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Mowgli (2018)
Stunning, beautiful film.
I elected to watch this today on Netflix, not certain what I was in for. Frankly, I have been disappointed with the direction that children's animated features have taken in recent years: they've become too silly, noisy, frenetic, bumptious, slangy, sarcastic... and totally devoid of REAL intimacy, tenderness and emotion.... of the kind that Disney films used to have in the 1930's, 40's and 50's.
But I am stunned by this film. So visually beautiful, gorgeous sound design. Stunningly detailed sets, and you will be hard-pressed to imagine where the live action ends... and the CGI begins. And the Mo-Cap animation is just blowing me away: They really have invested these animal characters with heartbreakingly honest and beautiful emotion, of a kind I have never seen before. I literally cannot examine these animated animal faces... without tearing up. This is real art, real care, real subtlety. In short, they've managed to traverse the "uncanny valley", and produce animated characters whose emotions are dazzlingly realistic, immensely subtle, detailed and affecting. At age 55, I am watching this thing with the openhearted, surrendered trust of a 6-year-old... because the animators have earned that from me.
One of the best family-oriented films of the Millennium, no question. Perhaps it is a little dark, but I know my toddler niece and nephew would totally love it and understand it.
Soeur Sourire (2009)
A gorgeous, stylish, moving film.
This film was obviously a labor of love... it's perceptible in every frame. I'm surprised it's not better known, because it works in every way. Truly Jeannine Deckers was a woman ahead of her time, even if that world wasn't ready for her. A gay icon, avant-la-lettre. And people ahead of their time sometimes must go through hell, and Jeannine did.
Exquisitely, stylishly photographed, elegantly and suavely edited, and superbly acted and directed, this will be a must-see for those immersed in Catholic theology, women's studies, sexual politics, those immersed in GLBT issues and history, 1960's history, and those who simply loved her 1962 hit, "Dominique" (even though her record was presented maniacally, as a source of bizarrerie in the recent episodes of American HORROR STORY, perhaps unfortunately.) The period details are stunningly accurate throughout... Belgium in the 1960's is flawlessly rendered... every prop, fabric, automobile and hairstyle is note-perfect.
The character obviously representing Ed Sullivan has been given a similar-sounding pseudonym in this film, almost surely because of permission rights in using his name. But anyone with any wit at all recognizes him and his TV show.
This is a film of great subtlety and emotion, and the tour-de-force performance given by the lovely and amazing Cécile de France is stunning. In fact, I feel slightly in love with her after seeing this.
Highly recommended. It is my hope that many GLBT folks worldwide will watch this, especially my sapphic sisters, even if they are less-than-comfortable with watching a foreign film with subtitles. See this! A magnificent gem of a film.
Kreuzweg (2014)
The Thinking Man's "CARRIE".
This movie will make your blood absolutely boil. If ever you needed proof that organized religion is a destructive, delusive, maniacal force that brings misery to people's lives, this movie is it.
Almost anything I might say here about the movie would be something of a spoiler... You just need to see it, from the beginning, and let the story make its simple, compelling case.
This movie is almost kind of a modern, real-life, thinking-man's CARRIE-- (the Stephen King story). It is sly, smooth, seamless, cool and compelling in tone and style.
Filmically, this movie carries on in the recent tradition of German films like REQUIEM (2006, dir. Hans Christian Schmid) and PARADISE:FAITH (dir. Ulrich Seidl, 2012) which deeply question the value of Christian brainwash in modern society, especially a society like Germany's, with its devotion to science. Essentially, these three movies show how religion... makes people batshit crazy, and makes them do cruel, mindless, absurd things.
If you're not foaming at the mouth by the end of this picture-- with indignant rage-- check your pulse. Some have blithely blathered that this movie is a religious tale of a girl's sainthood. That's SO not what this movie is saying; the director wanted to light a torch under your backside, pure 'n' simple.
Oasiseu (2002)
Soul-shredding cinema. An instant classic of humanism.
If deep humanism and filmic craft are your criteria, it's one of the best world movies ever made. Period. I'm just dumbstruck. It's just soul-shredding. Devastating. Astonishing. I'm speechless. No words.
No spoilers, but it's about a young man, what you might call a "f**k-up", the black sheep of his petit-bourgeois family, who falls in love with a quadriplegic girl.
A profound indictment of a modern, numbed, pitiless, hyper-urbanized Korea. The two lead actors deliver stunning, world-class performances.
The film will make you feel every emotion under the sun, and profoundly. It is perfused with a humor of the darkest, slyest variety, which belies the gravity and pathos of the story.
Profoundly original, I can't compare it to anything I've ever seen before, except perhaps to humanistic pictures like 1965's A PATCH OF BLUE, or 1975's DOG DAY AFTERNOON.
This movie will make you pray that the Bible is right when it says "God keeps His eyes on the sparrow." Connoisseurs of the finest world cinema simply cannot miss this movie.
Two Weeks in Another Town (1962)
Beyond bad.
This movie is truly one of the worst movies ever made. Every moment of it, every gesture, is wrong and ill-considered. It makes movies like HEAD and SKIDOO and HOT RODS TO HELL look like clever, insightful "Le Bad" masterpieces.
I think Vincente Minnelli had been watching not only LA DOLCE VITA, but also Godard's LE MéPRIS. Somehow the idea was hatched to make an "arty" new European-style picture... but it's only pure American cliché transplanted to Cinecitta.
This was that moment in American cinema in which the old studio system was creaking and crashing, supplanted by television, and ultimately by the new breed of 1960's young turks who would re-script it. But meanwhile you could see old Hollywood making desperate gropes in the dark for some kind of old-school monumentality, McLuhan-defined "hotness".
Kirk Douglas is reaching his sell-by date here, no longer convincing as the romantic lead. This is one of those 1960's-style "Viagra" movies, like 1968's PETULIA, or 1969's THE ARRANGEMENT: middle-aged man gets his life's potency back by having a fling with a young honey, all the while reciting his various existential angsts.
An old-school symphonic-strings score (which a Fellini or Godard would never dream of including) swoops and shrieks and wails, always obtruding, never vitalizing the on screen action.
The naked truth is, Americans, with few exceptions, have never been good at making arty Euro-style films, and this movie is a glaring example.
This movie is like the play put on in WAITING FOR GUFFMANN: the players unwittingly make disparaging comments which, as far as the audience can see, can easily apply to the very entertainment they're watching. And that's embarrassing.
If you're going to make a bad movie, then at least let the audience savor its badness...a-la a John Waters or Andy Warhol flick. But this film takes itself terribly seriously, even though all the plot points are disjointed, untrue, calculated.
Maybe 1962 lacked the censor's freedom to depict an authentic "movie-about-moviemaking" story; to see this same basic story told authentically, convincingly, we would have to wait until 1973's LA NUIT AMERICAINE by Truffaut.
Apflickorna (2011)
Adored this film.
Yes, this film unravels slowly... like a Swedish winter, but it is a fascinating glimpse, I think, into female psychology in general (not just Swedish). The film is very sly, and you won't appreciate the bitter, yet kinda funny, poetic justice of the plot... until the final scene. Highly recommended. Gorgeous young actresses in the leading roles, and lovely Swedish scenery abounds. The film is poetic and even somewhat oneiric, and, in its glacial ellipticality perhaps owes more to old Ingmar Bergman films than it does to more recent Swedish fare. Indeed, the story of the love/hate relationship between two young women seems a nod to Bergman's 1966 classic, Persona. So universal is the the theme of this film that one could almost comprehend the story without subtitles and not knowing Swedish. A real gem.