Beauty and the Beast (2017)

I thought it was good. I had thought Emma Watson would be a bad match for the movie, because it's all about magic and she looks sort of like a naturalist, and she probably is one because she's intelligent and went to college and got a degree. But she really did fit the part well, and at points I could even see the magic in her eyes, which is rare/sublime. I also found out that she's been in love with Beauty and the Beast since she was like 6, and her heart was bursting on the ceiling when she found out she was going to be doing this movie, which means it's not at all like she just did it because of the prestige and the pay, etc. while not really resonating with it.

I also thought the graphics were nice and stunning, especially the clock and the candlestick, thought the CGI for the beast sort of looked like CGI, like all living beings made with CGI do. It's a shame they didn't do it with makeup like I've heard the director actually wanted to.

I also liked that they changed a couple of things in the movie from the first one that surprisingly actually made it better rather than worse, such as making the reason Belle takes her father's place in prison be that the whole reason he was in there was that he was getting the rose that she had asked for, and also supposedly there were lyrics that were added to the song "Gaston" that were originally written for it but didn't make it into the 1991 film and are more mature-themed.

Oh, and the acting was pretty good in general—Gaston's, Belle's, her father's, everybody's. It's especially impressive that Gaston's acting was good since he's also good-looking in a way that fits the part.

One notable thing was that I had "a moment" when the movie showed Lumiere's (the candlestick's) life slipping away from him as he gradually turned back into an inanimate object after the last petal of Beast's enchanted rose fell, but only for a moment, as soon after he was revived as a human being (his original form before the castle became enchanted). This turn of events really put me in "the zone" of understanding life and death in the universe and how, albeit tragic, death is a relative thing, and one will always find themselves back in the context of life somewhere in the world at some time... again and again.

Groundhog Day

This is one of my all-time favorite movies and has been for over thirty years. Besides being funny and a good love story and a story of personal transformation, I love any story where people loop through the same time period over and over—especially when they're able to prove it to others by predicting events. I also happen to be a big fan of Bill Murray.

Other stories involving such time loops that know of are...

• Run Lola Run
• Edge of Tomorrow (aka Live Die Repeat)
• Russian Doll
• Omni Loop

The chemistry between Bill Murray's character (Phil) and Andie MacDowell's character (Rita) is pretty good. They both played their parts very well, and Phil's intelligent self-loathing and cynicism complements Rita's easy-goingness, cheerfulness and personability. The film also set it up well where Phil first sees Rita and you can tell she made an impression on him, but it's subtle and he doesn't really reveal it until later in the film.

I especially liked Bill Murray's acting regarding Phil's bewilderment the first time his day repeated, his love affair with Rita, and his general malaise with his job and life—it was subtle but just barely perceptible before it was made obvious how much he actually hated everything. And I thought the actors in this movie in general were good at portraying everyday realistic people.

One particular touch I liked was when Rita said she felt déjà vu, like she'd experienced the same thing before, even though Phil was the one who was actually experiencing the time loop. This is a nice touch because it has subtle philosophical/metaphysical implications that aren't further explored or resolved in any pat way; it's left open-ended.

I also just realized a deep metaphor in the movie as I was writing this. Phil's name is the same name as that of the groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, who predicts six more weeks of winter if he sees his own shadow when he's pulled out of a box. A couple of people even teased Phil about this in the movie. This is profound because the whole movie could be said to be about Phil going through the same bleak winter day until he works through and resolves his own "shadow self," to use a Jungian term.

I laughed out loud several times during this film, which is rare for me when watching a comedy. Most comedies aren't very funny to me; even my three favorite adult sitcom cartoons I rarely laugh at. 

I also related to Phil's womanizing tendencies (my only fictional hero is Don Giovanni) and liked how he was so successful with women as well as being extremely self-promoting in that respect. Phil was reminiscent of Bill Murray's character in Ghostbusters (another one of my all-time favorite movies) in that sense.

One minor oversight maybe worth mentioning is that Phil never bothered to see what would happen if he stayed up all night until 6:00 AM (the time when he'd wake up and start the same day over again) instead of going to sleep. Of course anybody in his position would do that!

So, overall, this is a great movie. The only caveat is that it's a bit dated and some people may not like old movies. I don't usually, but this movie doesn't seem to suffer from the cheesiness or overall crappiness that most old movies do.

