THE PERSIAN VERSION
Take a lesbian American-Persian young woman, add with 8 brothers, an ill father, and a secretive mother and you have a recipe for love, laughter, and lots and lots of reflection.
The relationship between the mother and the daughter — as well as the one between the grandmother and the mother — is at the center of this semi-autobiographical comedy-drama written and directed by Maryam Keshavarz.
Lesbian basketball player Leila has a love/hate relationship with her mother Shireen, the matriarch of a family of 11 — including a hospitalized father and 8 sons. In many ways, Leila and Shireen are the same. Stubborn, obstinate, and ambitious, the two women have a broken relationship due to the lack of emotional guidance they received growing up as young women in Persian families.
Although I perfectly understand where this comes from, I wish Layla Mohammadi had played a less “new-jersey” kind of Leila, and had been directed to add more Persian manners, language, and attitude. In my opinion, that would have added a more structured and layered conflict with her mother.
I’m also not crazy about the choice of casting Niousha Noor as the mother. Yes, the mother is supposed to be very young considering she had her first child when she was a teenager, but the actress doesn’t seem to carry the gravitas of her past life as a pregnant child bride, manipulated, cheated on, and isolated in a remote village. On the other hand, the performance of the younger version of her character, played by a newcomer Kamand Shafieisabet, was intense, heartbreaking, and heart-shattering. Shafieisabet did an absolutely terrific job!
The narrative of this film is non-linear, scenes jump quickly from the present to the past, from New York to Iran, and we end up losing a bit who is telling what story — is this Leila talking? Is this the mother remembering? Is this the grandmother recounting? But in the end, it doesn’t really matter, as the entirety of the scenes brings us to now: mother and daughter trying to heal from their past.
In this film, the men are essentially ornamental. The 8 brothers move and talk in unison, creating a chaotic and disorderly surrounding that helps us understand the weight Leila grew up with — the scene of young Leila asking to cook for her entire family because she is the only girl in the family is quite unnerving. Leila’s accidental boyfriend — played by an upbeat and funny Tom Byrne — is another very aesthetic presence in Leila’s life. Thanks to his 'Hedwig and the Angry Inch' costume — in the film he is a Broadway singer/actor — he takes up even more space in Leila's life than she desires.
In the end, The Persian Version is about how much women can control and decide their lives — and how much they can connect with other women — in a world highly dominated by males.
A great reflection on the arduousness young girls need to go through, and how much of their generational cycles they keep carrying in their lives, reluctantly.
A beautiful work!
THE ROYAL HOTEL
The Royal Hotel is a psychological thriller directed by Kitty Green, starring Julia Garner and Jessica Henwick, and loosely inspired by the 2016 documentary Hotel Coolgardie by Pete Gleeson.
Garner and Henwick play Hannah and Liv, two young American women backpacking through rural Australia. Short in money, they decide to take a temporary job at the bar of ‘The Royal Hotel’ in a mining town that seems to be only populated by rude drunk men, and with very aggressive manners at that.
A few minutes in, and the tension is already going through the roof. Verbal abuse and harassment of all kinds are only a few of the things the two oblivious best friends will go through.
There is no real plot in this film. Green is really good at creating an atmosphere of terror, anguish, of deep fear, a situation that’s so imbalanced, so disproportionate that we don’t know if we should root for the girls — to grab their backpacks and leave that terrifying place — or if we should just prepare ourselves for the worst.
Carol, the one female character, the girlfriend of the owner, is the only one who breaks the tension and seems to genuinely care about the girls.
Everything else is just a disaster waiting to happen.
Of course, it doesn't help that Liv — who is the life of the party — really wants to have a good time to the point of dodging red flags left and right faster than Neo in The Matrix. Hanna on the other hand tries really hard to keep her head on her shoulders and her eyes vigilant throughout the film, which brings a little comfort in that depressing desolation made of men with fragile egos.
Michael Latham’s dark cinematography adds very well to the deserted mood and overall sense of despair and loneliness of the film. Both Garner and Henwick were perfectly cast in my opinion, I really like the contrast between the sociable nature of Henwick and the reserved disposition of Garner, I think the cast worked really well.
This film uses the mining town in the Outback as a stratagem to explore on classism, sexism, misogyny, and toxic masculinity of our modern society. Definitely worth watching!
SHE CAME TO ME
She Came To Me, the new dramedy by Rebecca Miller came out quite stealthily among a series of blockbusters such as The Creator, Saw X, and the highly anticipated Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour — despite featuring stars such as Peter Dinklage, Marisa Tomei, and Anne Hathaway.
Steven is an Opera composer fighting writer’s block. His wife Patricia — who was his former therapist and is played by Anne Hathaway — is a cold, anal-retentive, hyper-zealous psychologist, wife, and mother. Her son, born from a previous relationship, lives with her and Steven full-time.
One day, after being encouraged to get out of his luxurious NY brownstone to take his dog for a walk, Steven finds himself seduced by tugboat captain Katrina, played by an excellent Marisa Tomei and ends up getting dragged into her boat and having sex with her.
Full of remorse, but finally inspired, Steven goes back home to write what would be his best Opera yet.
The film plays around the fact that everybody in NY has an interesting story to tell, and by just going out one day you could get dragged into the most absurd situation possible. Having lived in NY for about nine years, these stories seem honestly to be quite plausible too!
While Steven’s storyline unfolds, Patricia’s son Julian falls in love with his school friend Tereza, who, unbeknownst to all the parties involved, is the daughter of Patricia and Steven’s undocumented housekeeper Magdalena from her previous relationship, who is now married to Tereza’s stepfather. The two plots will develop at the same time and will guarantee a double happy ending to the intricate story.
