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Luca 10/10
Definitely one of my favourite animated movies.

here is the movie trailer for anyone interested in watching:
https://shrinke.me/1mPMjqn



RODRIGO D: NO FUTURO
(1990, Gaviria)
A film from Colombia



"♪ Cómo me calmo yo; todo rechazo,
ya no, consigo más, satisfacción; ♫
♫ ya ni con drogas; ni con alcohol;
ya no consigo ninguna reacción ♪"

Rodrigo D: No Futuro follows the titular character (Ramiro Meneses), a young man growing up amidst the poverty and crime of Medellín, while dreaming to be a drummer. Rodrigo is still reeling from the death of his mother and just can't get his act together. He doesn't work or go to school, he fights constantly with his sister, his relationship with his father is distant (despite the latter's attempts to connect), and he just wanders around the city, hanging out with friends and listening to music.

Of course, Rodrigo's dreams and aspirations are complicated and suffocated by the environment around him. Meneses does a pretty good job conveying that mixture of unhappiness and bottled up restlessness inside him. As it is, the film gave me vibes of Truffaut's The 400 Blows or Meirelles City of God, in how they present kids/teenagers trying to escape the circumstances around them.

Grade:



Full review on my Movie Loot
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Crossfire - 1947 noir from Edward Dmytryk and starring Robert Mitchum, Robert Ryan and Robert Young. It's a message movie that takes on anti-Semitism in an unequivocal, no nonsense way. It's set in Washington D.C immediately following WWII and Mitchum and Ryan play two of many soldiers who have been "demobilized", most of whom are grappling with uncertain futures as civilians.

George Cooper plays Mitchell, who has been accused of beating to death a man that he had met at a bar. Young plays police Captain Finlay and is tasked with determining who killed the dead man Samuels. He eventually figures out that the crime was rooted in anti-Semitism and follows the trail to the likeliest suspect who at first glance appears to be Mitchell. But there are enough inconsistencies that Finlay's cop radar is triggered. The main witness who inadvertently provides the most damning evidence is Montgomery played by Ryan. He's a loudmouth, a bigot and a bully. Mitchum plays Sgt. Keeley, the NCO in charge of this particular squad and he immediately takes it upon himself to extricate Mitchell from the charges.

Out of the three Roberts it's Mitchum who has the more nondescript role, playing a father figure/protector riding herd over his men. But Young and Ryan make the most of their roles with Young as the weary but still razor sharp detective and Ryan in a tour de force of sorts that earned him his only Academy Award nomination. He manages to convey all of Montgomery's weakness and arrogance and fear in just a handful of charged scenes. Gloria Grahame also has a small but pivotal role.

There's also a scene featuring a lengthy monologue by Young which ultimately rings true and is absolutely crucial to the story. Any other time it might have comes off as just more Hollywood proselytizing but Dmytryk and Young and writers John Paxton and Richard Brooks make it work. Worth checking out.






2nd viewning. It could be called Castle Wolfstein - The Movie. Even the font is similar
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Crossfire - 1947 noir from Edward Dmytryk and starring Robert Mitchum, Robert Ryan and Robert Young. It's a message movie that takes on anti-Semitism in an unequivocal, no nonsense way. It's set in Washington D.C immediately following WWII and Mitchum and Ryan play two of many soldiers who have been "demobilized", most of whom are grappling with uncertain futures as civilians.

George Cooper plays Mitchell, who has been accused of beating to death a man that he had met at a bar. Young plays police Captain Finlay and is tasked with determining who killed the dead man Samuels. He eventually figures out that the crime was rooted in anti-Semitism and follows the trail to the likeliest suspect who at first glance appears to be Mitchell. But there are enough inconsistencies that Finlay's cop radar is triggered. The main witness who inadvertently provides the most damning evidence is Montgomery played by Ryan. He's a loudmouth, a bigot and a bully. Mitchum plays Sgt. Keeley, the NCO in charge of this particular squad and he immediately takes it upon himself to extricate Mitchell from the charges.

Out of the three Roberts it's Mitchum who has the more nondescript role, playing a father figure/protector riding herd over his men. But Young and Ryan make the most of their roles with Young as the weary but still razor sharp detective and Ryan in a tour de force of sorts that earned him his only Academy Award nomination. He manages to convey all of Montgomery's weakness and arrogance and fear in just a handful of charged scenes. Gloria Grahame also has a small but pivotal role.

