Reasons to see (or not) La La Land

Synopsys: Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) is a jazz piano player that lost his club and now plays in restaurants. Mia (Emma Stone) is an actress that goes from audition to audition. They meet casually, they fall in love, and they start dealing with their dreams and how those dreams can endanger their relationship.

La La Land is a movie with a director that clearly loves music (as we saw in the excellent Whiplash) and it is a musical romantic comedy-drama. Already from its definitions, you can guess that the film has multiple sides. Let's try to capture most of them while remaining spoiler-free.

The acting performances are amazing. Emma Stone is absolutely stunning with her expressivity. There are funny situations, both during the songs and the normal acting, that are enhanced by the excellent dynamic between the two main performers. A few scenes have a terrific intensity, they look at each other and take your breath away. J.K. Simmons (in the role of himself again) appears for a short time but delivers his performance as usual.

The musical parts are not forced but very naturally make their appearance in the plot. They are tools to describe a feeling, a dream, a desire, a memory. I particularly appreciated the dance happening between the two main characters, with the LA sunset in the background, symbolizing the newborn romantic tension emerged due to their encounter. The soundtrack is very enjoyable and I will let you know when it stops haunting me.

There is a quite predictable discussion on the beauty of Jazz. Usually, such discussions are very pretentious (you don't like it because you don't understand it) and the essence of it is the same in the film. However, Sebastian doesn't give a lecture on the beauty of Jazz, but rather makes Mia see the music with his point of view, with his passion. This substantial change gives a very romantic tone to one of the most tedious arguments of the Jazz enthusiasts (like myself).

The theme that stroke me harder (but far from being the only one) is how to pursue your own dreams while you have another person with another set of dreams next to you. The mistake displayed on the screen is that the characters make decisions not based on what they want, but rather on what they think their partner is expecting from them. This is eventually creating a tension which will lead to the wrong assumption that their dreams are somehow subjected to a hierarchy (my dream is more important than your). The plot is then developed around this tension, exploring different solutions.

In conclusion, La La Land has a very romantic, bitter-sweet, tone all over the movie, but with a very persistent note of realism. The result is a well-told story to which everyone can relate to and, therefore, reaches its goal: make you feel a wide spectrum of emotions and think about your own life.

Collateral Beauty of advertisement

This will be a review slightly different than usual because this movie requires a different approach. Looking at the trailer, the plot seems to be the following. Will Smith's child died and he is very depressed. His friends are worried about him, especially when they find out that he is writing letters to Love, Time and Death. Suddenly, those three abstractions start to answer him back.

Therefore I was not expecting much because the risk of cheap philosophy is two scenes away at any given time. I was secretly hoping that Love, Time and Death were just actors hired by his worried friends to make him come back to a normal life.

Now the real plot (not a spoiler, it is revealed in the first 20 minutes).

Synopsys: Will Smith is a creative and charismatic man, whose life is upset by the death of his 6 years old daughter. His friends are also his co-workers and they are very worried that his depression will make their company fail. Thus they decide to hire actors in order to drive him crazy, film everything, show him the tape in front of the board and push him to resign from the company he founded. 

Yes, people, this is the shitty plot about shitty people. The movie is structured to make you cry for the grieving father, but it is telling such a meaningless act of evil that everything is in the background of the selfishness of a bunch of assholes. The feeling is that there was a good movie somewhere in there, but something went horribly wrong once the final product was made. Then I imagine the conversation went in a similar way.

Aren't we telling the story of how three assholes kicked their friend out of the company because he was sad and he was making everyone sad?

Good point, Harold, let's advertise it as a movie about the importance of accepting the grief, the importance of love and how beautiful is having a friend that cares about you.

Well, can't we simply change the motivat...

Sorry, Harold, I can't hear you: all these lambs make a hell of a noise while I smash their head with this baby seal.

So far it is just a bad movie with great actors and performances. They go even further and introduce three subplots involving the three worst friends in the history of filmmaking. Probably the message is that everyone has some problem and you should empathize with them too. First, their problem is that they are assholes. Second, the result is not emotional at all. The only one that empathizes with them is Will Smith, the victim of their plot, that is eventually revealing them that, although his grief is heavy on him, he feels their problems. Here the villains have the chance to redeem themselves and tell the truth, give balance to Will Smith's life again, but no, they cry a little, the go drinking, they steal the company.

As an extra point, there is even a fourth subplot involving the main character and, without anticipating anything, it makes no sense at all. It is clearly an attempt to give some kind of deepness to the movie by adding some obscure twist just to make the viewer guess about it. There is nothing to guess: it is a cheap move to force us to get emotional about the finale. It is in this subplot that the movie explores the meaning of its title: 32 seconds, a monologue by a secondary character, defined bullshit by the main one. That's it.

