gmezzanatto's reviews

As I see it, the messages of Coralie Fargeat are quite simple: 1) Women are valued just for their bodies 2) it is difficult and frustrating for women to live up with ageing 3) the show business isw dominated by disgusting men. How to do it ? Shocking spectators with an horror movie with disgusting and sometimes breathtaking scenes. This ends up with an ending uselessly bloody and violent where everything gets messed up.

There are also useless and pretentious references to Psycho's Hitchcock, Cronemberg, Kubrick but also a lot of plot holes. To give some examples, the most fantastic drug of the world is sent apparently for free, Sue can build up by herself a secret doorway in her bathroom, the termination of Sue ends up with the two women suddenly able to fight, and many others. A good movie cannot be so full of holes and inconsistencies, even though it doesn't want to be realistic.

What is more disappointing is that a very promising subject with an awesome cast is ruined by the only objective to use horror to shock the audience.

Very surprised about the reaction of critics: Sights and Sounds even rank it as the 7th greatest movie of 2024. Incredible!

In 1901, Segundo, a Chilean mestizo; MacLennan, an English army captain; and Bill, an American mercenary; embark on an expedition on horseback to delimit and reclaim the lands that the State has granted to José Menéndez.

There are 4 things worth to highlight in this movie

1. This is a violent and brutal movie on colonisation of the Terra del Fuego where the tone is clear from the first take, where an old man is shot dead after a work accident because he lost his arm: a man without an arm is one man less, says MacLennan before shooting him.

2. The role of Segundo, who is a mestizo, not daring to rebel to the violence of the settlers, becoming complicit of their violence. His eyes express his internal struggle, but this is not preventing him to join the most horrible slaughters, the last one told to the government representative come to promote a reconciliation with Indios.

3. The Patagonia landscape, which is beautiful, but deprived of any hint of prettiness by the camera of Simone D'arcangelo, as if even the landscape were defaced by the human violence.

4. The last part of the movie, after 7 years, is showing the will of the government to reconcile with Indios by hiding the violence of the past and perpetuating the colonisation of the land at the "end of the world". And of course this didn't happen only in Chile.

The Afghanistan veteran Thomas returns to his home village of Jerichow, in the former East Germany and meet Ali, a local Turkish-German businessman, owner of a snack-bar chain, who hires him as a driver and who lives with his attractive wife Laura (Nina Hoss). The story is a sort of remake of "The postman always rings twice" in the former East Germany, where you don't find good or bad guys, but just different characters struggling with life and fighting to survive. Released in 2008 the movie offers a good insight of the society of this area of Germany, which explains why AFD is gaining so much support in the former East Germany regions. Germany is still somewhat divided.

In East Germany, in 1980, a dedicated medical doctor, is transferred to a small clinic in the countryside. Constantly monitored by the men of the Stasi secret police harassing her both physically and mentally, she is lonely and aloof and rejects any attempt from her supervising physician Andre to come closer.

She is also planning to defect East Germany and reunite with her West German lover.

Her closeness with Stella, a young pregnant woman who escaped a hard labour camp, desperately pleading for help in order to escape from the country, is another important part of the story.

The strength of the movie is coming from the actor performances, in particular Nina Hoss is sublime in this role, and from the sense of oppression that emerges from a world where nobody could trust anybody.

The weakness from some shortcut in the screenplay. The movie ending seems sudden and almost certainly induced more by chance than being matured in Barbara's mind. What is missing is the tension of the final choice.

Another thing we are left completely ignorant about is where the West lover of Barbara is coming from, how much this guy is important to her, and this is not negligible in the overall plot.

However definitely a movie to watch from Christian Petzold, as many others from him.

This is one of the most iconic movies of the US independent cinema, one created with no budget, without a story and without a recurring character. But it somehow worked and many people have viewed and appreciated it.

The monologue of the first character played by Richard Linklater himself is outstanding, as it is the character depicted in the movie poster, who shows a glass slide pretending it to be of Madonna's pap smear. It is surprising that this movie made its own way even though it was produced in Austin, Texas, out of the new cultural environment of independent cinema in New York. The first big leap in the career of a Director who has given many proofs of his innovative talent.

This is Jasmila Zbanic's debut movie. It is about the painful aftermath of the Bosnian war and focuses on a Bosnian woman and her 12 years old daughter Sara. They are living in Grbavica, a quarter of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo. Esma needs money to pay a school trip for Sara, even though a certificate proving that Sara's father was a war hero would allow her to join free.

The movie won the Golden Berlin Bear in 2006, the main character is beautifully interpreted by Mirjana Karanovic as well as the daughter by Luna Zimic Mijovic, the looming reality of post war is crudely represented, but I wouldn't say this is a masterpiece. It lacks the real density of the story and, apart from the two main characters, the others are just sketched.

However this director deserves much attention as the movie "Quo vadis, Aida" will lately prove.

I have to admit that I didn't know the works of this Bosnian Director, even though this movie was Oscar nominee for Best International feature Film in 2021. This is a must-see movie, absolutely unforgettable for its strength, leaving the spectator devastated by its intensity and realism. The realism is achieved not through a documentary style of the Srebenica massacre, but by the personal story of Aida (Jasna Duricic), mother, wife and interpreter of the Dutch UN delegation, which was supposed to protect the city in the safe zone. Jasna Duricic is superb in the role of Aida and the movie is one of the best way to make sure that nobody will ever forget what happened in Bosnia in July 1995.

I would describe this intriguing movie as made up of three main elements. The first one is the classical conflict between a rural community and the power of business here represented by a glamping (glamorous camping) project. This is the plot setting, but it is not the most important. The second element is represented by the consciousness and emotion of the characters, by their interactions inside the community and with the two representatives of the glamping company. The third element is the surprising and ambiguous ending where the title of the movie "Evil does not exist" becomes meaningful.

The collaboration of the director and the score composer Ishibashi Eiko is particularly interesting since the film originated from a request to create images to accompany a piece of music.

This movie is disappointing in representing tennis as metaphor of life and sex and clearly shows a superficial knowledge of tennis world and game. Unprofessional and irritating in filming tennis action and games as there is clearly no serious research in the representation of tennis world. The final sequence of the movie is not only unrealistic, which per se wouldn't be a problem, but ridiculous and irritating. The performance of Mike Faist and Josh O'Connor interpreting the two tennis players is equally irritating. The only star of the movie is Zendaya, beautiful and convincing in her role throughout the film.

The domestic life of the family of Rudolph Höss, the Commander of Auschwitz, is described with a documentary style.

They are living ignoring or in denial of the sounds coming from the concentration camp just on the other side of the garden wall.

Rudolph lives the typical after work life of a manager fully committed to his work, that in his case is to organise and implement the Jew genocide.

The contrast between the sounds coming from the camp and country life of the family is the core of the movie.

Sandra Hüller is outstanding in her role of a super-busy housewife totally focussed on her daily objectives, not wanting to think about what was happening across the wall.

The movie is touching and disturbing at the same time.