oliverliush Reviews

Exodus (2023)

Stony Brook Film Festival

[6/10 · 23 July 2023]

A film on the refugee crisis is definitely needed. So I appreciate the writers and directors courage on this issue.

As much as I like the film, I will mainly address the concerns I had while watching the film, so it might seem a bit harsh. (I do recommend this film with all my heart.

The film is certainly informative. The conversations between the girl and the smuggler have an additional explanatory function. I sensed the effort in explaining to, sometimes confronting with, the western audience. Some of these conversations made me think of the real world politics and how the refugee crisis incited the right extremists in Europe later on. But that's not the film's flaw. It's the subject itself.

Another concern I had while watching: I could not help but notice that the girl is in fact, a relevantly "privileged" one among the refugee. Her family was rich before the war, and her sisters all seem to have received very good education. But this again another hard class issue that is hard to confront in life. I am not sure if this is a theme that the writer intentionally want me to pick up, or I am just coming from my own background.

But the film does remind me to face the tough questions.

I Like Movies (2022)

Insufferable main character

[4/10 · 22 July 2023]

Stony Brook Film Festival.

I hate movies like this where they try to make the main character quirky and awkward, but they only come off as entitled, narcissistic, incompetent, mean to others, and screams almost in every scene. I understand this is the intention, so that the character can develop through the course of the movie, but without a positive trait, it is hard to follow him through most of the movie. It's even making me feel bad about my depression. Movies I like that has awkward characters include Mary and Max. In that movie, aside from awkwardness, Max is detail-oriented, logical, and has his own take on the world, which played off nicely with Mary's curiosity. Here, aside from the unlikable traits, we don't see the main character having any other positive traits aside from the one good thing he did for his company, and his love for obvious movies.

I am also not a fan of the feminism angle brought up in the middle of the film. I don't think it meshes well with the bildungsroman story of an awkward boy learning to be sociable. If anything, it only made me hate the main character more, which made me hate the movie more.

Romina D'Ugo's Alana, however, is the bright spot of the entire movie. I like her energy, her composure, her attitude, and how she delivers her back story. However, I'm writing this review mainly to express how much I hate the "awkward teen" trope when there isn't anything to enjoy about the character.

Did I mention the story structure is almost identical to Lady Bird?

Sea of Time (2022)

Way too repetitive

[4/10 · 22 July 2023]

Stony Brook Film Festival 2023.

The first half of the movie is basically repeating the following sequence of events: Woman is mad. Man argues with woman. They make up. Nothing is developed in the first half of the movie. We don't even know the personality of any other characters in the movie, nor did we at any point knew the occupation of the woman in the first half. The sequence repeats itself for like 5 times before we get to the old characters, who provided more depth to the story from their performances, and thus made the film mildly interesting.

I literally heard someone snoring in the theatre.