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An error has ocurred. Please try againHere is a list of what I consider to be the best that has ever been made.
Reviews
Pet Fooled (2016)
Learn How to Read Labels on Pet Food
Some people are very passionate about their pets. When it comes to training and food, some people can come across looking like zealots, with information looking like it's based more on beliefs than on facts. What makes this documentary interesting is that it helps teach the viewer some of the history of the pet food industry, how certain products have evolved and come into being, and how to read labelling on pet food packaging so that you can pull out the information you need to make an informed decision, and (perhaps more importantly) to identify the BS terms pet food manufacturers use to present their products as being more than what they actually are.
For every vet that presents one idea, there will be another vet that will claim that said activities are dangerous because of x, y, z. Unfortunately that means that the onus is on pet owners to find vet that they trust the opinions of to help them to make informed decisions on what to feed their pet(s). This documentary (along with The Gruen Transfer's episode on Pet Food) should be essential viewing for all pet owners, especially given that the Pet Food Industry is not regulated at all and thus they can say what they like on their labels.
Captain Marvel (2019)
Best Marvel Film Yet
The fun and nostalgia (and cool soundtrack) of the first Guardians film, with the sophisticated story writing (with nuance and layers) of the first Iron Man film.
Gen X amd Y will love playing "spot the 90s reference", but Millennials will also be able to have fun laughing at how things (social norms and technology) have changed.
And because it's Disney, there's even a feel-good message for girls and boys, young and old.
And it's not just me that thinks Capt Marvel was a great film; according to Box Office Mojo, Capt Marcel had the 6th largest Opening Weekend of all time - the other films were Infinity War, a Fast and Furious film, Force Awakens, Jurassic World, and a Harry Potter film.
Captain Marvel (2019)
Best Marvel Film Yet
The fun and nostalgia (and cool soundtrack) of the first Guardians film, with the sophisticated story writing (with nuance and layers) of the first Iron Man film.
Gen X amd Y will love playing "spot the 90s reference", but Millennials will also be able to have fun laughing at how things (social norms and technology) have changed.
And because it's Disney, there's even a feel-good message for girls and boys, young and old.
And it's not just me that thinks Capt Marvel was a great film; according to Box Office Mojo, Capt Marcel had the 6th largest Opening Weekend of all time - the other films were Infinity War, a Fast and Furious film, Force Awakens, Jurassic World, and a Harry Potter film.
Cike Nie Yin Niang (2015)
The Emperor Has No Clothes
I adore Eastern Cinema. Japanese horror, Korean action, Wuxia, Magical Realism, I love them all. OK, I'm not a huge fan of "wire-fu", but for the most part eastern cinema is a visual feast that I love to gorge on. Exquisite costuming and hardcore female protagonists thrill me – whether it's science fiction or a historical drama, it rocks my world. So I was all set to be wow'ed by Taiwanese Auteur Director, Hsiao- Hsien Hou's latest work, The Assassin; The true story of Nie Yunniang, a female assassin that lived during the decline of the Tang Dynasty in 9th Century China (are you listening Ubisoft?).
Nie Yinniang, played by Qi Shu (The Transporter) was betrothed to marry her cousin, Tian Ji'an, played by Chen Chang (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) she was given to a Taoist Nun when she was ten because, "reasons". Since then, she has spent the rest of her life learning from the Nun how to become an assassin. When Yinniang fails to kill her target, the Nun believes she needs to toughen up and sends Yinniang to her to her childhood province to kill the man she was betrothed to 13 years ago.
Hou has dreamed of making a wuxia film since he was in High School, and now that he's 68 his childhood dream has finally come true. The Assassin is obviously a labour of love for Hou, but it is a Herculean labour to watch this film through to the end.
I love that Hou used minimal wire-work so that the grace characters display as they leap into action is presented as effortless ability rather than the obviously fake hovering through the air that dominates many wuxia and magical realism films. But sadly, that's one of the only good thing I can say about the film.
