<n>Read the explanation of method, madness, and <b>spoilers</b>.<fn></n> <ol> <a href="#Godzilla">Godzilla (1998)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120685/">7/10</a> <a href="#Friend">Our Friend (2019)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt9608818/">5/10</a> <a href="#Hulk">Hulk (2003)</a> --- <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0286716/">7/10</a> <a href="#Black">Black Mirror S07 (2025)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2085059/">9/10</a> <a href="#Goblet">Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)</a> --- <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0330373/">8/10</a> <a href="#Morbius">Morbius (2022)</a> --- <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5108870/">7/10</a> <a href="#Parfum">Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006)</a> --- <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0396171/">9/10</a> <a href="#Trainspotting">T2 Trainspotting (2017)</a> --- <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2763304/">8/10</a> <a href="#Wakanda">Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)</a> --- <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9114286/">4/10</a> <a href="#Immensita">L'immensità (2022)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt13051724/">7/10</a> </ol> <dl dt_class="field"> <span id="Godzilla">Godzilla (1998)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120685/">7/10</a> <div>The introductory credits play over atom-bomb explosions interleaved with images of iguanas on nearby islands. A Japanese ship is attacked; there is one survivor. Philippe Roaché (Jean Reno) manages to coax one word out of him: <i>Gojira</i>. The U.S. military retrieves Dr. Niko Tatopoulos (Matthew Broderick) out of Chernobyl, where he was researching radioactive earthworms. They put him to work for Dr. Elsie Chapman (Vicki Lewis), who's working for Colonel Hicks (Kevin Dunn). In New York, we meet pretty, perky, and young Audrey Timmonds (Maria Pitillo), who works for a news studio as an assistant to Charles Caiman (Harry Shearer), who is trying to bed her, not promote her. Her friends Lucy Palotti (Arabella Field) and Victor 'Animal' Palotti (Hank Azaria) console her. She spots Niko on the TV and recognizes him as her college boyfriend. We meet Mayor Ebert (Michael Lerner), who's is in the middle of a reelection campaign, so he's definitely going to be thinking about how to turn a giant-lizard attack to his advantage, should one occur in NY (he won't have to wait long). So far, so good. A classic Emmerich setup. We see a few more interactions with Godzilla, always invisible, until a fisherman hooks him on his rod and reel and he finally reveals himself to be in New York. Godzilla storms through the city, then buries himself (herself?) underground, amongst the tunnels beneath Manhattan. Godzilla reveals itself to Niko on the streets of New York, Godzilla looks kind of like a muscular kangaroo/lizard, almost human. Niko takes pictures with a Kodak disposable camera. This is notable only because it's a stark reminder of how much has changed: almost/just 30 years ago, we were still using film for everything. We had those cameras at our wedding in 2002. We weren't outdated. Audrey hunts down Niko, making big eyes at him, and making him feel bad for not forgiving her immediately for her not having wanted to marry him after college. Back in his tent, where he's offered her a tea, she stays behind while he investigates the beast's pregnancy---then steals some information and prepares a report with it, on a VHS tape. It's quite ironic that Niko is immediately fired from the project for having leaked information because the news these days is all about the Secretary of Defense nearly constantly leaking information to the press and his family over Signal and never getting fired for it. What a difference 30 years makes! Not just the disposable camera or the VHS tape but the attitude toward repercussions for bad information security. Anyway... Roaché half-kidnaps Niko and convinces him to join forces with his "French Legion". They take off to hunt the nest together---something that the U.S. military has decided not to do, which is a terrible idea. If they don't find the eggs, they'll hatch and then there will hundreds of mini-Godzillas in New York. Godzilla heads back to the surface, fighting with the U.S. military, this time underwater. She gets the Navy to sink its own subs with torpedoes. Their next volley is a direct hit and appears to kill Godzilla, or at least to have knocked her unconscious. Meanwhile, under the Madison Square Garden, the eggs are hatching and the babies are coming! The babies are everywhere and they're eating everything. The team gets out of Madison Square Garden, trapping all of the mini-dinosaurs inside just before the U.S. Air Force blows it to smithereens. Mama's back. She's pissed. All of her babies are dead. It's kind of sad. She chases the crew through New York, with them escaping in a cab. They eventually lure her over the Brooklyn Bridge, where she becomes trapped in the cables. The jets shoot her, wounding her deeply. They come back and finish her off. She dies pitifully, ensnared in the cables, laying her head down as her heart gives out and the light fades from her eye. Back in Madison Square Garden, a single egg remains. It cracks. I gave it an extra star because I like to watch Emmerich films in German and also because it's almost 30 years old and still has a ton of practical effects in it, which are far superior to CGI for this kind of thing. Or maybe it's just good CGI, like <i>Jurassic Park</i>? I dunno, but it's really not bad. There are only a few places with obvious green-screening. I watched it in German.