andychrist27 Reviews

Zeroville (2019)

it works

[8/10 · 3 December 2019]

My surprise of the year was seeing this movie being on screens for like a week here in Tallinn, Estonia, in one of our popcorn multiplex cinemas which usually only shows mainstream big budget Hollywood stuff ... no idea how it got into the program there. Judging by the amount of votes here on IMDB it was barely screened in USA.

It was actually a really good movie too!

Noches De Julio (2018)

Has promise but doesn't really deliver

[5/10 · 22 November 2018]

If Tsai Ming-liang was a Mexican, 30 years younger and had no clue what he was doing then he might come up with something like this instead of Vive L'Amour.

It tries to be ambitious and original but the script isn't polished enough and it lacks real narrative or engaging characters.

I was close to walking out in the middle but I'm happy I stayed until the end as the movie redeemed itself somewhat with the final 5 minutes.

Steak (R)evolution (2014)

One of the best food documentaries I've seen

[9/10 · 2 August 2017]

I'm not much of a meat eater but this is one well-done movie (pun intended). I was sort of expecting a film about U.S. steak snobs and new cooking techniques but in fact it is a surprisingly informative and passionate documentary about cow breeds, breeders and butchers in many different parts of the world. It starts from France and covers the growing concern of local butchers that French beef isn't really matching up to high global standards (due to lower fat content). From there on it moves to many other countries such as USA, Argentina, England and Scotland with their old breeds, Japan and wagyu beef growers in other parts of the world...until it reaches Spain where the authors believe to have found the best steak in the world. The strange numbering of the parts is I believe the rating authors gave to the best steaks they tasted.

Duet (IV) (2016)

a movie worth re-watching

[8/10 · 6 December 2016]

After seeing the international premiere of this in Tallinn, I had a feeling that in some ways this movie was too complicated to get all the details and nuances of the storyline on the first try.

Basically the story concentrates on two former musicians (the man is a pianist, the woman a violinist) who used to date in college but now are married to other people. They haven't seen each other for a long time, but a seemingly random encounter between them starts a chain of events which seems to spiral out of control.

The key of the story seems to be the violinist's husband (who emerges as the main character over the course of the film) who starts to dig in her wife's past and seems to be convinced she still harbors feelings towards the pianist. It's kind of hard to say if these doubts are justified or not, or is this man actually projecting his illusion on the reality, thereby changing his own life to the worse.

It must be said that I didn't find the first half of the movie particularly enjoyable as the story takes a while to get going and at first there's very little background presented to you about all those characters and their histories. In a Q+A session the director told of weeks of meetings with the actors where the main characters backstories and inter-relations were established. I have a feeling that in the end they were all so familiar with the story that they might have forgot the viewer does not share their knowledge and has to be brought in from the beginning. So in some aspects the script could have been written better. In the second half of the movie it all starts to come together though. It is definitely a movie which requires attention from the audience but also rewards them in the end.

The Last Family (2016)

A powerful movie about life

[8/10 · 26 November 2016]

This movie was one of these which I didn't enjoy much in the beginning but the closer it got to the end the more I started to appreciate it.

This movie is about Polish surrealist painter Zdzislaw Beksinski and his family. I have to say I've never heard of this artist and I have no idea how famous he might be in his homeland. I have a feeling though that the main reason why this movie was made was the extensive video archive he left behind, where he had obsessively recorded his family and everyday events (including very personal ones, like deaths of his loved ones). There's a fair amount of those videos included, which have been recreated with actors, staying true to the poor VCR quality of the originals.

A short summary: in this movie, much as in life, everyone dies in the end. The film spans 28 years and most of the events we see are somewhat tragic in nature. Zdzislaw, who already looks like a pretty old man in the beginning of this film, ultimately outlives all his family members, only to suffer a violent, ridiculous end.

It must be said though, that the key conflict in this movie boils down to two different approaches to life. One is represented in the humorous stoicism of Zdzislaw, the other in the paranoid suicidal anxiety of his son Tomasz. The father tries to help the son and respect his way of living, although there are moments when it all becomes too much even for him.

