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lmao i can't even pick a softball nomination that anyone likes. i haven't seen it in a long time and these reviews are making me worried if i'm even gonna like it now lol.



lmao i can't even pick a softball nomination that anyone likes. i haven't seen it in a long time and these reviews are making me worried lol.
For what it's worth, I enjoyed it. My review is somewhere upthread.
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The Travelling Players (1975) -


This is my second time watching this film and it's just as great as I remember it being. In regards to Angelopoulous, the only other film I've seen from him is Landscape in the Mist, which I also really enjoyed, but I like this one much more. Landscape in the Mist is definitely the more accessible of the two films since it has a greater emphasis on characterization, but while I enjoyed that film quite a bit, I prefer this film for its greater focus on its mysterious charm.

I stopped caring about the story and the characters about half an hour into this film and instead focused on the film's style. Angelopoulos seamlessly blends personal and political history in a number of hypnotic ways in just about every single sequence. And this is accomplished despite the film being almost four hours long! Throughout all the long takes in the film, Angelopoulos managed to drop my jaw a number of times. For one, he found all kinds of creative ways for the various political figures and set pieces to creep into the frame and intrude on or interrupt the characters lives. For example, the film sometimes showed the sounds of a patrol of Nazis or a political march in the distance get louder and louder until the characters eventually entered the frame. Also, sometimes when the characters would exit from the frame of a shot, it would linger in that location for a while until a soldier or a military vehicle would enter the frame, often indicating the film is jumping from past to present. This unconventional shooting style gave a hypnotic style to the film which I found quite mesmerizing and poetic.

The way violence is shown in this film is also impressive, specifically in regards to which bits are shown onscreen and which are shown offscreen. A recurring aspect to the violence was that, right when a violent bit would start, the characters would run away from the frame and the sounds of gunfire, explosions, or screaming could be heard in the distance, creating a strong sense of claustrophobia and (at times) fear of the unknown in the process. In many other cases, the violence served to prevent the actors from performing time and time again. The main highlight to the violence though is a lengthy sequence in the middle where the actors come across a gunfight between a patrol of Nazis and a group of Communists while sneaking through a town at night. The way the violence and the military units in this sequence are framed (they're only shown through the gaps between various houses and stores), in addition to a dose of surrealism, is nothing short of perfect.

Really, this film kept me glued to the screen from beginning to end in a way that few films have accomplished, and that it accomplishes this in spite of its length makes me all the more impressed by it. Some people may take issue with its lack of characterization, but I didn't mind that at all since it contributed to the film's mysterious power. Of course, I understand that many people will be intimidated by this film's length (which is understandable as I was worried it would be a chore to get through when I first watched it), but I still recommend giving it a chance anyways.

Next Up: Young Man With a Horn



Also, I just realized that I forgot to watch the nominations in ABC order like I usually do with these Halls. Guess I have to drop out now



Also, I just realized that I forgot to watch the nominations in ABC order like I usually do with these Halls. Guess I have to drop out now
Maybe they can still be in alphabetical order...if you grossly misspell them lol





The Painted Bird
(2019)
Nominated by myself

First, I want to say this film is not for the light-hearted. It is beautiful and disturbing at the same time.

Set during WW2, in black and white, the story of a young boy trying to find his way home to his parents. Along the way, he meets several different characters that impact his life, not always in a positive way. It's the dark side of mankind.

In the opening scene, we see him running in the woods with his pet ferret being chased by a few other boys. They push him down, and while one continues to hit him, the others take the ferret and douse it with a flammable liquid, and set it on fire. He wonders to what we feel is his home and the older woman says he's to be blamed for what happened and he calls "Auntie". A bit later we see him draw a picture on the sail of a handmade, with drawings of his parents and himself requesting "come and fetch me". From here, life for him gets even worse. His Aunt dies and the house catches afire. He is left on his own to endure what horrors unfold for him.

Each segment of the film is titled after a person or persons he comes in contact with. There are all forms of abuse in each segment from discrimination, religious persecution, slavery, sexual abuse, etc.

When I first viewed the film, I really enjoyed it. The scenes were stuck in my head. The horrors of humanity are real. This is what life was like seen through the eyes of this young boy. Death, despair, horrors untold.

Most people think that life should be full of joy and no pain. In reality, life is a two-sided card. You take the bad with the good and in hopes, that everything works out for you but there are those times that you just struggle to get through.