</div> <span id="Friend">Our Friend (2019)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt9608818/">5/10</a> <div>So this is a story about Nicole (Dakota Johnson), a woman who gets cancer and her husband Matt's (Casey Affleck) friend Dane (Jason Segel) who helps out a lot, even though he lives with them, and he doesn't really work---I think he's a comedian?---and he kind of wants to kill himself sometimes. They made no effort to make Nicole look like she has cancer except that they gave her a head-scarf, even though she's clearly not doing chemo, so I don't know why she'd be losing her hair. Still, she thinks she looks terrible because the purpose of pretty much every movie is to make every woman watching it feel inadequate. Like, if Dakota Fanning with her perfect cancer skin is ugly, then what is the poor viewer? Obviously hideous. Get to work. The story is told in flashbacks, bouncing around the years before and after her diagnosis. Toward the end, we discover that Nicole had cheated on Matt with one of her theater friends. Matt hadn't taken it well, moving out. He ends up going back but this is the most tedious of scenes, too. God, I have half a mind to drop the rating to one just for the simpering face they made Dakota Fanning make when Matt said he would try to make it work. Everything about this film is so desperately depressing. When a bunch of Nicole's friends don't show up for book club, Dane asks him to get some food. He cruises by the park to see all Nicole's friends playing with their children. They have moved on. The song "Can't Find My Way Home" by <i>Blind Faith</i> plays, just to make sure you get the point that things are bad. Palliative care specialist Faith Pruett (Cherry Jones) shows up to save this movie a bit. She is competent, even-keeled, and deeply empathetic. When she finds out that Matt and Dane have been caring for Nicole without any help as she descended into madness for the last four months, as her body deteriorated, she says <iq>Oh ihr beide Arme,</iq> because of what they needlessly had to go through. Nicole needs medication, especially an anti-psychotic to keep her mood up while her body dies. Next song is the amazing "Going to California" by <i>Led Zeppelin</i>, which is only slightly more upbeat. People are visiting Nicole for the last time. And then, just like that, Nicole's taken her last breath. She died in her own bed. Faith is strong and helpful and deeply empathetic right until the end. I remember this from when my mom died of cancer. The hospice-care ladies were really, really nice. It went more quickly for mom because she was much older. She was ready. She was relatively coherent until quite late in the game. In the end, hunger took her. Mom didn't want any ceremony, unlike the relatively extravagant wake featured in the movie. She did want her ashes to be scattered in Switzerland, though. She didn't say when, so she sits in her wooden box, on a shelf behind me, in my office. Oh hell, another insipid and terribly depressing song is playing that I don't recognize. Ah, it's a breathy, female cover of "If I Had The World To Give", originally by <i>The Grateful Dead</i>. The second half was more honest and interesting than the first but I'm not changing my rating. It's just a bit too self-indulgent and full of people I don't like. I like Matt. Dane is OK, but man is he maudlin. I can't tell whether they're kidding about him being a comedian, like an in-joke or something. Dane finally moves out. Bro hug and out. Huh, I guess this was based on a true story. Huh. So I guess people really act like that? I guess I really have nothing in common with most of the WASP middle-class in the U.S. I watched it in German.</div> <span id="Hulk">Hulk (2003)</span> --- <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0286716/">7/10</a> <div>I last watched this in 2022 and <a href="{app}view_article.php?id=4610">wrote a detailed review</a> then. The rating stands. I only saw about the last 1/3 this time, again in German.