There is a fundamental incompatibility. “Zoe” is not just a film about artificial intelligence and the influence it will have on our society. It also shows how artificially our society will be in the future. A world where feelings are reduced to figures and where pharmaceutical concoctions provide a short but intense expression of love. Both with disastrous results. Couples who are madly in love, without any major relationship problems, grow apart very quickly after hearing the final score of “The Machine”. A percentage that indicates how much chance there is that their relationship will succeed. Couples who are about to split up can take advantage of Benysol to experience those feelings of falling in love again. Which in turn leads to the trade of this product in an illegal circuit, as these feelings have an addictive effect. The film “Zoe” was fascinating, intriguing and touching at the same time. A film that kept me busy the days after I saw it. I don’t have that often. A.I. is sexy. “Zoe” is a mixture of “Her” and “Ex Machina“. “Her” was also about the love between a person and a non-human entity. Here it was a computer program that communicated sensually and seductively using the voice of Scarlett Johansson. Just because of the sexy voice I would fall in love with this artificially intelligent creature consisting of program lines. In addition to the development of a relationship test program and pharmaceutical love potions, Cole Ainsley (Ewan “Lo Imposible” McGregor), an engineer and expert in the field of A.I. who works at “Relationist”, managed to construct lifelike androids. Artificially intelligent beings that function autonomously. Just like Ava in “Ex Machina“. Only less futuristic and equipped with all elements such that there is no distinction between them and a human being. Cole himself is divorced and stares every night at his computer screen in search of a possible matching partner. I wonder if his loneliness and lack of female companionship cause his imagination to go in a certain direction, which then manifested itself in the design of these “synthetics”. Because his creations are equipped with a voluptuous bosom. Just like Zoe (Léa Seydoux). Falling in love can be hard sometimes. The film is pretty slow. There are many moments with a distant and preoccupied Zoe or Cole. Zoe tries to fathom her raison d’être and experiences a personality crisis, asking herself who she really is. Cole is caught in his emotions when it’s about Zoe. He’s intuitively attracted to her but his sense of reality about the person Zoe bothers him. Perhaps because of that, you feel there’s a certain kind of distance between these two individuals. An insurmountable obstacle with disastrous consequences for both. The result is a flee in self-pity for the one. And even doubting the meaning of existence for the other. But not only the romantic problems are central here. Also, the interaction of “Synthetics” with their immediate environment and other similar designs is being covered. And the associated well-known phenomenon of a piece of electronics developing a feeling of life and a consciousness is highlighted as well. Some brilliant acting. I thought the two protagonists played a sublime role as opposites. Perhaps some will say there that there was absolutely no chemistry between them. But wasn’t that the point? It shows how love sometimes has to overcome difficult obstacles. And how ultimate love will circumvent all obstacles. In that respect, their acting was perfect. But especially Léa Seydoux fascinates. The way her mood changes, is wonderful to see. One moment she looks like a teenager whose young life is filled with puppy love and therefore she flutters through the scenes. The next moment she’s hurt and looks like a hopelessly lost young woman, full of doubts who plunges into a chaotic love life. It was a pleasant surprise to see Theo James appear in this indie-SF. And to be honest, I found his character more interesting than the one he played in the “Divergent” story. And last but not least, you can also admire Christina Aguilera as a lifelike inflatable doll that entertains lonely fetishists. “Zoe” is an extraordinary film. Well, I really liked “Zoe“. It’s a beautiful film and a bit of a relief after a number of less successful films. But I’m guessing you figured that out already, after reading this long lyrical review. Even though I feared it would be a boring average movie at the beginning. The different story layers fascinated me and kept me riveted to my screen. It’s an extraordinary film pointing out that future relationships with artificial beings will be more complex than the human relationships as we experience them today. Sure enough, I could predict in advance how it would end and what a final picture we would get with Zoe in close-up. But, for once, that didn’t really bother me. My rating 7.5/10 Links: IMDB More reviews here

One often hears it said that great cinema is dying; Hollywood delivers the hammer-blows of blockbusters unto the coffin of art. The resurrected ‘Planet of The Apes’ franchise proves the lid isn’t shut as tightly as predicted - a predecessor of the newest entry cemented its place as a masterpiece. “War for the Planet of The Apes,” however is not “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.” It doesn’t quite reach the same depth, nor the rawness of emotion, despite its screaming name. But it does make one silent. When you are greeted with the credits, there comes a moment when a necessity for silence is paramount, for only then may you begin to comprehend all that is said within this art piece. Writing this review, I myself am nowhere near finding the omega truth. I was, however, able to piece together some fragments of it, and found that the bridge to connect them all is pureness. The third instalment to the franchises is about pureness; simple and true. Its source are creatures we deem savage, and therein lies the paradox. For reasons incomprehensible, we find ourselves drawn towards the apes. I claim this queer, because self-loving speciesism is present in all creatures; why then do we harbour such disdain for our own kind within the film? Perhaps it is because in nearly every human character, we are greeted with a dark reflection of ourselves? To an extent, yet this does not seem enough as explanation. What the film does is bravely ask the question: what warrants the establishment of criteria by which we judge morality? The dominant answer within any rational society is ourselves, our intuition. Yet Matt Reeves offers us a different answer; how can human cognition be the answer if the ‘primitive’ species act with the same accordance, if not more ethically? Ceasar does not succumb to thirst for vengeance at the end, nor does he betray his friends. Red stands up to the oppressors of the apes, despite being in servitude to them; his life is taken yet he is redeemed. Bad-Ape disregards his own nightmarish fear and goes against self-preservation to commit to Ceasar’s cause. Such acts lead one to conclude that morality is judged by action rather than source. The criteria for it is to be found within these acts, a comprehension of which is open to all able-minded creatures. This brings one back to the initial notion of speciesism. It seems that it is precisely because of our inherent narcissism and longing for perfection that we begin to look elsewhere, rather than our fallen representatives. In apes we see creatures worthy of admiration. I dread to use the word ‘persons,’ for it insights our own unsurpassability (nothing could be further from the truth), yet Ceasar’s family does manage to tap into something pure, something beautiful. Something that our kind could only dream of. Here I risk stumbling into the trap of the cliché. We hear a constant dribble that “Planet of The Apes,” at its core, is about role reversal, to show how humans are the savages. This is reductive, simplistic bullshit. Never does the storytelling become lazy as to equate desperation to savagery. Humans are desperate, and in their desperation to survive they commit atrocities. Acts of war. They are not primitive, despite the twist revealed to us by Harrelson’s character. On the contrary, the human danger is very self aware, acting with machine-like pragmatism to execute the calculated terror of its leader. They are left human; driven by the very feeling that makes them so. A fear of the loss of identity. When the clock does strike - when the inevitable happens - that’s when danger is rendered impotent. In primitivity we become harmless; it is the fear of it that pushes us to savagery. The ‘role-reversal’ piffle poses a risk of muddying the waters. Reeves refuses to lower himself to making subjective propagations within the film, rather choosing to follow Dr Frankenstein. He and Mark Bomback carefully conjoin into their work, the complex elements of life and with this infuse sentience into what is projected onto the screen. Their world is alien, and at the same time most sobering. Just like the Creature in Shelley’s story, the apes exemplify real valiance, real warrant for veneration. They serve as a dose of lucidity to realise our own brokenness, our fall. Reeves invites us to a world where we are tested; what is it that is virtuous, noble, good? The apes are emancipated from the chains of post-modernism; they have no care for ethical dilemmas, relativist pondering or subjective opinion. They know their truth and follow through with it. In doing so, they become a force of unity that makes us confront our own