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JamesMcIrish
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The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022)
Great entertainment - stunning
I enjoyed the opening episodes a lot.
Not only is it visually stunning, but it feels fresh, while remaining familiar.
It was particularly evident to me how much I was enjoying watching it when I noticed how pleased I was that the second episode was already available.
I don't know if this series follows Tolkien's lore to the letter, and since I don't know Tolkien's lore in great detail I just don't care. I just want this to fit with the books I've read, and be entertaining....and it is.
I will certainly be watching the rest of the series, and see nothing so far so suggest that it will not continue to be the beautiful, well-crafted gem of escapist entertainment that I hoped it would be.
Life After Life (2022)
Diverting, but ultimately a waste of your life
This passed the time, but the fact that it goes absolutely nowhere really drives home the feeling that the time spent watching this would have been better spent doing almost anything else.
I stuck with it in the hope that it would lead somewhere, but it doesn't.
La migliore offerta (2013)
A bit too slow, and too obvious
This is certainly not totally without merit, but overall doesn't merit more than 5/10. The characterisations were a little too far-fetched and blunt for me. Well-acted, certainly, but with an artificialness that made it feel more like theatre than a film, and that is not intended as a compliment, or an allusion to the impossible "theatrics" used by the thieves for that matter.
The pacing in this film was also just way off. It was already clear within almost the first 20 minutes how the film would finish and who the key protagonists were. The slowness with which that entirely expected outcome was reached was just too much for me.
I ended up skipping through much of the second half, just to speed things along.
The closing scene left some unanswered questions, as expected,
I did briefly wonder if it might turn more hopeful. I thought Billy might "pop up" at the end and this would all turn out to be some sort of beneficial life lesson he had taught his erstwhile friend.
But it seems that the final piece of "revenge-art" was probably intended to be the final scene itself; "old man waiting, alone, surrounded by clocks ticking out his wasted life". Ah, the joys of scripted revenge...where every plan works out perfectly...
Ultimately though I didn't enjoy the film enough to care what the final message it was trying to deliver was particularly.
Raised by Wolves (2020)
Starts out interesting, gets bad quickly
Like many people here I was visually engaged enough by this series to sit through all 10 episodes, but boy was it painful towards the end.
This is not really science fiction. Not yet at least. There is far too much woo in here. Sure, I get that the telepathy schtick could be explained away as some sort of advanced technological thing....but telepathy in general is a really, really weak sci-fi device. Good sci-fi story-writing doesn't rely on magic, that is why it is call sci-fi.
In fact most of the "drama" in this series was in trying to work out whether the whole Sol prophecy thing is just the writers trying to reel-in any religious viewers before hitting them with an atheist truth-bomb in series 2. Even I started to find it annoying, and I like the idea of a sci-fi showing flaws in religious ideas.
Anyway, to summarise the series. This is a "sci-fi" where we have a magic rock, a flying snake (born from a robot after a telepathic "insemination" of some sort) , a flying exploding-death-scream-firing robot mother, a telepathic bad-guy we haven't see yet who may or may not be related to the flying snake, and may or may not be humans from a previous expedition. Oh and a religious prophecy that is just dangling there in the storyline, for no obvious purpose except to be irritating.
The real questions is, how can they possibly make anything good from this in series 2 given such terrible starting ingredients?
The Ashram (2018)
Will not suit everyone, but I enjoyed it...
Solid 7...
I was actually pretty sceptical going in...but this was a film that didn't cliché out like I expected it to, to its credit, and I ended up enjoying it. It's a bit melodramatic in places, but it's just the right side of 'not too saccharine-sweet'. On a fairly under-developed topic too, in cinematic terms.
The visuals and soundtrack are a big part of the overall score. The stunning scenery in this film, while only being backdrop, really made me want to go back to the Himalayas. Even getting robbed by the taxi-bike guy was like a rose-tinted Indian tourist promo... albeit one where the moral of the story is either, "don't over-tip the baba" or "don't flash your wad of tourist cash in public"...possibly both. Take note, fellow travellers...
The sound track is great. I actually initially came here just to check whether the final track was Nitin Sawhny or not, but decided it was worth adding a review, since there aren't too many at this point.
It's definitely a romance/fantasy/sci-fi blend, so a bit smooshy overall, but it's nice to see the Buddhists getting a look in with the hollywood treatment, but without the obligatory "kung-fu shenanigans" - for a change.
