#CineMike

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Please kill me if I ever become a critic so absolutely blind and soulless

[sunflowersandsoftcream]

Mou Sugu...Natsuyasumi da...

I haven’t written here in awhile!  tbh I’ve been slacking.  Not on work but on blogging and doing anything really creative.  Or I guess I’ve been channeling my creative energy into lesson plans and activities.  There’s nothing left afterward, so I just watch K-dramas.  Such is the life.

But if anyone out there is following this tumblr (maybe some incoming JETs, helloooo thar!) then I figured I should write something and share a bit about life in the wilds of peach country.

So it’s almost almost ALMOST summer vacation.  I am. counting. down. the days.  I’ve got one full week left of school/actual classes, and then this weekend is a long weekend because Monday is 海の日 aka Ocean Day.  No plans for this weekend as of right now (if it doesn’t rain, I should work on weeding around my apartment) but I’m thinking of going to the mall and going to see a movie.

One thing I love doing here is going to a late show at the movies.  For one thing, there are way fewer people, especially if you go on a Friday night.  For another thing, it’s like 500 yen cheaper than a normal priced ticket.  I like just going by myself, getting some Cinemike popcorn and a drink and escaping for an hour or two.  It’s a nice thing to do when you want to do something but everyone is busy.

So my plans for summer are...work.  Not all the time.  I’m luck that my elementary schools don’t require me to come in during summer unless I need to get something done.  And my JHS don curr either, but I go in every so often and spend a few hours browsing the web or working on YETI stuff.  I’m on the council for our Yamanashi group.  It’s not AJET, just a general all-inclusive Yamanashi community.

We’re doing dinners for our new ‘nash arrivals for Group A and Group B during Tokyo orientation.  Then we’re getting one newbie ALT here in Hokuto, and my supervisor asked if I could go around with her to help with bank and cellphone and all of that stuff.  She speaks Japanese, so I know she’d be fine on her own but it’s kinda nice just having someone there who knows how things go.  Especially since our supervisor this year speaks ZERO English and kind of has a complex about it.

Then we have the BIGGEST fireworks festival this side of Tokyo in August called Ichikawadaimon Fireworks Festival.  We always claim a place so everyone will have an area to go to and won’t have to fend for themselves the day of the event.

Not only that but July 22nd starts the AKENO SUNFLOWER FESTIVAL!!!  I’m so excited cause it’s a full month where you can just go and take pictures of sunflowers and eat delicious sunflower ice cream and bask in the sun.  Akeno is where I teach.  IT’S MY PLACE.  So I’m quite fond of it.  Also, fair warning if anyone wants to come here for the sunflowers...we get the most sunlight in ALLL of Japan.

I also volunteered to do presentations at the JET Local Orientation about teaching at JHS and ES.  They’re throwing them both together and I’m like...erm...Cause elementary school is a completely different beast.  One that will melt your heart every day.  But I’ll do mah best, sir.

Mostly I’m just gonna chill at home, go into work sometimes, and try to have fun.  And watch more K-dramas.  Sounds like a pretty good summer vacation to me.

[chris-erickson]

Liked on YouTube: Game Of Thrones: THE HOUND trailer - CineMike https://youtu.be/M7Nkg5Uj2Dg

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

I honestly think the MCU is gonna get left behind in the coming decade. While I love its movies and how it set the groundwork for modern superhero films, I think it is quickly being outpaced by its competitors.

The main issue here is the necessity of interconnectivity. For the first ten years, it was pretty cool and novel seeing such a huge franchise where different heroes could interact. But now this looks to be a problem; Scott Derrickson leaving Doctor Strange 2 makes me fear two things going forward. One is that Disney is going to require these movies to have one sort of style and tone; DS2 was originally described as a horror film, but this was backpedaled on. This makes me feel that, with few exceptions - namely Gunn, Waititi, and maybe Coogler - Disney is going to enforce a sort of overall style with little wiggle room for experimentation going forward. Every film needs the same sort of tone and genre to maximize profit, nothing scary, nothing rated R, and nothing bold.

My other fear has to do with the relentless push for connecting everything. Newer movies are going to require knowledge of Disney+ shows and other films, which is ridiculous. You should not have to do homework before seeing a movie. You should not be expected to watch multiple hours of television to understand what’s going on in a film you watch at the theater. It’s just another way Disney is trying to milk the franchise for all its worth.