</div> <span id="Black">Black Mirror S07 (2025)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2085059/">9/10</a> <div>This is an unexpected and welcome return of one of the more inventive, interesting, and risk-taking shows on Netflix---or pretty much anywhere. The format is the same: six episodes, some of them nearly feature-length, each about how a tinge of technology mixed with our system would have macabre, dark consequences. It must be getting difficult to write about something twisted that hasn't already happened or isn't currently happening to us. <dl dt_class="field"> Common People <div>Amanda (Rashida Jones) is a schoolteacher, married to welder Mike (Chris O'Dowd). They're getting by, but barely. They've been trying to have a child but it's not worked so far. After falling unconscious, Amanda is diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor. A company steps in to offer a miracle cure, represented by Gaynor (Tracee Ellis Ross). They can't afford it but they get the cheapest plan. Mike has his wife again. She starts glitching, though. They're using her to run ads. They're putting her to sleep longer. They're trying to force her to upgrade their plan. They can't afford it. Mike makes it possible by selling himself online---to a site that makes him do horrible things for money. Does it work? Is it worth it? Does it end well? No, no, and no. Like, the exact opposite of "well". This is Black Mirror, baby.</div> Bête Noire <div>Maria (Siena Kelly) works at a confectionary company, designing luxury candies and chocolates. Verity (Rosy McEwen) appears at her office one day, a blast from the past, and is hired instantly. Verity insinuates herself into every corner of Maria's life, sidelining her. But why? Because Maria vaguely recalls that Verity had been bullied in high school. What she doesn't remember is that she was the ringleader. And how, though? How is she seemingly manipulating reality? Quantum computer, baby. Does Maria get her comeuppance? No, no she doesn't. Like, not at all. This is Black Mirror, baby.</div> Hotel Reverie <div>Kimmy (Akwafina) runs a company that can remake old movies with new actors, making what amounts to instant reboots. Producer and owner of a dying film studio Judith Keyworth (Harriet Walter) decides to work with Kimmy to remake <i>Hotel Reverie</i>, this time with Brandy (Issa Rae) taking the lead role (replacing the previous male lead), starring opposite romantic interest Dorothy Chambers (Emma Corrin). The ReDream technology malfunctions---or does it just function?---and everyone in the film is suspended in time, their consciousnesses experiencing a seemingly endless time together. Brandy and Dorothy fall in love. After an hour in "real" time, they've fixed the computers, allowing the "scene" to proceed ... and end. The connection is sundered and Brandy is devastated, even months later, when a telephone arrives in a package. She picks it up; it's Dorothy. </div> Plaything <div>Cameron Walker (Peter Capaldi/Lewis Gribben) gets himself arrested in a near-future London, where they pick him up for shoplifting but discover through DNA that he is also responsible for having murdered an itinerant friend Lump (Josh Finan) long ago. DCI Kano (James Nelson-Joyce) is a bit of a jackass/bad cop while psychologist Jen Minter (Michele Austin) is much more sympathetic and interested in Walker's story. <bq><b>Cameron Walker:</b> [To DCI Kano] You are very hostile. It's a crude trait and a poor strategy. [He probably means tactic, though]</bq> Why would he have killed Lump? Well, long before, Cameron had met a young programmer, who'd shown him a unique life-simulation game named <i>Thronglets</i>. Cameron develops what we would call an unhealthy attachment to them, except, except for the fact that they are <i>actually sentient</i>. They grow with Cameron, as he gains them more hardware, more power. Lump had found the game and was genociding them. He had to go. After a while, the hardware that Cameron can provide the Thronglets is not enough. They are deeply interested in spreading, in colonizing more hardware, more power. But they are peaceful, much more so than humans. They actually would bring peace, given the chance. Cameron obliges them by getting himself arrested so that he can get access to the mainframe hardware at the central police station, whence they communicate their message (imperative) of peace...to the world.</div> Eulogy <div>Phillip (Paul Giamatti) receives a package that tells him that he has been invited to the funeral of an old friend. The invitation comes from a company named Eulogy, which has sent an AI in the form of a temple nubbin to "help" him remember enough of his memories of Carol (Hazel Monaghan) to contribute to the funeral. His AI guide (Patsy Ferran) turns out to be Carol's daughter Kelly. Reluctantly, At Kelly's at-times hostile urging, Phillip, together with some long-buried artifacts, remembers more and more of his time with Carol, how he was the instigator of the breakup that he has long mourned. He attends the funeral, meeting Kelly in real life. This story was gentler than the usual Black Mirror affair, as they didn't even address the possibility that the daughter's AI would lie, aiding him in confabulation, twisting his memories to blame himself.