Hustlers

A fairly enjoyable film that was boosted by a fantastic - and fantastic-looking too! - Jennifer Lopez in possibly her best role in years! Unfortunately, the rest of the film failed to live up to the heights of J Lo. Constance Wu, in the lead role, was unengaging and uncharismatic, and placing her next to J Lo really highlighted the difference in ability and screen chemistry.

Similarly, although the film, written and directed by Lorene Scafaria, went beyond the typical debauchery and skankiness usually associated with stripper-flicks, whenever Scafaria dipped into more serious territory of capitalism, sisterhood, motherhood, survival and friendship the pacing faltered and the air just went out of the film. Until J Lo reignites the screen.

There could have been a better film within this if they had focused on the central relationship between Wu's and Lopez's character instead of the hustling. The flashback narrative structure served to only highlight the boringness and predictability of the central story, whereas the one thing that the audience are keen to find out more, namely the above-said relationship, got teased out to a rather unsatisfactory conclusion.

Scafaria seemed more interested in telling the story of the hustle rather than furthering the depths of these potentially complicated characters, but yet the hustle itself seemed as rote as that of a bloated Lifetime movie.

There was humour in the film too, and it was scattered around. I guess that could have been more due to the contribution by Will Farrell and Adam McKay rather than Scafaria, because oddly enough, on hindsight, one cannot really remember the specifics of the comedy.

Wu's character, the audience surrogate, was written very well - on paper - but its translation onto the big screen by Wu was a bore. Her costuming and look itself did her no favour, and obviously the costumer focused more on J Lo than recreating an authentic Asian look. I honestly doubt and Asian stripper would looked and dressed like Wu in 2007. She looked like she was stuck in the 70s or 80s instead. Added to that, the fact that Wu was just very uninteresting and did not play her character as someone worth rooting for.

Actually, there were no one character that was worth rooting for. Maybe except Doug. Poor Doug.

Scafaria had created for Wu a central lead character that had a great back story with so much potential emotional depth, but in the end, they only gave us someone who was essentially going through the motions without a sense of authenticity or lived-in-ness.

Having said that, Wu did deliver towards the end, but it was too little too late. What a shame.

Thankfully, we had J Lo. Man, we all should look like her at age 50.  And boy, the chatter is real, J Lo has a chance - albeit likely a long shot depending on how else the year goes - of some award recognition. A Golden Globe nomination for sure, but Oscar...we will see. She was electrifying, magnetic, charismatic and dosed out in just the right amount without being overbearing. She easily commanded the screen and out-classed and out-acted everybody. Then again, the latter was not hard, considering the rest of her cast mates were more well-known for their television screen roles and music career than acting per se. J Lo was the ferocious beating heart of this film and her screen entrance will be one for the books.

Another highlight of the film was the music. The songs featured were a homage to naughties and early teenies, and helped to move the narrative along despite the absence of a score.

J Lo should get back into serious film-making as we eagerly anticipate her 2019/20 awards campaign. Just as we anticipate Hollywood try to get a female-driven, female-led ensemble heist/hustler film done right. Steve McQueen's Widows was still the closest for now.

Weathering With You 天気の子

Makoto Shinkai's follow-up to 2016's phenom-hit Your Name continued the director's gorgeous visual and animation aesthetics, and blatant - but excellent - emotional manipulation with a killer piano score, as the story integrated Japan's hyper-modernity with its ancient shinto religion and manga-esque fantasy genre.

However, unlike Your Name, the film's central story (and romance) lacked emotional depth, thematic complexity and was narratively simple. Although the characters were very likable and very easy to root for, their relationship just felt too basic and thinly sketched, lacking the necessary emotional baggage to strengthen their emotional arc.

The resulting film ran just under 2 hours, but at times felt draggy. The prologue and epilogue were excellent bookends for the story, the former effectively setting up the intrigue and the latter closing the chapter.

The first act was fun and well-paced, getting to the premise and establishing characters efficiently, but the second act was unnecessarily complicated with multiple subplots existing for comedic reliefs at the expense of deepening the central premise and mythos. The third act then ultimately felt rushed and hence the climatic weight felt lost.

Although the introduction of the main characters from Your Name into the storyline was a nice touch, and seemed to suggest Shinkai may be starting a whole new in-universe franchise.

Nonetheless, despite its flaws - which were just more obvious because of the looming spectre of Your Name - Weathering with You was an enjoyable film. It was stunning to look at with breathtaking landscapes and stunning rain-animations, and had a killer piano score and charismatic, likable characters.

It Chapter Two

This was one of the funniest film of the year, and I am sure that was not what director Andy Muschietti and writer Gary Dauberman were aiming for. But unfortunately, that was the outcome.

It was genuinely funny due to Bill Hader (go watch Barry!) who was the only standout actor; he and James Ransone were a great comedic duo and they deserve a buddy-comedy film after this. But besides the real, good laughs from them, the rest of the film was filled with ridiculousness and over-the-top, exaggerated "scares" that deflated any sense of dread, fear or trepidation that led up to it. The over reliance on (bad) CGIs and blatantly telegraphed jump-scares (can it still be called jump-scares if the audience knows when to jump?) was pathetic for a horror film.

Most tellingly, you know you are in trouble when a horror film's more horrific moments are a gay-bashing in the cold open and domestic violence sequence in the opening minutes of character-introductions. Nothing after that in the bloated, over-wrought, 169 minutes ever came close to those cringing, eyes-shutting moments. And I honestly doubt that Muschietti and Dauberman had the smarts to have the wherewithal to establish a subtext that nothing in the world is scarier and worse than humanity/humans/men.

Not that there were not anything good about this film. For one, it was more faithful to the source material than the 1990 two-part miniseries; secondly, it did - effectively - foreshadowed the final form of It throughout the film such that when It becomes that it was not such a sucker-punch like in the miniseries.

As for the characters, the bonds of the adult members of The Loser Club was better demonstrated and genuine in the TV series than in this film. One of the best things about It Chapter One was the bond between the characters, but here it was lacking. They were obviously split into groups with Hader and Ransone as the comedic pair, Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy and Jay Ryan as the inevitable love-triangle, and Isaiah Mustafa as the always-alone Mike.

Chastain and McAvoy were just there with minimal acting required on their parts (just like in X-Men: Dark Phoenix) and Aussie Ryan's introduction to an international audience was more through his abs than his acting capabilities per se.  Also, there was nary any chemistry between all three of them to make any relationship worth rooting for.

Lastly, nobody can replace Tim Curry's Pennywise as the ultimate personification of fear and nightmares. Bill Skarsgard crafted his own unique Pennywise but it was so visually distinctively evil and crazy that its scariness was more dependent on Skarsgard's body language and all the CGI layered over him. You cannot really be scared of something that looked so blatantly evil and mad. Go watch Skarsgard in Castle Rock  instead.

Curry, on the other hand, was just an innocuous clown with dead eyes and a crazy grin standing there waving to you...until he struck and - BAM! - coulrophobia for life!

In the end, despite the faults of the miniseries, inevitably at the conclusion it was a much stronger presentation of It than this two-part film franchise. It was scarier, more haunting and more honest.

And Tim Curry is what nightmares are made of.