The Smurfs (2011)

I really liked that The Smurfs wasn't just CGI but was CGI + live action. Seeing real-life people react with horror to encountering Smurfs for the first time was very satisfying; usually, when fantasy characters encounter real-life people in movies, the people don't react with nearly enough astonishment. I also loved seeing the invisible membrane between the real world and the Smurf village being penetrated (which makes the Smurf village visible) and seeing the Smurf village for the first time. The animation scene with two Smurfs riding on he backs of Storks was pretty nice, too.

Gargamel was also very well done, including his facial attributes. It was fun to see that character interact with the real world, including him getting tased by the police, someone yelling at him to take his meds, and him doing powerful CGI sorcery. 

I liked the look of the Smurfs' animation better than that of the 2025 version of The Smurfs according to the trailer. The latter seemed to unnaturally "flatten" the shading of the Smurfs, while the former seemed more realistic and vivid. I also liked the general shape of the Smurfs and the slightly furry look of their skin to make it not so sterile. 

The animation of Gargamel's cat was done very well—I wouldn't have known it was CGI if not for its unrealistic antics, including a couple of places where it actually laughed...I found seeing and hearing the cat laughing both disturbingly bizarre and somehow funny at the same time.

One thing that seemed kind of lacking, though, was physical interaction between the Smurfs and real-life characters. E.g., they didn't impart any kinetic energy onto the people when they jumped on them and such, I remember one part where Neil's character was looking all around mystified like his house was infested with ghosts rather than at the actual Smurfs, and when he was patting one Smurf on the back, it didn't seem like his hand was actually touching the Smurf. But that seems like it's par for CGI + live action movies.

It was cool to see Neil Patrick Harris of Dougie Howser fame starring in it, as well as the beautiful Sofía Vergara playing Neil's character's boss. 

The narrator's style of speaking seemed kind of like it was catering to dumb people, similarly to the Animal Planet series Too Cute!, but maybe that's just me. It's also probably forgivable since The Smurfs is a children's cartoon. 

I found the storyline not bad, and it had a moral to it if not more than one.

Overall, I'd recommend this movie for children. For adults? Maybe, at least/especially if they share my appreciation for movies that mix cartoons with live action.

Barbie

This movie has its pros and cons. It's very philosophical/insightful regarding human life and the relationship between the two sexes, or at least of the patriarchy and what it's like to be a woman (but of course it's not philosophical in a pontificating way), but I found the "real world" in the movie to be disappointingly unrealistic and even hokey in some parts. 

I don't like unrealism in general, but it's especially important when you're introducing fantasy characters or other elements into the "real world" for the "real world" and the reactions of the people in it to the characters/elements to be realistic, because that makes it all the more satisfying and fun.

Also, I would have liked if they'd gone more in-depth about men's troubles and not just women's troubles to balance things out, but perhaps that would have been beside the point of the movie. I don't know, I think they could have worked it in. I think the movie was reflecting our cultural bias toward recognizing women's hardships and not men's, which are equally significant, or even if they're somewhat less so all added up, they're still significant, they're unique to men, and they go largely unacknowledged.

I also found it disappointing that even in the ideal land of Barbie, they thought it okay to restore the matriarchy and the subjugation of men through underhanded subterfuge, manipulating and undermining the male sex. It's like our minds are so encultured by the ubiquity of evil in this world that such a thing was seen as a part of an ideal or pat story.

I also found the part where Ken has his catharsis and realizes that "Ken is me!" to be more than somewhat clumsy, incoherent, forced and rushed.

I also found the whole scene where all the Kens are dressed in black and dancing to music in a blank room to be pointless.

I did like that Mattel was willing to engage in a fair amount of self-criticism in the movie.

It was nice to see Margot Robbie as the star of the film because she's so beautiful. It was also cool to see Rhea Perlman for the first time since Cheers. I usually love seeing movies with Will Farrell, but in this case he played the hokiest character of them all in the "real world," so his character was disappointing.

I liked that they made a lot of songs specifically for this movie rather than just using pre-existing songs, and they weren't bad. I particularly liked 'Closer to Fine' by Brandi Carlile and Catherine Carlile. I also like that they had a Karol G song in the movie—I love her song "El Barco", and Barbie's song "Watati" has some of the same charm. 

