Author: csabavarga

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Wish I Was Here (2014) and A Good Person (2023)

It seems like Zach Braff has a ten year cycle of taking the time to do one of his own movies, when he’s both writing and directing. Garden State, his first one from 2004, is somewhere in my Top 100 of all time; it speaks so much to my heart, with music from my childhood, and the “going back to my little city” vibe that I do myself every once in a while.

Wish I Was Here was on my backlog for a while, and I finally watched it, although it’s nothing even remotely close to his first flick. Honestly, it’s kind of a mess, especially being all over the place from a directing perspective, so not a great credit for Braff. The only thing that saves the movie is the typical Zach Braff heart-and-soul that I can feel all over it, and that makes it likable at least. But likable, as an ugly little dog that I wish the best for.

And after this one did I see that there’s a new movie he did just last year, which totally went past me. Maybe because he was not playing in it, so his face didn’t jump at me from a poster. Anyways, A Good Person is a strong one. It’s personal, intimate, soul-crushing but also heart-warming, with absolutely amazing acting all over. After the series of “idiotic old man comedies” done by Morgan Freeman, this one brings him justice; it’s a fantastic role played well. And Florence Pugh is just close to being my favorite actress in the past ~five years, so she’s brilliant like what I’d expect.

A Good Person also fits into a line of movies I’ve watched this year, all on the topic of someone battling with addiction and trying to overcome some past tragedy. Films like The Way Back and Half Nelson were beautiful gems I discovered with this theme.

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Dredd (2012)

This was a huge surprise. I had it on my watchlist for a long time as a catch-up thing, like something I knew I should not miss, but had no actual expectations. I assumed it to be on the level of the Robocop remake (not great).

Now that I finally watched it, I’m blown away. Great directing, interesting visual style, actually good actors doing actually good acting, good music, absolutely no “but why did they do that” moments, and an absolutely top-notch cyberpunk depiction.

It felt like a DLC for the Cyberpunk 2077 game when you’re playing a cop and see the megacity and the run-down future from their point of view. I can actually see how this movie made it to the inspiration list of the game’s artists. (Okay, now I googled this, and yeah, it’s obviously there.)

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Mad Max (2015)

From a rusty dirt box to a golden muscle car in 46 hours.

First I didn’t like how the game forced me to do looting and progress painfully slow to be able to get to the story progression, but soon enough I got hooked and unlocked some of the idle loot generation methods so the engine started working and it was more about exploration, easy but fun fighting, and earning progress at a nice enough pace. At the end, I could help but max it out completionist style. My favorite bit was the beautifully done post-apocalpytic style: this game has almost ten years on it at the time of me playing it, but I had zero complaints about visuals, it looked fantastic to me.

Overall, it was definitely a memorable experience, and a true Sisyphusian Mad Max storyline.

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The Black Dog – Other, Like Me

These guys are churning out new albums like a factory, and what’s socking is that none of these records feel like coming from a conveyor belt. This one’s on the darker side, introvert slow to mid tempo techno, some fine IDM noises, some industrial touch, some nice synths. It’s very well crafted electronic music.

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Be Kind Rewind (2008)

Such a great premise, it’s hilarious and fun. The lead-up about how the tapes get wiped is so unnecessarily over the top, but already sets the tone for what level of ridiculous one should expect. It’s also funny and full of heart. This is a new entry on my favorites list.

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Crashing (2016)

Funny and quirky, full of moments of “omg, can’t watch, why, can’t not watch”. In a way it’s a very British take on the Friends-template: starting-out young people hanging together, just not living in an unaffordable large apartment over Manhattan, but squatting in a run-down hospital.

Also, I adore Phoebe Waller-Bridge, I cannot imagine why the industry doesn’t squeeze more producing and writing out of her, she’s an absolute blast both as a creator and as an actress.

Finally, this is a dense piece, because there’s not just one but two manic pixie dream girls in a seven-person cast. Although I could argue that besides Lulu and Melody, Fred is also one (being Sam’s pixie) so that would make it three.

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Emily the Criminal (2022)

I loved to see Aubrey Plaza in a drama role, and both her and Theo Rossi killed it in terms of performance. The movie wasn’t an extremely deep ride but rather a “moment in life” thing, but it’s a really good one for what it is.

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Alien: Romulus (2024)

There are pros and cons, but it’s easily the best Alien movie in a decade. In my ranking Alien and Aliens are on the high pedestal of 10/10, and then Alien 3 and Resurrection are both 6/10 movies. Romulus fits somewhere on the benchmark of the latter two, perhaps a half mark upwards, and definitely way ahead of any of the prequels or Predator crossovers.

What’s going for it:

  • I really appreciated ground time, showcasing what a mining colony looks like, streets, a slice of society, struggles outside of the scope of a single mission.
  • We got glimpse of a new part of alien life: we’ve never before seen them between bursting out as an alien baby and reappearing as a big black monster, and now we saw that there’s an in-between cocoon phase.
  • The whole movie was beautifully shot: colors, atmosphere, consistency of the retro-futuristic setting. As for props, the scenes were built amazingly well, and the aliens looked bad-ass.
  • Acting was fairly good, and the writing had no painful “why would you do that?!” moments.

What felt hmm:

  • The whole cast felt very young, had a bit of a Children of the Corn vibe to it. Although I could think that miners die young, working class has children early, so this is just what this society’s reality looks like.
  • Sometimes I felt that the retro-futuristic technology to be kinda gimmicky. Like I’d see today’s youngsters playing with old props, well, which is the case. Maybe it’s just a hiccup of my suspension of disbelief.
  • The alien-human hybrid was creepy but rather in an odd-weirdo than a frightening way. I liked the Newborn version better in Resurrection.
  • CGI recreation of Ian Holm looked underproduced.
  • There were a lot of plot vehicles that felt exactly like plot vehicles and not embedded well enough so that I don’t see behind the scenes. For example, “you have 36 hours to pull it off”, so there’s a time pressure; “now you have rather 20 minutes”, so the time pressure is elevated; “there’s no air in there”, so you have some limiting factor to overcome; “the gravity switches on and off every X minutes”, so we can use this later as a physical stunt; etc. I know elements like this are part of a story as it is, but still, I can hear the conversation in the brainstorming session how these ideas came about and what plot needs they answered. It’s just too on the nose, like an exercise at a creative writing class.