And a Half

 Do not recommend - couldn't sit through the first 20 minutes of the film.

If 20 years ago (before I was alive), you told me that Polanski directed this film, I would laugh in your face. Perhaps his least stylistically recognizable movie ever, the work lends itself to an eerie sense of detachment. The aesthetic of the film is plastered by the faux-realism common in throwaway holiday films (even the hotel is CGI). Unlike Wes Anderson, the plastering of this film lacks coherency (granted Wes Anderson's films are perhaps overly coherent, but that is a discussion for a different day). The uncanny nature of the film proves the characters ethereal and ultimately not as comical as intended by Polanski. There's no good way to end this review but to say that it is unbelievably that we exist in a World where the Pianist and the Palace were directed by the same man.

 Even the boxer with the most wins ever succumbed to post-career maladies, as shown by Willie Pep in Featherweight . Lingering shots of the boxer's retired eyes looking into the distance expose that his life is passing by and he has no say in it. Even the documentarians don't listen to any of his directions to cut various scenes, he can't even control the people simply observing his life. Behind his eyes we slowly begin to see the internal workings of his mind - he is still psychologically boxing. A feature of his signature style (evasion) is omnipresent throughout the film's duration. Until the climax, Pep is always metaphorically dodging punches and living in the shadows of his career. This slow paced movie also dives into a father's psychology through the simple reality of its shots. The natural camera shake and lingering scenes past their logical conclusion immerse us in the retired boxer's world. As the bleak lighting reflects off his darting beady eyes, we...

 One of the central focuses of the film is its persistence of a dialectical structure. It is shot in black and white, there is a single opponent in judo, the older Iranian generation differs from the younger one, etc. The only possible solution, according to the film is similarly binary: either to give into pressures or to fight them entirely. This is precisely the thesis of the film - compromise in protest does not exist. Whether we agree or disagree with this theory is up to our own ethical convictions but the film is unabashedly proud of its somewhat radical nature.   One question which I reconsidered as the end credits rolled was why the title of this movie was Tatami? The tatami mat is of cinematographic significance itself; many shots pressed against the floor as well as perfect overviews are dispersed throughout the film. On some level, this film is about space, how it is portrayed, how it is fought over and most vividly, how someone is defeated in it. This notion ...

This film is my guess for the one which will win the grand prize at the Venice Film Festival. Despite its inevitable mass reproduction and advertisement, this movie offers higher-level structure that its contemporary counterparts often do not. First and foremost, this film is closely related to Christianity in an unintuitive manner – it neither rejects nor accepts its premises, rather examines the world as one which is inextricably linked to its intuitions. The general narrative structure follows one of the parable of the prodigal son – Emma Stone’s character leaves her father, expends her innocence and returns back to him. The picture takes the audience through a quirky yet beautiful world that we often fail to see in our own reality. Despite superb performances by Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo, the screenplay lacks a depth that is necessary in approaching questions of maturity, prostitution and love. Even the most sensitive viewers can make it through the film without shedding a sing...

 One of the most brilliant works of art I have had the pleasure to enjoy in my life; a seminal work in every sense. This film will take years to be understood or even valued. As evidence, nearly half the audience walked out during its first showing at the Venice Film Festival. The "film" is a constant attack of terror on the senses and our expectations of cinema at large. Although difficult to describe, this chef-d'œuvre can be summarized as a virile skeleton of the action genre. The plot is so simply brutish and the cinematography so bare that it seems as though Harmony Korine is ridiculing the audience's intelligence. Indeed, the film has been reduced to nothing more than "action" in its most primal form. Infrared cameras portraying the most basal movements and dialogue lacking adjectives eliminate what we perceive to be important facets of cinema. Action films are nothing more than this film, they contain no further artistically substantive qualities. Unf...

