Well, that was an emotional roller-coaster of a movie. I genuinely cannot tell you the last time I cried so much watching a film.
(Note - The following contains spoilers, so if the spoiler tags don't appear, then don't read if you haven't seen it).
The opening as you see and witness the true friendship of these two young boys, clearly having grown up together and become so close, like they were brothers. Spending so much time together, their clear love for each other. The epitome of childhood friendship and their bond together. It was simply adorable. I am sure we can all link our own experiences as young children, we all had that one special friend who you always had at your side, and things would never change .. but they do.
As they did here. Moving to their new school, getting teased about their closeness, and it not wanting to define who Leo was, he starts pushing Remi away - you can clearly see the inner turmoil working overtime for both of them, and the school playground scene, whilst short, is ultimately where things all changed. Remi couldn't bottle things in anymore and had his release. It was a very emotional scene which really tugged at the heart.
What followed was the unfolding of grief, anger, denial, and Leo believing he was responsible for what happened and I genuinely feel his heart was broken and would do anything to turn back the clock to make things different.
Leo throws himself into his Ice Hockey, and seemingly deliberately breaks his arm, sobbing uncontrollably whilst having is plastered at the hospital. like this he's able to cry and release himself from the guilt and hurt he is feeling, a truly poignant moment. Will Leo ever let go of how he feels, I certainly hope so.
I honestly felt so emotionally attached to both Leo & Remi, just wanting them to be happy and for that bond to be broken in the cruel way it was, I just felt so sorry for them both. Distraught even. I wanted to give Leo a hug and tell him it was all ok.
Just a "must watch" movie. Wonderfully written. Wonderfully case. Wonderfully executed. Worthy of every accolade you can throw at it.
Maltese neorealism in a story that avoids landscaping to get into people. Jesmark, despite his youth, adheres to tradition as his "luzzu", the old boat that passed from his grandfather to his father and from his father to him. It is a humanist film that, however, reflects the worst side of the human being, predator and victim at the same time in a world in which respect for the sea has been lost.
Martin Eden is a 2-hour biopic about a fictional character (created by Jack London a hundred years ago).
Biographies are of little enough interest as it is, but add to that the fact that this man never existed and you find yourself questioning the film's validity... until you realize the film wasn't made in the 50s, despite its look and feel, and that the director Pietro Marcello has painted a remarkable historical fresco. Don't see Martin Eden for the story, but don't miss this wonderful cinematic experience for its wealth of style.
"There is nothing to do and nowhere to go, There is nothing to be and no one to know"
-Thomas Ligotti
This movie is just stunning, both visually and in its attempt to tackle marriage, love, infidelity and the "bonheur". There's so much meaning, so much suggestion, thought provoking plan compositions, transitions, dialogue, sequences. The use of colour is just breathtaking. My first time ever watching an Agnès Varda film and I'm in love. I intend on watching her entire filmography now.
I was immediately blown away the first time I saw this film. I just couldn't stop thinking about it. So, the day after that, I watched it again.
Everything about this movie is very beautifully thought. The story is unique, the photography is extraordinary, the actresses are brilliant (THOSE GAZES, THOSE TOUCHES), the director (and writer) is incredible and the music is great as well. The plot is slowly simmered -filled with metaphores- just to explode with emotion right at the second part of the film. And the ending, it gets stucked in your head, making you wonder about what might have happened next.
I gave this movie a 9, just because I would have liked some things to be different. But it has definitely become one of my all-time favourites. Also, one of the best movies of 2019.
Go watch it!
PS: long live these holy lesbians! (I don't know what to do with my life now, to be honest)
I think the very best films are those that are able to speak to us, without being showy, of the rhythms and undercurrents that underpin our own lives. Sweeping emotional climaxes have never appealed to me as much as slow-burning, subtle explorations of our relationships with ourselves and others. Joanna Hogg's The Souvenir contains no grand climax, no catharsis, no resolutions. Instead it flows, shifting direction, twisting ever so slightly, looping back on itself and moving on anew. From reading the reactions to it, some have objected to its lack of obvious plot or its intensely personal nature, but these are the qualities I found myself relishing.
It's beautifully shot, full of muted tones and the grain of 16mm, and the use of space and light are remarkable—the feeling of a cramped student flat is captured perfectly. We move constantly back and forward between the living room, the bedroom, the stairwell. When Julie and Anthony are out for dinner they're shot from a low position, just a table in amongst the others. Close-ups are rare and all the more impactful for when they do appear.
