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Kiborgy. Heroyi ne vmyrayut (2017)
Well paced movie with a big heart
It surprisingly well paced and rather character-driven than actually a chronicle piece. Looks are stunning, whole flick is directed marveosly and characters flesed out so well, that now I'm eager to see spin-offs about every single one of them. Being a war movie, it mannages to capture the horrors of war pretty well, not making it fun attraction as some other flicks do. Nonetheless, there's a surprising amount of comedy, serving as a tone changer and means of coping with the situation by the characters.
Absolutely loved it, definitely a must watch one.
Klaus (2019)
Netflix and chill finally transformed into Netflix and cry
I absolutely love it - convenient, but not over complicated story with just enough dimentiality of the characters embodied in incredible and astonishing visual style - what the heck else do you want from any movie, especially a Christmas one?
With that level of competence of the production in literally every way it's just bizarre to me how such masterpiece couldn't find it's home for so long.
I'm definitely looking for more movies like this in the future.
Undone (2019)
Sci-fi pshychological story with shamans instead of technomages or nanobots
That's an absolutely beautiful show from any perspective: it's written consistent, scored perfectly, passed evenly and painted astonishingly. When the trailer came out, I was really skeptical about it, especially from the visual point of view, but fortunately, by some reason, trailer got not most beautiful shots from the show, but mostly an average ones. Generally all of the frustration of realistic animation and proportions in under-stylized graphics is getting away after the first episode, but still, it could be a bit more shabby and distanced from reality just to match better with the backgrounds. Special kind of respects I'm paying to the Submarine VFX for their hard and mostly seamless work, because it's so mind-bending, so it would be no wonder that artist go crazy after this project. Still, they managed to push it through in an awesome and consistent way, so visually series didn't fell apart halfway through. And it's especially charming that they've used Blender for this.
But enough about visuals (nah, it's really not EVER enough), lets talk about, well, everything else.
Our star and queen Rosa Salazar shines in this project in all colors of visible and some time invisible spectrum. She's funny, dramatic, dorkish, crazy and charming, often simultaneously in the same scene. Weirdly enough, rest of the cast are so good, that you enjoy every line from them, every delivery is on point and clearly are purified and iterated to the specific condition. Bob Odenkirk is superdad, although, that's goes without saying. Of course, none of it would work, if the story department wouldn't deliver. Fortunately, they did.
It's the same old feeling like from Bojack Horseman - when writer is walking on the razor's blade, tackling some sensitive issues, but doing it softly, so audience wouldn't be scared off or punched in the guts by a mind-twisting reveal. Sure, this series have it's own twist, reveals and surprises, but they are done gently, so viewer would come to the threshold of existential crisis, but won't fall past it, leaving the site eager to see more. Whole story structured non-linearly. It's interesting and serving the point of being confusing to Alma and to the viewer simultaneously, but it lead to the need to explain it, which took four out of eight episodes, which is too much to my taste. Of course this biased opinion of mine is coming from a fan of sci-fi genre, but show literally takes half of it's runtime to tell that Alma perceiving time now from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, and thus her physical body is traveling in time in a strict progression from cause to effect, her mind is getting in the waves of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff. As you probably already guessed, Doctor Who did that in one bloody sentence. Same thing with the explanation of Alma's incredible abilities: authors deliberately tackling scientific explanations and steering out of them explaining all of what's happening in terms of indigenous cultures, which is fine, as long as they denying science that way, which they, fortunately, didn't. Still, whole beauty of the show became clear when all pieces of the puzzles are in place, so don't even think about dropping it mid-way! Even if some episodes seeming to be non-eventful, great writing and occasional comedy make it fun to watch how some characters just getting drunk in a bar. From time to time Alma has habit to drop some _deep_and_meaningful_ though, which is really sometimes sounds out of place and confusing, but never awful and completely random. I guess ,with the whole crazy nature of the character it's a character trait. So don't look for deep, mind-blowing truths in her lines - most of them are on the edge of observational comedy and definitely not a Earth-shattering revelations some tabloids saying they are. Another positive side of writing is characters - they ALL flawed, we clearly can see some good sides, some bad sides, some aspirations and hypocricy of literally every character in the main cast.
And all of that presenting a viewer a brand new, shiny and colorful puzzle box of thoughts, ideas and concepts, gently presenting it without pushing any agenda, leaving all conclusions for viewers to make, however they want. Is Alma good or bad person? Is she trying to be nice, but fail, or trying to be awful and also fail, or succeed? That's up to viewer to decide, and that's brilliant, in my opinion.
Now you have to excuse me - I have to re-watch this series again RIGHT NOW and then wait till the next season.
Alita: Battle Angel (2019)
Hell yes to the kinda sort of original IPs
After loads and load of absolutely typical, like factory-made movies about superheroes and invulnerable Alita is just a breath of clean air, because main character is relatable, and constantly is in real danger. Main heroine keeps her scars and damage through the whole picture and heartbreaking moments for the character is also mean _something_ to the viewer. Fortunately, the flick doesn't try to have overcomplicated story with some pseudo-philosophical subtext or political statement, it's just as much as it needed to be - silly enough, naive to some extent, but exactly how it needs to be.
Can't wait for the sequel!
Chernobyl (2019)
Oh, come on, you've seen it, you know it's brilliant.
Yup, it's totally worth a title of best fictionalized series ever. Incredible direction, brilliant sound design, spectacular effects that's not intrusive, used exclusively to help to tell a story and the script itself, which goes marvelously well with the historical events - what can be better? Some said that 4th episode was a tag and series started to digress, but fortunately it served like a fantastic jumping point for episode 5 which wrapped whole story and all arcs up, restoring missing pieces of the puzzle of this horrible catastrophe and crowning it with glowing hope of triumph of the human spirit, which allowed not only to stop Chernobyl disaster from killing all of the humanity, but also to prevent 60 absolutely identical incidents on other power plants. And that's all under an immeasurable pressure of Soviet totalitarian regime, which was comparable to that pressure in reactor when it exploded. Same thing what did Soviet Union to itself five years after the disaster, figuratively speaking.
The series teaching us an important lesson about responsibility and non-conformism to systems of repression, which USSR was. Shall I remember you how Chernobyl shelter was funded by European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and built by the French consortium Novarka, because party leaders flee to Russia and refused to clear a mess they created? Even if Chernobyl itself is a thing from the past at the moment, viewers should remember that it didn't go away completely: it just took a form of Russian Federation, which for a brief moment tried to mimicate and appear to be vegetarian. Repressive system is alive and more ferocious than ever, evidently, as you can see by the acts of this state, which started from repressions for it's own citizens and now is all about annexing other countries, poisoning British citizens with radioactive elements, intervene in literally any elections in any major country and threatens to nuke their neighbors.
We can beat this threat again. Together. So remember about Chernobyl and don't let Russia do it again.
Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018)
Nearly a perfect sequel
Just love it. It may seem to predictable or even random at times, but eventually it's all come up to a single point, which is surprisingly good, actually. Sequel explores an idea of life after happily ever after. Fortunately, Internet itself is used just as a setting and those most of those internet-related jokes you've seen in the trailers.
A Sniper's War (2018)
Springtime for Hitler, but for real.
Seriously, it would be a great parody or an homage to Mel Brooks' genius with his "Springtime for Hitler" performance, but authors of that hot piece of cinema telling the viewer that occupation of neighbor's territory, racial genocide and 2.5 mil broken lifes is great and heroic thing to do FOR REAL.
Just speechless, to be honest. And that's even not even to mention that scenario of this historic event is carbon copy of events in Sudeten in 40s.