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teratornisI've been on a bit of a movie kick recently. I actually went to the theater a couple weeks back — something I don't do nearly as often as I'd like, but I have to work for a living and a matinee doesn't exactly cost five bucks anymore — and watched a handful of other movies after that for the hell of it.
So some thoughts on my recent watches, in order of viewing (films discussed are Project Hail Mary, Bullet Train, Kraven the Hunter, Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice, and Suzume).
Project Hail Mary
Over all I really enjoyed this movie. It's been quite a while since I read the book, but over all it felt faithful to the original in a way that worked pretty well. There were some aspects that got changed, but I think mostly for the better, in a way that made things clearer in the translation into a film format.
I did think some of the pacing was a little off. I understand why they had to alter some of that, pacing in a movie just works differently than it does in a book, but I felt like there were some points they could have dedicated a little more time to, and some points that safely could have been trimmed down somewhat. I felt like they spent too little time on the getting-to-know-you, language-figuring section with Rocky, as well as the decision Ryland makes to go back for Rocky and sacrifice his chance to go home, toward the end of the film. Those moments both could have been harder hitting with some reallocation of time. On the other side of that, I felt like they spent a little too much time on some of the Earth scenes, with the Taumoeba research and with Stratt.
Even so, it was an incredibly well done movie. Aside from over all relatively minor pacing issues, the story progression was compelling, and the acting and characterization were great. Visually it was absolutely stunning, and had some truly wonderful cinematography. Great music, too, done by composer Daniel Pemberton, who's a fave of mine.
And like so many in art and film communities in this day and age, I am delighted at the use of practical effects over greenscreen and digital effects. Digital effects can be used wonderfully, but the contemporary overuse of cheap and frankly bad digital effects is getting real damn old. Project Hail Mary did a really great job with the practical effects, and I was happy to see it.
Bullet Train
I've had Bullet Train on my list of to-watch films since it came out. It was never something I was super excited to see, precisely, but I remember thinking the trailers looked like fun, and always figured I'd get around to it.
It was. . . fine? I guess? It had some fun character dynamics, and it had some fun lines, but in the end it felt like a movie that was made of weird wacky twists and turns just to have a bunch of weird wacky twists and turns. Don't get me wrong, some of them were fun, but the important parts of the story could've been told in half the time without losing much. It was very much a plot put in place to loosely string together a bunch of fun visuals and epic fight scenes between a bunch of quirky characters with bizarre code names. Lots of twisty bait and switch turns and rapid-fire shifting alliances. Not necessarily a bad thing, but I felt like it dragged a little in this case.
Visually it is a lot of fun, I'll give it that. The action scenes are pretty entertaining, if way excessively over the top, but that's part of the fun for a movie like this, and I did enjoy some of the character interactions.
Kraven the Hunter
Okay I'll be real the only reason I watched this was because it appeared in the tag set for a fic exchange I'm participating in and I gut curious.
It's bad, folks. Boy, it's not good. The timeline is an absolute mess. I genuinely wasn't sure what order events were happening in sometimes, there were characters that turned up and did a thing and then never got mentioned again, a ton of the plot points were extremely contrived and outright illogical, and there's very little attempt to explain anything that's happening beyond some very half-assed handwaving that doesn't actually make any sense half the time.
An additional killing blow, none of the characters are particularly likeable. The main character was kinda okay I guess, for a while, but he made some dumb decisions and got increasingly cocky and self-aggrandizing over the course of the movie in a way that made him unpleasant to spend any time with. His father was just a shitty guy the whole time, his brother was a cardboard cutout of a Disappointing Second Son. The movie's female lead was probably the most interesting character of the lot, but she was pretty seriously kneecapped by some uh. . . frankly kinda racist writing, a very limited amount of screentime, and the fact that she too has a bunch of weird background stuff going on that's just never explained at all.
Also the main villain kinda sucked. He was mostly just annoying, and it was pretty unclear for like half the movie that he actually was the main villain at all.
The weird powers one of the side villains had was pretty neat, and some of the locations were visually very cool, but like. . . that's about the only good I've got to say about it.
Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice
I was honestly not expecting much of this movie. I thought it'd be something silly and kinda quirky and otherwise pretty forgettable. Instead, I surprised myself by really enjoying it.
It is, primarily, a very unserious and over the top mob movie. At its opening, you assume the plotline's going to involve some hijinks and nonsense revolving around this one guy who's sleeping with his buddy's wife. Since said buddies are both mob enforcers, this is understandably going to involve some violence, except it turns out there are some tricky complications going on. In this case, those complications involve time travel.
