Why Cars 3 is a great addition to the Pixar universe

‪HERE ARE A FEW THINGS I LOVE ABOUT CARS 3‬
‪Spoilers ahead.

‪You don’t have to see Cars 2 to understand or enjoy this movie. I did like Cars 2 (it is not Pixar’s strongest film, even though it’s fun, I guess) but this one is so. much. better. Oh my god. After watching it, I couldn’t wait to see it again. I’ve always loved Cars and I’m so happy this movie was made because it is fantastic.‬ I’m also glad that first trailer was misleading! I thought Lightning would never race again. Thank you for scaring me, Pixar.

 

‪They handled Cruz’s storyline very well and the best thing about it is they didn’t make it about her being a female racer. The fact that she’s a girl doesn’t even come up. They made it about her anxiety and lack of confidence. There is no moment like “Oh, I gotta prove myself to these MEN” or “Just because I’m a girl doesn’t mean-!!”

 

They do something subtle though. When they go to meet all the older racers that knew Doc, I think the only one she knew about was the female racer. This car does talk about sexism for a while and it’s obvious Cruz is a fan. It was just touching to see her meet a role model like that. Anyway, the movie isn’t special because hey~ we have a female car winning the race! No. It’s special because Cruz is just special. It’s special just like any other movie where the rookie becomes the master. I want more stories like this.‬
‪

All the homages to Doc. Just all of it. I couldn’t handle it sometimes. I had tears streaming down my face, guys. I had such a strong connection to it, mostly because of nostalgia. But those scenes were powerful. And I love how Lightning filled his role and did so many things in his honor, trying to be the best teacher he can be. The part where we see all of the letters and newspaper articles Doc was sending his old friends was beautiful. I’m a sucker for these things. HE WAS JUST SO PROUD ;-;‬
‪

I love Mater and he’s amazing, but thank goodness he is just a side character in this one.

 

‪We see how much Lightning has grown and changed since the first movie. The similar openings were funny – “Did I really used to say that?” – and the pranks the racers play on each other were great.‬

 

So was Cars 3 good? Absolutely. Am I biased? …Possibly. But I genuinely think Pixar did a good job with this one. I will be happy to watch Cars and Cars 3 back to back someday.

Now, I look forward to Coco.

Countdown to the Oscars | “Arrival” Review

The Oscars is soon (a week from now) and I wanted to actually know what deserves what before it happens. I’ve seen about eight of the movies that are nominated for awards so far. I’m going to watch as many of the nominated movies as I can before the 26th. So. Here’s what I thought about Arrival. Spoilers.

Arrival tackles some pretty big, pretty important messages and does it pretty well. I know it’s an alien movie, but it’s more than that. It’s about discovery, time, humanity in general. It raises a lot of questions and made me think. I loved that.

“If you could see your whole life from start to finish, would you change things?” Well, first of all, it depends on if I can even change it. If you could see into your future like Louise does, that means that what you will do has to happen in order for you to see it, right? Or was that only a possible future that would happen if she kept going a certain path? This will get into more time travel-related questions (even though this is not really a story about time travel), so I’ll leave you to decide for yourselves how this works. That question, though, is crazy and deep. I’m a sucker for crazy and deep.

The aliens were there because they needed help from humans in three thousand years. Does that mean they saw something bad happen in the future and now they’re enlisting us to change it? Or did they see us helping them in three thousand years, so they’re just assuring we’ll know what to do by then? Who knows! It’s possible Louise could’ve changed her future, but I think the point was, she didn’t want to and also…butterfly effect. Just saying!

All the actors did a good job. I haven’t seen Jeremy Renner in anything other than a Marvel movie, so it was good that whenever he was onscreen, I never saw Hawkeye, I saw Ian. Amy Adams, as always, doing great! And Forest Whitaker, as well. Like I said, everyone did a fantastic job and gave emotional and believable performances.

The story was very compelling for me. For one thing: aliens. Yes, please. And learning how to communicate with them, too! These movies are also entertaining for me partly because I get to see how the government(s) would freak out in this world the movie has created. Is it annoying sometimes? Yes, you leave those innocent aliens alone; they just wanna help us so we can help them! But is it interesting to see? Of course. That along with the character’s stories really kept me immersed.

And another thing: it felt like a big puzzle. Once I started to question when things were happening, it was fun to take everything and try to place it on a timeline before they actually explained what was going on. Pausing halfway through the film and theorizing with my parents was also fun.

The ending made me feel a lot of mixed emotions which in my opinion is kind of a good thing. Maybe that’s what they were trying to do. It was an extremely bittersweet ending, that’s for sure. Thank you for making me sad/happy, Arrival.

I loved the aliens. The way they spoke was interesting, the way they wrote was cool, the way they looked was great. I loved watching the process of figuring out their language. There really isn’t much I would change about this movie!

Here are some random thoughts:

The slow realization about what the aliens are trying to teach them and what they’re trying to do was very well done. The foreshadowing in particular was good.

The score was good, though somewhat distracting in one part in the beginning. I liked the music overall. It felt right for the tone and subject matter.

I remember laughing at one or two establishing shots in the film that lasted a bit too long. I mean, it looked cool. But I get it, this is the base next to the aliens. We know what it looks like now.

One of the aliens died from that stupid explosion and the other one had to stay behind all by himself on that ship! “Abbott is in death process.” I suppose since time isn’t linear for them, he’s not really gone. He’ll always be in the process of dying (don’t think about it too much it’s confusing don’t think about it too much it’s confusing).

