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Either I’m pissed off my chest mate, or that’s the biggest fucking boar I’ve ever seen. In 1955 we had a giant octopus in “It came from beneath the Sea” and last year we had the giant shark in “The Meg“. And in between, we were treated to a manifold collection of giant animals. There were also enormous ants (“Empire of the ants” from 1977), a big ass spider (“Big ass spider” from 2013), a giant snake (“Anaconda” from 1997), a monkey (“King Kong” from 1976), a crocodile (” Rogue ” from 2008), cockroaches (“Bug” from 1975) and wasps (“Stung” from 2015). And after doing some research you’ll notice there are more films about huge animals. Perhaps the makers of this film thought they had something original when they came up with a whopper from a wild boar. And to be honest, I thought so too. Turns out there are other movies with a frenzy boar, such as “Razorback“, “Pig Hunt” and “Chaw“. For starters, it isn’t as bad as Lake Placid: Legacy. I was convinced that this film could never be as bad as “Lake Placid: Legacy“, where a big crocodile was chasing a group of young people. This was really a crap movie. A completely ridiculous story, stupid acting and a monster that’s hardly shown on the screen. All in all, a waste of my already scarce time anyway. About “Boar” I can only say that the acting was generally not too bad. The boar was sufficiently visible. And there were even some funny moments in it. But to claim that this was one hell of a movie is also a bit exaggerated. It was full of improbabilities. And the story itself was also rather simplistic. Wow, and you expect the boar being gigantic. Wait till you see Nathan Jones. The story is set in Australia. The fact that the Australian production house Slaughter FX released this film (in the past they also released “Charlie’s farm“) made me feel hopeful. Frankly, I think most Australian horrors are sublime anyway. Maybe it has something to do with that beautiful Australian accent. It makes me instantly happy. So you’ll hear the stop word “mate” regularly here. There was no indication that the Monroe family their holidays would turn into a real nightmare. Debbie (Simone Buchanan) and her American husband Bruce (Bill Moseley) are on their way to Debbie’s brother Bernie (Nathan Jones). Together with the rest of the family. If you already think that the size of the wild boar is going to be impressive, then you’ll certainly be impressed by Bernie’s height. What a giant. He looks like a kind of Obelix who likes to eat such a wild pig for breakfast. So I was looking forward to a “Clash of the Titans”. Apparently, Slaughter FX are fan of Nathan Jones because he was also allowed to take on the role of Charlie in “Charlie’s Farm“. It’s even mentioned briefly in this movie. How come it got so big? Let’s talk about the subject: the gigantic wild boar. If you set up such a typical monster film as “Boar“, then you know in advance that you won’t get a phenomenal and astonishing story. The only thing that counts in such films is: how frightening and horrible is the huge monstrosity that kills so many innocent people and in what a horrible way they are slaughtered. The rest is secondary. Furthermore, you need to empty your head and don’t ask too many questions about the hows and why. Because it all remains a mystery. Is this wild boar so gigantic because of the consumption of large quantities of truffles or acorns? Or did it roll in a pool of chemically polluted mud? Or did a hunter shoot a load of lead in its buttocks after which the beast got so mad it took on such a grotesque form? Or is the beast coming from the underworld? I have no idea. The boar sometimes looks ugly? But what you can say is that the creature does have some remarkable skills. It turns out to be an expert in camouflage because nobody has ever seen the monster roaming around. And I thought Australians were outdoorsy who are connected with nature and spend a lot of time in the bushes with the local wildlife. Furthermore, the boar has an ingenious GPS system because it always appears in the right place at the right time. The biggest disappointment, however, is the visualization of the creature. It’s clear they used a model for the close-ups. A kind of XL Muppet of the Muppetshow. And on rare occasions, the digital version is used. But those images are extremely bad. Only when you see the monstrous head with gigantic tusks full of mucus, blood, and mud this pig looks frightening. And you can expect a few bloody, gory slaughter scenes when this monster tears up his next prey. You love movies with giant creatures? Oh well, try it. “Boar” is not of a high level and has its weak moments, but this is compensated by its uncomplicated goriness and sometimes awkward humor, such as the clumsy doings of Ken (John Jarratt) and Blue (Roger Ward) or the embarrassing behavior of Bruce (Bill Moseley). The most annoying aspects were the exaggerated flirting of the two youngsters Ella (Christie-Lee Britten) and Robert (Hugh Sheridan). And of course the bad CGI. This ensures that the film doesn’t rise above the average. But do you like a monster movie from time to time, you can still enjoy it when you see Miss Piggy roaming around. My rating 5/10 Links: IMDB