I just finished watching Miracle Mile (1988) for the first time. Directed by Steve De Jarnatt, the film stars Anthony Edwards as a man who hears a phone call revealing nuclear war has started and missiles are going to hit soon. It's an interesting story and I thought the film was a reasonably effective drama with enough suspense to keep things moving along. It was relatively short and the pace was good. Anthony Edwards is an actor I have liked for some years now and always felt he was underrated. I think he had the potential to be a bigger star than he ended up being. I liked his performance here. None of the other actors really stood out to me, although they were fine. I think this was a good, solid pick as it isn't a really well known film, but was definitely worth watching.




The Travelling Players (1975)

I have no idea who any of these people were, besides being a troupe of actors. I never learned their names. I never learned their relationships, other than I knew there was a mother and son among them. Basically I never knew what was going on in the film.

The first 50 minutes which constitutes the first act really had me lost as the narrator said it was 1952 and the actors were returning home and hadn't slept in two days...then the narrator says, Joseph Goebbels was traveling through town on his way to Olympia. I'm thinking what??? Goebbels died in the Fuhrer Bunker in 1945 during the last days of WWII. It took me until the second act, almost an hour into the film before I seen Nazis on the street and then realized the film was looking back to events in Greece's past. But there was no hint of the time change in the first act and the video quality I had wasn't the greatest so if the troupe of actors looked younger in 1945 than 1952, I couldn't tell it. The director never did closeups so I couldn't even see what these people looked like. All I knew was there was a couple of men with mustaches, a thin woman and a woman with red hair among the group.

Why did the young woman cry when she seen a man and woman in bed at the hotel? I don't know...was she happy for them? Was one of them her parent? Or her former lover? I don't know, I didn't learn anything about these people, I'm not even sure it was a hotel...All of this lead me to a complete disconnect from the film.

The film's subject matter is right up my alley and I was very interested in that. I was also interested in seeing parts of Greece but there wasn't that many different shooting locations in the 4 hour film. I went into the film with high hopes and I do love slow cinema when it's done with intent of impact, but with this movie I felt the director suffered from something I've read other director's struggle with...not wanting to cut any of the film footage they shot...and The Travelling Players needed editing to bring the film into focus.

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The Travelling Players (1975)

I have no idea who any of these people were, besides being a troupe of actors. I never learned their names. I never learned their relationships, other than I knew there was a mother and son among them. Basically I never knew what was going on in the film.

The first 50 minutes which constitutes the first act really had me lost as the narrator said it was 1952 and the actors were returning home and hadn't slept in two days...then the narrator says, Joseph Goebbels was traveling through town on his way to Olympia. I'm thinking what??? Goebbels died in the Fuhrer Bunker in 1945 during the last days of WWII. It took me until the second act, almost an hour into the film before I seen Nazis on the street and then realized the film was looking back to events in Greece's past. But there was no hint of the time change in the first act and the video quality I had wasn't the greatest so if the troupe of actors looked younger in 1945 than 1952, I couldn't tell it. The director never did closeups so I couldn't even see what these people looked like. All I knew was there was a couple of men with mustaches, a thin woman and a woman with red hair among the group.

Why did the young woman cry when she seen a man and woman in bed at the hotel? I don't know...was she happy for them? Was one of them her parent? Or her former lover? I don't know, I didn't learn anything about these people, I'm not even sure it was a hotel...All of this lead me to a complete disconnect from the film.

The film's subject matter is right up my alley and I was very interested in that. I was also interested in seeing parts of Greece but there wasn't that many different shooting locations in the 4 hour film. I went into the film with high hopes and I do love slow cinema when it's done with intent of impact, but with this movie I felt the director suffered from something I've read other director's struggle with...not wanting to cut any of the film footage they shot...and The Travelling Players needed editing to bring the film into focus.

That's it! I'm changing my review of Miracle Mile to a
now!!!

In all actuality, I can understand your take as I knew in advance this film would get mixed reviews from us. In regards to Angelopoulos though, I recommend watching Landscape in the Mist if you haven't seen it yet. It's much shorter and the characterizations are more conventional, so it would make for a good entry point to his filmography.



In all actuality, I can understand your take as I knew in advance this film would get mixed reviews from us. In regards to Angelopoulos though, I recommend watching Landscape in the Mist if you haven't seen it yet. It's much shorter and the characterizations are more conventional, so it would make for a good entry point to his filmography.

