Change Your Image
LifeintheDark-1321
Reviews
The Story of 90 Coins (2015)
Simple story, Gorgeous visuals
The Story of 90 Coins is made for those who have loved and lost. The story is simple but what elevates this short film is the aesthetic quality of its cinematography. Colour grading is crisp and beautifully balanced. The liberal use of shallow depth of field creating bokeh effects greatly enhances the romantic mood to showcase the pair of attractive lead actors. Who knew heartbreak could look this beautiful?
The gorgeous visuals also add an element of wishfulness to the narrative. Much of what we see comprises of flashbacks. Memories of a lost love and missed opportunities are invariably tinged with melancholy and sentimentality, which is why I think this style of filming works best in this instance. Kudos to the director, DoP and team.
The Tattooist (2018)
Gruesome Appetiser for Horror Fans
Thinking about getting a tattoo? Maybe you should watch The Tattooist first. Lasting a mere 1 minute 20 seconds including credits, this micro-short film takes you on a quick tour of a tattoo parlour on an ever-swerving camera under a lot of magenta lighting that foreshadows the blood-red visuals to jump out at you before your next breath.
Unsuspected customers are taken prisoners, drugged, tortured, mutilated, dragged by the hair across the floor. If you have the stomach for movies like the Hostel and Saw series, this one's for you.
One can't expect a very, very short film to dig into a deep narrative. Credit to director Michael Wong that under these limitations he has managed to build a kaleidoscope of disturbing imagery soaked in saturated colours that seem to bleed together to create a mosaic of visceral horror.
There's much we don't know. Who's this tattooist, why is he doing this and who are his victims?
This much we do know: The Tattooist functions as a trailer, a tease, an appetiser. It's a trove of ideas waiting to be fleshed out into a longer feature. There's no shortness of technical and visual confidence from Wong and his team. The mood and energy captured in a minute is a promise of sinister playfulness that will appeal to fans of the genre.
Ad Astra (2019)
Sci-fi for the brain and the heart
A space exploration that examines abandonment, commitment, truth and courage. Brad Pitt shows just enough emotions to make it real, and Tommy Lee Jones's short appearance carries immense weight.
Celle que vous croyez (2019)
One for the Facebook age
Pretend to be anyone. Go as far as you dare. What can't you do on social media if you really want to do some catfishing and assume a fake identity? Nothing. And that's the danger as you'll see in this absorbing drama that makes you doubt if that new friend request you received on Facebook is real.
'Who You Think I Am?' is a question Claire may well ask herself. A divorcee with two boys, Claire is disturbed her new beau Ludo doesn't seem to be on the same page in their relationship. So she calls herself Clara, post photos as a beautiful 24-year-old fashion intern and befriends Ludo's friend Alex on Facebook to keep tab on Ludo. Before long, Alex becomes smitten with Clara, as their chats intensify and a heady romance starts to spin out of control.
Will Claire come clean? How far will she go? Claire must have asked herself similar questions many times and evidently she is unable to stop herself. A literature professor in her 50s who teaches her class to analyse Dangerous Liaisons, Claire is intellectual and analytical, yet her emotions have overruled her rationality. Never mind she has been lying all this time. Never mind Alex is only as old as her students. There are no limits on age and experience when it comes to love and lust. Claire finds herself immersed in the excitement of desirability. All-consuming and addictive, a feeling she simply cannot let go of. So Claire keeps making excuses why she cannot meet Alex in person, while she looks at him at close quarters, standing still, aching to come forth.
The scene at the railway station when Alex looks straight through Claire as his eyes search for Clara is one of those moments that mark a movie as bona fide tragic romance. Two people so in love, so near their hands could touch, so far as not to exist.
Juliette Binoche finds layers in her portrayal as Claire/Clara. A defiant woman who tries to justify herself to her therapist, a insecure woman ensnared in her own dishonesty, and a weary woman racked with guilt. Francois Civil, always casual and ruffled, is charming and lovelorn in equal measure. No wonder Claire finds it impossible to say goodbye.