Gemini Man (2019)
Confused, a bit silly, and chock-full of unnecessary editing
While I'm totally ok with obviously fast-forwarded punches and ridiculously impossible feats in films that are basically modern remakes of classic chinese kung fu b-movie cinema (or in obviously make-believe universes like Marvel etc), this is not an effect that should be part of a serious action movie's look. It is unnecessary and ultimately amateurish looking.
This is most obvious in the scene where see the the 3rd clone tearing across the screen at suspension-of-disbelief-breaking speed.
These bad editing decisions aside, the dialogue is hammy, and/or unbelievable, and the basic storyline itself is just confused. It really feels in places as if this is several film ideas smashed together into one whole which just doesn't work...
Making Clive Owens the actual father figure of the clone added some horrific and frankly weird scenes later in the film where we are subjected to these two, clearly pretty savage murderers, having a ridiculous pretend "family time talk". I also kept getting the feeling Clive Owen was basically a cut-price Darth Vader...(can he turn his son to the dark side or not etc...) one of the many clear storyline "inspirations" which this film mashes together clumsily. (Moon was probably the inspiration for this film's main premise) Individually, each of these ideas could have worked. Together, they don't.
The acting is otherwise as good as you'd expect given the numerous script and storyline problems.
Chernobyl (2019)
An wonderfully crafted piece of TV
This was so good that I have watched it now more than once.
Excellent acting across the board, and the story is well-paced and generally focuses on the most interesting and relevant parts of this incredible story.
It manages to balance the facts and scientific explanations very well against the human side of the story, so that the story feels informative, real, emotive and engaging, yet steers clear of excess melodrama (mostly).
There was one obvious miss though. I removed one star because of the unnecessarily over-long segment about shooting dogs, which was the only section of this whole drama that I felt was clearly "screen-written". It felt like cheap and totally unnecessary emotional manipulation. You can fast forward this entire section and not miss it at all, which is what I did on my second viewing.
In my view, if that entire superfluous section was simply edited out entirely this would be almost perfect television.
Coherence (2013)
Interminable
The opening 10 minutes were so interminably dull, and the people so irritating that I already had no interest in any story that this group might have to tell (or be part of).
When will directors with limited budgets realise that "exposition by dinner party" is the lamest of all low-budget sci-fi film tropes. Manufacturing drama/conflict through people making silly choices (like being evasive to questions for no reason whatever) is another trope we could really do without.
Might this work as a theatre production? Maybe, but I still wouldn't go and watch it. Irritating people manufacturing irritating conversation for 90 minutes with no cerebral pay-offs? No thank you. Next...
Alita: Battle Angel (2019)
Entertaining drivel
Ok, its pretty good harmless fun, but this is not a 10/10 by any stretch of the imagination.
The plot is basically the sort of jumbled mess you'd expect from a kids film, jumping jarringly from serious moments to sports nonsense.
Not only that, but the cliches used are so staid that the very instant the Dr refuses to attach Alita to her "magic" new body you already know that she is going to shortly be "killed" then brought back, then get the new body, then conquer the person who beat her before...yawn.
Still, this does seem to be a kids movie (which I didn't realise before starting it) so I guess I should cut it some slack for being well executed and entertaining enough to sit through despite the rubbish plot and multitudinous cliches.
The Vast of Night (2019)
Style over substance
You can see what they were trying to do, but this film is ultimately not satisfying. Not exactly terrible, but not good. A definite 5/10.
It meanders through a pretty dull, and over-used storyline using all the photography and dialogue tricks it can muster to make it seem more than the sum of its parts - but ultimately fails.
The dialogue is of the "quick fire" variety that is often seen as the sign of a good script, but here the dialogue is almost pure filler. It doesn't build the characters, it doesn't add anything to the story. It just fills the time. (budget-Tarantino style, and I do not use that as a compliment - for me he's the pinnacle of style-over substance film-making)
The much-vaunted, very long tracking shot half way through is "creepy" because it is shot as a "creature POV", which turns out to be a ruse as it is simply intended as an "artistic cinematographic shot" to tie together locations. So that's another bit of screen-time wasted. The lighting was certainly moody though, so some credit is due for the basics.
The ending when it finally came was very much a "who cares" moment for me. I didn't care about the characters, or what happened to them, or the rest of their stupid town.
Ultimately, this is yet another of those films that leaves too much to the imagination, and is a poorer storytelling experience for it.