This movie also has its funny parts. My favorite was when Weird Barbie was explaining to Stereotypical Barbie how to get back to Barbie land. She said to do the same thing she did to get to the real world but in reverse, and Barbie said (something like), "So do I go forward but do the steps in reverse, or..", and Weird Barbie said, "Don't overthink it." To my mind, it highlights the overly simplistic nature of such TV and film tropes where important details are glossed over.

At the risk of making this review too long, one other thing I liked about this movie was the ambiguity in whether Barbie actually wanted all this disruption to happen or if it just happened because she was emotionally intertwined with her real-world owner. Twice, somebody said to her that she must have wanted it to happen, and she emotively responded that she didn't want any of it to happen, and the person said that either way, it happened because she was intertwined with her handler. This kind of open-ended existential ambiguity is very atypical of movies, which tend to be heavy-handed or pat in a way. It's very Eyes Wide Shut-ish and philosophical in a way. 

One thing that bothered me about the movie was the glaring illogicity in it that Barbie had exactly one real-world handler she was associated with that she had to find and that she would just know who it was when she saw her, even though Barbie was apparently the only one of her type in Barbie land (and, according to the movie, she was an embodiment of the very idea of Barbie). Obviously, there are millions of Barbies out there with millions of handlers. But I guess hey, whatever, it's just a movie.

Overall, I'd recommend watching this movie if for no other reason than to hear Gloria's insightful spiels on the contradictory expectations and hardships placed on woman, because being aware of a sociological situation goes a long way toward transcending it.

WandaVision

WandaVision is one of Marvel's greatest works, in my opinion, and it touched my soul more than almost any other series or movie. The main idea was also as completely novel as it was simple, as far as I'm aware. To adequately comment on the main idea of the miniseries, I'll have to give a bit of a spoiler. The spoiler will ruin some of the excellent development and twists that lead up to us figuring out what's truly going on in Wandaville, but on the other hand, who hasn't seen WandaVision by now that's ever going to see it? 

I can personally relate to the idea of unconsciously psychically controlling the actions of everyone around me in order to avoid their leading me to face some very uncomfortable truth. I don't even know why; it's for metaphysical reasons whose possible interpretations are as varied as they are subtle. I don't know if it's just me or if this is more of a universal nerve the writers have pressed, but just the fact that they made a miniseries based on this ostensibly strange premise seems to indicate it's the latter. 

In Wanda's case, the uncomfortable truth being avoided is the death of her lover, Vision, while I think the personal and/or universal nerve it touches has more to do with deep-seated shame as a result of the harm one has caused others. However, being torn apart by the death of a loved one is in itself one of the most powerful  and relatable psychological forces, and furthermore, I believe the other thing Wanda is avoiding confronting is the manner in which she's hurting everyone in the town a great deal by psychically controlling and entrapping them in the first place, so the need to further control them becomes a vicious circle, like so many of the most dangerous pitfalls in life.

One interesting thing of note is how confident Wanda is in her decisions, fighting with all her might against the witch who's there to bring her reckoning, even after having been brought to realize on a conscious level what she'd been doing. I think this is an example of how one can go wrong by having total trust in themselves while not realizing that they're capable of being deeply in the moral wrong. In this case, you only realize your folly after it's too late, and in Wanda's case, her only redemption involved making the ultimate sacrifice later on in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (yes, sorry, another spoiler).

Another interesting thing the line between life and death that Vision unwittingly treads. He's only given animation by Wanda's powers, but at the same time it's as if he has a life of his own. He doesn't realize he's dead at first or that he's being controlled by Wanda, and he becomes confused and angry when he eventually realizes/confronts the fact that he can't remember his past. 

I also enjoyed the fact that we got to see Elizabeth Olsen in a major acting role. For 32 years all we had ever heard about were Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. I didn't even know they had a younger sister before WandaVision, let alone that she's a good actress. And on top of that she's really cute! The Scarlet Witch (a.k.a. Wanda Maximoff) was in movies before WandaVision, but I guess I'd just never realized whom she was played by.

I don't watch a lot of movies or TV series, but I'm very glad I watched this one.

Agatha All Along

I liked Agatha All Along, even though I'm pretty sure it "objectively" wasn't as good as WandaVision, which Agatha All Along is a spinoff of. 

One thing that really struck me was that the quality of Aubrey Plaza's acting seemed better than anything else I've ever seen her in. I ❤️ Aubrey Plaza, but in general it's not particularly her acting that sells, it's her persona.

