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Joachim Trier, 2011


I'll poorly translate something a friend once told me when I said I was a Saturday afternoon kind of guy instead of the typical Friday night. He said: The night is a carousel of death, of beautiful and happy people who suffer. This character reminded me of him, because he's also in that carousel, spinning like hell. This film is a Trainspotting without the glorification and Requiem for a Dream without the drama, so, it's a hard one to sell. It's much more than a recovering addict struggling, it not only shows his thoughts but it also shows everybody else struggles with the most basic, trivial thing: living; loneliness, anxieties, expectations, a life of success measured by the amount of goals you have to fulfill, reminds me of a movie from 2009 that I like very much, very tranquil, The Drifter, a movie about Rob Machado a surfer, and he says: We dream of the perfect wave, the perfect job, the perfect house, the perfect love, and when we get there, we dream of something else, and the journey goes on.




Joachim Trier, 2011


I'll poorly translate something a friend once told me when I said I was a Saturday afternoon kind of guy instead of the typical Friday night. He said: The night is a carousel of death, of beautiful and happy people who suffer. This character reminded me of him, because he's also in that carousel, spinning like hell. This film is a Trainspotting without the glorification and Requiem for a Dream without the drama, so, it's a hard one to sell. It's much more than a recovering addict struggling, it not only shows his thoughts but it also shows everybody else struggles with the most basic, trivial thing: living; loneliness, anxieties, expectations, a life of success measured by the amount of goals you have to fulfill, reminds me of a movie from 2009 that I like very much, very tranquil, The Drifter, a movie about Rob Machado a surfer, and he says: We dream of the perfect wave, the perfect job, the perfect house, the perfect love, and when we get there, we dream of something else, and the journey goes on.
It's a good film that - intriguing ending. I like Trier's stuff.



Monos (2019)

Kind of a mix between Pixote and Lord of the Flies but with Colombian child soldiers. It has similar problems as Pixote too (especially the lack of characters but I can see why it's like that, I just don't personally like it) and despite the topic, it isn't as brutal either. Great scenery and at least OK acting. For some reason, I was expecting a little more but still pretty solid film.



EDIT: Raised my rating by half popcorn. Needed more separation between my recent watches and that was the most logical way to achieve it.
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Monos (2019)

Kind of a mix between Pixote and Lord of the Flies but with Colombian child soldiers. It has similar problems as Pixote too (especially the lack of characters but I can see why it's like that, I just don't personally like it) and despite the topic, it isn't as brutal either. Great scenery and at least OK acting. For some reason, I was expecting a little more but still pretty solid film.

I give Monos
. The characters were one of the things I liked the most about it. What was really interesting to me was that there didn't seem to be a "main" character, and all of the characters got a lot of attention and were very fleshed out and real. The character they ended up focusing on the most at the end of the movie was a character they hardly payed any attention to initially, and gradually the focus would shift to different characters throughout the movie. The cinematography was also excellent with a consistent emphasis on composition and some truly beautiful and difficult to capture shots. The acting was also really intense with things like characters being drowned, jumping into dangerous rapids, and being swarmed by insects. Saying there was a lack of characters and "at least OK acting," to me sounds unfair. I don't see how you can expect more from a film. Perhaps you see conventional style as important? (And for the record there was only one child soldier.)









You can find so many beautiful pictures looking for screenshots of the movie.



Defiance 2008

Surpised how many times Ive seen this now and still really enjoyed it, has great cinematography, it begins in black and white reminding us of the typical images we remember from WWII and then becomes colour.. it says this happened and sets the tone for the whole of the movie I think and Daniel Craig, Jamie Bell and Liev Schreiber are great to watch as the jewish resistance fighter brothers.



The Dead Don't Die 2019

I wish they would..

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This was just a pop and play. Didn't know anything about it except that it's a Leone with Henry Fonda. Terence Hill is Nobody and he wants to send his retiring, gunfighting idol Beauregard (Fonda) out with a bang. It's a comedy and some of it was funny, mostly when it went Looney Tunes with the humor, but it did get old as it went on. Terence Hill was either really funny or really annoying depending on the scene.





Excellent documentary about the late Donald Crowhurst. Contender in a solo round-the-world sailing competition in the sixties. Lost his mind to somewhat extent & tried to cheat his finish. Falsified logs, etc. His trimaran was eventually found empty & his body never found.
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Perhaps you see conventional style as important?
I suppose that's a fair assessment.

What I (probably) mean by lack of characters in regards to Monos is that they're not detailed with deeper motivations or background. In the movie's context, that's definitely a more realistic approach but as a personal preference, I'd like more focus and detail.

Like always with my reviews/ratings, you need to understand that they're based solely on the personal enjoyment of the film. Everything is fleshed out from that and especially now that I've abandoned my own review thread I don't spend too much time choosing my words for these short snippets. Monos is a very solid film that, at least on the first viewing, don't fully match my personal tastes but it's easy to see why someone else would love it.





Re-watch of a powerful movie. Unremittingly bleak & violent, but a satisfying ending. Michael Caine so good.



The Russian Bride (2019)

Ever imagined what it would look like if talentless teenaged Americans tried to copy the New French Extreme cinema? Michael S. Ojeda apparently tried to emulate such a scenario and the result is really bad. The mansion is a nice setting but the cinematography is ugly and clumsy, acting is sub-par and the script is straight from a French trash bin. If the estimated budget of $7M is correct someone must have had a payday.




Shane (1953)

First, Eastwood's Pale Rider is a pretty direct copy of this. I liked that one little more than this (maybe I should have given it half popcorn more) but mostly the difference is that Shane as an older film is more naive in the wrong way. And I really hated the boy.





Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2002


Slow passed, not much story or even dialogue, the camera work is good, the photography as well, there's a superb filmed scene about a beached ship, scary as a mother f*cker and also an analogy. You don't get much details from the story itself, just the characters background, you can only get the details from watching each characters behavior, how they respond to each others actions, after a while you know exactly what his felling without him telling a word. There's not much dialogue around but you understand what they're thinking just from paying attention to the scene in correlation to previews scenes. This film is repleted with analogies and metaphors. It's a very honest film, repleted with telepathy. I'll probably watch it again in the distant future, maybe I'll see it differently.



the samoan lawyer's Avatar
Unregistered User
I just happened to get Maborosi on an impulse a couple years ago when a video store was going out of business. Really beautiful film. I had no idea who Hirokazu Koreeda was, but with all this praise he's looking like someone I'll have to really pay attention to.

Might even be a good candidate for the 10 films by the same director category in the 2020 challenge.

I have Maborosi on my watchlist, sounds like something I'll enjoy. What did you think of Shoplifters?
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