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Reviews
Another Year (2010)
Unenlightend
During the film I felt like I was subjected to a narrow depressed and trapped view of life with absolutely no redeeming concepts whatsoever. It is a decent film for the young to watch so they can maybe appreciate their youth more but for a middle aged single woman to watch its irritating, not because it exposes truths, but because it denies other truths.
It confirms negative stereo types in a way that seems absolute. Not one happy single character? Only companionship can bring happiness? Groundbreaking stuff this..
Although I appreciate subtlety I felt like a distinction needed to be made between alcohol consumption and loneliness. As it were its such a convincing film that being single and middle aged is a sentence to eternal misery that I would not be surprised if a couple of people off themselves after seeing this entirely negative film towards people who age alone.
What is entirely annoying is that Another Year is no more than a skilled (rather than talented) portrayal of stereo types - holistically boring if it were not so excruciatingly painful due to its lack of imagination, based on well worn truths.
Hot House (2006)
Why did I get a headache watching this film?
This film gave me a headache. I assumed that it would be a revealing film. One that revealed some truths about the Palestinian Israeli situation but Hot House presents its small minded truths out of context and is dangerously misleading because of it.
This film is as close to a crime as a documentary film can get.
It dehumanizes the prisoners by exploiting their situation, their anger and their experience without giving more than one 5 second grab in the entire documentary to explain their anger and their experience. - The Occupation. There was no explanation, just the mention of it. This film 'pretends' to be interested in the prisoners and yet does nothing to voice their political views, only their hurt and anger, their weakness and exhaustion.
According to Hot House the prisoners (all of them) did what they did because they 'hate' Jews. No other reason. This was painful because rather innocently I kept waiting for the film to deepen its resolve. It was all so shamelessly misleading.
Instead this film sensationalizes the fact that when in prison, these people organize themselves. The horror of it all. Most of them are jailed for non violent human rights activism, not that Hot House lets you know that, and horror of all horrors when inside they group up politically and also for educational reasons.
Does the director give any breath to the simplicity of their desire for freedom. No he does not. He instead exploits the sexy lady from Jenin who has seen more murder than the writer of the above review, who sadly lost her child. I say this with all sincerity. It is a tragedy and should not happen, but how dare this film ignore what makes these people commit acts of war. How dare this film judge these people as if they are ordinary citizens in a free country when they are murdered under the guise of such words as 'military incursion, terrorist cleansing operations, and the biggest umbrella of all, the quintessential definition of vagueness - Israeli Security reasons.
To see a film like this winning human rights awards. convinces me that the world is spinning in the wrong direction.
Hot House was made to fertilize more racism by telling small truths without revealing the big ones ...Bravo!