That's it! I'm changing my review of Miracle Mile to a
now!!!
I wasn't going to rate your movie that low Seriously, I didn't hate your movie, in fact I really, really wanted to like it and I thought I would. It did have some nice compositions. Perhaps if the video quality that I watched was better...or if I had read what the movie was about before viewing it, I might not have been so lost.

But like I said before, I think it's great that you and Allaby went with movies that were your personal favorites



Young Man With a Horn (1950) -


I initially had a couple issues with this film, but it sat quite well for me upon reflection. One could say the film takes too long to get going, but I enjoyed how both halves of the film represented the right and wrong paths which Rick took. In the first half, it was implied that Jo was into Rick and they would eventually fall in love. Since Jo had similar interests as Rick and since her close friends were people in the same profession as him, you definitely got the sense that a relationship between the two of them would be healthy. In the second half though, Rick ultimately fell in love with Amy, Jo's friend. Amy was uninterested in Rick's music, spent little time around him, and they argued constantly, resulting in Rick neglecting his music and his friends (his rejection of Art stuck out as especially heartbreaking). Not only was the second half emotionally powerful, but it also twisted my expectations on the direction I thought the film was going to go in. I definitely couldn't imagine the second half being as impactful as it was without the first half which fleshed out the various characters. Fortunately, both halves of the film were given enough breathing room without them overstaying their welcome. Also, given that the film was released in 1950, bonus points to it for having positive African American representation. I did feel that the final couple minutes were rushed, but that's my only knock against the film.

Next Up: The Painted Bird





I watched Rams (2015) today for the first time. Directed by Grímur Hákonarson, this Icelandic drama stars Sigurđur Sigurjónsson and Theodór Júlíusson as two brothers who haven't spoken to each other in decades. They must work together in order to save their sheep.

I thought the cinematography in the film was very beautiful and really helped enhance it. The score was lovely and effective too. Performances were pretty good. I believed the actors. I personally didn't find the story overly engaging though. It wasn't bad, but I felt it just wasn't as interesting as it could have been.

I have only seen a few films from Iceland, so I was happy to check this one out.




Blue Spring (Toshiaki Toyoda, 2001)

Went with a nostalgia pick this time around as this was a big film for me in high school (honestly anything with Ryuhei Matsuda is gonna feel nostalgic to me dude was in like everything I watched around this time lmao). Did it hold up? Ehhh not all the way but the stuff that really stuck with me over the years still works. Mostly its the themes. It really hits that aimless feeling of post-high school anxiety where you don't know what you should be doing and you need to figure it out asap as well as the feeling of having a goal you can never achieve or potential you can never live up to. I think all these feelings are highly relatable and the moments it quietly muses on these kind of ideas are the highlights for me for sure (these are also the moments the cinematography stands out the most) but the other stuff is fun enough too. It does borrow pretty heavily from yakuza films and anime and whatnot (The ending in particular is extremely anime and I'll fully admit to being a sucker anime endings lol) but the grungy 90s aesthetic is a nice touch and the songs featured really bang, love me some noise rock. Doesn't quite hit like it used to but still a good time.



I forgot the opening line.

The Travelling Players (1975)

I have no idea who any of these people were, besides being a troupe of actors. I never learned their names. I never learned their relationships, other than I knew there was a mother and son among them. Basically I never knew what was going on in the film.

The first 50 minutes which constitutes the first act really had me lost as the narrator said it was 1952 and the actors were returning home and hadn't slept in two days...then the narrator says, Joseph Goebbels was traveling through town on his way to Olympia. I'm thinking what??? Goebbels died in the Fuhrer Bunker in 1945 during the last days of WWII. It took me until the second act, almost an hour into the film before I seen Nazis on the street and then realized the film was looking back to events in Greece's past. But there was no hint of the time change in the first act and the video quality I had wasn't the greatest so if the troupe of actors looked younger in 1945 than 1952, I couldn't tell it. The director never did closeups so I couldn't even see what these people looked like. All I knew was there was a couple of men with mustaches, a thin woman and a woman with red hair among the group.

Why did the young woman cry when she seen a man and woman in bed at the hotel? I don't know...was she happy for them? Was one of them her parent? Or her former lover? I don't know, I didn't learn anything about these people, I'm not even sure it was a hotel...All of this lead me to a complete disconnect from the film.