Art, music and film all hold an important place in this movie, as these seem to be the tools by which this family tries to rise above the depressive factors ruling their lives. Pretty much the entire movie takes place in drab socialist era apartments (one belonging to Tomasz, the other to his parents) and Beksinski's paintings on the walls of both offer a glimpse of alternate reality, a sort of escape from the mundane suffering.

I (V) (2016)

A picaresque tale from Iran...

[7/10 · 26 November 2016]

Leila Hatami plays a woman who has lots of things going: smuggling alcohol, supplying people with fake passports and visas, trying to profit from land schemes etc. At the start of the film she's being warned by some security official that if she doesn't change her ways they will soon put a stop to it. Several of her informants also make similar warnings, including an ominous claim that from some point onward anyone who seeks help from her is an agent...

She nevertheless continues with her schemes and soon it becomes apparent that she's addicted to the thrill, she just can't stop...

Overall it's a movie which very much relies on the performance of the main actress as the whole story concentrates on her (I can't recall any scenes where she is not involved). Hatami's acting is very enjoyable and the narrative itself is entertaining and believable in its intricate details. Although maybe one issue with this movie is that it doesn't offer much more than the psychological profile of its main character and even there the real motivation behind her actions is ultimately left unclear.

Daughter (2016)

One more thought-provoking tale from Iran

[9/10 · 20 November 2016]

I have often wondered what draws me to Iranian cinema. Somehow the movies from this country which make it to the European festival circuit are almost always very good. They tend to be emotionally complex and also quite subtle tales about ordinary people with their troubles and choices set against the backdrop of a totalitarian and outwardly very religious society.

This movie tells us about a girl who goes against her father's wish (possibly the first time ever) and it ends in a tragedy (or so it seems to her, at least at first). The movie sort of switches its focus somewhere in the middle: instead of the daughter, the father becomes the main protagonist of the second half of the movie. He's an excellent character, a huge mountain of a man who makes his point with silence for most of the time, keeping his words and outside expressions of emotion at a minimum. It is interesting how the dad (who seems to be almost like the villain of this movie in the beginning, a harsh and unpredictable man overly protective of his daughter) slowly becomes somebody who the viewer can sympathize with.

It can't be said that the people in this film manage to solve their issues by the end of the movie. There is no happy end (or even an ending as such, in the sense of how we usually think of movie endings). Still, it seems that some progress has been made and the viewer can be reasonably certain that the relationship between the father and the daughter will at least be more honest and open in the future.

The Forbidden Room (2015)

Might reward a patient viewer

[8/10 · 4 December 2015]

I had a strange experience with this one. I was ready to walk out after an hour or so (and many people did walk out)...but I'm glad I didn't. It simply takes time to see that there is a structure behind all this madness and different story layers do fit in together and compose a meaningful whole.

To be fair, this one is definitely not for everyone. It requires patience and at least some kind of appreciation towards the absurd to really get into this film. But it can reward you if you give it a try. For a lack of better comparison, I would mention INLAND EMPIRE here (not that the methods used by Maddin/Johnson are similar to Lynch's...but the overall effect is somewhat close to it). In the end, both of those movies build themselves into some kind of emotional rapture which overcomes the analytical mind.

Or maybe you'll simply hate this movie, which is pretty likely too.

Outside the Box (I) (2015)

Who said Germans have no sense of humor?

[8/10 · 4 December 2015]

A pretty weird German comedy about the insanity of the cut-throat corporate world. Short overview of the plot: 4 worthless yuppies from some consulting firm are dragged to a mandatory survival training course in a forest. What they don't know is that it is also a showpiece event for a bunch of journalists and investors who see the whole thing through hidden cameras (for whatever reason). It is supposed to peak with a fake hostage drama but those broke-ass Italian actors hired for the job decide to make it into a real hostage situation and demand 1 million euro. And so on...

