Belfast (2021)

Director: Kenneth Branagh. Cast: Jude Hill, Caitriona Balfe, Jamie Dornan, Judi Dench, Ciarán Hinds. 97 min. Drama.

• The setting is the late 60's/early 70's sectarian violence of Northern Ireland, but the universal question the film asks is: when life gets too hard in your country, do you stay no matter what ... or leave?
• The movie earns high marks, especially due to lovable supporting characters in Judy Dench and Ciarán Hinds (Oscar winner this year?), and incredible black-and-white angles and framing - so good, the cinematography is in the foreground, almost to a fault, rather than in the background.
• Kenneth Branagh has had hits (Dead Again, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Murder on the Orient Express) and really bad misses (Thor, Artemis Fowl) throughout his career. This is one of his hits. He shows incredible respect for cinema and the performing arts, as amid all the black-and-white, his young protagonist watches movies in color at the local theater with wide-eyed wonder - a respect reminiscent of Cinema Paradiso.
• Having been through the migration experience, watching the movie, I remembered the immigration process was much more painful than the emigration, which for me was relatively a given: when you're leaving a home country, you know very well why you're leaving ... but you don't know what form of hell you're getting yourself into. So if you're watching this see to your own immigration hardships played out on screen, you may be slightly disappointed as I was - even if the movie splendidly elaborates on the pre-immigration uncertainties and insecurities. 
• Heartbreaking:

• "Go. Go now. Don't look back. I love you, son."

MoGo's rating: 8/10

Your rating: Enter here!

Spencer (2021)

Director: Pablo Larraín. Cast: Kristen Stewart, Timothy Spall, Sally Hawkins, Sean Harris. 117 min. Biography/Drama.

• Long-awaited Diana biopic, with Kristen Stewart astonishingly transformed into the late princess, showing her revolt against the royal family during a few days in Christmas.
• Of course, this will be compared to the 4th season of the Netflix show, The Crown, where Diana first makes an appearance. So be forewarned: this is a moody, slow-paced movie, showing the inner tumult of the lady, rather than the dizzying drama surrounding her and better narrated on the TV show. The characters in the show (especially Prince Charles) look much more like their real-life counterparts; the characters in the movie (especially the Queen) look more grotesque, nasty, or perhaps ... artsy - a crucial difference between TV and cinema.
• As expected, you will need a decent familiarity with the real-life characters and their historical interactions, to appreciate the movie. For instance, Camilla Bowles has a very fleeting few-second presence in the background of one of the scenes, without even being called by name. If you don't recognize it's Camilla, then the power of the scene is gone. If you don't realize from the get-go whom Diana is referring to as "her", then maybe there's no point in watching the movie in the first place.
• After his 2016 film Jackie (biopic on Jackie Kennedy during the days after the JFK assassination), this is Pablo Larraín's second movie about a "political-wife-in-distress". While interested to see if and whom about the director will round out a trilogy, both movies suffer from an "okay, get to the point ..." feeling throughout.

MoGo's rating: 7/10

Your rating: Enter here!

Eternals (2021)

 

Director: Chloé Zhao. Cast: Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek, Kit Harington, Kumail Nanjiani. 157 min. Fantasy/Action.

• My god, this movie is 2 hours and 37 minutes long - about superheroes whom we're introduced to for the very first time. And because of not one but two pivotal post-credits scenes, we're stuck watching all the way down to the very last name and acknowledgment. It just goes on forever.
• The reason is ... we have the Fast and Furious phenomenon again: to prove adherence to diversity (but in actuality, to rake in more money from all audiences in America), we're forced to become familiarized with 10 (no less) superheroes that cater to as many minorities possible, in one movie: Asian-American, Latino-American, Indian-American, African-American, hearing-impaired, LGBTQ, non-binary, and mentally-ill (I kid you not). The only ones they left out were the Cuban-Americans, the green color-blinds, and the Senegalese - but if there was any chance of economic gain, they would've found a place for them in the story too. When a movie is handled as such, you become seriously suspicious what the source material was even about.
• And maybe if they had handed this to more able directors, to handle all these characters in one epic-scale crowded movie (the way the Russo Brothers professionally did with the last two Avengers movies), it would've worked. But no, they give it to Chloe Zhao, who recently won Oscars for directing an indie-type movie, Nomadland - an entirely different realm of filmmaking. That's how Hollywood corrupts bright new talent.
• The result is a boing, overlong movie with a choppy confusing screenplay full of flashbacks - with a long mid-movie section where the once disbanded group of heroes go out to recruit every single one of the band, and you keep asking: Is there anyone left? Please tell me that was the last one, and they're all back together again ... but then there's more. 
• And of course, surprise surprise, there's the obligatory massive special-effects-driven climactic battle at the end, and you've entirely lost interest by then because you know these are a bunch of superheroes with ten different kinds of superpowers unknown to you and any of the powers can work or not work at any time and new ones can spring up at any time because who are you to have a say in this anyway?
• God this movie is 2 hours and 37 minutes long ...

MoGo's rating: 4/10

Your rating: Enter here!