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Suburbicon (2017)
Symbolic, violent, American
Neighbors. While one family bears the unjust harassment from the entire neighborhood with dignity, the family next door is the chaotic scene of the breaking of every commandment. In the end, baseball.
Sorgenfri (2015)
An original little twist to the genre
Don't you get tired of the stereotypes in zombie movies: You can almost immediately tell who's the hero, the main characters take stupid decisions in turn like wandering off, at the end of it it's just a series of slaughters, uh oh another scary zombie?
This one escapes those stereotypes.
There are no classical heroes. Everyone makes mistakes, are idiots, turn out cowards, or die by "realistic" factors like simply being outnumbered.
The main characters generally stay almost calm and don't just wander off one by one. The one exception to do it in panic makes it back alive. The irrational choices are mostly made out of love for family members.
It's never just "a series of slaughters", as most kills are entirely unseen, those who are are mostly slightly out of the camera or audible only etc.
And best of all, it's not really the zombies that are the antagonists for the better part of the movie. It's the heavily armed and cynical welfare society! Civilians get quarantined and told almost nothing. Those who do not stay inside get shot. With one exception, there are no zombies in the movie for quite some time.
Liked it a lot.
Chosen (2013)
A lot fewer than 100 BULLETS for Chosen
Anyone who likes this series need to hurry up and read the "100 BULLETS" comic books. Because Chosen is ripping it off big time.
Except they ruined the plot. In the comic, the secret organisation seems to have an agenda beyond just morbid entertainment. In the comic, the people given a suitcase has personal motivation to kill their targets. "How far would you go for revenge? If you were given a chance at deadly retribution with a guarantee that the law could not touch you, would you take it?"
In Chosen, we just get random people coerced into killing other random people. I was waiting for dark secrets of the characters to emerge. Nothing came. They really are just in the "game" for the entertainment of some perverse and resourceful people. At the end of the day it's just silly.
Given that they have had quite a few years to rip off 100 BULLETS properly and even upgrade it, I would have enjoyed some more "surveillance society paranoia" type plot twists. Very little of that though.
Guldkysten (2015)
Promising - but failing
Method acting? Check! Two actors actually urinating on a third. Actor starving himself half to death? Check! Jakob Oftebro lived on an almond a day. Provoking? Check. At least some Danish nationalists will raise eyebrows at characters singing royal hymns while group raping African slave women.
I could go on with the bullet points that many critics will check off before arriving at a higher than average review. But these common features are far from enough to entice me.
This movie was, however, close to capturing me. By its sometimes dreamlike filming; the naturalist main character's musings; the imminent conflict between the scientist and the religious fundamentalists pushed aside by their common basic decency opposing the brutality of slavery; the long overdue treatment of that historical period and place.
But then there is the very special and in my opinion horrible techno music soundtrack which at the very least is completely alien to the time and setting. There is the slow, abrupt progress of the story. The lack of belief in most of the actors. The apparent difference between historical facts and this fiction; i.e. the main character being a pure hero while the historical person was actually a slave owner.
And at the end of the day: How much do the descendants of the victims of slavery care for a movie about it, that portrays a white man as the sole hero and liberator of slaves?
Didn't like it. Hated the music.
American Horror Story (2011)
Another over rated pulp show that may keep horror fans mildly entertained
American Horror Story (AHS) is to the main stream Hollywood "horror" story what Walking Dead is to the zombie genre. Except it far from as successfully implemented. Where Walking Dead expands and explores the social critique of modern zombie stories, AHS punctures every illusion and ridicules the shock effects of B-films.
AHS has borrowed from a lot of classic horror movies. The base plot of first season is similar to that of The Others (2001) - but dragged out, weaved in a circular story, messed up and almost evenly distributed across too many episodes. The neighbor's Downs Syndrome suffering daughter warns the main characters repeatedly and one becomes pregnant with a ghost - just like in The Kingdom (1994). In the extras a deleted scene of a waterfall of blood is shown - too identical to that from The Shining (1980)? The root of evil turns out to be a perverse doctor who performed illegal abortions (surprise) and experiments. That morale quickly got boring and seems misplaced in a series with constant mutilation and murder. But it was always welcome, because Dr. Montgomery comes with bits of the excellent Dracula (1992) soundtrack.
"Mental illness is a fashionable explanation for sin."
Similarly, in 2nd season it's always wonderful whenever we get to hear Helen's Theme from the Candyman (1992) soundtrack. Most of this season takes place in a religious mental institution - another common twist of taking something "safe" (home, asylum, Christmas) and turn it into danger. Themes now also include homosexuality, cannabis, motherhood and guilt. Fortunately, the silly ghosts are out. Facing the evil in the institution, trapping characters in prisons of social shame works much, much better.
But about halfway through the season, the plot flattens without sight of any nearby climaxes. The various plot lines ends more or less randomly. Some twists are just silly, apparently forced to fit the genre (Alma Walker turns ax murderer - really!?). The fine balance between acknowledging the icons of the genre and the blatant copying of clichés are routinely broken in AHS.
And it's more cozy than scary. The Germans know what horror is: For "cozy" they say "heimlich" (~"homely"), for "scary" they simply say "unheimlich". Scary is what turns safety into danger. In AHS, the horror B-movie fan is safely at home. But not scared and not in any kind of danger.
The IMDb average rating of 8.4 is an insult to ratings. I'll probably never watch season 3. There is so much other good stuff out there.
The Ambassador (2011)
A must-see mocumentary about blood diamond trading
Mads Brügger - whose last documentary consisted entirely of ultra rare recordings from deep inside North Korea - is releasing a new documentary; this time about corruption in the Central African Republic (CAR). Not posing as a diplomat, but having bribed his way to actual diplomatic immunity, Mads travels to the capital Bangui to set up a consulate and mingle with shady businessmen and poor, clueless locals.
A lot of the footage has been captured with hidden cameras, hence of less than perfect quality, the rest with a Canon 5D which no-one in the entire country recognized as a film camera. Real life crooks exposing themselves include European dealers of diplomatic passports, local criminals / businessmen, the now dead chief of the CAR secret service and some international diplomats.
It appears corruption is more widespread than most would assume. Illegal trading in diamonds is much more widespread than most could imagine. And that France, the former colonial master, is still meddling in affairs there - in a completely amoral fashion.
A must-see for anyone interested in foreign aid, blood diamonds, international diplomacy, the exploitation of Africa or just how to do a documentary. Genre-wise it is related to the works of Michael Moore and Sacha Baron Cohen, I'd say. Don't miss it.