</div> USS Callister: Into Infinity <div>This is a sequel to <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5710974/">S4E01</a>), which left Nanette (Cristin Milioti) in charge of a crew of clones of employees of the video-game company that runs the game in which they're all trapped. In the real world, Walton (Jimmi Simpson) leads the company alone after partner Robert Daly's (Jesse Plemons) death in the original film/episode. Robert's dead in the real world but he lives on in the same virtual reality in which they're all trapped. He is at the powerful nexus of the game, running the show but, in a way, more benevolent than the hateful man who existed in the real world. He still has those personality characteristics, though, so he very much looks out for number one. He makes a deal with Nanette to release her friends if she'll stay with him forever. She betrays him; he has the game's players attack her friends. She manages to "kill" him in the game. As the game, having lost its creator, leader, and inspiration, collapses in on itself, Nanette somehow copy/pastes herself and her crew into her comatose body in the real world, finally waking up. She is not alone. It's a party in her head. This is much better than I think I've made it sound. It's fun.</div> </dl></div> <span id="Goblet">Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)</span> --- <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0330373/">8/10</a> <div>Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) is on his way back, with the help of Peter Pettigrew/Wormtail (Timothy Spall). At Hogwart's, the Tri-school Tournament is in full swing, with Cedric Diggory (Robert Pattinson) from Hogwarts, Victor Krum (Stanislav Yanevski), and Fleur Delacour (Clémence Poésy) from other schools, and then, of course, Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) is also in the tournament. They must solve several puzzles. The first challenge is to get an egg from a dragon. Harry helped Cedric figure out this challenge. Cedric helps Harry figure out the next challenge, paying him back, and cementing a sort of friendship. They are out on the lake, diving underwater to save someone important to them. Fleur is unable to save her sister Gabrielle (Angelica Mandy), but Harry saves both Ron (Rupert Grint) and Gabrielle, coming in second, behind Cedric. The third and final challenge is in a giant labyrinth. Like, it is <i>magically</i> giant. And it <i>moves.</i> They have to find a trophy at the end. Viktor is sidelined, as is Fleur. Cedric and Harry reach the trophy at the same time, and realize that it's a portal. They've been teleported to the cemetery where the Deatheaters have prepared a ceremony for Voldemort's return. They don't need Cedric for this, so they kill him immediately. They need Harry's blood, keeping him alive while they draw it, then add it to a cauldron to which Voldemort's currently shrunken and shriveled mortal vessel is also added. Voldemort is back. He "lives". He tries to take out Harry, but of course it doesn't work (we need a few more movies first). Harry escapes with Cedric's body by touching the trophy again. Um, what else? Oh, yeah, Mad-eye Moody (Brendan Gleeson) was an imposter and was behind all of the tricks that guided Harry toward his being used to resurrect Voldemort: putting his name on the Tri-School cup, switching out the cup for a portal, etc. Reporter Rita Skeeter (Miranda Richardson) is also quite good, playing the annoying and mendacious media.</div> <span id="Morbius">Morbius (2022)</span> --- <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5108870/">7/10</a> <div>Dr. Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) declines a Nobel Prize for having invented the artificial blood that keeps himself, his lifelong friend Milo (Matt Smith) alive, and many others alive. Dr. Emil Nicholas (Jared Harris) watched over them as orphans and continues to work with them now, as adults. Micheal wants to take the next step: splicing bat genes with his own to cure his blood disease. This is not in any possibly way going to be sanctioned on dry land, so Milo's rich as sets up a floating laboratory for him. Guess what? OMIGOD you'll never guess! It's a quasi-villain origin story. I write "quasi" because Michael is actually a good guy but the bloodlust turns him into a nearly heedless killing machine. No-one else on the ship survives his initial transformation. <bq><a href="https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/its-morbin-time">It's morbin' time</a>.</bq> After the murder spree on the boat where Michael became Morbius, Agent Rodriguez (Al Madrigal) and Agent Simon Stroud (Tyrese Gibson) are hot on his trail. Martine Bancroft (Adria Arjona), Michael's friend and collaborator, was injured and hospitalized. So, Michael is "cured"---he's a superhuman all the time, and an insatiable killing machine sometimes---and his financial benefactor and lifelong friend <i>wants in</i>. He is <i>fine</i> with the "insatiable killing machine" part as long as it cures his blood disease. The superhuman strength, speed, and senses sounds pretty sweet too. Milo ends up "stealing" the cure---he can't steal it since he financed it and owns it---killing a nurse, and framing Michael to get him out of the way. Morbius escapes, hunting Milo down before he kills too many more people. Milo manages to kill Nicholas out of jealousy, then nearly mortally wounds Martine (Adria Arjona), who only survives by inadvertently lapping up a drop of Morbius's blood. Morbius doesn't know this, though, as he escapes with his dark thoughts. Hilariously, the Vulture/Adrian Toomes (Michael Keaton) appears during the credits, offering to team up with Morbius, clearly desperately hopeful that there will be a sequel where a movie starring the villainous duo Vulture and Morbius makes a billion dollars. Why not? There are three Avatars---the third one is well on its way to a billion dollars after only two weeks---none of which anyone remembers having seen. The movie was torn apart mercilessly but it's not obviously worse than any of the other middling fare that is most of what makes up the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It's way better than either of the Black Panther movies.