Pixar's 'Soul' movie review.

Yesterday, me and my friend found time together to watch Pixar's latest animated movie 'Soul'. We decided to watch the animation after we saw that it had just been released on Disney+ streaming service and was available for both of us to see.

Indeed, whenever a new animated film is released, we're more than eager to watch them and give them a chance. Animated films, thanks to their well-intended nature, are something that - almost always - manage to entertain us and put us on a good mood.

So when it comes to this particular movie, Pixar's 'Soul' is a film that basically has to do with the meaning of life. It's about a middle-aged African american music teacher (voiced by Jamie Foxx), who hasn't managed to make his dreams in life come true.

Indeed, instead of being a successful jazz pianist who gets to perform in prestigious clubs with a jazz band, he's a music teacher for students that aren't particularly skilled. He's in limbo with his life and is desperately wanting to become something better.

Story-wise, the catalyst in the movie happens after our protagonist is about to have his break as musicians. As he celebrates getting hired to a four person jazz band after an audition, he accidentally falls through an open manhole cover on the street and goes into a coma.

Not surprisingly - since he doesn't die - once he regains his consciousness [as a new animated character] in limbo between heaven and earth, his quest to get back to earth begins. He has to find a way to do it (and help another person) even though its seems to be an impossible task.

So when it comes to the overall quality of the movie, I have to say that - as unfortunate as it is - I wasn't that impressed with the film and its story. Neither me or my friend liked it that much, even though critics really liked it (95% fresh at Rottentomatoes.com).

Story-wise, one of the biggest problems with 'Soul' is that its screenplay is just too convoluted and contrived. Its basic story concept suffers from too many parallel worlds and characters that don't mesh in well and that constantly compete with each other.

By that I mean is that once our main protagonist is transported to the otherworld (limbo) and takes a new character (see pic above), it takes a lot of time to introduce us to what the place is about. The place has its own rules and parameters that require tons of exposition.

Indeed, before our guy comes back to the real world with his new sidekick (Tina Fey), who takes our protagonist's body and our guy becomes a cat (!), it takes too long before we get back to earth. This is simply too much and is too complicated.

Structure-wise, the really bad thing about making the story too convoluted and complex is that when you do that it really hurts the pacing of the film. When you spend entirely too much time explaining the concepts about the worlds, it pulls you out of the story. 

Not surprisingly, as the movie keeps progressing, I couldn't help but to feel that it kept losing its energy and momentum. Especially when it comes to its ending that is a total cop out, that one breaks every single rule that was established earlier in the film.

Still, just because the movie had its problems story-wise, that doesn't mean that the movie didn't have redeeming values in it. I'm definitely not saying that a Pixar film would be something that is completely awful and that it didn't entertain us at all. 

Indeed, when I think of the movie, I have to admire that the writers decided to take on an ambitious project that deals with the purpose of life. 'Soul' does manage to get across good points about what life is about and what are the things that we should appreciate.

After all, as we live through our main character and his desperate quest to get another chance in life, you can't help but to be moved by his ordeal. The story manages to be fairly touching - the protagonist is relatable - and it has entertaining moments in it. 

Production-wise, when it comes to the film's quality, it also has to be mentioned that the movie looks and sounds good. The animation is once again top notch and especially when it comes to the real world, I couldn't help but to admire how everything looked.

Still, when you look at the movie as a whole, there's no question that watching the story unfold wasn't exactly a fun experience. It was just too much 'hard work', which came as result of the writers not knowing well enough what the movie was supposed to be about.

In that sense, when it comes to recommending the movie, at least in my case as a writer, I can't in all honesty do that. I can't do that, because even though the film did have its moments, as a whole the story was too convoluted and did not work well enough as a whole.

Netflix's 'The King' (2019) movie review.

So last week, as me and my friend couldn't find anything better to see, we decided to watch Netflix's movie 'The King' from 2019. We decided to give it a chance, even though I wasn't that excited about watching a film that had to do with this particular genre.

Indeed, even though I do tend to watch - and even study - 'historical' stuff, I'm not interested in medieval history. There's not that much that you can learn from the era and that time in history wasn't exactly enlightening or uplifting when it comes to us as human beings.