The script is extraordinarily well written. All of the absurd elements of the film blend together quite nicely, as they find rest in knowing that the superb performances and chemistry between Dinklage and Tomei would match their quirkiness (and more), creating a picture that’s suspended between being at the same time hyper-realistic and surreal, down-to-earth and ethereal.
Miller’s choice to change the picture ratio every now and then is quite interesting. The format would go from 16:9 to 4:3 whenever Steven would go to the tugboat. Most of the time, the ration wouldn’t be noticeable right away, but it would definitely add to the overall visual sensation left to the audience: whenever we’re in the tugboat, the image feels restricted and claustrophobic, whenever we’re in Steven’s NY brownstone, everything feels airy and fresh.
One last positive note is the rich and opulent set design, starting from the opera house to the aseptic brownstone, to the eclectic tugboat. Every part of the frame is filled with visual elements, which accompany the actors and their performances quite beautifully.
A film that’s neither this nor that, you can absolutely love it (like I did) or you could hate it, but it’s undoubtedly a good time spent walking by the streets of NYC in the company of funny and eccentric people. Great work!
KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON
Killers of the Flower Moon is Martin Scorsese’s latest epic crime movie about the massacres of the Osage Nation, adapted from the homonymous #1 New York Times bestseller by David Grann, and featuring two of Scorsese’s most frequent collaborators, Robert De Niro as Willian King Hale — a wealthy rancher also known as “King of the Osage Hills” who presents himself as a friend of the Osage — and Leonardo Di Caprio as William’s nephew Ernest Burkhart — a WWI veteran who moves in with his uncle after serving in the army as a cook.
It’s the 1920s, and the Osage are some of the wealthiest people in the entire country thanks to newfound oil in their Reservation. From that moment on starts a sort of “gold rush” among all the white men to marry all the Osage women in order to inherit their money. William Hale is eager to use his blue-eyed nephew Ernest as bait to get his hands on Mollie, a rich Osage woman, masterfully played by Lily Gladstone. Ernest, who now works as a cab driver, soon falls in love with Mollie and they start building their own family, under the content eyes of his uncle. Soon after the wedding, Mollie starts getting sick, and Mollie’s family will start to die, one by one, under mysterious circumstances, and with no investigation whatsoever.
From the very beginning, it’s obvious to the audience that William is the instigator of all the crimes and that Ernest, nolens volens, is his facilitator. Without the suspense created by not knowing who the bad guys are, it’s really hard to create a film that’s engaging and captivating, and for that reason, the entire film seems really slow to me. If we’re not glued to our chairs to find out who was the one plotting and scheming all these bloody murders, then why should we? As a matter of fact, this film was quite difficult to sit through especially being over 200 minutes long.
Another thing that didn’t sit quite right with me was the total lack of justification for the trust and reliance Osage people had for white men. Killers of the Flower Moon is recounting true events, which I get, but I would have liked to see more incertitude, more ambivalence, more torment in the Osage people in their decisions to trust William and Ernest and all the other white men with their families, their money and basically their lives. It really only took one scene for Mollie to be completely smitten with simple-minded cab driver Ernest. And two scenes for them to become engaged.
The film is way too long for me, a lot of scenes seem to drag a bit, especially the ones between Di Caprio and De Niro, which honestly left me with a desire for more ruthless editing… On the other hand, I wish Lily Gladstone — as well as her Native American co-stars — had way more screen time than what Scorsese granted them. Not only was she absolutely wonderful in her role, with the poise and aplomb in her face practically carrying the whole film, but this is, in the end, a film about Native Americans! On top of that, I found her dynamics with her sisters to be way more interesting than the relationship between the two murderous white men.
It’s worth saying that Scorsese is still Scorsese, his directing is extremely well done, the cinematography is glorious and the production design and costumes are absolutely impeccable. But the film looks like a Western version of a mafia movie, a format that has been seen in every possible way.
A gorgeous and skillful stylistic exercise about an extremely interesting and unexplored topic.
ARISTOTLE AND DANTE...
Aristotle and Dante Discover The Secrets Of The Universe is a coming-of-age film of a young man who gets lost in the silence of his family and learns to know about himself, his limits, and his sexuality.
The film is set in the 80s in El Paso, Texas, and is written and directed by Aitch Alberto, and based on the homonymous novel by Benjamin Alire Sáenz.
Aristotle — or Ari for short — comes from a humble family. He goes to high school in El Paso, where he doesn’t seem to have bonded with any of his classmates and spends most of his time alone.
It’s the summer, and at the pool, Ari meets Dante, a kid his age, who offers Ari to teach him how to swim. The two start a friendship that will change the course of both their lives.
Since the beginning of the film, the theme of toxic masculinity is very strong and present. In school, Ari doesn’t feel comfortable around macho boys and doesn’t know how to speak to girls at all. At home, his father refuses to talk about his emotions and about Ari’s older brother who is now in jail. In fact, his father refuses to talk altogether.
On the other hand, Dante couldn’t come from a more different background. He is the only son of a liberal family who lives in a big house and he is pretty much free to do whatever pleases him. And while Ari’s bedroom looks like the bedroom of a monk, Dante’s sanctuary is decorated with tons of books and ethnic tapestry.
The film is very delicate, it softly touches harsh topics such as broken families, homosexuality, and physical violence, and yet makes you feel good about everything without ever simplifying the issues.
In this film, shoes encapsulate a strong and beautiful metaphor. Ari’s shoes symbolize running away from his past, while Dante’s shoes represent standing firm on his ground. Both Ari and Dante wear Converse, but Ari keeps his shoes very tight on his feet — almost as to show a readiness to take off at any time — while Dante uses them more as an accessory, holding them in his hands and walking bear foot — as to show that he doesn’t have to go anywhere, he is comfortable and happy exactly where he is. So the scene where Ari takes one of his shoes and one of Dante’s shoes ties them together and throws them on power lines is incredibly powerful. That scene will also mirror Ari’s parent’s speech toward the end, urging him to stop running and just start embracing himself.
