Season of the Devil is a 4-hour Filipino political musical about Martial Law era Civilian Home Defense Forces in the late 1970s in the Philippines. The movie has Gone with the Wind aspirations but a Left with the Breeze budget.
Season of the Devil is all setting with no story, so it feels as though we're watching a series of black and white music videos about cruel soldiers, volunteer doctors, local victims, poet rebels when an armed militia takes over a small, rural village. It is, for all intents and purposes, an a capella opera with no real action, just uncut scenes where a (usually) static camera films people singing while carefully choreographed sitting.
The directing is pleasantly professional for a film so indie they couldn't afford musicians. Not only is there no music to any of the songs, there is no music - not even in the background - anywhere in the entire film. Which, you'll agree, is highly unusual for a musical.
Overall, Season of the Devil kept my interest because I'd never seen anything like it before, and now I won't have to see anything like it again.
Mama Weed is like when you smoke some hash and fall asleep right after. Especially the 'sleep' part.
French people love a movie when anyone fights the system. I guess I'm not that French...
Remember Weeds, that TV series about the housewife who sells marijuana? Yeah, so does whoever wrote this. Unfortunately, comedy is based on surprises, and Mama Weed doesn't have any surprises.
Guns Akimbo is like relaxing into a recliner but a siren blares whenever you start to get comfortable. In this case, the film is the easy chair and the alarm is every time you remember the director attacks people of color and women online.
:person_facepalming_tone3:
Too bad, really, because Samara Weaving's streak of kick ass performances and Daniel Radcliffe's prowess in physical roles (Swiss Army Man, anybody?) are overshadowed by a filmmaker who can't keep his shit to himself.
Le Jeu (Nothing to Hide, French remake of the 2016 Italian film Perfetti sconosciuti) is a great idea torpedoed by a terrible story and sunk by an infuriating ending. Save yourself 90 minutes and get your underarms plucked instead, it'll be less painful and, plus, you'll have saved yourself.
At a dinner party, 7 friends decide to play a game in which they all must place their smart phones in the centre of the table and respond to any phone calls, emails, texts publicly, without the party on the other end knowing.
The possibilities abound with such a rich starting point yet sadly all of the characters' story arcs are that each of them is having an illicit affair with someone. Then, after an excruciating dinner where people begin to resolve their issues, we learn that none of the events really happened because there was a lunar eclipse. WTF!? The whole film was a fantasy and the only thing that was true is that you lost an hour and a half of your life that you're never getting back.
I can't really comment on this film because I'd had a shite day before it and this 'feel-good' story of con artists taking care of troubled teens only made me angry and my day worse.
Like a dildo low on batteries, In the Fade is frustrating and dissatisfying in the end, despite Diane Kruger's skill and persistence.
Like Rob Schneider, I thought people didn't like Shazam 2 because of the anti-vax rhetoric but in fact it's because it's infantile and it sucks.
This pale Disney knockoff suffers from an insistence on bad jokes, a glut of product placement and a rash of bad acting. I mean, come on, this made Thor: Love and Thunder look like a comedic masterpiece.
As exciting as packaged sheets on the shelf in a suburban Ikea.
Maybe if I knew more about Bergman? Maybe if I liked Bergman? Maybe if I liked movies about relationships tucked inside movies about relationships?
Like a one-floor house in a suburb: flat and no story.
What starts off as a really good idea (what happened to the crew on the boat that brought Dracula to England) makes some good decisions but eventually founders with uneven pacing and is scuttled by its shallow storytelling.
(There is also a slight anachronism in that the film claims to be based on Stoker's Dracula [which does discuss the Demeter's voyage], but in Stoker's version vampires can exist in daylight unscathed, while in this film they cannot.)
Like a photograph of oatmeal taken with a CANON Eos R6 II: technically perfect but still boring.
To kill time during the slow parts, I watched the guy in front of me play games on his phone. Seriously. At least I wasn't the only one who thought Spielberg overestimated how interesting his childhood was.
This was also the first film in a while I watched someone walk out on. So, you may cancel me for my opinion but I am not alone.
Like designer tampons: not just important, it's also very well made.
A perfect introduction to womanhood for young women at that stage, though the clown father figure was a cliché that stood out in a film with very few clichés.
Like playing Frisbee with your dog in the park on Sunday, it's all good fun until the romance kicks in.
I thought all that true story intrigue and real life espionage and secret military strategy involving Churchill and Ian Fleming was exciting but, wow, when they added a fabricated Harlequin romance love triangle, that's when I knew what the film really needed!
Trust me, the Wikipedia article about Operation Mincemeat is far more interesting than this overly-romanticized syrup festival. Tragic, really, because the actual story was so fascinating it didn't need to be helped right into the garbage.
PS This film might pair nicely with At War With Love (In guerra per amore, Italian, 2016), the story of how the American invasion of Sicily eventually led to the spread of the Mafia throughout Italy.
