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Paradise : Faith - (2012)
This is part of an Ulrich Seidl trilogy (the other two films are
Paradise : Love and
Paradise : Hope.) It's the second film in it, so I don't know if I missed any kind of set-up in the first film, but I can say that it works quite well as a stand-alone film. So much so that I really want to see the other two now. It's the kind of movie where sitting back and pondering it, I found that it had opened up a kind of dialogue with me and made me think, which is always great. Anna Maria (Maria Hofstätter) is a middle aged Austrian lady who is a devout, fanatical Christian - the type that has recently converted and is obsessed. Her mission in life is to save as many people as she can, but behind closed doors she tortures herself as penance for imagined sins, and has an unhealthy fixation on Jesus Christ which is crossing over into the sexual realm. When her Muslim husband appears one day, who has lost the use of his legs, conflict erupts in her household. She refuses to sleep with him (in all senses of the word) and he begins to treat her more and more harshly - it's a conflict that sheds much light on Anna Maria. It also sheds light on people's relationship with their God, and with their fellow human beings - where honeymoon phases are often fleeting.
7.5/10
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Serenity - (2005)
On the back cover of my
Serenity DVD it says "running time : 188 minutes" - which is misleading to say the least. Approaching the 2 hour mark of
Serenity I was thinking, "there's over an hour left to go? This sure
is epic sci-fi." A few minutes later and the film was over. I had to rethink the whole film, because I'd steeled myself for an epic 3 hour sci-fi movie, but this ended up being more normal than that. If that DVD is taking extra features into account, it still shouldn't say what it said, and should be clearer. Anyway, what can I say -
Serenity was good, but would have been better being more epic. The fights and action are decent, and central government-conspiracy plot enough to be entertaining - but it fell well short of my expectations that were huge after thinking it was going to be a truly epic
Lawrence of Arabia-sized science fiction classic. Psychic action heroes, space battles and futuristic cities are fine, but in that regard this doesn't stand out from the crowd.
6/10
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Magic in the Moonlight - (2014)
I like Woody Allen films, but after watching the awful
A Rainy Day in New York I was pretty scared about getting back on the horse again. Thankfully enough,
Magic in the Moonlight is good enough to pass the time without severe psychological consequences. There's nothing special here - but being set in the 1920s, and having a plot revolve around magicians and an acclaimed psychic at least made it interesting. Stanley Crawford (Colin Firth) is determined to prove psychic Sophie Baker (Emma Stone) a fraud, but they begin to fall in love, and Crawford starts to believe Sophie might actually be psychic - both events changing his world from that of a grumpy cynic to a happy man reintroduced to the wonders of the world. Both are engaged to other people however. I didn't love this movie, but I didn't hate it either - it's the kind of film that will fill in some time, but be forgotten a few weeks after watching it.
6/10