Reviews

I really want to rate this movie higher. The story is cozy, but the cinematography is a bit too basic for an Oscar nominee. I get why it's there, and it's great that after Sound of Metal (which is one on my favourite movies of all time) there's still focus on deafness in Hollywood.

But I don't know, besides that, the movie just seems a little too flat to me.

Although you have to be pretty f'in cold if you didn't cry on those last songs. Damn.

I found the chosen point of view of The Troubles interesting (it's a topic that should definitely garner more attention), but the sudden cuts, the odd choice of soundtrack, the super vague interpretation of the situation... Everything feels so rushed.

I like the fact that the whole movie is based around one block, but you can't nominate this purely because it has a great cast and it's in B&W.

Not only this was a great show, it was also enlightening: it's a sincere depiction of ultra-conservative traditions, and while it doesn't disrespect them or mock them, it does create a mirror in which every single culture can see their own treatment of women.

Shira Haas's performance is beautiful and heart-breaking, how she tries to stay strong and keep her cool despite being constantly stepped on. Hair-cutting scenes always leave me on the edge of my seat, but watching Etsy getting her hair cut and crying tears of joy has to be one of the most powerful, career-making scenes I've ever watched.

And Amit Rahav is not far-behind, encapsulating what it means to be a man in conservative communities: he is bad, of course, but you can't help but feel sorry for him, because you know it's the pressure from society, from his family, his community, that created this mysoginistic thinking. He his a perpetrator and a victim, and his journey is very interesting.

The show could be a bit better - I think the short lenght rushes the story and Etsy's discovery is very abrupt. But overall, "Unorthodox" is a very very good show, and highly recommendable.

As an attention-grabbing movie, it's perfect. Half of the time, I was legit sick of some of the comments from art collectors/artists/connaisseurs, etc..

The movie focuses on the desperation of Syrian refugees to get a better life, but it satires and highlights the inhuman treatment of refugees in Europe and the world, treating people like numbers or objects.

It provokes the 21st colonization, by rich people, artistas, pseudo-activists, who think themselves as saviours and as better people for paying a refugee, for giving them attention. The movie brillianty satires that presumption, making the refugee a slave and a property of the white rich artist or the white rich colector. To them, what they do is charity.

Social dilemma aside, the movie isn't amazing. The love story that serves as the anchor isn't new or flashy, and the cinematography is okay, with some questionable choice of visual effects.

But that's being very petty. The movie is very good and it's one of those movies that you must show around for years to come.

PS: Blond Monica Bellucci is a godess.

What a good, enjoyable and different war movie!

Sea battles don't get a lot of credit in the war movies catalog, and it's easy to get the lost in the great british movies that have been made in the past years.

"Greyhound" manages to breakthrough with simple storytelling, telling us in a few minutes everything we need to know about the main character. And if you need a simple yet deep role, who better than Tom Hanks to do it?

The action keeps you really on edge and despite not having the flashy explosions of an air duel, the visuals are still great, the sound work is terrific and the movie does a good job to make a sea battle exciting.

It's not Dunkirk, Saving Private Ryan or 1917, but boy, this was good. And it still serves as a good encapsulation about the war in the Atlantic, which is severely under-studied from America to Europe.

And bonus points for making me, a non-American guy, screaming "hell yeah!" on that last explosion. Solid job, Mr. Hanks.

The set is beautiful. That's the only major positive thing. The more I think about the plot, the more I hate it. The most boring space movie ever.

So, the Earth is losing air. Although we kinda asuume that it's because of global warming, no one ever tells us. And so Earth is left with a scientist who is revolutionary and special but we never know why. Cool.

Then, in space, we have the most boring space travelers ever. We only see one space walk (and the director thinks it's cool to put Sweet Caroline, a cool but really overused song from the 60's!), two accidents... and that's it? The only action on a different planet lasts around one minute - it's pretty, but that's literaly it! I want to see space drama, cool science, desperation, food shortage, but our space travelers are hit with objects that we have no idea where they came from and watch holograms from their families all the time!

An entire science-fiction space adventure movie is focused on two characters, that we barely know! Clooney's life is a mistery, despite some flashbacks; and we never know how Sully became an astronaut, or why, and if they're father and daughter.

If this is an attempt to capitalize on the huge success of The Martian and Interstellar, lads, this ain't it. Those movies followed the Mark Twain rule: "Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please." Those movies were scientificaly revolutionary and had a brilliant story that distorted slightly the science to its advantage.

The Midnight Sky's story is filled with plot-holes, and we are left with believing that a newly-found planet near Jupiter can do the trick.

This is an Oscar-nominee simply do to the lack of beautiful science-fiction visuals in the last year. This deserves no praise other than that.

It's Tom Hanks protecting a child. What more can you ask?

The movie is nothing special, it's a good modern western, the set is a post-civil war Texas and Tom Hanks portrays the southern gentlemen who doesn't want to get in trouble but is too kind to leave a child on her own, even when she tries to run and they don't understand each other.

It's a good classic, the kind of movie the Academy loves. But not even Tom "our Lord and Messiah" Hanks can make an ordinary, uneventful and decent story into an award-winning motion picture.

