Israeli movie from a few years back. Also known as The Punishment which is a better title. Ostensibly it is about the battle between a 16 year-old girl, Ariella, who is testing her limits and her father Giora, a military man who treats her quite harshly and who has his own skeletons in the cupboard.
Giora’s wife is a bit of a wet blanket and doesn’t defend her daughter much. Through a series of events, the family ends up face to face with its past via a tragedy.
At the same time with its emphasis on security, discipline and limits, there is a reflection on Israeli society as well which makes it interesting and the number of toxic male characters is notable.
Shira Haas as Ariella is the main reason to watch this film.
She looks about 13 but is quite a bit older and for all that this is a bit of a one-note film, she brings a force and depth to the character as she seeks revenge and to punish both her father and herself.
Yiftach Klein as Giora and Yoav Rotman as a young man that takes Ariella in at one point are solid enough. There are plot holes and inconsistencies later in the movie and I’m not sure we needed to have logical explanations for everything but Aviad Givon and Imri Matalon give us a film that is entertaining and which addresses some important issues in raising daughters and safety in society.
Not much to say about this one. Canadian Indie film of basically three characters who form a sort of unexpected ´triangle’. Emile is a gay actor who shares his house with Michelle a lesbian dancer. Emile’s best friend Brad is evicted from his flat and comes to live with them, falling in love with the supposedly unavailable Michelle who is seeing Lisa. Michelle finds herself drawn to Brad and they get together only for Emile to have a fit of jealousy and try to break them apart. Secrets and fears emerge. That is about it.
Plus points. Justin Turnbull and Christa Andersen as Brad and Michelle are great, have remarkable chemistry and manage to spark the long dialogues. Any film that has you smiling while characters speak earns a bonus mark and they manage to portray the contrived arrangements convincingly. Photography is good. The obviously low budget has not hampered the end product which looks professional.
Minus points. It’s all bit too talky and could have lost about 15 minutes. Emile’s character is not that likeable and apart from being jealous he doesn’t have so much to do. Not sure about Lou Ticzon.
Chelsea Howey has a small role as Lisa and ends up overacting. The dance and musical scenes illustrating their careers are a bit underwhelming.
All told, this film by Hayden Woodhead means well and captures issues we face in relationships: trust, the past, the inexplicable. It lacks something in its smallness but the two leads and the director show they have the chops for something better.
Probably quite forgettable, honest rather than bringing anything new to the table.
Christian sponsored movie that serves as a sort of remembrance of the beginnings of the Jesus People church movements in the late 60’s in California but ends up being somewhat anodyne and underwhelming in its conservative paint by numbers approach.
Seen through the eyes of Greg Laurie (Joel Courtenay), a High School student and cartoonist who gets swept into the movement we watch as the hippie movement of the time suffers/enjoys a breakaway group that forsakes the LSD trips and free love orgies for a sort of orgy like worship of Jesus.
They gather in churches that welcome them, often abandoned by older clergy, and sings songs and perform born again baptisms.
In this case, the church of one Chuck Smith (Kelsey Grammer) becomes home to hundreds of young people and ends up spreading to a huge tent as young Jesus figure Lonnie Frisbee (Jonathan Roumie) starts preaching alongside the veteran churchman.
The pairing up being initiated by Chuck’s own daughter Janelle (Ally Ioannides), alienated from her father’s church.
Not much happens in the movie besides the growth of the movement, some inevitable internal fights between members, Greg’s on-off relationship with a clinically depressed mother and a rather boring love affair between Greg and fellow follower Cathe (Anna Grace Barlow).
By the middle onwards, many of the scenes seem artificial and scripted merely to move the film along rather than reflect real events faithfully.
Akis Konstantakoupoulos recreates the sunny California light of the time and the set recreations seem authentic but Jon Erwin and Brent McCorkle in direction and Erwin and Jon Gunn in the script seem too concerned to make a nice wholesome product to really make the film stand out.
The subject matter gives it a difference – the experiences of a gay man doing US Marine Corps boot camp. It’s based on the director’s life story. Elegance Bratton appears here as Ellis French, a gay man living on the streets after being rejected by his sole-parent mother.
Deciding that the Marines is his only way out, he enlists and somewhat amazingly survives the 13-week course. Despite being the ´no ask, no tell´ period regarding sexual orientation in the military he is quickly outed as gay, which he does not deny and suffers more humiliation than other conscripts with the exception perhaps of a Muslim man. (The film is set in 2005 post the Iraq war.