Nevertheless, as we decided to give the film about Henry V of England a chance, we thought that it would be worth our time. There was a chance that the movie would hold our attention (71% fresh at Rottentomatoes.com) and that perhaps it wouldn't be 'that' violent.

So having now seen the film, I think it can be said that 'The King' wasn't that bad of a movie experience. It turned out that this was a somewhat well made and an entertaining movie, even though there are some pretty obvious problems too that need to be addressed.

Premise-wise, the story is basically about Hal, Prince of Wales (played by Timothée Chalamet), who as a royalty and an apparent heir to the throne, doesn't want power. He's a royalty who thinks that wars are wrong and that there's no point in shedding blood for no reason at all.

Indeed, as his father is dying, instead of preparing to become the next king as the oldest son to fight wars, he's more than happy to let his younger brother to succeed his father. It's up to his brother to fight those future battles once their father passes away.

Yet, in the story, it doesn't take long before things change, as his inexperienced brother manages to get himself killed in a pointless battle. This leads to Hal changing his mind and becoming the king, which leads him to a difficult journey (involving war with France).

So when it comes to 'The King's' quality, one of the best thing about the films has to do with its production values. There's no question that for a Netflix movie - that hasn't been known for its big budgets - this movie clearly looks good when it comes to its overall production.

Indeed, as I watched the movie with my friend, we couldn't help but notice that everything in the film looked top notch. The sets looked believable, the battle scenes were well executed (they were pretty realistic) and you simply couldn't help but to stare at the screen.

Acting-wise, it has to be also said that the film did also a really good job. All the main roles were well acted, including Chalamet in the main role, Joel Edgerton as Falstaff, Robert Pattinson as the French prince (he was totally great) and Sean Harris as Hal's advisor.

At the same time, when it comes to the story of the movie, there are some obvious problems here that can't be ignored. The biggest issue by far has to do with its screenplay, which - as unfortunate as it was - wasn't particularly well written or well structured. 

By that I mean is that when it comes to the motivations and the consistency of Hal's character in the first third of the movie, they left a lot to be desired. The movie does an awful job explaining why Hal decided to invade France after being shown as a 'dove'.

Indeed, when he makes that admittedly brave personal sacrifice in the first 15 minutes of the film (no spoilers), there's really no way the audience is going to buy him as a warmonger after that. It's such a strong character defining moment that defines the rest of the film.

So not surprisingly, even though the movie does give some external reasons for him changing his mind and attacking France, they don't make enough sense. They don't feel natural or organic, which made the story after that feel a bit forced and questionable.

In that sense, when it comes to Netflix's 'The King' as a whole, I think it's pretty safe to say that even though this film wasn't by no means terrible, it wasn't a great one either. It's pretty clear that there were some major character arc issues in the story that hurt it.

After all, when you have a protagonist that isn't consistent and changes based on what the structure demands, that's not a good thing. It really makes the story less immersive and pulls you out of the movie, even when those other aspects in the film work.

In that sense, when it all is said and done, whether one is going to enjoy watching 'The King' isn't really that simple and easy to determine. It really depends on what your preferences are and how much you're going to pay attention to the film and its character arcs.

After all, if you manage to get past the first 30-40 minutes of the story that are inconsistent and forced, this might be a movie a for you. In that case you might be entertained by the film and might appreciate it quite a bit (I was more in this camp).

On the other hand, if you set the bar too high and think that 'The King' is historically accurate and has solid character arcs, this might not be a film a for you. In that case, you'll likely be disappointed and might think that the movie as a whole just wasn't that believable or entertaining.

Retrospect: revisiting earlier writing projects.

So when it comes to being a writer, it's not exactly secret that revisiting your scripts isn't always easy to do. It isn't always fun to take another look at your earlier writing projects and see whether they happened to be as good as you thought they originally were.

Indeed, especially when it comes to projects that didn't go anywhere, there's a good chance that you won't like revisiting these scripts. Even though taking another fresh look at them might be beneficial learning-wise, that might sometimes be a bit too difficult to do.