But I did like the twist on the western, making the main character a news reader instead of a super brave and powerful cowboy.

I enjoyed Kingsley Ben-Adir as a Malcom X afraid of his surroundings and desperate to keep the fight going, but the movie just never fully clicked for me. Like other, it falls in that spectrum of good movies about the struggle of Black americans realized in the last year, but I think it's missing some momentum to carry it to another level and I can't stop from comparing it to other great movies about racism.

The acting and directing are good though, and Regina King showed in her debut as a director that she can go.

Shout out to the best and most current line of the movie, not from Malcom X, Muhammad Ali or Sam Cooke, but from the fourth of the group, Jim Brown:

"Some white folks just cannot wait to pat themselves on the back for not being cruel to us. Like we should be singing hosanas just because they found the kindness in their hearts to almost treat us like real human beings."

What an amazing series. As a white guy living in a former imperial European power, that completely threw aside any debate about racism and discrimination in the justice and police system (and whose country is now dealing with years of silence), this show was an amazing and necessary punch in the stomach.

I just can't decide which episode I liked the most, so just watch all of them, just absorbe and face the disgusting injustice in "Mangrove" and rejoice with the beautiful body-warming experience of "Lovers Rock".

Chloé Zhao did a great job with this movie, the cenarios, the story, everything is incredibly beautiful. And Frances McDormand is great, taking us in her journey through laughter, pain, happiness, heartbreak, a trip in search of some kind of closure in a life filled with solitude.

The main character doesn't care about money, or a stable job, or friends. She's just holding on to memories of a happier life, that is her way of grieving.

Nomadland is a showcase for how sometimes people just need to wander from place to place in search of something that can fill the void of what they lost.

If this doesn't win the Oscar for "Best Sound", I'll riot. I can't remember the last time I was on the edge of my seat with a movie that encorporates so much of it's narrative around sound.

I loved this movie so much. What a great performance by Riz Ahmed - who did great research with the deaf community to nail this movie - and a lesson to everyone of us. Whatever we lose in our life, we can fight and fight until we get it back, but we must also know that things are never going to sound the same and we just have to deal with it.

The first 30 minutes of this movie left me completely breathless. It just gives and gives and keeps giving you hope, you sense that something is going to go wrong at any minute. When it doesn't, you sigh of relief, you relax, you finally take a breath, you notice that your heart is racing... And then it hits you.

I can never understand the pain of losing a child, hopefuly I never will. But Vanessa Kirby and Shia LeBouf, each in their own way, provided me with ample evidence to be afraid and scared of that.

LeBouf portrays really well that hate-filled trauma, that resentment of losing something without any explanation and cursing at the world for doing so.

But the movie is all Vanessa Kirby. Speaking as a male heterossexual dude, I don't remember ever seing the most difficult time in a woman's life being the sole focus of a mainstream movie, but it is and Vanessa nails it, bringing us to tears with the importance of talking about the trauma of it. And, I mean, she's just a silent badass.

You just know right from the start that they're going to get too drunk and they're going to screw up their lives. It's just so predictable. And yet you stay for the ride, the narrative is really creative, the script well written and the performance by Mads Mikkelsen is, also predicably, great.

Who know that Mads would one day digivolve from Bond vilain to guy dancing jazz ballet with a bunch of high-school graduates and you wouldn't be upset about it?

Thank you, Anthony Hopkins, for giving me an eternal fear of forgetting everyone and everything I hold dear.

I just cried so much. What a heartbreaking story, backed by amazing cast.

I'm just gonna go to my bed and cry, if you don't mind.

I felt the entire movie that something was missing. I've seen "Judas and The Black Messiah", "Trial of the Chicago 7", "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom", and BBC's "Small Axe", over the past months, and I started watching this movie expecting the same racial inequality gut-punch. I got none of that.

I mean, yes, the film does portray the racial inequality and dicrimination that Bille Holiday suffered, but it made no attempt to explain it, it didn't broaden the fight for civil liberties that Billy was a part of. It just made the whole thing about the song.

And the problem with drug addiction was also just portrayed as an artist kind of thing. They missed a gigantic opportunity to talk about the connection between racial inequality and drug use.

Andra Day, congratulations. The main actress duly deserves her nomination, but the entire movie just falls flat for me. It still is very enjoyable, but in a year filled with great movies about racism in America, this one misses too many points.

Dreadfull. The acting is very very lame, mechanic and cheesy at points. Some reactions just don't make any sense. And it's not like the casting is bad, because it isn't. But there just so much you can do with a bad script, and Amy Adams and Glenn Close were given such bad lines, it should be ilegal to write this bad to such great actors.

I understand that the point is to portray an "american dream" type story, of resiliency and overcoming the odds, but I just don't buy it compared to other Oscar nominees (for example). It's simply boring as hell.

The constant flashbacks and flashforwards are so bad, at one point they just quit and made a horrible transition in the middle of the movie that looked like a school project.

Also. I love Hans Zimmer but the score is just too basic. But I guess it's hard to write symphonies for this kind of movie.

Also, also, I asked this the whole damn movie: who is J. D. talking to? It doesn't make sense.