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Reviews
Till (2022)
Emotional, immersive experience
This was a very hard film to watch because you're in the room with Mamie Till while she experiences everything that she does, you're feeling everything that she must have felt (if you don't have ice water running through your veins). It's basically an immersive experience of what it must have been like being black in the American South (and Chicago) in the 1950s and it's harrowing.
This is the kind of film that should be shown at schools and town houses. It's a lesson in empathy and a reminder of what a white supremacist regime looks like in unadulterated form. What's scary is how much hasn't changed, both in the U. S. and the world at large. How the same sort of group dynamics at play back then have people voting for the extreme right in this day and age. I'm very worried about the state of my country and the rest of Europe with more and more extreme right politicians getting voted into office but simultaneously the powerlessness that I and others feel is very relative compared to what the people portrayed in this movie went through. And they still fought back, which is the inspiring part.
Maid in Manhattan (2002)
Don't listen to the haters
This movie is now 20 years old. I recently watched it on tv for the second time and though it's not perfect, it's consistently entertaining and man, with everything going on in the world right now this is the perfect movie to take your mind off of things for a bit.
Ralph Fiennes' American accent is a bit dodgy but it doesn't matter. Every actor gives a good performance (seeing Natasha Richardson be hilarious made me a bit wistful, since she passed away years ago). However unbelievable the plot, this movie works. Only negative point is how Fiennes' character more than once says some pretty creepy sexist things dressed up as acceptable romcom clichés. And the ending could have been less abrupt. But again: this is a well made feelgood film worth your time.
Ocean's Eight (2018)
So much better than I had anticipated.
I went into this with zero expectations, having read only lukewarm to bad reviews. From the start it was just so much better than I expected. This movie is superior to all of the Ocean's movies with George Clooney and company. Unlike those movies, this one didn't bore me one second. The pace is fast, the story stays focused and compact, the jokes are actually funny, there's an eye for detail (Helena Bonham Carter speaking good French, Sandra Bullock being epic while ranting in German), all the actresses are great. So maybe the plot wasn't entirely believable but I'm giving it 8 stars for how much I enjoyed it.
Stalker (1979)
Read the book instead
I just saw this film on a big screen in a cinema. Though I didn't hate it like I did a certain overrated Antonioni film, it's still very dull. Having read the book I couldn't help but compare it to that and the book is much, much better. The film takes certain elements and characters and puts them in a completely different story. If you can call it a story. The absence of a progressing plot, the absence of anything interesting happening, is a major problem.
I may not have fully grasped every reference in the film because I didn't grow up in communist Russia. If my fellow moviegoer hadn't pointed it out, I wouldn't have noticed why the scenes with the daughter would not have made it past the Soviet censor. But that still doesn't make it a good film. If you think 3 characters talking in monologues for almost 3 hours is cinema than this is your thing.
I was reminded of Bette Davis who said something along the lines of "No audience will cry for a character who cries for themselves". This movie is every character crying, wailing, literally rolling on the floor out of pity for themselves. Besides the use of black and white (sepia) versus color, there was nothing cinematic about this movie. I highly recommend the book, it's got an actual plot and the atmosphere and world are much more interesting.
Blood (2018)
Started off so promisingly
The first 2 episodes were excellent. Intriguing and intense with surprises that sometimes unexpectedly lightened up the tone. It slowly declined from there. The twists kept coming but they started to feel a bit deus ex machina. I had a lot of sympathy for the main character but the logic of her choices got a bit slim. Not just hers actually. The ending of episode 4 is so grim it sucked the fun out of the show for me. And then the final episode (number 6) explains a lot but has no link whatsoever to the childhood trauma that set off the main character's suspicions. I would have wanted to see the characters deal more with the aftermath of that, like real people. Now the focus shifts and even though it puts events in a different light and gives some answers, it was unsatisfying. The slow pace and sentimentality of the final episode did not help. This series is not without merit but ultimately I was disappointed.
Bancroft (2017)
Intriguing
I just saw the first 2 episodes of this show and I´m very intrigued. Can´t wait to see how this plays out. The episodes I saw were already pretty epic. I watch a lot of crime shows but I´ve never seen a female character like Bancroft before (can´t go into detail because of spoilers). I absolutely love how the story so far has female characters front and center and all of them have a meaningful role. Breath of fresh air (and reality) that is, seeing women on screen being serious about their work and being good at it. The story is captivating in terms of both plot and psychology. It´s solidly rooted in the present day. This show may not be a 100% realistic but suspension of disbelief is working its magic and so far I love it.