The Assassin has received a lot of rave reviews from critics that talk about the reverie of seeing landscapes and characters that strike static poses like they're characters in a painting, and these reviews have in turn been criticized by the public for being a case of "the Emperor's New Clothes". Hou's directing style is to storyboard his film first and to then make his script fit the locations where he wants to shoot. In theory, this should give a story that is grounded in the "show don't tell" philosophy of filmmaking, but instead it has resulted in a film where landscapes more important than the story and what little story there is feels weak and underdeveloped. Perhaps the Cannes Jury wanted to reward Directors that take new approaches to filmmaking, but what I saw was a film with a weak premise that was dominated with; shots that were poorly lit, shots that were out of focus, shots with glacial pans for no foreseeable reason, followed by a cut to another angle (just to prove to us that the pan was indeed pointless), shots with background noises that stood out more than they should have, and fight scenes with jarring sound effects to tell us when a decisive strike was made because otherwise there would be no way to tell why people were suddenly no longer fighting each other.
I'm not sure why Hou thought that I had to look at a balcony while a guard walked on, walked off, then came back and then walked off again. There was a pretty roof in the background, but seriously, 45 seconds to show all that, with no clue as to what he was doing or looking at seems disrespectful of the audience's time rather than masterful directing.
I walked out of the cinema feeling like I'd watched a four-hour film, only to be told by the rest of the world that only two hours had gone by. Is Hou a Time Lord? Did I just have a Time And Relative Dimension In Space experience and not realise it?
I started to wonder if I was unfairly placing my western film literacy standards on an eastern film, but then I thought about the countless examples of Asian films that are beautifully lit, framed and in perfect focus.
500,000' of 35mm film that was used to shoot the Assassin, which bloated the budget to $15M USD – and not all of this has been made back in box office sales. The Assassin has had record number of walk outs during screenings in China – which was a hard sell to begin with given the animosity between Taiwan and Mainland China. However, The Assassin's opening at the Toronto Film Festival also resulted in walk outs (in Canada, a country renounced for having the most polite people in the world). It's pretty telling when a film's total Box Office takings from screenings in North America was reportedly little over $390,000 USD gross. To put this in perspective, The Big Lebowski also had a budget of $15M and it is considered to be a Box Office Flop for only bringing in $5.5M in its opening night.
I didn't see the trailer until after I had seen the film, and now that I have I can't help but feel that maybe the trailer contributed to the large number of walk outs the film experienced; if people were expecting a wuxia film called The Assassin to feature a heroic story that is packed with action as featured in the trailer, then it's no wonder that they were disappointed because that is not what the Assassin is.
If you're familiar with Hou's previous works than you may appreciate The Assassin. I wanted to like it, but my unreasonable western desire to see a film that is in focus means that the Assassin really wasn't my thing. Buyer beware.
This review was published by The Northsider: http://thenorthsider.com.au/film- review-the-assassin/
Deux jours, une nuit (2014)
Why Unions are Important
If you were given the choice between getting a one-time bonus of $1,500 AUD in your next paycheck, at the cost of one of your co-worker's losing their job, what would you choose?
Sandra Bya (Oscar winning French actress, Marion Cotillard) has the weekend to track down her 16 co-workers and to ask them if they would be willing to vote for her to keep her job, rather than getting a 1,000 bonus. If she can convince them to give up their bonus, she can keep her job. Apparently, this kind of horrific workplace negotiations is not uncommon in Europe, which makes me want to hug the next Union Rep I encounter.
On the surface, this is a film about an employee asking her coworkers to support her, at the cost of losing a big financial breath of air when many of them are struggling to tread water. Are they willing to put her (and her family) into a position of financial destitution in favour of the wellbeing of their own family? Or will they be willing to give up their bonus and to continue struggling as they have been so that their co-worker can keep their job? That's the external quest that the character is on, but the internal quest is that of Sandra's battle with depression. If you haven't suffered from depression yourself, or have known someone that has battled with it then you may not be able to appreciate just how masterful and authentic Cotillard is in the role of Sandra; her feelings of isolation and that no one cares about her, her feelings of powerlessness to fight against an injustice, her constant desire to hide from her obstacles by going to bed, the nightmares that plague her when she does sleep, recoiling from intimacy with her husband because on some level she feels that she's unworthy of it and the deep-seated feeling of shame that she's suffering from the mental illness at all. It's all there in its raw, un-glorified, excruciating ugliness.
Fabrizio Rongione as Manu, Sandra's husband, delivers an amazing balance of loving support and encouragement that Sandra not give up.
Flemish Directors, Luc Dardenne and Jean-Pierre Dardenne (the Dardenne Brothers) have won two Palme d'Or Awards at Cannes since they moved away from directing documentaries in preference of dramas. It is perhaps because of their documentary roots that they have recognisable style that is very reminiscent of Italian Neorealism. Italian Neorealism was a cinematic style that developed in Italy after the end of World War II; all the studios had been destroyed, but filmmakers were no longer restricted by the Mussolini government's censorship. This resulted in a lot of films about the working class shot on location using non-professional actors. This is the first film where the Dardenne Brothers have chosen to use a high-profile actor, and I'm not certain that an actor that didn't have Cotillard's level of expertise could have pulled off such an authentic, emotionally gripping portrayal.
No matter how good a camera operator is, hand-held camera work will result in camera shake so don't sit too close to the screen if you you have trouble with camera shake. That said, Cinematographer Alain Marcoen (SBC) uses the portability of the hand-held camera to invade Cotillard's personal space to give us a sense of intimacy, pulling the audience into the room with Sandra so that we are bystanders accompanying her on her quest.
Two Days, One Night was filmed in Belgium with French actors and received funding from Italy. It is an excellent example of how a good story can be made on a small budget (it says something about the world we live in that 7 Million is considered a small budget), with a hand-held camera and without special effects, and is why this is a "must see" for all Filmmaking students. It was selected to competed for the Palme d'Or Award at Cannes (it didn't win, but being selected is still a big deal), it won the Sydney Film Prize at the Sydney Film Festival and it will be Belgium's entry for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.
This is a story about realistic characters with realistic responses to an impossible question. It's a not an easy film to watch, but it will take you on an emotional journey if you let it
And so long as you can ignore that there are actually three nights, not one, between Friday afternoon and Monday morning.
This Review was published by The Northsider. Source: http://thenorthsider.com.au
Gone Girl (2014)
This Generation's Fatal Attraction
Living up to parents' expectations can be tough. Imagine if your parents published a children's book, based on all your accomplishments as a child. Now imagine that all of the accomplishments in the book were better versions of what you had actually done. What a way to find out that everything you did wasn't good enough for them. Being judged by others is just one of the many themes depicted in Gone Girl.
Gone Girl is the film adaptation of the 2012 award winning and best selling novel of the same name, written by Gillian Flynn. When Amy (Rosamund Pike) goes missing, her husband Nick (Ben Affleck) feels the unrelenting gaze of the people around him judging the worth of his marriage, judging his worth as a husband and as a man. Societal pressures on a man to be the provider and the disapproval for women to be successful are some of the subtleties that make Gone Girl so complex and engaging.
This is an ugly story about the decay of a marriage and how other people push their way into our lives, be it disapproving bystanders or talk show hosts shepherding public opinion. The depiction of trial by media in Gone Girl also includes a need for lawyers to engage public relations' strategies with talk show hosts in order for justice to even be possible in a courtroom. It's those kinds of elements that make this psychological thriller a horror story.
Very few films have been able to pull off a non-linear storyline, but when it happens, those films stand out in the crowd. Gone Girl is one of these films. All the actors do a stellar job at revealing emotional layers of their characters, but it's the auteur direction of David Fincher (the man behind Se7en, Fight Club and one of the executive producers of the US adaption of House of Cards) that shapes this film as a whole with the assistance of a musical score composed by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Fincher challenged the pair to create a soundscape that created a soothing façade that put the audience on edge because it was inauthentic, and it's the soundtrack that makes Gone Girl a see-it-in-a-cinema film, where you can be enveloped by the soundtrack in a cinema's high end sound system and in a controlled environment.