Now compare the biggest competitor to Disney’s MCU: the DCEU. After what I can only call some of the roughest franchise growing pains I’ve ever seen, the DCEU has finally found its footing. And how? By ditching trying to make all their films interconnected, letting each film have its own style, allowing creators to have freedom, and letting the films focus on characters rather than setting up a shared universe. The fact that The Suicide Squad and WW84 have been described as not being totally beholden to the originals is extremely reassuring. The fact they are also quick to embrace things like magic, wizards, Atlantis, and sea monsters without trying to explain away everything as aliens while also HAVING aliens and sci-Fi means there’s a lot of variety already. And I’m gonna be honest: I really doubt the MCU would ever be bold enough to make an R-rated elseworlds spin-off like Joker.

I’d love to be proven wrong. I love Marvel and the MCU, I think it has a lot of talent and artistic merit, and I’m super excited for films like The Eternals, Shang-Chi, Thor 4, Guardians 3 and so on, and I like that they aren’t trying to build up to another Thanos, but that’s ultimately why I’m worried. I love this franchise and I’d hate to see it get outstripped and left behind because it refuses to change solely so Mickey can maximize profits by appealing to the broadest demographics possible. I know they’re capable of being fresh and interesting; Guardians, Ragnarok, and Black Panther show that. But if they don’t start making sure their films are more creative like those and less bland and and sterile like the Iron Man sequels or Captain Marvel, they’re going to fall.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

You know what I wanna see?

An honest-to-god unironic Disney princess fairy tale musical.

No winking at the audience. No “Ugh are you gonna SING?” No constant snarking about tropes. Just a sincere, heartfelt animated fantasy where true love prevails over all adversity and heroes and villains alike have a song in their hearts.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

So in trying to write this out, I found it to be unfun, bitter, and just not enjoyable. Talking about things I hate is just not as fun as talking about things I like. So without further ado, as this decade comes to a close, here are the forty worst movies I saw the past ten years (and ten mediocre honorable mentions).

Yes, I saw so few genuinely awful films I had to pad the list out. 41 - 50 aren’t irredeemable but they aren’t very good either in my eyes. Remember, all of this is just my personal opinion.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

So I think this illustrates why I think “Nobody wants this” is a stupid non-argument that translates to “I don’t like this so it shouldn’t exist!”

>Says it got 1K likes

>Nobody wants this!

There is absolutely no possible way that there isn’t at least a few people in this crowd who wanted or are ok with this.

Like, if you want to say you’re not interested in a movie, just say that.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

I think one of the best things yet also one of the worst things of films of the 2010s (which really applies to most cinematic trends but I feel this one is most worth talking about) is the rise of female-led films that have an empowering angle.

It showed us that audiences are going to be just as receptive to a female action hero as a male one if you make them human, something a lot of people realize but something the suits at Hollywood can’t seem to comprehend. Movies like Wonder Woman, Alita, Inside Out, Us, Annihalation, and Hereditary among many others showed us that women can headline any genre as well as a man can - again, something I want to believe General audiences understand but that seems like an alien concept to Hollywood producers.

But on the downside we got a lot of movies that feel like they were made explicitly to “empower” without care for story and character. What I mean is that these films seem to think the only kind of women people want to see is a hypercompetent unstoppable forces or trying so hard to not be misogynistic that they come out at the other end and become incredibly misogynistic, which led to movies like Ghostbusters, Captain Marvel, Sucker Punch, and Charlie’s Angels. The nadir of this was Lucy and The Killing Joke; the former is a film with no stakes or tension as the lead was an unstoppable force, and the latter tried so hard to course correct the implications of the source material’s treatment of Batgirl that it ended up being disgustingly misogynistic.

If you want to see every problem with these kind of movies crammed into one character, look no further than The Emoji Movie’s Jailbreak. These things led to unfortunate results, such as people rolling their eyes at female-led movies existing and people throwing around the term “Mary Sue” to describe characters like Rey Starwars as if that term meant anything other than “I am stupid and have nothing intelligent to say about this character so she is bad.”