(London Film Festival, October 8th, 2019, BFI Southbank, Belvedere Rd, Lambeth, London SE1 8XT, United Kingdom, 18:10 pm) https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/lff/Online/default.asp?BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::permalink=guestofhonour&BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::context_id= "Guest Of Honour" Jim Davis (David Thewlis) and his daughter Veronica (Laysla De Oliveira), a young high-school music teacher, attempt to unravel their complicated histories and intertwined secrets in "Guest Of Honour", a film that weaves through time exploring perception and penance, memory and forgiveness. A hoax instigated by an aggressive school bus driver Mike (Rossif Sutherland) goes very wrong. Accused of abusing her position of authority with 17-year-old Clive (Alexandre Bourgeois) and another student, Veronica is imprisoned. Convinced that she deserves to be punished for crimes she committed at an earlier age, Veronica rebuffs her father’s attempts to secure her early release. Confused and frustrated by Veronica’s intransigence, Jim’s anguish begins to impinge on his job. As a food inspector, he wields great power over small, family-owned restaurants. It’s a power he doesn’t hesitate to use. While preparing Jim’s funeral, Veronica confides the secrets of her past to Father Greg (Luke Wilson) who may hold the final piece of this father-daughter puzzle. "Guest Of Honour" is a twisting morality tale exploring the complicated relationship between Jim, and his daughter Veronica, a young high-school music teacher, and the past that haunts them both. As the film weaves through time, scenes from the past catch up to the present, illuminating dark secrets. Jim is a food inspector working in a multicultural city. For him, each establishment is a potential hazard. He has the power to shut down restaurants not observing health codes. It’s a power he doesn’t hesitate to wield. Part of Jim’s weekly ritual is visiting his daughter in prison. Having confessed to abusing her position of authority as a music teacher during a high school band trip, Veronica rebuffs her father’s attempts to secure an early release. Confused and frustrated by his daughter’s intransigence, Jim’s anguish begins to impinge on his work. Scenes from the band trip gradually reveal that Veronica and Clive, one of her senior students, turned the tables on Mike, their aggressive bus driver. Their prank spirals out of control and becomes the basis for the charges brought against Veronica. Over Jim’s visits with Veronica, it becomes clear that there's another history at play. Veronica is using the prison sentence to punish herself for earlier transgressions. When she was a young girl, Veronica believed that her father was having an affair with her music teacher. Tragedy unfolds, in which Veronica is implicated, but was never held responsible. As a teenager, she confessed to the teacher’s son, with devastating consequences. Having lived with these secrets for years, Veronica has found a unique way of serving her penance. Jim doesn’t seem at all aware of his daughter’s true history even though he finds himself increasingly implicated in the compelling revelations of Veronica’s personal narrative. Father and daughter move towards a resolution, which is brought to a brutal halt when Jim dies. As she prepares for Jim’s funeral, Veronica confides in Father Greg (Luke Wilson) who may hold the final piece to the puzzle of the past. "Guest Of Honour" is a disturbing and compelling study of perception, memory and forgiveness. As a food inspector, Jim has the power to close a restaurant down, and while he uses this authority to determine other people’s destinies, he desperately tries to understand his own place in the world. Jim’s relationship with his daughter is obviously highly complex, that’s what the film is about. Realizing that the story really begins there, with the death of the mother. Jim is left on his own from then onwards, the fifteen intervening years between Veronica as young girl and Veronica as a woman. We've to understand what Jim so much loved about Veronica as a woman, a woman who’s gone off the rails, a woman who now baffles him, a woman who seems absolutely so incomprehensible in terms of her motives. And seeing that little girl playing the piano, the whole story becomes clear. Of course, there are sub-plots and various metaphorical issues and symbolism and storytelling, but it’s about a man trying to communicate with his daughter, trying to communicate the love he has for his daughter. That's utterly relatable in terms of how so many young people can get lost somewhere between adolescence and early adulthood, in all kinds of things that maybe one wouldn’t anticipate in their earlier years and can be catastrophic. It’s a terrible thing that’s happened really. One of the Jim’s characteristics is this sense of power he wields as a food inspector which may sound a rather banal job description. It doesn’t evoke wonderful images of this is a fascinating character we want to get to know until you really go down that hole and see what the issues are with food inspectors, and what a power-complex this man has. Simply, he can wreak havoc on people’s lives, close down family businesses with the flick of a pen-based on opinion or perfidy. He starts to abuse his power and manipulate his occupation to his own ends. But he’s rather delusional. He sees himself as some saviour, as some campaigner for health and safety, health and cleanliness, the health code is his bible and it takes him over. We've a backstory where he started a restaurant and that seems to have been scuppered by what happened to Veronica. He has to walk away from that business because of the vicissitudes of Veronica’s life and whether he holds some resentment there's another thing to be