Zak Hilditch's These Final Days is an Australian independent film chronicling the last day on earth for James, a self-absorbed twenty-something man. In twelve hours a cataclysmic event will occur, and with that in mind, James leaves his longtime girlfriend in an attempt to avoid any type of emotion. All James' girlfriend wants is for him to show her that he cares but James is a man living within himself, not wanting any semblance of commitment or emotion during the end of days. James leaves his girlfriend alone and makes his way to a party, voyaging through the lawless, chaotic wasteland that used to be known as Austrialian suburbia. On his way he stumbles acorss a little girl named Rose, in desperate need of help. Somewhat reluctantly he saves Rose from two men whose intentions were who knows what, which of course now makes James tasked with unwanted responsibility. These Finals Days is a film that doesn't care about exposition, throwing the viewer directly into this depraved world. The film has no intention to explain exactly what is happening in 12 hours, or why it is occuring, but instead These Final Days focuses its time on James' transformation as he slowly learns what is important in life. A personal redemption story, These Final Days wears its message on its sleeve, with James becoming to realize how much he loves his girlfriend and his unborn baby. With all the depravity between man, These Final Days keeps the event itself very ominous, letting it hover like a dark cloud over the narrative, never exposing exactly what is happening while showing how there is no hope for survival Featuring orange-soaked cinematography and a small budget, These Final Days paints a convincing portrait of the end of the world, with its raw, depiction of a morally bankrupt society.
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After a chance encounter with Regina, a seventeen-year old struggling with cancer, Henry Corra, a well-respected documentary filmmaker, became inspired by the young girl's spirit. Being passionate about cinema, Regina has always aspired to be a filmmaker and through this chance encoumter the two form a special bond, with Henry vowing to help Regina make her film about her life. Henry Corra & Regina Nicholson's Farewell To Hollywood is a deeply effective portrait of a young woman's battle with cancer. Intricate in approach, Farewell to Hollywood is not an easy film to experience, never holding back in detailing the countless treatments and overall lack of hope this disease instills in not only it's victims but anyone and everyone who loves them as well. Like any great documentary, Farewell to Hollywood is constantly evolving in front of the viewers very eyes, as Regina's condition strips her completely of her independence and causes incredible strife. This is what I found so compelling about Farewell to Hollywood, how vividly the film is in documenting the destructive capabilites of cancer. This is demonstrated through Regina's parents, two well intentioned individuals who grow incredibly hostile and posessive. While the father's coping mechanism entails ignoring his daughter's suffering due to his inability to deal with it himself, Regina's mother threatens to smother her daughter, selfishly wanting to spend every waking second with her. With Regina about to become a legal adult, her lack of independence, even in the face of this horrible disease, fractures the family unit, with Henry, the filmmaker, being the only one capable of looking past himself and seeing how important this film is to Regina. While the film's intentions may be written off as exploitative by some, Farewell To Hollywood is a provocative portrait of love, life, and art, delivering beautifully realized portrait of the fragility of life, the importance of doing what you love, and the difficulties of coping with the loss of a loved one. Oscar Ramirez, a rich farmer, lives a modest life with his family in the rice fields north of Metro Manila. When Oscar discovers he doesn't even have enough money to buy next year's seeds, he and his wife decide to escape their impoverished life and move to Metro Manila. While Oscar believes the big city will offer him plenty of opportunities, he soon discovers the city is overpopulated and overwhelming for him and his family, as they find themselves constantly manipulated by unsavory individuals, struggling to make enough to eat. Oscar seemingly catches a break when Ong, a senior driver for an Armored truck company, puts in a good word for Oscar and effectively gets him hired. LIfe seems to potentially be on the upswing for Oscar and his family, but soon he discovers that nearly everyone in this city is out for themselves. Sean Ellis' Metro Manila isa bleak, Dickenson-esque tale of a man being constantly pushed closer to the edge. This story has been told a thousand times before but Metro Manila manages to differentiate itself enough due to its characterizations. Metro Manila shows how hard the weight of survival can weigh on good men, exposing the desperation that sets in when it comes down to surviving and protecting your family. Metro Manila works because of strong characterizations, most notably Oscar, a genuine-feeling portrait of man grappling with extremely tough conditions. I particularly loved how it isn't until Oscar's first day on the job that he realizes the gravity of the situation, that he is working in a dangerous profession. Struggling for weeks in Manila to find steady work had left him backed into a corner, lost in despair, so desperate to take care of his family that his safety didn't even cross his mind. Metro Manila expoes the true nature of love and sacrifice through Oscar, with a glimmer of hope during the finale in an otherwise bleak film. While Metro Manila may border on exploitative at times in how it shows the peril of Oscar and his family, the film is a well-paced, skillfully crafted story of ultimate sacrfice. Albert and David Mayles' Grey Gardens chronicles the unbelievable story of Mrs. Edith Beal and her daugher Edie, aunt and cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Edith and Edie live in a secluded manion in the Hamptons, surrounded by decay and overgrown shrubbery that has consumed the once proud Mansion known as Grey Gardens. So far removed from society, Edith an Edie once found themselves threatened by eviction by the local authories, due to violating numerous living violations and sanitation codes. Born an aristicrat, Edith groomed her daughter Edie into an aspiring actress in New York, with her stirking beautiy leading to courtship attempts from many members of high society. Grey Gardens is a fascinating documentary that explores two eccentric characters who've long lived together in a secluded setting. The film paints a vivid portrait of two souls, capturing the overwhelming dependecy that has consumed both fo them. Using a very obversational lense, the Mayles brothers film these two characters in an intimate setting, capturing small details of these characters with insert shots which bring this strange and vivid world to life. Edith and Edie clearly care for each other very much but what Mayles' Grey Gardens does so well is capture the volatility of dependency, subtely showing the oppresion and hostility that can arise from deep-seeded dependence. Edie is a tragic character due to this, being a woman who had the world in front her, though she was never able to find her independence and truly set out into it. There is really no question that Edie and Edith suffer from some deep-seeded mental issues due to their secluded environment and unhealthy dependency, but what makes this documentary so impressive is that it never takes the easy way out, attempting to understand why these womant are the way the are, never writing off their eccentric qualities as merely the work of a mentally disturbed individual On of Ti West's earlier films, Trigger Man, tels a very simple story about a group of friends who decide to go on a hunting trip together. Things are peachy at first, but as Ti West films usually go, Horror is lurking around the corner, as they soon discover that they are in fact the ones being hunted by a mysterious individual. Extremely low-budget, Ti West's Trigger Man provides a raw early look into the filmmaker, being a slow-paced horror film that slowly builds the tension of its story, inevitably ratcheting up the level of suspense as the narrative propels towards its intense, satisfactory ending. Trigger Man is a film that almost seems to evolve as the narrative progresses, with the first 30 minutes or so of the film feeling more like a buddy comedy than any type of horror film. West uses the early part of the film as a way to get the audience to lower their defenses, offering a slow-burning story that feels low-key and relaxed at the beginning. Of course when the violence and intensity does comes it's graphic, with West's patience paying off, in delivering the true gravity of the situation, where life and death hangs in the balance. To be completely honest, I did find the handheld camerawork in Trigger Man to be a little too aggressive for me, particularly early on, to the point where I just found it distracting. While I liked Ti West's Trigger Man, the film's simplicity feels like a showcase of Ti West's potential more so than a great film. Peppino, a seemingly lonely man, works as a taxidermist. Having his own shop, he also routinely works for the mafia, stashing various contraband in corpses. While admiring animals at the Zoo, Peppino finds himself entranced by the handsome Valerino, a waiter possessing signficant stature. Peppino hires Valerino to be his personal assistant, offering him a substantial amount of money to essentially be his protege. The two become close, going out of the town together and sharing prostitutes. While Peppino is subtlely pushing this relationship towards physical intimacy, Valerio meets Deborah, quickly beginning a passionate relationship with her. Matteo Garrone's The Embalmer is an intricate look at a character tettering on the edge of sanity, with Garrone exposing the unlikely accord that can exist between violence, passion, desire, and love. Garron creates very vivid psychological portraits in his films, with Peppino being one of my favorite. From the opening scene at the Zoo it becomes apparent that something is a litlte off with Peppino, with the film creating an ominous tone around the character, almost like he is stalking his prey. While the film never blantantly exposes Peppino's homosexuality on screen, Matteo makes it quite clear with his playful sensibilities. It's almost as if he is teasing the audience in a few scenes, like when Peppino is showing Valerio a ring, doing so in a way that conjures up wedding proposal imagery. The sequence is extremely well done and combinted with other scenes offers an nuanced gateway into Peppino true self. What makes Peppino such an fascinating character is how terryfing and possesive he becomes, with Matteo peeling back the layers of Peppino's psyche like an onion, exposing a ruthless, possessive man. Matteo Garrone's The Emballer is a quietly disturbing film, that provide a pensive study of not only Peppino, but all of its character's inner psychology. Richard Stanley's Hardware wastes no time at all informing the viewer about this post-apocalyptic world, instead opting to immerse the viewer and let them figure out the intricacies of this world as the story progresses. This is a terribly underrated Sci-Fi horror film which is crafted with ingenuity and enthusiasm to the point that the budgetary constraints only add to Hardware's charm. It's essentially about Moses, ex-military, who discovers a pile of droid parts in "the zone" which turn out to be a dismantled prototype of a new battle droid. Chaos ensues. You can tell that Richard Stanley came from music videos cause this film is absolutely loaded with style and atmosphere. The film heavily uses music and editing in a succinct, stylized way, aiding in the creation of unique and robust atmosphere that makes Hardware unique. Strangely enough, the sex