I frankly don't think I've ever seen time travel handled the way it was in this movie. Nobody comes out and says that's what's going on at first. Nobody explains that's where this movie is going. The first hint you get that something weird is going on is when a double of one of the main characters turns up, and it turns out that double's not the one that did the time traveling, and also has no idea what's going on here.
It's rare, in my experience, to see a plotline based around time travel where the time travel isn't sort of the point of the plot. In this case, it's just one more tool the characters can use to achieve their true goal, which ends up being dismantling the mob they all work for, due to surprisingly heartfelt and sentimental reasons. The pacing was actually pretty solid, the slow feed of the characters figuring out the sort of situation they're in and how the time travel component works in relation to everything else going on is a lot of fun to see, and fairly well handled. Unlike with Kraven, I honestly kind of loved every single character in this movie, even the absolutely over the top villains, who were unabashedly terrible people.
The relationships between the main three (four? Except one of them is the same guy, but from the future?) characters is a whole lot of fun. A surprising amount of character growth happens for everybody, and the progression of that is handled really pretty well. They all have some great interactions, and some great lines.
I do think that, while there was a need to spend some time with the villains of the movie as a way to set the final handful of scenes, there were some scenes on that end of things that could have been trimmed down and streamlined some. And while I love a good action sequence, the outright rampage of the movie's climax was maybe a little more extensive — not to mention more excessively violent — than it really needed to be.
The movie's ending is surprisingly poignant, remarkably heartfelt, and successfully manages to bring out some touching quieter moments in the wake of such a wild ride of a film up to that point.
Also there's a cat. His name is Kingpin, and he's adorable.
Suzume
Suzume is an anime movie, which is not my usual fare, but I watched it together with a friend who recommended it, and I can absolutely see why he loves it so much.
Just from a technical perspective, it's got some of the most stunning detail shots I've seen in just about anything. Every single setting is beautifully detailed in a way that tells its own story. The movie features several personal living spaces, a lot of ruins, and a lot of outdoor areas, and just the visual details tell you a lot about the people who inhabit those spaces, the sort of place the ruins used to be and the story of how it became a ruin, or the lifestyle and environment of the outdoor spaces. You learn so much about individual characters just from seeing where they live. Every single plant and animal I saw in this movie is a very specific real-life plant or animal, and those change depending on where the characters are.
That's an impressive amount of detail for any film to include. For a full-length hand-drawn animated film, that's a staggering undertaking.
The character designs and animation were really solid, too. The film's set in the modern day, and all of the character designs and outfits fit with that, which in a lot of ways makes the very clear distinction between each one even more impressive. Each outfit has a lot to say about the person wearing it, who they are and what they do. The titular main character's outfit changes several times, and each change is important to her development and the story. And of course the animation behind it all is wonderful. Extremely smooth and fluid, giving a good show of action and body language and habit.
Interestingly, as much else goes on in the film, one of the most technically impressive parts to me was a shot of Suzume from the back, putting her hair in a ponytail. Animating that realistically and accurately and as fluidly as they did is hard, even more so because it's such a mundane action that, if it's animated badly, is obvious to anyone watching. It was gorgeous work.
I will say I didn't care as much for the design on Daijin, the little white talking cat that's frequently present throughout. His design was jarringly cartoonish compared to the rest of the film. He was cute, but his design seemed out of place.
The story was also really beautiful. At its core it very much had themes of grief and acceptance, which I'm always such a sucker for. There was a lot to do with old gods of the land — another theme I find fascinating and always love to see — and doorways to another world. The explanation behind these doorways and why the second main character, Souta, is so determined to keep them closed, is a fascinating series of reveals. For the most part, you get a grip on that relatively quickly. The character development and more personal revelations are a much slower build, that we only get bits and pieces of leading up to the movie's climax, that culminate in some really touching and really emotional moments.
I do feel like the sort of cleanness of the plotline got a little frazzled toward the end. There were a couple of eleventh-hour characters added in that threw me off a little. One of them needed to be there for the emotional payoff to happen, but there needed to be more build-up to that particular emotional payoff. There were a couple of threads that were picked up and then dropped again, or just not explained (where did this second magical cat come from and how did they get here? Wtf happened to Souta's grandfather after his brief role as Important Information Guy?), and some of the relationship dynamics seemed to shift with breakneck speed.
This is probably a movie I'll be watching again down the line, though. Over all, I really loved it. The friend I watched it with and I are both very much cry-at-movies sorts, so we were both a little teary-eyed for the last twenty minutes or so. Whatever flaws it may have had, it was still visually stunning, and very emotionally fulfilling.
In days to come, I really need to watch Sinners and Nope, and I've been told to watch Primitive War for the dinosaur designs, if not the plot (. . . definitely not for the plot). Maybe I'll finally give those a look soon.