preconceptions on family, personhood, love, hatred and survival. We begin to erase all the usual tripe dressed up in polemics and face our beliefs. On this point, the film is paramount in current day politics, for it uncovers one’s true colours and thereby builds a foundation for thought. When staring in to the eyes of Maurice the Orangutan, heart-wrenchingly portrayed by Karin Konoval, as he makes contact with a child born of the enemy all other thought escapes: you are greeted by something unadulterated, something untempered by our world. There can be no doubt on the goodness of the act that follows. Seresin’s cinematography compliments the story. Stark, beautiful, all-encompassing imagery stands bravely before you, uncompromising in its approach. Each moment is outlined and without fail - original. It could tell the whole story by itself. Each glance, each spoken word, each action is emphasised; one could even be tempted to call the cinematography stylised, were it not for the raw reality of it. Unequivocally, Weta Digital effects team deserve as much praise for their work: within the space of three films, they managed to turn the phenomenal into the noumenal. They are responsible as much as Serkis, Reeves or Bomback for the greatest irony of the film: truth comes from creatures who are not really there. Nonetheless, as aforementioned, this isn't “Dawn.” Serkis seems to have grown too comfortable in the role, the rawness of the past performances is gone. It is instead replenished by a more human, self-aware complexity. One could of course pin it on Ceasar’s evolution, sighting the writers’ infantile attempt to make him into a Christ-like figure, with the vicarious suffering on the cross. The fact remains, notwithstanding, that our protagonist has lost the brightness of his flame and with it, the depth of character. The nuance that Serkis goes for pays off somewhat, nevertheless it is difficult to grasp, for the marionette is too perfectly controlled by its master. Act I similarly has a faulty start: the audience are expected of too much, with a rushed reintroduction into a pre-established complex world. The story judges itself as already embedded within our minds, and thus not much effort is made to account for the 3-year hiatus from the last entry. Despite this the beginning drags. Much to soon after the first battle, we are transported to the ape refuge, a place of sombreness and melancholy. This is conventionally bleak, so much so that it transcends the screen and enters the auditorium, resulting in a loss of energy and pace. There are some more moments of this kind scattered around the film, however they come seldom and few the more we progress into the story, and by Act III disappear altogether. By Act III we reach a cocktail with a potency of “Les Miserables” and the colour of “The Last of Us.” Even the young girl, touchingly played by Amiah Miller, serves as a young Cosette clinging onto Maurice the Jean Val Jean. Strikingly similar elements persevere in both stories: an innocent child is taken away by a roughened hero, a people struggling for survival and the bloody consequences that come forth from it. The dystopian world is reminiscent “The Last of Us,” except in the film overturns the world to see it through the eyes of the apes; in short the three stories are connected in the thematics, with the most important factor being survival and persistence. The mere fact that Reeves’ piece stands on par with these of Hugo and Naughty Dog is a phenomenon in itself, yet what makes it even more a marvel is just how ambitious it is. In an age where self-delusion rules, where subjectivism is deified, where art has been forgotten and diluted summer flicks are offered as appeasement, it dares to make a stand. It isn’t perfect of its kind, but it is worthy.

(BFI London Film Festival, BFI Southbank, Belvedere Rd, Bishop's, London SE1 8XT, United Kingdom) 12 October 2020 17:40, BFI Southbank, NFT2 12 October 2020 17:50, BFI Southbank, NFT3 12 October 2020 18:00, BFI Southbank, NFT1 12 October 2020 18:30, BFI Player 13 October 2020 20:40, BFI Southbank, NFT2 13 October 2020 20:45, BFI Southbank, NFT1 13 October 2020 20:50, BFI Southbank, NFT3 https://www.bfi.org.uk/london-film-festival/screenings/undine "Undine" Undine (Paula Beer) is a historian who works as a museum guide in Berlin on Berlin's urban development. She knows all about 'The Humboldt Forum', and has the knack of choosing just the right blouse and suit. She has a small apartment at 'Alexanderplatz', a master‘s degree in history, and a freelance contract. But underneath the appearance of her modern citylife lurks an old myth; if the man she loves leaves her, the ancient myth catches up with her. Undine has to kill the man who betrays her and return to the water she once came from. And yet, time and again, her gaze wanders over to the courtyard café at the museum to see if he's there, or is still there, or if he’s there again. She's nonchalantly beautiful, and the way she imparts her knowledge about the city that was built on a swamp is as professional as it's graceful. But when her lover Johannes (Jacob Matschenz) is leaving her, Undine’s world is collapsing. So when he leaves her for another woman, Undine thinks she has no choice, until in the moment of betrayal, she meets Christoph (Franz Rogowski), an industrial driver. Undine defies her role as a powerless and spurned woman and falls in love anew, with Christoph, who dives into the sunken world of a reservoir. This is a new, happy and innocent love filled with curiosity and trust. But when Christoph starts to feel that Undine is running away from something, she has to face her curse once and for all. She doesn‘t want to lose this love. The magic has gone. 'You humans! You monsters!' Thus begins Ingeborg Bachmann’s narration 'Undine Leaves' published in 1961. 'Undine' is the betrayed woman of the waters. According to the myth, she lives in a lake in the forest. A man who’s fatefully enamored with a woman, whose love is unrequited and hopeless, who no longer knows what to do with himself or his feelings, who suffers absolute despair can enter the forest, go to the banks of the lake and cry out 'Undine’s' name. And she’ll come. And love him. Their love is a pact that may never be betrayed. And if it's betrayed, then the man must die. Then it comes to pass that he who loves and is loved seems easy and free, lovable and desirable once more. In the myth, the previously hopelessly adored woman suddenly becomes interested in the man again. And he leaves Undine to marry her, his first love. On the night of their wedding, Undine enters the bedroom and embraces the man in a bubble of water that’s going to drown him. She sweps him to death at the scuttling servants before disappearing into the lake in the forest. She has just been left and betrayed by someone whose name is Johannes. Going by the myth, she would take revenge on Johannes and kill him, but Undine defies the myth. She doesn’t want to return to the curse, to the lake in the forest. She doesn’t want to leave. She wants to love. She meets someone else. "Undine" choses fairytale-material as a point of departure. It's a story about love, but an impossible love, or a damaged one, or one that perhaps evolves. You see how love develops and remains. Undine calls out to the servants of the faithless man whom she has killed. Undine doesn’t want to go back to the forest lake. That she doesn’t want to kill. Undine is one such character who criticizes her curse too soon and is forced to fight. When she leaves Johannes, the man who betrayed her, she’s free. She goes home, lies down in bed and listens to 'Stayin Alive', the song to which she was resuscitated by the man who loves her. That’s when she’s free. But it’s at just this moment that the curse again takes effect. When you feel your most liberated, that’s when you’re most vulnerable. The curse of the old world demands an impossible price for her freedom. But for this instant it’s worth it. She holds on to this moment of freedom so that what she experienced remains present. There’s a man, Christoph, who’s the first to love her for herself, and it’s a love she’ll fight for. And we watch her realize this dream. She’s already human, she wants to remain human. When she goes diving with Christoph, she suddenly vanishes as if the water are pulling her into her element, she remembers nothing and says, 'no, I don’t want to come back here again'. But the enchanted world, the mythical world, won’t let go. It sticks to her, it’s brutal, it pulls her under. The myths and fairytales, men’s myths, leave Undine a pitiful dearth of leeway. Undine is a woman who needs to escape the work of male projection. A larger part of the film plays underwater in scenes with their very own magic. In the water, you can still feel remains of the old magic. The lake is not an enchanted one in the woods but rather a reservoir somewhere between romanticism and industrialization. It contains both the dammed water, that energy, and a flooded valley where a village once stood. Below is this mysterious, hidden life, the old stories, and above is modernity, steel; yet both are in the same space. And these cursed creatures, the stuff of fairy tales and myths who go about their mischief down below, feature as remnants in the film. The dam at dawn, the underwater world, the sunken city, the catfish. That all looks great, and it draws you in immediately. But the apartment where Undine lives isn’t an organically grown, enchanted place, it’s only enchanted