A visually gorgeous film, with a great production design, a catchy soundtrack, and beautiful acting — Max Pelayo and Reese Gonzales are absolutely brilliant in their roles.
An exquisite and extremely comforting film that addresses a difficult conversation in an intelligent and poetic way.
A HUNTING IN VENICE
Kenneth Branagh reprises his role as Belgian goofy detective Hercule Poirot for the third time in his new picture A Haunting in Venice. After solving mysteries in Turkey and Egypt, this time Poirot is in post-war Italy, more specifically Venice on All Hallows’ Eve.
The screenplay is inspired by Agatha Christie's novel "Hallowe'en Party", with the location changed from the UK to Venice, Italy.
Retired in the beautiful Italian city, Poirot reluctantly accepts the invitation of his longtime friend Ariadne Oliver, played by Tina Fey, to partake in a séance in an attempt to unmask the medium as a fraud. The séance is held at a famously haunted Venician palazzo owned by opera singer Rowena Drake, played by Kelly Reilly. Rowena Drake lost her daughter Alicia after she jumped into the canal following a heartbreak. In an attempt to contact her daughter, Rowena calls in a medium, Joyce Reynolds, played by Michelle Yeoh.
The opening spooky party for children at the palazzo, chaperoned by nuns, is very creepy, and the legend of the orphans who died in the palazzo and came back to murder people to take revenge on the injustice committed sets a horror and supernatural tone of the film, which creates some distance from the usual mused mystery film.
Haris Zambarloukos’ beautiful cinematography shows us dramatic angles, at times deeply tilted, leaving us with the impression of the majesty of both the city and the palazzo, and a sense of loss, like almost being in an Escher painting and desperately trying to get out.
The production design is absolutely impressive. The palazzo is discovered brick after brick, candelabra after candelabra, and we really end up feeling like we’ve traveled to Venice to be a fly on the wall on this gloomy night, if it wasn’t for the fact that in the ensemble cast of 11 actors, only one was actually Italian.
The cast is incredibly engaging and quite diverse, which is always nice to watch.
The film slowly builds suspense and tension and is able to keep the attention very high throughout the entire film. All that, whilst keeping some comedic and playful elements. Branagh’s skillful direction is able to combine a murder mystery with horror elements and make it entertaining, thrilling, and funny.
A quick-paced, witty, and scary film that keeps many of Christie's great traditional mystery elements, and then some. A great reason to go to the movies only a few weeks away from Halloween night!
THE RETIREMENT PLAN
The Retirement Plan is a comedy-thriller-action movie starring Nicholas Cage and written and directed by Tim Brown.
When Ashley, played by Ashley Greene, gets caught up in some sketchy business with her husband, she decides to send her 11-year-old daughter Sarah to look for her estranged father Matt, a former assassin who retired in the Cayman Islands.
In the first scene, Ashley is in her car, anxiously waiting for someone, she hears a gunshot and her husband gets in the car with a man who is clearly dying. They later get to the harbor, they light the car on fire, and escape. The first scene sets an intense dramatic tone for the film, but as the plot unravels, the movie is never able to match the gravitas of its premise. In fact, the plot doesn’t make a whole lot of sense at all.
The tween girl is put on an airplane by herself to look for her grandfather, who, according to Ashley, “could be dead for all I know” [I’m paraphrasing here]. Well, that's not the nicest thing you could do for your kid, especially since it will take the bad guys exactly three seconds to figure out their absurd escape plan... In addition, when the flight attendant — who is supposed to chaperone the unaccompanied minor — asks the girl if someone is picking her up at the airport, Sarah hands her over a piece of paper with an address in it, to which the flight attendant reacts by saying she will call a cab for her. I don’t think that in the real world, an unaccompanied minor can just land in a foreign country and leave the airport in a taxi like that. But oh well.
To top the messy plot, it looks like each actor is directed by a different director, acting in a different film. Nicholas Cage’s acting is laid back and lighthearted. He seems to genuinely be having the time of his life hanging out on a beautiful island and killing huge men with random objects. Ashley Green is trying way too hard to hit really deep notes, but just looks overly dramatic and ends up bringing flatness and monotony to the picture. The goons look like a parody of themselves. I’m not sure if that was the director’s choice or an acting choice, but they are neither scary nor funny. And the little girl looks like she is really struggling to find some sense in her generic dialogue.
Finally, I think it would have been nice if the director had incorporated some soca, calypso, or reggae music in the film instead of choosing rap music.
The result is not nearly as funny and as exciting as it was expected to be. A disappointment shaped as a fragmented, incoherent, and forgettable film.
DUMB MONEY
Dumb Money is Craig Gillespie’s new film about the financial short squeeze that happened in 2019 with the GameStop stocks.
Keith Gill is a plainspoken, sweet, and nerdy-looking financial advisor who starts posting YouTube videos about gaming store GameStop, a company he thinks is greatly undervalued. After spending his and his wife’s entire savings to buy their stocks, and periodically posting about it under the name of Roaring Kitty, he starts gaining a following. Received initially with mixed reactions, Gill is able to inspire Reddit users to buy stocks from the gaming store, driving the company to skyrocket in the stock market.
Paul Dano is impeccable as financial-analyst and investor Keith Gill. Dano is funny without trying to be funny. He delivers a compassionate, authentic, and deep performance. In fact, Dano’s performance, combined with Gillespie’s brilliant direction, was able to perfectly convey all of Keith Gill’s charisma that led hundreds of thousands of people to buy GameStop stock. Every time one of the characters would log into the Stock App RobinHood to buy more stock, I could feel the excitement in the audience, this intense desire to join them in their quest to defeat the big guys of Wall Street.
