siderite Reviews

Seven Samurai (1954)

Trailblazer

[9/10 · 22 April 2024]

Just a few days ago I was watching the latest film inspired by Seven Samurai: Rebel Moon. What a difference in class! Seventy years later, a decade for each samurai, the characters are cardboard, the plot automatic and the only working things are the special effects and production budget. Yet the original film, with no color, a low budget and many production mistakes (see the guy hit by the horse, ouch!) is so much better. It shows that someone put a lot of effort into the story, the characters, each scene. And this in a time where probably film was expensive as hell and the only way to edit anything was by actually cutting and using paste to put things together.

It is pointless to talk about the story. We all know it. Not only it is a classic, but it was remade and reimagined so many times that it has become part of our global identity. What shines through is the dedication, not only the director or the main characters, but also the supporting cast. People that look so much like peasants or samurai or tragic buffoons are so different in other movies. I guess one could call the movie part of the "golden era" of something, but it's not. It's just art in which people have put their hearts and souls. And it worked.

One of the movies that is still watchable and enjoyable and awesome after 70 years, I recommend it highly.

Rebel Moon - Part Two: The Scargiver (2024)

So much wasted potential

[4/10 · 20 April 2024]

The visual effects were really good, the actors were decent, the potential for this movie was off the roof. And they wasted it all. The battles were stupid. The people were stupid. The strategies were stupid. The motivations were stupid. The technology was stupid. The economics were stupid. The politics were stupid. Everything in this story was stupid. I understand they wanted to remake Seven Samurai, but they basically took the samurai, removed their fighting skills, gave them a compulsion for overtalking and gave them stupid laser guns. And the ending was spectacularly stupid, as it was revealed that they risked everything to defend a village, when there were higher stakes involved.

Even if you have no idea how to write, how difficult was it to set up a realistic battle with a military instructor. Just give the guy some money and he will tell you what they would do if they had a bunch of soldiers backed by a few tanks and several flying gunships or if they were besieged by the same and all they had were guerilla fighters. I can suspend my disbelief in the story if you show you actually gave a damn about the rest. Or you can set up really dumb scenes if you have a good story. But if you have none of those, why even try?!

What is even worse, many of the events in the second part invalidated much of the first. The more I wrote in this review, the more stars I removed. I wanted to say that the naysayers were a bit harsh and it was a watchable movie, but then my brain switched back on. This wasn't even entertaining. It was boring, pretentions and overwhelmingly stupid. Agh!

Split (IX) (2016)

Very well made, but it is too opaque

[8/10 · 20 April 2024]

Unbreakable was a weird little movie, but it had the sort of classical character arcs that people are used to: a hero who changes because of extraordinary circumstances. Split kind of breaks this pattern because the leads are not the kidnapped girls, but James McAvoy's character. Through the eyes of victims we see who the villain is and what he becomes, but they don't grow in any meaningful fashion. Hell, the two girls kidnapped with Anya Taylor-Joy's character are basically extras.

Yes, both films are, in fact, focusing on the villains, yet Split offers nothing revelatory in its last act. The film starts with girls kidnapped for unclear reasons, then you get an explanation somewhere in the middle, with the idea of what is going to happen. Then it happens. No "I didn't see THAT coming!" here. And the ending is really unsatisfactory, with no resolution in any direction, just a scene to let us know that it's connected with Unbreakable, which otherwise you would have never known. Imagine how ridiculous it would have been if the third movie would not have been made.

That being said, the film is very carefully made. McAvoy is his usual brilliant actor, Anya is weird as usual, but all of the other (few) cast members did a good job, the tension is always there, the sets are good, the sound is good, and so on. This is a good movie, but with an unclear story.

I watched Unbreakable in 2000. I kind of liked it. Then, *16 years later* there comes a pair of sequels. It took me 8 years to even convince myself to watch Split and I guess i will watch Glass now, but if people felt like me, no wondered this trilogy ended up as an obscure reference MNS fans like to obsess about.