by their love. Two lovers who manage to enchant an ugly place with their love. It has this 'Jules Verne' character to it, the adventure, the people welding underwater in a city that actually went under at this spot. History is changing, as are the legends and myths. Undine is no longer the Undine of 'Fouqué', but a modern woman, albeit one to whom the curse of the past still sticks. And she does something that is not part of the old undine myth, she departs. She doesn’t serve the myth of the past but destroys it. And there’s no such thing as an unpolitical story. The political always slips into the narrative. Two perspectives are important in "Undine"; Undine’s and the world’s. The film is the story of Undine, and when she has left the world it becomes the seeker’s story, Christoph’s. And if there’s the world and someone who looks at the world and goes through the world, you essentially only have those two perspectives: one of the seeing person and one of their view on the world. There are very few long shots, at the dam wall, of the models. The most important thing is to consider who’s narrating. Who’s this about, who’s watching here? That’s the crucial question in cinema. Is the camera watching, is it taking part? We've this scene where Undine and Christoph are lying on a wooden jetty and kissing, it’s straight out of a 'French Impressionist' painting, a 'Manet' painting. And it’s by contrasting his memory of the romantic image from earlier that the loss of the woman he loves becomes clear. His loneliness becomes apparent through the recollection of that image. We're looking at this 'Manet' picture, and it’s a narrative image, but that’s because it's narrator appears twice. 'French Impressionism' was a more important reference point than 'German Romanticism'. If you think about it carefully, all the shots at the lake are basically pictures that, over a detour via 'French Impressionism', once more illustrate 'German Romanticism'. But this is precisely not 'Caspar David Friedrich'; these are not the images of 'German Romanticism', but rather that’s already been broken with light, with resolution. That’s probably why we look at more pictures by 'Manet" than by 'Caspar David Friedrich'. But we can’t quite get away from 'German Romanticism', try as we might. So we've to approach it from a different angle, via 'Edward Hopper', via cinema. Motifs relating to the 'Undine' myth can already be found back in 'Greek Mythology'. The word 'Undenae' appears for the first time in a script of Paracelsus published posthumously in 1566: 'Undine', from 'The Latin Unda', wave, is a water sprite in human form who can only attain an immortal soul through marriage to a human. Should she come back into contact with her element after her marriage, she must return to it. Should her husband remarry, he must die. Paracelsus made reference to 'The French Melusine Saga' (12th century) and 'The German Stauffenberg Saga' (14th century). In 'The 19th Century', 'German Romanticism' returned to the subject, as can be seen in 'The Boy‘s Magic Horn' (1806–1808). In 1811, Friedrich De La Motte 'Fouqué' published the fairytale novella 'Undine', which cites 'Paracelus' and 'Egolf Of Stauffenberg' as sources and which in turn became the inspiration for countless variations and reworkings. 'Goethe' praised the text but made it clear that he would have made more of the material; 'Lortzing' (1816) and 'E.T.A. Hoffmann' (1845) adapted it for the opera. New interpretations can be found in the fairytales of Hans-Christian Andersen; 'The Little Mermaid' (1836), of Oscar Wilde; 'The Fisherman And His Soul' (1891). In Jean Giraudoux‘s 'Ondine (1939), the water spirits engender 'Undine‘s' husband‘s death and ensure that she won‘t be able toremember him. As for cinema, Neil Jordan was the last to adapt the material in "Odine" (2009). Berlin is no myths of it's own, it’s an assembled, modern city. As a former trade city, it always imported it's myths. We imagined that with the draining of the swamps, all the myths and stories the travelling merchants brought here are lying around as if on mudflats and slowly drying out. At the same time, Berlin is a city that's erasing more and more of it's own history. 'The Wall', that characterizing element of Berlin, was torn down in a very brief period. Our way of dealing with the past and with history in Berlin is brutal. "Undine" reworks the myth of the mysterious water spirit as a modern fairy-tale in a disenchanted world. The film deeplies assures work reimagines this legend by way of a new cinematic vision, in which precise everyday gestures are combined with ghostly hyperrealism. The story of a life-or-death love, splendidly and effortlessly told. The fairy tales you remember, the myths that were read to you by your mother; you don’t have to reread these. Their world view is stored in your memory. The condensation, the abridgement, all that's in the narration. The fairytales that are recorded by 'The Brothers Grimm' and so on had been passed on orally, being told and retold, and, at some point, changing more and more. But a few things remained the same. Cinema is more akin to this oral tradition than it's to research in the state library.

Most of the people I have spoken to about Inherent Vice have told me that it is the most confusing and difficult to follow film they’ve ever watched. But most of them enjoyed it. One or two couldn’t quite stomach the convoluted plot, murmured fast-paced dialogue, or the plain weirdness of some scenes. I myself have watched the film at least four times, sometimes under the excuse of showing it to friends, but mostly because it poses an enigma that I haven’t managed to ignore. Unlike many enigmatic films, Inherent Vice often seems as if it should be comprehensible. There is a narrative (or rather, many narratives) and one feels it (they) should be understood. I’ve concluded that the film offers an answer to a simple but interesting question: can a confusing film represent something about confusion? Inherent Vice answers with a resounding yes. The film, an adaptation of an equally bizarre Thomas Pynchon novel, centers around Larry “Doc” Sportello, a private detective who after an encounter with an ex-girlfriend (Shasta-Fay) sets off to unravel a mystery that seems to become more, rather than less, complicated. In the first and most comfortingly coherent scene, Shasta-Fay introduces a plot to have Mickey Wolfman, with whom she is having an affair, committed to a “looney bin” orchestrated by his wife and her lover. After both Shasta and Wolfman’s disappearance Doc sets out on a paranoia-fuelled mission of discovery which slowly reveals fragments of a conspiracy linked to a drug cartel connected to both a cult and a drug rehabilitation centre (the vertical integration of the drug trade). Amidst this convoluted plot, Doc, brilliantly portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix, provides a centre of humour, desire, and goodwill in what is otherwise a bleak portrait of 1970’s American society. The setting shouldn’t be overlooked, not only because it provides the justification for the film’s confusing mode of address, but because its execution is nostalgic without veering into over-sentimentality. It combines the psychedelic malaise of the era’s drug mania with satirical portraits of an oppressive police force, a corrupt relationship between the private and political sector, and a whole range of hippie-hating, repressed, power-hungry individuals, most triumphantly portrayed by Josh Brolin as Lt. Det. Christian F. "Bigfoot" Bjornsen. The soundtrack, most notably in Jonny Greenwood’s atmospheric score, flows across scenes creating a current of fluidity in an otherwise fluctuating and contradictory world. The scenes, largely based around dialogue, provide another oasis of sense in the nonsensical world. They play out for long stretches often uninterrupted by cuts or elaborate camera movements, opting instead to allow the characters and their conversations to provide their own interest beyond the interest of the narrative. And finally, this brings us to the answer of why the film works. A narrative as difficult to follow as Inherent Vice’s seem haphazard and unintentional, but it isn’t. It has the function of situating us with the protagonist who, as we gather from his notebook scrawl, is often as confused as we are. In this way, the film connects us with the experience of that confusion only just grounded by a good understanding of the social context of the time. Both Doc and the audience are tasked with the same mission: to make some sense out of the array of disparate and bizarre experiences. As the film progresses the narrative becomes less important and the centre of meaning in the film becomes the characters, specifically Doc. By the end of the film, I was left with the sense that despite the film’s obvious interest in a period and place it is most essentially involved with the broken world of a man with a broken heart. The fact that Inherent Vice is one of the most confusing films to arrive in mainstream American film in the last few years is not a great achievement, it’s not even particularly difficult. What is, is the film’s ability to create a world that is convincing for the very fact that it doesn’t make any sense, but feels like it should. As with all good films, the proofs in the watching. Despite, or because of its narrative, Inherent Vice, is fun to watch. And this is why, for the most part, viewers have found it to be the most confusing movie they have ever enjoyed.

