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Fire Will Come -


Moody, deliberate but not exactly accessible, this Spanish drama kicks off with a bulldozer plowing down trees until it stops in reverence at a much larger, more majestic one. It then diverts to Amador, a pyromaniac who, like the tree, is different than most of society, but like most people we can't easily explain, he is treated much differently. He is released from prison after setting a forest ablaze and returns to his hometown in Galicia, where everyone but his loving mother is suspicious. What follows is a sometimes thought-provoking and sometimes interminable march to what the title promises.

With forest fires becoming more frequent, it's not surprising that there are more movies about them, and it's a nice change of pace to see a non-action one. Filming - with impressive cinematography, I might add - in not only a heavily forested area, but also in a town that has seen better days makes the movie seem more documentary than drama, not to mention makes you wonder if such places are where people like Amador are bred. Speaking of documentaries, the climactic event - which I don't think is a spoiler to mention since it's in the title - actually happened, and the way director Laxe and company film it put me in the (underfunded and undersupplied) firemen’s shoes and proves that there's no substitute for the real thing.

There's plenty to complement about the look and feel of the production, but I wish I could say the same about the characters. Amador is supposed to be a mystery, but he's perhaps too mysterious. In Herzog and Bresson's movies about the lonely and misunderstood - two directors Laxe is obviously inspired by and not just because he uses a non-professional cast - they're able to do this while giving us something to work with, if you will. Despite scenes where Amador bonds with a veterinarian who's treating his mom's horse, so much of the time spent with him seems like filler. Despite Benedicta Sanchez's work as his sympathetic mother, I always felt like I was at a distance. For the ways the movie used forest fires to examine humanity's failings, I give it a mild recommendation. I just wish the rest of the movie hadn’t taken a backseat to the forest fire scenes.



The Way We Were (1973)



Seen this a million times. Love it.
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I never watch animated movies, but made an exception for this one based on a true story. Excellent movie.



Lilya 4-ever (2002) A powerful, well made film with excellent performances.
I love this film, and it radically changed the way I regard the portrayal of violence/sexual violence in movies.



Lilya 4-ever (2002) A powerful, well made film with excellent performances.
I think I saw this, but can’t remember a single thing.



Le Pupille (2022) I watched this today on Disney+ because it is Oscar nominated for best live action short film. It's really well made, charming and sweet. The acting is delightful and the cast is adorable.





Living (2022)


They white washed Ikiru! jk jk jk this is a remake of the Kurosawa classic moved from Tokyo to London. And it feels like they cut about a half hour off the run time to deliver a powerful and pleasant experience. Famed author Kazuo Ishiguro decided to tackle this masterpiece with Bill Nighy giving an incredible performance. It's a funnier version of the story because the director clearly doesn't have the same visual skills as Kurosawa but as a remake this is pretty solid.





After Yang, 2021

Jake (Colin Farrell) and Kyra (Jodie Turner-Smith) live with their young adopted daughter Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja) and Yang (Justin H. Min), an artificial intelligence designed to help Mika connect with her Chinese heritage. One day Yang suffers a malfunction and will not restart. As Jake tries to find a way to fix Yang, he gets an insight into Yang's experiences with their family and others.

This is a stirring, meditative look at connection and loss. Anchored by strong, wry-but-moving performances and a distinct visual style, it slowly unravels Jake's understanding of the young (artificial) man purchased.

The film is incredibly strong from a visual perspective. Starting with one of the most engaging opening credits sequences I've ever seen, there are many layers of visual interest to explore. There is great use of contrasting interior and exterior spaces, including the structure of the house with a central courtyard made visible through large glass windows. Characters, and their voices, appear and disappear in unexpected ways. Later in the film we get some glimpses into how Yang saw the world, and the memories are loaded with reflections, refractions, and simple meditations on tea leaves swriling in hot water.

The performances themselves are for the most part pretty muted---this is one of those films where half of the characters seem to be speaking in half-whispers, though I'm not exactly complaining because Sarita Choudhury's voice is like drinking hot chocolate--but they are coherent. There's a fundamental distance between Jake, Kyra, and Mika, something rendered more blatant by Yang's sudden absence. I really enjoyed Min's performance as Yang, always keeping the character right at the edge of making you wonder if you're seeing really good programming, or something more (for lack of a better word) organic. I continue to be impressed with Farrell's comedic timing, something I first started noticing in earnest in his work in Lanthimos's films. He brings a mix of desperation (as with Jake's repeated protests that despite buying Yang used, "he was certified!"), wary outrage at the state of the world (as when a technician offers to turn Yang's head into a personality-free virtual assistant), and some deeper sorrow undercutting it all.

But the story itself, and its implicit meditations on what it means to be alive or "real", is what really got me. This film, to me, felt like a spiritual cousin to Marjorie Prime, another film that explored memory and relationships and the possible role of artificial intelligence in those things. The movie doesn't just come at this exploration through Yang himself--though the trips we take into his memories are definitely highlights of the film--but also through the grief process of the family he left behind. Despite repeated offers that treat Yang as an object--like discussions of warranties, repairs, recycling him, cashing him in, etc--the family can only approach his loss as they would mourn a "real" person. Mika misses her older brother. The role he played in their lives, whether via programming or something else, was the role of a person.

One of the best aspects of the film is that it doesn't let itself get bogged down in the "rules" of AI or some of the other near future technologies we see (like a neighbor whose daughters are clones). It simply lets us watch what happens when people integrate those human-adjacent (or human, depending on your point of view) beings into their lives.