The plot and acting performances are pretty good and the whole thing is wrapped up well after all those twists and turns. It is not easy to make a comedy which aims for something higher than being a collection of gags and cheap laughs...this one doesn't cut any corners and stays true to form from start to end. My guess is that this movie will become quite a box office success once it gets a wider release.

Bob and the Trees (2015)

Blurs the line between movies and real life

[8/10 · 4 December 2015]

OK, what makes this movie special is that basically you have a bunch of working class people playing themselves and trying to re-create for the camera some events they lived through in real life not so long ago. Those people and those events are by no means very special. An old logger and his son work on a new cutting plot...but what the son doesn't know is that the father (Bob) has taken financial risks he can't really afford. So we see over 1.5 hrs how Bob's life and state of mind slowly falls to pieces (although we sort of know the ending can't be too tragic, because after all he and his son are here, playing themselves in this movie).

This movie yet again proves that everybody can play at least one role: themselves. The question is how to make it worth watching. "Bob and the Trees" might not be very memorable or enrapturing but it is one of the rare movies which is refreshingly honest due to being so close to real life.

Apparently it won the top prize in Karlovy Vary film festival which is kind of a big deal in Europe.

A War (2015)

a film about tough decisions and their consequences

[9/10 · 4 December 2015]

This is a movie about a squad commander who makes a mistake. At least that's what his superiors say. He himself doesn't think so. Neither do his troops. But nevertheless he, a loving husband and a father of two children, is dragged to court and faces jail time if convicted. He doesn't want to lie or make excuses as he feels he has done nothing wrong...but he also doesn't want to go to jail.

It is a very confident effort by the director Tobias Lindholm from start to finish. There are no heroes and no villains, simply circumstances which force men to make snap decisions when their life is being threatened. The best movie yet done about the war in Afghanistan in my opinion. And would make it to my top 5 list of war movies overall.

Epitafio (2015)

One of the surprises of this movie year

[9/10 · 4 December 2015]

It was shown in Tallinn Black Nights Film festival and the makers of the film were there too and provided some background. Apparently this movie was inspired by Herzog's "Aguirre, the Wrath of God" and the source material which got the entire project going was found from some diary of a conquistador which Herzog had suggested to read. Like many works of the great German director, this one was also very much an extreme film-making project, with a very small crew and filmed on location on the slopes of the volcano. The result, while maybe lacking "Aguirre's" emotional intensity, is nevertheless excellent and beautiful.

Pretty much the entire movie follows three characters testing their resolve in extreme conditions. Historical dramas usually require vast and elaborate sets to bring the viewer hundreds of years back in time. This one doesn't, as wild nature provides the backdrop and it hasn't changed a lot over time.

The main protagonist in here is Diego de Ordaz, one of the forgotten characters of La Conquista. Cortez has given him the task of reaching the top of the Popocatépetl, which during most of the movie seems like an absurd challenge but it does have a practical goal which we find out only at the end credits. In Ordaz we see a man who has illusions of grandeur, who wants to go down in history as somebody who did his great part in bringing down the Aztec kingdom. Given that there was a very limited number of conquistadors in the Americas and those few hundred men tried to bring down vast empires and even succeeded at this... it seems that the only thing which sometimes kept them going was a belief in some kind of divine providence, of succeeding against all odds. It looks close to madness and yet it produced results. This movie studies the mental state of these men very convincingly while not judging them, and this is its main virtue.

Eisenstein in Guanajuato (2015)

What happens in Mexico stays in Mexico...

[8/10 · 16 September 2015]

New Peter Greenaway movie about Russian movie-maker Eisenstein's Mexico odyssey in 1931, when he went there to make a documentary with the financing of famous writer Upton Sinclair and ended up with 400km of film reel he was never allowed to edit. According to the movie, comrade Eisenstein, as a closet homo, also lost his (anal) virginity there, at age 33...and the scene where it happens is quite graphic.