(Release Info London schedule; February 19th, 2019, Curzon Bloomsbury, London WC1N, The Brunswick, London, WC1N 1AW, 14:45 PM) "Hale County This Morning, This Evening" An inspired and intimate portrait of a place and it's people, "Hale County This Morning, This Evening" follows Daniel Collins and Quincy Bryant, two young 'African American' men from rural 'Hale County', Alabama, over the course of five years. Collins attends college in search of opportunity while Bryant becomes a father to an energetic son in an open-ended, poetic film that privileges the patiently observed interstices of their lives. The audience is invited to experience the mundane and monumental, birth and death, the quotidian and the sublime. These moments combine to communicate the region’s deep culture and provide glimpses of the complex ways 'The African American' community’s collective image is integrated into America’s visual imagination. It's a refreshingly direct approach to documentary that fills in the gaps between individual black male icons. The film allows the viewer an emotive impression of 'The Historic South', showing the consequences of the social construction of race, while simultaneously trumpeting the beauty of life and offering a testament to dreaming despite the odds. Director RaMell Ross earned a 'BA' in both 'English' and 'Sociology' from 'Georgetown University' and an 'MFA' from 'The Rhode Island School Of Design'. His photographs have been exhibited internationally and his writing has appeared in such outlets as 'The New York Times' and 'Walker Arts Center'. He was part of 'Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces Of Independent Film' in.2015, and a 'New Frontier Artist' in 'Residence' at 'The MIT Media Lab'. In 2016, he was a finalist for 'The Aperture Portfolio Prize', winner of an 'Aaron Siskind Individual Photographer’s Fellowship Grant' and a 'Sundance Art Of Nonfiction Fellow'. In early 2017, he was selected for 'Rhode Island Foundation's Robert And Margaret MacColl Johnson Artist Fellowship'. RaMell is currently on faculty at 'Brown University’s Visual Arts Department'. While teaching in a 'GED' program in Greensboro, Alabama RaMell Ross met Quincy, and coaching basketball at the local high school he met Daniel. Filming start after about three years. "Hale County This Morning, This Evening" is his first feature documentary. With a large format '8x10' inch camera, the view of Southern poverty was crystallized in the summer of 1936. The documentation of poor white sharecropping families became the landmark book 'Let Us Now Praise Famous Men'. Two years later, 'The Farm Security Administration' commissioned the effects of 'The Great Depression' in the southern states. The photographic perspective established a new documentary aesthetic and defines a region. In the history of documentary practice, 'Hale County' is a mythical place. On the one hand it's part of the rarefied cannon of black and white photojournalism. The descriptive prose poetry and reflexive questioning of whether documentation can ever represent such social misery. Today, 'Hale County' is a different place. While the current residents subsist with comparable economic hardship, the racial demographics of the region have shifted. These forgotten, isolated, famous men in 'Hale County' are now people of color. Largely disenfranchised, 'The African American' population and communities subsist under conservative political structures determined to maintain a ritual of peaceful cohabitation an unequal distribution of and access to resources. The cycle of poverty in this region persists not only through mainstream political inaction, but also through the absence of progressive initiatives that deconstruct, intervene and disrupt this bogeyman region existing in the American consciousness. The film avoids the tropes of traditional documentary to get at these issues while reacting to the historic, cultural imaging of 'African Americans', in pursuit to exalt the lives of Daniel and Quincy. The film is more than the sum of it's images. The entirety of impressions which constitute the film that take shape in our minds, are something else and more than the film itself. An idea which "Hale County This Morning, This Evening" invites us to experience in a free-form, impressionistic and at times almost surreal montage of cinematic snapshots from 'Hale County', Alabama. But also in a brilliantly edited, up-to date report from the heart of black America, which through it's images tells of racism in 'The USA' and about black self-perception right here, right now. It's not just about what we see, but also how. The film has a sharp eye for the beauty and significance of fleeting moments, but also for organising his images into a larger movement of forms and critical experiences. An artistically eminent and politically urgent intervention at the very right time; and with a cast of protagonists whose company we feel privileged to be in. "Hale County" investigates the return to home of a 'Northern Black American'. The film looks closely at vast stretches of Quincy and Daniel’s lives and to witness the ephemera of the human project; the latter in the context of 'The Historic South', the origin of 'Black American' aesthetics, and in that, the film strove toward engaging the visual complexity of being black. The intentions is quite simple; to exalt Daniel and Quincy’s lives from our centrality, the looking out from 'The Black Community', in the documentary genre’s language of truth. Immediately the problem of agency and historical imaging emerged. You can not faithfully represent the lives of Daniel and Quincy without acknowledging the trouble of representation, that any viewer’s engagement with their lives without first confronting that influence of racism on our perception, is irresponsible. It's the trappings of representation that called for a responsive form; the use of an almost claustrophobic subjectivity and associative editing techniques to give the film a double consciousness. The historical imaging of 'African Americans' is a passive aggressive content of the film. It's important to understand the lives of Quincy, Daniel, and the people of 'Hale County' through glimpses rather than the conventions of a detailed narrative arc. When someone sees another person making a decision, they naturally judge the decision. But if you refuse the viewer that moment, removing judgment, they’re forced to consider a person and their life through other means, through the bigger picture, one that requires the filling in of blanks and active thought. This relieves a burden from the protagonist, perhaps the burden to succeed and/or make the right decision to earn compassion, or escape the odds. In this case, "Hale County" avoids the convention of narrative in order to highlight the greater forces at work in the lives depicted. The music in the film is used to initiate a spry, fleeting experience in line with the film’s itinerary. "Hale County" takes inspiration from both the music and it's desired effect, as well as from forms of musical structure. You could say it’s composed by a series of movements. In that a series of images unite together to have a cumulative effect, a self-determined montage of sorts. The film calls them movements because of their musical relation, and they've a similar quality in that they cultivate a state of being. These movements organize the audience’s journey with the film, allow them to engage with a sense of progress yet encourage the visuals to function the way music does; for that moment of engagement, the pleasure of that single exchange. The global structure of the film is sun up-sun down, all images relating to each other by time of day. As the film is composed of almost completely single moments, the characters do not appear as much as they would normally, which not only increases the weight of that appearance but also makes the moments more susceptible to influence by what comes before it. Adhering to the form of the film while balancing the micro shifts of feeling and mood while balancing the clarity ambiguity, the story takes a collective brain. The film is in some ways itself an effort to answer that question. It's an attempt to create the reality, a reality of film as strategic inquiry, while representing the pre-existence of that world. There are visual moments so intimate in this film that the look itself feels embodied to the point of a sense of participation or involvement. The camera isn’t there to point to a person or something and say to the audience; look at that, this is what's happening. It’s really the proximity to things that determines how much of them we understand. And so the film takes a radically subjective approach to bring people closer together. Cinema is still very young. "Hale County" offers the audience a cinematic experience of perspective and place. Shared experience brings people together and while those onscreen are the other participants, cinema acts as their medium of exchange. The film closes the distance between people by inviting close looking, and in turn close feeling, and allows the audience the feeling of witnessing something, linking wonder and awe to the encounter with the protagonist. There's an element of cosmic and environmental wonder that enters the film. 'Popular American' culture’s relationship to time and memory is distorted. Days, months, years, when does one thing cease to influence another? The past doesn’t fade, it's absorbed into the present. In the same way we're all made of stars, we're all made of history. All of human history has happened under the same sun. It's important to bring the audience back to the origins of cinema’s early declarations of 'Blackness', in order to allow the audience to adjust their bearings, and consider the ways their encounters with media’s 'Blackness' determined their lived reality.