There's also a scene featuring a lengthy monologue by Young which ultimately rings true and is absolutely crucial to the story. Any other time it might have comes off as just more Hollywood proselytizing but Dmytryk and Young and writers John Paxton and Richard Brooks make it work. Worth checking out.

Yeah, solid film. In addition to what you wrote, I enjoyed how it showed flashbacks of the same crime from different perspectives. Kurosawa perfected this premise and used it to much better effect in Rashomon, but I found it interesting to find this aspect represented in a film which predated it by a few years.
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Welcome Home (2020) - 7/10. This was good stuff. Violent, gritty and dark. Loved it. Quite unexpected. Indian movies are mostly fluff, but this was quite different. Recommended!
Where is this available?



Crossfire - 1947 noir from Edward Dmytryk and starring
Robert Mitchum, Robert Ryan and Robert Young. It's a message movie that takes on anti-Semitism in an unequivocal, no nonsense way. It's set in Washington D.C immediately following WWII and Mitchum and Ryan play two of many soldiers who have been "demobilized", most of whom are grappling with uncertain futures as civilians.

George Cooper plays Mitchell, who has been accused of beating to death a man that he had met at a bar. Young plays police Captain Finlay and is tasked with determining who killed the dead man Samuels. He eventually figures out that the crime was rooted in anti-Semitism and follows the trail to the likeliest suspect who at first glance appears to be Mitchell. But there are enough inconsistencies that Finlay's cop radar is triggered. The main witness who inadvertently provides the most damning evidence is Montgomery played by Ryan. He's a loudmouth, a bigot and a bully. Mitchum plays Sgt. Keeley, the NCO in charge of this particular squad and he immediately takes it upon himself to extricate Mitchell from the charges.

Out of the three Roberts it's Mitchum who has the more nondescript role, playing a father figure/protector riding herd over his men. But Young and Ryan make the most of their roles with Young as the weary but still razor sharp detective and Ryan in a tour de force of sorts that earned him his only Academy Award nomination. He manages to convey all of Montgomery's weakness and arrogance and fear in just a handful of charged scenes. Gloria Grahame also has a small but pivotal role.

There's also a scene featuring a lengthy monologue by Young which ultimately rings true and is absolutely crucial to the story. Any other time it might have comes off as just more Hollywood proselytizing but Dmytryk and Young and writers John Paxton and Richard Brooks make it work. Worth checking out.
Nice review. Here is my commentary:


Crossfire (1947)

Directed by the inestimable Edward Dmytryk, and starring the 3 Roberts (Young, Mitchum, Ryan) along with the always fascinating Gloria Grahame, the film is a complex whodunit with noir treatment by cinematographer J. Roy Hunt.

John Paxton wrote the screenplay based upon the novel
The Brick Foxhole written by Richard Brooks. In the book the object of murder was a homosexual. But since homosexuality could not be mentioned in 1947, the unfortunate character was switched to Jewish. In that way the premise was somewhat weakened, since Jews were not heavily ostracized to the degree that homosexuals were. The comparatively gentler prejudice that Jews received at the time was showcased in Gentleman’s Agreement, released later that year.

Nonetheless, starting with a somewhat shaky premise did not hurt the film’s power, which was predominantly provide
d by its actors, direction and photography. Robert Young was especially effective somewhat against type, playing a semi-hardboiled police investigator. His continual pipe smoking actually served to soften his character, giving him more of a fatherly or professorial image.

Robert Ryan on the other hand registered a powerful performance of a near sadistic, dominant bully type-- a role which would more or less pigeonhole him for the rest of his career. Mitchum was his silky self in a portrayal of an honest concerned everyman soldier who simply wants to get to the truth. And Gloria Grahame played a tramp who is finally convinced to tell what she knows.

Crossfire is not in the highest ranking on my list of personal favorite noir pictures, nor in general are films which prominently feature aggressive bully types. Still this is a well done memorable picture with notable themes and performances, and is an essential example of top mystery film making from Hollywood’s golden era.








Adequate and involving doc about the pioneering comedian and his evolving and unorthodox approach to politics and nutrition. Covering both his influences and his substantial influence on comedy, it illustates an important touchstone between Lenny Bruce and the later work of Pryor and Carlin in the lineage of provocative and conscious comedy.



The film also delicately broaches Gregory's later decline - from Alzheimer's - which saw him in his later years struggling cognitively with increasingly wild conspiracies - chemtrails, Cosby was set up by NBC, Prince was murdered by Warren Buffet, etc. This tragedy is handled gracefully, and the heart of the man and his nobler intentions are shown in balance with integrity. Definitely recommended for anyone underfamiliar with his legacy or this particular era of comedy.


