In this not too good thriller the ever pretty Charlize Theron plays Sasha, who likes adventurous holidays a bit too much. After losing her partner in Norway, she goes to a single girl road trip in Australia where her partner was from.
Sasha gets boringly chased by a local madman and becomes the hunted.
There are beautiful shots of nature and Theron-in-action shots, but both the story and the execution and rather dull.
In Sorrentino’s latest we follow Mariano de Santis who has been the president of Italy for a long time and has a half year left in his last term. He has always taken the save route and steered the country through several crisises. For his last year he has a few ‘headache cases’ left.
It is not the first time that Sorrentino has old people looking back at their lives. De Santis never got over the death of his wife with whom he had been together for 40 years. He mourns her every day.
Being a jurist himself, De Santis has his daughter as the main jurist in his administration and she is both his professional and personal mirror. De Santis also has a few close friends with whom he goes back many years and which whom he shares his doubts and reflections. One of these old friends is the Pope, here portrayed as a black man with grey dreadlocks; also something not uncommon for Sorrentino.
It is all there. Deep emotions, modern music that is not entirely out of place, subtle jokes, beautiful women, drama and existential questions. “Grace” is again a good Sorrentino.
The latest Lanthimos. It took some time before I saw it. I was too late to see it on the big screen and then it was a ‘buy’ rather than ‘rent’ Prime Video.
Conspiracy theorist Teddy (Jesse Plemons) kidnaps the head of a big company (Emma Stone) whom he suspects of being an alien. Together with his nephew Don, he plans on visiting the mothership of the alien in order to prevent the alien race from whiping out humanity.
“Bugonia” is an alright psychological thriller, but is by and far not as weird as Lanthimos can get.
This film has been on my wish list for some time, but Amazon Prima hid it behind a sub-subscription or something. Now suddenly it was available for rent.
Malick makes interesting arthouse films. Just as “Tree Of Life”, “Knight Of Cups” is not an easy film. It is perhaps a bit less dramatic and less ‘artsy’.
Based on the legend of the pearl and layered with Tarot-symbolism, we follow Rick (Christian Bale) who forgot his heavenly descent and quest. He tries to make his stay on earth worthwile by falling in love. Six women give him temporary happiness.
The film is somewhat spiritual, dreamy and quite slow. Malick created beautiful shots and managed to attract an interesting line of actors.
The international title appears to be “Peacock”. The second half of the title means: “Am I real?”.
Matthias works for a company called “My Company”. People hire him when they need a ‘+1’ at the concert, an imaginary son or even to try to learn to argue. And so we see Matthias in continuously different roles, a bit like in “Holy Motors“, but not that strange.
Matthias has a very modern, perfectly organised house, where he lives with his girlfriend Sophia. Sophia is increasingly annoyed by the fact that Matthias is not only an actor for work, but also more and more in his private life.
And so we have a slightly ‘off’ drama that slowly grows into being more of a drama as Matthias is loosing his grip on his life.
We also encounter a familiar face, by the way, Theresa Frostad Eggesbø, who is the daughter in the “Ragnarok” series.
When a F.F. Coppola is rated only 4.7 on IMDb.com, there has got to be something with it, right? Is it not commercial enough?
Let me immediately say that I quite like “Megalopolis”. It is indeed quite pomp in setup and execution, but perhaps it is Coppola’s critique of American culture that costs him internet points.
American culture is compared to ancient Roman culture, a culture that collapsed at its peak and American culture seems to head in the same direction. To tell his story, Coppola transposed the story of Rome to a future America, New York to be more specific.
The major of New York is Cicero, his main opponent is the visionaire Cesar Catilina. Cesar has big plans for the city. A large part is whiped out for a green and social new part of the city. Those in power have more interest is keeping their power and their decadent life-style. When the daughter of the major starts to work for Cesar initially tongue-in-cheek, she starts to understand what he is after and what his reasons are.
The historic-futuristic setting is not never seen before, but also not entirely uncommon. The pomp goes with the message. All in all I find “Megalopolis” an interesting watch.
Another oldie that can be streamed on the website of the International Film Festival Rotterdam.
Two ghosts are tired of being ghosts and they learn that when they first travel to Santiago de Compostella and then to Finistera that they might be able to gain a physical body again.
As you can expect, what follows is a slow, minimalist, absurdistic ‘road’ movie in which we follow the two ghosts. One scene has music of Suicide.
“Bardo, falsa crónica de unas cuantas verdades” or “Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths” is about the succesful documentary maker Silverio, who is about to be the first journalist of Mexican decent to receive a prestigious journalism award in the USA.
Silverio moved to the USA to raise his children. This is exactly something that many Mexicans also want, but do not get the chance to. Silverio makes his documentaries about the people trying to get into the USA.
In a lengthy (2:39 hours) and at times surreal drama, we see Silverio being tossed between his Mexican roots which he basically outgrew because of his succes and his succes as a journalist and how other people react to this succes. His life is not all easy and a son that was born stillborn keeps haunting his nightmares and putting pressure on his relationship with his wife. The fact that his children are neither really Mexicans nor Americans does not help either.
Iñárritu puts the magnifiying glass on migration issues between both countries, on the story of the Mexicans who did and did not make it into the USA and mixes this with the very personal view of the life of Silverio with a thick layer of Mexican culture. The film goes from common drama, to vague scenes and strange camera work.
“Pan T.” (‘Mr. T.’) is a very nice Polish film up on Netflix. In 1953 Warszawa (Warsaw), hence, in communist times, we follow a writer, highly regarded by his colleagues. He proves to live in some sort of writers-hotel. Everybody asks for his advice. Some address him as subversive.
The government has strict rules what can be said and written. On the other hand, it supports writers, journalists, etc. who play by their rules. Thus the trick is to write so that the officials approve, but that the readers can detect criticism to the system.
In this highly controlled environment things are hard for indepedent thinkers. Mr. T. is under observation and balances the thin line of keeping to his principles and trying to make a living.
In moody black and white, a bit of a noir type, slow movie with some odd humour, not too much of a story unfolds, but “Plan T.” makes an interesting watch.
A magnificent, surreal and musical short film (15 min) of P.T. Anderson up on Netflix. The music was made by Thom Yorke of Radiohead.
It is not like there is a story to this, but “Anima” is a great and weird ‘image- and soundscape’.
