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Race, Equity, and Education: Sixty Years from Brown: 2016

Pedro A. Noguera, Jill Pierce and Roey Ahram

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Book

This powerful and timely analysis takes stock of race and education sixty years after the historic...

Silent Partners: Women as Public Investors During Britain's Financial Revolution, 1690-1750

Amy M. Froide

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Book

Silent Partners restores women to their place in the story of England's Financial Revolution. Women...

LeftSideCut (3776 KP) rated Willy's Wonderland (2021) in Movies

Feb 21, 2021

Willy's Wonderland (2021)

2021 | Horror, Thriller

6.7

(13 Ratings)

Movie Rating

I can safely say that I got exactly what I expected from Willy's Wonderland, a schlocky as hell B-Movie horror that manifests Nicolas Cage going toe-to-toe with a host of murderous animatronic mascots, set to a music score of synth heavy electronica/children's party jingles. Is it silly and dumb? Yes. Does it have annoying and unlikable teenage human characters who are there just to die horribly? Also yes. Is it entertaining as fuck? Most definitely.

Cage's silent protagonist feels like the role that his career has been leading up to all these years. He has his very own corner of the zeitgeist at this point, and is just running with it, happily poking fun at himself whilst managing to be undeniably badass, whether it be the Mad Max-esque opening, tearing the robots to shreds with his bare hands, or him furiously dancing whilst playing pinball. Whenever he's on screen, he steals all the focus, without uttering a word. It's so ridiculous and enjoyable, that it renders the half-baked plot a moot point.
The animatronics themselves look pretty decent for the most part, and there's some solid gore here and there. It's the kind of gore that will make you burst out laughing, but in a good way.

Willy's Wonderland is far from a perfect experience, but it is what it is, and never tries to be anything more, and therefore succeeds in what it's trying to achieve.

Kudos

Awix (3310 KP) rated My Octopus Teacher (2020) in Movies

Oct 4, 2020 (Updated Oct 4, 2020)

My Octopus Teacher (2020)

2020 | Documentary

6.0

(2 Ratings)

Movie Rating

Netflix sea-life doc that sets out to be moving and inspiring and just ended up making me shout at my laptop a lot. A bloke going through some sort of mid-life crisis does the usual thing and gets involved with a younger female: the twist is that she's an invertebrate. Never mind 'My Octopus Teacher', based on what he says - 'I was overwhelmed by my feelings for her,' etc - 'My Darling Octopus' might have been a better title. Same old story: Man meets octopus, they swim around together for a bit, octopus loses arm in shark attack, he nurses her back to health, she has several hundred thousand children behind his back, etc.

Quite apart from the weirdness of the subject matter - what did the bloke's wife think of all this? what, for the matter, did the octopus think was going on? - there's something very dodgy about the way the film is presented. The story is presented as something that's already happened, so are we watching reconstructions of the events? Is it all a staged or confected narrative? Has someone told the octopus actually appearing in the film it's basically in the role of Kim Novak at the end of Vertigo? Stunning photography and images of sealife, naturally, but rather than informing the viewer about octopuses - which are fascinating creatures - it just unloads a lot of sentimental, anthropomorphised cobblers on them. Best watched with the sound turned down and appropriate sea-life noises playing.