scene is a great example of this, with a synth score immersing the viewer in this strange erotic sequence, Stanley syncs the score with white and blue strobe lights that illuminate the action, making it one of the more memorable sex scenes in recent memory. Hardware is full of these types of sequence, the lighting an use of color, particularly red, used by Stanley gives the whole film this strange dark, post-apocalyptic feel. Hardward is dirty, bleak and somewhat sleazy, thanks mostly to a character who is the neighbor of Moses' girlfriend. Let's just say he likes to watch, which inevitable leads to one of the best death sequences when the aforementioned voyeuristic neighbor meets his maker. While not loaded with violence, Richard Stanley's Hardware is a creative and unique vision of a post-apocalyptic world, being another under-appreciated gem from Richard Stanley. Tom, a playwright, and George, a painter, are two young American artists living together in Paris. While traveling, the two meet Gilda, a free-spirited young woman, with each man instantly falling in love. Unfortunately, Gilda struggles mightly choosing between the two men, admiring them both for different reasons, which leads to a 'gentleman's agreement" between the three of them. The Plan? Gilda will move in with them as a friend and critic of their artistic work, but neither man, neither George nor Tom, will ever be physically intimate with Gilda. While the aggreement works at first, when Tom gets his big break on a production in London, he leaves Gilda and George along in Paris, putting the whole agreement on thin ice. Design for Living very much feels like a Lubitsch film, featuring the elegant dialogue that is superbly written but never overwrought. Coming from the pre-code era, Design For Living is a pretty racy film for its time, given that when Gilda first meets the two young men, she is intimate with both of them, dating them on back to back occasions, wishing to sample the product before making and rash decisions. Lubitsch's films ooze elegance, delivering impressive characterizations that really express the passion, desires, and fears of these three individuals. Design For Living may try to tone down its source material homosexual undertones, it's interesting how intentional or not, one could argue that Gilda's character is a symbolic representation of the relationship Tom and George share -friends' only when there is obviously both a mental and physical connection. Ernst Lubitsch's Design For Living is not one of my favorite films from the filmmaker, though it maintains the elegance and humanistic qualities that make Lubitsch great. Goodbye First Love is a poetic, sensitive exploration of adolescent love and passion told through the life of our main protagonist, Camille. The film begins with Camille in a relationship with Sullivan, who she believes is her soulmate. Sullivan is older, and wants to explore the world, but to Camille, who has a rather limited point-of-view of the world, Sullivan is merely wanting to do things instead of being with her-leading to an inevitable break-up. The film chronicles Camille's life from the aforementioned, where she is 15, to later in her life, where she is pursuing a career in architecture and seeing her former teacher. It's a real pleasure to see this woman's life unfold in front of the viewer, and you really see this character grow as a person, while still maintaining the sensibilities which are merely a part of her soul. Oh course, she reconnects with Sullivan, creating a reminder of her past love. Mia Hansen-Love's Goodbye First Love is a film full of genuine emotion, deconstructing adolescence by looking at the love, lust, longing, obsession and disappointment which love entails. Like most french films, the film is very talky and sensual-at one point in the film the script itself pokes fun at this generalization, where Camille and Sullivan argue about the quality of a film they just saw. There is definitely a comparison to be made between "Like Crazy' and this, but both have rather different approaches in their deconstruction of how love, memory and distance intermingle. I definitely liked it, but I wasn't as emotionally invested as I thought I would be. As a filmmaker, Albert Serra is certainly one of the more challenging for audiences, a director who seems to intentionally drag out his scenes, offering minimalistic slice of life type sequences that offer little substance. His style always seems to rub me the wrong way, almost being intentionally obtrusive, and while Serra's latest, The Story of My Death, doesnt see the filmmaker change his approach, that fact that it's essentialy an arthouse period piece chronicling an encounter between Casanova and Dracula left me intrigued. Centered around an aging Casanova, whose womanizing has tempered considerably, much of The Story of My Death follows on his adventures through the coutryside, meeting people and writing his memoirs with his new valet. Headed towards the Carpathian mountains, the majority of The Story of My Death finds Casanovia wax poetic, attempting to stay in touch with the changing times. It's only about two thirds of the way through the film that the Prince of Darkness is introduced, with Serra slowly and subtlely shifting the film's aesthetic to a much darker pallette, brooding with a sense of death. The Story of My Death is not a film very interested in its two famous characters, only using them to create a strainge, absurdist 18th centruy period piece featuring the trademark wit and philosophical bantering. Serra uses this period piece setting and Casanova to juxtapose love and lust, rationalism and romantacism, seeing Casanova venture towards the darker passions of Vlad the Impaler aka Dracula. Wth The Story of Life and Death, Albert Serra still shows his penchant for irrating the viewer with long, drawn out sequences, but it's hard to deny the film's artistic and thematic merits. |
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June 2023
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