The film's subject matter is right up my alley and I was very interested in that. I was also interested in seeing parts of Greece but there wasn't that many different shooting locations in the 4 hour film. I went into the film with high hopes and I do love slow cinema when it's done with intent of impact, but with this movie I felt the director suffered from something I've read other director's struggle with...not wanting to cut any of the film footage they shot...and The Travelling Players needed editing to bring the film into focus.

The Travelling Players is interesting in how it purposely misdirects the viewer, changing time periods with absolutely no warning. I was confused when, just after being informed that it's 1952 we see fascists in the street and hear about speeches from Goebbels - then at the end, with the characters obviously at the end of their journey, we're told it's 1939. Or else, when it's obviously the 1950s, and then in the very same shot we see Nazi occupiers. Theodoros Angelopoulos seems to have wanted to blend this 13 year period together, beginning at the end and ending at the beginning - at the same location. The travelling players were different, but they were basically the same. The characters actually take a linear path through the film, often in spite of what we're told the time period is. I've read someone mentioning that these travelling players are like ghosts, unfettered by the dictates of straight narrative. They not only wander around the Greek countryside, but the wander around in time as well. When you begin watching The Travelling Players expecting just a normal movie, you quickly realise this is going to be anything but.
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Latest Review : Le Circle Rouge (1970)



I forgot the opening line.


Miracle Mile - 1988

Directed by Steve De Jarnatt

Written by Steve De Jarnatt

Starring Anthony Edwards & Mare Winningham

It all comes down to that age-old question. If you knew the world was about to end - say, in about 1 hour - what would you do? Of course, perhaps the first thing you'd do is try to confirm that the world will actually end in 1 hour, and make sure someone isn't pulling your leg. How much of that hour you waste doing that is up to you. It's the first step Harry (Anthony Edwards) takes in Miracle Mile, Steve De Jarnatt's labor of love that took nearly a decade to create from inception to it's release. Harry's second step is finding and warning Julie (Mare Winningham) of the danger, and then rescuing her - they've only just began dating and falling in love, something which changes the tone of Miracle Mile so drastically when the doomsday clock starts ticking, and the people of Los Angeles start tearing the place apart in blind panic. It's a very unusual, and surreal film.

Harry has unfortunately just stood his new girlfriend up, accidentally sleeping in due to a power cut in his building (fate : delivered by a feckless pigeon.) He arrives at the diner where she works at around 4am, and feels compelled to answer a ringing payphone. It happens to be a young person working in a missile silo, trying to warn his father that missiles are about to be launched and that a retaliatory response is to be expected in around 70 minutes time. You can forgive Harry for not quite believing it, but the call troubles him. It sounded like the caller had been silenced. Inside the diner, he hashes it out with both customers and employees - and there happens to be someone there (played by a young Denise Crosby) who can find out how reliable the information may be. When everyone decides that this could well be true, a race is on to a helipad which can hopefully transport these hopefuls to the airport and onwards to Antarctica - but Harry won't leave Julie behind.

Harry and Julie. There's is a really cute romance, with Harry being introduced as someone perhaps unlucky in love, and reserved. They meet at the La Brea Tar Pits, and size each other up over the course of the main credits sequence, almost going their own way. It's not the handsome guy and gorgeous girl we're used to in American feature films, but neither is this the story and tone we really get from any other feature. Winningham looks like she's been modelled on 1970s glam era David Bowie (that hairstyle is...something), and Edwards sports a blue suit only suitable for wear in the 1980s and absolutely no other time period. They do enough for me to buy that they're falling in love, and although neither were going to receive an Oscar nomination, there's not really anything much in the script that allows for them to really dig deep, except for in the film's final moments. It's especially sweet to know that these two performers married in real life in 2021 though - they sell the love story, so that even though they've just met, you understand why Harry comes back for her when he'd be forgiven for just taking off.

