365 Days (2020)

Credit: Netflix

Directed by: Tomasz Mandes, Barbara Bialowas
Written by: Tomasz Klimala (Screenplay), Blanka Lipińska (Novel)

Starring: Anna Maria Sielucka, Michele Morrone

NSFW

This post is inspired by Scaachi Koul’s write-up at Buzzfeed. I recommend checking it out, she’s a better writer than me.

365 Days is a film where two actors that hate each other act like they like each other, and then fuck all the time. Its premise is somewhat novel: a mafia boss kidnaps a girl he saw on a beach once and gives her 365 days to fall in love with him; if she does not, she is free to go. We’ve all been there.

So we’re looking at a Beauty and the Beast situation in a modern context and whose difference is not subtle at all. The film tries to transgress or subvert that formula by presenting The Beast as a thoroughly unlikable asshole through its whole runtime. As the head honcho in charge of a large crime syndicate, Massimo (not Mossimo, the clothing guru who bribed college administrators to put his daughter through college) is more of a caricature of a person. He is used to getting everything he wants no matter what and won’t take no for an answer, especially concerning the feels of women. He is played as a cold, dead-eyed dickhead by Michele Morrone who takes or shows no joy in the role whatsoever.

By contrast, Anna Maria Sielucka is Laura, the woman from the beach and Massimo’s, um, target of affection. She is shown early on to have some agency and a bit of a plucky personality, and pushes back against Massimo an appropriate amount (100%) after she’s kidnapped. The problem is that Massimo is not well-meaning or earnest in his proposition, being the crime-bred character he is. So even when she says ‘no, not gonna happen now or ever,’ and exercises that agency and pluckiness of hers, he basically threatens to rape her and tells her that ‘um actually you will fall in love with me in 365 days or else.’ The only thing missing is him running his thumb across his neck or saying she’d be sleeping with the fishes. It’s an erotic rape fantasy made manifest, and some viewers will likely take issue with that.

Eventually, she does give in to his advances, probably more due to Stockholm Syndrome than anything else. It’s here where all character development is thrown out the window and some really savage fucking begins. This is what audiences were waiting for and 365 Days delivers, almost with a wink, pushing the envelope when and wherever it can all the while. I can’t discuss it much further without sounding like a total perv, but in sum it is borderline pornography and if you’re watching this on family movie night you may end up feeling awkward and embarrassed for a long while afterwards. It screams 90’s late-night Cinemax fare, the kind of dreck you’d get satellite TV for and skip around the other channels until it gets to the good stuff. And in spite of all the love-making going on, there’s just no love that’s happening at all, so the blue ball-inducing buildup transitions into a vignette of carnal scenes that mostly feel unearned. You’d be better off watching real porn, not that I would know anything about that.

What we’re left with is a film that gets a little hot in a few places but falls flat in plenty of others. The leads sleepwalk through all of the non-erotic scenes whose overall conclusion is boring and nonsensical. The film’s score sounds like some low-rent bullshit from Soundcloud that bashes your head in with how on the nose it gets. Some of the photography is good but feels aimless and uninspired. Italy looks nice this time of year.

365 Days is a film that preys on folks who, as Scaachi Koul from BuzzFeed writes, are “too nervous to just take the plunge and type ‘pornhub’ into a browser.” It attempts to know its audience better than the audience knows itself. In my opinion, it doesn’t succeed. I recommend viewing this only if you don’t know where to look for hot people doing it anywhere else on Earth.

D

Blue Valentine (2010)

Directed by: Derek Cianfrance
Genre: Romance

Blue Valentine is an independent film about a married couple that has rushed into an unhappy marriage for the benefit of their illegitimate child.  They take a romantic weekend getaway to a cabin in the woods in order to sort out a row they’re having.  This affords them plenty of time to ruminate on why they hate each other while also remembering all the good times they had in younger, more innocent days.