discussed. Maybe he’s doing this job as some kind of revenge. Now he enters a restaurant with the power to destroy the business, the lives of the owners. His vocation is taken away from him, and now he can visit the same fate on others. There are many levels to this film, you keep discovering. His daughter Veronica is a young music teacher who's passionate about her craft. But, she also carries trauma that bleeds into her relationship with her father. The film explores the complexities of family life. How family can absolutely make you or absolutely break you or both at the same time. The vast breadth of feelings, the turmoil those feelings cause! Music is very important to Veronica, it’s her source of joy and we’ll see in "Guest Of Honour" that she’s not always happy all the time so it will be nice to see the moments where she's lost in her music. She believes that she has found a way to a strange sort of peace in her life, until that is challenged by revelations of a past she never fully understood. She’s a character who’s broken, who makes impulsive, self-destructive decisions. We see her joy in music and we see her dark pain as well. With incarceration, she’s found a way of medicating herself. But it’s not sustainable and then something unexpected happens, which transforms her life. The character who holds the key to this past seems to be a priest. Father Greg is a Texan who's transplanted to Canada, The biggest mystery in the film is whether the food inspector Jim, in asking for his eulogy to be performed by this particular priest, has somehow planned an emotional reconciliation he could never have achieved with his daughter in life. Father Greg is an unusual priest. He knows about Veronica who’s come to see him to arrange a funeral for Jim. As he talks with Veronica to learn details for the eulogy, Father Greg comes to understand that he knows a great deal about her narrative. But he’s bound by oath not to share his knowledge. He breaks his word because, he decides, it's critical for Veronica to understand her father. Rather than see her continue to suffer, living with false assumptions, Father Greg renounces his pledge. As viewers, we can locate ourselves in this very complex narrative in terms of how he sets himself within it. Father Greg has an unexpected front row seat to Veronica’s story. Father Greg is one of those characters that’s woven throughout the story, Not quite a narrator, and not the protagonist, but a figure that intersects with the different characters. In that way, he knows all of the people that the audience meets, at different times and in different situations. And often times, as we find out, he knows these very personal parts of some of the characters’ histories. Father Greg’s character is a way for the audience to keep up with the storyline and these characters whose lives interrelate. You've these imperfect, interwoven characters and then there’s the priest who’s something of a psychiatrist, or a psychologist, or a doctor, somebody that people go to and share their personal stories. “Guest Of Honour" is an emotional investigation of the bond between a father and a daughter. Their history has been rocked by events that neither fully understands. They’re both in a suspended state for much of the film, trying to understand the nature of their connection to one another. There’s a very clear sense of time passing in this film. While we understand from the beginning that their physical relationship has ended with the father’s death, the details of their past are evealed in a form of psychological autopsy. The film finds a cinematic way of allowing the viewer to inhabit they particular world the characters are trying to navigate. The film explores what might be called the emotional chronology of Jim and his daughter, Veronica, a way of measuring their complex feelings. While the structure of the film is non-linear, it's actually based on a simple recounting of the scenes as they flow into the characters’ minds. While the situations specific to Jim and Veronica are extreme, the parent/child bond will be very familiar to audiences. The film creates a sense that for Jim and Veronica the scenes all play in a continuous and sometimes shocking sense of the ‘eternal present’. The film itself becomes a sort of machine through which the characters come to an understanding of what they mean to each other. "Guest Of Honour" is a story told through glass. Apart from the actual glass of the camera lens, which displays the way in which images of the past can be refracted and refigured, there's a literal use of a glass musical instrument woven through the film. The use of glass as a distorting lens, as well as a material which allows the process of creative expression, is an important motif in "Guest Of Honour". The soundtrack wows in unexpected ways, as the characters come to terms with the complexity of their lives and the exoticism of their relationship to their own pasts. Every child feels their parents made mistakes, certain ways in which the parent did not express love, or pay the right sort of attention. Those moments reverberate through our lives in sometimes painful ways. "Guest Of Honour" covers such a wide range of time, you get to see the evolution of specific characters, which is very exciting. Our family has been around us for our entire lives, they’re everything we know. Sometimes we project our feelings onto them, sometimes we feel their words are hurtful, but that’s what having a family is all about. The film ends with an unexpected reconciliation.

