The Super Mario Galaxy Movie review – bland screensaver of a movie that’s actually worse than AI

At this point, it’s trite to say that a bad film feels as if it’s been AI generated, but this simplistic sequel is next-level – it’s nothing more than an Easter holiday cash grab Here is an inert and uninteresting animated follow-up to The Super Mario Bros Movie , based on the legacy video game about two wacky Italian-Brooklyn plumbers Mario and Luigi, voiced here by Chris Pratt and Charlie Day; this kind of stereotype is evidently the last in mainstream entertainment to be considered offensive. Now they and mushroom-kingdom ruler Princess Peach (voiced by Anya Taylor-Joy) have to rescue Rosalina (Brie Larson), the adoptive mother of the faintly Minion-y creatures called the Lumas. She has been abducted by Bowser Jr (Benny Safdie), the son of wicked turtle Bowser (Jack Black), who did very much the same sort of thing in the previous film. Of course it’s intended for little kids, but it surely didn’t need to be such a visually dull screensaver of a movie, with even more of the cheesy,...

Motherboard review – enthralling smartphone self-portrait of family life

Copenhagen documentary film festival
Victoria Mapplebeck’s documentary stitches 20 years’ worth of footage into a home video love letter to her son, whose whole life so far is observed

Victoria Mapplebeck is a British director and lecturer who has worked in film, video, VR, user-generated content, and with her personal, revelatory projects she’s shown a magic touch with a smartphone camera: she won a TV Bafta in 2019 for her iPhone short Missed Call, about her life as a single mum, working out her relationship with her teenage son and his absent dad. Now she has developed this into a tender, intimate, funny and entirely absorbing full-scale feature documentary, the title of which is a reference to the central circuit board on a computer – meaning perhaps both the importance of the digital equipment she’s using to record everything, and her own central importance to the computer of their own family unit, the motherboard that isn’t allowed to go wrong or take a day off.

Motherboard is essentially a home video love letter to her son Jim that crafts 20 years’ worth of footage, showing her own life and that of Jim growing surreally from a tiny baby into a fiercely opinionated, smart young adult who suddenly towers over the parent. The film lasts around 90 minutes, which is about how long the growing up process seems to take in real life for a parent. And at the same time she has to deal with exhaustion, a breast cancer diagnosis, anxiety and her own complex relationship with her father who walked out on the family when she was still young.

Continue reading...

from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/zKH19Ug
via IFTTT

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Miracle Club review – Maggie Smith can’t save this rocky road trip to Lourdes

‘I lost a friend of almost 40 years’: Nancy Meyers pays tribute to Diane Keaton

Malaika Arora scolds 16-year-old dancer for inappropriate gestures: “He is winking, giving flying kisses”