That's like a lily

I've now watched to the end of episode 26 of Blossom. I could finish it this weekend, if I so choose. I appreciated that they made the terrible stepmother more complicated, sympathic and interesting (though no less terrible). I feel like the main male character is kind of terrible, and actually only kept in check by the female lead, though I'm probably not supposed to feel that way 🤣 But I find them kind of cute and appeallingly functional. Whenever he admires her strategies I'm charmed by it.

I went to see Detective Kien: The Headless Horror (2025) -- a Vietnamese somewhat supernatural historical detective thriller -- at a cinema one suburb over last night. The film was fine, basically about as 3 out of 5 stars as you can get. I liked it well enough. It's sufficient to the job. I was neither wowed nor put off. A lot of the detecting is about getting gossipy landed gentry to spill all the beans, so it's not on the Sherlock-y end of the scale (which I appreciate, tbh). I appreciated the flirtation between the two main characters was a flirtation between people who are not young. There's a subplot with arranged marriage drama with face-slapping and a whole thing with people hallucinating (or maybe not) a monster. Nice outfits and hairstyles; I don't know enough about Vietnam to say whether or not they're historically accurate, but they're visually appealing, and they signalled things like class status & etc. at a glance. I suspect this film is funnier if you speak Vietnamese, given moments when people laughed. There was a bit where red dirt was a clue, and the characters instantly assumed it was dirt that got blood soaked into it, but because I grew up in a place where the dirt everywhere is red I was surprised.

What I didn't like was people coming in late and walking in front of the subtitles. This always drives me crazy! And there were people using their phones during the movie. I guess this is often how the movie-going experience is now (though it depends on the film, I think? If it's an art film aimed at older audiences I don't often have this issue), but it's very annoying.

Also, the particular Hoyts I went to see this at renovated so that buying food and picking up food seem to be in completely different areas now and it was weirdly unclear which you're supposed to do first. That and it being at a shopping centre at night, so I missed my tram when I got out in the rainy dark, and then had to wait 20 minutes for an uber... I don't regret going out to see the film (even if it was just fine, I still feel enriched by leaving the house and seeing a new thing, and it's nice to add another country to my list of 2025 films), even if I was beset by annoyances.

I went to see The Phoenician Scheme yesterday, and alas, it's a fizzler. The opening is so strong, that I was genuinely excited! I felt that I was in capable hands. Very Wes Anderson, but the music gave the opening a sense of urgency and Benicio del Toro's physicality brought a degree of menace to it that I genuinely don't expect from his work. And then... it turned out to be a stiff, surface-y lukewarm rehash of the sort of thing he's already done in The Royal Tennenbaums and The Life Aquatic & etc. etc. Shitty patriarch reconnecting with child, sets that make everything feel like a dollhouse, a bunch of celeb cameos, a bunch of monotone line delivery. The comedy doesn't land. Mia Threapleton's acting style is too casual and monotone, to the point that sometimes it feels like a humorous juxtaposition to everyone else's OTT acting and sometimes she just seems like a bad high school drama student. And this is on the higher end of orientialism for his films. This felt like maybe he's entering a Tim Burton-esque bad parody of himself era.

It's a shame, because I actually really enjoyed his last two films: to me they felt like he was using his style to do slightly different things and evolve, and while they were certainly more niche than his most popular, they had just as much heart. Asteroid City felt like it connected so well with lockdown grief, and The French Dispatch is such a charming blend of styles in what is blatantly a love letter to The Paris Review. But this felt like it was missing its heart, just going through the motions. And why would you waste a guy like Benicio del Toro on bad comedy.

It's not all bad - Richard Ayoade's bit as the leader of a humorous stylish freedom fighter/thief gang is delightful, and Riz Ahmed's bits reminded me that he's very good looking. And the beginning really is so good, stylish and urgent with a dark humour underlying. The afterlife segments scattered throughout the film are also a highlight for me, and they felt like that was where the real story was. Honestly, I felt like he could have done more with those and less with the wacky mid century basketball nonsense.

It kind of makes me want to see Anderson do a film about a character with genuine menace. If this had turned expectations on their head, and instead of being another unnecessary shitty patriarch becomes less shitty through reconnecting with adult children story had been about a villain who stayed a villain and didn't reform it all, it would have been a much better story. But this is more of a deflated balloon of a film.

I'm still going to watch the next one he makes though 😂

I also finally went to see Sinners last night. I'm sure everything that could be said about that film already has, and I'm not particularly qualified to say it, because I discovered while watching it that my hearing loss is worse than I thought because I couldn't understand a lot of the dialogue. I'd like to watch it again once it's on streaming and I can use subtitles. It's obviously in dialogue with other vampire films, along with everything else it's doing. Great sound design; I felt especially wrapped in the music, but the way it used sound as an auditory flashback overlaid over the present of the story was also a highlight. Charismatic actors. I was especially compelled by Wunmi Mosaku as Annie.

There were parts that didn't work as well for me - Michael B Jordan passing something to Michael B Jordan did not, in fact, look as convincing as I'd hoped. I can't tell how much it's fair for me to judge characters for doing dumb things in a horror movie, when people doing stupid things when scared is often the fun of the genre for me.

But really, I need to watch it again with subtitles to truly judge the film because I couldn't understand half the dialogue.

I did burst out laughing at HelloChinese teaching me how to say 'New York is extremely clean' in Mandarin.

纽约非常干净 ...I was like, infamously not, though. Unless it has the cleanest pizza rats around!