Fire and Ice (1983)

A classical fantasy story with great animation

[8/10 · 13 April 2024]

This is a must see animation. It does so many things right. The setup is a sort of Conan the Barbarian world in which two warring nations battle for supremacy. The ice people led by Nekron, which uses as his greatest weapon his mastery of ice, crushing everything under an ever advancing glacier, and the fire people, led by the worst father in the history of film. Anyway, the hero is a blonde proto-He-man guy whose people have being killed by Nekron's forces and who vowed revenge. A beautiful princess, a prehistoric Batman and a Grendel's mother type witch are also there. Complex stuff, but the end result is the typical good vs evil, beautiful vs ugly, kind vs tyrannical.

However, what struck me was the way the story was told and graphically represented. Teegra, the princess, is unabashedly feminine and her scantily clad body would bring "modern audiences" to apoplexy, yet she is almost never a victim. She uses cunning and her femininity to great effect, even if most of the time she is ineffectual in physical conflicts. The blonde hero is a strong courageous man, but he fails often and has to learn and recover from mistakes. The evil Neanderthal looking ice men are savage and brutal and ugly, but they are not stupid, their attacks always terrifying because they use not only their strength and numbers, but also tactics and coordination to defeat their opponents.

The Batmanesque character felt like from a previous story that someone has forgot to tell, as well as the evil queen, who was presented through exposition and has like 3 scenes in total. However the evil prince Nekron was a gem: an immensely strong mage, manic, weirdly disturbing and apparently so beyond humanity that normal behavior was hard to maintain. His reaction to being presented with a gorgeous semi-naked princess is "get this filth away from me", although he finds the hero interesting and doesn't kill him. A homosexual suggestion, perhaps?

Anyway, the animation was very interesting: beautiful matte paintings, very normal looking animation, but with simple lines, emphasizing shape and movement, not detail. The story was a bit fractured, things happening fast one after the other, making the landscape seem a few kilometers wide. One can imagine king Horrible Dad, Juliana and her evil son Nekron having started the war because a common parking lot dispute or something.

My takeaway is that such a film would be impossible to make today. The handcrafted animation would be computer assisted or generated. The self sufficient woman would be fighting in armor and the hero would be a smart talking romantic trying to live up to her expectations. The evil army would be dumb and sadistic and the good army would be heroic and empathetic. And so on. It's not that Fire and Ice is some kind of perfect artistic masterpiece, but that in the past we had the option to have it made. Only by watching things from the past can we expand our vision of the future.

So get it and enjoy it while you can. Recommended for fantasy and Conan the Barbarian fans.

Old Dads (2023)

Entertaining and sometimes brutally real comedy.

[8/10 · 10 April 2024]

Imagine a buddy-dad comedy, you've seen those: several dads figuring things together, mixed with a Bill Burr special and you get this movie. It's not like it's a brilliant piece of cinema of unfathomable originality, but that's what makes it work. You have no expectations and, fifteen minutes in, you're cringing at the things happening to those poor people and laughing at the same time. Because what else can one do when faced with pure reality than laugh-cry?

So depending on your nationality, mood, political leaning and generation, you will either love this, hate it, be really terrified by it or any combination of the above. The movie takes a really kind and conciliatory path (which is what Bill Burr really does with all that apparently offensive talk) so it suggests we do have hope. So many things in the film are presented as absurd, but they do happen, which is terrifying to me, especially since I see it happening in my country, too, not just in crazy America.

The people in it look like they had a lot of fun, there are many cameos, silly stuff, real stuff, emotional stuff. You get a bit of everything. I liked it.

Dersu Uzala (1975)

A particular type of beauty

[10/10 · 9 April 2024]

A weird Russian movie filmed on film of various quality and directed by a Japanese director trying to get back in the scene, Dersu Uzala has a special kind of beauty that appeals through subtlety to people who love the wild. Based on real people from the memoir of Captain Arseniev, it depicts the friendship woven between two vastly different people while traveling the Siberian taiga together. It's also a "twilight" film, about cultures that were simply erased by our incessant technological encroachment on the wild and an examination of our lives and their meaning.