Le fidèle (2017)
Cliché overload
I paid 1 euro to see this film. Still too much money.
The first third of the movie is promising. There are impressive scenes and stunts. A twist I didn't see coming in the shape of a character who was not at all what she seemed. It's (mostly) engaging as it works towards a climax. After that, the story is as stagnant as the lives of the main characters.
Where at first I was waiting for the female lead to come to her senses, as the movie progresses it becomes clear neither of the lead characters have any sense. They are two-dimensional and boring. Cliché is heaped upon cliché to propel the story forward. Except it doesn't, it just turns the movie into a weird mix of crime- and melodrama with a whiff of kitchen sink realism.
It seems like the filmmaker wanted to tell a story of obsessional love. But since there is no substance to the relationship of the couple the entire movie revolves around, there is no substance to the film. Every sex scene (supposedly to show their passion for each other) consists of Schoenaerts mechanically drilling his much younger co-star. They have nothing to talk about and the sex only gets him off. How is that any motivation for the girl to turn herself into a self-sacrificing saint? How is that guy worth her or my time? (And did the women's lib movement skip Belgium?)
Another theme in the movie is the tragic, abusive background of Schoenaerts' character. How he himself can't explain his own actions. It all reeks of literary movements like determinism and naturalism. As if he can't help it, it's his background that turned him into a criminal. It could have been excellent material to flesh out a character. Instead it just leads to Schoenaerts making the same face over and over again. If you're going to make a movie about dynamic characters robbing banks and racing cars maybe next time don't mix it with a tale of pre-determined fate that has people stuck like a hamster in a wheel. One pretty much cancels out the other.
The movie looks much better than most movies that come out of the Netherlands (good for you, Belgium). There were definitely people involved who knew what they were doing in terms of the look of the movie, the action sequences, the locations, the way the camera is handled. But ultimately this is a crap story that wastes the talent of its cast and crew.
Jack Goes Home (2016)
This could have been a good film.
The film centers around Jacob, who is weird and defensive and maybe a jerk or maybe a misunderstood, damaged soul. Jacob's girlfriend is pregnant and then he gets a call that his father has died in an accident. So Jacob goes home. Rory Culkin as Jacob is in almost every scene and that's a good thing. Even though this film was disturbing and ultimately disappointing, I watched all of it. It kept me on the edge of my seat, wanting to know what the hell was going on. Which is part of this movie's problem: too much was going on. Had the story been stripped to its bones and had the film been cut back in length, it would've been better. As it is, it's atmospheric but frustrating and messy. It's beautifully shot and Rory Culkin was pretty amazing. I read another review saying he was basically a block of ice but I completely disagree. The leads (especially Culkin) made what otherwise would've been crappy dialogue sound natural and all round I thought the cast was decent to very good. What I don't get is why anyone would hire Natasha Lyonne or Nikki Reed to then only give them one short scene. Makes me suspect scenes were cut and somebody hadn't figured out beforehand what do storywise.
End of Watch (2012)
Avoid
So much potential yet such a crap movie. The leads are great and I'm always happy to see Frank Grillo. If only their acting were framed by a decent story. As it is, it's a bunch of people stumbling through cliché after cliché. The movie follows a pair of LAPD cops doing their thing. They shoot bad men and save kids. They're lenient towards a certain drug dealer, because, you know, these guys are cool and likable. Doing their duty they stumble upon the evil deeds of criminals who are perhaps too big for mere cops to handle. Did I mention just how much inadvertent stumbling upon major criminal activities happens in this movie? Maybe that's an LAPD thing. There's one scene in particular, where Frank Grillo's character drunkenly talks to younger men in uniform, where I just couldn't bear the mind-boggling stereotypes. Someone give this man some decent material to act in instead of wasting his talent like this. For all the screen time they get it would've also helped for the Mexican gang members to be portrayed as more than just a bunch of swearing caricatures. Excessive violence and casual sexism is everywhere. It reminded me a lot of Training Day in that way; this movie's writer- director turned out to be the writer on that movie too. And then there's the documentary-style. Maybe it could've worked if it wasn't so illogical and inconsistent. But it didn't.