As much as I really want to love this film, I cannot ignore that it ultimately depicts misogynistic myths and fantasies relating to rape and domestic violence, and by doing this it validates them. Yes, this film does talk about victim blaming, the scorn women can have for other women that they see as better than them, the scorn society has for women that are victims of abuse at a time when they need support the most, and that (according to the film) the number one killer of pregnant women is domestic violence. But Gone Girl also depicts the myths of rape and domestic violence that frankly do not need any help to be sustained; that women ask for it, that they did something to provoke it, that they deserve it and the ultimate misogynistic fallacy: that women will lie about rape and domestic violence, and that it's men that are the real victims of these accusations.
At just over two and a quarter hours, Gone Girl is just long enough for us to have a two part story, without it being a deep vein thrombosis experience. Just when you think that the film has come to a conclusion and you're left wanting more, Fincher and Flynn unravel the story further to reveal more complexities, consequences and manipulations, right up until the moment that should have you going, "No
Really?
I can't believe they're going there."
Overall, worthwhile female roles in a male-centric narrative, masterful composition, cinematography and direction are all the hallmarks of an excellent cinematic experience and the film is worth seeing for that expertise. Just make sure that you make time to have coffee with men that don't subscribe to these outdated myths, and make a donation to a women's refuge after you're done.
Life Itself (2014)
How Roger Ebert Changed the Way Films are Reviewed
There is something surreal about a film critic writing a review of a documentary about a film critic, but Roger Ebert was no ordinary critic.
On the surface, Life Itself is a about a man who had an amazing influence on American filmmakers. Roger Ebert was one half of America's most famous film critic team: Gene Siskel and Robert Ebert. Ebert was the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize, and was also the first critic to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The film tells the story of how Ebert and Siskel came to work together, and the story of their relationship. It also tells the story of how Roger met his wife at the age of 50, and his candid approach to his battle with alcoholism.
But this is also a film about cancer; living with it or supporting a partner who is battling with it. Roger wanted to be very transparent about his illness, and so he invited Director, Steve James, to his hospital room to speak candidly about his life; warts and all. James had directed several documentaries about characters in Chicago, Ebert and Siskel's home town, including Hoop Dreams, which Ebert named best film of 1994.
Watching this film is not a comfortable experience. It's confronting to watch footage of a man who has been severely deformed by surgery, watching him getting hooked up to machines to give him sustenance because he can no longer eat nor drink the way he used to. However watching this film is also uplifting and inspiring as you witness the interactions of a man who remains jovial despite his physical condition. The viewer sees his determination to continue to sneak out to cinemas to see and critique films while he was in hospital and his desire to continue to communicate with the world. At the time this was filmed, Roger had to use his computer to "talk" to people, but the manner in which he would use his eyes and hand gestures to give life and meaning to a robotic voice is remarkable.
Voice actor Stephen Stanton provides narration for excerpts sourced from Ebert's Autobiography, Life Itself (upon which this film is based), in a voice that mimics "young Roger Ebert". It includes interviews with film critics, filmmakers, friends, and footage of the rivalry and bitterness between Siskel and Ebert during the filming of their television shows. His wife, Chaz Ebert, honours us with some deeply personal stories, out of respect for Roger's desire to be open about his life.
Life Itself was an official selection for the Sundance Film Festival and Cannes Classics, two film festivals he frequented and loved for many years when he was physically capable of attending them, and it is an example of how a documentary can touch you as deeply and emotionally as any drama can.
If you love film theory and know who Roger Ebert is, or if you have no idea about who Roger Ebert is but enjoy a good story, this is a film for you. If you know someone battling with cancer, or if you want to watch a film that will resonate with you and change you forever, see this film.
This review was published in The Northsider. Source: http://thenorthsider.com.au/life-itself/