Beautiful scenery, some gorgeous shots, a heartwarming and heartbreaking story, although a bit more bright than the actual material and a main character that inspired Master Yoda.

My wife loved the film, I also liked it a lot, I guess it's something that must be recommended on the chance that you would like it just as much, but enjoyment might vary a lot. In a way it's a very layered experience, watching in 2024 a movie made in 1975, by a director who dreamed of making it since 1950, from a memoir written in 1923, about the life of people in 1902, every new layer adding more distance from the original experience, erasing it, just like Dersu's grave.

Dune: Part Two (2024)

Good film, but I felt something was missing

[8/10 · 7 April 2024]

Denis Villeneuve is a great director, one who is not afraid to take risks, as proven by this second of part of Dune, in which he took quite some liberties with the story in the book and added a lot more flesh to the parts that Herbert paid little attention to. But in the same time he changed the meaning of the gestures some characters made. Stilgar comes off as a mindless fanatic, rather than a great friend, leader and strategist, Chani feels like a modern woman, trying to judge and control Paul's path, rather than someone completely loyal to him, the Fremen themselves just violent savages, the Bene Gesserit are given a much more deliberate agency than simply the vague future blending vision driven prophecy making mechanisms in the book and so on.

The result is something that feels like a disconnect for someone who read the books and also loves the Lynch version of the story as well. I understand what the director is trying to do: make the story more grounded, less nebulous and spiritual, and maybe the rest of the books can be adapted to something that the regular viewer can get behind. Yet so many things come off as spectacle, done for no good story reason and bringing inconsistencies in it. Like the battles, which use quick sword and knife movements that should be stopped by personal shields, the very reason why people don't use long range weapons so much, or Fremen getting into spaceships in stillsuits and knives, when they have no idea how to use them and their close range weapons are pointless. There are a lot of examples, the point I am trying to make is that while adding flesh to spectacle and world building, Villeneuve skimmed over important parts relevant to the story, like who the people really are, what drives them and their world and how technology and culture shapes how things are done. In trying to ground things for the current audience, he loses the magic, the awe brought by seeing what humanity becomes tens of thousands of years into the future.

Bottom line: great visuals, sets, decent acting, but both character and story subtlety and grandness are sacrificed on the altar of accessibility and even rationality.

The Invisible Shield (2024)

Informative documentary marred by a disgusting style of making a movie

[4/10 · 5 April 2024]

To be brisk, there are two categories of documentaries: the ones that are trying you make you think and the ones that are trying to make you believe. This is in the latter one, something that does not documents, but judges. China bad, U. S. good, follow the playbook, don't think too much, listen to the nicely made up (both meaning of the word) people that narrate whatever they want you to believe. I am a big fan of medical scientific documentaries, but I couldn't continue watching this. It felt like pure propaganda poured into my ears and eyes.

Imagine conversations you have with your friends and family over a few days or weeks. Then imagine that someone would pick and choose whatever anyone had said and string up as a representation of reality. Ridiculous, right? When you uncle says aliens destroyed the twin towers or whatever, you can leave the room, you can tell him he is wrong, you can laugh your heart out or maybe agree with his perspective. Not with this documentary, which takes individual opinions, fragments them into small pieces then strings them up in a pathetic joke of a narrative. This is bad because I recognized the pattern. This is the norm now, not the exception: montage beats narrative flow. There is no argument you can think about or proof you can analyze, just a vague idea repeated ad nauseam by fragments of talking heads, spouting platitudes nicely, slowly and facing the camera while the soundtrack tells you what you should feel about it.