Cancer is a bitch, but that isn’t news, this movie just reminded me. Thanks, movie.

Louise went through all that trouble to save everyone, including the aliens and lived with the burden of knowing the future. And when she finally told someone about it, he got mad and left her. And eventually, her daughter died (see above)!

Humanity is, overall, stupid and it’ll take a while to achieve the unity we see at the end of this film, sadly. But I do think and hope it’s possible.

To end on a happier note…I really want to write like the aliens now, just without gaining the psychic powers. It was such a cool concept!

And can we take a second to admire these posters? They’re beautiful.

---

So in conclusion, Arrival was a fantastic movie. If for some reason you’re still reading this and you haven’t seen it, please go see it. It’s a good sci-fi drama. Now, I just have eight other films to see, and I’ll tell you which one I think deserves the award for best picture!

Please like and share and comment and all that good stuff so we can get a nice discussion going. Thanks for reading 🙂

The Controversy of “The Danish Girl” & its Cast’s Emotional Performances

Before seeing this I didn’t know who Lili Elbe or Gerda Wegener were. I didn’t know who received the first sex reassignment surgery. I didn’t know a lot of things. But after seeing the film I wanted to learn more about these people’s lives. Thanks, by the way, Wikipedia!

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve gathered that it’s possible Lili was intersex, Gerda might have been a lesbian or bisexual, and Lili went through about four surgeries before she died. And Gerda wasn’t overshadowed by her spouse’s artistic success like in the film.

The movie is based on the book of the same name by David Ebershoff which is a fictional story inspired by Lili Elbe’s life. So no, this is not a very historically accurate movie. But it’s still important.

I never really thought about it before. It didn’t affect me personally. Whenever I’ve seen a trans character in a movie, they’re usually played by a cis actor. But I didn’t even know what “cis” meant until recently. (For the record, it means someone who identifies as the sex they were born as.) This movie, a couple shows I watch, and a few things I’ve researched on the internet over the past year got me thinking about representation in media and gender and all this stuff.

Eddie Redmayne being cast as Lili is a controversial thing. I know there must be hundreds of trans actors out there that could’ve gotten this part. I definitely see why people think trans characters should always be portrayed by trans actors. That being said, I still don’t know exactly where I stand on this. It’s new to me.

I think the movie was very well cast. I understand representation is important and if you have someone who already has experience in this area, they’ll be able to handle the part. I don’t know how I’d feel if I were trans (probably different), but right now I think it was a good choice.

Plus, if they had decided to cast a trans actor, who knows how difficult it would have been to schedule everything around them if they were transitioning at the time. It might have just been easier to not have to worry that their main character would look too feminine too quickly. It would’ve been great if they had cast a trans woman for the part, though.

Because the Oscar winner is in this movie, more people will have interest in it. More people were exposed to this story because of his popularity. Not only that, his performance is absolutely stunning. It’s no wonder he was nominated for an Oscar again because of this role.

I’ve seen a lot of his interviews and a few of his films. Going into this I thought I’d just see Eddie or Newt or maybe Marius pretending to be a woman. But he completely transforms. I found myself thinking only female pronouns whenever he was in a scene. (And, on an unrelated note, I don’t know if it’s fair that he’s a beautiful woman and an attractive man.)

I’m very grateful Eddie Redmayne did so much research for this part. It’s clear to me he has a respect and understanding of the transgender community when I see his interviews concerning this film. I think they represented Lili very well but I will admit I’ll never truly know how transgender people think about this. And that is what’s important.

Alicia Vikander as Gerda was also fantastic. Though Gerda wasn’t my favorite, I could see she was a complicated person. Alicia Vikander showed all of her layers perfectly. I could feel everyone’s pain and confusion throughout the film. All of their performances were a big selling point for me.

The relationship between Lili and Gerda is the main focus of this movie, and knowing a little about the real story, it is kind of disappointing. It does feel like it was made a certain way to have more of an appeal toward the cisgender viewers. The characterization of Gerda was a bit of a problem for me. I’m fairly sure Gerda and Lili had a better relationship in real life and they only separated because two women couldn’t legally be together in the 1920’s. If that’s incorrect, please let me know.

The scenes later on in the film were confusing to me. They seemed to be in love, they seemed to more or less support each other. Then they were talking about when Lili will marry again. But at the end, we get a scene with them where Lili asks how she earned Gerda’s love. (By the way, I’m pretty sure they made Gerda either straight or very…in denial. Or both, in a way. I know her sexuality was something that was glossed over in the book too.) I understand the troubles they went through and the things they struggled with as a couple, but the way they moved apart wasn’t what I thought it would be.

The messages I expected to get from this movie were something along the lines of “be yourself” and “love unconditionally”. But neither of them really did the latter. Especially Gerda. They are both very confused, I know, but still.

Even so, I felt such an emotional impact from this movie. I’ve cried about it twice or three times after seeing it. I’ve realized things about myself because of watching this. I sobbed multiple time during my viewing. I shed happy tears at the line “I am completely myself” after Lili’s surgery and I was devastated at the end. It was all beautifully done. It isn’t perfect, but it’s a great story based on the life of an outstanding human being with a pretty great cast.

We can discuss more in the comments if you want! Thanks for reading. Please share this with your friends. 🙂