Clara (2018)

MIMDB score: 8.5
Current IMDB score: 6.9
Director: Akash Sherman
Main Actors you care about: n/a, you haven't heard of these actors yet.

Why I liked it: This movie could be considered very troupe-y but the feeling by the end of the movie that this movie gave me is what I'm looking for in an entertaining movie.  I want to watch a movie, get to the end, and then think, holy crap, I didn't watch that movie close enough.  That means to me that it's a well-crafted movie.  It has stereo-types in regular sci-fi/philosophical movies but it doesn't really matter.  It's still all well done, and the plot and execution of that plot is well done.  It (I won't say perfectly but) near perfectly rides the line of feeling/faith vs. fact-based thought.  You can either conclude that Clara is an alien that helps the main character make contact with her species, that Clara is a manifestation of the main character's son, or just a whimsical human that just randomly comes across the main character.  This is exactly what an entertaining movie wants to do.  It gives you multiple ways to think about what is happening so that you expand your mind critically.  It's great and few movies do this and even fewer do it with the simplistic, quiet style that this movie uses.

This movie glorifies astronomy in a clever, interesting, and entertaining way which I haven't overly seen before.

Thing(s) I would change:
There's a scene where the friend character says "it looks like you haven't slept" which the main character looks the same as any other scene.  Maybe the movie is saying he never sleeps but he should look more deprived of sleep I felt like.  It just took me out of the movie during that scene.

Favorite Line(s)/Scene:
The conversation they have while walking near a river is something out of Before Sunset for me.
Clara:  Can I ask you something?
Isaac: Yea
Clara: Why is finding life out there so important to you?
Isaac: You know what people are scared of most?
Clara: Death?
Isaac: (shakes head) The unknown which unfortunately this universe is chock full of.  Sure, we've been chipping away at it for thousands of years but we still basically know nothing.  So how do we process that?  We do what we've always done.  We make things up. Create these elaborate bedtime stories to explain it all.  But if we found something, I mean even smallest clue that something else exists out there.  Something entirely different, well we wouldn't be in the dark anymore.  We wouldn't have to be scared.
Clara: So you think the only reason we tell stories is because we're scared?
Isaac: Terrified.
Clara: Ok, but what if telling stories is just a part of human nature?
Isaac: I'm done playing pretend, I think we all should be.
Clara: Ok, Ok, What about this?  Let's say there's a scientist who is brilliant and very well respected who makes game changing, world altering advancements in his field but he's also religious, his driving force is his faith, his belief in god a bedtime story, but the result of his work is science and progress.  What would you say to him?
Isaac: What would I say?
Clara: Yes
Isaac: I'd say skip church and get back to work.  You'd get more done faster.
Clara: Well I think he did just fine.
Isaac: What?
Clara: Sir Issac Newton, I think he did just fine.
Isaac: (laughs), Alright, we've got work to do.

The projector scene of TESS images is quite interesting.  It made me want to buy a projector and do the same thing on my wall.

Having a couch outside on a roof-like place has always been a dream of mine.

I've barely hit on the music which I want to hit on more as this movie is wonderfully scored.  Classical music in the right places to give you time to think and the original version of Girl from the North Country by Bob Dylan.  The transition scenes showcasing telescope imagery of space is great.  It adds to the immersion into astronomy.  This movie makes me want to by a telescope and join an astronomy club (which if you live in a major city I bet has one)

Similar Movies/TV Shows: The Fountain, Cloud Atlas, Contact, The Arrival, Before Sunset (reminded me a few times)

"Side" note: There's a review (that I hate) on IMDB saying that the plot is great except for the "textbook manic pixie dream girl story".  I think this misses what the movie is trying to express.  If they made the girl a non-manic-pixie-dream-girl-type, then she couldn't be seen as an alien I don't feel like.  If she had more of a back-story or even grew as a character then I think you could miss that she could be "an alien that helps the main character make contact with her species, that Clara is a manifestation of the main characters son, or just a whimsical human that just randomly comes across the main character".  In general the "manic pixie dream girl" troupe really overlooks what's going on in the movie and over simplifies the point the movie is making with that character.