Along the way, these characters come across many people playing small parts. Denise Crosby I've mentioned. Mykelti Williamson (billed as Mykel T. Williamson - obviously somebody wrote that down while on the phone with him) plays a thief that Harry hijacks and forces to drive him places. It rankles a little that the part for the black actor here was as a thief, but at the time this was pretty common. Both Harry and this character come across Eddie Bunker, which perked my interest, and they participate in a scene where two cops burn alive - really creating a sense of whiplash, for this started out as a cute love story. Robocop's Robert DoQui plays the chef at the diner. The ever-recognizable O-Lan Jones plays a waitress. The equally recognizable character actor Kurt Fuller shows up on the helicopter pad, and features in a controversial moment late. Earl Boen, the ever-present psychologist in the Terminator franchise is one of the diners. Brian Thompson is a buffed-up helicopter pilot. It's always pleasant having recognizable faces show up in a film, and this one is treasure trove of 1980s bit-players.

Steve De Jarnatt's script for this became a well-known piece of property during the 1980s, and studios wanted to produce what would have been a toned down version of what he wrote. De Jarnatt was painfully aware of what that would mean to the whole concept, and at one stage bought the option back so he'd have the opportunity to make it himself, and stay true to the ending and tone. John Daly eventually decided to produce, in what would be a difficult, drawn-out process, for $3.7 million - so when necessary reshoots and adjustments didn't fit within Daly's budget, De Jarnatt himself would pay the bills and fight every step of the way. The screenplay was finished in the early 80s, and the film was eventually released in May 1989, an almost decade-long process to see out someone's artistic vision without any interference from anyone else. This impacted Steve De Jarnatt in a way which made him non-prolific in the industry, only directing two features among other screenwriting and directing for television.

The cinematography was performed by Dutch director of photography Theo van de Sande and is given an eye-catching style and artistry at times which would satisfy those who want something more than shot-reverse-shot and static filmmaking. The real attention grabbers though are Tangerine Dream, who gave Miracle Mile it's electronically pulsating score - a factor which succeeds more than any other aspect of the film. You'd be forgiven (or, more accurately, admired) for getting the album and playing it during your rush hour commute - the sense of urgency which infects society as a whole is rhythmically tuned into, and every beat accelerates to various synthetic sounds and instruments. When thinking back on the film, it's with Tangerine Dream's magnetic fast-paced music at the forefront every time, and it compliments this movie to a perfect degree. Tangerine Dream had most notably scored Sorcerer and remained a source of cinematic musical accompaniment for a considerable time, giving us music for Risky Business, Thief, Legend, Firestarter and Near Dark.

Miracle Mile is a good example of a film which plays out in real time, at least from the moment where Harry discovers there's little more than an hour left according to his providential phone call. From there on out everything slides steadily in the direction of surrealism, which mirrors how our characters would really be feeling - from all night gyms to night-time strolls with your girl slumped in a shopping trolley, the film keeps up it's pace well. It manages to insert emotional cues, with Julie's grandparents (played by Lou Hancock and John Agar) being re-united after an extended period separated, but whisked away from Julie just at a time she'd like to be close to them. Harry would almost have to feel a sense of guilt, especially when we consider the possibility that the phone call he received might not be genuine. Panic is spreading, instigated by him - could all this be Harry's fault? Is he a proverbial Chicken Little? At a certain stage in the film, people have died, so when Harry and Julie stop to consider that the missiles may not be coming after all, you almost hope they do.

I'm probably underselling Edwards and Winningham when I compare their performances to Oscar-winning ones, for they do have an emotional journey. Theirs is a love life on fast forward (it's easy to profess life-long love when your life expectancy is measured in minutes) but it's a love fettered by fear and anxiety. This is a strange love story, but I enjoy anything that's strange and unusual - especially if it comes from the 1980s and is infected with recognizable 80s trademarks, fashion-wise, actor-wise, music-wise and culture-wise. There's even that one moment of gratuitous nudity, which comes out of the blue. When the movie was released it competed with Road House at the box office for a few weeks, and was then crushed when Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade came out. After nearly a decade of work, that seems wrong, but films get a chance to live on in this era and I'm happy I got to take a look at it and experience it. This is one film that passed me by at the time, and that I've only found out about now.