I also liked that we finally got to see what happened to Wanda's kids after the dissolution of Wandaville. I'd been wondering when we were going to find that out ever since WandaVision ended. I had no idea it was revealed in this miniseries.

The worst thing about the miniseries, in my opinion, was that the witch's road—the parts of it that weren't challenges inside buildings—looked so obviously like a set that it took me right out of the show. 

The only other particularly bad thing about it was that they made it harder and harder to really like the main character as they revealed more about her. But I guess we're supposed to be sold on the fact that, in the end, she felt too guilty to face her son due to her past, at least. 

Oh, and actually, one of the bad things that was revealed about her just seemed like a cheap plot twist, as it didn't really resonate with the show's history up to that point. She had seemed to so earnestly want to try the witch's road and to get all of the other witches onboard (beyond any reasonable consideration that it was all just a ruse), and then we find out that she never really believed in the witch's road and had just wanted to steal all their power and kill them. She had even confided in one of them earlier that she can only steal a witch's power if they unleash it on her, which is especially inconsistent with that turn of events. I don't mind giving away this particular spoiler, as I feel that the writers committed an intellectual crime against the viewer on this point.

One other thing worth noting was that the show was a bit macabre, as (spoiler:) nearly all of the protagonists died eventually.

There's a pretty amazing and unexpected twist at the end that I thought was good, that I won't reveal here.

The show ended in a way that seemed to suggest there may be a future season, but we're not really told one way or the other about whether there will be. I read somewhere that the fact that Agatha All Along was submitted for awards as Best Comedy Series rather than Best Miniseries or whatever may indicate that they're planning future seasons.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

I finally got around to watching Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. I'd been waiting for this sequel for many years; I think it was a long time ago that it was first promised. 

I'm not sure I can do this movie justice, especially while trying not to give away too many spoilers, but...

It's been a long (long) time since I've watched the original, and I don't have a great memory, but I have the impression this movie has a more complex plot. I was thinking for most of the movie that they tried hard, and Keaton's performance was on par with the original, and a lot of the special effects and style matched the original, but that somehow I liked the original better, that this movie just didn't have the same charm somehow. 

But then I got to the Macarthur Park wedding scene. That scene was a masterpiece. I love a good mind-bending piece of media (case in point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLGj0JMDT1Q, though maybe it only works if Super Mario Bros. 3 was an integral part of your childhood), and Beetlejuice et al. dancing to and singing Macarthur Park in the original singer's voice was truly surreal. The inherent beauty of real music, and in particular this song, which is one of my favorites, elevated the scene to a sublime level, which provided mind-melting contrast given Beetlejuice's stylishly filthy, demonic nature. This scene made the movie for me. 

There was also no shortage of unexpected twists and turns in this movie, the best ones being right at the end. One of them was assumed to be a wholesome and beautiful moment that suddenly became very defiled in an absurd and humorous way, and the other seemed to indicate that maybe Beetlejuice hadn't died in the end after all.

There were two parts of this movie that made me laugh out loud. The first was when Beetlejuice swore to keep a promise on his mother's grave, and then suddenly, unexpectedly by him, his shirt caught on fire. The second was when Astrid (Jenna Ortega's character) and Lydia end up in the desert/no man's land of the afterlife, and Astrid sees Saturn and concludes that they're on one of its moons, and blurts out, "I swear, the afterlife is so random!" (If you see this movie, or probably even if you've seen the original, you'll see how that line was a bit of meta-humor.)

And speaking of Jenna Ortega, it's always a pleasure seeing her in anything, as she has such a cute, cool-looking face as well as a cool persona, so having her in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was a real boon for the movie.

If I had any complaints, one was that the characters weren't astonished and/or reactive enough in response to discovering certain realities or turns of events, but that's typical of movies; but even more forgivably, it was probably part of the intentional aesthetic of the Beetlejuice franchise. Or at least the lack-of-astonishment part probably was; there was one part where a beloved family member died permanently, and the family hardly reacted with any emotion at all. (I guess the blow was softened by the fact that it was clear that the person would be hanging out in the afterlife from then on out, but still.)

Another complaint would be that I never understood why Willem Dafoe played an actor playing an afterlife crime unit agent, but that fake crime unit agent had a practical role with real consequences. It didn't seem to make much sense, but maybe I just missed some important plot point there. Or maybe the movie just doesn't have to make total sense, and that element did add a certain amount of flare or colorfulness after all. I had some other complaints, but they're too minor to mention here.

