What have you watched recently? 3D!

Those PoV scenes were astonishing, each one. There was one in particular, with a mirror behind the person the PoV character was interacting with ... and I could barely see the joins. Must dig out some Making Of info 'cos it must have been a logistical nightmare to shoot so many of those scenes - and in that case, reversed(?)

It's funny to watch stuff like this, compared with how blockbusters are made now: often indie directors like Colin Trevorrow, with one small film under their belt, suddenly helming giant CGI driven blockbusters and basically anonymous or superseded by the 2nd Unit. Strange Days was like a bit shot of adrenaline. She's only 70: give Bigelow a Blank Cheque you cowards!

Also, forgot to mention but Tom Sizemore's wig. chef's kiss.

Perhaps if the digital age hadn't taken off around 2000 anyway, Strange Days' tech mightn't have aged so fast? Felt like it needed a few more years to simmer in the zeitgeist. The internet wasn't that far around the corner, and oh my god I just see now the famously awful "The Net" was also released in 1995. Quite the year for cyberpunk, internet thrillers.

Well if Clint is anything to go by she has another 20 years in her, at least! Detroit was rather poorly received, right? Never got around to seeing it, but can't see any news of newer projects coming down the tracks.

Kung Fu Hustle (2004)

I sure wasn't expecting an, ahem, full-blooded Shining reference in this goofball live-action cartoon.

Would "better" FX have improved or worsened the whole experience? I kept wondering this throughout the otherwise proudly, energetically silly adventure that asked "what if Looney Toons - but with Kung Fu?". The movie came out in that early era of CGI; the early 2000s when yes, it could be good - even convincing in places - but required the time and money 90% of productions simply didn't have access to. Nowadays though, even films with relatively middling budgets can put their hands on solid computer-generated effects. Good luck spotting a live wild animal in any modern production, for instance; all those bears and Metaphor Delivery Icons (aka, Deers) are often ones and zeroes. 

All that said, "better" FX wouldn't have made this a better experience; in many respects, all those rubbery, obvious digital moments replacing actors or scenery during fight scenes worked in the film's favour - especially its tone. I never scoffed at how a digital stunt double had aged like milk, not once. The unreality of the CGI only worked in tandem with the rest of the cogs happily turning away. I just giggled to myself and enjoyed how confidently daft it all was. A cartoon movie has cartoon effects.

Watching this was also a reaffirmation at just how bland and flavourless American blockbuster cinema has become; that as fashionable as it is to dump on the MCU - a series about ostensible superpowers and optional physics - the franchise has never once showed the kind of flourish and imagination Kung-Fu Hustle swaggered around with. Indeed, comparing the obvious closest cousin in Shang-Chi, the newer, more expensive film just seemed so much more rote than Stephen Chow's older creature. The more modern CGI drawing attention to the joins, rather than inviting us to embrace the silliness.

Miami Vice (2006)

A film that ran almost entirely on a distinct vibe: a certain pulse of emotional energy, more interested in the feel of things such that its actual plot became abstracted into a lot of dialogue about "loads". The audience wasn't asked to understand the minutiae though - only to feel. Like many Mann films, its cast was stacked with characters full of competent purpose, all while laden with unspoken burdens - albeit with less cocaine mania than in Heat & Pacino's famous performance. The pensive mood here was reflected across the sky; full of thunder & lightning from a storm constantly threatening to start. A character would remark late in the movie that "... time is luck", punctuation that the cast were simply existing as best they could before the storm came, the axe fell and luck ran out. I can see why this thing got roasted on its initial release.

I wasn't quite sure what kind of film I was about to get; ostensibly being a remake of a popular TV crime series from the '80s. A show famous for its brazen, contemporaneous style above all else. Maybe my resting bias assumed it'd be another action-thriller of the type Mann has become synonymous for - but I sure wasn't expecting something so deeply existential or brooding in between the (brief) moments of brutal gunfire. The action scenes we got had exactly the impact and physicality as one would have hoped from this director - but overall? Miami Vice was as if Mann took the character played by Robert DeNiro in Heat - and especially that scene as he looked out his window across the LA coastline - and expanded it out into thematic feature-length.

The Lost City of Z (2016)

This was hauntingly beautiful stuff, sumptuously textured, all breathing with atmosphere. Occasionally disjointed for sure, but overall a film the likes of which hasn't been seen since the heyday of David Lean or adjacent pictures of yore. James Gray's determination to (apparently) keep events matching the historical timeline meant this was a story that somewhat bounced about without much in the way of clear direction or trajectory; but that's not to say the end result didn't work either. That slightly jumbled structure ultimately worked in tandem with the on-screen fumbling around by those various explorers within the "green desert" of the Amazon.

It also managed to successfully thread a tricky moral needle: it embraced the adventuring spirit of those twilight years of colonial exploration, without necessarily condoning the turpitude of that era either; indeed it was through the growing obsession with the titular city of 'Z' that Hunnam's Percy Fawcett showed an empathic awakening towards the Amazon's tribes and history. At first ambivalent towards the slavery & dismissal of the Europeans, Fawcett showed subtle nous, understanding and - ultimately by story's end - acceptance that his part in this region's history was minimal - irrelevant and ephemeral in the face of things. All of it culminating in a genuinely emotional and heart-rending finale; one that both maintained the mystery of Fawcett's ultimate destiny - while nodding towards his & his son's probable fate.

After all those MCU appearances, it was interesting to watch a young Tom Holland play the oldest son; maybe it's simple retroactive analysis, but you could see the germ of that older actor, his final scene with his father naturalistic & powerful. All with relatively little screen time. While this movie also forced me to reassess Charlie Hunnam as a leading man: he wasn't entirely playing against type, but showed subtle range that never overplayed the conflicts within Fawcett's nature - so that it was easier to swallow a man repeatedly leaving his family to pursue folly & presumed death. Sienna Miller also nailed it, her own performance amounting to the Supportive Spouse trope, but with a good layer of visible hurt. A wounded performance, she always appeared quietly devastated when her husband left for the Amazon - more so than when he went to war.

Also: noting this was a total flop at the time, I couldn't help speculate if the title acted against the success of this. Superficially it reads so schlocky & explotational. I know film titles can sometimes err on the side of bland (see "Edge of Tomorrow" vs the Japanese title of "All You Need is Kill"), but perhaps here, the opposite applied; audiences scoffing at such an anachronistic name for a film. But then given it was all such a meditative piece of filmmaking, it was never destined to blow the doors off the box-office anyway.