Watching this movie is a lot like being a roommate or guest in the company of a couple who fights all the time and is just as interesting.  It’s so full of contempt and loathing that in watching it I had to pause a few times to catch my breath, and not in a good way.  Meanwhile it is also devoid of any energy or excitement, with a plot that dawdles to nowhere even as it asks us to hold on and see if these two star crossed lovers will reconcile their failed relationship.  Do it for the children, guys!  Wait, don’t do it for the children, you’d make horrible parents.

A small redeeming factor of the film is its most interesting and shortest scene.  The wife visits an abortion clinic because she is scared to have the baby and it seems to be played straight.  It covers her interview with the doctor and talks about her sexual history and then switches to her lying on the operating table to complete the procedure.  She is awake and presumably numbed, and is allowed to make a last-minute decision about whether she should keep the baby or not.  It is a powerful scene that forms a powerfully emotional core of an otherwise mediocre film, and in a way that almost makes watching it worthwhile.  At the very least, I think I understand that I shouldn’t be a drunken asshole loser to my wife.

C+

 

Theatrhythm Final Fantasy Curtain Call (2014)

Platform: Nintendo 3DS
Publisher: Square-Enix
Genre: Rhythm Game

I was a bit skeptical when I first heard about Theatrhythm. By the time Square-Enix dropped this proverbial hat into the proverbial ring, Guitar Hero and Rock Band had ridden well into the sunset, to the point where they could no longer be seen without a telescope. But I was still drawn to it anyway. I was fond of those other two rhythm games and this one doesn’t require any clunky plastic peripherals. More importantly, I also have a deep love of Final Fantasy’s myriad of over-produced scores. But could a portable system with tiny tinny speakers manage to engross me in the rhythmic experience the same way as, say, an obsessively precise home theater experience? I wanted to find this out.

The core of the game is, of course, the music. Square-Enix has went full-on Nostalgia Celebration Mode here, providing as many as 200 songs from nearly every Final Fantasy game, including obscure titles like Mystic Quest. Most of the tracks are unlocked at the start of the game too so you can overdose on call-backs immediately. The 3DS also perfectly transcribes the audio; there are no ‘As Performed by Nobuo Uematsu’ bullshit covers here and everything plays as originally cut, including pieces from the NES games. You should have no trouble getting instantly transported to those times in your life where you Final Fantasy games were important. And if you haven’t played the series at all? Well, some of the tracks might be interesting enough to go on a hunt for more.

Nostalgia certainly plays a big role in Theatrhythm, but without some decent gameplay it’s just a thirty dollar jukebox. That’s where the rhythm comes in. The player’s objective is to restore a substance called rhythmia to the world because Chaos and Cosmos are arguing about something. Rhythmia is acquired by using adorable chibi versions of Final Fantasy characters to bash in monsters’ heads, traverse through classic fields, or watch full-motion-videos culled from around the multiverse.

All performances are carried out by tapping and sliding around the 3DS screen with the stylus or pressing a button or doing both of those things at once in time with whatever music is playing. As more songs are played, the heroes you’ve selected gain experience points and abilities that allow for better durability in the expert difficulties which, to their credit, are outrageously hard. There is also a quest mode that assembles a smattering of songs to play that end with a siege of some bosses in a dungeon, kind of like a treasure map. I like these quests a lot; it adds a lot of depth to a game that on its face appears to have none. It’s also really exciting when a favorite song comes up; I found myself really wanting to prove my devotion to the Final Fantasy series by beating its ass over and over.

My biggest gripes with the game come down to the nature of the songs and their presentation. Not *all* of my favorites are in this package and are likely only offered via DLC through the Nintendo eShop. Also, several songs (I’m looking directly at you, Dancing Mad) are cut very short to preserve the fundamentally casual aspect of an admittedly casual game. There are also timing issues to contend with, a common problem for all rhythm games. Note latency isn’t always right and the ‘hold then slide’ sections in the field pices sometimes cut off early, resulting in missed Critical hits that can disrupt the music’s flow. StreetPass is incredibly underwhelming–what are the chances someone else will be walking around with this feature turned on, even in the nerdiest of nerdy stores? None, I checked. The game also doesn’t make much use of the 3D qualities of the 3DS, opting to float the track above the action while the paper cut-outs duke it out underneath. These gripes are minor though.

