(film review) - The Creator

He came on the scene and a lot of people were wondering, "John David Washington, is he as good as his father? Is he trying to ride the coat-tails of his father? What is he going to bring to the acting table?" You could say, he has big shoes to fill, but with everything I have seen him in, JDW seems to be carving out a filmography for himself where, some may not hit well, but he is really good in the role. This would be his 13th film role. Starting in Malcolm X with his father, then Devil with the Blue Dress and then Book of Eli as a co-producer. Since then, JDW has been in BlackkKlansman, Tenet, Malcolm and Marie, all great films, so JDW is starting to become a household name. The Creator though, this is something different. And if I do say so myself, JDW was great in this. Joshua is an undercover operative in a war between humans and artificial intelligence who is tasked to seek out and locate a new weapon created by Nirmata, a mysterious chief architect of the AI machines and a machine called 'Alpha O' which is believed to have the capabilities of taking out a USS orbital weapon named the North American Orbital Mobile Aerospace Defence (NOMAD). When Joshua discovers Alpha O on a mission, Joshua discovers the simulant to be a little girl and must decide whether he should kill the little girl or follow his heart. Gareth Edwards has not done many films at all, Monsters, Godzilla, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and now this. While I do recall things being said about Rogue One regarding his involvement with Tony Gilroy, The Creator shows us where we are with Gareth and exactly what he is capable of. The Creator is a few films fused into one, but delivered in such a great way in regards to storytelling and visuals. Yes, the story is not groundbreaking, but it is told in a way where it is upto the audience to decide who is the bad guy? Morality. Ethics. What we do as people, humans on this earth and how we treat each other, view each other and behave when we do not understand or wish to understand. The film is masterfully crafted giving us breathtaking visuals and special effects which simply looked amazing considering the budget. I have watched movies that were a lot more money and the special effects and graphics were nowhere near as clean as this. The character designs were amazing and some of the designs added lent to some comedic moments in a film that is fairly serious in tone as it tackles the subject matter of trained/learned behaviour. The music is great, Hans Zimmer has a catalogue of scores that pair well with his films and this is simply just another one to add to his ever growing catalogue. The acting, superb. John David Washington's performance here is great and whilst you can close your eyes and hear his father, John exudes confidence and charisma that gels well with the actors around him as well as Madeleine Yuna Voyles who plays Alpha O. She is great and helps to carry the emotional moments within the movie throughout. Seeing Ken Watanabe is always great, along with Gemma Chan. Short roles but they did a great job with carrying the story. This film reminds me of 'A Quiet Place' for the sheer fact that, while the events of this film takes places mostly in Los Angeles and New Asia, what are the other stories across the globe? Are there other pockets of factions fighting wars on their turf? Is it simply just the Americans being Americans (in films like this) or is there a British Army, Korean Army, German Army fighting "Rogue A.I" as well? I would love to see a sequel where Alpha O possibly meets another version like her who is the exact opposite built from the same schematics and raised in a way where they continue to perpetuate the war. There are soo much possibilities with this movie and considering the movie was made for a quarter of what movies are made for these days, hoping the studio make their money back, I am hoping they can push forward for another excellent movie. Something a little longer. Something with a bit more tragedy and moral dilemmas. Something that challenges the audience and pushes us to feel emotions about the things we do. Whilst this film did some of these things, they were considerably light and with the rise of AI and all the stories which have already been told, I feel we could have a great franchise here for the ages.

(trailer review) - Eternals

(Teaser Trailer)

Ok, it seems I might have missed a few trailers for this movie or Marvel have decided to be a little different with the trailers for this because this trailer shows soo much I've not seen before and it looks GREAT! Like how many trailers have they put out yet?

I said before that the t ailer doesn't show me much but blimey, this trailer seems to answer all the question we had been asking.  I'm really starting to love that Marvel seem to be IN the audience's heads and tackling the question we would ask about the lore/world of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  So, if this happened, why didn't so-and-so do this and come and help or why didn't blah blah come with blah blah to help.  A problem the MCU can have, is people forever asking these questions, but the real of it is, people are always out doing something else with their own problems and/or demons they need to fight. It's similar with real world things and life, you don't hear from someone because it is likely their life is chaotic as it is.  I just loved the way this trailer shows us a lot but still doesn't show us much and going off the back of what I have been hearing about the Shang-Chi trailers, the trailers do NOTHING for the film, so it stands to reason, this movie will be 100 times better than these trailers.  I mean it does look really amazing as it is AND that the bar had been raised. Maybe Shang-Chi has raised the bar, but I haven't seen that yet.  We will see.