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

(MONDAY 23 MAY 2022 • 8:15pm • Prince Charles Cinema • 7 Leicester Pl, London WC2H 7BY, United Kingdom) https://princecharlescinema.com/PrinceCharlesCinema.dll/WhatsOn?f=16659095 "Boyhood" (2014) Filmed over 12 years with the same cast, "Boyhood" is a story of growing up as seen through the eyes of a child named Mason (Ellar Coltrane), who literally grows up on screen before our eyes. Single Mom Olivia (Patricia Arquette) and Dad Mason Sr. (Ethan Hawke) charts the rocky terrain of childhood. Snapshots of adolescence from road trips and family dinners to birthdays and graduations and all the moments in between become transcendent, set to a soundtrack spanning the years from Coldplay's 'Yellow' to Arcade 'Fire's Deep Blue'. "Boyhood" is both a nostalgic time capsule of the recent past and an ode to growing up and parenting. It's impossible to watch Mason and his family without thinking about our own journey. "Boyhood" takes a one-of-a-kind trip, at once epic and intimate, through the exhilaration of childhood, the seismic shifts of a modern family and the very passage of time. The film tracks 6 year-old Mason over life’s most radically fluctuating decade, through a familiar whirl of family moves, family controversies, faltering marriages, re-marriages, new schools, first loves, lost loves, good times, scary times and a constantly unfolding mix of heartbreak and wonder. But the results are unpredictable, as one moment braids into the next, entwining into a deeply personal experience of the incidents that shape us as we grow up and the ever-changing nature of our lives. As the story begins, dreamy-eyed grade-schooler Mason faces upheaval, his devoted, struggling single mom Olivia has decided to move him and older sister Samantha (Lorelei Linklater) to Houston, just as their long-absent father Mason Sr. returns from Alaska to re-enter their world. Thus begins life’s non-stop flux. Yet through a tide of parents and stepparents, girls, teachers and bosses, dangers, yearnings and creative passions, Mason emerges to head down his own road. Who are you going to be when you grow up and what’s your life going to be like? As a kid, of course, everything feels much more simple and now there’s so much more that we can see now about how dense and complicated this family’s relationships are. Sister and brother is a really kind of awkward relationship when you’re a kid, and we've that in the beginning because we're more stand-offish with each other at first, and there's more a feeling of rivalry. But that changed a lot as we get older. A dynamic sense of motion underlies the structure of "Boyhood", allowing the audience to be acutely conscious of time’s trajectory and time’s pull, even as they are caught in the grip of the day-to-day events unfolding throughout Mason’s youth. There's a sense that Mason’s life could take any infinite number of turns from this point forward, but all we know for sure is where he has been. "Boyhood" is almost just as much a view of motherhood, as the dance between mother and son plays out while Mason begins in all kinds of ways to assert his independence. Olivia is flawed, and she could be seen as passive at times, but we also consider her a brave mom, a woman who's always trying to balance her own passions with doing the best that she could for her kids. For example, the scene late in the film where Olivia watches Mason going off to school is really quite the opposite of that same scene in our life when we went off to school, but we also remember it being very intense and heavy, and it seemed that Olivia’s is an equally human and valid kind of reaction. Olivia’s interactions with men, with her children’s father, Mason Sr., as well as a series of challenging, at times abusive, partners she takes up with along with the way, revealing as they do the way we all struggle to really see other people for who and what they're. With Mason Sr., she has sort of put him in this permanent box labeled irresponsible and she sees herself as the only one who has done the hard, day-to-day work of raising these kids. But, of course, she also never sees her ex when he's with the kids, or what kind of father he's really like. She thinks she’s doing what she should be doing for her kids, looking for a stable situation for them, but she can’t see, not the way we can looking back at it, that she's sometimes wearing blinders. Despite the blinders, despite the inevitable stumbles and dangers, Olivia is rewarded with two intriguingly strong, sensitive young adults who really do seem ready, as ready as any of us ever are, to take on the modern world. Movies have always been about playing with time , about trying to snatch the moments that relentlessly flow through our daily lives and etch them to where we can get some perspective; or about diving into the mythic, dream-like dimensions where time is put through the blender. Even so, nearly all fictional movies are, by practical necessity, made over a period of weeks or months. But could a contemporary drama be made over a far greater stretch, say in the time it takes for one little boy to evolve, year-by-year, shift-by-shift, into a young adult. It's a movie about the singularly private emotions and hard-to-describe experience of childhood, but childhood is such vast territory. It's like taking a great leap of faith into the future. Most artistic endeavors strive to have a certain amount of control but there are elements of this that would be out of anyone’s control. There are going to be physical and emotional changes and that's embraced. Over a very extended range, beyond the life of most stage, film and television characters, going further and further as they revisited them anew each year in shifting circumstances. It's not only about leaping, but also about staying patient, taking the long view, which is not Hollywood’s standard modus operandi. The "Before" series explored the impact of time on everyday lives,revisiting the same couple at three diverse junctures in their unfolding relationship, but it did so in a very different way from "Boyhood". Of course, one insurmountable problem of time is that it operates in concert with things like chance and uncertainty. People sometimes hear the idea and think ‘oh, it’s like a documentary’ or it’s similar to Michael Apted’s 7-UP. But this isn’t a documentary, it’s a narrative film made over 12 years, which is something quite different. It’s rare to see someone trying to use the medium in a new way, to explore time in a new way. Seeing the film for the first time is an emotional, even cathartic, experience. Written by Gregory Mann

