No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t forget you.

Finding Dory (2016)

8.0/10 on IMDb
94% on Rotten Tomatoes

Chloe's thoughts: Signed, sealed and recommended by Chloe; Watch it in cinemas
Watch it if you: Are a fan of Disney/Pixar (who isn't, though); Want to watch a fun movie with lots of laughs to be had


13 years after our beloved Finding Nemo was gifted unto humanity, we finally have a sequel!

It's been about a year since Marlin and Dory travelled across the ocean to find and rescue Nemo, and now Dory is starting to remember her parents. Overwhelmed by this sudden resurgence of childhood memories and this new and strange feeling of missing someone, Dory sets out to travel across the ocean again, this time to seek out her parents.

Yup, so this film should really be called Finding Dory's Parents, but I guess we are also trying to find Dory's identity, so I'll let that slide.

I actually went into the movie with really low expectations. The trailer didn't seem that great, and I was really wary of the studio making a sequel for the sake of having a sequel. It's always worrying when studios announce sequels since you have to wonder whether there's a need for a sequel, or just a need for money. More often than not, it's unfortunately the latter. Sure, you can say that it's Pixar and Pixar's always great, but you cannot deny that there have been bad sequels (looking at you, Cars 2), and you can see most recently with The Good Dinosaur, which I haven't seen but have heard not-so-great reviews about, that even their originals aren't guaranteed success anymore.

But despite my reservations about the film, I was still pretty hyped for it, and it turns out... it was a great film! It wasn't as great as Finding Nemo, but I think it comes real close.

This film definitely did have it's own story to tell,and it was a great story with great morals about trusting your instinct, persisting in the face of helplessness, thinking outside the box to create new ways to solve problems, home, family, and even... belonging (oh, Advanced English, you didn't think I could forget you so easily, did you?). It actually wasn't just milking the franchise, it was adding to it, which made me so extremely happy! Now all I have to do is just wait for The Incredibles 2...

So first things first, LOOK HOW ADORABLE BABY DORY IS!!!

JUST LOOK AT THAT!!! I WANT ONE! (Although in all seriousness, don't go and buy yourself a Blue Tang and make the whole species extinct. Finding Nemo, despite it's message that fish belong in the ocean and not in our fish tanks, resulted in the endangerment of the Clownfish.)

But yes, Baby Dory is so cute, and the animation in general for this film was done really really well. I mean, there was no crazy beautiful jellyfish scene (by the way, go check out this amazing TED talk done by one of the animators working on that jellyfish scene), but I was so blown away by the animation for Hank the Octopus. It was simply AMAZING! The way they made him move and camouflage was so fluid and fantastic. In fact, they spent two years working on him, with one whole year spent just to develop the proper program to make him move like an actual octopus, according to the animators. One great scene, though, was when they showed this huge tank of fish... the animation on that just blew my mind because it was SO STUNNING!

The film was also really funny. Dory seems like the obvious choice for a sequel since she's the most likeable character of Finding Nemo, but remember, she's also pretty annoying. However, Ellen was perfect voicing Dory, and they managed to flesh out her character so that we really rooted for her and we didn't find her annoying at all! I also loved the new characters they brought in. Since we have the characters and personalities of the original trio down pat, the film was really able to solidly define the personalities of these new characters, and that really helped. Ty Burrell was fantastic as Bailey, and Ed O'Neill is back at it again with his typical grumpy-yet-endearing role. Even Idris Elba has a role in this, making a Disney-animal-voice hat-trick for him. I'm particularly intrigued by Hank the Octopus though, and if they HAD to do a sequel or spin-off (although please, Disney, don't), I'd be interested to see Hank's backstory, as he seems to be a really interesting character with a dark and sad past.

One thing that this film did really well was that it had a lot of elements, but managed to tie them all together in a way that made sense. Because a lot of major plot elements of the film are told in flashback, we get little snippets of Dory's memories that could have been really confusing, but they managed to only reveal what was necessary at each time point, and then they made sense of all of these elements towards the end. In fact, it'd be a crying shame for me to not relate this back to Memento, one of my favourite films of all time that you should go see right now! This film is almost like the Pixar version of Memento: we know nothing about the character's background, and what we do know is told in flashes and little bits that make us a bit confused until it becomes clear at the end. Of course, there's no trippy Nolan-esque mindblow at the end, but they managed to capture the essence of anterograde amnesia quite well.

And because of all these important little elements, the film is pretty fast paced. There aren't that many moments for you to get bored, but it also wasn't too overwhelming. In fact, I think they paced it quite well. It's 1 hour and 45 minutes long, and this was the perfect length for the film. It wasn't too short, and it wasn't too long. It does actually pick up really slowly, as the film takes time to ground itself, but I think that was alright because we did need that backstory on why Dory starts thinking about her family, even if the first 20 minutes or so weren't the most interesting. One thing that does come as a result of this fast-paced nature of the film is that it doesn't quite tug at your heart strings that much. There is one moment that hits you and you tear up, but I didn't cry at all in this film and that is saying a lot because I cry at EVERYTHING!