Gillespie has definitely a flair for the dramatic in biographical settings with a touch of absurdity, which makes his film so captivating and honest.
The writing of Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo is extremely effective and fast-paced. The plot follows on one hand the Wall Street people, and on the other hand, the regular people, all with one thing in common: they are all drowning in debt.
However, this story leaves a bitter aftertaste. It shows how regular citizens are really left to themselves to sort out their savings, their pensions, their future, and their expenses with no guidance whatsoever. All this while the huge companies play Monopoly on regular people’s jobs and lives. So it doesn’t come as a surprise at all that when Keith Gill comes along — an analyst who happily and transparently shares all of his personal portfolios — people don’t think twice before following his direction.
This endearing biographical comedy-drama about regular people trying to subvert Wall Street and big hedge funds
is also full of references to the pandemic and the rise of TikTok dances, which can always be a hit or miss. But in this case, the result is absolutely fun, educational, engaging, and overall brilliant.
A great reason to get away from the first cold days of fall and get cozy at the movie theatre!
THE INVENTOR
I have always had a passion for independent animation movies since the early 2000s when I first laid my eyes on films such as Spirited Away or The Triplets of Belleville. The ability of animated films to address difficult topics with poetry and grace often leaves me absolutely speechless.
So when I read that a new independent animation movie was coming out, written and directed by Jim Capobianco — the creator of Ratatouille — voiced by an incredible cast including Stephen Fry, Marion Cotillard, and Daisy Ridley, I got extremely excited. And on top of that, it was about the life of Italian genius Leonardo da Vinci? When I got to the theatre, my expectations were as high as they could be!
So maybe it was my fault that I didn’t like it.
In the picture, Leonardo Da Vinci is in his sixties and has already painted his most famous works such as The Last Supper and Lady with an Ermine, and is about to complete the Mona Lisa. He decides to move from Milan to France to be part of the court of young King Francis I, who hires him to design a dream city in Romorantin.
The idea of showing Leonardo Da Vinci’s daily life as an old man in his last years of life is somewhat original, but I found the storyline quite dull. The pace was slow and the dialogues were hard to follow. Sure, the stop-motion animation is adorably done, and the overall aesthetic of the film is very pleasant to watch — maybe even too pleasant.
But the result is at best didactic, and at worst just plain boring. I had to fight my urge to curl up in the theatre chair and catch up on some well-deserved snooze.
The film in fact fails to make a point.
A bit naive in its writing, I didn’t find it engaging enough for an adult audience, or entertaining enough to keep a young child on his chair for 92 minutes. Is it supposed to be an educational film made for children? Is it a film that aims at offering a deep introspection on the works and life of the Italian genius? Is it an ode to the endless talents of the Tuscan engineer, inventor, and artist?
The answer is still unclear to me.
What is clear is that this well-executed yet poorly thought-out animation movie missed the mark on what could have been a splendid and inspirational picture for young and old.
MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING 3
Nia Vardalos is back with her third “Greek” script, this time directing the picture as well.
I have to admit that I was one of the few people who didn’t go crazy when the first My Big Fat Greek Wedding came out in 2002. I liked it all right, in the sense that in a world where Facebook hadn’t been invented yet, a cheesy rom-com about cultural clashes could maybe still have a sense.
And was in fact, it was quite funny.
Today, it’s a whole different story. The actors and the characters stayed the same, which is not a bad thing per se, but they don’t seem to have evolved with time at all. The world changed radically during the past 20 years, especially with the rise of social media, and the distance between different cultures has grown more tenuous.
So the premise that the Portokalos, a Greek family of 10, is traveling for the first time to Greece and gets culturally shocked by the sight of old Greek farmers and fishermen is laughable at best. Not to mention that the family, whose older members always spoke with a thick Greek accent when in the US, is suddenly incapable of getting around their country of origin, and gets completely “lost in translation”.
One pleasant surprise was brought by the blue-haired non-binary mayor, played by Melina Kotselou — of a village with a population of 6 — who seemed to be the only one being in step with the times (despite having brought from the dead the infamous “duckface”). A few funny lines were delivered by Aunt Voula, played by Andrea Martin, but her brilliant comedic timing wasn’t enough to carry the rest of the cast.
The film could have been funnier without all the unnecessary clichés about Southern European people being possessive, overbearing day drinkers and meat eaters.
A collage of dated gags, a predictable plot, and the platitude of Americans finding romanticism only thanks to the music and foods of their ancestors made this film boring and decidedly obsolete. A film like this will hardly find a place in 2023.
2002 called, they want their movie back!
BOTTOMS
It’s incredibly refreshing to watch a film written and directed by young women. In the wake of the admirable success of writer-director Greta Gerwig, an independent film written by a woman, a queer woman at that, Emma Seligman, is exactly the new type of film that I imagine GenZ might need. A film that pulls far away from the obsolete stereotypes of the teenage movies we, poor millennials, grew up watching (see: American Pie et similia) and delivers a hilarious parody of high school sex movies.
There is no horny teenage boy in this film (only a few egomaniac quarterbacks here and there), but two very horny lesbians, PJ and Josie, played by Rachel Sennott (who also co-wrote the film) and Ayo Edebiri, a duo we've already seen in the Comedy Central show Ayo And Rachel Are Single.
Committed to losing their virginity before graduation, PJ and Josie are not exactly popular girls. In fact, they are openly called “the ugly untalented gays” by the school principal. The premise of the film is that in a society that mystifies beauty, external validation, and uniformity, anything that differs from aesthetic perfection cannot be but unappealing, pointless, and, go figure, talentless.