What resonated deeply with me is the sense of being in a relationship that clearly isn't healthy but has enough charm, enough life, in it that it seems as if there really is no alternative. I have had relationships like that, where my partner would be equally controlling and encouraging. I was young and impressionable and even after it became clear to everyone else that there was only one way things could end I clung to it. I understand Julie: I understand why she stays with Anthony and goes back to him and indulges him; I understand it when she apologises to him for his bad behaviour; I understand it when she begins to borrow money from her parents to fund his lifestyle, remaining wilfully ignorant of its realities. There are seldom great, dramatic ruptures in real-life relationships and so it is here.
The performances from all of the actors involved are astonishingly good. Hogg spoke about casting Swinton Byrne because she seemed uncomfortable in front of the camera, like an artist and not an actor. This has proved to work very well as Julie seems, genuinely, like a young woman who hasn't figured out who she is personally or artistically. Tom Burke's arrogant, golden-tongued Anthony has a sort of feline character to him, sly and charming and managing to convey much with just his eyes. He worms his way into Julie's life, setting boundaries and then breaking them, pushing her far beyond what any partner should have to do. He encourages her, cajoles her, bullies her and it fills the heart with despair to see the relationship go where he directs it. Richard Ayoade has a memorable cameo and Tilda Swinton is typically magnificent as Julie's mother—a highly-strung parent who gets 'shopping headaches' and makes Julie and Anthony sleep in separate rooms.
Hogg also spoke of her lack of desire to make a film about class and yet class is everywhere in The Souvenir. It's in the sets, the clothes, the accents. It's in Julie's desire to make films about dockworkers in Sunderland, shown disdain by working-class and bourgeois characters alike. It's in the family dynamics, the parties, the cheques that pay for the dinners. It hangs obliquely over everything, and while Julie is often quick to acknowledge her own privilege it is clear that she occupies a rarefied existence.
The film's close comes almost delicately, and without the sweep that might be expected from a lesser, more obvious picture. It made me feel a quiet, deep sense of loss that I'm still thinking about days later. I will come back to it, revisit it, think about it. That is what I want from cinema.
Wow, a nice surprise! I felt some Last of Us vibes.
Wow Olivia Wilde knows what being young is like, the pool scene is a literally journey of a teenager/ young adult through society, beautiful soft sleek ride into a harsh reality.
I loved it. They took special care in the development of the characters. It reminded me tenacity but also fragility in women. I did not want it to end.
Conceptually good, with some neat special effects that belie the low budget. However, the acting kinda sucked, and the script wasn't that hot. It felt like a pilot for a tv show at times, which while not a bad thing, certainly isn't what I expected after the rave reviews on this page.
Positively heart-wrenching at points. Han Ji-Min was amazing as Miss Baek, portraying the character in all her flawed glory and badassery, while the rest of the cast contributed amply as well. Might make an uncomfortable watch to some, but still a very important movie that tackles the very serious issue of child abuse head on.
A psychadelic polygon. An ethereal deodarant spray.
Cinema has adapted over time and each decade has brought something new, most notably the 70s for its crime stories and gangster obsessions or the 80s for the birth of outrageous science fiction - many would certainly say the definitive genre of current times is that of the superhero and while I think this to be true in the mainstream, I think this is also the time for the 'experience film'. It has almost become a cliché to say a movie is more an experience than an actual film now but that's only because there's so many of these movies. It's not the birth date of this 'genre' by any means, but now they seem to be everywhere, and films like High Life really sum up this generation's vision in the world of independent cinema. What does this say about our generation? I'm not sure, maybe we're all hippies pretending not to be, but what I do know is that films like this show just how far filmmaking can go. Despite the (literal) other-worldliness to this, I think it has actually inspired me to pick up my phone and just start filming things.
Genre: N/A
You can really see that Claire Denis is comfortable here, and these visuals are some of the most hypnotising I've seen for some time. It's utterly gorgeous but more importantly unique and took me to places I never thought I'd go - this film manages to make the image of semen running down someone's leg still look fascinating. It takes a garbage dump of imagery, then injects it with both a rainbow-coloured sex drive and Claire Denis' mind, transforming it into something so atmospheric and spacious that you really do feel like you've been released from Earth for a... well, a couple of hours? a day? a lifetime? The concept of time is forever challenged in this movie.
I just can't believe how liberating this was. A meditative process resulting in a discharge of fairy dust and a hug of deep relaxation that I am about to carry with me to sleep.
