As promised, another wrap-up of movies I have seen in February. They're very different, which is fun.
I saw Deadpool in the cinema, and I was very hyped, and it was so
exciting, and Goddamn it was so good.
I haven’t ever really read
Deadpool, and the only frame of reference I had was tumblr and the first
Wolverine movie, which was not great. But I really like Ryan Reynolds. Not
really for any of his movies, at least none I can remember off the top of my
head. But I always loved Two Guys and a Girl, which is an excellent show.
Excellent might be stretching it, but I always loved it, and Ryan Reynolds was
a big reason for that. Anyway, what I had seen of Deadpool, and Ryan Reynolds,
made me excited.
Deadpool is about Wade
Wilson, a mercenary who lives in New York and goes around roughing up creepy
dudes who stalk, and bother girls. He meets a prostitute, Vanessa, falls for
her and they move in together, and they love each other. Then he gets diagnosed
with cancer. It has spread to everywhere, and he can’t be cured. Then he’s
approached by a shady-ass company who say they can cure him by triggering his
mutant-y powers. He says yes, is cured, and is severely deformed. So he doesn’t
go back to Vanessa, instead he goes on a killing spree to find the man who made
him deformed, the man who he believes can cure him. He can now heal from pretty
much everything, and he’s all super-hero-y. Except not heroic really.
It’s awesome. I feel like
this was the role Ryan Reynolds was made to play, this is the role he was born
for. He’s snarky, he’s funny, he’s self-deprecating, and he’s just really cool.
And Reynolds is surprisingly good at being sensitive and sad. The movie is full
of references to Ryan Reynolds’ life. He refers to his Green Lantern
performance, and straight up says; do you think Ryan Reynolds got by on talent?
He breaks the fourth wall constantly, at one point breaking the fourth wall
while he’s breaking the fourth wall. He refers to the Marvel Universe/X-men
issues, which is friggin’ hilarious.
I loved the female
characters. Vanessa, played by Morena Baccarin is incredibly awesome. She’s so
strong and powerful, and so sure of herself. She is a complete equal in her
relationship with Wade. She does sort of fall apart to an extent when Wade
walks out. She also saves herself when she’s captured.
The other main female
character, I guess, is Negasonic Teenage Warhead, an X-men trainee, who doesn’t
talk much. She just snarks, and chews gum and rolls her eyes, and is awesome.
She’s a teenager who can throw out these badass sonic pulses. She’s strong,
she’s tough, and even if she’s snarky as hell she helps out Wade, and she’s a
total badass.
The third female character
who is a complete badass is the comic relief, Blind Al, the old, blind woman
who lives with Deadpool. She keeps snarking him, she has a weird subplot where
she keeps building IKEA furniture, which was hilarious.
I loved how unapologetic it
was. And how self-aware it was. And how sex positive it was. And it was just; I
loved it so much. I loved it. It had flaws, and it’s not perfect, but good god
it was so good.
I completely forget this movie’s title whenever I think about it. So I
have googled: “Tom Hiddleston Vampire movie” more times than I can count.
It is about Adam and Eve.
They are both vampires, Eve seems to have lived for like millennia, and Adam
has been around for 3-4 centuries. They’re married, but in the beginning they
don’t live together. Eve is walking gracefully around Tangiers, hanging out
with her friend Christopher Marlowe, yes, that one, turns out he’s a vampire.
Marlowe is her blood supplier. It’s important that they drink clean blood, and
they live in a world where all our human blood is all contaminated by the
world.
Adam lives in Detroit and
is a musician. He writes and composes and he sells his music, so that it gets
out there. He is a recluse. He has used the ideas of Tesla to make himself
completely self-sufficient. He goes to a hospital, or lab, to get blood, and
tries to stay out of the public. He only really has contact with Ivan, the guy
who buys him guitars and equipment. Adam is disillusioned and wants to die, so
Eve goes to him to cheer him up.
It is so beautiful. It’s so
incredibly beautiful. Probably because Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston are the
most beautiful creatures on earth. Adam is constantly dressed in black, his
hair is black, and Tilda Swinton is dressed in beige and white, and her hair is
white, so they are a great contrast to each other.