Their only praise? Being able to spread the rumor that they spent their summer in juvie.
Availing themselves of this opportunity, the two start a girls' fight club — supposedly to learn self-defense — but really created to get as intimate as possible with their crushes, Isabelle and Brittany.
Bottoms also depicts a world run by overly dramatic immature adult men (the teacher going through a breakdown following his recent divorce), which adds to the hilariousness of the whole plot. I feel like Seligman and Sennott tried really hard to show what the world looks like through the lens of a young woman — bringing it to an extreme — and in my opinion, they absolutely nailed it.
Sennott and Edebiri are really funny, both of them having also really nice emotional moments towards the end. The writing is wild and absolutely unhinged, which makes this quirky film even more enjoyable to watch.
The result is a funny, intelligent, over-the-top, satirical, and parodic film that criticizes everything that’s wrong in today’s society, as seen from the eyes of teenagers.
A great dose of laughs for 88 minutes of quality entertainment.
AMERIKATSI
Amerikatsi is a comedy-drama about an Armenian-American man returning to his country of origin after escaping the Armenian genocide as a kid.
In an attempt to learn about his long-lost country, Charlie Bakhchinyan arrives in his homeland only to find himself being the perpetrator of an absurd crime: wearing a tie in a post-WWII Soviet country. Now locked in a Soviet prison, Charlie, alongside the other Armenian prisoners, is forced to rebuild the prison walls, torn down by a sudden earthquake.
Way up in his pitiful and cluttered cell, a small window with bars faces an apartment building. One of the apartments houses a seemingly lovely Armenian couple. Charlie starts living his life vicariously through his neighbors from across the street, making it more bearable for him to tolerate the bullying and torture committed by the prison guards. Charlie will in fact soon realize that he found in his neighbor a true friend.
Amerikatsi is a poetic and beautiful story of humanity. The film reminds me of the Slavic film No Man’s Land, which, too, emphasizes the absurdity of wars, and how, once they find each other face-to-face with the enemy, individual human beings have really no space in their hearts for hate and conflict.
Michael A. Goorjian does an absolutely terrific job in writing, directing, and editing the film. The movie is two hours long but feels way shorter. Immersed in the mundane life of this Armenian couple, we're left wanting to see more of what becomes of them.
The biggest praise of the film however goes to Goorjian's acting. His piercing face, at times romantic, at times troubled by pain, is so mesmerizing to watch. Charlie, setting his makeshift table and eagerly waiting for his across-the-street dining companions to finish their speech in order to eat his putrid prison meal is one of the most romantic prison scenes I have ever seen in a film.
Goorjian achieves all this without romanticizing either the war or the atrocities of prison.
In fact, since the beginning of this film there is no desire for revenge or escape for Charlie. He accepts his faith as if to say: "I want to get to know the real Armenia, and if that means spending 10 years being tortured and looking at my neighbors through the peephole, so be it! Whatever you will give me, I will be ready to accept".
There is something so intrinsically powerful in this message. A message that says how human nature lives in a suspended place where good and bad coexist. And where even a Soviet guard — in this case, his neighbor — can be a romantic painter and a loving father and husband.
A tender film filled with hope, humanity, humor, and lyricism, that addresses the strength of human resiliency and the power to love one another.
100% recommended!
NO MORE BETS
No More Bets is a film about online scamming and digital fraud, directed by Shen Ao and produced by Ning Hao. The thriller is a fulfilling two-hour long, with lots of action and a decent amount of blood.
The film is an open critique of online gambling and adds a good deal of persuasion to the many ways online gambling can ruin your life.
Disappointed by a missed promotion, Chinese programmer Pan Sheng (Lay Zhang Yixing) has no idea that the highly-paid job he is applying for online will bring him to be kidnapped — along with a group of other uninformed programmers like himself — and held captive in a sweatshop in Myanmar, forced into data scraping for the company manager Lu Bingkun.
The scam factory is enormous, featuring different classes of workers, with, at its top, gorgeous online croupiers. In fact, soon after arriving, Pan meets Anna (Gina Jin Chen), a former model who lost her agency and sponsorship after her appearance was stolen, and now works as an online croupier. Together, they will try to escape the situation they are in.
Since the very beginning of the movie, there are a few different levels of victims: the people at home, being obviously scammed through online ads inciting them to spend their money on online gambling, the people in the factory, scammed into thinking they were applying for a high-paying job with plenty of benefits and ending up being kidnapped and forced to work seemingly forever. Both of them are also scammed into thinking their reality can, in fact, get better if only they could make a little bit more money.
As a matter of fact, I don’t know which world is the most horrifying one, the “real world” where people are on the verge of losing their families, their homes, and their lives altogether, or inside the sweatshop, where workers sleep in camps and work for who-knows-how-many-hours in a dark basement, with no sunlight or fresh air.
Despite not presenting a real and specific point to the audience, the film shows a good dose of action and is in fact quite entertaining. The direction and editing make it really fast and engaging despite being 130 minutes long, with a lot of back and forth between the scammers and the scamm-ees, and many different subplots added to the main story.
Along with the direction and editing, the cast was especially brilliant. Every actor gave a different nuance of the atrocious hierarchy in the fraud business and all were able to convey at the same time the despair and the intrigue. The acting was not overly dramatic and was quite subtle, which is exactly what you need when the theme and direction are already so complex and rich.
No More Bets is really a depressing representation of what happens when people get down the gambling spiral, and it doesn’t appear to take back that sour taste in your mouth, that stays way longer after the movie is over.
The sour taste being nothing more and nothing less than the very moral of the film: online gambling is really, really, really bad for you.