Now, the apparent intent of the show is to explore how transformative the domain of public health has become and how it is not a matter of monopolist decision or of money or even governments, but of people coming together and doing a public service. Which is a beautiful fantasy. The very people interviewed are empowered bureaucrats that believe policy and laws have saved lives more than the individual people who risked their lives to determine what the problem is, then fight AGAINST the norms to implement a solution then even more to enforce it. In their attempt to empower the people who are on the invisible front line against disease, the one that people notice only when something goes wrong in their manufactured reality, the makers of the documentary have eroded the very thing that makes the system work: brave people willing to take individual responsibility and replaced it with a nebulous "we the people" which never ever did anything except as a battering ram inspired by these rare influencers.

It's always painful to see ritualistic narratives, generated almost automatically by using formulas that worked on the majority of previous watchers of other films - it's the reason why most content today is awful and derivative, but imagine how painful it is to see this by the numbers documentary done on the very thing that keeps us safe and sound. Now I am not the kind of wild eyed nut that adores the lone wolf hero, but if you think about it, most of the people that pushed out of the status quo aren't even regarded as heroes today, they are either ignored or declared villains. And if that weren't bad enough, halfway through the first episode, it goes on with how the Western society of pencil pushers noticed "something that we really needed to pay attention to" when the Wuhan epidemic flared. And what they did was follow "the playbook" and set up an international screening program. For those unfamiliar with the lingo, that's covering ass language. But before you try to understand what they are saying, they switch again the narrator, the context, talking about the Middle Ages and the Black Plague, then back again.

Perhaps the next three episodes will be better, but if it starts with this kind of crap, I probably won't get to watch them.

Road House (2024)

Misses the mark a bit, but McGregor is a delight

[7/10 · 24 March 2024]

Set in Florida, it depicts an invincible MMA fighter coming to work as a bouncer at a bar that is targeted by rich land developers. I think Jake Gyllenhaal was great, Daniela Melchior really cute, Billy Magnussen best cast for an entitled rich kid villain, the fights were pretty good, too, but the delight of the film was Connor McGregor. Because how can you counter an invincible MMA fighter except with another invincible MMA fighter, who's also Scottish?

Really, the ideas in the film are not as impactful as the original Road House, mostly because the connections between people were not as strong. Most characters are pretty cardboard so why should we care what happens to them? However the psychopathic glee that McGregor brought to the film actually elevated it to a classic. I can't wait to see the guy in other movies, because he clearly has the charisma and physicality for action movies.

Madame Web (2024)

Wasn't THAT bad

[6/10 · 19 March 2024]

You know you're in for it when most of the reviews are either 1s or 5s, but you expect it to be a film that you either love or hate. Instead you get a mediocre superhero movie.

I don't really care about the politics of the thing, the extensive reshoots, the changing of the story by committee until there was nothing artistic left, I only care if I enjoy watching the film. And it wasn't good, but it wasn't unwatchable either. It made just as much sense as The Flash, but it featured young women and there were no cameos from famous actors or characters. If it were not a "spider-movie" and it was just a random studio making a film, I would have said "meh!" so this is also my rating.

It has a lot of pacing and editing issues and very little actual action, but its greatest sin as far as I am concerned is that it's boring. Honestly, it's got the structure of a video game: the plot is linear, the characters are barely sketched and everything that you see has some direct and immediate impact on the plot. If you need something to happen in another place, the movie instantly goes there, unless there is some interest in heightening the drama, in which case you get a scene that makes no sense like the one with the log truck. And obviously, the ending sucks, because no one in Hollywood seems to be able to write one anymore.

I would have rated it lower, but I see it was hatefully rating-bombed already, so there is no point in it. My advice is to relax, grab some food and a drink and enjoy this like any other silly TV movie.

Road to Perdition (2002)

An adult film to cleanse your palate of all the adolescent fantasies nowadays

[10/10 · 12 March 2024]

You've seen the plot before: tough guy gets something taken from him, so he sets out for revenge. But the way in which this film was done was perfection. There is no smirking vengeful discussion with the enemy, no killing of hundreds of people by skill alone, no pleasure or release in the act of retribution, no random coincidences to push the plot further. This is an adult film, where the characters are adults, even - ironically - the narrating character who is a kid. No adolescent fantasy playing out, but instead complex characters interacting according to the rules of their world and weaving a predictable, but very nice story.