Good acting though, I thought.
Glass (2019)
Wow. Just awful
I'll admit I'm not a huge Shyamalan fan - I thought sixth sense was his one good film - but this was far worse than I was expecting.
Awful, awkward dialogue. Totally random expositions that add nothing to the story. And no twist worth talking about.
The fight-scenes, like the protagonist's super-powers, are half-baked at best. I understand this is not an action film, but since the "psychological" element was maudlin pop-psychology at best, and at worst just plain silliness, the action that was there needed to "pop". It just didn't.
My feeling throughout the film was that birthers and their ilk would love its nod to conspiracy theory lore, which might explain some of the unwarranted love the film receives.
M Night fanboys (and girls) no doubt skew the overall score a lot too. Note how many comments take aim at "the critics", rather than just accepting their take on this movie - a classic defense mechanism against a perceived "elite", who's views are therefore implied to be inherently untrustworthy.
The film is not engaging. The story is not engaging. The sparseness of the sets feels like budget constraints rather than an artistic choice - whether it was or not. Many of the unusual camera angles just don't work, and give this the feeling of a student film project in places.
Although McAvoy is great I just don't find the characters he's asked to play engaging or menacing (I didn't particularly enjoy Split, though at least it felt more cohesive and therefore successful as a film).
Plot in a nutshell: People with vague, mild superpowers get captured and somehow convinced they might not have them. Glass, bizarrely, thinks the biggest problem he has is that the world hasn't seen video of these minor acts of strength. Glass makes a plan to release the others and kill himself in order to get the video of what they can do out (something that would have been a lot easier and less lethally accomplished had he done it at any point in his life before being captured). Everyone dies, but there's video of it on youtube. The end.
Caveat: This film was so dull I zoned out a few times, but the above is basically the plot I took from it all.
Cloud Atlas (2012)
Tries hard to be deep, but is actually paper-thin.
I get what they were trying to do. The basic premise and message of the film can be summarised roughly as, "If individuals don't stand up for what is right, even if the cause seems hopeless, then evil will prevail".
There were a few other similar messages mixed in. The attempt to tap in to the ongoing save-the-planet trend was never more obvious than in the "what is an ocean but a multitude of drops" line. A cute sentiment, but the sort of "wisdom" one might find in the "365 thoughts for your day" philosophy books you see on sale for £2 next to the till in bookshops. Hardly enough to transform 3 hours of mish-mashed short-stories (more like fables really, given their moralistic nature) into a masterpiece of intellectual art.
That these messages are, ultimately, truisms is probably why there are so many people falling over themselves to claim this as a masterpiece. Some people prefer to believe that it was, because the messages are positive ones that most can agree with. The jumble of the film itself then becomes beneficial, as people who are emotionally swayed by the message will attack critics of the film (who they misconstrue as critics of the message perhaps?) and leap to its defence with overenthusiastic praise, and outlandish claims of deep meaning where there is none. A 10/10 movie this is NOT.
The film-making itself was bad on so many levels. Trite dialogue, no story arc, no sense of resolution, no character development. Add to that the lack of overall coherence and the downright weird accent choices, and it rendered even Tom Hanks unable to deliver a performance worth watching. I engaged with none of his characters, particularly the more badly-made-up and voiced ones.
The individual stories were basically totally disparate sketches of people variously displaying heroism in the face of adversity, with the historic, present and future settings intending to show that we, here now, are the potential heroes of tomorrow. But not one single story managed to engage me, and I found myself irritated by the pretence that 3 hours was needed to adequately get that rather basic message across. It ended up feeling like a lecture, rather than entertainment.
I am never particularly keen on "spiritualism dressed as science", and this film does hit that nerve in places. The line "My uncle was a scientist, but he believed that love was real...that it lasts forever" is a particularly egregious example of it. It's usually used by screenwriters to lend whatever pseudo-philosophy plot-device they are selling a veneer of intellectual respectability. In better films I am always willing to suspend my disbelieving irritation. Here I was not.
There are plenty of people out there who love all that sort of thing though, and it is no doubt they who are awarding the high marks for the film!
The equally problematic notion of multiple lives was also totally unnecessary and irrelevant to the message, but seems to me to have been done here purely to maximise the use of their big-name cast-members.
To say they don't dwell on this element of the story would be incorrect. They don't dwell on anything. "Shallow" is all that is on offer here on any topic they raise.