But let’s not end this on a negative note; the positives greatly outweigh the negatives in my book, and things are looking good for the next decade.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

So earlier I said the MCU should probably make Magneto a black man if they put him in a future X-Men movie. I didn’t elaborate on it before, so let me elaborate now:

Let me begin by saying Magneto is probably one of my favorite comic book characters. His very concept - not only a mutant, but a survivor of the Holocaust, leading to a life where he has been persecuted at every turn, leading to not wholly unjustified anger - is a great one, albeit one not always utilized to its greatest potential or well-written. I think Magneto is a crucial piece to why X-Men works as an allegory for things like racism, because Magneto, in the hands of talented writers and frankly just in general, is always painted as a complex figure, and the fact he is hero as often as villain really shows this.

Here’s the thing though: Magneto’s origins were extremely relevant when he was first conceived, and when his backstory was first conceived. At the time, it was absolutely conceivable there could be someone who survived the Holocasut running about and getting into superpowered smackdowns. Not so much anymore. If they were to keep Magneto’s backstory as it was originally conceived, we would need to have an 80 - 90 year old Magneto at least, which is kind of pushing things. I do understand this is a world with flying men, cyborg suits, and Howard the Duck, but when even Cap decides to pass on his shield when he becomes an old man, I feel like someone like Magneto would be feeling his age, mutant powers or no.

I’m not saying this because I want Magneto’s backstory to be changed, as again, I think it adds an important layer to his character; I’m saying that, in a logical sense, it is fast becoming inconceivable to belivably have a near-100 year old whose only power is mastery of magnetism also have survived the Holocaust. There are ways around this. Obviously, the easiest (and cheapest) way out would to just plop Michael Fassbender into the MCU via wormholes r something. He managed to get through the 80s and 90s looking the same as he did in the 50s, so there we go. They could just not adapt Magneto at all and save themselves the trouble, as we all know Disney loves cutting corners in order to avoid offending the people writing their checks (cough Ancient One cough). 

Or they could make Magneto black.

Now I say “black,” but really, you could put any sort of oppressed minority there. Armenian, Palestinian, any country that China is trying to put under its boot, someone who survived under communist dictatorships... The Holocasut is a famous example, but there is a vast history of oppression and genocide in the twentieth century that has gone on into the 21st, meaning if you really wanted to make a younger magneto, one that could realistically be in fighting shape, there are options closer to the present of the MCU (which is now a few years ahead of our own world even).

I basically went to “black” because I remember there were rumors the two would be recast by black actors, and because it works on a lot of thematic levels. Most obviously, the whole “Magneto = Malcolm X, Xavier = MLK” thing; those were two of the most famous civil rights activists ever, and they werre black, so why not make their superpowered inspirations black too? And while making Magneto black isn’t a perfect translation, it does work on the same sort of levels. Say Magneto is American. I don’t think I need to explain the long, dark history of brutal racism that has existed in America from conception to present day. It would be pretty easy to have a Magneto who grew up as a child in the Jim Crow era and then finding he’s a mutant lead to him becoming embittered as no matter how much the world claims to be progressing, he is still persecuted, and it fills him with not unjustified anger. It also works because it would be a lot more relatable to modern audiences; there’s still plenty of racism alive and well today, and one need only look at the numerous mass shootings or reports of cops murdering innocents to see that.

This does run into problems, though. The biggest one from a story and creative standpoint is that this would lead to Magneto being very similar to Killmonger. I think this is easy to work around, though: just keep Magneto alive. Frankly, killing Magneto would be gross and insulting, considering what the character represents in the first place. 

Overall though, I just want to see what they do to Magneto. The fun thing with comic book characters is you can reinterpret and mold them in any number of ones, and transform them to better fit with the times when adapting them. Do I want them to alter Magneto’s backstory in such a way? Not particularly. But would I rather have him in a film, keeping his core concepts and ideas while delivering a recognizable yet fresh take on a character I had previously watched for the better part of two decades in another franchise? Hell yes.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

I like how Sony made one (1) good Spider-Man film in 15 years and is just an incredibly shitty company when it comes to franchises and animation otherwise, but this one single good film means they can do no wrong with Spider-Man.