High Life is hypnotic rape, flavoursome murder and a deep blue ice cream cone. An ocean blue cone with no filling.
huh?
I have no idea what I just watched but I loved every second of it.
Surreal and creepy story about a plastic surgeon that kidnaps women with the help of his assistant. They remove their faces and tries to transplant to her daughter's face whose face was totally destroyed in a car accident.
The interesting thing about it is that theres something beautiful in this insane story. The music score perfectly suits the film and helped to create the dark atmosphere, the acting is strong and the cinematography is very good.
The use of silent scenes in the film were important to increase the tension and the suspense.
This story made me remind of Pedro Almodóvar's film The Skin I live in.
It is impossible to watch this movie and not realize that we have either seen or read something (or many things!) before, that were clearly inspired by this. And still, this piece shines above them, almost 60 years later. What a great fun it was to experience it!
Another Western? Noooooooo, it isn't. Like most good movies with a Western backdrop the key to the film is a good story. That's one of the reasons that I've often thought Westerns are an excellent genre - the writer is not encumbered by needing to explain job, marriage, kids, etc. We can just get right to story. Fun fact - The story in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly was borrowed from a ninja movie. A good story is a good story regardless of genre.
First and foremost, the acting is tremendous. Phoenix and Jake Gyllenhaal offer up stellar performances but the real heart of this movie comes from John C. Reilly and Riz Ahmed (who was excellent in The Night Of). From beginning to end this just has a very unique feel to it that I couldn't put my hand on. The final five minutes made me realize what that feeling was (I won't say here). The message of the film wasn't about the old west or anything like that. To borrow from the Grinch: it was something much more.
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Far better than expected... The comedy takes a back seat to great acting... My ol'lady killed me, after John C Reilly got bit and swole up, she said look! It's Amy Schumer bahahaha
It's called Climax because it's a mind fuck, but I'm not sure you'll be glad you came.
It begins with the end scene and closing credits of a fake thriller as a sign to the audience that the traditional movie is over and we're about to go beyond the boundaries of normal film structure.
After a couple of dance sequences and party small talk centered on sex, drugs and a lot more sex (with passing references to children/parenting), the end credits appear in the middle of the film. Following them is the 2nd experience of the two-fer, where things get very dark very quickly.
The 'Dancing with the Scars' half is like a drug trip I couldn't get on board with so there was no way for me to get off -- I ended up just staring at the ceiling and wondering if it was going to be finished soon.
An LSD-fulled nightmare of dances, violence, delusions, betrayal and desire by the one and only Gaspar Noé. The dance sequences are quite stunning to watch while the descent into chaos and madness makes the movie a bold, striking and nightmarish trip into hell that you cannot unsee.
Love it or hate it, this film is technically astonishing and whatever it's trying to do, it's doing it very well. It's almost like they've trapped the true essence of French Extremism, set it on fire, and followed it with a steady cam.
The camera work in this is surreal and its movements, along with the actors' choreography, are surprisingly well coordinated for a "write-as-we-go" film.
Climax will make you feel a lot of things and I don't think you're going to like how most of those things feel, but that's exactly what makes Climax a very well executed horrifying experience.
A surprisingly efficient huit-clos / chamber thriller about a man with a past working the phones at a Danish 911 call centre.
Because the entire film is set in one single room, the success of the project relies entirely on the script, the director and the actor. If any one of those three comes up short, they take the entire movie down with them. Fortunately, this is not the case. Director Gustav Miller is able to maintain the tension to keep the tight script taut (for the most part), and lead actor Jakob Céder immerses us in the film with his portrayal of the hapless officer.
Only a tad reminiscent of the similarly themed Halle Berry vehicle The Call, the plot twists keep the viewer guessing long enough to justify the Audience Award Den Skyldige garnered at the last Sundance film festival.
Not every story sticks - the shorter tales fared better than the extended ones - but still an enjoyable, typically Coenesque view of the Old West.
I'm not sure if this would of been better as a tv show or movie but either way it's great. It starts strong with Tim Blake Nelson's singing Buster Scruggs and keeps going. I love the Coen's humor and dialogue. Some of the stories are a little too long but they are all so good. It's a shame that it was given a full theatrical release.
very Sam Esmail-esque
not gonna lie, I absolutely ugly cried a couple of times just watching Zula singing or dancing and I will never be ashamed of it
she's absolutely mesmerizing and although the whole movie is a masterpiece, Kulig is the one you will always be searching for on the screen. amazing.