Bratton does not base his film on much narrative. Most of the film is about his experiences in camp bookended by scenes with his disapproving mother both before and after the event. Yet, it is sufficient and rather well done all round. There is a lot to ponder on in the rituals of the military, in the insular WASP attitudes, in the way the US struggles to value anything outside its borders.
Photography by Lachlan Milne is good and often poetic, both fight and fantasy scenes are handled well. Acting is good as well with out actor Jeremy Pope conveying a lot often in silence.
A surprise was the excellent performance of Gabrielle Union as the mother. In only four scenes she portrays an unattractive character, a bigoted anti-gay religious single mother now prison warden, with a power and credibility that pervades the whole film. Raúl Castillo as one of the camp leaders offers his usual nuanced effort and the rest of the cast all fit in well.
This is a smallish film which achieves what it sets out to do and suggests Bratton has a bright future in movies.
A patently autobiographical film from James Gray, Armageddon Time refers to the early 1980´s with Ronald Reagan as the new President and the threat of a nuclear Armageddon with the Soviet Union. Our hero, Paul (Banks Repeta) representing Gray is a 12 year-old boy in Queens, New York, who is part of a tight-knit Jewish family.
Jeremy Strong and Anne Hathaway (very effective) play his parents but it is with his grandfather, (Anthony Hopkins) with whom he has the greatest affinity. It is with a black classmate, however, that the real drama comes.
Johnny (Jaylin Webb) is cared for by an ailing grandmother and is given no favours in this public school. All he wants to do is get out and go to find a stepbrother in Florida. Paul is not only friends with him but wants to help and the pair get involved in various adventures to the point where his parents take Paul out of school and into a private school where his older brother goes.
In a way this is a film about the loss of innocence. Paul is a day dreamy artistic type and he is now getting the word that he needs to succeed (ie. make money in life via a good profession). Secondly black kids are seen as losers and not to associate with. In a very entertaining and effective cameo, Jessica Chastain plays Maryanne Trump (Donald’s older sister) giving a motivational speech to the new school assembly.
Preaching somewhat to the converted as these kids and their families have it made but ironic too as Donald has made a life based on using other people’s money.
The loss of innocence also refers in part to the USA although arguably it was never too innocent. At this point however, the chance of bridging the gap between the rich and poor, the whites and blacks seems to start its losing journey.
This is a watchable film and strange at the same time. The issues are raised (corporal punishment, discrimination against Jews) but not really dealt with. Just left to ponder. And is it an admission of guilt by Gray that as a boy he should have done more to help his friend. Where is Johnny today?
Jaylin Webb is very good as Johnny and in some ways his scenes and lines are the soul of the play.
Strong and Hathaway have their moments too while I was less enamoured with Hopkins. He has his presence, etc but I found his character somewhat clichéd and his accent rather slippery.
Something a little different from Portugal in the form of this beautiful work by Pedro Costa. It is, true to Lusitanian form, melancholic and focuses on Vitalina, a woman from Cape Verde who arrives in Lisbon to find her husband after 40 years only to learn that he has died.
She goes to the slum where he had a house and begins to learn something of his life, the poverty, alcohol and women principally. The other residents are largely immigrants from the Islands living in extreme penury. One, a priest (Ventura), was in Cape Verde and had to leave after a tragic accident and Vitalina recalls this in discussions with him.
The film consists of beautiful images filmed by Leonardo Simoes. Most are set at night with carefully framed light and through these we see different places in the slum and some of the characters who live there.
It is indeed remarkable how the mould, graffiti and grime of the slum can be rendered quite glorious in an image even if the message is clearly that these people are suffering.
There are a couple of scenes in reverie of Cape Verde and some outdoor scenes in Lisbon but for the most part, the setting resembles that of a black hole.
Vitalina is basically recreating the story of her own life in the film and she is a redoubtable figure, strong and somewhat angry.
How to assess this film overall? It is a sort of art piece perhaps more than a robust story. Vitalina’s experience is a narrative motor but is very casual and has no clear objective really. It is a sort of picking up the pieces and see if it all fits together. And yet in all that there is also a commentary about the life of immigrants in this situation.