So some thoughts on my recent watches, in order of viewing (films discussed are Project Hail Mary, Bullet Train, Kraven the Hunter, Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice, and Suzume).
Project Hail Mary
Over all I really enjoyed this movie. It's been quite a while since I read the book, but over all it felt faithful to the original in a way that worked pretty well. There were some aspects that got changed, but I think mostly for the better, in a way that made things clearer in the translation into a film format.
I did think some of the pacing was a little off. I understand why they had to alter some of that, pacing in a movie just works differently than it does in a book, but I felt like there were some points they could have dedicated a little more time to, and some points that safely could have been trimmed down somewhat. I felt like they spent too little time on the getting-to-know-you, language-figuring section with Rocky, as well as the decision Ryland makes to go back for Rocky and sacrifice his chance to go home, toward the end of the film. Those moments both could have been harder hitting with some reallocation of time. On the other side of that, I felt like they spent a little too much time on some of the Earth scenes, with the Taumoeba research and with Stratt.
Even so, it was an incredibly well done movie. Aside from over all relatively minor pacing issues, the story progression was compelling, and the acting and characterization were great. Visually it was absolutely stunning, and had some truly wonderful cinematography. Great music, too, done by composer Daniel Pemberton, who's a fave of mine.
And like so many in art and film communities in this day and age, I am delighted at the use of practical effects over greenscreen and digital effects. Digital effects can be used wonderfully, but the contemporary overuse of cheap and frankly bad digital effects is getting real damn old. Project Hail Mary did a really great job with the practical effects, and I was happy to see it.
Bullet Train
I've had Bullet Train on my list of to-watch films since it came out. It was never something I was super excited to see, precisely, but I remember thinking the trailers looked like fun, and always figured I'd get around to it.
It was. . . fine? I guess? It had some fun character dynamics, and it had some fun lines, but in the end it felt like a movie that was made of weird wacky twists and turns just to have a bunch of weird wacky twists and turns. Don't get me wrong, some of them were fun, but the important parts of the story could've been told in half the time without losing much. It was very much a plot put in place to loosely string together a bunch of fun visuals and epic fight scenes between a bunch of quirky characters with bizarre code names. Lots of twisty bait and switch turns and rapid-fire shifting alliances. Not necessarily a bad thing, but I felt like it dragged a little in this case.
Visually it is a lot of fun, I'll give it that. The action scenes are pretty entertaining, if way excessively over the top, but that's part of the fun for a movie like this, and I did enjoy some of the character interactions.
Kraven the Hunter
Okay I'll be real the only reason I watched this was because it appeared in the tag set for a fic exchange I'm participating in and I gut curious.
It's bad, folks. Boy, it's not good. The timeline is an absolute mess. I genuinely wasn't sure what order events were happening in sometimes, there were characters that turned up and did a thing and then never got mentioned again, a ton of the plot points were extremely contrived and outright illogical, and there's very little attempt to explain anything that's happening beyond some very half-assed handwaving that doesn't actually make any sense half the time.
An additional killing blow, none of the characters are particularly likeable. The main character was kinda okay I guess, for a while, but he made some dumb decisions and got increasingly cocky and self-aggrandizing over the course of the movie in a way that made him unpleasant to spend any time with. His father was just a shitty guy the whole time, his brother was a cardboard cutout of a Disappointing Second Son. The movie's female lead was probably the most interesting character of the lot, but she was pretty seriously kneecapped by some uh. . . frankly kinda racist writing, a very limited amount of screentime, and the fact that she too has a bunch of weird background stuff going on that's just never explained at all.
Also the main villain kinda sucked. He was mostly just annoying, and it was pretty unclear for like half the movie that he actually was the main villain at all.
The weird powers one of the side villains had was pretty neat, and some of the locations were visually very cool, but like. . . that's about the only good I've got to say about it.
Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice
I was honestly not expecting much of this movie. I thought it'd be something silly and kinda quirky and otherwise pretty forgettable. Instead, I surprised myself by really enjoying it.
It is, primarily, a very unserious and over the top mob movie. At its opening, you assume the plotline's going to involve some hijinks and nonsense revolving around this one guy who's sleeping with his buddy's wife. Since said buddies are both mob enforcers, this is understandably going to involve some violence, except it turns out there are some tricky complications going on. In this case, those complications involve time travel.
I frankly don't think I've ever seen time travel handled the way it was in this movie. Nobody comes out and says that's what's going on at first. Nobody explains that's where this movie is going. The first hint you get that something weird is going on is when a double of one of the main characters turns up, and it turns out that double's not the one that did the time traveling, and also has no idea what's going on here.