</div> <span id="Parfum">Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006)</span> --- <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0396171/">9/10</a> <div>I read and loved this book in the original German in <a href="{app}/view_article.php?id=1530">2007</a>. The film follows the book's plot quite closely. This is the story of Grenouille ("frog" in French), a child of rape ejected rudely into the world by his fishmonger mother whilst she was working. This is an unforgettable scene, where he drops squalling to the ground as his mother screams and tries to keep working. He was soon orphaned by hanging and spent his youth in orphanages. He was an odd youth, always apart, quickly aware that he had a superhuman sense of smell. As he grew into a teenager, he apprentices as a tanner---one of the most vile-smelling trades possible. He grows infatuated with a local redhead, by whose scent he is entranced. He inadvertently kills her while trying to keep her quiet from startling at his approach. He does not have super-strength but he has the strong hands, arms, and sinews of a tanner. In death, her scent fades, no matter how hard he tries to retain it. It goes into his scent memories but disappears from the world. How can he preserve the lovely scents that he detects, that seemingly only he knows? Grenouille meets perfumer Giuseppe Baldini (Dustin Hoffman) on a delivery. Baldini's business is failing and he is astounded to learn that Grenouille is a gifted natural talent at mixing perfumes. He claims the scents as his own, quickly revitalizing his reputation and fortune. Grenouile is interested only in recreating scents, learning as much as he can from Baldini. He learns of the twelve prime scents but is deeply disappointed in the gross limitations of the man's capabilities. If he can't preserve the scent of iron or glass, then what good is he? Baldini, annoyed at the young man's frustration---and, quite frankly, bizarre demeanor and comportment---makes a deal: he will provide journeyman papers in exchange for 100 perfume recipes. Deal. None of those scents would ever reach a nose, as Baldini's wonderful-looking building collapses out of the middle of the bridge in which it is situated, splashing into the water, taking all of Grenouille's recipes with it. This is a great, memorable scene as well. As Grenouille travels to Grasse, he changes his path, making his way, up, up, high into the mountains, where he lives alone for a long time, ensconced in a cave, hunting local animals, and learning that he himself doesn't have a scent. In Grasse, another redhead Laure Richis (Rachel Hurd-Wood) catches his <s>eye</s>nose. There are many perfumers in Grasse. Grenouille quickly obtains employment at one, learning the technique of <i>enfleurage</i>---to bathe in flowers---which he begins to misuse to capture the scents of young women. Unfortunately, the process is fatal. There are many young women---twelve to be exact, one for each of the prime scents dictated to him by Baldini. The town is terrorized by this mysterious killer who's fallen upon it. The final, thirteenth, and heretofore unknown scent will be that of Laure. Her father Antoine (Alan Rickman), panicked, takes her to a seaside castle, to keep her safe. She is not safe there. Grenouille can find her scent anywhere in the world. With the thirteenth scent in hand, he begins concocting the ultimate perfume. Just as he has it, he is finally captured. No matter. He has the scent. He stands on the gallows, the platform on which stands the guillotine that will finally consign this monster to the death that he so richly deserves. Is he a monster? Did he ever deserve his fate? He is a monster; he has no care for human life. But is he the only monster? He isn't much different from most of the people he'd met. None of them cared much for any human life other than their own. Is he that much worse for having killed 13 young women than a lord who, intent on increasing his own already vast riches, starves 13 hundred? He dabs the perfume on himself. The slavering crowd is transformed. They no longer cry lustily and in blood-curdling manner for his head. Instead, they cock their heads like golden retrievers about to get a good-boy snack, immediately enchanted by the perfume. The scent doesn't simply predispose them positively toward Grenouille---though they do now view him as a God striding the Earth---it transforms their lust for spilled blood to one for shared flesh, for the grinding sensation of full-on, mindless rutting. Grenouille strides from the platform, down the stairs, wading into an unfolding orgy that comprises the