Apparently this film was from a book. Perhaps it should have stayed that way. I'm not sure I'd even be bothered reading the book now, based on this re-telling.
Black Panther (2018)
Average blockbuster, let down by blatantly racist post-colonial undertones
I understand why people want to like this film. There isn't enough cinema which focuses on African people or nations in a positive way, but this film really isn't doing that. All it is doing is perpetuating the myth that Africans believe that violence is a reasonable way to resolve disputes, and that "might is right".
I find it very hard to believe that portraying the most advanced African nation as an isolationist dynastic monarchy/dictatorship which eschews democracy in favour of 1 on 1 armed combat, tribalism and nepotism is "woke"? Really?
This portrayal of "advanced" Africans primarily as warriors, rather than intellectuals (their technology is only achieved by their luck in living near the only know site containing Vibranium, rather than by their inherent ability as capable human beings to create an advanced society) is incredibly insulting and reinforces the racist stereotype of Africa as being socially backward and perpetually driven, and riven, by violence.
Apart from that, it is a reasonably entertaining, if forgettable, film in the same vein as most other recent superhero offerings.
Bird Box (2018)
Just bad
This film very quickly reminded me of "The man from Earth", which is not a good thing, since that is the worst film I have seen in the past decade or so. It has a very similar feeling of a single bad idea (clearly cherished by the writer), extrapolated out into a tedious, (poor) dialogue-heavy, low budget b-movie.
Like in that film, the script is so poorly written that it immediately makes the situation feel manufactured, particularly the way everyone gets a piece of dialog in turn, as if the scriptwriter was writing by just skipping through each character and assigning them something trite to say, one after the other, to give them their "reason to be there". The opening scene where Bullock's character calmly ignores the very obvious armageddon taking over the rest of the world and carries on her lighthearted chit-chat really sets the tone for how silly this film is, and how little the screenwriters understand (or manage to portray) how humans work in real life.
The lack of any story development, except a succession of increasingly improbable activities and events, makes this a story with no story-arc. In many cases it feels as if the blindfolds are mainly used as a tool to ensure there are no SFX costs to pay on this film.
And maybe I missed this whilst I was busy grimacing, but why exactly are they safe indoors but not outdoors?
Having You (2013)
An excellent, understated bittersweet drama
An unexpected gem.
I started watching this on TV without having heard of it or seen any inkling of what it was about. I was immediately taken in by the story, which portrays a normal, good, average guy dealing with a difficult situation. It managed to capture my attention quickly because of its carefully crafted portrayal of life as it often is; flawed, imperfect, but ultimately well-meaning and plain "normal".
There is no unnecessary menace. No fabrication of conflict, often derived purely by the script-writers by forcing characters to "act stupid" in order to create drama that wouldn't otherwise exist (Walking Dead is a good example of that popular cinematic crime).
Everyone (with perhaps the exception of the father, and Barry) makes decisions which we can all relate to, with no suspension of disbelief required. It is that which made the film both heartfelt, and truly engaging. At every turn I felt I could actually relate to the characters. A rare treat in this world of plastic cinema and counterfeit drama.
It is certainly slow moving, and lacking in "theatrics", but this is precisely why it works. It doesn't rely on cliches or any of the banal moralising tripe that swamps so many Hollywood films. The decisions and choices that the central characters makes are immediately humane and real.
If you like blockbusters, and only blockbusters, then you'll probably hate this film for its slow pace and lack of action. If, however, you aren't a soulless dolt then maybe you'll even shed a tear at the finale like I did. Unusually for me, I didn't feel totally manipulated in doing so.
Great cast, great script, great film.
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)
unremittingly awful
At almost any moment while watching this, just when you think it can't get any worse, it manages to pile on a new layer of turgid awfulness. I only made it to the end because I hate writing reviews without watching to the end, and from quite early on I was sure that this one deserved a review...!
The weak plot barely manages to haphazardly tie one set-piece to the next. It meanders fairly aimlessly for half the film before derailing entirely for a totally incongruous and unnecessarily bawdy music video scene. (presumably because Luc just really, really likes Rihanna) I caught myself wondering just exactly why she allowed herself to be attached to this project. It's a confusing mixture, juxtaposing the worst, most maudlin elements of a Lucas-style sci-fi confection with mild but in-your-face titillation, which just didn't work at all for me. (Rhianna clearly has great sex-appeal, but it jarred, as if a saucy music video had sneaked its way into a children's film - imagine having 5 minutes of Showgirls spliced halfway through the 1998 version of Lost in Space and you're nearly there)
Ultimately, despite the apparent randomness, the overall story arc still manages to play out with zero twists, and total predictability.
