I must it that my expectations for this one were somewhat tempered. Millennium Actress is the red-headed stepchild of the Satoshi Kon films; it's not as renowned as Perfect Blue, as beloved as Tokyo Godfathers, or as notorious as Paprika. Fittingly, the story at its core is more simple than any of Kon's other three films as well. The audience will find no psychological twists and turns, no city-wide odyssey, no surreal dream world. Millennium Actress is about a woman,…
Completely unapologetic in its depiction of the conditions that create child sex trafficking. So few people ever give Lilya so much as a chance, and she does all that she can to persevere in spite of that, but there's only so much you can do when the deck is deliberately stacked against you. In spite of the harrowing subject matter, the film manages to never feel exploitative. It wants you to be horrified, sure, but it always knows when to…
This is, despite being three hours of television from 1990, quite good. Tim Curry delivers an immortal performance as Pennywise, and the child cast is really good, maybe even better than the adult cast. The special effects are all cutting-edge too, everything still looks great today. It does a very solid job of portraying the realities of small towns where "nothing ever happens" and the adults refuse to see problems that are as clear as day to the children. This definitely sticks the landing better than the Muschietti duology, too.
"AT LEAST IT CAN'T GET WORSE THAN MASTER OF DISGUISE," I SAID, STUPIDLY, WITH NO IDEA THAT THIS FILM'S SPECTER WAS HOVERING OVER ME LIKE A RAINCLOUD. THE FACT THAT THERE WAS A WIDE THEATRICAL RELEASE FOR BUCKY LARSON: BORN TO BE A STAR IS A BIGGER INSULT TO CINEMA THAN ANY MARVEL MOVIE COULD EVER BE. WHOSE FUCKING IDEA WAS IT TO GIVE NICK SWARDSON HIS OWN MOVIE? AND THEY DO THE FUCKING MIDWESTERN ACCENTS THE WHOLE FUCKING MOVIE!…
Dumb, boring swill that was clearly only made with kids in mind. I haven't seen the first one, but I doubt that would make much of a difference. It's kinda cool that there's an underlying theme of body positivity, since the main kid is kinda heavyset and it's never remarked about, but other than that, there's not much of value here. I know that it's based on some long-running comic that some Brazilians might be nostalgic for, but damn, this sucks. Letterboxd really needs to do something about the Brazilian bot s that are actively attempting to undermine their ranking system.
