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Da Couch Tomato Podcast, Episode 11, discussing Ford v Ferrari, the awesome sound design, and the importance of great story.

Background music used is the Ford v Ferrari musical score by Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders.

Hosts: Sting Lacson and Rachel
2:29 PM
Walt Disney Animation Studios on YouTube

Da Couch Tomato Podcast, Episode 10, discussing Frozen II, the importance of short films, and having black people in Arendelle.

Background music used is the Frozen II musical score by Christophe Beck.

Hosts: Sting Lacson and Rachel
4:31 PM
Inverse

Da Couch Tomato Podcast, Episode 9, discussing Charlie's Angels (2019), Elizabeth Banks's manly directing, and the girl power movement in Hollywood.

Background music used is the Charlie's Angels musical score by Brian Tyler.

Hosts: Sting Lacson and Rachel
12:15 PM
YouTube

Da Couch Tomato Podcast, Episode 8, discussing Netflix's Dolemite Is My Name, Eddie Murphy's stellar career, and Ruth E. Carter's costume design.

Background music used is Dolemite Is My Name's musical score by Scott Bomar.

Hosts: Sting Lacson and Rachel
6:25 PM
Now imagine this mug on an IMAX screen. 

Although not shot in IMAX, the trailers and previews kept promising how this movie should be seen in IMAX. Which I did. It actually made a difference, sure, because space movies are always more breathtaking in the IMAX format.

Okay, before anything else, let me just say this: I don't remember the film that much, because I may have slept through some parts of it. Well, I'd say my sleep lasted maybe five seconds tops, but there was a lot of it, so add that up and you get one hazy memory. Sorry, James Gray. It's not that your film was boring. I was just tired from work, maybe? I caught the last full show that day.

Anyway, let me try and give as objective a review as I can, discounting the fact that I slept through some parts of it.

Brad Pitt was good, as always. The thing with Pitt is that he always was a great actor, notwithstanding the fact that he was a Hollywood pretty boy. Since this film plays more on drama than science fiction, Pitt has had plenty of screen time to showcase his acting chops, and he did not disappoint. I think there's a subtlety required when acting in front of an IMAX camera, because even the littlest micro expressions will register on film, and overacting will be something very evident on the big screen. Brad Pitt, however, was superb.

I can hardly remember the other cast, though. I guess that's an effect of having Brad Pitt as the lead actor; he eclipses everybody else. I know Tommy Lee Jones was his dad, and that Donald Sutherland was a colonel or something. And also Ruth Negga was an astronaut on Mars or something. I don't know. I don't really remember, because like I said, I was really sleepy. Everything was like a haze.

Now let's just go to the cinematic depiction of space. Did it succeed in giving us the "most realistic depiction of space travel that's been put in a movie"? That would be debatable. In my opinion, Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity bags that title. Even Christopher Nolan's Interstellar and Ridley Scott's The Martian were better than Ad Astra. But this film does have something going for it, which is the excellent lunar chase sequence. That's something new I haven't seen before onscreen, so good job.

Anyway, I've run out of things to say. I'm just waiting for this film's video release, so I can rewatch it again. Who knows, it might actually be better the second time around.

This looks very Lego.



Ad Astra. USA/China. 2019.



Rating: 6.5/10
Lunar chase sequence: +0.1
Final rating: 6.6/10
4:25 PM
YouTube

Da Couch Tomato Podcast, Episode 7, discussing Netflix's The King, the importance of historical films, and how good special effects are those that go unnoticed.

Background music used is The King's musical score by Nicholas Brittel.

Hosts: Sting Lacson and Rachel
6:11 PM
YouTube

Da Couch Tomato Podcast, Episode 6, discussing Netflix's The Laundromat, underutilising the stellar cast, and the unusual approach used by director Steven Soderbergh.

Background music used is "Rodney Yates" by David Holmes, who also composed The Laundromat's musical score.

Hosts: Sting Lacson and Rachel
3:02 PM
YouTube

Da Couch Tomato Podcast, Episode 5, discussing Jerrold Tarog's Goyo: Ang Batang Heneral, this film's place in the trilogy, and Goyo as an old-timey fuccboi.

Hosts: Sting Lacson and Giosi Mendoza
1:12 PM
She could've come in handy during Hagibis.

Okay, so this is the new film by Makoto Shinkai, who's apparently a big name in Japan.

I guess you could say I am a casual fan of anime. Not a die-hard fan. But I do appreciate the beauty of the art form.