Whereas the excessive stylistic flamboyance of the 5th Element was balanced by that film's obviously humorous ambitions this film has no such charm. Sure, there are a few moment which might just raise a half-grimace, but the overwhelming feeling by the final scene was one of bile rising in the throat.
From the irritating and unpleasant eponymous male "hero" Valerian, to the pseudo-strong female character who is in love with him despite displaying all the indications of having sufficient intelligence to know she can do better, this film pulls no punches in displaying all the worst chauvinistic movie tropes.
No-one is beautiful except for the women, who are all waif-like supermodels. All the women need to be saved by the big-strong leading man (although in this case he's neither big nor strong, nor likeable) who they inexplicably seem smitten with despite his many, many, obvious character flaws. etc etc
Perhaps what irritated me most on that point was the fact it tries to camouflage its standard pastiche machismo behind Cara's character, who initially starts off strong but gets weaker and more anodyne as the film progresses. It feels like a slightly puerile cop-out, particularly when the lead male is so decidedly un-heroic.
My 3 stars are only given because the acting is not bad at all, and the visual impression is - despite it's feverishly over-styled ridiculousness - fairly sumptuous. I also thought Cara was surprisingly good given what little she had to work with in terms of story-line, or script.
While I have watched some of Luc's previous films repeatedly I doubt I could bear a second viewing of this, even for Cara. I just found it really, really superficial and tedious.
John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017)
Total guff
I cannot state with enough force just how awful this film is. I gave it 2 stars rather than 1 purely because it has Lovejoy in it.
Now, you may be thinking "That's a stupid reason to give this awful tripe an extra star"...well, maybe, but after wasting 2 hours of my life watching this I actually feel like I have somehow damaged my brain, it's that bad.
The plot doesn't exist. The choreography is bad. (too many times we see people waiting to be hit and the close range shooting is amateurish in that it shows up the incompetence of both Wick and his assailants).
The repetition is just endless, dragging out this mind-numbing farce way beyond what was needed to convince the audience how bad it is. Action films are great, when they are done well. This is not done well.
The very best I could say is that this film display style over substance. But even the style is hyper-hyperbolic trash, with cliches galore.
That the best scene is the "comedy" one (was it supposed to be funny? It's impossible to tell) where Wick is pretending he is buying guns from a wine sommelier should be all you need to know.
Hopefully mr Wick got shot immediately after the hour was up and someone collected the $14million (and my very grateful, heartfelt thanks), otherwise I fear we may all be at risk of being exposed to yet more of this dross in the future.
Tl;dr - Avoid.
Salyut-7 (2017)
Pretty good, even if foreign films are not your thing
Although this is more fiction than fact it was certainly as good as the many similar Hollywood propaganda pieces (though nowhere near as good as Apollo 13, which was a better film, despite being more fact-based, with all the narrative limitations that naturally entails).
It is definitely a better space-based film than Gravity, in my view, although that isn't really too hard.
Entertainment is what this film is about, and it delivers that well, keeping the tension throughout, with a satisfyingly well-considered set of problems being created for the piece's heroes to overcome. Which they do, with what seems to me to be some quite convincingly typical Russian use of human power, rather than technological might to win the day. (rags and a large hammer to the rescue!)
From a cinematographic point of view the film is extremely good. The zero gravity scenes are all excellent, from the wonderful vistas of earth to the watery cabin scene. The cast is all solid, if not exceptional.
One area which took me out of the zone a little was the music, however since I am not a fan of overly bombastic music, Russian or otherwise, the fact that I noticed this was potentially more of a cultural thing. We're all very used to a US soundtrack style these days after all, and this was definitely different, even if subtly so.
I was disappointed to learn after watching this how little of what was shown actually took place. Tension is easy to build when you don't have to stick to real-world events. But at least they kept the whole thing pretty believable unlike some others (I'm looking at you here Gravity)
Overall I would recommend this film to any space addict.
The Fog (1980)
Pretty good classic horror
Watched this again quite recently. It has definitely got "it"...that undeniably hard to pin-point factor which just makes it work as a horror film.
