Reviews

Great cinematography, beautiful scenarios and well directed, Black Crab has everything it needed on the technical side and all the elements on the narrative one necessary to make a compelling and engaging war movie, it can also relies on an, as always, extraordinary Noomi Rapace but it drags itself for too long on thin ice, the pace is a bit too slow and it's too easy to loose interest in the characters and in the story itself.

This is fortunately and unfortunately everything you expect from a Wes Anderson movie.

Like most of his works I experience the same, weird and unique process: in the first 10-15 minutes i love every single shot and every single word then it slowly and progressively irritates me, too many words and phrases, too many perfect shot studied in such a meticulous way that makes me angry and anxious, til I get to the point where I just want to turn it off (40-45 minutes in, usually) then past this point I lose the battle and I just surrender to his style and I let myself be carried away by it, at the it ends up being a fascinating, beautiful and exciting experience that I want to repeat again and again.

And this movie is the Manifesto of this.

A film that starts from premises, although not exactly original, nevertheless interesting and that could have led to captivating developments if only the screenplay and the direction had been able to dare more.

The film instead chooses safer and less tortuous paths, thus missing the few possibilities it had to be able to distinguish itself from the numerous works that more or less have told and experienced similar scenarios and reflected on the same Hamletic issues.

What works least is precisely what the film should stand on, the bearing columns of the story, that are the characters and the social and physical dynamics that evolve in and between them.

The characters are characterized in a very superficial way, with two or three traits often quite extreme and radical, completely polarizing the different characters and behaviors. This makes them little more than archetypes, even if instead they should indicate the most human and pure instincts, towards which it is difficult to empathize, even those who demonstrate the most morally positive traits. Indeed most are irritating caricatures.

While the dynamics that form and evolve in and between them are extremely banal and predictable as well as different narrative implications that in the last part turns out to be even ridiculous.

Sam Levinson knows how to attract attention, I'll give him that, and in Euphoria he even success, finding the right tones and respect the fact that there's a limit even if far but there is one.

Here he completely lost it.

The viewing is uncomfortable not in the way he intended it to be, but because of the poor taste with which the movie rappresents every single event in its confusing and unbearably edgy screenplay.

The social commentary, not even that smart, deep or philosophical as he pretend it to be, is just an excuse to vomit in the camera free violence and depravity without actually saying anything and with an extremism that in every case would inevitably overshadow any type of message.

It has some interesting ideas but most of them are underdeveloped so that there could be enough space for the love story between the two leading character., being this a romantic movie. But the romantic side is exactly what doesn't work in this movie, the major problem is the two characters, they are extremely basic and definitely not special, interesting or specific and so are the two actors whose interpretations are just unremarkable; therefore the relationship between them can't but feel generic, banal and very dull

So obsessed with appearing quirky and extravagant and completely dependent on its role as a feminist manifesto within the strongman DC world, that it leaves behind everything that could truly make it an interesting addition to the limping DC cinematic landscape. If you strip it of all the colors and all the jokes, in fact, it remains a rather banal plot made unnecessarily complicated by continuous flashbacks and the nerve-racking voiceover; flat and not at all captivating characters and action sequences that lack spectacularity and that rarely exalt as they could and should have. "Birds of Prey" thus turns out to be empty, tasteless and paradoxically devoid of personality.

This movie is just exhausting and it drags itself for 1 hour and 45 minutes in which the only likeable things are the decent cinematography and the soundtrack. 1 hour and 45 minutes of forced, unnatural and extremely pretentious dialogs; of poses too staged to feel authentic; of end-to-end situations that often get so exaggerated they almost get to the point to be grotesque; of mirrors put in specific places so that the director could make that totally unnecessary but so strongly aesthetic shot. A movie, so arrogant not naive, that constantly thinks, that it's sure to be smarter, better and more important than it actually is. A chaotic, empty, loud, stupid noise that wants and thinks to be jazz.

Pure imagination, adrenaline, frenzy, madness and a LOT of speed.

Redline is both everything and nothing you can expect from a Japanese anime about car racing.

Richard Ayoade's work is extremely derivative but in perfect symbiosis with the original Dostoevsky's book. The grotesquely absurd dystopian world; the depressing, cynical tone; the perpetual night enlightened by discontinued artificial lights of different colors; the continuing feeling of injustice, claustrophobia, perfectly organized caos; the sensation of being completely out of place and still so irreversibly integrated with the society; everything feels so right for the story that it's difficult to think of an alternative way of telling it. Also a better actor could not have been chosen to play this role outside of Jesse Eisenberg, simply terrific.