(Release Info UK schedule; Leeds International Film Festival, November 10th, 2019, Hyde Park Picture House, 73 Brudenell Rd, Leeds LS6 1JD, UK, 3:45 pm) https://hydeparkpicturehouse.co.uk/film/greener-grass?screeningID=1924 "Greener Grass" Jill (Jocelyn DeBoer) and Lisa (Dawn Luebbe) live in their perfect homes in their idyllic suburban community with their happy families. Their days are spent in the grocery store exchanging fashion tips and at birthday parties complimenting their neighbor's potluck dips. In this dark comedy of manners, soccer moms Jill and Lisa seek the approval of their friends; at all costs. This surreal world is just on the edge of consciousness; suburbia through the looking glass. Every adult wears painful braces on their straight teeth, couples coordinate meticulously pressed outfits, and coveted family members become pawns in this competition for acceptance. In a day-glo-colored, bizarro version of suburbia where adults wear braces on their already-straight teeth, everyone drives golf carts, and children magically turn into golden retrievers, Jill and Lisa are locked in a passive aggressive battle-of-the-wills that takes a turn into the sinister when Lisa systematically taking over every aspect of Jill’s life. As the women desperately vie for validation, they struggle to maintain pleasantry and normalcy, even when things get weird. And they do get weird. When Jill gifts Lisa her newborn baby in an altruistic gesture, paranoia overwhelms Jill while her fears and anxieties quickly unravel. Meanwhile, The Ref (Londale Theus Jr.), a psycho yoga teacher killer, is on the loose and Jill’s husband Nick (Beck Bennett) has developed a curious taste for pool water. That’s just the tip of the gloriously weird iceberg, a hilariously demented, 'Stepford Wives'-on-acid satire destined to be an instant cult classic. These girls are idiots! They might not have seemed like your typical baseball-cap-wearing, video-village-lurking characters. Jill, in head-to-toe pink with her son Dan (Sutton Johnston) by her side, a golden-retriever wearing khakis and a 'Purple Heart' pinned to his polo. Lisa, with a soccer ball pregnancy tucked up under lavender tulle, both of them wearing braces on their teeth. Years ago, they're put on a house team together at 'The Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre' in New York. They bonded one chilly night when all 'The East' coasters had left early and the two girls are putting the chairs away. There was one piece of a black-and-white cookie left and, like an overplayed 'My Fair Lady' CD skipping, they entered a loop of 'No, please, you've it' and so on. Neither of them ate that piece of cookie that night. And after only a few short half-hours, they threw it away together. And it was at that moment the girls would be incredibly productive working together. Now, Earth to Little Helen (Dot Marie Jones). Would a couple of idiots choose to triple-threat their future? A movie that stars children, a baby, and a seven-month-old puppy. A movie where we chose not to show any vehicles other than golf carts. A movie that co-stars a soccer ball with half a dozen costume changes. And most importantly, a movie featuring so many of our aging friends that we've to make a 'Hail Mary' decision to give every adult in the damn thing braces to look younger. But, alas. Dot Jones can say whatever she wants because she’s a 15-time world arm wrestling champion and we've delicate elbows. But just like non-idiots George R.R. Martin, JK Rowling, and Rand McNally before, they've created a world with it's own logic, hand-drawn maps, and board games based off it. This world is a demented version of suburbia. And who better to satirize oh-so idyllic, polite America than these two Midwestern middle girls? Suburbia has never been so hilariously absurd as it's in "Greener Grass", where two eccentric housewifes are driven by her eagerness to please. In a residential suburb with a killer on the loose, the two housewives compete to have the best children, the best husband and, above all, the most beautiful teeth. In this stinging satire on 'The WASP Community', a baby is given away like a piece of clothing and a child morphs into a dog without anyone being shocked. Politeness is taken to extremes and the realm of appearances reaches the point of lunacy. An overly colorful, deliciously warped version of suburban America that feels like 'The Stepford Wives' at a lawn party and then snuck off to do acid, the film plays soccer-mom frenemies in deranged competition with one another. Golf carts, braces, golden retrievers, soccer balls, and yoga teachers all play way bigger roles than you’d expect. This 'Desperate Housewives' on acid throws a nasty blow at the clichéd image of American suburbia. "Greener Grass" fully commits to a demented version of suburbia as the film scrutinizes the willingness to endure extreme discomfort in exchange for conformity. A deliciously twisted comedy set in a demented, timeless suburbia where every adult wears braces on their straight teeth, couples coordinate meticulously pressed outfits, and coveted family members are swapped in more ways than one in this competition for acceptance. "Greener Grass" explores one’s willingness to endure present pain in exchange for future validation; or at least a perfect smile. The film confirms a gift for outrageous absurdity in this impressive dark comedy full of unsettling behavior.