The actors that play Clara and Isaac are (currently) married in real life.

Life Itself (2018)

MIMDB score: 6.3
Current IMDB score: 7.9
Director: Dan Fogelman
Main Actors you care about: Olivia Wild, Oscar Isaac, Antonio Banderas

Why I liked it: My Eighth grade teacher once said she only goes to see one movie a year.  I thought to myself at the time that she was crazy.  In 2018 I only saw maybe 2-3 movies in theaters.  This movie I did not see in theaters but I'm sad that I didn't.  The trailer was astounding.  When it came out I got busy.  I read the reviews in anticipation and they were super negative so I didn't watch it till it came out in my home theater.  Most people complained about the ending which I was scared to watch when I was halfway through it.  Halfway through it I had actually felt something unlike most movies of the year.  Movies that actually make me feel something are few and far between for me this late in my understanding of life.  There's a lot of things this movie does that I like and that should make you feel something in a sea of movies that are feelingless.

There's the person-butterfly-effect as I call it.  It's the idea that everything effects everything.  It's the idea that everything is connected, very loosely, but still connected.  It's what gives meaning to good things people do that no one will ever find out were done.  It's what gives meaning to lives of lonely people that don't think most things they do matter.  It gives life meaning.  Unfortunately a lot of critics and reviewers that say this movie is too sad miss this wonderful portrait of everything you do mattering in an otherwise meaningless existence.

Thing(s) I would change: Most people say this movie is way too pretentious to be worth a watch.  They are crazy.  The movie is pretentious at times which should have been caught and edited out but it's nothing too bad.  It's a mild distraction from the monologues that make you think and feel something.  There's like 2-3 bad pretentious moments where the diagloue is trying too hard but other than that it shouldn't distract too much at all.

I really don't fully understand Rodrigo's dad left the family.  Maybe if I actually believed Rodrigo's mom loved "Rodrigo's uncle" I might see how a good person like Rodrigo's dad would have left but no, it doesn't make sense for Rodrigo's dad to leave.  Either show Rodrigo's mom actually falling in love with Antonio Bandera's character or have him die in a olive oil accident or something.

Favorite Line(s)/Scene:
"When critics reviewed . . . Bob Dylan's 1997 release, "Time Out of Mind," the song "Make You Feel My Love" was a source of much criticism. Every track on the album brimmed with unrelenting melancholy and sadness. But there, smack in the middle of it all, sat an unbashedly populist hit song, a love song . . . a song that in years to come would be covered by Garth Brooks, of all people. Critics argued that putting an on-the-nose love song in the middle of an album about despair and tragedy was Dylan's only misstep. Others argued that was his point."  This nails what I think is the main point of the movie.  In the sea of sad things happening, love is the only thing that makes it bearable.


"Unreliable Narrator! . . . Unreliable Narrators are considered a device, right? Don't answer. They are. They are and they don't get a lot of literary analysis because it's a gimmick. It's a trick. I mean Canterbury Tales gets a shoutout because, you know, it's good but typically it's used for popcorn crime novels and thriller movies (Agatha Christie, Usual Suspects, so on and so forth). But I'm going to argue that every narrator by its very definition is unreliable because when you tell a story there's always an essential distance between the story itself and the telling of said story, right? So therefore every story that has ever been told has an Unreliable Narrator. The only truly reliable narrator would be someone hypothetically telling a story that unfolds before our very eyes which is obviously very impossible SO what does that tell us? That the only truly reliable narrator is life itself. But life itself is also completely unreliable because it is constantly misdirecting and misleading us and taking us on this journey where it is literally impossible to predict where it is going to go next. . . . Life as the ultimate Unreliable Narrator."

The final conversation of Rodrigo and his mother gives a good thought that's probably overdone but the idea that parents pass on themselves and never die if there family tree is still alive (and in this case, loving someone).

Similar Movies/TV Shows: Cloud Atlas, The Road, Stranger than Fiction, Love Actually?, This is Us (because of the feels)

"Side" note:
I don't get it.