A room, a man and a phone call. It's simply remarkable what this movie managed to do with just these three elements. A story simple but at the same time complex, as Fritz Lang's "M" (1931) it asks itself where's the line between guilty and victim when a mental issue is the weapon? 86 minutes of uninterrupted tension, wonderfully written dialog and a powerful interpretation by Jacob Cedergren.

It's not a bad movie but it's astonishingly unremarkable and that's because it never reach any emotionally powerful moments, every character feels so thin and forgettable (apart from Emma Thompson's) that if one of them would have disappeared in the middle of the movie you wouldn't have noticed it and all the romantic relationships between them are so superficial and banal that's difficult to even care about. Still in its 136 minutes it never really annoys or bore, it has a particular charm that manages to make the viewers watch every minutes even if they aren't into it.

The absurd, raw, violent and bloody stunts work pretty well and some of them are impressive so that would have been enough to make it a fun flick for a Saturday night and probably it's what the movie should have gone for: entertaining, technically week done and unpretentious action and nothing more. Instead it makes a mistake, it takes itself too seriously with dramatic segments that should add some emotion apart from the entertainment but on the contrary they only break the rhythm and feel unconvincing and inevitably forced. For other movies it could have worked but in this one, with its two-line script, there wasn't any space for that.

It's not new, we've heard most of the words and seen most of the images that are in this documentary in tons of other productions, including some of David Attenborough's like the latter "Our planet". But here there's something different, something deeper that makes you hear and see everything with a more radical attention, there's an extreme urgency that overshadow the beauty of the images, that makes you realize how thin the line is toward the irreversible; the difference here is that the calm, poetic, sensitive and emotional voice of David Attenborough feels like a loud, tireless scream not for help but for hope, an hope that doesn't mean inertia but effort, and the fact that his scream feels so desperate and broke means that we have no time left to change, we have to do it now. He had his life, a beautiful and full one and if we want the same we have to do at least a small percentage of what he did for this planet and for us.

Aesthetically and technically speaking Sydney Sibilia is one of the few directors who manages to make a homegrown film at the level of other international productions and therefore addressed to a much wider audience, not limiting himself to the Italian one as most of the productions of the our country do. "L'incredibile storia dell'isola delle rose" is yet another confirmation of this: special effects, direction and, in particular, cinematography are of excellent quality, an example for all those filmmakers who want to change italian cinema to make it visible and appreciable in the rest of the world. Unfortunately, however, the screenplay does not propose the same quality, between forced and banal dialogues, poorly characterized characters and a fluctuating rhythm, everything that makes this (unjustly omitted from the history books) story wonderfully interesting is missing: the sense of affront and rebellion towards a system that seemed untouchable but also the absurdity, the incredible passion, the irony and at the same time the humanity behind it and its characters, are almost never perceived. The film works as a medium-level comedy-drama and manages to entertain and intrigue but is often unable to tell the facts as they deserved to be told, giving them the more than necessary political, historical and social importance.

A bit ripetitive as the editing follows Diana's words adding nothing more than archive images and video cut and glue together always in a simplistic, canonical way but at the same time it gives us a complete, exhaustive and precious look at her story, through her point of view, from which it's impossible not to be hooked and moved by, even if you're not familiar with this matters or usually you're not interested in.

"The Truth", when compared to Koreeda's homegrown filmography, can easily be seen as more superficial or less profound but, even if under some aspects that's true ("Shoplifters" is undoubtedly a greater movie), sometimes a simpler piece is exactly what a filmography needs. In this movie we can see most of Koreeda's typical themes such as the relationships within a family, the absence of a figure inside of it, the trauma that can born and live in it, treated with an (apparent) simplicity, yes but even with a charming sobriety that makes everything flow with an irresistible fluidity. A fluidity that slowly but steadily plunges the viewer into the relationship, poised between reality and acting, of a mother and a daughter, both superbly interpreted by Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche, that is never banal, always credible and deeply felt and more complex than it seems. "The Truth" may be simple and thin but it's one of those movies so enjoyable when watching that when they end they make you want to watch another movie and another one and another one, they make you appreciate cinema so much you can't not love them.

Artistically it's a masterpiece without no doubt, it's incredibly inventive like most of the Pixar movies and deeply poetic like just their greatest ones. It manages to use the animation to create and rationalize images, worlds, characters and concepts so complicated and imaginative that usually can only find their form inside minds. But at the same time narratively it feels rushed and this makes it hard to be involved, moved and you find yourself detached; so many aspects about the main character, the dimensions he cross and about the philosophy behind them and the main story needed more attention, a more elaborated development, especially in the first half where the movie don't find the right rhythm running and running without a breath, a beautiful, essential breath. Maybe it just needs to be watched a second time or even more to be fully appreciated. Still it really is a good movie, even a masterpiece under some aspects as already mantioned, but it could have been a masterpiece under every aspect if it lasted longer. It had so much to say and too little time to do it.

