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Reviews
The Vatican Tapes (2015)
Very good style and acting
It's not just another exorcism movie. It's updated for the modern age story wise and while it does go through the motions of a possession story, it's still very interesting due to the serious nature and beautiful imagery. Speaking of imagery, the lighting is beautiful, and the shots in general are great. The most interesting aspect is how perfect it is with all the story elements it covers. It's like the perfect exorcism movie and nothing is really missing, and it goes further than other ones I've seen. It has a more modern story and implication like I mentioned previously. Overall I was very pleased with this film and I'd love to see a sequel like Mark Neveldine has talked about!
Sense8 (2015)
Great emotional core, a lot of moving parts but not complicated
The most visceral part of this series are the emotional scenes that relate to interpersonal relations. They blow the wind out of you in a way that I haven't felt in a while in neither TV or film. It has a good level of optimism (more positive views on life etc than most shows allow to show), but with enough realistic grit and suffering to not make it insufferable. And oh my, the action scenes are great. They pack a punch not just in an aesthetic / kinetic way, but also because the story of the characters and their motivations make the action scenes 10x more emotional because you're totally on board with them. It's not just mindless action for the sake of it, it is an emotional release.
In fact I have no complaints about the characters and the emotions, but what I was a bit dissatisfied with was that it had much less mythology and sci-fi than I thought. But on the other hand, maybe they managed to weave the shared consciousness aspects into the story so seamlessly that they became almost invisible. I must say the pacing and writing of specific scenes was outstanding. The flow, the buildups and the music were all amazing. I almost cried during the emotional scenes, and got extremely pumped during the action scenes. I think essentially it is a masterfully executed piece, but with less sci-fi than one might think. Also there are a lot of details and nuance one could write about in specific dialogue, visuals etc and symbolism for things, so there's a lot of that going on as well if one cares to look for it.
Crush (2013)
Better than expected
*Some very minor spoilers about the general direction of the plot, nothing directly from the movie*
This is not just a cheesy teen obsession film. It looked that way to me when I saw the thriller, but I was pleasantly surprised. Not only does it bend some of the obsessive stalker plot arc's we know of, but it also has a real human and emotional element to it that made me connect to the characters since they didn't just end up as 2D stock people. There are subtle side-plots about competitiveness, jealousy and the normality of obsessive or strange behavior, which helps flesh everything out and adds nuance. Visually and sound wise the film looks great and is not a budget or amateur production at all, it has the Hollywood polish which is nice.
The plot is still familiar, and it does have several of the typical tropes, but at the same time it adds its own originality and personality to the characters in a way that made it refreshing. All in all entertaining and immersing, and touching even!
Den brysomme mannen (2006)
Amazing multi-layered film
I came out from this movie with a lot of different ideas about the symbolism presented in the movie, but I had no idea there were so many different ways to interpret it until I read the IMDb comments. I will not go into all the other interpretations presented here, but they are certainly worth reading. It's a story about society, the mind, reality, death, pain, anxiety, love, art, hopelessness, fear and almost everything that can be put in a movie coherently. Not only is it a masterpiece, it was, to me, such a deeply profound movie that it opened up a whole new way of seeing the world, and reality.
I believe most of the events and situations in the film represent abstract symbolic feelings and emotions that can be applied to our normal lives. The train scene can represent the anxiety about death, injury and the vivid imagination we can have about how we die or how scary violent and gruesome events can be. His life there can represent depression and alienation from the unknown world that we are surrounded with, and the train scene can be our fear of death that stops us from committing suicide and thus go back to our less than optimal lives.
It also tells us reality is cruel in its neutrality, it does not know nor care about any living organisms in its path, and its destructive force can be brutal and unrelenting in its ignorance. We as humans must deal with this random reality, and we have to live with the pain and violence that may meet us at some point, and which does indeed strike many people everyday. The way the train stops when Andreas is lying on the tracks tells me even more about how cruel and random the world can be, it doesn't just let you die, it rubs it in in the worst possible way.
Andreas' return home as a bloody mess only to be met by a neutral girlfriend who asks if they want to go go-karting can represent the feeling of despair we can feel inside, but are unable to communicate to others nor get a response from them. The hole in the wall can similarly be an abstract hope of all the good things one can experience, the positive euphoric possibilities granted by reality, which is not all bad, but all extreme poles of evil and bad, to good and blissful euphoria. Finally the finger cutting scene is a perfect example of how we have to experience every sensation - brutal pain included, and the desperate feeling of seeing your finger cut off (and the shocking surprise of actually realizing what is happening) but reality remains static and uneventful even so. You are alone, completely alone, in your experience.
The movie tries to be neutral, the way I see it, but there is underneath the obvious dystopia, an even more fundamental despair. The fact that he is left in an icy snow world as an immortal is beyond cruel, because he will feel frost and solitude, but never die presumably. This can also symbolize how some people are completely rejected from society. The movie was to me extremely scary. It was among many things a psychological and existential horror movie. I am glad I saw it, but I also regret it, because ignorance can sometimes be a GOOD thing.
World's Greatest Dad (2009)
A funny and dark movie, IF you accept the basic messages of the movie
This movie is well written and has many dark comedic moments, but the problem arises when you look a bit underneath and see the true colors of the message. We follow Lance (Robin Williams) as he goes through his daily life, but there is a certain pain and loneliness lingering underneath. We feel Lance doesn't fully trust or like the people around him. He has a girlfriend, people try to be polite and his son is a greedy bastard who does erotic asphyxiation rituals.
Every character he interacts with in the movie, it always feels like he's distanced himself from them. He's just acting, because they aren't smart enough to see what he sees. An example is for instance when Lance has his girlfriend read the memoirs that he wrote as his son, and he had come up with the title "I am what I hate" and she didn't like that title. She wanted the title to be "You don't know me." It is implied that her title is stupid and shallow, and that Lance's title is more deep, as if she had never understood him really.
This theme goes through the entire movie.. I felt a hostility towards humans which I didn't like. Maybe some people are stupid, maybe some aren't, but it did come off as a bit arrogant. The end comment made by Lance says it all..
"I used to think the worst thing in life was ending up all alone, it's not.. The worst thing in life is ending up with people who make you feel all alone."