I watched a load of stuff over the weekend.
Birdman: I really enjoyed this. The performances, comedy and the overall style of it (not least the soundtrack) made for engaging viewing with only the weakly inconsistent ending marring the experience. Having finally watched it though I'm confused as to why there was supposed to be all this debate over the nature of the lead character.
ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view!
He's not a superhero. He's just an actor prone to flights of fancy, with the Birdman character representing the aspect of himself that wants to just retreat into the comfortable world of popcorn movies and give up on the theatre. The whole bit with the taxi driver is a blatant attempt to signpost this.
Elle: Isabelle Huppert plays the head of a computer game studio who is raped in her home. Though brushing the experience off as unimportant to friends and family she starts investigating her attacker and some pretty twisted hijinks ensue. During my time of watching the film I thoroughly enjoyed it with it's dark humour and brilliant performances from everyone involved. Thinking about it later on though it sends some problematic as fuck signals in that, not only does she just brush the entire thing off as unimportant and carry on seemingly unaffected, but
ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view!
she then actually starts up a consensual violent sexual relationship with her attacker when she figures out who he is
. Everything comes 'good' in the end, but the journey to that could easily be argued to totally minimise the impact being raped generally has on the victim's life.
Kong: Skull Island: monster flicks aren't something I'm generally interested in but the trailer for this implied a sense of humour about itself that was demonstrated in the final cut as well. It doesn't do anything particularly new ('man is the real monster' of course) but it does it stylishly with a very good cast and decent CGI. Well worth a watch.
The Green Room: punk band play at a nazi venue and see something they shouldn't; brutally violent hijinks ensure. I've been looking forward to this one for ages and was left slightly disappointed. The plot itself lends itself it simplicity but there seemed to be a few confused attempts to beef it up with aspects that just passed me by entirely (or I'm too dumb or wasn't paying enough attention to catch what was happening). Performances from the members of the band--including yer man who played Sulu in the Start Trek reboot--were very good in general but Patrick Stewart as the head nazi was nowhere near as interesting as I was hoping for. In my head he was going to be all scenery chewing evil but in reality he did fuck all of note and was a pretty polite figure throughout; opportunity missed there.