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Reviews
Nowhereland (2016)
A grim masterpiece, brave and astounding.A truly important film,worthy of every award going.
Terrifyingly true to life A grim masterpiece about the nightmarish life of a young girl adrift on the underbelly of society.What is most disturbing about this is that not only does the girl and women like her , have no power whatsoever because she has no money, and is therefore horrifically and serially exploited (just as her Mother was and is ) But that a brutal misogyny thrives at the heart of her world, a kind of misogyny that we associate with stories of women living in less progressive cultures, .The men want her sexually but they punish her for it .. She is lusted after , and commodified and exploited , then in echoes of other cultures, habitually and violently punished for the very capacity she has to invoke that desire . It exposes so much about attitudes to sex and desire . It exposes everything about the realities of street drugs and their use .In this violent male world , loyalty is cruelly derelict , women casually and literally, sell each other out ,some for basic survival, (her own Mother to have the use of a washing machine ) and some for plain visceral greed .The film is so stark ,raw , unflinchingly realistic, that i have not been able to shake it from my mind, it looms as vivid as a personal memory. I'm shell shocked,stunned, it was at times, almost unbearable to watch .The director literally captures what it is like to live that life .It is an incredibly important film , masterfully directed ,cast shot and edited ,and spectacularly well performed by all .Literally flawless in every way.The lead is astonishing Jessica Taylor Haid,convincingly inhabits her role so completely,that i felt her every emotion as my own. The supporting cast are all equally Oscar worthy, ..How is a film of this calibre overlooked by the Oscars and mainstream press ?!! Why isn't Robin Bain better known ? .I'm so emotionally drained from watching this that i don't know if i could take ever watching it again ,! It is just so unrelentingly hopeless and sad, but i know that this is the truth of the lives of these women and this film honours that truth . It's genius is that is shows so well what' the banality of evil ' that Hannah Arendt talked of looks and feels like "Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it."..it's a breathtaking achievement .I've never been so moved by any film ,i looked online to find that director Robin Bain co starred as the Kim the Mother ! and wrote and produced it ! .I will be raving about this film forever more .It's magnificent i would go and see any film that this woman ever makes ,she's genius.
Life in Pieces (2015)
staggeringly bad
What can i say ,what can anyone say? Apart from emit a high-pitched wail of agony and disbelief? Staggeringly transcendentally bad So bad that by the 3rd episode i had lost the will to live and remained frozen in horror Watching it, I felt like screaming, like the radio announcer who famously witnessed the Hindenburg bursting into flames ("Oh, the humanity!") it never ever reaches the outskirts of slightly vaguely funny , a pooh pooh jokes was the highest point There is a terrifying trend now to use fabulous actors in truly atrocious infantile fare like this,i blame it all on Adam Sandler and Ben Stiller who in order to lend gravitas to dire material and give their uncles and godfathers employment began the trend of using great seasoned actors to give their putrid fare some kind of cred.In this James Brolin and Dianne Wiest humiliate themselves in material that is so incredibly puerile and poor it makes 2nd grader locker room humor look startlingly Noel Coward esque sophisticated .It's a testament to elder abuse and the brutality of the American medical system of paying for healthcare because that has to be the only reason talents of their calibre would agree to appear in this turkey ,the writing is so so so so so bad .It begs the question was this actually written by some senior exec's 12 year old ? HOW did this ever get made ? Seriously if there was ever an indication that we are living the culture of 'idiocracy' and this is the golden age of stupid it is the fact that not only was this commissioned but has gone for 2 series ?!!!! Dire just absolutely diabolically dire .Don't watch it