It's rare, in my experience, to see a plotline based around time travel where the time travel isn't sort of the point of the plot. In this case, it's just one more tool the characters can use to achieve their true goal, which ends up being dismantling the mob they all work for, due to surprisingly heartfelt and sentimental reasons. The pacing was actually pretty solid, the slow feed of the characters figuring out the sort of situation they're in and how the time travel component works in relation to everything else going on is a lot of fun to see, and fairly well handled. Unlike with Kraven, I honestly kind of loved every single character in this movie, even the absolutely over the top villains, who were unabashedly terrible people.
The relationships between the main three (four? Except one of them is the same guy, but from the future?) characters is a whole lot of fun. A surprising amount of character growth happens for everybody, and the progression of that is handled really pretty well. They all have some great interactions, and some great lines.
I do think that, while there was a need to spend some time with the villains of the movie as a way to set the final handful of scenes, there were some scenes on that end of things that could have been trimmed down and streamlined some. And while I love a good action sequence, the outright rampage of the movie's climax was maybe a little more extensive — not to mention more excessively violent — than it really needed to be.
The movie's ending is surprisingly poignant, remarkably heartfelt, and successfully manages to bring out some touching quieter moments in the wake of such a wild ride of a film up to that point.
Also there's a cat. His name is Kingpin, and he's adorable.
Suzume
Suzume is an anime movie, which is not my usual fare, but I watched it together with a friend who recommended it, and I can absolutely see why he loves it so much.
Just from a technical perspective, it's got some of the most stunning detail shots I've seen in just about anything. Every single setting is beautifully detailed in a way that tells its own story. The movie features several personal living spaces, a lot of ruins, and a lot of outdoor areas, and just the visual details tell you a lot about the people who inhabit those spaces, the sort of place the ruins used to be and the story of how it became a ruin, or the lifestyle and environment of the outdoor spaces. You learn so much about individual characters just from seeing where they live. Every single plant and animal I saw in this movie is a very specific real-life plant or animal, and those change depending on where the characters are.
That's an impressive amount of detail for any film to include. For a full-length hand-drawn animated film, that's a staggering undertaking.
The character designs and animation were really solid, too. The film's set in the modern day, and all of the character designs and outfits fit with that, which in a lot of ways makes the very clear distinction between each one even more impressive. Each outfit has a lot to say about the person wearing it, who they are and what they do. The titular main character's outfit changes several times, and each change is important to her development and the story. And of course the animation behind it all is wonderful. Extremely smooth and fluid, giving a good show of action and body language and habit.
Interestingly, as much else goes on in the film, one of the most technically impressive parts to me was a shot of Suzume from the back, putting her hair in a ponytail. Animating that realistically and accurately and as fluidly as they did is hard, even more so because it's such a mundane action that, if it's animated badly, is obvious to anyone watching. It was gorgeous work.
I will say I didn't care as much for the design on Daijin, the little white talking cat that's frequently present throughout. His design was jarringly cartoonish compared to the rest of the film. He was cute, but his design seemed out of place.
The story was also really beautiful. At its core it very much had themes of grief and acceptance, which I'm always such a sucker for. There was a lot to do with old gods of the land — another theme I find fascinating and always love to see — and doorways to another world. The explanation behind these doorways and why the second main character, Souta, is so determined to keep them closed, is a fascinating series of reveals. For the most part, you get a grip on that relatively quickly. The character development and more personal revelations are a much slower build, that we only get bits and pieces of leading up to the movie's climax, that culminate in some really touching and really emotional moments.
I do feel like the sort of cleanness of the plotline got a little frazzled toward the end. There were a couple of eleventh-hour characters added in that threw me off a little. One of them needed to be there for the emotional payoff to happen, but there needed to be more build-up to that particular emotional payoff. There were a couple of threads that were picked up and then dropped again, or just not explained (where did this second magical cat come from and how did they get here? Wtf happened to Souta's grandfather after his brief role as Important Information Guy?), and some of the relationship dynamics seemed to shift with breakneck speed.
This is probably a movie I'll be watching again down the line, though. Over all, I really loved it. The friend I watched it with and I are both very much cry-at-movies sorts, so we were both a little teary-eyed for the last twenty minutes or so. Whatever flaws it may have had, it was still visually stunning, and very emotionally fulfilling.
In days to come, I really need to watch Sinners and Nope, and I've been told to watch Primitive War for the dinosaur designs, if not the plot (. . . definitely not for the plot). Maybe I'll finally give those a look soon.
no subject
Date: 20 Apr 2026 23:11 (UTC)Think I'll give Kraven the Hunter a miss, though! :D
no subject
Date: 21 Apr 2026 03:02 (UTC)I definitely can't blame you for that. :P
no subject
Date: 21 Apr 2026 04:02 (UTC)no subject
Date: 21 Apr 2026 04:40 (UTC)