Directed by Chloé Zhao and starring Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Kumail Nanjiani, Lia McHugh, Brian Tyree Henry, Lauren Ridloff, Barry Keoghan, Don Lee, Gil Birmingham, Harish Patel, Kit Harington, Salma Hayek & Angelina Jolie

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(film review) [STREAMING] - Raya and the Last Dragon

Pronounced "Rye-ah".  I had been calling it Ray-Ah because, well I'm English and I say things the wrong way all the time because, English...lol.  Anyway, when I saw this trailer, I thought to myself, "I haven't seen a decent cartoon movie from Disney in a little while".  It would have been Toy Story 4 but the last Disney cartoon movie I watched was Soul... and before that, The Lion King then Toy Story 4.  But although I really enjoyed Soul, I feel I had a slightly better time with Toy Story 4 because I knew the characters, the story was great and it has stuck with me since seeing it, as in, it is more memorable and funny.  It was just a great cartoon.  Considering Toy Story has been going on for years, it really hasn't lost it's step.  With Soul, although I enjoyed the story and the meaning, it was really good, but seeing a black guy as a cat through majority of the film couldn't let me resonate with it as much as I would have liked to looking back at it now, since I have watched it a few times, but still a really good movie, just hasn't stuck with me as much as it perhaps, should have.  The Lion King, well...it was the Lion King.  Raya, when it was finished, although the story was great but the meaning was a little wishy-washy for me, I understood ultimately the message and this movie was really good.

Raya (Kelly Marie Tran) belongs to one of five tribes that live in a land called Kumandra.  These tribes have been at war for centuries after an event that left them in a power struggle.  Raya believes a magical orb is the solution to peace, so she goes on a quest to seek out Sisu (Awkwafina) The Last Dragon in an bid to try and bring the tribes together and restore peace.

If I say anything more, I would spoil moments of the movie, however, I really enjoyed this movie, a lot.  Maybe I'm forcing myself to like it more because I got it under Disney Premier Access, but no, I really did enjoy it.  I felt the animation was amazing, but at this rate, from when they have made animated Lions, Tigers and Bears, oh my, look amazingly real, then this was nothing in the grand scheme of things.  The characters looked great and I remember noting from the trailers, the skin on these characters were soo smooth and somewhat "plastic-like" but also real?  I can't really put my finger on it but the colours for the skin tones and the lighting were just great.  I also adored the depth of view, like what our camera's do now, you know, portrait mode when the background is blurry.  Soo effective.  Talking about depth, I felt the story was serviceable but it lacked just a little bit of depth, like the quest felt short.  I felt like it didn't feel epic enough or that it took years to get to where we are, although it is heavily implied.  I also felt that we could have had more epic fight scenes.  Maybe because I am a huge fan of Eastern Culture such as Samurai's and warriors of that sort, I believe it would have went a long way if we had just more epic fights like the kinds you see in 'Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon' or 'Hero', you know? Mulan is not on this list because I keep falling asleep.  I must get back to it though.

The characters and the voice acting was great.  I feel Kelly Marie Tran did a great job, although I hear she wasn't the original person for the role.  For some reason, I don't believe I have actually heard Awkwafina speak, or at least I know her name than her voice, I actually though she sounded more like Natasha Lyonne, but she did really good in her role as Sisu The Last Dragon.  Some other characters such as the con-baby (as stated in the trailers) and essentially Raya's nemesis were great characters and I loved the battle of two people desperately wanting to be friends, but because they are of opposing tribes, they can't and don't trust each other due to generations and generations of civil unrest, a little like Romeo and Juliet.  You know, create your own path, don't let your parents or the generations before dictate your future.  That could have actually have been the message here as I think about it.

What I will definitely say is, this film would have been great to watch in the cinema and get that cinema experience.  It deserved a big screen, it deserves them booming speakers and a nice comfortable sitting arrangement and snacks, but I guess two out of four isn't terrible at all, plus you don't have to travel home...

Pay that premier price, it's definitely worth it.

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(trailer review) - Raya and the Last Dragon

These guys seems to be making more quality animation that looks so so sooo good! Granted they have years to perfect animation and technology is changing daily, but not only is this looking soo good, the story looks great too.