I felt such a complicated array of feelings while watching this. I was wracked with guilt about my relationship with my parents. I was ashamed of times I didn’t stand up for myself growing up. I was embarrassed with her and for her and for myself. This movie is a true achievement in capturing the mood of being that age, I related to it completely to my core. I was instantly transported back 20 years and it felt so much like my experience regardless of the cultural touchstones and how new the Internet was when I was in 8th grade. It should be required viewing for every parent of a tween.
Genuine and endearing, uncomfortably awkward, humorous, and honest. Expertly acted. And while I was never a teenage girl, there are parts that are so very universally relatable Quite easily the best coming-of-age slice of life film I've seen in a good decade or two. Furthermore Whomever it is that acquires the films for that A24 chooses to release deserve a raise. I wouldn't be surprised if, nay when, this wins an Oscar or two
The cinematography felt so uninspired and boring. Nearly every shot in the first third were perfectly static cameras, placed orthogonally lined up on a single object (door frame, bush, pulpit) or a strong vertical smack dab in the middle of the frame. And the characters simply milled about within the static frame, as if they were not as important as the bush front and center.
I specifically remember the first camera pan in the movie; When Toller arrives at Mary's house the second time and the camera is centered on a bush in the hard. Toller's car arrives and Mary helps him out of it out of frame, so that they could walk back into frame and the camera trollies with them to the drive way.
Maybe this style goes with the storytelling of the film, which is deliberately subtle as others have pointed out. Though it is clear and pointed when it comes to its central theme of environmentalism and commercialization, the supporting details are deliciously understated. Like Toller selling souvenir hats as a supposably active house of worship, all the while our first scene inside the Abundant Life megachurch is a shot of their five thousand seat concert hall with multiple microphones, amplifies, and other expensive sound equipment visible behind the state.
Toller's character arc is biggest reason the film didn't land for me. I often have trouble relating to tests of faith, and this film is no exception. I couldn't quite tell if the film was trying to point to an inherent inconsistency with believe, or venerate the virtues of the faithful. Toller's rebuttal to Michael that life is about holding two contradictory truths in your mind simultaneously seems to point to the former. However, in the same monologue Toller asserts that we all want rational answers to troubles, but there is no rational escape from despair; only faith can keep us from the darkness.
"Oslo, August 31st" is quietly, profoundly, one of the most observant and sympathetic films I've seen. Director Joachim Trier and actor Anders Danielsen Lie, working together for the second time, understand something fundamental about their character. He believes the ship has sailed without him. He screwed up. He lost years in addiction and recovery. Life has moved on. His old friends like Thomas have stayed on board the ship, and Anders feels adrift. Even the much-loved city that surrounds him is an affront, a reminder of the days not lived, the experiences missed. How can he begin again? Above all, Anders is angry with himself and in despair, although he's so inward as he tries to conceal that.
Oslo, 31 August is a 2011 Norwegian film directed by Joachim Trier. Very simple, yet very intense and moving.
Anders is a smart guy, he had a stable life, a happy family, a girlfriend who loved him, but let himself go into the terrible world of drugs. Began to consume various kinds of drugs and started gradually destroying what could have been a wonderful life. At the beginning of the film, Anders is already in rehab and what we watch is a day that is given by the clinic where he is at, to go to the city of Oslo to a job interview in order to be re-integrated into society and also took the opportunity to visit some friends.
In the film we see, apart from moments between Anders and friends, also a beautiful retrospective of what was the life of Anders so far, but only by the narration of himself. He tells us certain episodes of his life as he wanders through the city, and with a beautiful cinematography behind, very elegant images of the city of Oslo. Sometimes we also hear what other people say in the city, while Anders listens to them very closely, as if all they are saying is anything he would have done or liked to do next in his life. These are extremely beautiful moments to see, because while listening to all those words we realize the suffering of Anders without him even opening his mouth to say a word.
Anders Danielsen Lie, the actor who played the main character (curiously with the same name as his) did an extremely good job! We can feel all his pain, often just by his look and body language. Sometimes even manages to be disturbing only to look at him.
A film which portrays perfectly how hard it is for society to accept someone who has made mistakes in the past, in this case, someone who was a drug addict. A society that most often do not know how to give a second chance. We also see the opposite side, of the person who no matter how hard tries to be insert back into society, feels completely apart of it. And unfortunately many people suffer from the fear of rejection, rejecting themselves doubting their own abilities and credibility.
Oslo, 31. August is a very deep film that contains much power at the social level, doing a good critique of society addressing very important moral values.
