Shorts #110
Today's shorts: Horse Girl (2019), To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You (2020), Ad Astra (2019), Emma (2020), The Peanut Butter Falcon (2019), Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky (1991), Invader ZIM: Enter the Florpus (2019), Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989)
Maybe one of the best filmic experiences I have ever had, Horse Girl blew me away. I do not know how to make sense of it, and don't want to try to at present. I don't dare question the fact that I will re-watch this. I will have to write and explore more after that.
I cringed too hard and must have passed out. Didn't make it to the end. How torturous these modern teen romances are.
I couldn't make much sense of Ad Astra. This is a film that does well in presenting the line between complete psychological distress and control. However, what it does having established turmoil within its main character is slightly deflating and unaffecting. Ad Astra sees hope mask delusion and pain; it presents the very fringes of human experience as a realm of loneliness and, for lack of a better term, inhumanity. Perhaps you could be urged to ask having seen this--what point is there at gazing to the stars if you don't know where you stand, if you've forgotten where you have come from? Whilst one could deduce such notions from a memory of Ad Astra, it is a dull experience and somewhat dry film. This may be by design, but I found myself lost more than immersed whilst watching this.
Maybe one of the most pedantic and trivial stories ever put to film, Emma is very entertaining. The very brilliance of this film is encapsulated by the fact that the highest point of drama comes when, during a picnic, a harsh insult slips from our main character's lips. The lamentation, tears and moans that rain fourth from this are absurdly tickling. All of that said, Emma, as all adaptations do, exists under a question of the original source material. Is it Jane Austin's novel that provides this its quality, or is there anything unique that can be attributed to this cinematic adaptation alone? I cannot say much to this question as I have not read the book. So, all I can do is praise this tentatively. It is a little slow and exceedingly trifling, but Emma is pleasantly entertaining.
A genuine and warm film, The Peanut Butter Falcon is simply brilliant. With an understated script and an intrigued cinematic gaze, this allows each of its actors and actresses to shine. Both Shia LaBeouf and Dakota Johnson are at their best - yet they do not make loud statements with their roles. The Peanut Butter Falcon captures, in part, the tone and feel of the near-lazy, relaxed, genreless and minorly dramatised indie films of the 2000s, more concerned with the feel of an adventure, the being of living and the sensations of character. Such is utilised to tell a story of establishing ones own way in a world of many roads, some bigger than others, but all leading in different directions. More than worth the watch.
I have seen this twice in the span of a week, and Riki-Oh is a wacky gem of a film. I wanted to watch a crazy movie, and found myself surprised at just how insanely graphic and ludicrous this is. I cannot remember shouting with such surprise so many times in a film. From the first skinning and random impalement of faces to the body blasting hooks, Riki-Oh is off the wall. There are moments in this that I simply struggle to conceive of as being written by someone: our man's arm's tendon is sliced after he is blinding by glass; he washes the blindness away with sewage water and then ties his tendon in a knot like a shoe lace to fix it; he then proceeds to slice his foes gut open with his mere fist. I had to share the insanity on display on this film, and the second watch was just as golden as the first.
I don't watch cartoons on TV. I don't know why adult cartoons are such a thing... but I also get it. I did not know that Invader ZIM was a series before I started this movie - I realised that a hour or so after it finished. I was just pulled into the most trippy and nonsensical chaos I could comprehend. Nothing made sense, but I accepted this and moved on with things. I laughed once or twice. Time flew by. Very little of consequence happened. I don't know why this exists, nor how it came into existence.
Kiki's Delivery Service is one of Studio Ghibli's best works despite a slightly lacklustre depth of characterisation. Kiki herself is an enthralling character that invites you deep into this narrative. Her friends and other minor characters, however, lack what those in, for example, Spirited Away do: they fail to complete a world and expand theme. That said, it is hard to look past how brilliant this film is - and all for such simple reasons. This is a film that optimistically asks how one can take responsibility for themselves and others as to grow up. There is no ethical pretence about this. It is earnest and forward in its assertion of the individuation soul, and for this cannot be regarded as anything lesser that truly fantastic.
