Tag / ewan mcgregor

by Jaime Rebanal

Jaime’s Film Diary: February 28, 2020

In order to continue keeping this site as active as possible while I have not been able to write as many full-length film reviews as I had planned initially, I figured that another solution would have come by in placing my Letterboxd entries starting from the week before here as a placeholder for eventual full-length reviews that are set to come by, if I were able to find the time to write another one. But as is, these are quick thoughts that I figure would be nice to keep afloat so that the site will remain active on a regular basis.

First-time viewings are noted as such. You can follow me on Letterboxd right here.

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by Jaime Rebanal

Christopher Robin Review: Disney’s Ode to Nostalgia Is a Heart-Warmer

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I don’t know a single person whose childhood never included Winnie the Pooh in any way, shape, or form. He was always that presence that some of us recognized for the fact that he always represented the pleasantness that we had loved most about childhood, and for that alone it was always a most comforting moment for us in our lives. But those memories fade away from us in the same way that they had done for the young Christopher Robin Milne, who later grew to distance himself from the creations of his own father. In the case with Disney’s own Christopher Robin, we already have a reminder as to how important it is to have felt such joy in our lives, no matter how small it may be – you just know it was always there. It would be in knowing this you already feel Christopher Robin being a great film for the family, because sometimes we need that reminder it should be made into something more and from the simplest words, it may indeed have come from nothing.

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by Jaime Rebanal

Beginners – Review

✯✯✯½

Evidently this is a really personal story on the end of Mike Mills and I can only imagine the sort of poignancy it would carry towards his end but no matter how much I try, I can’t find myself connecting with it to the degree I hope for. There’s a degree to which I wish I could find myself loving Beginners to, based upon my own expectations after the wonderful 20th Century Women, but in itself I just find a work too difficult especially where it shouldn’t be. A rewatch that came after having fallen head over heels for 20th Century Women had me hoping that I would find myself loving Mike Mills’s Beginners on the count that it tells of something touching at this point of one’s life, but unfortunately the attachment feels suffocated at its very worst, and it’s a prominent feeling that I come across with these quirky indie films.

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by Jaime Rebanal

Beauty and the Beast (2017) – Review

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As I was about to watch Bill Condon’s new take on Beauty and the Beast a growing skepticism was only arising on my own end with the fact I had only recently rewatched Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise’s original film, for it not only remains my favourite of Disney’s animated films but one of my own all-time favourite films. Therefore with Disney’s recent trend of live-action reboots of their animated classics I felt that there was a possibility that something new could have only been brought to the table but I’ve had a running issue with these films as they can’t seem to find much about themselves in order to allow each entry to stand apart from the original. It seems to have run again with Beauty and the Beast, a fairly competently made one but to some extent what I thought it would be overall.

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by Jaime Rebanal

Stay – Review

✯½

I’m not going to deny how a certain amount of concentration is required for films in order to get a grasp of their ideas, but when I think of a film like Stay, the way I see it is that it feels more like a film that wants you to concentrate without necessarily earning any of it because it just presents emptiness all around. All I can ever pick up from every oddity arising from the manner to which Stay had been made only went on to annoy me more, because it never seemed justified. Instead, it struck me as Marc Forster attempting to ape on David Lynch’s style, and doing it so poorly to the point I’m just sitting there for every minute while it lasts reminding myself I would much rather be spending that time watching Mulholland Drive. Continue reading →