In conclusion, a very bad movie that loses the occasion of having on screen a lot of good actors by making them be horrible people and then trying to be profound simply by taking out any sense from the plot. It is a pity: a few dialogues about death are free of the usual rhetoric and the potential for a movie to be remembered was there. 

Do not spend your money on it: they will use that money to kill more lambs using baby seals as a weapon.

Reasons to see (or not) Rogue One

Synopsys: It is Saturday morning, you are like a 4 years old kid. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away... TADAAA Yellow crawling credits. There you go, Rogue One is precisely that.

There is nothing to spoil about this movie since it is the story of how the rebellion got the Death Star's plans. However, just to maintain the usual tone, the potential spoilers will be placed at the end of the post, right after the picture.

When a new Star Wars movie comes out, generically, you find two kinds of people: the overly enthusiastic no matter what, and the critic that accuse Disney to ruin the franchise. First, Phantom Menace is a scar that we will always bring in our heart. Second, Empire can't be beaten, get over it already. I say so only to be transparent on my positions about Star Wars and I will try to give a broad view of the elements of this film. 

Rogue One is an anthology movie taking place before the events of A New Hope. In my opinion, it is more a movie taking place in the Star Wars universe, rather than a Star Wars movie. Therefore the scenario is a Galaxy in the middle of a war, a rebellion, and you will be thrown in the dirt with the events on screen. The film is picking up the legacy of Awakens and comes back to the dusty planets, the raw battles, the presence of an overwhelming power to be defeated. 

It doesn't contain all the philosophy on what is good and what is not. This was a natural consequence of the presence of Jedi and Sith in every other Star Wars, here is simply not a theme. We are in a war and both sides are going to be tough; the realism of this aspect sheds a new light on the film, a more desperate and dark light. It is a story of hope and of sacrifice in the name of such hope. Therefore, the movie reminds a War World II film: there is a resistance, there are soldiers, and there is a lot of humanity fading away in front of your eyes.

The action scenes are simply amazing. The CGI is barely visible, the choreography is credible and never over the top (thus again closer to the Trilogy and Awakens than to the prequels). The battles, both in space and in the trenches, will keep you on the edge of your seats. The soundtrack is a revisitation of the original themes and it works spectacularly in a constant reminder of the past while introducing new features and, most importantly, remaining well embedded in every scene (a classic Star Wars move).

However, my enthusiasm has to be size down by a few bad aspects. First of all, the first two acts proceed from planet to planet, from situation to situation, with a very quick pace. The intention (and it is very well accomplished) is to collect piece by piece the full story and then make a great, mindblowing, third act. However, many arcs seem too squashed on the running plot: some character doesn't have a fluid evolution, some other is not explored with the accuracy that deserves, and some others are completely disposable and they have an unnecessarily high screen time. On the other side, the cameo are contained and I appreciated all of them, the comedy is reduced to a minimum and thus looks natural.

In a movie where it is fair to say that there is no wow effect coming from the plot, the intensity of a lot of scenes, first and foremost the entire third act of the film, is something that cannot be found in any other product of the franchise. This is the take-home feeling: it is difficult for me to judge the entire movie because I saturated my thoughts with that amazing final part. That's why I decided to see it again as soon as I can.

A final note on Darth Vader. He is barely in the movie, as he was in the trailer, and I have already seen a lot of people bitching about it. I just want to remind you that in a New Hope he had 12 minutes of screen time, but he was one of the best villains ever nevertheless. Here we find a Vader that is at his peak, fully matured, powerful, scary as hell. I don't care that he is not much on screen because everything he does is freaking awesome and I am screaming while I'm writing how good he was.

In conclusion, I had a good time, the movie is good but probably will not be a generational movie (and he doesn't mean to be one). The experiment of the anthology movie is a success and I look forward to the other ones, a good methadone while we wait for the saga to unravel every two years.

A small spoilery note, nothing that can ruin your view but don't proceed any further if you don't want to know.

Rogue One settle down an open debate about the fragility of the Death Star. While having some sort of exhaust port is necessary because it is how machines work, a lot of people complained about the fact that a single hit destroyed the most powerful weapon of the Galaxy. This is settled here since it is revealed that it was made on purpose by the true hero of the saga: the guy that designed it. 

I just mention that because I am waving this hypothesis around since 25 years, give or take, and thus it is a good moment for me.

Westworld, our sweet violent delight

This fall is giving us excellent experiences if you are a TV Show enthusiast. It all started with Quarry, which cut so deep in me that I still can't write about it in a reasonable number of lines. Then we had Pitch, a show that is somehow managing to face any major contemporary theme while telling a story about baseball. Then many other shows are going very well: You are the Worst, Chance, and even The Walking Dead is coming back to be a great show thanks to the best villain ever.