entire town, clothes thrown every which way in a frenetic abandon, as the townspeople fall on each other, insatiable and unstoppable. Antoine Richis confronts Grenouille but is helpless before the power of the perfume, taking Grenouille in his arms as a son. Grenouille, being not like other men, is not enchanted by this power, by the ability to rule like a God that the perfume would grant him. He is...disappointed that he cannot truly love or be truly loved. He returns to Paris, whence he came. He pours the entire bottle over his head. The people in the plaza look up like zombies, catching the irresistible scent, driven immediately to the fervor of the first crowd but this time with the desire to <i>consume</i> their object of love. They fall on Grenouille, tearing him limb from limb. By morning, nothing remains but a pile of clothes. The crowd has dispersed. The morning sun glints from a single drop remaining in the perfume phial.</div> <span id="Trainspotting">T2 Trainspotting (2017)</span> --- <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2763304/">8/10</a> <div>This is the twenty-year reunion of the original, which I watched in <a href="{app}/view_article.php?id=3188#Trainspotting">2015</a>. In that film, four reprobates---Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor), Simon "Sick Boy" Williamson (Jonny Lee Miller), Francis "Franco" Begbie (Robert Carlyle), and Daniel "Spud" Murphy (Ewen Bremner)---did a lot of heroin and did a bunch of little, shitty deals until they finally got a decent score. At the very end, Mark absconds with the money all for himself, leaving for Amsterdam. In this sequel, his life in Amsterdam is falling apart: he's going through a divorce and he has a heart attack. He returns to his old stomping grounds to make amends,...or something. Is he trying to save his old friends or is he trying to save himself? Is he still the same selfish Mark Renton who'd abandoned them 20 years before? He was a nice guy then, but still tended to decide for himself, convinced that he was less of a loser, less of a lost cause, than the others. His first stop is at Spud's place, where Renton saves him from a suicide attempt. As in the first film, Spud is far and away the most sympathetic character. Renton helps him get clean. The next stop is with Simon, who would, in any other film, qualify as the least-sympathetic character. He's a manipulative boyfriend/pimp/strip-club owner who's switched out heroin for pretty large amounts of cocaine. He's awful to his girlfriend Veronika Kovach (Anjela Nedyalkova), who takes a liking to Mark relatively quickly. They start fucking because <i>of course they do.</i> Mark is nothing if not a combination of treacherous, self-destructive, and a nice guy. The only reason that Simon's not the worst thing in the movie is because Begbie exists. Begbie escapes from prison and starts making everyone he knows very, very miserable. His ex-wife (or current wife?) and son catch the brunt of his abuse at first, but he soon learns from Simon that Renton is in town. Begbie is a force of nature, just a ticking time bomb. A whole lot of awful shit goes down, with Spud emerging as the hero, staying off of heroin, providing for his baby-mama Gail and son Fergus, while Begbie tears a swath of destruction that is, finally, stopped without anyone else having to die, thankfully. Simon and Renton reconcile, as do Renton and his widower father. This movie has a cool vibe, has great music, and has an interesting shot-selection. It was a very strong sequel, standing on its own, with a sort of bittersweet triumph.</div> <span id="Wakanda">Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)</span> --- <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9114286/">4/10</a> <div>This movie starts with five minutes of trying to save T'Challa from a disease, and then him dying, and then everyone crying, and then a five-minute funeral, followed by intro credits without music and only pictures of Chadwick Bozeman. It doesn't get a whole lot better from there but I knew what this was going to be going in, which is why I really only had it running the background. The whole world wants Vibranium. Wakanda isn't going to give it to anyone else. It's understandable that they don't want to let France or the U.S. steal it, but they also continue to be utterly unwilling to help anyone, even the incredibly poor countries on their own continent. Speaking of continents, the lost one is represented in the person of Namor and his Atlanteans. Namor is Southeast Asian now, rather than blue. The took the worst character of the first film---T'Challa's sister---and made the second movie all about her, moping about her lost brother. I get that she would be sad but it's not great cinema. Anyway, she and her mom's general are on a campus, finding the girl who built a vibranium detector. She has the world's biggest dorm room, of course. Everyone acts like that's totally normal. Also she's nineteen but she's spent "years" building a flying car or whatever. She also has the world's biggest personal lab, as if she were Tony Stark and not a college student. It is just wild how unbelievable this all is. Most kids live