This film is full of amazing little moments, not unlike how we come to understand the way that Yang's memory storage works. I LOVED a sequence where Yang explains adoption to Mika using the analogy of tree grafting. Just all around very moving.




I forgot the opening line.

By Netflix Animation/Netflix - Vital Thrills, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=71098602

The Sea Beast - (2022)

My primary reward for watching The Sea Beast was one of visual satisfaction - this animated feature hasn't just got one wonderful "monster" to marvel at (and boy, is that creature beautiful or what), it has half a dozen or so of the most incredible life forms ever invented for an animated movie. It's a really visually appealing film, but for me it did lack the comedic spark that other animated studios give their features - and when that's not present I find that I really miss it. Other than that, this might be a good option for kids if you have them, for they'll surely marvel at the organisms on display. I prefer films like Moana, which had great songs and great humour, and although you'll get a song or two in this, it'll be the characters singing sea shanties.

This is the first of the five Best Animated Feature Oscar nominees I've watched, and I have four to go. I'm going to try and see them all before the awards ceremony, but it'll be a stiffer challenge than some other categories.

6/10



The Martha Mitchell Effect - (2022)

During the Watergate scandal, wife of John N. Mitchell, Martha, started speaking out about what was going on, so Nixon told his old Attorney General and head of his reelection committee to resign and tell the press he was doing so because his wife had gone crazy. This attempt to shut her up was appalling, and Martha never stopped trying to get the truth out, despite the fact that it indeed did sound crazy, which combined with what was circling in the press lessened the impact. In the end she was vindicated - after being held against her will, at one stage drugged, and after all those stories were leaked to the press by the president's men. Now, "The Martha Mitchell Effect" means having people tell everyone else you're crazy while you're actually telling the truth. This short documentary about it has been nominated for an Oscar this year - it's the first out of five I've watched.

6/10
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Latest Review : Le Circle Rouge (1970)



The Red Shoes

Director: Emeric Pressburger and Michael Powell
Rating: 10/10


If you haven't started your pilgramage through Pressburger and Powell films, I highly reccomend thrashing through them. The Red Shoes was the most intense and fulfilling experierence of what I have seen of their filmography so far.





I forgot the opening line.
Le Pupille (2022) I watched this today on Disney+ because it is Oscar nominated for best live action short film. It's really well made, charming and sweet. The acting is delightful and the cast is adorable.
That was really good! Just as you described - "charming and sweet" with an added touch of meaning. I watched it after reading your post.







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





The Kid Detective, 2020

As a child, Abe (Adam Brody) was an Encyclopedia Brown-like kid detective--working out of a treehouse, charging $0.50 per case, and solving mysteries like the disappearance of the school fundraiser money. But his innocent enthusiasm for his detective work takes a heavy hit when his friend Gracie (Kaitlyn Chalmers-Rizzato) disappears. Haunted by her unsolved disappearance, Abe is now in his 30s, solving menial cases and dragging himself from day to day in an alcoholic, self-loathing stupor. One day, a teenager named Caroline (Sophie Nélisse) appears, begging Abe to find out who killed her boyfriend.

This was, by turns, a funny and emotional look at the fate of child prodigies when they become adults in the "real world". With a solid premise and a satisfying resolution, I found it very enjoyable.

Years ago, I read a book that I really liked called The Boy Detective Fails. It also tackled the idea of a child detective struggling to deal with the messiness of the kind of crimes that are committed by adults. I was worried that this film would feel like a lesser retread of that same concept, but I thought it held its own well.

Adam Brody is a capable center of the film, a man who is trying to sustain himself on the fading light of past glories (and still very much taking advantage of the "free ice cream for life" deal that at this point has probably put the ice cream shop owner in the negative). Abe frequently notes how the town has changed and become cynical. "Has it?" asks one character. While the town has probably changed a bit, some of the difference is in Abe's no longer being a child.

So some of the humor of the film comes from watching Abe continue to coast on his past success, dealing with very mundane, simple cases (such as a child who wants to know if his classmate really did practice with the Mets last summer. Spoilers! He did not.) But underneath the typical drunk loser trope, there is a genuine sorrow to the character. He is perpetually reminded of his failure to find Gracie, through seeing missing posters or his interactions with Gracie's widowed mother. It is always a hard thing to watch when a talented child hits their own limits abruptly, and that's the pain that Abe has dwelled on for years. Because he believed himself so capable--and because the adults around him encouraged that perspective--it hurts extra hard when he is confronted with his failures.

I thought that the film walked just the right line with the character of Abe. Yes, he is pathetic. He lies to cover his inadequacies. He postures and bluffs to present a confidence and capability that he doesn't really possess. But also, in the middle of it all, he does want to solve the murder of Caroline's boyfriend. And right or wrong, he does consider himself responsible for Gracie's unresolved disappearance.

At times the movie teeters a bit close to just superficially saying, "Boy, the real world is complicated and messed up!". But I thought that Abe's character arc was a strong enough through-line to forgive some of the simplicity of the understanding of the town around him. I think that a lot of people hit their 30s/40s and find themselves doing some serious reflection on their youth or what they thought their adulthood would be like. For Abe, this comes with some literally life-or-death implications.

A solid comedy-drama with a good character arc and a very satisfying, emotional conclusion.