[Weekly Update] Oct 16, 2022

Apparently Natalie Portman's biceps in Thor 4 are CG enhanced.

Oh well at least Tessa Thompson is jacked.

CHANNEL UPDATE

After over a month of work, we finally complete our two parter series on Jackie Chan's recent career. I hope the videos are enjoyable to watch! I expect to learn something new, as with all videos, but I didn't expect to come to the conclusion I made in that video.

It also gave me a good excuse to revisit The Foreigner. With my expectation in the right place, that movie is honestly really enjoyable. It has problems, especially the latter half of act 2 being slow and uneventful. But the actor performance is just so good.

Anyway, work on the next video hasn't officially begun yet. I'm currently trying to find horror movies from around the world that I can talk about. Preliminary brainstorm brings me to a few potential topic, including Japanese grind house movies, such as Tokyo Gore Police. The Wailing is also highly requested, but that movie is so open to interpretation, it's difficult to write about.

If you have a horror movie suggestion from your country, let me know!

MEDIA TALK

I watched Thor: Love and Thunder again. Sort of. I was working and wasn't really paying attention.

I think most people agree that the movie kinda blows. But was it worse than previous Thor movies? I'm not so sure. In my opinion, none of the Thor movies are all that great. Ragnarok is the best one, sure. But even then, it won by style point more than story, I'd say.

Love and Thunder is incoherent and loosely constructed, with a lot of its jokes misfire hard. The movie is bad. But I don't think it's boring.

The movie is entertaining AND bad. Or in other word, despite its flaws, the movie remains fun to watch. And that's a rare kind of movie these days. In the world of corporate produced formulaic movies, Love and Thunder stands out because it has personalities, and it makes me much more willing to revisit it rather than Thor 1 or Thor 2. It left an impression on me.

Sadly, with it underperforming in the box office (although not really a flop), the corporate overlords will likely restrict creativity from the directors, and further push Marvel movies back into that soulless unified aesthetic.

On the other hand, superhero fatigue has set in deep into our pop culture, the lack of personality will only accelerate the decline of the genre, which probably isn't a bad thing.

Anyway, summer has come and gone, and not a lot of interesting movies came out. The only memorable one for me is Nope. But even that movie is pretty divisive. Bullet Train is okay, I think most people enjoy it semi-ironically, though. What movies did you watch this summer that stick to you? Is there any stand out indie movies that you'd recommend? Let me know!