#nikki amuka bird
The Outfit (2022)
Director - Graham Moore, Cinematography - Dick Pope
“If you don’t aim for perfection, you cannot make anything great. And yet, true perfection is impossible.”
Great news! I’m so excited for Rupert Grint. He’s doing amazing.
Movie Review: Old
This was more horror than I was originally expecting. To be fair I only knew the bare minimum of the plot.
It’s a freaky premise, where a beach causes rapid aging to all that stay there. Visitors are trapped though and the rapid aging is fatal.
It does create an interesting human question: how would one react to getting old in a blink of an eye. the kids going from 6 to teenagers, a baby being born, illness is worse.
I found it choppy and disconcerting, which I think was the point. As a viewer I wanted people to be better. Out of less than 10 people there was an asshole who was just terrible. And perhaps that was due to his mental illness, but still, 10 people one of which was acting like a terrible person. I always just want better from humanity.
Like most Shyamalan movies there was a twisting in the ending, and this time it tied things up in a bow. You find out who was behind the groups of people being sent to the beach, why they are doing it.
It doesn’t explain the island/beach though, but how to explain a natural phenomenon? Overall, the movie was ok. I didn’t love it or hate it, it was just ok. I do think I was hoping for more.
I have seen a lot of all-caps enthusiastic posts around tumblr lately, more-or-less saying “JUPITER ASCENDING IS SO DUMB YOU GUYS, SO DUMB, BUT YOU SHOULD SEE IT BECAUSE IT’S AWESOME.” The thing is, I started to get really tired of all these posts telling me how dumb, plotless and ridiculous this movie is (but enjoyable!) because I started to feel like it was really insulting – how dumb could Jupiter Ascending be when you compare it to all the stuff-exploding-naked-woman’s-back-bro-space-films, which number about eleventy-million? Why do we have to tear this specific film down to make sure that no one has any high expectations going in, when it isn’t much different to all the usual summer sci-fi blockbusters?
I really liked Jupiter Ascending. Jupiter is the reincarnation of a planet-owning space queen, she falls in love with a muscular mixed-species mercenary who is very clear about how much he cares for her, she survives the machinations of her evil, incestuous and fabulous space family, comes out on top and saves the earth. She gets to wear fabulous costumes and has a fridged dad and a NOT FRIDGED MOTHER, defends the importance of being a cleaning lady, and gets to defeat the villain and save the earth! Through bureaucracy, intelligence and courage!
What’s so dumb about that?
It sounds really great to me.
When do we ever get a film like this? I saw multiple women in pretty much every scene! I saw women, and specifically women of colour, taking charge and kicking ass. And they didn’t get killed off, and they achieved their goals. Razo (Doona Bae) is a blue-haired space mercenary with a hoverbike and flower tattoos all over her face who is an amazing fighter and actually does manage to kidnap Jupiter, turn her in, take her payment and walk away unscathed. Diomika Tsing (Nikki Amuka-Bird) is a spaceship captain who retains her authority throughout, risks death-defying situations to save civilians and does not prioritise either of our lead characters over the needs of the many. Let’s not forget that our heroine, Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis), is a Russian-speaking immigrant who cleans toilets for a living and that her experience in the service industry, at the bottom of the ladder, shapes her outlook that all beings are precious and equal, and that no one person should be valued over another just because of who they are.
Jupiter Jones doesn’t, like Spiderman, choose not to make the choice between saving Mary-Jane or saving dozens of people, and then manages to save both. Jupiter Jones looks honestly at the fate of her family on one hand, and the fate of the entire world on the other, and chooses the world. From my perspective, that’s a real heroine. There are no stakes if you dodge out of making the tough decisions.
Caine Wise’s (Channing Tatum) werewolf space mercenary flying roller-skating fighting aside, it’s actually Jupiter who defeats the ultimate bad guy in this scenario – the fabulously over-the-top designated evil queen of the story, Balem (Eddie Redmayne). Balem is the sexy evil lady with the naked back coming up out of the water. Balem wears the sparkly black sexy clothes and wants eternal youth at any cost. He’s the wicked queen from Snow White, he’s Mother Gothel from Tangled – for once our sexy dangerous villain is a man. A man that Jupiter takes on head to head, shoots in the leg and keeps hitting with a pipe until he goes down and stays down.
I can’t see why anyone should have to defend liking this film. It’s an enjoyable, bright and fantastically-costumed space opera blockbuster, with fantastic women of colour on sides of both good and evil, a heroine who becomes queen, and a mercenary who is defined largely by his relationship with the heroine. It’s funny and it’s over the top, it’s gorgeous and it has a cast of great women.
Jupiter Ascending isn’t dumb, you guys. You should see it because it’s awesome.