Overall, I think this movie was worth watching, even though it may have lacked a certain je ne sais quoi that the first one had.

Cast Away

So, I find myself in a Holiday Inn Express on our way back to Miami watching Cast Away on the biggest TV I've ever seen in a motel or hotel. I've seen this movie before, but it's probably been over two decades, and I have a terrible memory.

Warning: This review has spoilers, because everybody already knows exactly what happens in Cast Away by now.

This is yet another iconic film starring Tom Hanks—maybe not as iconic as Forrest Gump, but iconic things have definitely come out of it, mainly memes surrounding Wilson, the volley ball that he uses to keep him company throughout the film. (Throughout most of this movie, Tom Hanks' character is trapped alone on an island after surviving a plane crash, but you probably knew that...)

Sometimes I think Tom Hanks isn't an especially great actor for how popular he is, because he's not extremely expressive, but this movie reminds me of why he actually is a great actor. He really takes you into the movie (as opposed to taking you out of it); he just doesn't overdo it. Sometimes he's subtle, such as his body language and facial expression while the pilots are trying to get in touch with Air Traffic Control and not succeeding: you can tell he's not quite sure the situation is dire, but he's wondering. (I think credit for this partially goes to the director, too.)

The movie moves kind of slowly, if you really think about it, but it's not actually boring. Not a lot of things happen per unit time, yet it's still interesting, probably because when trapped on a deserted island, everything you do can be close to being a life-and-death situation. 

One thing that kind of bugs me or at least disappoints me about the movie is that you never get to find out why the plane suddenly went down. I mean, I know they were struggling in the storm, but they were flying along relatively fine until the everything suddenly went haywire in an instant. Oh, now I just  got to a point in the movie I'd forgotten: we find out that experts never determined why the plane went down. So that's better, it makes it an actual plot point.

Another thing in the film that stood out to me is that just before he gets rescued, I don't know if it's just me or if it was intentional, but there's a moment where you're not sure if he's going to get rescued or die at sea. It's perfectly ambiguous as he swims out away from his makeshift raft to chase after Wilson just as he gets close to the being saved, as at one point he drops beneath the surface. I've never decided whether this was good story-telling or needlessly contrived emotional manipulation. But I guess that's me: I'm not particularly fond of suspense, nor of sad stories. But now I just got to that point in the movie, and it turns out it was more suspenseful in my memory than it was on second watching. I was fairly different 24 years ago. 

It's poignant how close a bond he developed with Wilson, how important it was to him/how seriously he took it, and how often he talked to it, as if it were a real being. It shows length a human will go to and the insanity when they're deprived of social interaction for years. We're social animals above all else. 

Come to think of it, the timing of his losing Wilson was significant: sometimes we have to get rid of the old, such as old habits that once kept us alive, in order to embrace the new. 

I think the most powerful takeaway from this movie is probably its illustration of the strong human drive to survive: he keeps himself alive for four years on a deserted island, and then eventually makes it back to civilization. Oh, I see now that he talks a little bit about that after he's rescued. He just knew he had to "keep breathing."

The other strongest takeaway, I think, is the existentialism of the end of the movie, when he goes back to his previous wife and she's with another guy, and he has no idea where to go from there. He stands at  a literal and a metaphorical crossroads, then the credits roll. And, like he said earlier, his plan was to continue to just keep breathing.

I hadn't remembered that his finding out that he wasn't going to be back together with her being such a warm encounter. I'm glad we find out that he was still essentially the love of her life—she's even tempted to drive off with him happily ever after, she kisses him, she hugs him at length, etc. (not in that order). That's a lot better than what I had remembered: he shows up at her door, she's surprised, they talk for a bit, she tells him she's already with someone else, and he drives away. I'd be much more satisfied with the actual closure in the movie if I were Tom Hanks' character (what was his name, anyway?) than with what I had thought happened.

So, how would I rate this movie? All in all, while it's a bit harsh to sit through someone being alone for at least half a movie, and the plot seems a bit thin if you don't count all the things he does while he's stuck on the island, if I were Siskel & Ebert, I'd give this movie two thumbs up, despite myself. I'd also be two people; imagine the parapsychological experiments I could conduct... and also I'd get to eat twice as much food. Oh, and not to mention this probably would have been a much better review. Win/win.