I'm not a fan of Greenaway but this movie proved to be very enjoyable as long as you don't take it too seriously. It is not a traditional biopic, being quite experimental and with constant over-the-top intensive dialogue. Some visually beautiful scenes and inventive camera work and framing. It also has quite a lot of emotional and even existential depth.

Right at the beginning, when we are introduced to all the main characters, Greenaway shows photos of real historical figures in a split scene with actors portraying them...it must be said every one of them looks surprisingly similar to the real thing. For me as a Estonian it was pretty funny to hear all the Russian characters speaking English with Finnish accent (apparently for Greenaway as a Briton this sounded close enough to legit Russian accent so he had Finnish Swedes playing all the Soviets). Elmer Bäck as Eisenstein is fantastic in this movie and pretty much carries it on his own at times.

Homophobes are advised to avoid this one like a plague though.

1944 (2015)

Solid patriotic propaganda effort

[6/10 · 3 March 2015]

Nothing special really, a no-nonsense patriotic war movie which apparently is supposed to prove that almost all Estonians who fought in WWII (be it for the Reich or the Red Army) were top notch individuals. It would be unthinkable that a movie as simplistic in message as this would be made in any Western European country nowadays but that's what you get when you are not allowed to tell certain stories during the 45 years of Soviet occupation era. Most countries got WWII movies like this out of their cultural system in 1960s-1970s I guess. In fact the director has also said that his main message was to make Estonians proud of their country and nation so maybe it can be excused that the movie never really rises above this level in terms of plot and characters.

The most impressive thing was the budget: 1.9 million euros. They did get free support in mass scenes from the defense forces but still the movie looks excellent for such limited resources.

Lucifer (I) (2014)

There's nothing else quite like it...one of the most technically innovative movies of 2014

[9/10 · 6 February 2015]

Lucifer is a very unique movie. It was filmed with a high-sensitivity circular lens developed by some German company. The technique is called Tondoscope. The entire movie (except for the last 30 seconds or so) has a circular framing instead of a rectangular one, making it a very unusual viewing experience. Because of the high light sensitivity of the lens the entire movie also has an eerie, luminous quality, with the picture appearing more "whitewashed" than in other films.

It was filmed entirely in some bizarre Mexican village near an active volcano so usually there were no outsiders in the village and they found the movie crew a bit annoying although many locals agreed to appear in the movie (apparently only the guy playing Lucifer is a pro actor). Those old-fashioned clothes people wear are also a local specialty as well as the public announcement systems (which according to the director are always yelling stuff and advertising throughout the day, creating an unbearable cacophony...they silenced it because of the filming which the locals also found strange, they were unaccustomed to silence). The story of how this movie was made sounded so interesting that it might deserve a "making of" documentary of its own...

It won the best movie award in Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival and rightfully so...very innovative and clever movie which deserves mainstream success.

In fact this movie featured TWO innovative techniques as it also had a 360 degree mirror lens system used in some parts of filming.

Van Den Berghe was also there on the screening and told us how difficult it was to get the sound in place because they couldn't use the usual stereo sound as the picture frame had no "right" or "left"...in fact only in the end of the movie, for about 30 seconds, the standard cinematic frame appears together with the regular stereo sound and indeed it's like entering a different reality. I didn't think about the sound at all when watching it but the difference became clear during the stereo sound segment at the end.

Stray Dog (2014)

Contemplative and low-key documentary about real Americans

[6/10 · 5 February 2015]

Had high hopes about this as Debra Granik is the director behind such captivating movies as Winter Bone and Down to the Bone.

This, however, is a very low-key, unassuming documentary about his friend Ron Hall (who played this sinister Thump Milton character in Winter's Bone). This old Santa-looking fella is a biker and a former Vietnam veteran. This film shows him in several war veteran/biker events (I couldn't quite figure out if there's an actual separate subculture of war veteran bikers...it seems there is). Hall is also dating a Mexican woman and at some point later in the movie her twin sons from Mexico come over.