With an “8.0” rating on IMDB and a 95% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes (85% audience score) it’s clear that John Krasinski’s directorial debut A Quiet Place has been well received by both audiences and critics alike, and is being hailed as one of the greatest horror movies of all time. I must concede, when I saw the movie in the cinema I was never bored at any time and found many aspects of the film to be greatly enjoyable, I did not however, at any moment believe that I was witnessing one of the best horror movies of the 2010’s. There are certain modern classics, such as Django Unchained or Wall-E which I can look back and say that I was there to see it on the big screen (in the same way that my father can boast that he saw Rocky, The Godfather and Jaws in theatre). I was there to see film history in those instances, but does A Quiet Place compare, the short answer, from my own personal opinion is no. I would be doing the film, and anyone who is interested in seeing the film, or just in film in general, a great disservice to say that it is a bad film, because it certainly isn’t. The filmography in general is to a high standard, first and foremost, the film looks good, though with a budget of 17 million dollars you’d hope that would be the case. The film is almost a character study of a family living in a post-apocalyptic world where most of humanity have been wiped out by near indestructible creatures which hunt via sound alone. These creatures are never given an official name (they are at one point coined “Angels of death” but this is never confirmed) but who needs an arbitrary name, if The Thing, The Descent and Predator can do it, then why not A Quiet Place. These monsters are established as being ruthless hunters, who have wiped out most of mankind and much of Earth’s wildlife simultaneously, what are they exactly, where did they come from? It’s not really necessary to the plot, and I’m actually glad the writers didn’t try to give them some contrived origin story, be it extra-terrestrial, biblical, demonic or other, they’re here and they’re deadly, that’s enough. The design of the monsters isn’t exactly inspiring, almost like a giant black preying-mantis with a horrific looking giant ear, which is concealed behind a layer of flesh, the flesh lifts up in a truly disgusting fashion to reveal this ear, chunks of flesh attached to pink tendrils, easily the best part of the monster’s design. Other than that, big teeth, big claws, moves quickly, nothing special really. Now I don’t expect Alien or The Thing levels of monster design for every horror movie, and the relatively lacklustre design of the monsters doesn’t detract from the movie, but certainly better than most sub-par horror releases of the last few years. We follow a family of five as they try to survive in this world and, where even the slightest sound can attract these monsters, which are far too fast to run from and are said to be indestructible. The brutality of this world is shown to us in the first five minutes when the youngest child of this family is killed by one of these creatures after he decides to pick up a battery powered toy rocket that makes a lot of noise, not only does the death of the characters youngest son and sibling set up just how cut-throat this world is, and it also sets up conflict for the rest of the film. I liked this opening, it introduced the world, characters, nature of the world, conflicts and allowed us to empathise with the characters we are going to be following. However, it must be said, the film dives in mediocrity from here on out. One major plot point is that the eldest child and only daughter is deaf, not a bad idea, a good juxtaposition between our lead character and the monsters, creatures which hunt purely by sound up against a girl who can’t hear anything, she isn’t even aware of the sound she could be making. This does explain how the family would know sign language (their main method of communication) and is relevant to the plot later on. I liked this idea, and it’s shown well with the film going completely silent when we follow the daughter, near the beginning of the film, so we can hear what she hears. Another main point is that the mother is pregnant. I really liked this aspect, in theory, a world where monsters will tear you apart if you make even the slightest sound, and there’s a nine-month pregnant woman who has to help her husband try and protect her two other children and teach them how to protect themselves. This is played quite well, the visual acting really pulls through, you can see on the character’s faces that they know that they are most likely going to lose their mother and wife, as the process of giving birth will obviously be extremely loud, and you can see that all the characters know that the day she gives birth is coming, and with the wound of losing the youngest member of their family so fresh in all their minds, could they really cope with losing another family member. However this ends up being pushed aside because the film decides to give each character their own sub-plot, a film about a pregnant woman in a world where silence is key for survival is a truly brilliant idea, it could play with the idea that humanity may not physically be able to survive or re-populate, it plays heavily on the family dynamic and you could have a truly masterful climax where the rest of the family have to try and protect the mother, as well as trying to keep themselves alive. But unfortunately it has to compete with other subplots; the father trying to protect his family and pass the torch to his son, the son trying to live up to his father’s teachings and conquer his fear, the daughter’s grief of playing a part in her brother’s death and being at constant loggerheads with her father, as well as coping with being a constant liability to her family due to her not being able to know if she’s making sound or not. These plots could be worked in subtly, but they’re not, the birth scene takes less than five minutes, and once it’s over the focus is never on protecting the new-born or the mother’s recovery. I have never seen such a good concept or driving plot device be dropped so quickly, in the film’s third act it’s not even an issue, why build up to this moment for almost an hour then have it be over and done with in less than fives minutes, it was truly a waste of a fantastic idea. The second act splits the characters up, the father and son go to collect fish from a nearby river, the daughter goes to visit the grave of the brother she lost, and the mother is at home preparing for the baby and doing a few chores. The father and son parts are okay, for the most part, we learn that the creatures ignore constant sounds, like a river or waterfall, the characters can afford to make a bit more noise around running water. It’s here where we get the first lines of dialogue and they are atrocious. The son says in two instances: “Do you blame Regan [his sister] for Beau’s [his brother]”, but we already know, through signed-dialogue earlier, in the movie that he doesn’t blame her. He then goes on to say, “She blames herself”, we already know this, it’s highlighted through the entire film that she blames herself for her brother’s death. In a film based around silence, you’d expect the little dialogue there is to be extremely poignant, but no, we get told what we already know. The father and son then walk back through the woods, they encounter an old man who is standing next to his dead wife, the father tries to mime to him to be quiet, but the man is either inane or cannot possibly live without his wife anymore, and screams, essentially committing suicide, forcing the father and son to run and hide. I actually like random encounters like this in films, it’s a crazy world full of invincible super-predators that hunt via sound, I can accept the odd random scene, and we can decide for ourselves if he killed his wife, maybe to put her out of his misery and spare her from the monsters, or if he really loved her that much. Good piece of film making capitalising on the audience’s imagination. Meanwhile, back at the farm, the mother, while doing chores accidently catches a piece of cloth on a nail on the stairs and pulls it up so that it is pointing up menacingly, if someone was to step on it they would surely scream in agony. Why a nail has been nailed up through a set of stairs, I don’t know, but that’s a bit of a