It’s sort of oddly put
together when it comes to sound. A lot of Adam’s character is built around
music. He’s a composer and music writer and it’s what he spends his eternity
doing. So there is quite often a lot of music playing. And then a lot of the
time it’s completely quiet, there’s just the ambient sound, which I thought was
really beautiful. There’s a lot of quiet, which is very odd, and very
beautiful.
I found Ava slightly odd.
Ava is Eve’s sister. She is also a vampire, but while Eve and Adam are these
ethereal, quiet, eternal creatures Ava feels really modern. She has the most
severe case of Arrested Development ever. Because she’s about 20, and at the
same time, she’s like 1000s of years old, but she acts like a teenager. She
laughs, and scoffs at Adam, and acts very childishly and on impulse. It’s
almost like she’s rebelling against being this eternal being. Because Adam and
Eve feel very eternal, otherworldly, and different, Ava is very present and
down-to-earth. Adam is very disillusioned, which I think is a common vampire
fiction trope. Ava seems to take her being immortal as an opportunity to party
forever. It also makes her more destructive. Adam and Eve seem to just subsist
on as little blood as they can to stay alive. Ava is just consuming as much as
she can all the time. It’s fascinating to see how different they are.
In summation, it was
incredibly beautiful, and magical, and weird, and Tilda Swinton is like a
Unicorn, or something.
What happened, Miss Simone is a documentary about Nina Simone. Nina
Simone was born in the South in the 30s, and was a musical prodigy. She wanted
to be the first black professional classical pianist. She moved to the North so
she could work on this dream. Her whole family moved with her, and she worked
in clubs to make money. She wasn’t allowed to just play in the clubs, she had
to sing too, and so the legend of Nina Simone was born.
The documentary is based
around Nina Simone’s diaries, some interviews she’s done, her daughter, her
husband, and her friends talking about her. I found it fascinating, because I
love Nina Simone. She’s just so incredible. Nina Simone was a straight up musical
genius. And she was a big fighter for civil rights. She spent time with Malcolm
X, and Martin Luther King Jr. and so on. She wasn’t really too into the
non-violent ideals. She wanted to fight and be violent to achieve the goal, but
she also played at a lot of rallies. And she was incredible.
I loved watching her play,
and sing, and to see the things she did. And it was fascinating to see how she
became aware of the racism she faced. Basically when she lived in the South she
was given piano lessons by two white ladies in her home town and she would play
in the church. When she was like 7 her parents weren’t allowed to sit in the
front of the church to listen to her, and she straight up refused to play until
they were allowed to sit in front. She recounts how she wasn’t accepted to the
university she wanted to attend even if she was just as good as everyone else,
and it took her a long time to realize that the reason she didn’t get in was
because she was black and it made her angry and sad, and it made her want to
fight.
It’s a bit… scary the way
this was done, because her husband/manager speaks a lot about her. Obviously
her husband/manager would be an interesting source for knowledge about Nina
Simone. The thing is, her husband was very abusive. He would hit her, he would
push her to work even though she wanted to stay home with her daughter. There’s
a story from her daughter where they’re driving and he leans over out of
nowhere it seems, and he just smacks her in the face, and she bleeds, because
he’s cut her with his ring. People say that when Stroud (the husband) stepped
out of his car in New York while he was a cop, people would run away, because
they were terrified of him. And he gets to sit there and talk about her, and
just say; yeah, I would hit her, and she would get all mouthy, and she would do
this and that. And he got to do it completely unchallenged. His daughter didn’t
take his side, but she wasn’t necessarily very sympathetic towards her mother
on the abuse. I realize that Lisa (the daughter) was also living in an abusive
household and she was allegedly beaten by her mother, but it was a bit
upsetting that Nina Simone wasn’t able to answer for any of it, or give her
side of how she handled Stroud beating her. Because people kept talking about her
as difficult and bad, and she can’t say anything. If Nina beat her daughter,
that’s not okay, obviously, but I feel like the long-term effects of the abuse
she suffered wasn’t discussed particularly well.
I thought it was beautiful,
and her music is obviously weaved through it, and it is interesting to see what
she did during the civil rights era. I love her music, and I love her genius
and how beautifully she sang, and the beautiful things she did. I had some
problems with it, but it was also very beautiful.