When Claire tells her therapist who Clara really is, we understand a little better what this masquerade means for Claire and how it relates to her broken marriage and her attempt at reclaiming the seductive power of youth. Claire's sessions with her therapist not only decide the course of the story and what information is revealed, it serves another narrative purpose. Through the therapist's eye we see an enactment of Claire's manuscript, which culminates in Claire's accidental death. She is the only witness to Claire's attempt at redemption, told in a story-within-a-story style.
The therapist is no longer a passive role through whom the audience gets our information. Her final contact with Claire leads to an ending which is both urgent and ambiguous. Claire has the chance to right the situation, or she can continue lying. What you think she'll do?
A little game gone very wrong, two hearts strung along, both broken in the end. Who is the real victim? Who You Think I Am is an emotional thriller for the Facebook age.
The Vanishing (2018)
A well-made speculative mystery
Never take anything that doesn't belong to you. We have seen this many times in the movies, when people appropriating ill-begotten wealth always end up in a bad way. The ending is almost certain a foregone conclusion.
This latest variation on the same theme is based on the mystery of the Flannan Isles, off the coast of Scotland, where three lighthouse keepers disappeared in December 1900. No one knows what happened. The men simply vanished from the island.
This speculative script does not involve anything supernatural. Everything that transpires is the consequence of human actions. A chain of events that sweeps the men past a point of no return.
The lighthouse keepers - Thomas, James and Donald - played by Peter Mullan, Gerard Butler and Connor Swindells respectively, arrive on the island for their six-week stint. They quickly set into their routine, doing maintenance, lighting the lamp, and taking turns with the cooking and chores. In a small compound on an isolated island, each man has his place, whether he's a seasoned captain or a young novice.
Once the introduction is done, the movie dives straight into the start of the mystery. Almost by pure chance, the men catches sight of someone washed up onshore under a cliff. Donald climbs down to find the stranger dead, with a heavy wooden trunk. While James and Thomas pull the trunk up by rope, the dead man, who turns out not to be dead, attacks Donald and out of self-defense, Donald kills him.
Before they're able to fully process the aftermath of killing another human, they find gold bars in the trunk. James and Donald are euphoric, believing this will change their lives forever, as Thomas remains cautious.
Then a boat arrives with a couple of sinister looking fellows asking for their mate who fled with their loot. The keepers lie; and they know the intruders know they're lying. Before the night is over, violence will take over and the intruders will be dead.
Like a storm that comes out of nowhere, everything changes in an instant. The keepers make quick plans, split-second decisions, which only land them in the deep end and for more than one, a swift descent into mental meltdown.
In a confined environment with nowhere to run, the next few hours become emotionally charged and tense. Director Kristoffer Nyholm skilfully takes the movie on a sharp turn in mood and atmosphere, all the way to its unsparing and bleak conclusion. By this time, he has also developed character sympathy as we learn about how Thomas's wife and babies died many years ago, James's young family waiting for his return, and Donald's unrequited first love.
All three actors give commendable performances. Peter Mullan is solemn and grounded as the one with the most experience, but his sense of caution doesn't preclude him from making some fateful decisions that might arguably cast him as a villain. Gerard Butler shows dramatic chops with a strong presence and a contrast between his brute strength and vulnerability. Connor Swindell's character shows the most change by the time he meets his end. A different man from the one who landed on the island not so long ago.
Although the mystery of the Flannan isles happened over a hundred years ago, this movie shows it's lost none of the fascination. Naturally, with the disappearance of the men the story assumes the worst. Nobody comes home, and not all will survive. In the hands of Kristoffer Nyholm and writers Joe Bone and Celyn Jones, The Vanishing is a tale of fundamental human drives and bad decisions. Well made and moody, it deserves to have a wider audience.