Change Your Image
alexfalconer-11900
Reviews
Man in Room 301 (2019)
Flawed but captivating
Most of the boys and men in this drama are either guilty of some misdeed, or appear to be guilty of one. The script shows those who are actually guilty, but for the rest doubt about their virtue is sown by close shots of faces that look worried, guilt-ridden, or mischievously gleeful. The exception is the second husband of the woman whose son was killed. He's a model man: caring, considerate, and gently persistent. The technique of casting doubt on multiple characters is clever but transparent; we sense that it is being done for our sake alone, and it doesn't add to the story.
There's an obvious class conflict in this drama, between the wealthy family who lie to protect themselves, and the poor family who fail to protect their son. That divide is bridged in the end, through the unity of two of the children (one from each family). It's also a story about the sins of the fathers being visited upon the sons (and daughters). And how when long-kept secrets escape, they can do so with destructive force.
Punk (2019)
Enjoyable and informative
Enjoyable and informative, but as a Rancid fan I was disappointed they weren't given more than a mere mention.
Blood Simple (1984)
Interesting editing and artistry make up for shallow characters
It's hard to care about any of the characters in Blood Simple, but that doesn't make it a bad film because there are other things to appreciate. The editing for one: how a finger pressing a button at the end of one scene becomes a finger inspecting a blood-stained seat at the start of the next. And the visual artistry is striking too: shafts of light punched by bullet holes, the way streetlight falls across a sleeping couple. In fact, light and the use of it is a key feature of this film.
Borg McEnroe (2017)
Predictable but enjoyable. It's no Rush
The outcome of the final match was never seriously in doubt, given the focus of the story that preceded it. The film suffers from this predictability. Nevertheless, it held my attention right up to that point by delving into the emotional background of both characters, and revealing their surprising similarities.
I couldn't help but compare it unfavourably to another film of sporting rivalry - Rush. Whereas Borg McEnroe builds up to a single final showdown, and the viewer's inevitable sense of disappointment at being left with a winner and a loser, Rush focuses on the relationship between F1 drivers James Hunt and Niki Lauda and how how that relationship changed over time and when tested by adversity. Borg and McEnroe had a similarly long-lasting relationship, and got the better of each-other on tennis's biggest stage on different occasions, and it's a shame that the storytelling potential of this was not fully developed.
ZeroZeroZero (2019)
Violent and compelling
It costs a hundred lives to get a ton of cocaine from South America to Europe. This is what Zero Zero Zero taught me. The violence is brutal, bordering on the gratuitous, but it serves the story rather than providing mere titillation.
There are so many paradoxes on display: Manuel's love of god alongside his pitiless violence; the 'Ndrangheta's love of family alongside their willingness to kill family members for the good of the mob; Emma's desire for her father to focus on the legitimate side of their shipping business, alongside her coolness and competence in managing the illegitimate side of it.
The score by Mogwai is tense and unrelenting, and the drone cinematography provides a grandeur and bird's eye view that matches the story: as viewers we are above the drama literally and metaphorically, in a way that the characters are not. We see the enormous trail of destruction wrought by the passage of the cocaine; they only see or experience a horrific part of the carnage.
Efterforskningen (2020)
Justice doesn't come easily or quickly
It was interesting to see Pilou Asbaek in the prosecutor's chair for The Investigation; in the recent film 'A War' he was cast in the role of the accused. Soren Malling was also in 'A War', as Asbaek's character's defense lawyer, but in The Investigation he's the main character, Jens Moller. Moller's character type will be familiar to fans of police procedurals - he's the hardworking detective with troubles at home. What distinguishes The Investigation from lesser series in the genre, however, is its eschewal of graphic violence and unlikely or fantastic plot developments. The latter can perhaps be explained by the series being a representation of a true story so strange and unique that no over-writing is necessary. The quality of the writing is exemplified when Moller lets down his daughter to attend a calll-out to the pathology lab. While waiting on a bench outside the lab with his junior female partner, she falls asleep on his shoulder, and in that simple moment we see that he is providing the support to her that his daughter needs from him. We are also shown his professional values in the contrasting way he deals with reporters seeking news on the case, and Kim Wall's parents. He promises them all that they'll be the first to know if he has any news, but he only delivers on that promise to the parents. We sense that he has his priorities right.
The Investigation's biggest strength is in showing the immense effort that goes in to achieving justice when a murder is committed. Without that effort, justice can't be achieved, and so it is a reminder that justice doesn't come cheaply. But surely that's the way it should be if we're to value human life appropriately.