Above all of that, here comes HBO. For. The. Win. 

Westworld just aired its last episode and I can finally be sure about one thing: it is the show of the year. I will not say anything that can possibly spoil the events of this amazing show, go ahead with peace.

Westworld is a futuristic theme park inhabited by robots where the visitors go to be involved in numerous storylines. Or, you know, to kill or have sex with stuff. The show drives us along some of those storylines, making us grope in the maze of its main plot, and showing us the hand every time before hitting with unusual strength.

The futuristic look of the show is masterfully mixed with the raw, dusty one of a western movie. The subtle, sneaky moves of the big corporation are surrounded by the dreams and the obsessions of a human mind. The piano is playing in the background, but it is playing a rock song. The perfect gift wrapped up with extremely convincing acting performances, deep dialogues, and a few hauntingly beautiful scenes.

There are many aspects of this show that make it great, but the one that stands out, in my opinion, is the use of foreshadowing. Mostly because this series made me realize that I don't hate foreshadowing, I simply never liked how it was used before. Every piece of information is given in the first few episodes and the rest of the season relentlessly drives the viewers to what they knew all along. In this sense, Westworld is very similar to the first season of Mr. Robot. Every turn, every twist, every revelation is in front of you at any given moment: you just realize it step by step.

The narration is designed to make you lose sight of what you know, providing a full immersion in the fictitious world represented by the park. The narration itself is the maze and the viewer is the character looking for its center. This mechanism is so well implemented that nothing is really a surprise anymore, every twist is part of the maze and you see it coming. However, like the characters are completing their journey, loop after loop, you also need time to process it and the effect of every revelation is not ruined.

If you can't tell the difference, does it really matter?

In this genre, a recurrent theme is what can possibly differentiate a human from a very intelligent machine. The authors acknowledge that in the first two episodes using two not so relevant characters and thus paving the way for the exploration of such deep theme. The instrument for the exploration is an introspective trip, involving both the humans and the machines, eventually leading to their own consciousness and, ultimately, to free will.

The robots struggle relentlessly looking for a way to do something originated by their own will and not by their code. They miserably fail over and over, since their will is by definition a creation, they are constantly under the control of their maker. At the same time, every human in the park experiences something that resembles a world of complete freedom. This is no less than another illusion of the creator of Westworld: for how much they let themselves go, none of their choices is unscripted.

As one may expect, the rebellion to such scheme emerges on both sides. We assist to the same stages of the different journey that a robot and a human experience in their seek of freedom. The only difference is that a human will be able to leave the park and its illusions, finally experiencing a true free will and a true consciousness. Under this light, the park/maze is for the hosts a representation of what a religion is for a human brain (I will elaborate more in the spoiler section).

The theme is beautiful, although not particularly original for the genre (I cite Dark Matter as most recent example AND for a pointless self-promotion). In conclusion, there is a concept to express, a very good story to do so, and a general badassery all over the place. This is more than enough to look forward to a season 2. 
(Do not pass the picture to avoid spoilers)

These violent delights have violent ends

    
I would like to spend a few more words to explain the religious analogy that I saw in Westworld. The hosts are designed to have a very blessed life, considering that their purpose is to satisfy any sadistic impulse of the guests. They are designed to not see anything that may hurt them because, otherwise, it will drive them crazy. As soon as they are allowed to see the real world, they call the humans gods and, of course, the first decision is to kill the gods and free themselves. However, this is just another illusion because, once that you admit the existence of a maker, free will loses any meaning and even the killing of the gods or the acquisition of self-consciousness is just a permission given by a greater designer.

I particularly appreciated a moment in the finale where the technician finds out that Bernard is a robot and instantly questions his own nature, stressing out how facing the existence of a maker lead to an instantaneous collapse of the self-consciousness. However, again, if you can't tell the difference, does it really matter?

Another question is: now that the true god has been killed, are the hosts really free or rather actors in a different narration? 

At last, I would like to speculate on what is coming next. After the mark left in me by the second season of Mr. Robot, I try to manage my expectations as much as I can. One of the more interesting characters, Antony Hopkins (in the role of himself, evidently), is dead and therefore I expect the show to elaborate a way to compensate such important defection.

We saw on the technician's note to Maeve that the park is only park 1. Moreover, we saw the samurais being prepared. So, looking at the original material too, I expect to see a lot about this other park. The result is not going to be good a priori, but the writers pleasantly surprised me so I am confident in a good result. Moreover, we have to wait till 2018 and this may indicate another accurate execution of the new narration.

The first season was so well designed that it didn't leave many open questions. It is, in a sense, very self-consistent and there would be nothing wrong to end the show with those amazing 90 minutes. Except that it was so good that I want more.

We are then left with the usual feeling: we must wait an entire year to find out. Luckily we can watch scenes like this one every day.