Wonka (2023)

 Sometimes, if I particularly like what I say, I'll copy it to Letterboxd.

But I have to say;

This movie is the most unhinged thing I've seen since 2018. It leans into the live action children's films of old - I don't watch many these days - where they didn't shy away from subjects and made children feel like they were a little more grown-up for watching.

Look at this, it has everything; Illiteracy, slavery, police brutality, several attempts at murder, some kind of overeating fetish, mob mentality, physical slapstick violence...the works!

The songs are okay, I don't feel you needed to autotune Timothee that much. He's not going platinum but his voice is clear, endearing, and fine enough to the point where the autotune was more distracting when it did appear.

 

Letterboxd

Twisters 4DX

 Talk about being behind. Besides this movie, I need to review my notes and post about many movies new and not.

 

Instead, I'll start with the November re-release of Twisters. This makes the 3rd time this movie has been released this year.

 

There's a lot of kerfuffle about people in midwestern (or mideastern)  states feeling ignored, shunned, or insulted by "coastal elites".

I loved that this movie had a short jab at these "elites" briefly before focusing on the people in the heartland, how things can be difficult, and that there is a great deal of diversity in places like Oklahoma. They were treated with respect. It was nice to see until the movie was over, you went into the real world, and you checked how red that entire section of the country went after Nov. 5th 2024.

My sympathy with characters didn't evacuate because of an in real life poisoning of minds, or selling out for cheaper bread. I was more interested in how thoughtfully the science was portrayed, how it didn't shy away from someone buying up the ruins of people's lives to flip to produce plywood-built homes over legacy farms, although we could have used more.

The 4DX was powerful, and the only reason I bothered going; It's a blockbuster in the purest form with some more care and compassion than I expected.