I gotta ask: would anyone be happy with Spidey being taken out of the MCU from a film standpoint if Spider-Verse didn’t exist? Forget the terms of the deal, would you all be happy with Sony regaining 100% control of Spider-Man if Andrew Garfield’s superhero abortions were the last Spider-Man films made prior to Spidey joining the MCU?

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

I can’t believe there are people who actually think Pan’s Labyrinth is a better movie if all the magic is imagined. Like why does that make it better? What is improved by making the ending all bitter and no sweet? Why is fantasy looked down upon so much that a movie with fantasy elements can be considered “better” by removing them?

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Ok so I was thinking about this and there are two really weird cases that really show how people misuse the term “cashgrab.” Like I mentioned earlier, a movie is a cashgrab only if it seemingly exists to ape off an existing trend.

Which brings me to Ghostbusters 2016. This movie was called a great many things, and “cashgrab” was certainly one of them. But... was it really? Was there any demand for a new Ghostbuster movie? Was there any preexisting trend it fit? Female-led reboots were certainly not a prominent thing prior, so it really set that trend more than anything. 

The 2020 Ghostbusters movie, on the other hand, reeks of being a cashgrab. Its major selling point seems like “Hey, did you hate the reboot? WEll here come the REAL Ghostbusters.” Obviously There’s no way of knowing until the film comes out but at the moment it looks very reactionary in its existence and not coming from a place of genuine creativty.

Then there’s Captain Marvel. I don’t know if I’ve specifically seen it called a cashgrab, but some of the critcisms I have seen give off an air of it, like “Too late Marvel, Wonder Woman did a female superhero movie first!” Like... yes? And? The fact remains that CM was planned since phase one and only didn’t get made due to the racist, sexist higher up Ike Perlmutter, The movie was always going to be in the cards after he was gone, it’s really just coincidental it came out in a post-Wonder Woman world. It’s not a cashgrab, whatever your thoughts on it are.

Oh yes, one more thing: Magazines or websites or whatever publication trying to push a film does not change the fact that a film is not a cashgrab. We all know how Ghostbusters was pushed, that does not make it any more of a cashgrab. 

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Unpopular Film Opinions

I don’t like Peni Parker that much and think she’s the most pointless Spidey in Spider-Verse.

Tarantino has never mad a bad movie but Inglorious Basterds is really unfocused. The Hateful Eight is better.

Captain Marvel was not a bad movie or character.

Endgame did not ruin Thor but it didn’t really progress his character in a meaningful way either.

JLaw was a good actress but her Oscar win gave her a serious ego problem.

A film that is earnest in its use of cliches is always better than a film that constantly needs to snark about cliches.

Thor: Ragnarok is great but people need to acknowledge it has flaws, namely how badly it handled Skurge.

A lot of the Disney DTV sequels are good.

Timon and Puumba actually kind of suck and do not fit the tone of The Lion King at all; they are much better and funnier in their spinoffs. And yes I think “Hakuna Matata” sucks.

Citizen Kane is only great from a film historian standpoint, it’s a bit dry for general audiences.

Cars, Brave, and Shrek 4 are all decent.

Up is only a decent movie after the opening. Nothing else in the film really measures up.

Michael Bay and George Lucas are overheated, and so is Shyamalan to an extent.

Gamers deserves more respect.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

So when did we start acting like movies making a lot of money is indicative of anything other than... the movie made a lot of money? Like, oh no! Halfway through the year the top 5 highest grossing films are Disney movies! This means... what, exactly? The bloated Mega Corp made money by strategically releasing their blockbuster films? Ok...? So what?

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

So first Scorcese and Coppola chime in with their two cents on Marvel movies as if they get to decide what art is, but then Ken Loach throws his hat in the ring and it’s like, literally who the fuck is Ken Loach? I looked up his filmography and I have never head of a single one of his films. Like, whatever, Coppola and Scorcese are talking out their ass but they’ve at least had legitimate cultural impact, this guy is some absolute “Literally Who?” and he thinks his thoughts on the matter are valid. Can’t wait to hear the thoughts of Uwe Boll, cuz that’s where we’re headed at this point, next stop after that is using a Ouija board to contact Kubrick and Hitchcock.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Here’s the one for 90s movies. This one was tough, the 90s had a LOT of good movies spread out, unlike the 2000s where it felt like most of the movies were bunched together in the early-to-mid period.