I feel like the good vibes of the directing talent and bravado were completely negated by the bad vibes of the characters and narrative for me. I can get by on style over substance, but when the narrative feels hokey and lame, it ceases to actually feel stylish to me and just comes across as annoying. Just get the sensibilities and tastefulness right/appealing, and I'm okay with the substance being a shallow illusion (like for example, Blade Runner would still be really cool and great and perfect even if you found out that the ideas communicated was really underwhelming, which some people do think).Strangely, even though I like the movie, and thinks it deserves a higher grade, I completely agree with your review.
This is indeed a filmmaking exercise. The script is as basic as it comes, as he simply took Syd Field's hero journey template taught in almost all Screenwriting 101 class, and he adhere to Field;s belief that the first ten minutes makes-or breaks the movie. In essence, Wright pretty much just took all the basic aspects that were taught in film school, and made a movie out of it. On the surface, that does not sound impressive, but to put it together in such a polish and entertaining manner certainly takes skills and talent.
This is one movie I am actually curious on how you feel towards it, because it does have a good vibe. Now I know.
I know the concept and found it really cool and full of potential, but I was just wondering if, in practice, it was ever done in a way that really worked and was really well received critically. Or was it just a really good idea filled with grating bro-humor that similarly put a lot of people off in the comic books (which is what the movies seem like to me)? I know they got the essence of the character right, but is the level/style of humor in the movies more or less the same as the humor in the comics, or are the comics a lot better at it?
Bingo. Completely agreed, and I wish more people bought into this idea. I inherently dislike the term style over substance. Flash over substance makes sense, because flash is a trivial benefit/novelty that ultimately doesn't matter and can't stand on its own, but actual style does stand on its own and becomes its own kind of substance, IMO. I dislike the idea of giving Baby Driver credit for having a strong sense of style. because I don't really think it does.
I don't remember the book that well, but Bradbury is one of my favorite authors and although I don't remember it, all I was thinking during the movie is how much better the book is.
May I suggest another trilogy from roughly the same period, Satyajit Ray's The Apu Trilogy (Pather Panchali (10B/10); Aparajito (8A/10); The World of Apu (8B/10)--the trilogy is about a child growing up in rural India and then becoming a man in an ever more modern India. Like The Human Condition Trilogy, The Apu Trilogy is one of the pillars of humanist art in the 20th century.
Disobedience (2018) Dircted by Sebastian Lelio 3B
When her estranged father, a fundamentalist Rabbi, dies suddenly, Ronit (Rachel Weisz) returns to the Orthodox Jewish community in London that she escaped years earlier (much to the relief of the community, apparently). There she rekindles her relationships with her childhood friends Esti (Rachel McAdams) and David (Alessandro Nivola), now married to one another with David in the process of assuming the responsibilities of the dead Rabbi. Ronit and Esti once again grow attracted to one another as the orthodox community recoils in disapproval and disgust. There will be repercussions but what exactly those repercussions will be takes its sweet time arriving. Disobedience is a serious movie. You can tell by how gray it is. Indoors, outdoors, light source or not, everything is gray, gray, gray so as to match the glum, glum, glum tone of this dull, dull, dull movie. Equally subdued is the lovemaking. Weisz and McAdams engage in a much ballyhooed and wildly overrated sex scene that is tastefully tame when it should be Blue Is the Warmest Color hot. The movie has bigger problems than that, though. Clearly the movie wants to take on the patriarchal hierarchy, sexual repression and female subservience that are hallmarks of communities organized around religious orthodoxy. But David isn't really a bad guy and the film has no desire to step on toes of potentially paying customers, so Disobedience comes up with an ending which will simultaneously neither completely please nor thoroughly offend anyone. By the simple expedient of allowing none of the characters to get exactly what they want anyway, Disobedience finds a way of bringing its morose but underdeveloped story to a close. Gray, gray, gray; glum, glum, glum.