After having hearing only the good stuff about the fan film with Nathan Fillion, known as the actor born to play Nathan Drake of the 'UNCHARTED' game series, I had finally come to submit to my own curiosity. The film is 14 min long, and features Nathan Fillion of 'Firefly' and 'Castle' fame (his immense popularity within fandom-community not withstanding) takes on a well fitted role of Nathan Drake, a known explorer, historian and thief in style of Indiana Jones, but funnier. Nathan, along with his long time partner in crime, Sully, are once again on a hunt for yet another sea-fairer treasure - with Drake once again finding himself captured by an opposing side, needing to get out of the situation with secrets and himself in tact. Right off the bat I can say that the production value, is very much in tact. Yes, you can see hole in the budget - the security guards are remarkable in their non existent acting and every now and then the set is a bit bare - and yes, the secondary roles are incredibly stiff in their delivery. However, the editing is crisp. It is Clear. It is artistic and yet not painful, for example character reveal of Drake is both typical but not obnoxious. I did not feel like shouting "I know whom he is!", as I usually do with these type of cuts. When the sets do have significant to the story, they are well lived in and have good attention to detail, as far as props are concerned. The one action scene (a staple of the games) is done both in the spirit of the games but in Drake himself. Nathan Fillion, true to form, does a great job filling the shoes of Drake as the character, as well as North Nolan, the actor voicing him in the Naughty Dog series. Steven Lang off 'Avatar' and 'Don't Breath' is both character accurate in bringing Sully into live action, yet spicing him with his own on-screen charisma. The same cannot, I repeat CANNOT be said for the secondary characters! The secondary acting painful to sit through, and the corresponding info-dump is not helping the situation. At all. Except for El Tigre. El Tigre is awesome. But, in full seriousness unless you are an actor yourself, I don't know weather you would notice in the first place. Let me know, because I honestly don't have a clue. Finally, my evaluation of the motion picture: The film is well maid, well edited and well shot. The principal actors are delivering their characters and their line delivery, the action is well done (considering the budget) and the throwback to the game play is well welcomed. Also, it's for free on YouTube. I'd say it is well worth 14 minutes of you life. Especially if you love 'UNCHARTED', or Nathan Fillion. Final verdict: watch it, it's for free. UNCHARTED - Live Action Fan Film (2018) Nathan Fillion You can fins this on: YouTube

If you could have just said, “I’m sorry”, or faced up to what happened. Maybe then we could do something with this. But you can’t take responsibility for anything! So now I can’t accept… And I can’t forgive because… Because nobody admits anything they’ve done! “Hereditary“. A film I was really looking forward to and expected a lot from. Unfortunately, it was kind of a disappointment. If it would be a psychological drama that concentrated on the traumatizing effect after the loss of a relative with a labile mother as a result, I would have liked it. The fact Annie (Toni Colette) doesn’t have a stable and healthy mind is actually not that surprising. Not with a psychotic depressed father who starved himself. And a schizophrenic brother who hung himself in his mother’s bedroom. And a dominant mother figure that, in my opinion, couldn’t think clearly. Annie’s mother isn’t really clearheaded when you see the diorama with Annie breastfeeding her daughter. At least if this diorama displays how it happened in reality. And they generally do. A person would go nuts for a lot less. Terrible sadness and mourning. And Annie also goes completely through the ribbon after the terrible accident that happens to her daughter Charlie (Milly Shapiro). A strange little girl with a downright peculiar appearance. A regrettable and mind-boggling accident. And her brother Peter (Alex Wolff), can hardly be blamed. Maybe he should not have left Charlie on her own that night. Leaving her so he could smoke some weed with a nice girl from his class, isn’t only bad for his health. It also results in this dismal accident. An impressive moment of acting and at the same time a heavy emotional event that’ll get under your skin. No, this film isn’t about scary and blood-curdling scenes. Not initially, that is. It’s the grief for those who died, that makes the most impression. You’ll be struck by an uncomfortable feeling when you hear Annie screaming and crying. A sound like nails on a chalkboard. And you’ll feel sorry for Peter who doesn’t know what to do with his sorrow. Not an easy movie. “Hereditary” isn’t an easy movie. Emotionally you are dragged back and forth. Just like the members of the Graham family. A mother who has been traumatized by her past. Husband Steve (Gabriel Byrne) who looks at everything in a passive way and actually has no idea sometimes how to deal with the situation. And the son Peter, whose bond with his mother comes across as reasonably dysfunctional, tries to soften