BARBIE
As I’m sitting on my computer, the soundtrack of Barbie is blasting from the living room, Ryan Gosling rocking the motto “I’m just Ken, everywhere else I’d be a ten” as my 2-year-old girl screams “AGAIN, MOMMY!! AGAIN!!!” whilst jumping on the couch as if possessed by the all-pink-craze, to the point that she can’t stop listening to this depressing masculine-power-ballade performed by an almost middle-aged actor (hey, I’m just looking at it from her perspective).
I watched Barbie during the summer. I was on vacation in Italy with my two kids and the heat wave forced us to seek refuge in one of the only places with air conditioning in the whole country: the movie theatre. The film started late, around 7.30 pm, and both my jet-lagged kids were restless during the whole showing. Yet, my 2-year-old daughter was so captured by the mesmerizing beauty of the actress playing her favorite doll, Margot Robbie, the vibrant colors, and the captivating choreographies, that she couldn’t even blink. On the other hand, my 4-year-old son, who was really intrigued at first, lost interest during the whole “Mattel Executive Board” storyline.
And so did I.
I was really on board spending two hours watching Robbie, along with Ryan Gosling and all the other Barbies and Kens (and the one Alan) go about their days in Barbieland — I was even fine with the character’s trip to Venice Beach in the non-color-corrected real world — but the whole Mattel CEO storyline was pointless and didn’t add anything to any of the characters’ developments.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved the film and love what it represents. I have been following Gerwig’s work since back in 2011 when I first watched Damsels in Distress and was fascinated by her uniqueness, and later fell in love with Frances Ha, like every other millennial girl around the world dreaming of becoming a successful dancer/actor/singer/etc. I am also incredibly impressed with the box office results and think this film comes at a great time for women in the industry.
But it seemed to me that the film was trying to please too many people, and the result is a bit fragmented, with a big useless foot chase right in the middle of the film and people pointlessly going back and forth from and to Barbieland/Kendom.
On the other hand, the production was impeccable and the cast was absolutely spot-on. Margot Robbie impersonated the doll almost too perfectly. She looked unbelievably gorgeous and her performance was cared for in the smallest details, a hand movement, a head tilt. I loved America Ferrera’s role. Despite having the difficult task of carrying half of the film along with Robbie, she did a really great job. I didn’t think I would ever have bet on Ryan Gosling as a Ken, but his comedic timing, goofiness, and great looks were perfect for the male counterpart.
An element of surprise was brought by Ariana Greenblatt. The cynical-teenager-who-doesn’t-believe-in-dreams-anymore character is usually a bit superfluous in my opinion, but Greenblatt’s performance brought a substantial depth to the film.
Finally, I really want to applaud Gerwig for having such an inclusive cast and for giving all the “other” Barbies and Kens as much screen time as possible. In Gerwig's words, it did indeed seem to be “a big party, and everyone is invited”!
OPPENHEIMER
Oppenheimer is a film about the rise of J. Robert Oppenheimer in his studies on atomic energy, from the beginning of his career to the end of his life.
At the very beginning of the film, one professor asks a young J. Robert Oppenheimer: A musician is not one who can read sheet music, but one who can hear the music (I’m paraphrasing). And sound is in fact a key element in Christopher Nolan’s new film. At times completely absent, at times going on and off — just like a ticking bomb — the sound very much mirrors Oppenheimer’s feelings throughout the 3-hour movie.
The film is very well directed — of course, it’s Nolan — and it’s very well produced too. I’m always a bit uncomfortable when I see aging makeup on screen, most times you can definitely tell where the prosthetics are on the face, but in this film, the aging was done absolutely beautifully — no big noses or lumpy cracked lips — which definitely helped understand the time jumps of each scene. Not an easy task for a film that tirelessly goes back and forth from the twenties to the sixties, to the fifties, and back to the forties.
The plot of the film is nothing we haven’t seen before. It traces the creation of the atomic bomb during the Manhattan Project, from the point of view of its inventor, J. Robert Oppenheimer. But Nolan does so in non-linear storytelling that allows him to show the main character’s private and professional life and investigate his doubts and fears.
Whenever I look at period films with male characters at their center, I can never help but wonder how the director and casting department choose which actor gets which role. With more than twenty of them being 30-40-something-white-good-looking-smart men, most of the characters and actors seem to be interchangeable to me. On the other hand, how difficult it must be to cast only two female roles in a deeply male-dominated film. Emily Blunt was absolutely fantastic in her role, and I honestly love all of her work. However, the role of Florence Pugh could have been performed by pretty much any other “good-looking” actress (I’m looking at this from a male’s perspective), the role being very much of appearance and not much of substance.
In fact, I read recently that Nolan apologized several times to Pugh for the size of the role of Jean Tatlock he was offering her, and after I watched the movie I understood why. Mind you, most actors/actresses would give an arm to be on set with Nolan for even one second, but I don’t think he was referring to her actual screen time. I felt like her character was under-written and under-developed, and was generally lacking depth, especially being Jean Tatlock the “problematic” character who was going through psychiatric treatment.
Matt Damon’s portrayal of Leslie Groves would always get a laugh in the room. His performance was over-the-top and Damon managed to make him seem surprisingly cute and likeable for a General.
Now, let’s get to the real main character. Cillian Murphy’s piercing and penetrating blue eyes. I remember studying at some point in high school the difference between the “looking eye” and the “eye being looked at” as defined by Jean-Paul Sartre (referring to the conscience of the ego. Unfortunately, my memories of philosophy class start and end here), and throughout the film, Murphy’s eyes appear to be “looked at”. They are present and absent at the same time. He absorbs information without expressing any judgment or ego.
He simply exists.
And the depth and presence of his eyes were indeed the most magical element of the film.
That and the long awaited explosion of course — expertly and beautifully shot, only with visual and almost no sound.