It's a very quiet but thought-provoking film about average Americans in a very ordinary setting...largely concentrating on war traumas inside people and how to transcend the negative influences of war through emotional openness and human kindness.

Ming of Harlem: Twenty One Storeys in the Air (2014)

Tiger in the concrete jungle

[7/10 · 5 February 2015]

Antoine Yates was a guy whose arrest once caused a furor in New York when it was found out he kept a pet tiger in an Harlem apartment complex. Oh, and he also had a gator there. Well, the tiger eventually bit him and he had to call 911. The police evacuated the animals and Yates was jailed for a couple of months for reckless endangerment.

The first part of this movie concentrates on Yates driving around in Harlem and remembering his days with Ming the Tiger. He's an interesting character and raising wild animals seemed to have some spiritual meaning for him...it's his true calling.

Just as I was thinking this entire movie will be like this, we suddenly see a tiger in the apartment...and later we see the gator too. The apartment (built in a studio setting, with cameras in each room) follows the layout of Yates' real apartment. The viewer gets the feeling how it was for the tiger to spend his existence in this barren environment. Well, the male tiger they used there didn't seem particularly happy, that's for sure. He seemed to be bored out of his mind.

This apartment sequence lasted around 25 minutes or so and was mostly without any verbal commentary. Well, not entirely though as at some point an Icelandic woman started to recite freestyle poetry about the animals. This knock off Björk performance was quite annoying to be fair and the movie might've been better without it. Yet this mostly silent animal sequence had overall a very mystical and eerie feeling and made the movie worth watching.

Ming of Harlem is basically a cross between narrative documentary and experimental art-house...never seen something quite like it.

Tangerines (2013)

The first Estonian movie to be nominated for Academy Awards

[8/10 · 5 February 2015]

Backstory heard from the producer: the movie was done only with €600k budget and had no big expectations...originally they struggled to get festival invitations but once they did they won several awards. So they decided to do screenings in USA too and hired a PR firm which specializes in promoting foreign language movies for Academy Awards.

Nevertheless it seems this movie has achieved a lot on sheer quality alone.

Tangerines is still a bit more of a Georgian movie than Estonian one IMO although the movie which takes place in Abkhaz region is about 50/50 in Russian and Estonian languages. Georgian is not spoken at all.

The story is simple. Two old Estonian tangerine farmers are the last inhabitants of their village (everybody else has left to Estonia because of the war). As the war comes to their doorstep (literally) they are forced to take care of 2 wounded soldiers from different sides of the conflict.

It is quite slow-paced, depressing and lacks energy like most Estonian movies. But nevertheless it is worth watching. Lembit Ulfsak is brilliant, the two Georgians do fine roles too, Elmo Nüganen (who BTW is the director of the upcoming WWII movie 1944) is a bit overshadowed by the rest of the cast.

The narrative is quite strong, all the many tension situations realistically and believably solved...what's the point of it all? Hard to say. Do most wars have any point?

In the Basement (2014)

Powerful, controversial movie

[8/10 · 5 February 2015]

Another fine effort from Ulrich Seidl, #1 troll director in Europe. This film shows us what Austrians do in their basements (no, Josef Fritzl doesn't appear). Not sure about the documentary element as surely there was lots of director's influence in many scenes...although the people were apparently real and not hired actors. Several memorable characters such as the S/M couple where the man is a full-time sex slave of her wife. Then there's a subdued middle-aged fascist who has a Nazi museum in his basement where he holds drinking sessions with similarly-minded band buddies. Then there's a middle-aged woman who works at Caritas, stabbed his abusive husband to death and likes to be caned.

The friends I watched this movie with were all grossed out because there was lots of hardcore S/M stuff, penises and vaginae in full view etc. I found it a very engaging and entertaining movie though...it consciously provoked the viewer to make judgments over those people and narrow-minded viewers (including the political correctness crowd) probably did just that. But there was a very strong humanist element behind all this.