Now Over 5500 Reviews and (near) Daily Updates!

WELCOME! Use the search engines on this site (or your own off-site engine of choice) to gain easy access to the complete MAKSQUIBS Archive; more than 5500 posts and counting. (New posts added every day or so.)

You can check on all our titles by typing the Title, Director, Actor or 'Keyword' you're looking for in the Search Engine of your choice (include the phrase MAKSQUIBS) or just use the BLOGSPOT.com Search Box at the top left corner of the page.

Feel free to place comments directly on any of the film posts and to test your film knowledge with the CONTESTS scattered here & there. (Hey! No Googling allowed. They're pretty easy.)

Send E-mails to MAKSQUIBS@yahoo.com . (Let us know if the TRANSLATE WIDGET works!) Or use the Profile Page or Comments link for contact.

Thanks for stopping by.

Monday, November 9, 2020

TENKI NO KO / WEATHERING WITH YOU (2019)

After his rapturously received YOUR NAME/’16, this much anticipated next film from Anime-tor Makoto Shinkai is another visual dazzler.  (Those lateral cityscape tracking shots!)  This one about a runaway teen coming upon the bright lights and high costs of Tokyo where the good-natured boy first falls in with a pair of counter-culture publishers; then falls for a ‘sunshine girl’ with a rare, inexplicable gift for sweeping aside Tokyo’s perpetual rainy gloom to literally let the sun shine in as weather turns Biblically bad.  But it's a supernatural talent that comes at a terrible personal cost.  It proves a tricky mix to pull off, with Shinkai’s storytelling abilities unable to rise to the occasion.  (Where’s Richard Wagner and his sacrificial dames when you need him?)  Construction a mess, with blocks of narrative moving forward only by happenstance & coincidence; too many close-call escapes for any one teen protagonist to have; and odd, arbitrary choices on what to explain and what to leave as a mysterious, metaphysic blank.  Shinkai’s favored time shifting stratagems (love and time in conflict thru jumps or generational gaps) replaced and less gripping as a technological cautionary tale for the world.  (Because it's less personal?)  Thoughtful, but unsatisfying, in spite of many felicitous beauties, including a fine score with good Pop tunes from Radwimps.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Runaway boy Hodaka always keeping his copy of CATCHER IN THE RYE nearby.  No wonder he’s annoying as Holden Caulfield.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Perhaps writer/director Shinkai would benefit from less autonomy.  Meanwhile, YOUR NAME.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/06/kimi-no-na-wa-your-name-2016.html

No comments: