Okay's Thoughts on Okay Films

Holy Earth! I did not expect this to be such a bad movie, but it is, and that's so shocking to me. I mean, how can the person responsible for a great film such as "Mystery Train" (a masterpiece compared to this right here), then go on and make "Night on Earth", an amateur version of what I thought a Jarmusch film was supposed to be. Basically, the movie is divided into five segments, all taking place during the same night, with each episode occurring somewhere around the world, and mostly inside of a taxi. Interesting concept in the hands of Jim Jarmusch, there is no way this isn't gonna work out, right...? So I thought.

For a film that solely relies on the characters and the conversations held between them, the film manages to create some exceptionally obnoxious people, filled with extremely annoying characteristics. I was seriously holding my ears, throughout the entirety of the segments taking place in New York and Rome. I'm guessing Jarmusch thought that this is what constitutes as humour, just being loud, and loud, and even louder. There are also political messages contained in each of the five stories, and they are written clumsily and unsubtly, to the point that it comes off as embarrassing.

Film-making wise, nothing was really impressing either, the cinematography was good enough, the acting ranged from acceptable to awful, the score was good, but nothing to write home about that's for sure. This ends my little Jarmusch watching spree with a bitter taste in my mouth. This doesn't mean I'm never gonna check out his other films, of course I will, just not any time soon.

⭐⭐

"The Phantom of Liberty" is exactly what you would expect from a Buñuelian film. He manages to create a world where taboo subjects are switched to become mundane, and ordinary practices are turned into inappropriate habits, all the while asking, why does society dictate our gut reactions, and why are these reactions contradictory to each other? Buñuel's non-smug way of expressing his thoughts via film, is what makes his movies such entertaining rides. We are subjected to countless hilarious scenes of pure absurdity, that make us question our actions while having a smile on our face, instead of feeling judged by whoever is behind the screen.

⭐⭐⭐1/2

A film about two friends who can't control their raging hormones, going on a road trip with a married woman, is not something I imagine myself enjoying. Fortunately though, "Y Tu Mamá También" tackles bigger themes than the usual clichés, and takes a more sensible and sophisticated approach in doing so than one would expect. In the end, the two men come out of what they thought was gonna be a sex filled trip (which it still was), surprisingly more enlightened in what life's all about.

⭐⭐⭐1/2

The events surrounding the 1966 shootings at the University of Texas at Austin, are what Keith Maitland’s masterful documentary "Tower" is about. He compellingly recreates the events of that tragic day, through rotoscopic animation (think of "Waking Life" or "A Scanner Darkly"), which totally works and compliments the mood of the film. Another decision made by the director that I highly command, is making the shooter's identity irrelevant, and solely focusing on the victims and the bystanders experiences, which definitely helped at delivering a much more powerful emotional punch to the viewer's gut.

"Tower" did everything one would want from a documentary about this subject, it was well crafted, well scored, perfectly paced, engaging, extremely tense, and moving to tears, which was my reaction on multiple occasions. This is one of the very best movies of 2016 and I highly recommend it!

🌟🌟🌟🌟1/2

A depressing Bergman film, filled with hopeless and philosophical dialogue? Sign me up immediately!

We follow a pastor who's struggling with his faith in God, which leaves him in a state of confusion and depression. He also has to deal with the people in need of his advice and attention, while he's in such state, which only leads to more anguish for him and everyone else.

The usual Bergman dialogue is present and is as exceptional as ever. It holds so much depth and substance that it leaves you with as much pain as the characters'. This dialogue is what links each thread of the film together, and is the secret to how well the themes of the film are illustrated.

The interactions between pastor Ericsson and his surroundings are very dreary, but still gripping. They explore his existential crisis and what it does to his psyche. His conversation with Mr. Presson even left me with my own existential crisis. But if there's one scene that touched me like an angel, it's the letter scene. Not only is it manifested perfectly, but what it contains was personally crushing. In the end, we are left to answer the haunting question by ourselves, has the pastor's faith been re-affirmed or repudiated?

🌟🌟🌟🌟

In “Cries and Whispers”, we are introduced to three sisters and their maid. One sister is suffering from a terminal illness, so the others come to her aid to take care of her, but their process of doing so is not conventional, and far beyond what one might expect.

Bergman studies each of the four characters very carefully and meticulously. Their interactions with each other are filled with lovelessness and coldness, and this is a theme that one will become familiar with when it comes to this director. The fundamental coldness in humans and their inability to communicate, understand, or love each other, is so present in his filmography, especially and specifically in this feature.

To say that the film is devastating would be an understatement, and this is expected when the majority of the characters are emotionless, stoic, and extremely selfish. A viewer's expected reaction is to ask, what made these people turn this way? But the answer to such a question is too complicated to just be portrayed in an only 90 minutes long picture, so it can't be found only through the materiel we're given.

Bergman does eventually showcase some needed intimacy out of these characters via the ending, which is nothing but a wide open window to let the viewer breathe, after being suffocated by the characters' bleakness for such a long time.

If there’s one thing I'm not too fond of, it's the character of Karin (played by Ingrid Thulin). Whenever the film heavily focuses on her, I am simply left...bored, and this is odd because on paper, she is the most interesting character out of the bunch. This is then made up by the last 15 minutes of the film, which left me feeling a roller-coaster of emotions. Everything else is nothing short of entrancing. The dialogue overall is just as intriguing as in any Bergman film. The cinematography is particularly superb, and the acting is absolutely top-notch. This is most definitely one of the director’s best films, but this seems to be the case with all of his movies.

“Time of the Wolf” centres around a mother and her two children, who are left to fend for themselves in the wilderness, following an unspecified past apocalyptic event, that left the world in chaos and turmoil.

From time to time, I crave for some Haneke, and today was one of those days, so I decided to re-visit the film of his I thought of the least, and even though it would probably still place low on a ranking of his masterful films, I still took more out of it than ever during this second watch of mine.

Movies with similar backdrops approach the genre of catastrophe and disaster with exaggeration, which lets the viewer consume the material with enjoyment. If you know anything about Haneke, you would know that this is against the man's beliefs, so he takes a route opposite of the conventional. He showcases misery, despair, and the hopelessness of mankind when put in such conditions, while refraining from sugar-coating the true reality of the situation. Matter of fact, Haneke's brutal honesty is what makes his films so emotionally effective, time after time. He not only manages to make the viewer observe the nightmares lived by the characters, but experience them as well.

The characters of "Time of the Wolf" await some kind of saviour. Their perception of this saviour is in the form of a train, that will supposedly arrive and take them to a better place with better conditions. But even if that were the case, even if a train does eventually arrive to pick the survivors up, would it really matter, since mankind's true nature would expose itself regardless of its whereabouts.

The film might be tough to get through due to its dark themes and slow pacing, but I think it's well worth it, for the cinematography, for the performances, for all the subtleties one can pick up on during a second viewing, and more importantly, for its brave examinations of the presented characters.

"Blow Out" is about a sound technician who works mostly on grade-B horror movies. He accidentally records crucial evidence that can prove an accident to be actually a premeditated murder.

Just from the title and the description I gave, you can tell that the film would be derivative on a few levels (De Palma is obviously inspired by Antonioni's "Blow-Up"). But it also uses whatever it borrows as a stepping block, and builds from that, which is enough to make the movie have its own voice.

One should also expect the sound design to be good, and it is, it's even great at times, the scenes of Travolta's character recording nature's poetry are oddly interesting and more engaging than everything else the film provided. The cinematography was surprisingly pretty impressive, it definitely helped at keeping me interested when nothing else did. Other than that, the movie is painfully mediocre.

My main problem lies within the plot, for the first half of the film I had no complaints other than a few minor, harmless, and personal nitpicks. Little did I know, everything will fall apart throughout the second half, especially during the climax. There was just too many conveniences and plot holes for me to turn a blind eye on. It seriously became idiotic near the end, and the film pretty much turned into its own B-Movie...how ironic. I also didn't think that the acting was as rewarding as it should of been. John Travolta does a good job overall, he really nails his character and portrays it with such charm. On the other hand, Nancy Allen is a hit or miss. She's supposed to be naive and child-like, but she's not capable of being exact with her performance, so she ends up overplaying it at times.

Overall, this is a pretty average movie. It has a few shining moments, and the ending sure is interesting, but that's all overshadowed by the excessively prevalent blandness.