7.5/10



MUSTANG
(2015, Ergüven)
A film with a title that starts with the letters M or N



"The house became a wife factory that we never came out of."

Mustang is a Turkish film that follows the lives of five orphaned sisters as they struggle with the conservative beliefs and upbringing of their grandmother and uncle who are raising them. The above exchange comes at a point when the grandmother has had enough of the girls behavior and decides to isolate them at their home as she marries them off.

The film is co-written and directed by Deniz Gamze Ergüven, and apparently the catalyst event is inspired in her own experience as a Turkish girl. The "catalyst event" is nothing but an innocent game of "chicken fight" with some male friends at the beach; something that their grandmother (Nihal Koldaş) classifies as her "granddaughters, pleasuring themselves on boys' necks". That gives you an idea of the kind of "conservative" mindset they're trapped in.

Grade:



Full review on my Movie Loot and the PR HOF4



The Mandela Effect, 2019 (D)

Two parents go to the beach with their daughter, who dies there. The father then starts unraveling a whole thing about the Mande effect, where millions of people misremember a bunch of things in the same way.

At around 80 minutes and using exposition and a copious serving of montages of real-life tv and youtube clips, plus narration, this movie still manages to feel long and uneventful. The events are a minor component of the movie. It feels like a spitballing session that was not followed up with a scriptwriting session or a clean up of the mess. The guy talks too much about programming, you get those viral clips of people talking about simulation theory, etc, and then it ends pretty stupidly. It talks a lot, but says nothing. Bad movie.



I went and saw Old today at the cinema. Directed by M. Night Shyamalan, this mystery/thriller is about a family at a secluded beach who start aging rapidly. Overall, I liked the film. It's an interesting concept and I was invested in the story and seeing what would happen. Performances were hit and miss for me. Thomasin McKenzie gives the best performance in the film and her character was easily my favourite. Other performances range from decent to being over the top and not always believable. The camera angles were kind of strange and at times came across as almost random. I felt that the odd camera work detracted a little from the film. Even with those quibbles, I was still entertained by the film. It's not Shyamalan's best film, but it is also not his worst. My rating is a



The Mandela Effect, 2019 (D)

Two parents go to the beach with their daughter, who dies there. The father then starts unraveling a whole thing about the Mande effect, where millions of people misremember a bunch of things in the same way.

At around 80 minutes and using exposition and a copious serving of montages of real-life tv and youtube clips, plus narration, this movie still manages to feel long and uneventful. The events are a minor component of the movie. It feels like a spitballing session that was not followed up with a scriptwriting session or a clean up of the mess. The guy talks too much about programming, you get those viral clips of people talking about simulation theory, etc, and then it ends pretty stupidly. It talks a lot, but says nothing. Bad movie.
You make some very good points. However I was impressed what they did with a tiny budget. Here are my comments:

The Mandela Effect (2019)

Despite its low budget and use of comparatively unknown actors, this is an absorbing and clever sci-fi film that probes the parallel universe theory.

A computer game designer (Charlie) and his wife tragically lose their young daughter in a freak accident. Later the man starts noticing a series of false memories (the Mandela effect). He, his wife, and brother-in-law experience an additional series of false memories which bring up a dichotomy between their memories and facts which they know to be true.

Charlie eventually seeks out the advice of a famous scientist who has been ostracized by many of his colleagues from suggesting that life is simply a computerized simulation. This concept leads Charlie to believe that his daughter may not have died, but it simply living in a parallel universe.

After Charlie probes the potential operation of such simulation clandestinely via a university's quantum computer, he attempts to interrupt the simulation so as to bring about the reality of their lives prior to the daughter's death.

I was surprised at the quality of the production, given its micro budget. Director/writer David Guy Levy deftly pulls together all elements to fashion an interesting and suspenseful sci-fi movie. One can imagine this film as a major release if it had a bigger budget.

Doc's rating: 6/10







SF = Z



[Snooze Factor Ratings]:
Z = didn't nod off at all
Zz = nearly nodded off but managed to stay alert
Zzz = nodded off and missed some of the film but went back to watch what I missed
Zzzz = nodded off and missed some of the film but went back to watch what I missed but nodded off again at the same point and therefore needed to go back a number of times before I got through it...
Zzzzz = nodded off and missed some or the rest of the film but was not interested enough to go back over it