So well made that I didn't like it. Give Me Liberty is a frenetic film about frantic, stressful situations edited by a juiced up monkey in a room with a splicer who doesn't get it right in a million years. See this film and you'll leave so wound up that the tension hurts. Sadly, here there is pain but no gain because the film doesn't give you anything but a hard time.
An exotic look at the genesis of a dysfunctional relationship.
A man falls in love with a maid because he pays her to be docile and servile. They should've made the film 15 minutes longer to show how he reacts when he discovers the whole woman.
This film is, in fact, a whodunit. As in "Who thought this movie was a good idea, and who in the hell green lighted it?"
But the biggest mystery is why in the world would Carrie Fisher agree to appear in it?
This should be called The Chambre, because it's the French equivalent of The Room.
Victoria & Abdul is a historical farce that didn't have the common decency of being even the slightest bit ironic. Watch Viceroy House instead.
The film was as well made as it was important in these days of Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen. While I think the movie ironically took some liberties with the true history, the message came through loud and clear, and without beating anyone over the head.
The reason I don't like documentaries is that they aren't enough like this one. No narrator, no melodrama, just authentic home videos and interviews with the people involved. A must-watch if you saw the film Foxcatcher.
Why would anyone make a sequel and not try to surpass or at least equal the original? As much as I didn't hate the first one, this "film" is a waste of everyone's time, cast and director included.
Blade isn't a bad film for its time, because times were bad but I had good enough time with this. Still, vampires who can walk around in the daylight because they wear motorcycle helmets or sunscreen!? Are you WTF'ing kidding me?
Like a soap opera digest: skips over the facts to focus on the romantic drama.
Like this year's Napoleon, there was a lot I wanted to know about the subject and none of it was in the film.
Credit where it's due, though, the film did a nice job recreating the era and Adam Driver was one, but if you want to be truly entertained watch Ford v Ferrari again or maybe an episode of Succession, which at least has the decency to be shorter.
Like candy cigarettes: a fun idea but very old fashioned.
The gimmick of having (practically) zero dialog because the protagonist is voiceless starts out as cute but finishes as annoying because there are moments when it would be ridiculous not to say something yet no one does so it is.
Also, Woo apparently is stuck in the 80s because the real hero of this film is the wife who's relegated to the background and not the macho vigilante who takes her for granted and treats her like shit.
Like a country road at 3am: you think you know where it's going but it twists and turns out to be more ominous than you could've ever believed.
This Aussie supernatural horror has the same starting point as every other drama teen turned scream queen thing (Countdown, Smile, Truth or Dare...) but heads off in a different direction right from the get-go with a refreshingly complex lead role, moments of genuine suspense and a story that's difficult to predict. A pleasant surprise.
Like most of my dates, what I think is going to have action turns out to be psychological drama.
If the poster were four people sitting in an empty room instead of a lone outpost surrounded by a furious storm, I might've been better prepared.
The Disney live-action remake of French history.
Like a fitful sleep, there was a lot of down time then some beautiful images then me jerking awake and falling back asleep again.
The story is so cliché as to be non-existent, the lead actor (who is also the director) doesn't look the part (at least we know more how he got the part) and the fight scenes are unimaginative. At least the cinematography is nice to look at before you fall back asleep again.
Like someone as stupid as me crawling uphill on ice in nylon this movie is so so slow.
Based on the tragic true story of a young woman who confessed to killing her 15-month old child, Saint Omer is fairly autobiographical as the director attended the trial in real life and then made a movie about a woman attending the trial in the film.
The interminable long shots, the crushing silences, the absence of music, the incessant melodrama, the odd detours that kick off the third act and the farfetched conclusion that people have mothers had me looking at my watch more than the screen.
Like those who've never perused the novel Brie Larson's movie was based on, some Iranian filmmakers need to read the room.
I have nothing against Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi. He's been persecuted for his political beliefs, was arrested, and is still now under 'house arrest' (though he's permitted to travel around Iran).
What I find harder to accept is that when living in a country where women and children are being murdered for protesting, he's decided to make a movie about how inconvenient the government makes it for him to make a movie.
Yes, No Bears was made before the murder of Mahsa Amini for improperly wearing her hijab but so was the recent Until Tomorrow, a film that had no problems denouncing the treatment of women by the Iranian government (though, it must be said, was made outside of Iran, unlike No Bears).
What it comes down to is that I'm less interested in seeing Mr Panahi's life played out on screen than he himself is.
Knock Knock
Who's there?
Armageddon.
Armageddon who?
Armageddon tired of this kind of movie.
Armageddon Time is like a What I Did This Summer assignment written by Saul Bellow.
This visual memoir about a young Jewish boy growing up in the 80s is fascinating in its mundanity.
I think the point is that even famous people had the same boring childhood you did. The only difference is that mine wasn't covered with some dirty sepia filter like this guy's.