nit-pick. In a peril packed few scenes, the mother goes into labour and steps on the nail. Peril, peril, peril; bad luck can be an interesting idea to toy with, but come on, this a movie about unstoppable super-predators, why shove so much unnecessary peril into this film, and just to clarify, when I say peril I am referring too: old man in the woods screaming, wife going into labour, wife stepping on a nail, son falling into a corn silo and almost drowning in corn, son running head first into a tractor and knocking himself out, a sound proof basement they had just finished building flooding, all three monsters converging upon them at once, daughter falling asleep and not knowing her mother is in danger. Why throw so much bad luck at them, like I said can be an interesting idea to toy with, but they never do, this stuff just happens, basically to move the plot on and for really no other reason. The climax of the film involves the father trying to rescue the children, who are isolated on the other side of their farm. The father rushes to save them, but his kids are then attacked by one of the monsters which traps them in a car and is seconds from tearing the car apart and killing them both, when the father decides to make the ultimate sacrifice and distract the monster from his kids, but not before signing to his daughter that he loves her. A scene where the leading male sacrifices himself for others, not to be a meninist or anti-feminist or anything, but I can’t even count how many times I’ve seen this particular cliché in horror films (again bit of a nit-pick), but then again, there are enough nit-picks or flaws to point out in this film that lead me to believe that it is not one of the best horror movies ever made. One major flaw in my eyes is the spoken dialogue, as I said a film that capitalises on silence, you’d think the few spoken lines would be important but again, the only other spoken lines involve the father and mother sitting in a sound-proof basement, where the mother say’s “Promise me you’ll protect them [referring to the kids]”. He’s been doing that for the entire film, she even says signed earlier in the film “he just wants to show you how to protect yourself, and me”, she and the audience knows he is protecting them. She has just given birth, it’s not unfair of her to ask her husband to stay and protect her and the new-born baby, he can then say that he needs to protect their other two kids, this would get across the same message and could be used to show how relieved they are that she managed to give birth and wasn’t torn apart, miracle of birth accompanied by the miracle of not being eaten by monsters. Another flaw of the film is the sound-proof basement, it just shows up half way through the film and it just works, surely the characters would be banking on this as it would allow them to be as loud as they wanted, and the mother could have given birth in there, it’s just introduced half way though and as soon as we see it, a broken pipe floods it, and it’s gone as quickly as it appears. Apart from letting the characters speak for a bit, it serves no purpose, and throughout the film we see that the father is trying to think of ways to kill the creatures, and they have backup plans to help distract the monsters if they ever attacked, a sound proofed room would be like a palace in this world, why relegate it to just a footnote of the plot, and then get rid of it. One of the biggest problems with the film, is how they finally manage to work out the creature’s weaknesses, the daughter’s new hearing aid, that her father invented, produces a high frequency sound that hurt the monsters, and while their reacting to the sound they are exposed enough for the mother to shoot them with a shotgun and kill them. Firstly bullets, bullets kill the monsters, what a great way to bring the creatures down to the most mundane level, like a boss fight in a game, weaken the creature and then inflict massive damage, I can’t help feeling they could have been a bit more inventive with this. But the biggest problem is how the daughter works out that her hearing aid will hurt them. We, the audience, see earlier in the film that when her hearing aid plays up it hurts the monsters, but in both these instances the daughter never sees this, she would logically have no idea that this would work, and the family have speakers, loud ones which they project the sound through. Why didn’t they use them, we already established that the river makes constant enough sound that the monsters ignore it, record the river and play it through the speakers, it’s already shown that they use distractions to keep themselves safe, but not one of them thought to use the devices built to produce loud sounds. Leading on from this we get the final scene where we see the last two creatures running towards the family, the mother nods to the daughter and cocks the shotgun, as they now know their weakness. Great to see our family finally fight back, but what a lame ending, all this character building and we get a “let’s do this” moment. Okay it’s not the worst ending, and is better than all of them dying or them just killing the other two in a bloodbath, but this film shows us characters who play it safe 24/7, and have seen the consequences in the worst possible way, why would they risk their new-born son/brother after losing their father. This “badass” moment comes out of nowhere, never mind all of that character building, they’re badass monster killers now. All in all, it’s not a terrible movie it really isn’t but it isn’t great, and the biggest crime it commits is that it isn’t scary. At all, it’s essentially a soft action movie, I get maybe some kids would be scared by the monsters, but it’s rated 15 (UK), they marketed it at adults, and failed to scare anybody, nobody I know who’s seen it has said they found it scary. It was essentially an hour and forty-five-minute-long Doctor Who or Supernatural episode, for a 17 million dollar movie they could have done a lot better. 6/10

It’s a satellite phone. How did this get in my purse? While looking at the film poster, the first thing I thought was: “Wow, Halle Berry has a thing for films about kidnapping”. First, there was “The Call“. And then at the beginning of the year, I saw “Kidnap“. And now it’s a film about human trafficking. In particular, the kidnapping of young women who then end up in a network of prostitution and terrible abuse. But soon I realized I was completely wrong. The woman in question wasn’t Halle Berry. But damn, she looks disturbingly a lot like Halle. Now, I didn’t like “Kidnap” very much. To be honest I thought it was outright irritating at times. This film is, despite another protagonist (Paula Patton), of the same level. That surprise weekend will become a fiasco. The acting in itself wasn’t that bad at all. Perhaps a bit simplistic and predictable, but certainly not annoying. Only some stupid decisions were made again. But that’s typical for these kinds of films, I suppose. Lovebirds Brea (Paula Patton) and John (Omar Epps) are both nice looking persons and form a beautiful couple. When John arrives one day with a classic car as a birthday present and takes Brea on a surprise weekend, you already know this very peaceful scene is doomed to turn into a fiasco. Where’s this phone coming from?. First, they are being harassed by a motor gang in a gas station. Next, their fantastic weekend full of love and eroticism is ruined the moment super-jerk Darren (Laz Alonso), someone with an ego problem and an agent for sports stars, shows up. And as icing on the cake, there’s a satellite phone, with a series of disturbing pictures of abused young women, inexplicably ending up in Brea’s handbag. I’m not impressed. If only they’d stuck to the idea of making a disconcerting film about sex trafficking, it might have been interesting. But turning it into some kind of Hollywood spectacle, with story twists you could see coming from half a world away and an improbable denouement, wasn’t such a hot idea. Human trafficking is a deadly serious subject and a despicable type of crime that needs to be tackled seriously. The fact they try to make people aware of this widespread problem, I can accept. But in the end, this was nothing more than a cheap B-movie about the abuse and exploitation of women in networks. “You were not really here” also brings up this issue, but there it concerns networks with minors. And that message was loud and clear. “Traffik” just uses the cheap solution of showing statistics about the number of women abducted in the US. In other words, I wasn’t really impressed by this film. My rating 4/10 Links: IMDB More reviews here

