Reviews

This is 2022. An Obersturmführer in a KZ speaking English with a German accent is so ... well, unbelievably stupid these days... The Survivor himself is also fluent in English with a tiny "akzent." I can't watch this. Sorry. Netflix subtitles, right? Learn to read.

Why am I even watching this? I am not a middle-aged house wife. What is happening to Netflix, burrying us under soapy tales from all over the globe, this one set in down under. Sigh.

I'm almost halfway into this comedy, chuckled twice and was slightly "amused" a few times more. The main problem however is the difficulty to empathize with any of the characters, let alone sympathize with them. The Square is a satire on pretentious, politically correct "bobos," the very same people who made this film I'm afraid.

A gorgeous 38-year-old French prostitute has one problem: how to pay 9000 euros a year for the private top culinary school tuition of her seventeen year old son. Really?

A group of cops sort through the left luggage at Brussels International Airport after the terrorist attack of 3/23/2016. They also seem to feel the need to console surviving victims and victims' families. To avoid any blame game against Muslims, the leading investigator is Samira, a Muslim herself. Actually this short synopsis sounds more interesting than the obviously cheaply produced series, which is not much better than the average soap.

I stopped halfway into this boring film with a female protagonist who has no respect for men... The men however are nice and cute. Is this the new fashionable way to portray women and men. In Norway?

I'm 13' into episode three. Sigh. Repetitive, badly paced, Feria is a terribly written ghost story about a cult. The characters are unsympathetic, their actions make no sense, nor does the abundant nudity. Although there are dozens of cops lurking at every corner of this sleepy Spanish village, they don't seem to have a clue.

Ms. Ninja Thyberg (!) turns out to be a one-trick pony. After her 2013 short film Pleasure, this 2021 Pleasure is the feature-length version of similar "behind the scene" footage. She claims the budget was over two million dollars. In the late sixties, early seventies, Sweden flooded the movie theaters of the world with soft core pornography disguised as sex education; now we're full circle with this hard core porn disguised as an indictment against women's exploitation.

What is with the camera wildly swaying left and right, up and down, back and forth to suggest POV's but then they're not? I'm 30 minutes into this nonsense and I'm going to give it another 10... Because I paid 4.99. It's the kind of film that is supposed to be highly critical of its country's censorship (or so I read!) then gets all the important awards by that same country's Film Academy.

Though (snippets of) a dozen languages are spoken in this muddy esoteric film, Tim Roth who plays a genius polyglot, doesn't manage to pronounce a single one correctly! Surprisingly his English varies from mid-european/ fake Romanian-influenced to British. Even his colleague's name, Dr. Stanciulescu, a fellow Romanian, is pronounced with an English accent. And most of the cast's overacting on top of bad voice re-recording makes it a difficult and yes: annoying film to watch.

I am 35 minutes into the film and so far it is a difficult viewing. People who think this is good and funny must be the filmmakers themselves? None of the characters is likable. This is not cinema but unfunny literature/theater. The 3 stars out of 10 are for the crew's courage to finish the shoot.

Miss Patton should be very angry with her directors for not telling her she was overacting in almost every scene. Miss Birch who plays the brat Serena... well, I'm only halfway the first episode. Will her character be killed soon? Please?

The number of people with producer credits has risen to 22 in this Brothers by Blood AKA The Sound of Philadelphia. The Belgian-Dutch-French coprod (tax shelter and other State subsidies) has some admirable actors (Schoenaerts and Kinnaman) playing psychopaths with little or no back story or subtext... The pic runs for only 82' without the end credits (which take another 4') but will almost bore you to death. Instead of spending the budget on producer fees, they should have thought of bringing in a screenwriter.

This is the most over scored movie I have ever seen. Starts with 8' of (terrible) music, then some dialogue (fortunately without music) and off we go again: music, a few lines of dialogue and more music. Is the composer the director's BF or what happened here?

After 36' I'd had it. Suspension of disbelief, nope.

Dennis Harvey is right. Again. Why was this film made? I am into 28' and a bit bored.

It is not a remake of Death and the Maiden nor is it flagrant plagiarism. Let's call it "inspired by" the Polanski film, with an added spoonful of Holocaust sauce. The locations and the era in which the film is set (1959) are a good backdrop to some excellent acting by Noomi Rapace.

Why would you want to see a movie like this? It is simply so far off the charts. There is no suspension of disbelief. And the extremely stupid old judge who initiates the unbelievable story is black. Ouch!

This French series reminds us of Thelma and Louise but updated to 2020. In the bleak city of Dunkirk in between the ferries to England and the trailer park on the beach, the men are losers, thugs and local crime lords, the women are penniless wannabe's, bad mothers or hopelessly in love. Veerle Baetens as Cheyenne, leading the interesting cast, is excellent.

I stopped watching after 9 minutes and 20 seconds. This is not a film, this is not cinema. An overlong radioplay perhaps. That this won a director's award at the Berlinale's Encounters section, tells you a lot about film festivals these days. The two points are for the intriguing poster and mysterious title.

Shot in Lithuania, set in Sweden, (British) English spoken.... Thanks, i'll pass.

Simple fun. Exciting, every single minute. Well cast. Great score and sound track.

Diamantino's (Ronaldo's) twin sisters were so ugly, disgusting and over the top that I had to stop watching. Terrible overacting too.

Apart from a lack of "suspension of disbelief," the body count of totally innocent bystanders as collateral damage is unseen in any action picture. The real reason this pic was made is the very generous Tax Shelter system provided by the Belgian Federal Government. And the regional subsidies in Belgium. But it really gets confused... All of the Antwerp scenes are clearly shot and set in Brussels (which has a distinctly different architecture and layout). The expat says to his daughter: "Let's go to Brussels." While they obviously are in the center of... Brussels. There is more confusion... about the local languages spoken: Flemish isn't French! Hello? Allo? After another dozen of staff gets killed off in an Antwerp/Brussels (?) hospital, 37' into this dreadful film, I stopped watching.

That King Leopold II of Belgium used (abused) the Congo, then his property, not a Belgian colony until 1908 (!), as a private source of income, is true. That thousands and perhaps hundreds of thousands of Congolese died of famine, diseases and the maiming and killings by (mostly) British mercenaries under the wing of Arab ex-slave traders is a fact. But there was no genocide. Why would one kill its working force and with which military force in the rain forest? Late 19th century? Check Hearts of Darkness (the book) or easier: Apocalypse Now (the movie). The number of ten million Congolese deaths in 27 years is absurd. The whole population was estimated at less than 15 million in 1885. Estimated.... This third rate unknown amateur historian and documentary filmmaker Peter Bate worked on 3rd generation hearsay and newspaper articles solely written in English, published in the late 19th and early 20th century.... Sigh. Produced by a Belgium second rate producer. And what a terrible poster!