So the reason that I'm writing about this is that during the last week or so I've been actually trying to revisit my earlier writing projects. I've tried to take another look at the quality of them and see whether my previous assessment about them was correct.

Motivation-wise, the biggest reason that I decided to check them - not that surprisingly - has to do with my children's book. Now that I finally got the book finished and managed to make it as good as it can be, I thought I could safely check my earlier stuff 'risk-free'.

So when it comes to this task, the first thing I have to say that I was a bit surprised how I had managed to distance myself from my earlier projects. Even though a lot of time had passed, I thought that I would still be more attached to my tv specs emotionally.

Indeed, especially when it comes to my Big Bang Theory and Modern Family scripts (I wrote seven of them), those were a really big thing to me. I was so invested in them and had high hopes about having a career breakthrough with the specs (didn't happen).

Expectation-wise, when it comes to these scripts, once I was about to start reading my favorite Modern Family spec script, I expected to see some solid stuff. I wanted to see a well written spec that had good flow and that had jokes and funny moments that would make me smile. 

However, once I finally started reading my favorite Modern Family spec, things didn't go as well as I had expected. Once I started reading, I noticed right away that I had trouble adjusting to the pacing of the script and couldn't get a proper feel of what was going on.

Indeed, no matter how hard I tried to read my story about Mitchell's big day as a courtroom lawyer and Jay & Phil going to the auction event, I just couldn't get it. Especially when it came to the storyline about Haley & Alex, I felt that what I had written was just hopeless.

Not surprisingly, based on the reading, I was now pretty confident that I had been previously wrong about the quality of this script. This one, that I knew was the 'best' Modern Family script that I had written, most certainly didn't seem to be that good in retrospect.

So based on this unexpected and unfortunate reading experience, one might have thought that I was now really disappointed about the whole thing. You might think that since my best 'old' script didn't make much sense, I would feel terrible about myself.

Yet, even though it now more or less appeared that the script wasn't even remotely as good as I had expected, that wasn't the end of the world to me. I wasn't thinking that just because this script in my opinion didn't look good at all, all was somehow lost.

Indeed, the biggest reason for that was that I had recently done bigger and more demanding projects that were more challenging story-wise. Especially when it comes to my 'two years plus' book project that required tons of talent and effort, I was in a good place now.

After all, that book project had a story that required like ten times more story beats compared to a sitcom episode. The fact that I had finally managed to come up with a full length story (with 30+ chapters) was something that really made me happy.

The second reason was that just because I felt during that day that the script didn't work, that didn't automatically mean that the script was bad. It might have been that I just had an awful day and that I hadn't been able to adapt to the sitcom format as reader.  

So not completely surprisingly, a couple of days later when I started reading the spec the second time, it turned out that my hunch was correct. As I was this time able to adapt to the sitcom format, the script suddenly started to make a lot more sense.

Indeed, even though there were some tiny mistakes in it, overall the spec was genuinely solid. The way that I had managed to read the characters, come up with solid storylines and execute such a wonderful, kind and clever script was just life-affirming.

In that sense, when it comes to this thing as a whole, I think it's pretty clear that we as writers (considering this task), every now and then, should revisit our older scripts. We should look at their quality and evaluate them, even though it might be a bit difficult to do.

After all, when you as a writer keep looking back at your earlier scripts, it - first of all - gives you perspective about yourself. It shows that over the years you have probably done a lot more things that you can even remember having done as a writer.

The second thing is that once you look at your earlier scripts, you get to know what your strengths and weaknesses are and have been. You'll get to see where you have been good at and what you can perhaps do even better when you start working on your next project.

In that sense, as I'm currently thinking about my next project, based on one of the spec scripts that I just read, I think I got some fairly good feedback from it. I got information that I can use when it comes to considering my next project and its genre.

After all, in my case, even though I haven't been feeling that great about my comedy writing skills, I shouldn't be thinking that as a writer I'm not able to write to funny stuff. I shouldn't be thinking that I'm only good at writing drama and that's where my strengths are.

On the contrary, especially when it comes to that Modern Family spec that I wrote years ago, that one is still good stuff. It's good stuff and shows that even though I've done different things lately, I can still write comedy too if I'll just decide to give it a try.