Story-wise, Weathering With You is a simple romance, about Hodaka, a runaway boy who becomes an apprentice in a publishing company, and Hina, an orphan girl with the power to control the weather. The film has just the right amount of supernatural to be considered as magical realism. The famous anime filmmaker, Hayao Miyazaki, has stories that are all-out in their supernatural elements. In "Weathering With You", the supernatural is subdued and dialled down, which makes for a more relatable movie, especially for older fans.

The animation is always a glorious sight to behold. Japanese animation has reached a point now where traditional hand-drawn animation and computer-generated imagery (CGI) have formed a perfect marriage, with the two different media complementing each other beautifully instead of clashing together horribly, like in the early days of CGI.

Apart from the visuals, the soundtrack also seems to be very popular, especially with the younger kids. Not a big fan of J-Pop myself, but my teenage son is, and he can sing along to the soundtrack despite probably not knowing what the lyrics mean.

All in all, a wonderful work of art, and I am seriously very curious about Makoto Shinkai's earlier film, Your Name, which I am quite eager to watch.

"I hope no one notices me scratching my butt."



Weathering With You. Japan. 2019.



Original rating: 7.9/10
Animation: +0.1
No animated sex: -0.1
Final rating: 7.9/10
6:59 PM
"Let's try and do that dance John Travolta did in Pulp Fiction."

Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood is the ninth film from director Quentin Tarantino (Kill Bill Volumes 1 and 2 count as one film). He's famously quoted as dead set on doing only ten films during his career, so I guess that leaves just one more film left before he supposedly retires.

After watching this film, I've come to a not-so-shocking discovery: Quentin Tarantino is actually not the Hollywood wunderkind a lot of people think him to be.

That wasn't some haphazardly drawn conclusion as well. Tarantino displayed some directorial lapses in this film, lapses that may be forgiven for first-time directors, but not for someone who's on his ninth film. Actually, I counted only two lapses, but that's still two more than what should be expected of him. The two lapses I'm talking about involve a mismatched cut, and a horribly composed shot. There's also a minor lapse in the very first scene, but I'll let that slide because 1) it's more of having a feeling that something's off rather than being able to pinpoint what's off exactly; and 2) I watched this to be entertained, not to nitpick.

By the way, I'm not here to bash Quentin Tarantino's work. What he has going for him, definitely, is his original storytelling. Each and every single Tarantino-directed film is an original screenplay. He's never been lured by the chance to direct a superhero flick, or a film based on a book. Tarantino's films have their own cinematic universe, and I can think of no other filmmaker right now who never took off his auteur cap in his entire career.

"I would say Chris Nolan, but he doesn't really write his own stuff."

Moving on to the actual review, I'd like to start with the acting. This film has two great actors in the lead roles, thanks to Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, who play the actor-stuntman tandem of Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth. Now the dynamics of that relationship is quite complicated: the actor of course is seen as higher than a stuntman in the Hollywood pecking order, and this is reflected in Cliff Booth's other job as Dalton's driver. I think DiCaprio and Pitt were able to pull it off, although there are instances where you see them as equals rather than the pseudo-employer-employee relationship the two of them should have. You with me so far? I told you it's quite complicated.

I have also come to realise that Tarantino's foot fetish is now officially creepy. I mean, I wouldn't mind close-ups of feet, as long as it propels the story forward. But to show feet close-ups just for the sake of showing them? No, thank you. He even gave Dakota Fanning's feet some considerable screen time, and I've also just realised that Dakota Fanning has hideous feet.

And finally, my main problem with Tarantino movies – and this is just me – is his use of alternate realities. Some people call this "revisionist fiction", but I'll just stick to calling it alternate realities. Tarantino did this before in Inglorious Basterds, where the Basterds ended up killing Adolf Hitler (which we all know didn't happen at all). In this film, the Tate murders never happened, and the Manson Family killers ended up dead at the hands of Dalton and Booth. What's my problem with alternate realities, you ask? I don't know how to properly explain it, but I am of the opinion that realities must be kept separate. Sure, there can be an infinite number of realities, each one different from the others, but they must never merge. Sure, you can travel between realities, from one reality to another, but they must never merge. Why? Because merging realities is the first step to insanity. And when one takes the first step of the journey to insanity, coherence and clarity are the first to go.

"How about an alternate reality where I do a Tony Montana as Michael Corleone?"



Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood. USA/UK/China. 2019.



Original rating: 7.6/10
Al Pacino: +0.1
Brad Pitt: +0.1
Not enough Margot Robbie: -0.1
Margaret Qualley's armpit hair: -0.2
Old school Columbia Pictures logo: +0.1
Luke Perry: +0.1
Terrible Bruce Lee portrayal: -0.1
Charles Manson being played by same actor who played Manson in Netflix's Mindhunter: +0.1
Tarantino's foot fetish: -0.1
Final rating: 7.8/10
6:51 PM
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