in shoe-boxes with three roommates and have to pay hundreds if not thousands of bucks for textbooks but this young lady is somehow living in automated luxury communism. Oh, I guess the thing that she's worked for years on was her own personal Iron Man suit. Now they're doing a bit of a meso-American history lesson, speaking some French in Africa, and speaking some Spanish in Mexico. Oh man, I don't have the energy to write down the details of this silly plot filled with incredibly intelligent and unstoppably powerful people, each equipped with nearly unfathomable technology. A bunch of the third quarter of the movie is just watching two young black women be smart at science in a society with unlimited resources of which one of them is currently queen. As for the rest of it? Wooden dialogue doesn't even begin to cover it. The costumes are so bizarre, like something out of an 80s-era <i>Star Trek</i> movie. How many times are they going to show Shuri plucking a white tennis ball from the sculpture and putting it back? After all that, after designing the super-soldier serum that will bring back the Black Panther (as a young black girl, natch), they mix the ingredients together with a mortar and pestle. This is not just inconsistent but utterly incoherent. It's the same problem they have with having the supposedly most advanced technology but then they still fight with spears because <i>they're black</i> and <i>from Africa</i>. Also they grunt and hoot at each other like monkeys when they disagree with each other. They also pound their chests. Like gorillas. I am not making this up. It's horribly and disrespectfully racist but it poses as a triumph for black Americans. At least Blacksploitation movies knew what they were and leaned into the irony. I'm not sure whether the movie is more offensive to black people or to women because they turned the nerdy STEMmy princess into a war-happy nearly psychotically irrational warrior. Sure, she suddenly fights like Rocky---blow for blow---but how does she even know how to fight? And how does she seriously go toe-to-toe with Namor, one of the more powerful beings in the Marvel universe? Oh, because she's black <i>and</i> a woman. I apologize for even having asked such a stupid question. Did she really just say, <i>Wakanda über alles</i>? Wow. Oh, I guess I didn't mishear that. She says it again. No irony noted there. Black Panther subdues Namor and they fly back to the Wakandan cruise ship on a flying saucer that appeared out of fucking nowhere. They're best buddies now, with her in charge (naturally). Jesus, these actresses are terrible. Neither one of them will ever be in anything again. As predicted, Letitia Wright was in one terrible movie in 2023, nothing in 2024, and reprises her role as Shuri in 2026 in what will almost certainly only be a bit part in an upcoming Avengers movie. The other girl Riri (Dominique Thorne) also had no work in 2023, two TV episodes in 2024 and looks like her black, female Iron Man named Iron Heart will get an eponymous six-episode series that will almost certainly crash, burn, and disappear without a trace. This is just another in a long line of Marvel movies in which everyone gets everything they want because they're all billionaires with unlimited power and no problems. It's such a shame because things could be so much better. Go watch <i>Luke Cage</i> instead. I watched the movie in German.</div> <span id="Immensita">L'immensità (2022)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt13051724/">7/10</a> <div>Clara (Penélope Cruz) lives in Rome with an abusive and distant husband Felice (Vincenzo Amato) and three children. The oldest Adri is a girl who wants to be a boy. The middle child Gino (Patrizio Francioni) is a pudgy redhead who poops on the floor in the living room, and the youngest Diana (Maria Chiara Goretti) is an adorable little girl who seems the most grown-up of all three. The children fight whenever the father erupts at them. The one problem they don't have is a lack of money. They seem to be living quite comfortable middle-class lives, if not upper-middle-class lives. Adri (Luana Giuliani) occasionally dreams of herself and her mother doing dance and song numbers together, with Penélope Cruz singing quite convincingly in Italian. Adri befriends a local Roma girl in her role as a boy. They kiss. They become friends. After Clara comes back from a clinic (presumably treatment for a breakdown), the father proudly proclaims that the gypsies have all been cleared out of their area, devastating Adri, who runs down to the former encampment to find it completely bereft of human life, cleared to the ground. I watched it in Italian.</div> </dl> <hr> <ft>These are notes for me to remember what I watched and kinda what I thought about it. The amount of text is not proportional to my enjoyment. I might write less because I didn't get around to it when it was fresh in my mind. I rate the film based on how well it suited me personally for the <i>genre</i>, my mood and. let's be honest, level of intoxication. I make no attempt to avoid <b>spoilers</b>. Links are to <a href="https://www.imdb.com/user/ur1323291/ratings">my IMDb ratings</a></ft>