I will remember it most of all for some of its images and for the fact that it is a different approach to the topic.
Ali Abassi is an Iranian filmmaker exiled in Denmark and he continues to work on subjects related to his country. This film, well reviewed in many places in 2022, saw the lead actress Zar Amir-Ebrahimi pick up the Best Actress award at Cannes.
It is quite a work and even more meritorious given that the film was shot in Jordan but apparently manages to convey Mashhad the holy city of Iran very well. The actors and Iranian crew are part of the Iranian diaspora living outside the country and some were involved in Tehran Taboo. Needless to say, the film was banned in the Republic of Iran.
Holy Spider is the name given to the lead male character, a serial killer who about 20 years ago lured prostitutes to his house and then strangled them and dumped them, allin the name of cleaning the country of these dirty women.
Saeed is played by Mehdi Bajestani, in an excellent performance as a frustrated former soldier, family man and somewhat religious zealot. It is chilling how he performs his deeds and then goes to have dinner with the family as if nothing happens. In his defence at the trial he comes across as arrogant and righteous, totally expecting to be validated for his actions.
His counterbalance in the film is Azetoo Rashimi (Amir-Ebrahimi) who plays a young woman journalist, already the victim of plenty of the social stigma and prejudice against women in the country. She goes to Mashhad to report on the case and why the police are not making any progress. She discovers that because the victims are women and streetwalkers, the police can’t really be bothered and again she is faced with deeply chauvinistic attitudes and behaviour. In the end, she dresses as a hooker herself to catch the spider and in a scary sequence nearly ends up losing her life.
The first 60% of the film is like a blend of thriller and horror. Several of the murders are filmed in gory close-up which may put some people off.
Once Saeed is caught, the film shifts its attention to the trial. Will the court, religious of course, forgive this man because he is acting in the name of God even though 16 women are dead? A couple of hajj (senior men with a holy status for having been to Mecca) make arrangements for Saeed to be released, Ms Rashimi and her colleague try to insist that punishment be given. We also get to see the reactions of the family of Saeed and his neighbours, many of whom shockingly support his deeds.
This is a strong film which makes some very clear observations about Iran: the denigration of women and women’s rights, the ‘old-boys’ network where men protect themselves through their contacts, the inability to see the reality of others in society, the dubious role of a legal system ruled over by a theocracy.
A brave effort indeed. The two lead actors are indeed very good, as is Saeed’s wife Fatemah (Forouzan Jamshidnejad) the screenplay is smart as written by Abbasi, Afshin Kamran Bahrami and Jonas Wegner, Nadim Carlsen portrays the city well in his photography and Martin Dirkov gives us a soundtrack with interesting sound effects.
One or two plot points may stretch belief and some of the violence may seem unnecessary but the overall effect is a strong one. Bajestani in particular deserves credit for making his monster seem credible and human.
Zach Braff, of Scrubs fame, brings us a somewhat melodramatic movie he wrote and directed for ex-girlfriend Florence Pugh. It is about Ally, a woman who is driving the car involved in an accident which kills her future sister-in-law and husband.
Fast forward to a year later and she is a mess, having dropped her fiancé, become an addict to prescription drugs and a social outcast by her own choice. In an AA meeting she meets Daniel, the dead woman’s father who is now bringing up his granddaughter alone and teetering back into his own alcoholic habits.
The two rekindle a difficult relationship and the rest of the film is basically about Ally sorting herself out and Daniel trying to be there.
There are some interesting themes at work here: taking responsibility for your actions, pill addiction, loss and mourning and how to handle sudden absences. Generally, it is watchable as we wait to understand the whole story and see what might happen. But it also can seem rather too pat and convenient in terms of giving the protagonist some key scenes.
That said, Florence Pugh is excellent in the lead, credible, varied and resourceful in her performance and surely chameleonic.
Best thing I’ve seen her do. Morgan Freeman does get a few too many sugar-coated speeches but he also outs in his best performance in years and it is a delight to watch.
Molly Shannon is suitably strident as Ally’s mother and a little goes a long way.
Chinaza Uche as the fiancé is all right and I preferred Zoe Lister-Jones as an AA mentor to Celeste O’Connor as the wayward granddaughter. Good photography from Mauro Fiore with plenty of close-ups.
