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drama

Ratched – Murphy & Romansky (series 2020)

  • drama

Sarah Paulson (whom I mostly know for “American Horror Story“, just as Rian Murphy, one of the creators of the series) is Mildred Ratched (and she produced 11 of the 18 episodes). Ratched is based on the character with the same name from the film “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest”). Ratched is a manipulative woman who works herself into the staff of an exclusive early mental institution where Dr. Richard Hanover experiments with innovative techniques, mostly from Switzerland, with varying degrees of succes.

The series begin bloody with Edward Tolleson (Finn Wittrock who also plays in “American Horror Story”) killing several priests. The series do not become as bloody anymore after that. Tolleson is taken to the hospital of Hanover, initially for treatment, but also for investigation and -later on- to be prepared for death penalty as he becomes the focal point of a governor’s campaign. It is soon obvious that Tolleson is the reason that Ratched came to work at the facility.

Ratched tries to manipulate everybody around here to reach her objective which is initially unknown to the viewer. However meticulously planned, things do not go exactly as Ratched hoped. Especially with the arrival of Gwendolyn Briggs (Cynthia Nixon from “Sex and the City”), Ratched has to look deep into her inner and learn that there is more to life than a childhood’s promise.

The story nicely twists and turns, the series have some amusing characters such as Louise (Amanda Plummer from “Pulp Fiction”), Betsy Bucket (Judy Davis) whose character evolves wonderfully and Lenore Osgood (Sharon Stone). It goes from drama to thriller to ‘whodunnit’ with a bit of a horror element here and there.

Beau Is Afraid – Ari Aster (2023)

I did not like Aster’s “Midsommar” and (so) I never watched “Hereditary”. I heard “Beau Is Afraid” is something completely different. It sure is! “Beau Is Afraid” is weird. It is so weird that I wonder why it plays in cinemas. How many people can stand something as odd as this?

Joaqin Phoenix plays Beau, a man with massive anxiety disorders. There are monsters lurking under every rock. The viewer sees the world through Beau’s eyes. He lives in a rotten city where people stab each other, where monsters crawl out of cellars and in which everything that can possibly go wrong, goes horribly wrong. Even crossing the street for a bottle of water, is a massive challenge for Beau.

He was going to visit his mother remembering his father on the day that he died, but a drug infused mob trashed his appartement. On top of things, his mother dies in a very unfortunate accident. Beau is expected at the funeral, but he gets hit by a camper truck.
That is about the easy part of the film.

From his nursing address Beau wanders into a community living in the forest and performing plays which -incidentally- tell the story of Beau’s life. The film switches to surrealistic animation to make a circle back to the present where Beau finds himself in a situation which could never have occurred. Perhaps his life is not as miserable as he always thought? The shimmering optimism is soon gone when Beau arrives at his mother’s place.

“Beau Is Afraid” is mostly a very strange drama. The viewer goes from strange scenes with strange humour to completely different even stranger scenes and the story gets as blurry as Beau’s mind.

Indeed, not a film for people who want a clear cut horror film with scare moments. There is an incidental scene with some gore, but mostly the film is a peek into the mind of person who has lost his wits at birth.

Amusing, certainly. Not a brilliant film though, but I do not get to watch a film as odd as this one, so I have to give Aster some bonus points for that.

Lost In Space – Allen & Sazama & Sharpless (series) (2018-2021)

Mankind is forced to move to another planet. The best of the best are recruited as the first colonisers of Alpha Centauri. We follow the family Robinson who join the mission collectively. Each family member has its talents and tasks including the children.

The trip does not go as planned and the family gets stranded on another planet. They have to figure out a way to get to their actual destination. The son of the family befriends an enemy robot who also crashed on the planet. The relationship between Will and the Robot is the main red thread throughout the three seasons.

In every episode there is a problem that has to be overcome. This usually is a means for some extra drama which soon becomes tiring. Some idea succeeds, something else goes wrong. Who will die this episode, but miraculously gets saved at the end only for the next problem to appear? The same thing happens with the different seasons. The planet is left behind, new problems occur, so the story continues in another place. Meanwhile the other robots that have not changed to like men are chasing Will.

With pomp Star Wars like music, too much drama and fairly predictable story lines, but on the other side descent acting and just enough interesting events to not stop watching, the series manage to balance just enough for me to finish all three seasons.

Certainly not a must-see, not a complete waste of time either. The story that is stretched over three seasons is not all that bad, but all these boring subplots and problems make that perhaps the story was more fit for a film so all unnecessary additions could have been skipped.

Daphne – Peter Mackie Burns (2017)

The story was written bij a second cousin of my girlfriend. That is another way to find a film.

Daphne (Emily Beecham) is a young adult living in London. She fills her life with a job at a restaurant, drinks, drugs, hook-ups and when she has the time, friends. Habits go over in boredom which goes over in apathy; especially when she finds herself in a situation in which she ‘should feel something’, but she does not.

And so the movie goes from showing a lively young woman, to a doubting woman drowning herself in misery. People around her notice the change, but she is not ready to accept help.

As you can see, a very ‘normal’ story, nicely portraid. The film is not too melodramatic.

Three Thousand Years Of Longing – George Miller (2022)

Alithea (Tilda Swinton) is a happy, single “narratologist”. When in Turkey for a conference, she buys a bottle which proves to contain a Djinn (Idris Elba).

The Djinn likes to tell stories, Alithea of course does so too, so the film is presented as a story in which stories are told. We hear how the Djinn found himself trapped in a bottle three times, all times ’caused’ women. As the Djinn tells his story, so does Alithea culminating into a shared life.