At a casual glance, I didn't realise that this film would be about nuclear catastrophe. Way back before De Jarnatt had backing it was going to provide a stand-alone plot for The Twilight Zone movie which was just about to be given the green light - and the finished film does have that Twilight Zone feel about it. The show did have many entries related to various apocalyptic scenarios. The tone we end up with by the end is the same one you'd feel when things became strange on that show, and I'm glad we ended up with a version that wasn't messed around with and given a 'Hollywood' ending, or featured 'Hollywood' actors. I really wish that De Jarnatt had of had an easier time of it though, and I really wish he'd had the kind of career where we'd get to experience a lot more of his films. It maddens me to think that filmmakers like this are so discouraged, and other less talented ones have longer careers just because they accept interference with their films - interference which usually makes for worse movies in the end. I think Miracle Mile would have been even better with a budget that at least allowed for what De Jarnatt wanted to do, and didn't have him struggling so hard to make changes and finish it. It's a real labor of love though, and a film I think people will always by interested in seeing and talking about.




The Travelling Players is interesting in how it purposely misdirects the viewer, changing time periods with absolutely no warning. I was confused when, just after being informed that it's 1952 we see fascists in the street and hear about speeches from Goebbels - then at the end, with the characters obviously at the end of their journey, we're told it's 1939. Or else, when it's obviously the 1950s, and then in the very same shot we see Nazi occupiers. Theodoros Angelopoulos seems to have wanted to blend this 13 year period together, beginning at the end and ending at the beginning - at the same location. The travelling players were different, but they were basically the same. The characters actually take a linear path through the film, often in spite of what we're told the time period is. I've read someone mentioning that these travelling players are like ghosts, unfettered by the dictates of straight narrative. They not only wander around the Greek countryside, but the wander around in time as well. When you begin watching The Travelling Players expecting just a normal movie, you quickly realise this is going to be anything but.
That makes sense, thanks. I wish I had knew that before I watched The Travelling Players, but I went into without knowing a thing about the movie. Some people prefer to watch all 1st time watches by doing a blind watch, others do research before watching so they have some back ground information about the director's intentions. I think both methods are good, it just depends on the movie.

Sounds like you might have done a blind watch, that's what I did and somewhere after the Nazi's appear I started to think the director wasn't using a chronological timeline which of course made it hard for me to ground my thoughts, hence I felt as lost as the traveling players seemed to be...As a side note, my wife who also watched the movie, next day read about Greece's 20th century history and she told about what she read...so at least I got a mini history lesson out of it




The Travelling Players (Theo Angelopoulos, 1975)

So this does a lot of things I like. Exactly my shit in terms of camerawork with all the pans, dollies and trucking shots and y'all know I dig on films with little to no direct narrative but despite this its also not my kind of film at all. I always have a tough time getting into films that are just wall-to-wall misery, especially when they're presented with a realist approach but I'll also admit that I went into this blind and was really not in a good mindset for it since, you know, *gestures at everything*. This also being the first year of my life where I've actually been happy, spending like 6 hours (approximately how long it took me to watch this) being miserable wasn't ideal. This probably would have went over a lot better with me basically any time before now lol. To talk about the film itself, I did find a hefty chunk of it extremely repetitive. Like there's probably an hour and a half straight of "here's a scene, then someone gets shot, repeat" and this is probably my only real complaint about it. Otherwise its an extremely well made, effective film that I hated watching lmao.



The Painted Bird (2019) -


I couldn't get into this one. Comparing this to other films about kids experiencing the horrors of war, it can't help but pale to Come and See, but every war film I've seen does, so I won't hold that against this film. What I will hold against it though is how cold I was left throughout it. In spite of how much misery the boy experiences and witnesses in the film (physical abuse, rape, suicide, animal cruelty, pedophilia, bestiality, antisemitism, etc.), the impact it had on him remained too vague for those scenes to stick with me in any lasting way. A lot of this falls on Kotlár since neither his acting nor his physical appearance make any changes throughout the film. Rather, he just keeps the same blank expression on his face and looks the same at the end of the film as he does in the opening. Even the retaliation angle in the second half of the film, while it's one of the more promising elements of the film, didn't click with me as well as it could've due to the reasons listed above. Technically speaking though, the movie is pretty good. Some of the larger-scale gunfights looked cool and, in spite of what I said up above, a couple of the disturbing scenes left a decent impact on me (that's to be expected with a movie like this though). Also, while fair criticisms could be made that the black and white photography looks too pretty and doesn't pair well the disturbing content shown in the film, I enjoyed how it created a contrast between the two. Finally, it was also cool to see Aleksei Kravchenko (star of the aforementioned Come and See) in this film, perhaps as a nod to the film. Overall though, the film sort of just came and went and was pretty forgettable.

Last Up: My Favorite Year