his frustration by using mind-altering substances. And then there’s Charlie. A little girl who clearly lives in her own universe. And above this dislocated family the spirit (Not literally! Or maybe it does.) of a seemingly tyrannical and dominating grandmother floats around. A woman who also had an unhealthy interest in the occult. Scariest movie in years. Don’t make me laugh. “Hereditary” knows how to keep the suspense alive in a smart way. The mysterious mood is constantly present. It’s also a terribly slow film with an enervating soundtrack in the background. At a certain moment, you don’t know what makes you nervous the most. The whole atmosphere or the slow pace. What I do hate a lot, is the exaggerated hyping of movies like “Hereditary“. According to their crafty marketing department, this would be the most terrifying horror film of the last 50 years. Even scarier than “The Exorcist“. This ought to be correct if you read the press releases. People are fainting and are leaving the theater massively because it’s so scary. Maybe that’s why you’re feeling tense. Even when the movie just started. Trust me. Apart from a few explicit graphic shots, it’s all reasonably suggestive. “Hereditary” is again such a horror movie with a double meaning. A movie that pushes your feeling in a certain direction and finally has such a twist that you are totally lost. A film that simply begs for a re-watch so you might discover the missed hints. And that, fellow moviegoers, is something I never do and I’m not planning to begin with in the future. Highlight: the acting of Toni Collette. Don’t get me wrong. This is a gem when you look at the cinematographic part and the acting. The way in which everything is depicted is simply fantastic. Sometimes it might be a bit exaggerated so that you get a multitude of painfully slowly zoomed in images. But in general, it’s a pleasure to watch and a continuation of the wonderful footage from the intro. Toni Colette plays a major role in this film (with the dinner scene as highlight). It’s certainly not easy to play such a tormented soul. A beautiful performance delivered by this actress (even though she already convinced me of her acting talent in “Miss you already” and “Please stand by“). And it remained mysterious and ominous until it escalated at a certain moment and evolved into a sort of “The Lords of Salem“. And when you reach the end you’ll probably conclude that it’s indeed advisable to watch the film again so you can rediscover certain clues. But again, that’s not my cup of tea. My rating 5/10 Links: IMDB

I Am a Ghost was directed by H.P Mendoza, which is a name most people have never heard. However, he became popular on the indie film circuit when he wrote a script for the 2006 film Colma: The Musical. Since then, he's been involved with a few films, but the most well-known of them all is I Am a Ghost. Made on an extremely low budget and fiercely hard to get hold of until the widespread availability of online streaming, the film was made popular by its premise - what if the ghost was the one being haunted? However, after the initial excitement of there being something new and innovative out, word of mouth made I Am a Ghost a cult classic. It was spoken about on film blogs by film critics, but it is a film which was very much touted by seasoned horror fans, not an unreasonably large marketing budget.  Emily (played by Anna Ishida) haunts a Victorian house in an unknown time period. She goes about her daily life, minding her own business, until one day she hears a voice that seemingly comes from nowhere. It turns out to be the voice of Sylvia (Jeannie Barroga), a psychic who makes a living exorcising spirits from people's houses. Because of that, Sylvia has to help Emily come to terms with the fact that she's dead and help her move to "the other side." The film cost $10,000 to make, and a lot of that was raised through Kickstarter. I Am a Ghost could never have a mainstream release. It's a film that starts with 15 minutes of near-silence; a loop of scenes, each one with an incredibly small variation. Emily feels restless, and so do we. However, just as the audience is about to give up, the story begins to reveal itself and the film kicks into gear. I Am a Ghost, for its budget, is a remarkably well-made film. The lighting isn't the sharpest (although it is functional), but the sound design is brilliant and there is some very impressive make-up design. In fact, the thing this most reminds me of is David Lynch's brilliant short-film series The Alphabet. This is an extremely experimental film from start to finish, and although it has a short running time of 76 minutes, it is one that rewards concentration and patience. On the surface, it's a ghost story, but the entire basis of the film is effectively a conversation between a therapist and patient, and a young woman's attempts to reconcile with her own death. The best thing about this film - and it's the best thing about all abstract films - is that it perfectly straddles the line between the metaphorical and literal. It also doesn't skimp on the horror elements. The end of I Am a Ghost is dark, gory and threatening, and I think it will satisfy the fans who were expecting something visceral. Horror films this unique and exciting are genuinely rare, and it is one of the most interesting horror films I've seen in years. It's ambitious, daring, experimental, and delivers an emotional and an intelligent payoff. It's available to stream on YouTube for £2.50-£4.50 and is well worth the rental price. If you're a horror fan, do yourself a favour and check this