If you ask me, Theatrhythm Final Fantasy Curtain Call is a game that holds up to scrutiny incredibly well. It does this franchise a wonderful service; and even though non-FF gamers probably won’t see much value in it, the nostalgic demographic Square-Enix is clearly targeting have no need to remain skeptical. Give music a chance!

A

Cinderella (1950)

Directed by: Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske
Starring: Ilene Woods, Eleanor Audley

Cinderella is the first of an epic trilogy of animated feature films where a teenager whose abuse and neglect at the hands of her stepmother and sisters forms the basis of her chronic schizophrenia. The girl gets on with her life by doing various chores around their Gilded-Age mansion while talking to and sewing clothes for a bunch of freeloading rodents. When it is decreed that the Prince of the Realm wants to get laid and is throwing a ball to do just that, Cinderella’s dreams of escape are realized and she summons an impish old biddy to transform her and her furry friends into an enchanted entourage in a manic display of ultimate power.

The film focuses on the stepmother and sisters’ attempts to stop her from usurping the Prince’s mind, taking his throne, and leading the Kingdom down its darkest timeline of gloom and doom. It’s a pretty tragic story, actually, and typical of Disney’s early works where they took risks by using some wonderful visuals juxtaposed with heavy themes. It’s a work that holds up well even today, with lavish details and attentions  paid to the set-up and pay-off made in its various acts.  It’s a demonstration so masterful that I wouldn’t be surprised if it was found in academic circles as some kind of golden standard.

I’m disappointed in the over-use of the animals.  But I guess if you really think about it, Cinderella as a story doesn’t have much going for it. It’s a story about how dreams, no matter how lofty they seem, can come true if you just wish hard enough. Girl dreams of guy. Guy dreams of banging 150 girls. Guy throws ostentatious ball. Guy gets girl. Game, set, match; that sort of thing. So a little embellishment is needed to get from point A to point B I guess. Regardless, Cinderella serves as a fine example of the work and the passion that put Disney on the map of greatness. It really is a work of art to be proud of; and it’s so great to see them continue to shamelessly plunder it today.

B+

John Tucker Must Die (2006)

Directed by: Betty Thomas
Starring: Brittany Snow, Jesse Metcalfe

Yep. It’s a teen movie. A bunch of beautiful teens slink around a beautiful high school trying to get laid while ostensibly discovering their true feelings, identities, and/or sexual preferences. Chances are high that this beautiful high school is somewhere in beautiful California. Probably L.A. People’s beautiful high school reputations are at beautiful stake as they plot and scheme to fuck each other or fuck each other over on their collective quest to become a beautiful legend or something among a beautiful crowd of peers notorious for not remembering or caring about any of that beautiful fucking crap.

I’m trying very hard not to sound jaded here; I don’t have the enthusiasm. John Tucker Must Die (JTMD if you’re sassy) simply doesn’t achieve anything new. The movie is about an invisible beautiful girl who moves from town to town. She and Jenny McCarthy have settled in some upscale hamlet in beautiful California, where she finds herself struggling to fit in. Meanwhile, the most popular kid in school is reveling in his ability to play the field and date several beautiful girls at once. Our invisible beautiful heroine is not part of this fun. When it’s revealed that he ain’t nuthin’ but a beautiful playa, the estranged ex-girlfriends involve our heroine in a plot to destroy his beautiful reputation because they are shallow and also incapable of getting over him. Everything culminates not in a school dance but with a party that looks like a school dance. This shows us that yes, this teen movie is different than the rest of them and is complicated and has a lot of depth to it. For starters, did you know they all drink alcohol?