Rudyard, there are no people living in this forest. Do you see any animals? There’s no flora with any color, nothing to allure insects! Are you someone who prefers to spend his free time in his perfectly tended garden? Is your lawn as if a delegation from the International Golf Federation could arrive any minute to ask if it could be used as a “green” at a next golf championship? Do you spend hours in your garden staring at freshly planted and potted flowers and plants? Are you an expert in fertilizing, scarifying, digging, pruning, grafting and draining? Well, I guess this film is really suitable for you. Because “Flora” is actually nothing more than a nature film that every botanical film viewer will be excited about. Do you know which film quote always came to me? “Run, Forrest, Run!“. Only here the main characters are running away from a forest. They might have used the following alternative movie title: “Attack of the killer pollen“. That about covers it. It really looks like the 1920s. “Flora” certainly isn’t a bad film. But for those who don’t see themselves as purebred nature lovers, this film may seem terribly boring. What they managed to do, is to show a decent image of the 1920s. I found the props and atmosphere perfect. All the pieces fitted. The oldtimer, the costumes, and the used music. Perfectly chosen. Everything seemed innocent and frivolous in those days. The naivety and insufficient knowledge are portrayed in a proper way. The resources available to the six scientists are fairly limited. Plants are cataloged in notebooks. Illustrations are made with the use of a whole array of colored pencils. No electronic worksheet and digital camera as one would use in the present time. You won’t see the main characters wandering around with a tiny headphone connected to a compact MP3 player. No, here they are lugging around with an impressive gramophone with a huge horn. Before you know it, an old-fashioned foxtrot echoes through the forest after putting on such a fragile record. The footage and acting look great. Unfortunately, it’s slow and superficial. Praise for the creators of this indie-horror. Because despite the extremely limited budget, film-technically it looks fab. Even the for me unknown actors made themselves meritorious in the field of acting. Admittedly, sometimes there was a touch of overacting. And they tried to bring drama in a forced way. But this was certainly not irritating. Unfortunately, it was all fairly superficial with a painfully slow pace. It seemed after a while that the entire film consisted of exploring the surrounding nature. And yes, the discovery that no living organism can be detected in the surrounding area can easily be called troubling. But it’s never really exciting. Nail-biting boredom. Trust me, I’m not someone who only associates horror with gory slaughter and diabolical entities. And also, a forest in a horror movie isn’t automatically linked to a lonely, deserted wooden cabin. Or a wandering, bloodthirsty creature that suddenly shows up from behind a tree and rips you into pieces. So all the praise to try a different idea and for once think out of the box. However, I don’t think this symbiotic fungus that kills every human and animal life is something that ensures it to be a movie with nail-biting suspense. All in all, the starting point of the film wasn’t bad when you talk about originality. But apart from some beautiful nature shots and moments in which the dialogue seemed interesting, it’s all relatively boring and monotonous. My rating 3/10 Links: IMDB More reviews here

There’s no medicine out there. There’s just death and hate. The future world looks fairly simplistic. Mankind has been transformed into a superficial society in which the truly kindhearted population has nestled in one or another oasis, while the riotous part indulges in looting and hanging out in a striptease/dance temple or drug centers. Also choosing names will be simpler in that period, as it seems. When you are the leader of a motorcycle gang who wander around on their dirtbikes to terrorize innocent people (such as pirates and barbarian tribes did in ancient times), you simply call yourself War Lord (James Franco). When you run a place where drugs are being used somewhere on the American coast, you call that place “Paradise Beach” and yourself simply Drug Lord (Mila Jovovich). The idolized woman of the peaceful tribe who lives in tents between the palm trees is then conveniently called Queen (Lucy Liu). And you’ll never guess it. Her son is called Prince (Jeffrey Wahlberg). The scriptwriters of this somewhat unsuccessful Mad Max clone have given this a lot of thought. Had there been a person who owned a stall where he sold mineral water, they certainly would have called him Water Lord. Mad Max, the cheap version. “Future World” just exudes an atmosphere like “Mad Max“. It has identically scenery. A world affected by drought and full of sand, where lawlessness rules and everyone apparently pillaged the local leather goods store at the start of the Apocalypse. Most traveling is done using transport that can handle sandy surroundings. And furthermore, you can be sure your head is being smashed by some brutal-looking colossus of a guy just because you’re near him. Apparently, the only thing that still makes sense in this long-lost world is the opening of alcohol, drugs and dance facilities (where functional nudity is obviously necessary). To be honest, “Future World” looks like a trial version of “Mad Max: Fury Road“. The similarities are sometimes so obvious. I think Franco, who’s not only playing a leading role but also directed this, will be bothered by the copyright commission. Quite a busy bee, Franco. You got to hand it to Franco, he’s quite busy in film land. The number of films he played in as an actor and the amount he directed, is impressive. One wonders whether Franco has quantity as the main goal instead of quality. Well, you can’t call “Future World” a quality product. The story is meaningless. The combat actions and pursuits look dull and uninspiring. Even the aspect of the high-tech android Ash (Suki Waterhouse), that suddenly proves to be in possession of a consciousness, is something that we have already experienced in a better way in “Ex Machina“. Ash doesn’t look very expensive here and its malfunctioning is only made clear by a sizzling, crackling sound and a short-term non-functioning. Furthermore, it’s as if Suki Waterhouse just came from “The bad batch” set. Apparently, deserts are a fetish for her. How about the acting? It’s also quite disappointing when talking about acting. And then to think that they have managed to get a few big names for this production. James Franco is widely known (not difficult if you see his resume of films) and he did a better job in for example, “Rise of the planet of the apes“, “Homefront” and “Oz the Great and Powerful“. I thought Mila Jovovich was the most interesting character. But she’s not as intriguing here as in the “Resident Evil” franchise. Lucy Liu has a rather limited role. Luckily her part was of more importance in “Kill Bill” and “Charlie’s Angels“. James Wahlberg (He says uncle to Mark) is actually one of the leads but is so uninteresting it’s as if he blurs with the background. Even Snoop Dogg shows up as the owner of the seedy striptease-joint Love Town (And yes, his name is Love Lord. The creativity kills me). A small contribution but highly entertaining. It’s another crap-movie-warning. The most positive thing I could think of about this film is related to the dedication and enthusiasm of James Franco. If you continue to produce films as if they rolled off an assembly line, someday there will certainly be an exquisite result. But to be honest, this boring and meaningless creation is just a failed attempt. A sloppy and superficially made film that seems so ridiculous that it’s not even funny. No, this film can be avoided like you’d avoid a cheap holiday offer to stay for 2 weeks without drinking in the Sahara. It’ll kill you. My rating 2/10 Links: IMDB