Celebrities Giorgio Armani Olga Kurylenko Ryusuke Hamaguchi Luc Besson Caleb Landry Jones Aki Kaurismäki Jacob Elordi Sofia Coppola Ava Duvernay Oliver Masucci Luca Barbareschi Wes Anderson  Woody Allen talked to a bunch of producers and other cinema PEASANTRY🤮 Films Watched Sidonie au Japon Comandante  D'Argent et de Sang (TV Show) The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar Ferrari Explanation for Everything (Magyarázat Mindenre) El Conde  The Palace Aggro Dr1ft Poor Things Tatami Featherweight Moving (Ohikkoshi) Hit Man Priscilla The Shadow of Flame (Hokage) There was a Father Gasoline Rainbow (I walked out after 10 minutes) Holly Life of Shock Force Workers Other Stats  Espressos consumed - ∞ Spritzes consumed - idk but Select > Campari and Aperol Paninis/pizza meals consumed per day - ~2

 Rarely does a contemporary film concerning politics present itself in such a novel and non-moralizing light. Furthermore, as one of its core tenets, the movie poignantly reveals the truly banal nature of  ostentatious political discourse. In a masterful display of editing, the main plot device to illuminate this issue is cleverly hidden from sight in numerous shots of quotidian life. Casually claustrophobic frames, multiple narrative arcs and realistic color grading remind us of our own lives all too well. The opening of the film displays a slowly growing shot of Hungarian high schoolers graduating, a clear indication of this motif of intensification. Abel, an aloof teenage boy, accidentally leaves on a pin with the Hungarian flag for his final oral exam. When pressured by his right-wing father, he blames for failing the exam due to unfair treatment vis-à-vis the political nature of the pin in an increasingly polarized nation. An ambitious reporter for a political magazine ju...

 Why do we watch racing movies? The only possible answer to this question is that we yearn to see the driver crash in the most grotesque way conceivable (one we have not seen before). We want to see his suffering wife, his innocent children left fatherless and the brotherhood of the other drivers shown on the screen to rouse us from our mundane lives. Ferrari attempts to subvert our expectations as an audience by showing a crash so gruesome and so tragic that we are simply repulsed by it. This crash (the traditional western climax) is not climactic at all, despite aims to be so; it is detached from the main themes of the film. The pursuit of the sublime over all and sonhood constantly reinstate themselves as the driving (no pun intended) motifs of the plot. These motifs never result into anything substantive in the grand scheme of the narrative. Although Ferrari pushes ceaselessly in the pursuit of beauty he ultimately does not pay a personal price due to the crash. Although De Po...

A shorter film generally warrants a longer review. As Anderson’s style continues its infantile impersonation of impressionism, his films continue to grow in dullness. Full of facile visual appeal, a pastel color grade, steady camera shots and fairytale sets dominate the movie. In this case, these techniques and a television play format coincide with the youthfulness of Roald Dahl’s spirit of an author. The shot is often framed from a viewer’s perspective, constant and unchangingly centered on the speaker at hand, mimicking Henry Sugar himself. Frequent breaks in the form of Shakesperean asides shatter the viewer’s spell, the equivalent of failing at Sugar’s task of utter concentration. I would love to praise this film in honor of my soft spot for impressionism, but neither has the exoticness of Gaugin nor the soul of Van Gogh.

No review of war movie is complete without mention of Truffaut's maxim "every film about war ends up being pro-war". By nature of writing this review I am acknowledging that this adage does not hold for this film. Then how exactly does it subvert this military film stereotype? Comandante , like the warfare of WWII, is a film characterized by angle and distance. One of the defining features of its genre are its duel-like facets - Comandante lacks the expected back and forth between the audience's hero and his enemy. The home portion of the film abounds in perpendicularly angled still lifes, indicating a serenity which contrasts with the disorder and claustrophobia of the diagonally angled shots in the submarine. Man never triumphs over machine, merely coexists with its strengths and flaws awaiting its inevitable victory, trapped inside its hull. In effect, the confinement proposes the conflict is personal despite the impersonality of miles of sea and inches of solid...

  "We live in a country that doesn't exist" If one could summarize this film in a single phrase, it would be this one. These are the first words that Sidonie manages to push out onto the page after her prolonged period of utter grief. In fact, they may be the only words ever truly spoken during her entire trip to Japan despite numerous scenes of dialogue. Modernist architecture, cultural sterility and cinematic linearity overpower our senses from the very first moments that the country appears on the silver screen. Indeed, Sidonie a writer who has lost her entire family in two separate car accidents feels at home in the land of the rising sun. She even goes as far as to remark that everything around her feels familiar, it merely has a different texture from home. Sidonie's life has become flavored by an intense sterility used to cover the bitter taste of trauma, much like post-war Japanese culture in the eyes of the director. At moments, she seems to blend into the f...