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Under the Tuscan Sun (2003)
A well-done rom-com, perfect for a rainy day
Sometimes all you want to do is watch a predictable but not entirely cheesy rom-com. This the perfect movie to watch when it's rainy out and you're snuggled under some blankets.
The cast is full of typical characters you find in a typical rom-com, the cheating husband/partner, slightly ridiculous plot resulting in the main character traveling to a foreign land or doing something crazy and random people who in real-life would be a pain as opposed to charming. What the director does in order to temper the zanny plots and characters is to counteract them with a witty script, gorgeous cinematography and making sure that not all of the characters are charactictures.
At the end of the day the film isn't life changing but is on the high-end of mediocre.
The Chase (2021)
The show is too slow and confusing
Sara Haines was a great addition to the View but on the Chase, she's too slow and not witty at all. The fact that questions doesn't show up on screen in the first round is bewildering to the viewer and Sara's slow delivery exacerbates it. It makes it hard for the viewer to follow along.
The show spends too much on time shooting/filming the gameboard bit and it both throws off the show's pace but is also confusing. Instead of switching the garishly-colored game board after every time a contestant answers a question, it should appear as a graphic on the screen. The best game shows are visually simple like What's My Line, Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy.
Also, the other two quizmasters isn't terribly beneficial. Perhaps it was just the episode that I watched but I didn't find James or Ken's commentary particularly useful or interesting. They weren't witty or gave much insight how they would have answered a particular question. Finally, the combination of a visually confusing game and the game's numerous steps and nuances makes it tiring for the viewer and it seriously impedes the adrenaline that a viewer would need in a quiz show.
Sylvie's Love (2020)
Beautiful film with a Lousy Plot
The film is no doubt beautiful. Gorgeous costumes, beautiful actors, good acting, lovely sets. However, what made this film fall flat on its face was its plot.
First of all, the main character, Sylvie, is a character you want to root for but the writing for her is confusing. For the first twenty minutes of the film you learn almost nothing about her except that she is more reserved than her cousin, Mona Lisa, and she has a vast knowledge of jazz. Both are fine qualities but we learn almost nothing about her. Did she go to college, what does she like to read, does she have any hobbies, none of that. Fast forward 10 minutes and she decides she wants to be a tv producer. The only inkling the viewer gets that she's interested in the television industry is that she watched a lot of tv. However, even that is explained by the fact that she's using it to pass time, in the beginning, because her fiance is stationed in Korea. She then lands a job without showing any interest in the field. It's believable that she has no relevant experience but you need enthusiasm and drive to make it believable. In her job interview, she came off as arrogant and privileged, qualities nobody wants in an assistant. Sylvie could have been a well-written character, similar to that of Peggy Olsen from Mad Men but instead we got a bare-bones version of it.
My other major gripe is the cheating because it wasn't necessary to move the plot forward at all. Instead, they could have just gone on the date and she didn't have to cheat because she already had him around her finger. She could have just had a flirtatious exchange with him, shared some longing faces and it would have done the same job as her cheating. While I'm aware that extramarital dalliances were more commonplace in the '50s, the fact that she cheated didn't serve the plot at all. Her marriage to Lacey was already in the dumps over conflicting perspectives and her father's death made her realize that she wants a career and she wants to be with Robert. Another issue that arises when you include cheating in the plot was that of the fact she suffers no consequences. Her prim and proper mother who runs an etiquette school, does not appear and isn't even mentioned until there's 10 minutes left.
My final major gripe with the film was its ending. They spent the last 30 minutes of the film with Robert feeling lost in his career with the decline of Jazz's popularity but it amounts to nothing. He talks about these new tunes he writes but the audience doesn't see it and isn't ever brought up again. He essentially has no closure except that he can't live without Sylvie. That's great and all but it isn't like he could not have had both. It's baffling to the audience because music is such a big part of his life. Everyone admires him for his music. The film could should have ended with either a montage or flash forward in which they're in New York, her as a successful tv producer and him as a popular performer at a local club or writing new compositions for various productions. Jazz may have fallen from its height of popularity in the '50s but jazz was still very much alive in NYC even till today.