Miller’s film is slow and somewhat dreamy, romantic in the sense that the two spirits find their similarities.

After Yang – Kogonada (2021)

The second film I saw last weekend with Colin Farrell. This is more of his usual sad face, slow movies. “After Yang” is a pretty science fiction, a bit of an arthouse movie. Slow, minimalist, a bit of an odd story that is created to make you think.

Yang from the title is a robot who acts as a brother of a Chinese adoptive girl in the near future. Yang is ‘refurbished’ but when he stops, there is not really a guarantee plan. Mika is inconsolable for she lost her brother who she has known all her life (but knows well that he was a robot). Mother and father think that is time to spend more time with the family instead of having a robot raise their kid. Still, the father sets out to try to find a fix for Yang, only to find out that Yang was a serious privacy issue, which raises other dilemmas.

“After Yang” is a nicely shot film about a subject I think the viewer can relate to to a certain extend. It raises some questions and then just stops.

Indeed, “arthouse”. A nice one.

A Man Called Otto – Marc Forster (2022)

  • drama

Tom Hanks is Otto, a man who lost his wife and with her also his will to live. Otto was an unexciting youth who managed to win the heart of a beautiful woman. They lived a happy life, but with a big drama. As a widower Otto knows nothing to do but to go about his daily, grumpy, routine and planning to join his wife.

Otto lives in a closed street which is some sort of community. Then he gets new neighbors in the form of a young Mexican couple with two little daughters and a third child on the way. They soon get to know cranky Otto, but Marisol (either consciously or not) manages to break a hole in the wall that Otto built around him. It does take a while before she learns how Otto became the man that he is though.

I thought “A Man Named Otto” would be a tragi-comedy. Indeed, chagrin Otto is in some ways funny, but his is mostly tragic. What is perhaps the heaviest part of the film, is that Otto is just the guy down your street. There is no big story in the film. Otto, Marisol and her family, the neighbors from the street are the common man. A teacher, an immigrant, somebody’s son, nothing fancy there. The same goes for Otto. He is a mechanic, his wife was a teacher; together they tried to keep their neighborhood clean. Life was easy and good while it lasted, life was but life after. Otto’s story is painfully relatable and so are (some of) the other characters in the film, which makes the tragedy quite heart-felt.

Valley Of The Gods – Lech Majewski (2019)

A bit of a weird film (can I say “arthouse”?) apparently based on a Navajo story. A beautiful valley is inhabited by ‘Amerindians’. It is their valley of the Gods. Nearby is an encroaching city where industrialists have their eyes on some mineral that can be found in the valley. The main company with interest is headed by the wealthiest man on earth who lives on top of a nearby mountain.

John Ecas is a writer with not too much inspiration. Then the project of a biography of this wealthy man (Wes Tauros, played by John Malkovich) comes up, for which he is going to spend some time in Tauros’ castle.

Tauros is not the dogged materialist that you may expect and Ecas also wants to look at the Navajo’s side of the story. Thus a mix between Navajo mythology and utopian/dystopian future Western culture unfolds both in the story and in the way of filming.

An interesting watch.

The Queen’s Gambit – Scott Frank (series 2022)

The highly intelligent Beth Harmon has a troubled mother that first causes her to lose her father and later her mother as well. She ends up in an orphanage at the age of nine. In the basement she encounters the janitor playing chess. Reluctantly he teaches her the game. Beth proves to be a prodigy and her chess-star soon rises.

By the time Beth becomes a young woman, she is played by the beautiful Anya Taylor-Joy.

We follow Beth both as a growing chess player, but also as a young woman coming of age. Sensitive to the temptations of drugs and alcohol, perfectionist, single minded and a bad loser. In the series we see Beth in good and bad times, Taylor-Joy wonderfully portraying Beth’s ups and downs.

Of course the game of chess is central to the series, but I do not know if you will learn much of the game. The plays are extraordinary fast and theories are explained, but my own knowledge of the game are too limited to tell if all that is very educational. The series are set in the wonderful 1960s with colourful wallpaper and furniture, design dresses, odd haircuts, nice cars and new music.

According to the series, the ‘chess scene’ in the USA is of alright level. Beth can make a living playing chess, but the biggest US tournaments are played in universities using “cheap plastic pieces on cheap plastic boards”. Europe is better, bigger tournaments are in Paris. Russia is the top-notch chess country, so the series end in Moskou.

Taylor-Joy is indeed great (she won several prices for her role), other characters (such as Jolene) as well. The creators managed to make chess games actually look tense with a lot of ‘facial acting’. The story unfolds nicely. Indeed a good series that for some reason are listed as “Creating the Queen’s Gambit” on IMdB.com.

The Dig – Simon Stone (2021)

Before she lost her husband, the wealthy widow Edith Pretty bought a piece of land next to her house where a few tiny hills were located. She asks the local and fairly well-known amateur archaeologist Basil Brown to come to investigate.

After some digging, Brown stumbled upon what appears to be the remains of a boat which he suggests could be Anglo-Saxon. Soon colleagues get wind of the discovery and two musea try to take over the project. Pretty sees to it that Brown remains involved in the further excavation which proves to be the finding of the nowadays famous Sutton Hoo ship and treasure.

The time is 1938. Europe is tumbling into the Second World War. Time for the excavation is short the signs of the war become more and more obvious. Pretty suffers from bad health, but tries to use her influence as long as possible. In the end, she cannot prevent other people than Brown receiving the credits for the spectacular finding and the film is an hommage to the man and his work.

“The Dig” is an alright drama about an interesting historical event. As a viewer you do not really become much wiser about the finding and especially not of the ‘treasure’. No image of what was found and what the findings look like.