It's a beautifully shot film as well, filled with great actors playing some of the best roles of their lives. I am usually a very critical person, finding issue with things and focusing on them, but for this film, I swear, I can't think of anything. Not the sound, not the music, the plot, the pacing, the story. Everything was great! Bravo!

Damsel (2024)

Another Netflix feminist film featuring Millie Brown that actually works

[7/10 · 12 March 2024]

I have to say that the story is interesting, the sets are great, the effects are good, the acting and the cast quite competent. Just like Enola Holmes before, it has high production quality and it's quite entertaining. All but the ending.

One complaint against this film was the pacing and I agree. This is basically a collection of three parts that have nothing to do with each other: a very long setup, a creature feature and a "moral of the story" ending that fails miserably because it negates a lot of the rest of the film and goes so far down the girl boss path that it just cleanly breaks off and feels like a slap on.

So I have to rate this average. I would have liked it a lot more with a well thought out ending and not just random revenge porn.

Halo Legends (2010 Video)

It looked cheap as hell

[6/10 · 11 March 2024]

I always applaud companion content to a beloved story, so I was kind of having high expectations about Halo Legends. Unfortunately, it all felt really cheap and uncoordinated.

You get seven animated stories in two hours, with various animations styles, various directors and so on, made by Japanese animators. With the considerable talent they've got over there and the resources of 343 Studios and Microsoft, this should have been amazing. Instead, the 2d animation felt like some 1980 anime and the last one, a 3D animated segment that looked like made with the Halo engine, was pretty weak.

But the problem was not really the animation, because I don't care about that, it was the stories. There were not bad per se, but they were not even close to special either. Probably the one with the Arbiter was one of the best, but the animation style was weird and took me out of the story - also it needed a lot more context to be understood, even if you know the lore. I liked the sniper mission one the best, but the childish dialogue again ruined it.

Bottom line: some entertainment value, but ultimately cheap looking and boring.

Argylle (2024)

Unfortunately, the naysayers have it. This is a bad movie.

[5/10 · 11 March 2024]

One might consider a bad movie something that didn't reach a particular vision, they tried and failed, but I feel more offended by movies that are created exactly as intended and still are filled with flaws. I don't blame rickety old boats, but I do blame vast ships hitting icebergs. And unfortunately, Argylle is a very bad film because it squanders almost every resource it has.

Number one: the actors. Henry Cavill is first billed in the movie and he is followed by an impressive list of celebrities: John Cena, Daniel Singh, Dua Lipa, Richard E. Grant, Samuel L. Jackson, Sophia Boutella. Well, NONE of these actors has any role above the level of a cameo. The only actors are Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Rockwell and Brian Cranston. It was a criminal underuse of the cast. And I know they would have to pay them, but really, there was no reason for any of them to be part of the film with the roles they had. Another wasted cast member: the cat. YouTube videos make more use of a lovely cat than this film. And by the way, whoever put Bryce in that yellow dress at the end of the film should be fired and never hired again. I am all for hiring people with disabilities, but blind people don't belong in the film fashion industry.

Number two: the story. A light and fun combination of Mission Impossible and Romancing the Stone, it should have been a slam dunk. In this era of people tired of all the remakes, it is time for remixes: take two unrelated films and mix them together. It required no brains, it was so easy. And still they botched it. The plot makes no sense, the twists are obvious and many times redundant, the movie doesn't know if it wants to be fun, action, thriller or romance.

Number three: no art. The final nail in the coffin, this film was utterly predictable. The glaring mistakes, grating tone changes, tasteless style and fashion, story issues, plot holes, the bad CGI, the misuse of actors, the bad acting and sets, none of that was actually unexpected. From the very beginning, the film is SCREAMING at you "I am a silly movie, my makers didn't take me seriously, so why should you?". It's not an endearing quality, but a screeching painful alert that no one actually cared even a bit for the quality of this film and that they knew from the get go it was a by the numbers product, not an artistic endeavor.