It actually scared me witless when I first watched it (I was much, much too young though....maybe only 9 years old or something!), so I was basically interested to see if it would keep even a fraction of that. Thankfully this time I didn't end up going to bed terrified that there would be a knock-knock at my door...
Ultimately I feel that it has definitely stood the test of time as a very well-made and thoroughly creepy scary film.
The Walking Dead (2010)
Not worth watching past series 2
The opening series was great. Not perfect, but perfectly entertaining. As the series wore on it quickly became worse and worse.
As of 2017/18 the series has become a soap opera, and a terrible one at that, relying on stupid decisions to create "situations" that needed to be painfully slowly resolved over the course of each series.
And even soap opera directors aren't as lazy as the directors here, who revel in wasting the viewers time, every single episode now contain segments of 5 minutes or more where absolutely nothing happens except they pan from one melancholic face to another. One after the other, with "emotive" music playing over the top, as if to make us believe this is not the utter waste of screen time it is.
Seriously, watch out for it. This happens every single damn episode and is an absolute insult to every viewer. Do the directors really think this is all they need to do to create emotional energy on-screen? To create a "connection" to the characters' plight??
In terms of their plight...The characters are all idiots most of the time too now, which hardly helps. I actively want Rick to die now, immediately, and painfully.
I'd rather gouge my eyes out than continue watching this debacle unfold.
This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
Glorious, with some utterly classic comedy moments
10/10 may be a touch gushing, but some of the jokes in this film still get me today, something which can't be said of many films which are almost as old as I am.
If you still haven't seen this then you should if only for the special custom amp joke, and of course the 'henge.
The amp joke is even still relevant in more modern times, with our politicians in the UK apparently eager to follow the band's hilariously stupid lead (by creating an "A*" rating for student exams, when making an "A" rating harder to achieve would have perhaps been the more intelligent option).
Well worth your time.
Hidden Figures (2016)
Very entertaining, if not entirely realistic
I enjoyed this thoroughly.
It isn't likely to be the most true to life imagining I've ever seen of the problems people of colour faced in the US in the 60's and it no doubt glosses over a lot of issues, but all in all I found it sufficiently entertaining not to mind.
A solid 7/10.
Annihilation (2018)
Annoying nonsense
This is not a science fiction film. It is a vaguely pretty puff piece, that goes absolutely nowhere, says absolutely nothing and constantly irritates while doing so, with its lack of narrative, vagueness and utterly boring finale.
It isn't true to say there are flaws in this film, because the entire thing is so fundamentally flawed and devoid of logic as to render the term meaningless. This is a vehicle for pretty graphics, nothing more.
It does look pretty though so, hey if you're into CGI art then maybe you'll like it.
Me? I thought it was a steaming, stinking turkey of a movie.
Babel (2006)
Hugely over-rated and inconsequential
Just because a film deals with potentially interesting multi-culturally diverse subject matter does not mean that the film itself is interesting, or indeed multi-cultural. In fact there are some pretty offensive racial stereotypes employed throughout this film to progress the "story-line", such as it is:
- Bedouin goat-herders being portrayed as so ignorant and insensible that they will shoot at a bus for no good reason, and that one masturbates while thinking of his sister undressing. (what point was that scene trying to make exactly?)
- Middle-aged white tourists, who are obviously open-minded enough to be there in the first place suddenly becoming totally unreasonable and racist, believing the locals are all "out-to-get them" despite only one shot ever having been fired.
- That Morocco is so backward it would take more than a day to get access to better than veterinarian care.
- That the local US embassy staff would be stupid enough to classify a single shot as a terrorist event, even though it is this classification that apparently led to the delay in the ambulance.
- That a deaf-mute Japanese girl would be so desperate for "affection" that she would lick the face of her dentist and strip in front of a policeman she had only just met.
- That a Mexican nanny would be stupid enough to take the children in her care out of the country and try to return with a drunk at the wheel, despite being herself an illegal.
For a film with so many plaudits about it's "depth" and "insight" I find these hard to countenance.
The 3 stories are essentially totally unconnected, with the writer forced to link them with some ridiculously unlikely happenstance. The art direction is average, with the shooting style making the film even more exhausting an ordeal than it already is.
The acting was superb however, so full credit to the great cast. The score is also strong. These two facts alone are, I believe the reason most people seem to view this as art (which it isn't) rather than a poorly pulled-together set of unrelated and individually weak yarns.