Inside Out

Perfect movie. Would be genial if it were not so emotionally detached and scripted.

Game of Thrones II

As an astronomical joke, I describe the world(s) of the Game of Thrones in my "technical" blog.

Seriously, one of the main attractions of the "Games" was its slow, "realistic" pace [GoT]. When the producers ratcheted it up more in line with the tempo of feature-length movies, it became more visually comprehensible but the charm is lost.

Mad Max

Mad Max: The producers thought (probably, correctly judging by 90%+ approval even on rottentomatoes) that scantily clad Charlize Theron and Rose Whiteley jumping around on moving vehicles can exculpate an absence of the plot.

Ex Machina vs. Her

Ex Machina is a retell of Dr. Frankenstein story for a new robotic era. It is stylish and well shot but it endows robot with human motivations and logic. Her is endowed with the strangeness of human-software relationship. Operational system is not so unhuman as to be totally opaque to human understanding, yet significantly different in its behavioral motivation and patterns. Furthermore, the Vicander-Gleeson duo does not stand up to the brilliance and subtlety of the Phoenix-Johansson duo.

P.S. There are also two bloopers in Ex Machina. When the mad billionaire-scientist's villa is out of juice, all doors must open, not shut down because they were reprogrammed that way. Second, the robot girl did not acquire autonomous source of energy to function in a human environment.

Leviathan, by Zviagintsev

A Mexican soap opera with lots of Russian expletives and vodka.

Inherent Vice of Maps to the Stars

Two movies essentially about the same thing: that the rich people are perverted and vapid and their actions wreak havoc with lives of simple people, the "Great Gatsby" for our times. The difference is in perspective--the "Inherent Vice" sees it from the perspective of the ordinary Joe--while the "Maps to the Stars" deals with the trials of the rich people themselves.

Talented P. T. Anderson seems to be physically unable to make a short, i.e. normal-length movie. He even adds a prolonged sex scene between protagonists for no obvious reason. But, helped by T. Pynchon, his dialogue is smart and well organized. PTA's characters are weird but totally believable in their weirdness.

Same thing cannot be said about Cronenberg's "Map to the Stars." Primitive dialogue and stock characters do not support his movie's pretense of sophistication. Even Oscar-bound Julianne Moore and Mia Wasikowska do not save the movie. Furthermore, it is branded as comedy for unspecified reasons. It is as ponderous as a lead block.

Strange Magic of Paddington.

The previous subject--an inability of American critics and public to tolerate any degree of ambivalence--manifests itself in the widely diverging reactions on "Paddington" (98% of approval on rottentomatoes,com) and "The Strange Magic" (20% approval). While Paddington is superficially cute, Magic has ugly and self-destructive male lead and her female lead, the warrior princess, does not transform in the end into anything else. Likewise, is her air-head sister. This is intolerable.