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Nikolai1968
Reviews
Subject (2022)
Excellent conversation starter
This is a very well needed film for the documentary industry. A moment of self reflection to hopefully allow filmmakers (I doubt that many 'subjects' will see this) to ask themselves key questions before embarking on a documentary.
Told through the eyes of participants in a wide variety of high profile films, Camilla Hall and Jessica Tiexiera respectfully broach the subject of personal impact of a film on the interviewees lives.
This is a film for filmmakers primarily. One that is very well needed. It does not offer answers, but asks very important questions that all documentary people - directors or commissioners - need to ask themselves.
Jekyll (2007)
Are you all on crack?
I am shocked and amazed that anyone can endure watching more than 5 minutes of this program.
Are the reviewers here on crack?
To call it high camp is a compliment. To see the scene chewing, preposterous setups, painful expressions and cheap cinematography is horrific.
If this is the state of British television then we are lost. Gone. Forever.
The BBC controllers should stop watching ITV and start looking at HBO. This series is like Eastenders + Pantomime + a bunch of overly self confident actors 'reinterpreting' a script written by some white middle class idiot.
***spoiler alert **** It's s**t!
Poor Robert Louis Stevenson.
Not good is an understatement.
At least it leaves it open to be done again... :)
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
Over inflated nonsense
Incredible. The director has obviously never spent much time in England.
I have never seen such a flagrant waste of money spent by producers worried that a script might be so dull that they had to build all the sets three times larger than necessary (has anyone ever seen offices this large in London??? Especially in the 70s!?!), and have as many top name actors as possible to fill roles that have been dreadfully underwritten.
Don't get me wrong, this is a great story! But it was put on like a Broadway version of a Beckett play, lit like a play, and edited by a drama coach worried about losing all of those well rehearsed "moments".
Maybe there was a translation problem between Swedish and English on set, and everyone was so desperate to impress each other, and not offend, that they ended up with this...showreel.
This film is wannabe Fincher but unnecessarily beautiful camera angles and ironically, no regard for the cinematic audience.
Hitchcock would have laughed at it.
Suspense = 0 Surprise = 0
Overwrought meaningless stares = 10
Now if Pinter had adapted it, maybe the emptiness would have meant something. We shall never know.
Meek's Cutoff (2010)
Beautiful non-narrative film
It is interesting reading all of these angry people here, who seem to appreciate having seen an amazing film but don't understand why it does not have a 'three act structure' or Hero's journey. If you are a fan of early Michael Haneke or even Tarkovsky (to a lesser extent), then you will like this film. It is a very gentle observational piece which takes its time to even let you hear human voices. It wants you to feel the wind on the scrub desert or to hear the bubbling of the river.
To make a film like that, especially in America where the audience is weened on cleanly prepared stories that have beginnings, middles and ends, is brave, stubborn and amazingly lucky that Kelly Reichardt was able to raise the money to make it.
Fantastic. Unique, Beautiful.
But just do not expect to be 'told' what happens next, because nothing massively important actually does. Just like life really.
Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist (2005)
A Reader's Digest journey to Africa
I have to wonder why such a talented writer as Paul Schrader, who has successfully scrutinized the psychologies of humans in his previous films and scripts, embarked on such a terrible journey with this story. To make a film takes up many years of one's life, so why waste it on such drivel? The money? Because you need a career kick start? Laziness?
This film is mainly set in East Africa and follows the 'weird' events surrounding an archaeological dig. If you took White Mischief or even Hercule Poirot, as made for ITV, and added spooky content, with dire melodramatic music and paper thin characterization, then this would be Dominion. It is Death On The Nile with a god slant.
Schrader seems lost in a story that cannot make up it's mind as to what to say. On one level, it is taking a very superficial look at colonialism in Africa and the effects of the missionaries on the indigenous population, then peppers it with a love story between the priest (Skarsgard) and a girl (Bellar) supposedly bound by the horrors of WW2, and then there is the atrocious portrayal of Africans as ignorant superstitious bush dwellers with their mouth piece being the English speaking Jomo (Aduramo) who acts as the 'black lackey' who can fill them in on what the "fuzzie wuzzies" are saying. Jesus H Christ! All set to TV drama music! It is the sort of film my great grandfather would have enjoyed, but i bet even he would have found it rather anodyne.
The opening scene set ,supposedly, in Holland with a cliché German SS execution dilemma where Father Merrin has to choose as to who will die is the motor for the film;s horror. Does God exist? if so then he would not be so cruel... But his guilt is so ham fistedly explored, that there is no tension or even desire to revisit that dilemma.
I would not even say that the film is nicely shot. Well exposed maybe, but there is no motivation behind the camera as to where it is placed, other than to push the plot forward mindlessly.
Friedkin's camera was inquisitive, curious and scared. It knew what it was looking for, as did the script. As a film maker, one has the choice to choose the moments in time, and the place with which to view events, in order to involve an audience into one's own curiosity to a story. A great film tries to understand the fragility of being human.
And we don't need bad CGI hyenas (or monkeys, Mr. Lucas - THX 1138 remastered) to put fear into our bones. The human fear is the fear of the unknown, the fear of our existence, and that is a very private and special fear that most filmmakers today are choosing to ignore. Travis Bickle could have told you that.
One day a real rain will come, and wash films like this away....