With "Mulan" Disney made same choice that they did with "The lion King", adapting the animated movie into a more serious and realistic live-action. Both the movie failed in the same way but here the process of making the story more credible is even more drastical, they cut off the songs, most of the magical elements and the main comic component (the little dragon). What's left is a emty, boring and useless movie without any personality and originality, that fail to modernize the original one. The family-movie component is completely sacrificed and every comic scenes just feel out of place or even embarrassing. So it's even more frustrating seeing that the action part, the one that should have been elevated when they decided to make it just a simple action movie, never really works. The action sequences lack of dynamism and mobility, the editing is too slow, heavy and disoriented while the direction is inadequate and it never creates the right set up or makes them look exciting or just convincing, in addition most of the stunts feels wooden. This just shouldn't have been made especially if they didn't no how to properly excuse its existence, if not the one of making more and more money.

The concept is great, an original way to make a biopic, a genre that is been abused in the latest years, especially the musical ones. But apart from the concept, the astonishing performance form Viola Davis, that lives in a perfect armony into Ma Rainey's body, and from some interesting moments, "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" is clearly born for the stage, is a play in every single aspect and the cinematic production didn't do much to make it different, to make it suitable for the screen, especially the streaming one. Everything is too theatrical: the screenplay full of dense dialogs that overlap, a static, claustrophobic direction and the exaggerated interpretations that most of the time are too dramatic or too elaborated to feel natural, real (expect Viola Davis' one). Chadwick Booseman was a great actor but even him seems to constantly search the applause or the looks of an audience that is not there, that can't be there.

"The prom" is as hypocritical, opportunistic, manipulative as the characters that it wants to criticize. Always too busy trying to be appreciable, recognized, praised for his commitment to the good cause, trying to appear good, innocent and honest (and to include as many product placement as possible) that it neglects everything else with extreme superficiality: from the two-dimensional and stereotypical characters and the mediocre choreographie to the repetitive, forgettable and corny songs. Nothing really works, not even Meryl Streep can save it and at the end it's difficult to ignore the sneaky intentions behind the shiny lights and the glossy colors.

It rarely reaches the tension and the suspense it needs but it's still an interesting, entertaining little film that managed to be quite original despite the saturated genre.

A fascinating manifesto of rebellion, anarchy and anger that reflects in a blunt, unsophisticated but genuine way the inconvenience of a society that was but that paradoxically feels very much similar to the actual one; a society that ghettoises and marginalizes, that prefer to ignore than listen or understand. The dialogs didn't age well nor did the fight scenes or the acting but it still remains very enjoyable for its look, imagination and especially for its strong character and its defined personality.

It's difficult to understand what type of movie the producers wanted to do and that's because it seems like if every crew member was working at a different movie, like if there was a lack of communication between them and no one of them has done a good job. The direction at least knows how to create tension but it's constantly obstructed by a ridiculous dialogs, a script that miss substance and an intrusive soundtrack.

The dazzling cinematography and the colorful, wonderful soundtrack try really hard to give magic to this movie but nothing helps when the direction itself misunderstand the story and therefore doesn't know how to develop it with the right tones. Everything feels empty, soulless and definitely without any type of magic, from the flat and annoying characters to the inconsistent and dull screenplay; to the point that at the end the movie seemed to have told nothing or, at least, nothing interesting.

This movie came in a really predictable way into Guy Ritchie's filmography. After one big flop, (king Arthur) which I sill liked, and a big-budget and definitely not authorial one (Aladdin), Ritchie returns in his safe zone with an extremely (for his career) canonical movie, it's frenetic, noisy, fancy, elaborated and it has his signature in every shot and every dialog both so sophisticated and studied that risk to be redundant as usual. But here there's more talk and less shoot or punch and that's where "the gentlemen" find its problem: it makes you smell the tension, the action scenes, the climax but it never really comes or hits as it wanted to. It's a bit a disappointment cause Richie is great with action scenes, he knows how to direct them with charisma and intelligence but, and this is how he makes this movie still be good despite the nearly absence of action and the underwhelming climax (probably caused also by some twist that didn't worked perfectly), but, as I was saying, he's also really good at makes every line, every dialog feels like a fun and satisfying fight scenes. So at the end "The Gentleman" has his flaws and it could be better but even if it's not as good as most of Ritchie's movies, it's still as entertaining, fun and full of style as every of them