Bottom line: Sam Rockwell was great, as always, and that's the only reason I don't rate this into oblivion. However it is an insultingly bad film considering the resources available and you should simply avoid it.

Freud's Last Session (2023)

Two words: self indulgence

[5/10 · 10 March 2024]

Many a time, in pursuit of a more dramatic or artistic result, filmmakers take license with the truth, add stuff, change the order of things, make things up. And what's very mysterious to me is that they tend to overdo this especially when celebrities are involved. Look at the latest biographies that gained a screen adaption: they are drastically veering from factual events. More often the defense for such practices is that art is a form of expression, not of reality, but of the vision of the author. Surely, though, that vision must be predicated upon some amount of fact.

So here we are, watching a film about Freud debating God with C. S. Lewis for one hour and a half, but that seems to say more about Mark St. Germain - who wrote the play, based on a suggestion by someone else who died in the interim, then managed to turn it into a movie where he is the screenwriter - than either Freud, C. S. Lewis or the invented cameos/name drops of Tolkien and Einstein. It might even be more about Anthony Hopkins than anybody else, because all I saw was him being him and not the person of Sigmund Freud. Especially revealing is the small font paragraph at the end of the movie that says Freud met with a young professor right before his death, who might have or might not have been C. S. Lewis. Other than that, so the entire film, is pure conjecture.

How presumptuous and self indulgent, but also unintentionally ironic, to invent something that involves actual famous people who lived, and that thing being talking about the verisimilitude of religion and how people changed the story of a real life carpenter from Nazareth. Then not actually focus on Freud's work, Lewis' work or even Anna Freud's work, but on Freud's fear of death, the Christian reconversion of Lewis and Anna's lesbianism all on the background of the German invasion of Poland and England declaring war. For the entirety of the film, Anna Freud's character runs around London to get medicine to her father, only to arrive with female lover in tow and do a silent scene of determination and acceptance, all while her father was in terrible pain and she had the morphine on her. And there are so many scenes just like this.

Bottom line: haven't seen something so lazy and self indulgent except in movies about actors, meta constructions that feed back into themselves, with no beginning, end, or connection to reality. It's a movie in which Hopkins orates most of the time and everybody else is an extra and that has, as far as I can see, little relation to the actual people depicted in the film.

Perfect Days (2023)

A peaceful fantasy

[8/10 · 9 March 2024]

The typical story has a protagonist starting from a stable position, a crisis disturbing that stability, a climax, then the protagonist reaching a new stable position. Or dying, which I guess it's the most stable. We also see our lives as a collection of stories like that and we measure them by this sequence of small crises and unexpected events. However there is life in between these moments, perfect days of stability and, if not happiness, at least contentment. This is what this film is about: what if nothing happened and one could live their lives in peace? The Japanese lead and environment suggests thought of Zen and other Eastern philosophies, but the film maker is German, so there is no hidden meaning in the film.

However, this is also a fantasy, because while the protagonist enjoys his books, music, breaks in perfect weather in the park while he works as a toilet cleaner and his little plants, we know that the crisis is looming and the film hints at that, but then turns around and keeps the guy safe. The message is clear: enjoy the perfect days, each and every one of them, not because of the extraordinary quality of events, but their very ordinary nature.

Thankfully, the film is just two hours long and, even if it seems a boring premise, time just flows as we follow two weeks in the life of this lonely toilet cleaner. I guess I could recommend the movie if you want to feel peaceful and that life doesn't need to be a struggle for keeping what you've got while trying to get more.