From what I can tell, it seems to be some kind of in-fighting between families and/or tribes and the Village Raya comes from gets taken over by the person with the short hair and Raya needs to fight to get it back.  Maybe she loses the village when she is off on her quest to find the last Dragon in wich she will use in hopes to reunite the families/clans.  Also, there is a shapeshifting dragon. Maybe I should have led with the shapeshifting part first.  But having not being the only person looking for the Dragon, I'm sure this will just make the quest more difficult.
The fighting scenes look well animated and I liked the extending whip-like sword and the con-baby is cute and adorable.  Raya has a fruit ninja moment which was cool, however, I hope it isn't too cheesy. Oh, what an amazing cast as well!

Directed by Don Hall, Carlos López Estrada and starring Kelly Marie Tran, Awkwafina, Gemma Chan, Daniel Dae Kim, Sandra Oh, Benedict Wong, Izaac Wang, Thalia Tran, Alan Tudyk 

(film review) - Captain Marvel

We are at a stage in our lives and in Marvel's franchise that an origin movie may now be out of place.  I mean our lord savour, Kevin Feige has mentioned no more origin movies, yet this one is a semi origin movie with a twist and ultimately, Marvel has stumbled with this one.  It's sad to say, but they have and although I will review the film, I won't go into all the details and spoil anything, but reasons as to why they stumbled but didn't fall.
Marvel have stumbled with many films.  Their way of doing something different and/or when they first started out, they were slowly piecing together what they wanted to do with the franchise.  The Incredible Hulk is good, Ironman 2 is good, Thor: The Dark World is good and Ironman 3 is Goodish (not one of my favourites at all), but Marvel have had greater and many more hits than misses and have made small ret-cons here and there.  One of the major ones of recent, by no fault of their own I guess, was with the Spider-Man: Homecoming movie, regarding the year.  But that came down to communication and "admin" error? However, this is something that has  been more forgiving by fans and helps with the integrating of such character into a grander story.  If the new and upcoming Avengers: Endgame grosses around 3 billion worldwide, we are looking at a 10 Billion Dollar Franchise.  10 Billion.  That's 9 zeroes.
But how does Captain Marvel's story fit into this? Well, any way Marvel can squeeze it in...for the women of the world!?

Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) is a Kree operative for Starforce who goes by the name of Vers.  She is a confident, upbeat, determined, yet hard-headed woman who get's the job done at any cost.  She has a good moral compass but is plagued by dreams and visions of what seems to be another life.  On a mission to eradicate the Kree's sworn enemies, The Skrulls, the mission goes wrong and from that point, Carol aka Vers spends the rest of the movie trying to figure out the mysteries of her dreams and visions, who she really is and what and whom she is ultimately fighting for.

It sounds great on paper, but I personally feel that this movie could have been executed in a better way.  This is where I feel they stumbled, and not fell.  I felt that it was not fully fleshed out and that some of the characters could have had more depth as well as maybe, the film being a psychological thriller, a bit like how 'The Winter Soldier' was a 70's political thriller.  With the themes in the movie, this film could have touched on that in a big way.  What is real and what isn't.  Who am I?  Total Recall did that.  And for the most part, that movie is a classic for many reasons.  But they would still need to cater to the young ladies of the world to aspire to be Captain Marvel.

I didn't hate the film as I quite enjoyed it.  Brie is not miscast at all and their are some great visuals and some really quiet moments that allow particular characters to shine.  Lashana Lynch is great as well as Samuel L. Jackson.  But as I said earlier, some character development with some other characters would have made the story a bit meatier.  There are some decent visual gags as well as the many mid-nighties references.  With many easter eggs and visual references of movies from that era, this movie hits it out of the park, but ultimately felt like a Phase 1 Movie in a Phase 3 world.  Doctor Strange is a origin movie, even Black Panther, yet these movies feel like they pack more of a punch, especially with Black Panther...and this woman has glowing fists!  I felt that it was shoehorned into the MCU because DC made a Wonder Woman movie which was very good.  And these two giants are in deep competition with each other, so there is always a company trying to out-do the other and this is possibly another reason why Marvel stumbles.

A lot of people are saying Carol is over powered and personally, although that is somewhat true, I feel we should have more powerful characters in the MCU, because this is how we will separate the many different tiers of these heroes and be able to tell a variety and multitude of different stories.  Phase 4 is looking to be great and varied, especially with the conclusion of the Fox Deal, I'm very interested in seeing what Carol will be doing in Avengers: Endgame and after.  A sequel and the many prospects it has is great fore the future of the MCU as well as the many women and little girls who will feel empowered by Captain Marvel.