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Wonder Woman (2017)
Good characters in a mediocre film.
This film had the potential to be a decent film, but this potential is completely squandered. The film's strongest point are the characters. Diana and Steve are have fleshed out personalities and world views, and are fun to watch when they engage in mundane conversation. I also enjoyed how unabashedly cheesy some of the other characters were, such as the quirky sidekicks and the absurdly sinister villains. The characters alone would have been enough to earn the film a 6/10 rating, all the film needed to do was have a story that made sense and be competently made from a technical level but the film fails to clear either bar. The cinematography, editing and visual effects are very poor, and make every action scene completely incoherent. The story is riddled with numerous plot holes and inconsistencies, while they aren't obvious during the film are incredibly evident if any thought is given to the story. While I do appreciate the film's attempt at exploring the idea that a black/white morality world view is incompatible with the real world, the grand finale manages to completely contradict this thematic crutch, rendering the story meaningless. I review films based on how good it is rather than how much I liked it. While I liked most of the film, it just wasn't a good movie overall.
Dina (2017)
Pleasant, if not outstanding
Dina was decent. The standout elements are the very restrictive cinematography, with everything shot on a tripod making the film resemble a slice-of-life drama award contender; and the incredibly entertaining characters, with everyone behaving in a nonchalant and quirky way, almost like characters in a Wes Anderson film. While this film has an abundance of charm, I didn't find it exceptional. One metric I use to judge a documentary's quality is determining whether I would still care if it were a work of complete fiction, and I don't see myself being as forgiving if that were the case. My main annoyance with this film is that the story begins to feel extremely repetitive after a while. We are constantly cycling through the process of Dina getting frustrated, her fiancé having trouble compensating, and the to making up before starting again. If not for how entertaining the people featured are, the film would have been a complete slog.
Beuys (2017)
A muddled bore
Beuys is clearly a film whose success is completely reliant on the skill of the editor, and the editing was very sloppy. The filmmakers could not figure out how they wanted to approach their subject and the resulting approach is all over the place. The film starts off with a non-linear narrative driven by topic before suddenly shifting to a chronological structure. The film initially follows Beuys' development as an artist before becoming a character study half way through. While the style of the editing and the use of archive was interesting, the lack of focus made it impossible to get invested in what I was watching. This film did an especially poor job of explaining why any of his art is important. We are continuously told that Beuys wanted to "expand the meaning of art", and the film certainly acts as though Beuys was a visionary for believing this, but without properly explaining what that means or what any of his art means, there isn't a lot to keep the audience from thinking that Beuys is just a pretentious man. It's not until at least an hour into the film that an interpretation for one of his works is given, but by that point, the film had exhausted all the good will I had to offer.
DRIB (2017)
Endlessly amusing
This is the most fun I've had during a movie in some time. As a mostly reconstructive documentary based on some anonymous people, the film has the freedom to get creative. The characters and situations are very exaggerated and very amusing. Everyone is well acted and well cast and the character of Brady was surprisingly well developed. This is also a very funny movie. There is a healthy mix of visual gags, crude jokes, cringe comedy and surreal humor that keeps the film constantly entertaining. This film also had the freedom of having some interesting directing. The director clearly has a good grasp on how to use film language to enhance a scene and how to build a unique visual and auditory style, even though what's at work is pretty obvious. The film lacks subtlety, with most of what is being offered being on the surface level. The characters, jokes and directing are quite evident throughout. The story is more restrained and does offer some interesting ideas, though I'm not certain those ideas are meant to cohere into a theme. But it's hard to complain when, like the main character's performance artistry stunts, the main motivation is clearly to entertain by any means necessary, and any subtext is secondary to that, and I was definitely entertained.
Trophy (2017)
A fascinating exploration of moral ambiguities
It's always neat when a documentary takes the audience's preconceptions and uses them to reveal their ignorance. The film will punish the audience for judging too quickly by deliberately omitting information and revealing some unseen truth that changes what was already shown. This film will make you feel like a hypocrite and it completely reinforces the film's message. Beyond the superficial topic of hunting, this film is ultimately a cautionary tale for what can happen if people make uninformed opinions, and it certainly has the power to move people in that direction. It's incredibly entertaining watching a sprawling web of moral ambiguities unfold, even if it gets so dense that even the filmmakers seem incapable of navigating it. The film certainly asks a lot of questions and asks them in an exceptionally articulate way, but the film can't seem to offer anything resembling a definitive answer.
The Work (2017)
Deeply intimate and moving
This film would not succeed without brilliant characters, brilliant moments and brilliant editing, and this film has all three, to the point that it's astonishing that this film isn't a work of complete fiction. There are so many intimate, raw, emotional breakthroughs, to the point that this film could have used some clearly defined moments of pure levity to avoid dulling them as the film goes on. This film's structure is incredibly well organized, with every character getting the spotlight in a way that seems bizarrely coordinated. There is so much character to all the characters, and they are all memorable. The filmmaker's ability to articulate the shared struggle made me cry, and as of writing this, this is the only film that has made me cry purely because of the quality of the filmmaking. It's especially impressive that not only that the three members of the public that are focused on have their moments of emotional enlightenment, but that their emotional struggles also seem thematically linked, and this thematic link is even acknowledged through a line of dialogue by one of the inmates. I sometimes forgot that I was watching a documentary because of how smooth the journey was, but even the elements of the film which remind me that this wasn't filmed in a controlled environment only enhanced their scenes. If this film turned out to be completely fabricated, I would not be surprised, nor would it devalue the film for me whatsoever.