Code 8: Part II (2024)

A decent sequel to a decent average superhero movie

[7/10 · 29 February 2024]

I was reviewing the first film in 2019 and noted that I liked the acting, but the story was formulaic. This one is... exactly the same. It doesn't expand the world of the superhero hating police state any more than it has to and pits the Amell brothers against each other and an evil cop. You can see that the two have huge chemistry and at this time I wonder if their TV career didn't hurt their chances to do more, like Hollywood blockbuster more.

Part II is a perfect sequel to the first film, so perfect as to feel a bit of a clone, all except the Amell brothers who felt to me like they've grown as actors, at least when working together. Could this be turned into a successful franchise, using the talent they have available, the lore they have established and the Netflix resources? I hope so, because all dark superhero stories: Tomorrow People, Powers, Bright, Hancock, etc. Just went nowhere. This is their chance to establish an X-Men style long term franchise, with multiple stories in the same universe, nothing epic, just grounded stuff that is somewhere between the Marvel mania and the DC depression.

Sisu (2022)

Very entertaining

[8/10 · 22 February 2024]

Tom Cruise has nothing on Tommila Jorma. Imagine someone took Mission Impossible, John Wick, Indiana Jones and The Raid and put them in a blender, then made a movie out of the mix. Now imagine it done by Finns :) To be honest, the percentage of Finnish movies that I enjoyed tremendously is way larger than American ones. They mix serious realism, humor and fantasy within interesting and entertaining stories.

In this particular case a group of retreating Germans mess with a tough and relentless old man and get to regret it. There are some really gruesome scenes as well as some that I think were meant to be funny. The Wonder Woman-like scene was clearly in jest, for example, and it was pretty early on. The level of toughness the main character has also shifts from believable to unbelievable to epic fantasy really fast. I kind of regret this, because as hard as it would have been to make this realistic, it was really close for a quarter of an hour, then it all went into the fantastic. There is also a truck full of extras that do nothing the entire film.

This is not the first film coming out from the Tommila-Helander family, Rare Exports from 2010 was also ridiculous and extremely entertaining. I may have to look into everything they've done now. For a 6 million dollar budget, this is absolutely an excellent film.

Bottom line: Extremely entertaining, but also quite forgettable, akin to so many blockbuster action movies nowadays, but done with a lot more style on a percent of the budget. Recommended.

Neo Tokyo (1987)

Very artistic animation and storytelling, but a bit too clunky

[7/10 · 21 February 2024]

An alternative title to this is Manie-Manie and I think it describes perfectly the style of the film. There are three different unrelated stories: the first is a dream-like trip of a child and his cat in a fantastic circus world, the second is a surrealist racing story and the last is a robot going haywire/satire of the Japanese work culture story. Made by Madhouse, they're all mad.

The animation style is... forceful. It is powerful, yet it lacks subtlety. You can feel it's art, but you don't get anything else out of it. The prose and dialogues are fragmented, clunky. The reason why I wanted to watch this - and in the end the best story of the three - is the last animation: "Construction Cancellation Order", but the other stories were fine, too.

It may seem that I have nothing but criticism for this, but it was entertaining. It felt too artsy and too experimental to be enjoyable. If the first two stories would have had a more classical narrative structure or if the three stories would have had some connection to each other, I am sure this would have been a hit. As such, it's mostly the animation that might make this worth it for you.

The Night Comes for Us (2018)

Better and tighter than The Raid

[8/10 · 20 February 2024]

When The Raid exploded on the screens everyone went crazy. The violence, the blood, the visceral feel, it was new and unexpected. But then there were a lot of other movies that just did the same thing. The same crazy little dudes fighting for nothing and dying in droves. Some tried a bit more story, some tried a little more blood, but it was now old news. And then here comes this film.

Is it that the story is better? Or that there are no more armies of tiny disposable people? No. But the fights are so good. The final battle, between Iwo Uwais and Joe Taslim, is pure art.

Bottom line: Watch the film to kill some time, but set aside 20 minutes so you can enjoy the last part to its true value.

