Change Your Image
salsayyad
Lists
An error has ocurred. Please try againReviews
Faces (1968)
"Cry. That's it. That's life."
This is the film you send to the aliens. I love Kubrick, I love Hitchcock, Scorsese, Coppola, and Bogdanovich, etc. But of all the great directors working during the golden age of Hollywood, it was Cassavetes who knew how to tell the most pure, human, and loving story.
Faces is not a film that was made as a consumer product; it is an experience. The characters do not exist to serve you, the audience; they are not clowns for your entertainment. We have chosen to enter their world, and we must accept the chaos, the drunkenness, the hysteria, the non-existent structure. Because that is their life, and that is our life, as mankind, collectively.
Be patient, do not expect anything, only allow yourself to enjoy the company of these characters, and you will not be disappointed. I loved it more than anything.
The Daytrippers (1996)
I like how they shot from inside the car
The film features a cast of highly unlikable characters, making it challenging to care for them and ultimately enjoy the movie. For instance, Carl and the writers who work at Louis' office, come across as annoyingly pretentious and corny. Although the film somewhat mocks them, their constant presence in the story becomes tiresome. This is an issue I have with Woody Allen and early Noah Baumbach films where there is this "self-aware" pretentiousness, which might be more annoying than unabashed, confident pretentiousness. However, despite this setback, I found the family dynamic in the film to be complex and captivating. The interaction the family had with Leon was the most intriguing aspect and the highlight of the movie.
Un pays qui se tient sage (2020)
An interesting and important topic, but doesn't need to be a feature length film
For the first 20 mins I was fully engaged, the footage and stories are very moving. The reactions of the victims to their own battering was intense. However, the film gets repetitive, as the same ideas and themes are only reinforced, but not developed. It is difficult to go into depth with political theory in film form; I personally believe film can only be used as a tool to agitate but not educate. The film references Weber throughout but I also recommend Charles Tilly's "Do states make wars?".
This film would be better as a short doc uploaded to YouTube so more people could see what's going on in France.
Whispers (1980)
"Five years and I've seen nothing"
Eerie and slow, this film pulls all the emptiness out of Lebanon during 1980 and dumps it into your heart. The white, blue and black colour palette makes this feel like a ghost movie. However, the characters are opaque and alive, whilst the cities dead, just swaying in the background bleached white. Beautiful poetic narration is interjected between scenes and provides a romantic yet realistic insight into the countries past, present and future. The film does not ask for your sympathy like a charity advert, but just makes you fall in love with Lebanon and its people who's personalities relish through the lens of Baghdadi.
There are some moments which felt a bit too slow, but they did serve a purpose. I wish more people in the west would see this film because it truly humanises arabs and arab suffering in a time where we are seen as throwaways who deserve less then an animal treatment.
Dead Poets Society (1989)
I cried... a lot.
Objectively speaking, this movie isn't a 10, but I don't give a damn, this movie came to me at the perfect time in my life. I was sobbing through the entire third act. That feeling when you can't be who you are, because you don't want to disappoint who you love, is something I've been wrestling with my entire life. Becoming mentally ill because hiding the person you really are causes you to lose any sense of self, as if you are slowly disintegrating into an automated copy of who others think you are. Every beat of this film reached deep within me and pulled out all the anxiety and depression that festers at the bottom of my heart and told me to just breeeeeathe. We must not fall to the fate of Neil. This movie is truly beautiful and should be shown to every parent who thinks they are the writers of their children's destiny's. They still would not change but at least they'll have a different perspective.
Stay true to who you are, pursue your dreams, because life is too silly not to.
Beyrouth ya Beyrouth (1975)
Experimental, stylistic and pessimistic - a beautifully haunting experience
Love and chaos are intertwined in a Beirut which is trying pull itself back up post defeat in the Arab Israeli war. Young wannabe revolutionaries find themselves frustrated, neutral sideliners become frustrated, lovers frustrated with one another, all hope fades away. We only see peace in the mesmerising scenes of two mad hatters who have the remarkable ability of going where the wind blows. Perhaps fighting the wind is not worth it any longer. The revolutionary days of the Arabs are over. The American company will build where it wants, the businessmen will make profit at any cost and the working people must sit and endure these endless cycles of pre revolutionary excitement and post revolutionary despair.
This film is remarkable in making you empathise with the most flawed and unamiable characters. The abrupt editing style does not take you out of the film a single bit, but only makes you feel the forever ongoing nature of these struggles the Lebanese people face. This film is timeless, despite the terrible fashion of the 70s ;)