Project "Hail Mary"

 

       As is the story goes with all movies made after Weir's books they are thick on technical details (hard sci-fi) and short on human conflict. But all cinematic stories, even the animal documentaries, are ultimately about people. The movie would benefit from a farewell sex scene between protagonist (Ryan Reynolds) and tough-as-nails captain played by Sandra Huller but, maybe, the need to keep it PG-13 precluded the producers from any hint of sexual nature of attraction between them. 

    Equally lacking is the alien contact story. It has no moral or conceptual divide between the world of the stone spider alien and a human. Yet, a burning of an alien in oxygen atmosphere is quite realistic and can be scientifically explained. Unlike the PG cartoon message of the movie. 

Hoppers

 

O'K movie with fine animation of nature. Some complexity is added because the villain is not a "capitalist" mayor or mad scientists but a nature queen who suddenly acquired human powers. 

Scarlet

 

Another "girl power" anime, probably reflecting powerlessness of women in the Japanese society. Yes, a current Prime Minister of Japan is a woman but Elizabeth I and Katherine II were absolute rulers, yet their position did not signify a feministic streak in 16th century England or in 18th century Russia. 

The movie is beautifully done and has a very interesting idea of an afterlife. In the afterlife, people die turning to "nothingness", achieve Paradise on the Gold Mountain, or remain in limbo continuing some version of their previous lives. 

Zootopia 2.

 

A long blue serpent is hardly a credible good guy in the animation intended for children. 

All You Need Is Kill

   

Enticing but totally forgettable anime with stock characters: lonely unrecognized girl with powers and lonely boy with less powers fighting interplanetary/supernatural invader Darol.

Housemaid

     

       This thriller, or maybe horror, is quite true to its genre and is well wrought. Why it was as well as "One battle after another" castigated as a comedy is a mystery. It turns out that MAGA doll Sydney Sweeny can act! And that is without any special education, which suggests that film courses for actresses may be a sham. Seyfried is also very good. There is a slight wrinkle: the villain did not even attempt to use pliers to remove the lock. 

Nuremberg.

       

              The movie on Nuremberg trials could not be anything but formulaic. But the wonderful acting by Rami Malek and, especially, Russel Crowe, despite poorly believable German accent and his unusual facility with the tongue of the Bard. An obvious defect is the Woodall's character who, after five years in America, speaks perfect English without any accent. Kissinger, who was a military translator during the WWII, never got rid -- or wanted to -- get rid of this German accent. 

    Hollywood orthodoxy imposes the judgement in Nuremberg as the story of Shoah. This is wrong -- Nazi atrocities against the Jews had much less significance for the Anglo-Saxon judges, civil servants and politicians among whom there were many anti-Semites. Much more significance for them held "violation of the laws of war", as if any ever existed -- such as murder and enslavement of the POWs, sinking of hospital and refugee ships and the "war of aggression". 

    Obviously, the thrust of the movie was directed against Trump (riding roughshod over the American laws and the Constitution) and Putin, in connection of "the war of aggression" -- no story could be made without him and if Russians did not exist they had to be invented. 

        But, all in all, the movie is better than can be expected given the straightjacket of the American public consciousness.