And so the film is also quite predictable. It's a standard Pixar film following the Pixar formula well, and while it does a good feels trip, it doesn't really make the stakes high enough for us to be too concerned. In particular, there is a scene towards the end that is 100% completely unbelievable. To the point where there seems to be absolutely zero stakes because of how unbelievably well our main characters are controlling the situation. But hey, if I can believe that a rat can control a guy by pulling onto his hair, as if his hair roots are somehow embedded into the nerves in his brain, then I can believe some of the stuff that happens in this film.

So overall, this was a pretty great time. It was a fun family movie that doesn't quite make as big of a statement as Inside Out did, but it serves as a well done sequel to the classic Finding Nemo that we loved. I can truly say that the 8-year-old Chloe that never seemed to grow up is rather quite pleased right now.


A few side notes:

Loved the references they had to Inception and Alien!!

The Pixar short at the beginning is also adorable, as it always is.

What Does a Crook Know About Love?

The Handmaiden (2016)

7.9/10 on IMDb
90% on Rotten Tomatoes

Chloe's thoughts: It's alright
Watch it if you: Are interested by the trailer; Want to watch an engaging and interesting arthouse romance drama film; Enjoy being a bit puzzled, confused and unsettled throughout a movie; Don't mind really long and drawn-out lesbian sex scenes
I went to the Sydney Film Festival for the first time ever last night! I'm still in the middle of exams, so I know I shouldn't have gone, but all it took was for me to be bored of studying and for Michael to show me the amazing trailer for the film. Once I saw the trailer, I knew I needed to see the film. I love trailers that entice you without giving away much of the plot, and plus the use of the song Red Sex by Vessel is simply perfection.

Adapted from the novel Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, the film is set during the 1930s Japanese occupation of Korea, where conman Count Fujiwara hires a born and raised pickpocket, Sook-Hee, to become the handmaiden of the rich Lady Hideko. Sook-Hee is instructed to convince Hideko to marry the Count so that he can inherit her wealth. However, things become less clear-cut when Sook-Hee and Hideko start to fall in love.

Of course, I didn't know any of this since all my knowledge of the film was through the trailer (in other words, I had almost zero prior knowledge), but I think the trailer does a pretty great job at setting the mood for the film. The film is a bit unsettling, there's a lot of mystery to it, and erotica is a major focal point of the film. What did surprise me, though, was how funny the film was. The directing was really great as the film was able to go from serious to hilarious really smoothly and naturally, many times throughout. Sometimes it was the camera angle, sometimes it was the music and tempo of the scene, sometimes it was just the dialogue, and sometimes it was the actors pulling it off so well.

Haivng said that though, this film progressively gets more and more unsettling. Part One is more or less a simple con job, Part Two's exploration into the erotica genre becomes darker and more uncomfortable, and the end of Part Three is extremely unsettling. I think this was a pretty good move on the director's part, as Part Two became the bridge for the very different tones of Part One and Three. He makes us get used to the unsettling nature of the story during Part Two, but we're not too comfortable, and end up completely shocked and disgusted by the events in Part Three.

I know I'm being quite vague about the actual plot events, and that's deliberate. In fact, there is a plot twist in each of the three sections of the film, so it's difficult to be more specific. However, it is these plot twists that make me a bit uncertain as to how I feel about the overall film.

On one hand, I really enjoyed the first plot twist and the explanation behind it. I love it when you see the same event but from multiple perspectives, and this is a major element of the film, so that was done really well. However, as more and more plot twists start to unravel, the film keeps doing this. Over and over again. And while it is interesting to see this, it does drag out the film for quite a bit. The film has a runtime of nearly 2.5 hours, and it seems to drag on for quite a bit during the second half of the movie.

Weirdly enough, the second half of the movie also seems to rush through important explanations of things as you are left to speculate about what exactly was going on. It wasn't so much speculating on plot holes, but I think the audience just got too used to having everything elaborately explained to them that the ending came as quite a shock because it suddenly stopped spoon-feeding us.

Of course, this may just have been me getting really tired towards the end of the film. It was a 9:15pm screening and since I'm 1) a grandma who likes to be in bed by 11pm, and 2) someone who struggles a lot with paying attention for extended periods of time, it was quite a struggle focusing on all the Korean and Japanese subtitles for so long. However, when I discussed it with others after, others were a bit confused too.

But let's talk about the most... interesting parts of the film... the lesbian sex scenes. Yup, this is one of the focal points of the film, and while I have no issues with it, I must say that some of these scenes dragged on for QUITE SOME TIME. Apparently this director likes exploring female sexuality, and while it was a necessary plot point to the film, honestly most of the sex scenes could have been a minute or two shorter. Also, as I stated, the film does that thing where they revisit a scene but from different perspectives/camera angles and they did that on one sex scene so I was like, "Is this really necessary? We've seen the exact same thing occur already", but then the second portrayal of that scene just elaborated and extended the scene for a very long time. This really did not help with the long run time, but it did help with the overall mood of being uncomfortable, especially in a theatre full of quiet audience members. Some of it was quite funny though, for example hearing naive and innocent thoughts of the characters as they had sex was hilarious.

So in the end this was a really interesting film. It was quite unique in that it kept making you question what you had seen before, as it would continually reveal more plot twists and more different perspectives. It's not a film for everyone, and it's quite long, but it's a pretty good drama if your interests have been piqued by the trailer.