My Sole Desire (2022)

A movie about sexual women who are not afraid or ashamed of it

[8/10 · 19 February 2024]

It is immediately apparent to people trained on American movies that something is really wrong with this film. Girls are unashamedly exploring their sexual freedom and desire, they profit from it, grow as people, love each other and themselves and nothing terrible happens to them in the end. Is that even possible? Isn't being young and sexual and beautiful the ultimate sin that needs divine punishment?

Luckily, this is a French film and it explores the lives of strippers and occasionally sex workers in a benign and wondrously exploratory way. The girls are beautiful and there is lots of nudity, but I didn't feel like it was exploitative. In the end it is a love story on the background of navigating your own desires and needs. Refreshing.

Blood Simple (1984)

Noir story, with some great acting from Emmet Walsh

[8/10 · 15 February 2024]

The first movie of the Coen brothers is also an accessible one. Who would have thought such a thing?

Think of something like The Postman Always Rings Twice, only a little weirder. Worth it to see Frances McDormand young and sexy, and everyone acts well, but the show is completely stolen by Emmet Walsh as the sleazy detective. Instantly believable and detestable in the same measure.

The story is rather simple and if I even mention elements of it here, it might spoil it for you. It's the acting, the way the situations are portrayed and the dissection of the psychology of every character that makes this film a very good one.

So I liked it, I warmly recommend it, but it's a slow paced noir thriller where the details matter more than anything else.

Strange Way of Life (2023)

Brokeback Mountain meets Misery, on the short side

[7/10 · 15 February 2024]

This is all a 30 minute film about actor performance and filming technique. It takes almost a half of it to get to the part where Pedro Pascal needs to protect a child. Meanwhile, it is all about how two people can lust and then long for each other, while living in an unforgiving world.

It's ridiculous of IMDb to ask reviewers to write a long text about short films, so here's the filler: if you don't like gay men, you shouldn't watch this; if you wanted action, you are not going to get it; if you wanted a heartfelt story about life choices from two people who love exposition, then this is the film for you.

The Fall (I) (2006)

A wonderfully visual storytelling, combining deep symbolism and authentic acting

[8/10 · 13 February 2024]

This is not an easy movie. On the surface is the same formula of the older man telling a story to a child and then showing us what the child sees, but every scene is handcrafted to mean something and to connect to something. This is not a film for children, but for attentive adults, that's why, I believe, it received less than stellar reviews and was not recognized as the great achievement it is.

The imaginary world is visually stunning, while the scenes in "reality" feel so natural and authentic. It is hard to make a nine year old child act with any degree of craft, but in this film the director went further: it made the film around the natural behavior of the child. It is a strange concept: a real story that is only hinted at, with just glimpses of what happens, juxtaposed against a fairy tale with exquisite detail, but not going anywhere. It's the fantastical that informs on the real, through the psyche of both protagonists.

I liked the film quite a lot, but it requires more than the average effort usually spent on consuming a movie.

Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)

Very difficult movie to watch

[8/10 · 12 February 2024]

There are several aspects of this film that have to be taken and rated separately. The settings, the acting, the music, everything is spot on from the viewpoint of the film production.

Then there is the subject, one worth knowing and it alone making this movie worth it, however it is a grueling story to endure, for the entire length of this film, which is over three hours. If you had any doubts about the systematic eradication of the Native Americans through any means by the colonists, as recent as the 1920s, when the story takes place, this film is going to dispel them. It will show you human greed and ugliness to levels that are hard to suffer. You will have to witness this filth without any redeeming qualities for the people involved, no entertainment value in the story.

Based on a non-fiction book written by a reporter, these are real events, presented slowly and methodically, without anything that would make the film entertaining. And while mentioning the slowness and the length, let me also tell you that the film ends with a radio show like production of 20 minutes that storytells the ending. So, after three hours of basically psychological torture and snuff porn, Martin Scorsese needed to summarize what went on next, otherwise there would have been another three hours I guess.

Bottom line: a dramatized documentary you need emotional fortitude to go through, and at the end all you get to feel is despair and no hope for humanity.