You can eat cookies till you throw up, for all I care. You’ll see… things are…quite different here. Have you seen “Goosebumps” where Jack Black plays the leading role as well? Well, you can expect almost the same thing. A kids-sized horror film. And I had the same feelings about it after a certain amount of time. Namely that it’s all a little bit over the top. Probably it wasn’t the intention to make it too scary. It should all be about magic and mystery. And it sure was the first half. I admit I have a weak spot for such type of movies. “The House with a clock in its walls” reminded me of the wonderful “Harry Potter” movies. Here too it’s about an orphan boy who ends up in a foster family and apparently has magic powers in his DNA. Lewis (Owen Vaccaro) himself looks like Henry from “The book of Henry“. Also an outsider with aviator glasses on. But halfway the movie derailed a bit and felt rather exaggerated, absurd and grotesque. Shit, there’s that lion again. As I mentioned earlier, the first part is highly entertaining. Lewis is being introduced. He meets uncle Jonathan Barnavelt (Jack Black) and his neighbor Florence Zimmerman (Cate Blanchett). And of course, there’s this huge Victorian-looking house with its ghostly contours. As a spectator, you notice there’s something very unusual going on and certain ordinary things come to life (and in normal circumstances they never do). Something that Lewis only discovers afterward. We then see Lewis attending his new school and how he befriends Tarby (Sunny Suljic), the popular boy who briefly raises Lewis’s popularity. All this is brought with the necessary humor and is highly entertaining for young and old. Even the presence of Jack Black was bearable. I’m not really a big fan of Black’s humor. Usually, it’s bland and ridiculously exaggerated. That is why a similar scene with a lion-shaped-bush with stomach problems is being used three times. Bland, trite and exaggerated toilet humor. Puking pumpkins? Let’s use the umbrella. But in general, it was still enjoyable. What amused me the most was the constant bickering between Uncle Barnavelt and Mrs. Zimmerman. That never really got boring. And then suddenly those puking pumpkins (and boy this was bad looking CGI) and a bunch of puppets shows up. Also, you’ll witness the resurrection of the evil Warlock Isaac (Kyle MacLachlan) and his illustrious wife Selena (Renée Elise Goldsberry). And finally, everything revolves around a very well hidden clock somewhere in the house of uncle Barnavelt. Although he’s a talented wizard and Mrs. Zimmerman a famous sorceress, finding this clock seems an impossible task. Even uncle Barnavelt is forced to use other tools to look for it. Like a huge pickaxe, for example, with which he starts to demolish walls in the middle of the night. And the way they handled this clock-problem, in the end, was also an easy solution. Apparently, the scriptwriters were exhausted and a little uninspired. Most positive was Cate Blanchett. No, I wasn’t really impressed. Visually it looked sophisticated and extremely well-taken care of, but it never was as magical as “Harry Potter“. Cate Blanchett was perhaps the only highlight in this fantasy film for kids. It was as if she tried to be the new Mary Poppins with her behavior. Maybe this movie is perfect to stimulate the fantasy of 8-year-olds. Though they must endure the hyperactive behavior of Jack Black. Is it because of the awkward way in which horror director Eli Roth tackled this project? Or is it due to Jack Black’s lackluster humor? Or was it the laser beam-shooting umbrella of Cate Blanchett used? No more fantasy-movies for kids. Anyway, my interest disappeared and made way for annoyance and lots of headshaking. The only thing I was hoping for was that the damn clock that posed a threat to our universe was found as quickly as possible. And that the other books written by John Bellairs aren’t used for a motion picture as well. After “A wrinkle in time” and this movie, I’m going to avoid fantasy films for children. Enough is enough. My rating 4/10 Links: IMDB More reviews here

All that time with Anton, the practice, the performances, the pressure to be perfect. Whenever I read newsflashes about films that make people suffer from migraine attacks and even make them sick, my curiosity is immediately awakened. The final verdict can go two ways. Or the film indeed has an ingeniously elaborated story and is provided with images the average stomach can’t bear. Or it’s the umpteenth overrated movie of which you ask yourself afterward “Who on earth made such statements?“. Are those people who’ve never seen a similar film as “The Perfection“? Are they film lovers who limit themselves to innocent rom-coms? Or supporters of superficial films such as “The Sound of Music“? No idea. In any case, I couldn’t find any nauseating fragments or rancid footage in this Netflix Original. But that doesn’t mean I thought it was a terrible movie. On the contrary. “The Perfection” contains a cleverly put together story, some successful acting, and a surprising denouement. So, highly recommended. A bit suspense. A bit erotism. I myself thought that “The Perfection” was nothing more than a psychological thriller with a bit of erotism and a few lurid events. Admittedly, the denouement will look pretty disturbing for some. But I assure you that this film will mislead you from the start. The goal that Charlotte (Allison “Get out” Williams) has in mind and the reasons for this are of a very different nature than you would expect. If you realize what a dark secret the Bachoff Institute is hiding, where Charlotte has taken lessons for years as a gifted cellist, it will give you more chills than the bus ride through rural China. The film fits in perfectly with our modern zeitgeist where there’s a “Me too” movement that explicitly tries to draw attention to sexual harassment and sexual assault. How the renowned academy Bachoff can be associated with this is something that you have to discover for yourself in this original film. A mixed bag of different genres. It’s quite clear that this film is difficult to catalog when it comes to the genre. It’s actually a mixed bag of different genres. It’s a light-erotic thriller with a dash of horror. For experienced horror enthusiasts, the horror part will be slightly disappointing. You could describe it as an ultra-light version of “I spit on your grave“. But without explicit visual material and a wide variety of horrifying revenge actions. And from the beginning of the film till roughly halfway, it’s a mild drama where you are introduced to the most important protagonists. Charlotte, a talented cellist who, after years of absence (taking care of her sick mother), seeks contact again with her former music teacher Anton (Steven Weber) and his wife Paloma (Alaina Huffman). But especially the meeting with the new star of the academy, cellist Lizzie (Logan Browning), is causing some stir. First of all, you can feel the competition between the two cellists whose finger-fastness and sensitive handling of the fiddlestick create magical sounds the moment they squeeze a cello between their knees. As these two, not bad-looking classical musicians spend more time together, the sexual tension between them increases. And before they know it, they make use of the skills they use while playing the cello, when they are all over each other when lying naked under the sheets. It’s not perfect but still. Once this introduction took place and the two lovebirds are sitting on a local bus on their way to some small town in China, the film goes in a higher gear. The frivolous atmosphere makes way for exciting situations and horror elements. It feels rather mysterious. Even the rewind moments won’t really clarify it. On the one hand, I thought this technique was kind of an original approach. On the other hand, it seemed rather pedantic. Let’s say something about acting. There’s actually nothing negative to announce. You can safely state that the two main characters almost reach perfection when it’s about that. The chemistry between the two girls is realistic. The different moods that they struggle through are convincing. Steven Weber and Alaina Huffman also fit perfectly into their role. An illustrious couple consisting of dark personalities. Perhaps it seems as if they have mixed a number of different genres and it feels as if they didn’t know which direction to go. But it never gets boring. No, “The Perfection” is certainly not perfect. But it wasn’t very far from perfection. You can watch “The Perfection” on Netflix now. My rating 7/10 Links: IMDB