What I wanted was the kind of film you want to watch when it's cold out and you just want to watch something predictable and uplifting. What I got was a beautiful but confusing film.
On the Basis of Sex (2018)
A must-watch. A well-produced film about a legal giant.
The film captures a snapshot of the Justice's early legal career. Thank god, it isn't one of those films that tries to jam in everything significant that happens in her life into one film. To be frank, I don't understand those criticizing the film as being way too heavy on the "legalese". In fact, I would argue that the film does to great lengths to make the court case exciting to the average movie-goer. It would be like if someone watched a sports film and complained that it focused too much on the game/sport. Before watching the film, I would of course google the sport to learn about the sport's history and rules.
The film centers around a very important case that Ginsburg works on, so of course it's going to be packed with legal jargon and the monotony that comes with the legal system. Courts and the legal system are almost never as thrilling as Elle Wood's defense of Brooke Taylor-Windham at the end of Legally Blonde and that's a good thing. It is why for instance, SCOTUS cases should never air on TV. Perhaps I'm biased as a political science student but I think the film does a good job of trying the explain the significance of the Ginsburgs' arguments and how screwed up it is to have US law to include prescribed gender roles in a sufficiently artistic manner. It's understandable if you're worried about not understanding the film but give it a chance and before doing so, just read the wikipedia article on the court case.
That said, I would dock one point for showing not showing enough of the difficulties of juggling being a mother and a law professor/lawyer. I only say that because the filmmaker chose to give her daughter a rather large role in the second half of the film so it's important to flesh out her character and by connection, humanize the person RBG. I think it's important for filmmakers to acknowledge the baby-sitters, grandparents and etc., the difficulties of raising a teeneager in the early '70s in the midst of second-wave feminism and etc. These are the human interest stories that in partial, made her extremely endearing (not to discount her legal work) to so many. It's not that women can't have it all but it's just easier for some women, more than others.
This Is Paris (2020)
Sheds a new light on the Paris we know
Like many born in the late 1990s, Paris was a distant memory of the embodiment of the "spoiled rich girl". She was ditzy, media savvy and cunning. I was too young to ever be interested about her life in the 2000s but presently, I viewed her nothing more than as a smart businesswoman who knows how to build a very profitable empire of her image similar to the likes of Kim Kardashian. In short, no one of particular interest to me but was living a very materialistic but presumably happy life.
In the documentary, it reveals a lot more about her childhood and what triggered her desire to create this empire in spite of being perfectly able to live an extremely high standard of living with her inheritance and any money she would have made during the early '00s. Yes, Paris is an executive producer on the documentary which led me dock a few stars on the bias she would have had on the documentary and another was docked from the straying away but understable reasons behind not pressing more substantial questions on some of the interviewees. However, I think it's human nature to not want to see people suffer and be vulnerable when it's obviously painful, even if it's a rich, young, conventionally attractive heiress.
In many ways, her fixation on accumulating wealth is tied to her painful adolescence, Yes, she went out partying at a young age (and probably dabbled into alcohol) but was it ok for her parents to create an environment in which her sister was placed into a very uneven dynamic where she was parentified and encourage to tattle on her sister, Paris? Some additional disturbing details such as the kidnapping her parents planned in order to send her this sort of rehabilitation camp for children who misbehave are also revealed by a clearly, still-shaken Paris. While a flawed argument for such a rash reaction could be made if the person was being harmful to herself and/or society, many, including I would argue that her family's "legacy" does not conspire to the same burden. If I were to have children in the future, I would hope to be in a relationship with my children that was close and where we could be honest and for them to not be afraid of me.
If you still view her as just another rich socialite with no sense of reality and disposable, I hope that you'll at least take a page in how not to be a parent or a human being. For all of us in life, empathy is free and/or cheap and even a millionaire-heiress who has said questionable things in the past deserves some of it. I think it will be great for humanity if they saw the film and situations such as the ones mentioned in the film with some more empathy.
