
movie here. There's so little heart in this action-packed sequel and so little
desire to give the audience anything new or unexpected. Only the first third of
the movie is spent on the island, and the rest is about unravelling the
cartoonish bad guy's cartoonish plot, with the help of junior Lara Croft.
It's all supremely unlikely, of the new characters only
the kid is vaguely likeable - and MAYBE the useless Mos from The IT Crowd type
- and her backstory raised about the only interesting questions in the script
as well as justifying her final decision in a way that wasn't hugely
hypocritical for a little girl who isn't a stringent vegan. way too many
coincidental things have to fall together for this story to work. Overall, there's
little to recommend this movie and it's going to date very, very quickly, but
hey. There's nothing exactly terrible about the film either. It's just really
mediocre.
Perhaps worst of all, the whole thing ended on an
insipid cliffhanger that I don't care to see concluded. They didn't even bother
to tell a full story.
King of Thieves
On one level, it's always going to be fun to watch
elderly British acting royalty doing anything, from staying in a hotel to
robbing diamonds. On the other, this film does glorify a life of crime a little
too much for my tastes.
That said, the first half of the movie, with the heist
and initial divvying-up, is hugely fun. The silly old men are very, very
entertaining. I find it faintly hilarious that Paul Whitehouse, who I used to
love doing his Michael Caine impression on the Harry Enfield show, is now
sharing screen time with him. Plenty of other stellar cast members - Michael
Gambon, Ray Winstone, Jim Broadbent. There's a lot of funny bumbling about but
getting the job done.
The second half, where the thieves get paranoid about
one another and start clamouring to double-cross their old partners, is a bit
of a drag - even if it perhaps has slightly better moral lessons for us. I'd
like to see how much this is based on a real story.
I have to say, though, a few guns to wave around would
have made this a fair bit more convincing. The young man could very easily
overpower the rest when they bully him, so some scenes don't exactly ring true.
But I'd probably watch this cast read the phone directory together.
Nice to see shots of my neighbourhood in London, too,
with the cable car running happily in the background.
Searching
Honestly, I thought that I was scraping the barrel when
I started watching Searching. I hadn't heard of it and didn't think there was
much chance it would be a good movie. But it turned out to be by far my
favourite of the movies I watched on my plane trips this time. Not that the
competition was that fierce.
Of the various found-footage-type gimmick movies, this
one is probably done best. The whole movie plays out on a computer screen,
through streaming, Facetime calls, movie files and social media sites. By and
large, the movie also manages to use real sites and operating systems, which is
so much better than using fake imitations.
The thriller mystery functions well, with a twist
ending I didn't see coming, having fallen for one of the red herrings. The
method of conveying a story was remarkable too, with a lot of story coming
through text so strong performances not really needed - except for John Cho's
at the centre of it. To my mind this film did the things Gone Girl tried to do
far more adeptly and believably (even if the fundamental story was different).
It's a shame this apparently didn't become a cult hit, because I thought it
took its gimmick and did good things with it. Though perhaps there was a little
too much cheesiness in the final act.
Leave No Trace
Well, I finished off my movie-watching with Leave No
Trace (though I had an hour or so extra both ways, so I watched March of the
Penguins 2 on the way to the UK and Charles Dance's episode of Who Do You Think
You Are? on the way back). Compared with the comic book fluff I mostly watched,
this was on the heavy and serious side.
Very slow-burning, somewhat uneventful but absolutely
beautifully-acted, this movie tells the story of a man who, wracked with the
PTSD of so many soldiers, has withdrawn from society and began to live in the
woods using all his survival skills. But the twist is that he has his young
daughter with him, aged about 13. She is well-used to living in the wild and
her father makes sure she's educated, but of course when the two are caught and
she gets an introduction to life in civilisation - and society - doubts begin
to grow in her mind.
The narrative isn't all that important here. What
matters is the hook and how the characters develop from there. The
interpersonal relationships are fascinating, in good times but mostly when
things become fraught. While this isn't a film I would care to rewatch, it's
certainly one I was glad to have experienced once.
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