While the overall plot has nothing going for it really, I will say one thing about this film that I found to be really good. JTMD is totally an actor’s movie. And JTMD’s cast had a lot of fun making this movie. This is most obvious in a frenetic scene where it is revealed that main character Kate (Brittany Snow) hasn’t really kissed anyone before, at least not well. She and Beth (Sophia Bush) are in John Tucker’s Jeep discussing how to deal with this sudden change in the plan to ruin him because he’s going to drive Kate home and likely give her a good night kiss which will, like, most definitely ruin the whole thing. Beth is the loose one of the group and she lays on a seduction so convincing to Kate that as she and John are driving home later you can see it in her face: she is clearly turned on. The best part is that John has no idea and starts talking to her about music and stuff. It’s a wonderful little blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment that I wish appeared more in an otherwise bland teen movie.

C+

Edward Scissorhands (1990)

Directed by: Tim Burton

There are probably a few things one should consider when one fucks around with someone whose hands are made of scissors. The first and most important issue is that THE DUDE’S HANDS ARE MADE OF SCISSORS. The other things are negligible in light of this fact, actually. If one’s precautions aren’t on full alert by now, nothing more can be said or done that could improve one’s survival odds.

It might also do some good to think through a decision to invite a dude whose scissors are hands into your house to sleep in your beautiful teenage daughter’s waterbed a little more carefully. This is especially true if there is a hide-a-bed (and ample space, booze) in the basement. If you need to raise a 20 year-old manchild that looks like a manic-depressive serial killer–and who wouldn’t–segregating him from your children for at least a week is probably the most practical idea. Dude’s gotta acclimate first.

Should a guy with scissors for hands be allowed to love? Gosh, I don’t know. Probably. Should a teenage girl start swooning over him within a week of his arrival, especially after her first meeting with him, where he is laying nervously in her bed, watching her undress while his scissors splay toward the ceiling? Meh, just laugh it off at a family reunion later or something. But it’s completely out of the question to have him carve a gigantic–no, COLOSSAL–block of ice into a swan in the middle of warm summer night. That’s where I draw the line, movie. Where did the ice come from? Where did he get that giant ladder? How can Winona Ryder be the only one who sees him going to town on this thing and making all kinds of noise? What would her pent up melodrama look like without an epic soundtrack and slo-mo camera present? Why are the neighbors such catty bitches? Why has the dilapidated evil mansion on the hill not been turned over to the city or a groundskeeper or meth addicts? I demand answers, dammit!

B

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (2013)

Published by: Nintendo
Platform: Nintendo 3DS

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds is a video game that tells the story of a young boy who is forced to save the world when all of his friends are transformed into paintings by a mad clown or something. The hero is himself turned into a painting, but is allowed to escape eternal purgatory with the aid of a smelly leather bracelet acquired from a shady-looking bunny man. The bracelet allows him to turn into a painting and walk around on walls; the rest of the game explores this fascinating new superpower in a myriad of creative ways. In fact, many of the ancient dungeons of Hyrule appear to have been built specifically with this ability in mind, even though no one else in Hyrule has ever been known to use such unusual magic before. The Ancients are truly an awesome and wise people.

So the game is especially great for those nostalgic fans sighted clearly in Nintendo’s crosshairs. A Link Between Worlds is the direct sequel to SNES golden child A Link to the Past and pays homage in a way I can only describe as consistent. The landscape and the monsters and the set pieces are familiar enough, but now jazzed up with a nice 3D look and a little tighter AI where appropriate. It feels really nice tromping around the ol’ stomping grounds again, and the 3DS is well suited to this task with its 3D mode turning Hyrule into a beautiful diorama. You get this desire to merely pluck enemies off the screen with a pair of tweezers and put them on a shelf or something. That’s pretty neat. The effect really shines in the Water Palace stage; pulling a switch and watching the water levels rise and fall is one of those obvious but brilliant design touches. Seriously, it looks amazing.