Mulan (2020)
Just disappointing...
The 1998 Mula film has always been one of my favorite films, not just because it made me feel represented as a young Asian-American but the film had a good story with important messages. Not going to lie, I was both excited and scared about the 2020 film but I wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt.
Now I know the 1998 film has some flaws but the 2020 does just adds nothing. I really mean, nothing. The CGI looks questionable at times, the phoenix was confusing and useless but its most disappointing qualities are that of its changes to the characters and the plotline. For instance, the decision made to make Mulan a prodigy invalidates just about what made her stick as a character in my mind. She was proof that it was possible to become good at something so as long as you persevered. In the 1998 film, Mulan is offered a role as an advisor but in the 2020 film she gets an offer to be a guard. In the age of Disney trying to be relevant and/or woke, this comes off as insulting. There's really no good that comes out of preformative feminism which doesn't work to benefit all women. Instead it pits women against other women. Even the 2020 Mulan was at times innovative and in return, you give her a job that allows for her to not input any of her useful insight? How is that fair and why did Disney think it worked from a story perspective. What made the 1998 Mulan tick was that it explored the extreme ends of preforming masculinity (she was super awkward when she first met Li Shang) and femininity (I mean the matchmaker scenes were just perfect) and she failed at both. Instead she demonstrated that it's important to harness the qualities of both genders and that she only succeeded when she used both.
Finally, I'm going to dock points a point for historical accuracy because while this was never marketed as some sort of historical epic and it's a Disney film, the thing with costuming, art direction and set design, is that it has to add to the story. I mean Moulin Rouge's costumes aren't really historically appropriate but they add to the feeling of what a spectacle Moulin Rouge is. For example, one could look to the type of house that Mulan's family lived in. As the story is set in Central China, the round houses were characteristic of those in the southwestern part of the country. I'm sure the shape of the houses aren't really relevant to the plot but it wouldn't hurt to change that aspect especially if you're not constricted by the confines of animation. To be frank, I find it insulting that Disney has all the money and couldn't hire a single (or better, several) East Asian Studies/literature professor to help them with that?
I can't speak to how accurate the script was as I'm not terribly knowledgable about the original ballad and as such, I can't dock a whole lot of points for that. Perhaps it wasn't the worst film I've ever seen due to technicalities, but it it earned itself a one-star rating for its lack of innovation given its resources.
Hollywood (2020)
It's exactly what we were promised.
No one watching this should expect a documentary and that's ok. Ryan Murphy didn't promise such a thing and thus we should judge it on other merits. It's a show with a tidy plot, beautiful sets and costumes, decent and at times, wonderful acting. One could make the argument that since it deviates so far away from reality, it's just wish fulfilment and invalidates the real-life experiences of Anna May Wong who in real-life never was nominated for an Oscar or Rock Hudson who spent the majority of his life in the closet for the fear of damaging his reputation. However, it's 2020, we can seek those views and experiences in other movies or documentaries and neither should we dismiss those facts. We can't reverse what occured in the past and we shouldn't try to rewrite it to be historically inaccurate but it doesn't mean we can't celebrate their accomplishments. Since this miniseries is presenting itself as a slice of alternative history, I see it as a way to honoring them. As an Asian-American woman, I might have shed a tear or two watching her recieve her rightly-deserved award in this mini-series. Yes, representation in the media isn't a substitute for a legal victory or advances such as that but god, it feels great. Finally, I saw this series as some light-hearted foder given the show's premise and the current circumstances, it just seemed perfect.
Some of the things I disliked or thought that took a bit away from the series were Laura Harrier's acting and the character, Henry Wilson,'s redemption plot. I found Laura's acting a bit jarring at times since her accent and diction was entirely too modern. She should have had a mid-atlantic accent and her diction gave me too much "valley-girl/generic American" rather than a studio-system actress. While I know that Harry's ending/redemption plot was in-line with the "Happy Hollywood ending"-trope, I feel like it was a touch too favorable to him so I'm glad that Rock didn't accept his apology right-away.