The film leaves a few things unsolved, like why Oppenheimer desired to go through a 4-week long hearing knowing that the outcome was predetermined. Or why was Oppenheimer actually on board with the creation of the bomb, knowing that the Nazis had already backed out, only to have remorses right after the bomb was dropped.
A beautiful masterpiece that doesn't offer any original point of view but will likely glue you to your seat for 3 hours straight.
GOLDA
Golda is a biographical drama by Israeli director Guy Nattiv, showing the life of former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir starting from the traumatic days of the 1973 war to her battle with cancer that will accompany her to the end of her life.
It’s 1973, Kyiv-born and Milwaukee-raised Golda Meir is leading Israeli as its first female Prime Minister since it was founded in 1948. Suddenly, and because of a malfunction in the espionage department, the country gets a double coordinated surprise attack from a Soviet-backed Egypt and Syria, with near to zero preparation. Golda will then spend almost three weeks trying to fight back for her country, not without a great amount of difficulties and obstacles. Those weeks later became known as the Yom Kippur War.
Helen Mirren does a terrific job of portraying the tough, hardworking, chain-smoking leader. She played Golda with many hidden soft sides and gave her an incredible humanity. Mirren is also completely unrecognizable as the Prime Minster. Under a big nose, falling cheeks, a hump, and enormous ankles — I understand those were predominant features of the Prime Minister, but to me, they ended up being really distracting — we can only recognize Mirren’s piercing eyes.
Nattiv really wanted Mirren to play the role despite her not being Jewish. And yes of course, she is one of the greatest actresses on the planet, but on top of that, the lightness she plays the Israeli “Iron Lady” with — even under several inches of prosthetics and padded bodysuits — is absolutely admirable. She was able to make a prime-minister-going-to-war film look like a personal affair. Almost like a grandmother caring for her own grandchildren and trying to make sure everything ended up okay — which didn’t, considering the tens of thousands of young lives lost during the battle, but she sure ended a surprise attack quicker than anyone would have imagined.
During that time, Golda is also secretly undergoing radiation for her cancer. Shortly after winning the war, she sadly loses her personal battle with cancer.
I personally loved Camille Cottin’s role and performance. Her face is magnetic and she is Golda’s perfect sidekick, a sort of daughter figure who ironically ends up mothering Golda during this tough period, helping her to get dressed, making her soup and just being constantly there for her.
Liev Schreiber is also unrecognizable in his role as Henry Kissinger, he was kind, empathetic, and an overall peaceful presence in Golda’s life.
The film results in an intimate and personal lens on the prime minister.
The camera is often close enough to capture each of Golda’s (prosthetic) wrinkles, and the audience is close enough to almost hear her thoughts. But when you add the smoke from her infinite cigarettes, then it creates this sort of curtain, a separation between the space of Golda and the space of the audience.
A very private look on a horribly deathlike time directed and acted with grace and elegance. Despite the heavy premises, I definitely wouldn’t mind watching it again.
ELEMENTAL
Another great family movie this season is Elemental, Pixar’s new animation feature. The film is a must-watch for adults and kids, as it teaches about family traditions, inclusivity, diversity, and self-exploration. The characters reminisce of the film Inside Out, but instead them being anthropomorphic versions of feelings, this time, the characters represent the four elements in nature: wind/air, water, earth, and fire.
The film starts with a fire people couple expecting a baby, Bernie and Cinder Lumen, who are emigrating in a boat, huddled together and looking scared. The couple left their birthplace, Fireland, to look for fortune in Element City, a city where the water people, the air people, and the earth people live in prosperity.
In Element City, however, the fire people all live in a ghetto, right outside the city, called Firetown, an imaginary Chinatown-like neighborhood with cracked streets and leaky plumbing.
Right after moving to Firetown, Ember Lumen, voiced by Chinese American actress Leah Lewis, is born, and the family is able to start their small family business: a fire shop called Fireplace in the front — run by Bernie, and a fortuneteller shop in the back — run by Cinder.
It doesn’t come as a surprise that the film was inspired by the director, Peter Sohn’s story as a Korean immigrant living in the Bronx. In fact, the references to the Southeast Asian community are quite obvious since the beginning. Echoing the image of the boat people, the fire people embody the epitome of Asian families moving to America to build a better future for their offspring. Bernie and Cinder are in fact proud people who value hard work to the detriment of their sense of identity.
But when Ember meets Wade Ripple, a young man part of the water community, voiced by Mamoudou Athie, things get funny and unexpected. Wade’s family is in diametrical opposition to the fire people. They are loud and have very obvious displays of affection (very funny how water people are portrayed as getting emotional and crying for the smallest thing), and while the fire people fear the judgment and the consequences of an “inter-elements” relationship, the Ripple family is warm and welcomes Ember with acceptance and fascination.
The line “You speak so well and clear!”, the condescending compliment Wade’s uncle makes to Ember is what every single child of an immigrant has heard at least a dozen times time in their life — me included — and it was far too real. Along that line, Wade’s mother doesn’t know how to greet Ember “Do we hug, or wave, or…”, as a reference to the southeast Asian people mainly bowing to greet each other.
And that’s the real beauty of this film. It shows things straight to your face, even the most uncomfortable ones, and turns them into something funny.
The design of the cities is so well done and extremely captivating. Even omitting the whole metaphor about inclusion and diversity, which would be hard for a young kid to understand anyway, the film is colorful, fun, extremely enjoyable, and easy to follow.
Catch it while it’s still in theatres!
GRAN TURISMO
I have to admit, before I entered the theatre, other than having a boyfriend from 20 years ago who occasionally played Gran Turismo, I had little to no knowledge of the simulation video game. So everything I watched was new to me, from the precision of all features present in the game to the accuracy of the tracks.