Gameplay is on the same level as the graphics: there’s enough nostalgia to get you into it and then the experience veers in a new direction with a wholly new core mechanic. Link gains an ability to turn into a painting and walk along the walls, which comes in handy for most if not all of the game’s puzzles. If you get stuck, look around for a flat wall you can merge with and that is the most likely solution. The fact that the game is built around this mechanic means that dungeons can be technically challenged in any order. Nintendo understood this enough to allow the renting of most of the game’s items. This is okay, but oft-times wall walking is the only working solution, which dampens the joy of using your wit to find alternatives with the items you spent good money renting.

Finally, the game’s script and score are pretty much par for the course. Zelda is in trouble. Link is the only one that can save her. The world is a big, scary, place that requires its scores of monsters to be enthusiastically put down. Various MacGuffins are sealed away inside various gimmicky dungeons for tax purposes and they must be recovered. The same overture with a slight change in the bridge blares on through reedy 3DS speakers. It’s a tried and true formula, the comfort food of the gaming world; and if you find a fault in A Link Between Worlds it’s likely going to be this. I agree with Nintendo’s trepidation re: formulaic gameplay. After all, why fuck with a formula that works? You don’t see people bitching about E=mc^2 or pi*r^2, you know?

A

Multnomah Falls (Oregon)

Yep. It’s water falling alright.

Coordinates:
45.57595° N
122.11536° W

Multnomah Falls is a natural monument located east of Portland, Oregon. Its waters bluster forth from a cliff 627 feet above sea level only to plunge headlong into the waiting maw of the basin 542 feet below.  Thousands of tourists are annually showered in its frothy mountain mist as they cling excitedly together and point their clunky DSLR cameras skyward, marvelling at the waterfall’s marvelous majesty.

The site offers plenty of photo and hiking opportunities, its primary set piece being its iconic and historic bridge.  Most tourists merely stop here and take a bunch of pictures that they’ll share and forget on their Facebook feeds within a week.  Occasionally in a fit of inspiration a man will bend his knee and surprise his significant other with season tickets to see the Trailblazers, a tale as old as the falls themselves I’m sure.  For those wilder spirits for whom adventure cannot tame, a paved footpath about 2 miles long meanders along the side of the falls in a series of switchbacks.  It eventually emerges at an overlook where the more stalwart visitors can snap more pictures and remark on how the filthy plebs below look like tiny pleb-shaped ants.  Traversing this footpath is a lot like climbing 100 flights of really muddy stairs.

What is interesting about Multnomah Falls is how it is passively permeated with reminders of everyone’s impending doom.  These reminders crudely inform visitors that they are on borrowed time and are alive only because the Multnomah Falls wills it.  Two car-sized boulders resting at the foot of the falls serve as the most obvious and terrifying examples.  However, multiple accounts also exist of falling rocks Hulksmashing through the iconic and historic bridge or otherwise laying waste to the hillside without warning.   Additionally, all manner of natural hillside decor suggests that every object is destined to slide violently into oblivion but has been temporarily set back by some precariously placed tendrils of some baby trees, moss, lichen, and ferns.  Ever cognizant of this, the vigilant folks at Parks and Recreation have graciously polluted the landscape with signage begging hikers to stick to the footpath lest they accidentally start Armageddon ahead of schedule.

Should the End Times start at Multnomah Falls, those who are left behind can stop by the historic Multnomah Falls Lodge for a bite to eat at a suitable price so they don’t have to face the Wrath of God on an empty stomach.  There is also a souvenir shop where you can buy waterfall-related baubles and a coffee stand to remind you of the suburban life before all the fire and brimstone rained down from the heavens.  The coffee’s alright, but I have yet to try the food.

Recommended

Other pictures

 

The Core (2003)

Directed by: Jon Amiel
Written by: Cooper Layne, John Rogers
Starring: Hilary Swank, Aaron Eckhart, Stanley Tucci, D.J. Qualls

I wonder how stressful it is to be a screenwriter. Day in, day out, endlessly shopping your shitty script from studio to studio, agency to agency, homeless guy to homeless guy. All so you can afford that next tin of cat food that screams romance and stability because you eat it at night and by candlelight. It’s a daily struggle I’m sure.

