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Vidblysk (2021)
All the world's a morgue, and all the men and women merely bodies
Valentyn Vasyanovytch's films about the conflict that broke out in Ukraine in 2014 are bleak. With his previous film Atlantis (2019) Vasyanovytch gained international acclaim by balancing the bleakness with scenes of great visual poetry. On account of that film's quality I had high expectations for Vidblysk (Reflection).
Sadly, that visual poetry is almost entirely lacking. All that remains is bleakness. Vasyanovytch is known for his long, static shots. Here such shots linger on torture scenes, which will make many viewers uncomfortable.
Morgues are a common feature in Vasyanovytch's films, but his cold, clinical style makes every indoor location resemble one, including living rooms, which are invariably drab gray.
The film's biggest flaw is that the protagonists are nearly always filmed with long shots, This, combined with a very superficial characterization, make it impossible for the viewer to engage with them emotionally. So no matter how bleak the film became, the result left me rather cold.
There are one or two scenes where an attempt is made to provide meaningful depth, but the film's overall lack of inspiration makes them fall flat.
The Northman (2022)
One-dimensional bombast bordering on unintentional parody of the epic genre
I loved Robert Eggers' previous film The Lighthouse, so I was excited about the prospect of this. Alas, it does not deliver. Like so many talented directors before him, Eggers succumbed to the need to dumb himself down in his quest for the multiplex.
This is basically a very run-of-the-mill revenge story fleshed out with stylishly trippy scenes of pagan rituals. Admittedly, I enjoyed the latter, but these individual scenes could not save the film from its major flaws. The trapping of the revenge theme is that it is, in itself, so one dimensional. This doesn't have to be a problem when it is balanced out with other themes, and proper attention is given to reflection and character development. But The Northman has none of that. It is gore, trippy pagan ritual, gore, trippy ritual, gore, ritual, gore, gore, ritual, gore... rinse, repeat, ad infinitum.
Add to that, rather clichéd dialogue that becomes tediously repetitive, and the tonal bombast of a coked-up metal band that seeks to impress with the volume dialed up to 11 in its opening chords already.
If The Northman didn't take itself damn so seriously, it could have made for a promising parody of the sword and sandal epic.
Shame.
The Green Knight (2021)
We are the knights who say "Nah...".
Everything that is admirable about this film has to do with its design: exquisite sets, good score and stylish cinematography.
I didn't care much for the cast (regardless of their ethnicity), and projecting contemporary sensibilities onto period dramas always rubs me the wrong way. However the main turn off was the film's very narrow tonal range. There are a few individual scenes here and there that work for their ability to evoke an otherworldly atmosphere. But its slow-paced, po-faced solemnity throughout, devoid of any counterpoint, makes The Green Knight a very stodgy film that fails to engage. It takes itself far too seriously.
My Psychedelic Love Story (2020)
Uncharacteristically shallow puff-piece by Morris
Timothy Leary was always considered a controversial figure, even by many within the 1960s/'70s counterculture. The "Jet-Set Rebel Turned FBI Informant" role that Leary and Joanna Harcourt-Smith acted out arouses all kinds of suspicions, not least among Harcourt-Smith herself.
Coming after, and as a direct result of, the director's excellent mini-series Wormwood, I was expecting Errol Morris to dig deep and come up with some juicy revelations. Something that would place Leary's hi-jinks and subsequent betrayal in a whole new light, in the same way that Wormwood did in its exposé of the CIA's role in the death of Frank Olson. Harcourt-Smith even explicitly asks for Morris to do so in the film.
But no, we get little more than a narcissistic socialite's quasi-naive retelling of her infatuation with her acid guru. If you need yet another reason to dislike Baby Boomers, then this is the documentary for you. Any allegations concerning Leary and various members of his entourage get a brief mention at best, without being held up to investigative scrutiny. Morris seems more interested in Leary's yellow Porsche.
Morris should have got some other talking heads to counterbalance Harcourt-Smith's one-sided narrative, which at times is rather dubious to say the least. The only addition we get is some archive footage and cliché psychedelic graphics. This is Morris at his laziest.
There is still a definitive warts-'n'-all story to be told about Leary, because this ain't it.
Aparelho Voador a Baixa Altitude (2002)
Ignore the low score, this is solid art-house sci-fi.
If you like art-house sci-fi films, then this J.G. Ballard adaptation is definitely worth checking out. As a Ballard fan I started watching this with low expectations but found myself pleasantly surprised.
The story is set in a dystopian future, in which human populations are dwindling fast because almost all babies become mutants and are thus either aborted or post-natally disposed of. It's Sci-Fi, but refreshingly devoid of techno-gadgetry. The plot's theme has a hint of Eraserhead (Ballard's story was published a year before David Lynch's film was released), whereas stylistically it resembles Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville and Weekend, or perhaps Fassbinder's World on a Wire. I wouldn't recommend this film to the average fan of space opera.
The film was made on a low budget and the plot and style were kept simple. But in my opinion this only works to the film's advantage. Ballard's work deals a lot with the impact of visual culture, for fetishistic and ritualistic purposes rather than any commercial motive. Personally I associate this aspect with the raw look of a low-tech production, rather than with glamorous, Hollywood-style cinematography. That's why I find "Aparelho Voador a Baixa Altitude" truer to the Ballardian world than David Cronenberg's Crash.
The film makes good use of the strong source material. The director is very familiar with Ballard's work (she interviewed the writer 16 years prior to making this film) and she intuitively knows how to visualize his world. There's plenty of beautiful Ballardian architecture for instance.
It's a little strange at first to watch a Ballard adaptation in Portuguese, but this does not detract from the film. There are even one or two comedic moments. The acting is overall quite decent, if I'm not mistaken the main actress won a Portuguese Golden Globe.