In the end, despite all the positive features plus a good pop soundtrack (songs sung and written by Pugh too) the sum of it all is not quite the wow that it should be. Perhaps because it seems to be trying a bit hard.
Based on a best-seller by Tomás Eloy Martínez, this 7-parter takes an almost detective approach to telling the Evita story, focusing it around a journalist researching to find out what happened to Evita’s embalmed body after her death and in the decades before it was returned to Peron in Madrid. This mystery is used to hang the biography of Evita on and to flash out some of the characters around her at her death.
The series advances in 3 time frames.
One is in 1971 as journalist Mariano (Diego Cremonesi) is given the job by his editor to find out what happened to Eva Peron’s body after she dies and Peron himself had to flee the country. The military demolished the Presidential residence and scuppered plans to make a huge mausoleum to Evita.
Mariano soon discovers that there are people who don’t want him sniffing around. A second time period runs from 1951 onwards, a little before her death and involves Colonel Moori Koenig, the military man in charge or protecting her when alive and protecting her dead body later on.
In an almost farcical scenario, the body is hidden in different places in Buenos Aires, eventually ending up in Italy. Long after she was returned to Argentina and now lies in the family vault in Recoleta cemetery hidden from public view. Moori Koenig, played extravagantly by Ernesto Alterio is secretly obsessed with Evita as are some of his men.
Using events in this period as a hook, the series also goes back in time to show Eva as a teenager in her small town, how she came to the capital and her early days in radio theatre.
We also see how romance burgeoned between her and Peron, a man much older than her, and in the final part, her work with the poor. Her reputation as a defender of the poor and their rights has remained almost mythically even though she was a character as much loves as hated in the country.
Natalia Oreiro, local music star and actress, has the role of portraying the adult Eva. She grows into the role and is much more convincing in the last two episodes but is not enough of a character actress to do justice to the part. It is an adequate portrayal, no more.
Alterio starts strong as the Colonel but gets weirder as his character starts to melt down. Dario Grandinetti as Peron is a solid performance throughout without giving us too much charisma and Diego Cremonesi does well as the journalist. Most of the minor characters are well performed.
The recreation of the period is careful and convincing. What I found rather banal and predictable was the screenplay and it came across, a bit like the direction, as a bit of a paint-by-numbers exercise. Although the 3 timeframes got smoother at the end, it all seemed a bit self-conscious and even laborious early on.
A good enough summary of this part of Evita’s life and the corpse chase is a twist on many biopics. But it all lacks a bit of magic and spark to turn it ito something really gripping.
Something a little different from recent fare but firmly in the biopic tradition. Set and filmed in Italy but largely funded from the US, Bobby Maresco, an actor, director and co-screenwriter for Crash, embarks on a labour of love giving us a fairly broad brush account of Ferruccio Lamborghini, farmer’s son, tractor designer and eventually brains behind the most beautiful luxury sports car ever produced.
I guess the good feature here is that we get to understand some of the story. We tend to get a glossy talking over of the things rather than well developed critical scenes and Maresco is clearly no great shakes as a screenwriter. The first 40% is about his life as a young man, his wife’s early death, the struggles to develop a car with his partner Matteo, who he later betrays and the start of the tractor business. The next 40% is about the golden years investing the tractor money into his dream, which is fueled by a great envy of and competition with Enzo Ferrari.
The final part gives us a wee summary of the later years when Ferruccio sells the company but remains but omits reference to a 3rd wife, a 2nd child and the fact that both children have remained in the company. From what we gather at the end, his son Tonino wants nothing to do with it. Linking all these parts is a repetitive dream/nightmare race between Lamborgini and Ferrari as they try to best each other in a match race around the local villages.
For me, the first part works best. Though a bit young for Ferruccio’s real age, Romano Reggiani has more charm as the young version and some scenes with Matteo, his first wife Clelia and his father are interesting in a fairly predictable way.
The jump 15 years ahead brings us Frank Grillo in the lead, a fairly dull actor battling away with dull lines and a much less likeable person. Apart from that he seems too old at the beginning. I guess he does what he can.
Mira Sorvino as his second wife and Gabriel Byrne as Ferrari
are wasted in their roles and it’s left to the cars, especially the yellow Miura to be the stars.
The scenes and staging seem well dome to replicate the age but the odd gaps in continuity and the loss chances to inject this film with some magic and inspiration let it down.
passionfilm 