The film traces the real story of Jann Mardenborough — fabulously played by Archie Madekwe — a nineteen-year-old kid from Cardiff who dropped out of university to work at a department store and otherwise stays in his bedroom to play GT on what seems to be a professional setup.
Jann also happens to be the son of a professional European Football player, Steve Mardenborough, who ironically forbids his son to follow his passions and urges him to find a “more realistic career”.
One day, Jann finds out about a simulation competition that gives the 10 faster sim racers a chance to be part of the Nissan-sponsored GT Academy and learn how to race with real cars. Being this film a bit of a fairytale in the sports world, Jann will soon go from college dropout to car racer superstar, as well as find the love of his life.
The friction between the dreamer essence of Jann and the sternness of his dad is what makes this film compelling. Notably, the scene where Jann sticks his dad’s team logo on his helmet during a competition resonates so much with the desire to be a good child and be truly seen by their parents. In fact, during my sleepless nights spent researching parenting tricks, I would come across many videos explaining how every baby is born with an impelling urge to make their parents happy. Even the one born with the most reckless of dreams, really just want to make their parents proud. Madekwe was able to show this aspect of his character so gracefully.
Apart from Madekwe, the other actor who gave a wonderful performance was David Harbour. Harbour is always so grounded as an actor, and in this film, he plays what he plays best: a bitter and grumpy man with the heart of a teddy bear. In fact, every time he is on screen he brings a breath of fresh air. Which definitely clashed with Orlando Bloom’s over-the-top portrayal of Danny Moore, the chief of the GT Academy project. Bloom’s acting seemed exaggerated and seemed to be detached from the no-frills acting of Madekwe and Harbour. Bloom, in my opinion, didn’t deliver.
A beautiful story, with great CGI and top-notch acting. Would definitely drive a lot of young gamers all around the globe to the theatre!
PAINKILLER
“Painkiller” is a Netflix Limited Series directed by Peter Berg that dramatically narrates the use and unfortunately the abuse - from the late 90s onwards - of a drug called OxyContin, an opioid created and distributed by Purdue Pharma.
Richard Sackler (brilliantly played by Matthew Broderick), head of the Pharmaceutic Company, is an avid and unscrupolous man triyng to avoid a financial meltdown.
In the United States - as written in the first article of the Declaration of Independence - the pursuit of happiness is one of the fundamental human rights; so the best way to easily make big money and at the same time conquer people is promising a fast happiness and a fast pain relief.
Oxycontin arrives on the scene like a magic pill that erase your pain - a back pain after a surgery, in the case of one of the main characters (Taylor Kitsch) - and brings you back to life: no more tears, no more physical aches, no more terrible sleepless nights.
Using misleading advertising, fluffy teddy bears and training beautiful girls to convince doctors to prescribe the drug for any kind of ailment, Purdue Pharma promise relief but consciously manipulates people’s mind and hides the truth. An horrible and devastating truth: Oxycontin is in fact a drug with the same effect of heroine and just like heroine got the same high probability to cause death and addiction.
That’s why Edie Flowers (Uzo Aduba), a determined investigator at a U.S Attorney’s office, decides to fight Sackler and his dirty evil plan.
Each one of the six episodes begins with the testimony of a parent who has lost a child to addiction on oxycodone, a tragic but necessary way to let the audience understand how badly pain medication have forever altered the American landscape.
The acclaimed docudrama - thanks to a dynamic director and a perfect cast of actors - highlights a plague that still claims too many victims every day.
LANDSCAPE WITH INVISIBLE HAND
It’s 2036. A species of aliens called the Vuvv has taken over the world, ruining its entire economic system, and allowing only the most affluent inhabitants on earth to move to the wealthy “upper world" and leaving everyone else to share the remains on earth.
In this post-apocalyptic setting, two high school kids start a friendship that very soon becomes romance. Adam Campbell, played by a piercing Asante Blackk, has an artistic soul. He is part of a middle-class family made by his mom, played by Tiffany Haddish, a former lawyer, and younger sister. And while they are still able to live in a nice house and have food on their table — or rather cubes of alien-made edible mush vaguely resembling food — Chloe Marsh, played by Kylie Rogers — whose personality is way more pragmatic and business-oriented than Adam — along with his father and brother have no food on their table and no roof over their head.
While falling for his classmate, Adam impulsively invites Chloe and her whole family to permanently live in his family’s basement. It’s interesting how, from that moment on, starts a new political hierarchy. With the Vuvv and the wealthy humans living in the upper world, down on earth the Campbells occupy the two higher levels of the house while the Marshes occupy the lower basement, with limited access to basic needs such as food and internet.
An interesting aspect of the film is that the classical racial and sexual stereotypes of the American family are now subverted, with the family headed by a black woman being the one detaining more power, while the one headed by a white man being the poorer one.
However, this situation will create no little tension between the two families and between the young lovebirds. In fact, in an attempt to raise money for rent and food, taking advantage of the Vuvv species’ yearning to learn about human feelings, Adam and Chloe start a broadcasting channel to show their courtship, which will wreak havoc in both their families.
The film, adapted from the homonymous novel written by M.T. Anderson, offers a criticism of our society from different levels. For one, it shows how when a society is oppressed, people usually turn against each other instead of teaming together to fight the higher power, which in this case is even more humorous considering that the Vuvvs don’t look exactly threatening, but rather look like a hybrid between a slimy little pig and SpongeBob's Mr. Krabs.
The film also offers a reflection on the incorporation of social media in our lives. The tool is not only present daily to show an audience our lives, but it ends up dictating the course of them.
The film doesn’t really offer a solution or an ending, most characters end at the same place as when they started, they just learned how to coexist with their flaws and disadvantages.
A moderately funny, quite entertaining, and definitely quirky sci-fi movie for the ones who love a good dose of originality.