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Reviews
Down Low (2023)
I am not a man nor gay but this was good
One doesn't need a high budget to achieve. I started with low expectations due to the previous reviews (10, 2, 2, 10 etc) - in one word- you either hate it or love it type of movie. I was touched. It is layered in level of lecture, it is absurd, it is humorous, it is exaggerated and NOT pretending. Like life. Touches boundaries, shakes the middle class and cries along. It could have been a stage performance Eugene Ionesco style, refurbished anno now. It describes life. I am not gay neither a man. I was born after the boomer generation and before the millennials and I can say this film triggers something deep inside of me. So beautiful so absurd so genuine yet provocative and nevertheless serious. Just like reality but enhanced.
Youth (2015)
A film that brings tears to your eyes the way good music does
I hesitated a long time until I "put myself to" watch this film. The decorum of static timeless Swiss pristine nature as opposed to the former glory, beautiful decay of a luxury resort and most of its temporary inhabitants forms a dichotomy that's present as a background noise all along the movie.
A "third party " is represented by the "youth", in various forms to be contemplated from outside-in.
An incredible cast whose acting cuts right through your heart. Beautiful and melancholic, very Sorrentino.
It left me with tears in the eyes without being able to point why. Just like good classical music sometimes does. Strikes the short-cut to our deepest human emotions, the ones that cannot and need not to be expressed in words.
Kút (2016)
Above my expectations
Like some other reviewer mentionned it: it is a Panonian Western: slow, with well designed typical characters that contain just that extra depth, inner sadness and fatality. The right amount of killings.
All more or less accidental but they changed the life of everybody for ever. All rough but contemplative/ melancholic but not a tear jurker (at all). Interesting plot. The atmosphere is loaded all the time, with missed destinies, regrets, harsh lives. It doesn't take parts. Life goes as it goes. And in spite of everything people hang on it.
Very good acting. The final is quite satisfying. This is a real movie, not just entertainment.
Suspiria (2018)
Artsy and dark with smashing cast but also some flows
It has all been all said in the reviews before; I found it hypnotizing , costumes, decors, dancing, acting. In the end of the day we still can doubt the reality of the "witches", as the doctor said, something like "it can be that people gather together to murder and then call it "magic". Everything can be explained in a rational way as well, depending what we as spectators want more to believe we will notice different "hints" in kne kf the other direction
The fascinating, scaring, enchanting, secretive, interactions of a social closed group containing only females of different ages attracted me particularly. Although some younger, I can remember those times, the Berlin wall, the life style ...Even now (and I am a female) I tend to look at gatherings of exclusively women (more than Let's say 4) with a kind of unexplainable fascination : they have a scary, mysterious, the could be witches;) or at least something I will never be able to be part of (I grew up in a males family and have a few sons, no daughters). That can work as a "charm" for the males; it is an other language totally .
If I leave aside the "rupture" in the movie with Chloe's initial 20' and all that useless political suspicions about her, plus the political background that wasn't relevant to the story in any way (my view) ... if we forget some inconsistencies and flaws in the storyline, especially in the last half an hour..
... well, there is still a entangling film to enjoy....
Even only with the magical gaze we can't stop watching a big fat spider in his web.
Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
Unexpectedly brilliant!
I avoided to watch it as I am not a fan of absurdistic parodies... until Curtis got the Oscar, which made me curious . Armed with new patience I turned it on, it is on Prime TV.
I didn't expect to last the full 140 minutes and the first 20 something were... challenging as I couldn't place it anywhere.
But slowly it opened up, and the brilliant acting only helped me to navigate through this circus of emotions, depth, superficiality, human nature, clichés, philosophy, comedy, costumes, caricature and even real tears (I'm human after all:). The world in a nutshell with us, humble beings as observers. Incomprehensible, incommensurable, impressive, unpredictable, entropic.
The title says it all.
Warning: you will either hate it of find it genial.
Crimes of the Future (2022)
Masterpiece of acting and ideas but not for everybody
With an international cast of incredibly talented and famous actors (Viggo Mortensen, Léa Seydoux, Kristen Stewart) this movie (could have been a stage play as well) will start by being for some visually very shocking. So much that they'll get "horrified" and stay at that superficial level of lecture. If you can pass through this you'll find a complex movie with a heavy, entangled atmosphere, where old concepts like "what is art" and its (possible) relation to politics...art as opposite of "nature" and "natural" and how far we should go as a society against evolution to preserve what we think is "order".
We understand that in this era everybody got an (accidentally) mutated gen: pain-free/with a few exceptions. We also see what the consequences of it became. That's why the officials are against any encouragement of "leaving the nature do its ways", by this encouraging artists as Saul that were simply ejecting publicly whatever mutations nature was growing into them.
It's hypnotic to watch, very fine tuned and gets a few turns (nobody is deeply what we initially thoughy they were).
Not a film that you forget after an hour.
Phantom Thread (2017)
Slow paced, beautiful and quirky
It is slow paced, brilliantly acted and well filmed- with lots of introverted emotions and a strange, sensations loaded atmosphere).
There are proustian-like memories and mother issues, there are young and old souls, young and old bodies, defense mechanisms and intense feelings, distance and soul-level closeness, co-dependence and devotion - all mixed up like an unsual, slowly stirred cocktail.
Through sounds, smells and textures we get to taste the scenes like a highly sensitive person would do it in real life. The noise of a cut toased bread hits us heavier than any verbal fight, passions are extremely intense but so softly expressed that you almost miss them. Like a strong but very intricate lace pattern.
The moments of raw, rude assertiveness are oriented towards the "outsiders": the rich lady that didn't respect the dress, the doctor, his own loyal sister. Even when the distance freezes them, they are more intimate then ever, although not in a physical way.
Both heroes are strong and fragile, extremely dependent and selfish at the same time. Their moral compass is not the common one. No compromises are made. They stay themselves all the time.
Also they are very creative (he with silk and organza, she with practical solutions to problems). Like finding their own, risky and unconventional "reset button" that works and
that can seem "sick" for the outsider.
The movie talkes through the silences between the dialogues and touches directly to the non-verbal "you" somehow.
It touched mine, that's for sure.
The Equalizer (2014)
Denzel at his best in a vigilante/mob/action
A mob/action movie with a traditional subject that might be predictable in the big lines but not in the detail work; the stress is taking an unhurried pace to weave around and from the fascinating main character. I probably gave it an 8 because I really love Denzel Washington and his acting and this is one of the roles he CAN as no other (controlled dangerous, melancholic, introvert, own-moral vigilante); there is a dark, irresistible, edgy streak of "lonely wolf" solitude in his eyes different than the sad puppy-look of Will Smith (no offense). Some standard characters are present but at the right time in the right place to make the story go. Watch it.