It’s all good, man. Because you have an idea, an idea so goddamn awesome that its very power can change the world. Now if only you can find someone to understand its significance. Someone who will call you and pay a shitzillion dollars for it. It’s not about the money, though, even if it helps. Cat food is pretty gross. Unless you’re eating a duck. Duck is pretty good.

So someone approaches you with an offer you can’t refuse. They’ll pay… a marginal amount for the screenplay, say 60 dollars. Enough to get through the weekend with some grapes or something. So when they come back with changes to make to your beautiful beautiful script, where everything needs to be changed, what do you do? Do you compromise your integrity so you can put food on the table? Or do you stick to your principles and say ‘no way, no how.’

And if the movie flops terribly, who falls on the sword? Certainly not the actors, one of whom might have an Oscar or two under her belt (this is called a ‘get’). Certainly not the CGI people, they’re just doing what they’re told. And certainly not the director or the foley guys or the cinematographer or even the caterers. The accolades for producing a terrible piece of shit do not go to the producer, the stunt doubles, the scientific consultants brought in to talk about the science stuff, or the set designer. No, it’s the humble screenwriter who commits career seppuku. He and he alone is responsible for the abysmal shitshow that is The Core. And so nothing of value is lost when he is flushed out of his loft at an animal shelter and run out of town, never to be seen or heard again.

C-

 

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001)

Directed by: Chris Columbus
Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Maggie Smith, Alan Rickman

At this point anything I say in this review has probably already been said and I don’t need to embellish anything anymore.  Harry Potter is an institution that has more than proven its worth to people.  The books are all quite good, filled with all sorts of ideas that make you think ‘shit, why didn’t I think of that?’  So it’s obvious that someone got a hold of this brilliant property that has swept the imagination of the world and shouted from the rooftops, “GET ME CHRIS COLUMBUS, THIS NEEDS TO BE A MOVIE THIS INSTANT.”  And thus history was made.

HP&tSS is a fantasy movie about a boy who is suffering a crisis of extreme abuse and neglect at the hands of his foster parents.  He spends the better parts of his days locked inside of a small closet below a flight of stairs fantasizing about how being a wizard who saved the world when he was a baby.  As his confinement worsens, he dreams of a magical schoolhouse where all the wizard and witch kids take lessons in magic and wizardry, replete with its own haunted mysteries and quirky inhabitants.   Here at Hogwarts Harry is no longer locked away and forgotten; actually, he is a bit of a celebrity.  His defeat of the Big Bad Voldemort when he was a tiny toddler resonates within the wizarding world even 10 years later. Students and professors alike lavish him with their attention and praises.  He even secures a place on the local Quidditch team as a Seeker, being the youngest player of the crazy dangerous sport for over a century.  It’s the perfect childhood fantasy that has set the stage for volumes and volumes of copycats and fanfiction for years to come.

As far as book adaptations go, Harry Potter & the Sorcerer’s Stone is pretty much a beat-for-beat copy.  It is an adventure that begins and ends with a quaint little cherry on top, and as a children’s film it is bound to delight.  Watching it in an era where CGI is far more realistic makes it difficult during scenes where they had some trouble with the green-screens–Quidditch in particular–but the magic and monsters still look good enough today to be remembered fondly.

The issues I have with it stem from the adaptation itself; key plot points don’t seem to be as well connected or make a whole lot of sense as they do in the book.  A lot of stuff happens in Harry’s head that makes better sense in context, the magic mirror being the best example (though they make considerable effort at this very important moment).  Why the Sorcerer’s Stone is important also feels kind of glazed over, as does the origin of the invisibility cloak and the presence of the villain.  Encounters with Snape and Malfoy feel a lot more forced on film as well.  Actually this seems to be the tone of the whole movie.  Things are just kind of there hanging out, hoping you’ve either read the book or are too busy looking at something else to ask questions.  It’s not a terrible movie, but a Needs Improvement sticker could be put on its report card.

B