(Minyan • 2020 ‧ Drama ‧ 1h 58m • Showtimes London • Tue 18 Jan, Genesis Cinema, 5,6 km·Whitechapel, 93-95 Mile End Road, LONDON E1 4UJ, United Kingdom, 21:00) https://genesiscinema.co.uk/GenesisCinema.dll/WhatsOn?Film=25625632 "Minyan" David (Samuel H. Levine), a young 'Russian Jewish' immigrant in Brighton Beach at the height of the 1980s, caught up in the tight constraints of his community. While helping his grandfather Josef (Ron Rifkin) settle into a retirement facility in the tight-knit 'Russian Jewish' enclave he calls home, he develops a close friendship with his new neighbors, Itzik (Mark Mogalis) and Herschel (Christopher McCann), two elderly closeted gay men, who open his imagination to the possibilities of love and the realities of loss; and explores 'The East Village' where he finds solace in like-minded souls. A world teeming with the energy of youth, desire and risk. He finds and quietly blossoms. When Itzik dies and the neighbors want to throw Herschel out, David must stand up to defend his discoveries about himself and where he belongs. The film is based on David Bezmozgis book. The short story is about a young man whose grandfather is struggling to find a place to live, and the only reason he gets an apartment in this building is because he's a pious 'Jew' and will show up to make a minyan for prayers. The protagonist of the short story is not gay, but there are pieces of 'DNA' from Bezmozgis's writing that feels foundational to who David is; the immigrant who doesn't fit into his community, and who doesn't have access to language. The elements pertaining to the yeshiva school David attends in the movie appear as a set of observations in parts of other stories from the same collection. The notion of wanting to be able to live a physical life, and to experience sex, David in the movie wants that, because lust and desire are things were supposed to feel as young people. Coincidentally, his neighbors are two closeted gay men, and one of them dies. A question emerges of will they throw the surviving partner out or not, because his name isn't on the lease. The movie contains a scene of unprotected sex that adds a layer gravitas to the story, considering it's time period. It would be naive and false to claim that the only sex gay men have after the discovery of the virus is safe sex. Gays and straights continue to have unprotected sex because passion and sexuality often overrule our better judgments. How we deal with uncertainty is an energy that all the characters in this movie feel in different ways. They all feel threatened. David has little or no idea at first what's going on in the world just a few subway stops away. But once he knows, he can never really shake that fear off. The movie is in some way about those moments, trying to be who you're in the most authentic and vulnerable way, even if it ends up being a threat to your survival. In the '80s 'Brighton Beach' is also more heavily religious than it's now, something David would have wanted to get away from. It feels like 'Old Country Jews'. It's a story about the tests of freedom, or the tests of empathy, in the free world. NYC in the 1980s as 'AIDS' took such a terrifying and decimating hold on the community, "Minyan" is a powerful story of rebellion and self-discovery, sexual and spiritual awakening, and survival. A story of strength in numbers, as one young man wakes up to the realities of a new life, where youth, desire and risk collide with the indelible specters of the past. There's a particular way that strangers move through strange lands. 'Immigrants', 'Jews', 'Homosexuals', in order to survive, they've learned to be keen observers, listeners more than talkers, always on the lookout for danger and openings. They carry history under the skin, and make do with less to fulfill a promise in the future. This is the 'DNA' and the ethos for "Minyan"; and very much the way we've moved through our own life. Trying to figure out who's required navigating grief and sexual exploration. What's shadow and what's light. We're comforted by and fascinated with the stories our grandparents told, their secretive crying and mysterious 'Yiddish' whispers. There's a strong connection in "Minyan" to this idea of 'The Jews' being the people of the book, reading the Torah, saying the prayers, the story of 'King David', which is an incredible story itself. On one hand, a minyan refers to the simple rules of prayer, you need ten men to make a quorum to say certain prayers. As a pious Jew you say prayers alone from the moment you wake up and wash your hands, but those are private prayers. These big signpost prayers like the Kaddish have to be told in a group, and with 10 people it takes on a different dimension. We believe that with the group, prayer is changed into belief. We're attracted to the edges of things, moments held in mesmerizing balance, the surface tension, here between fear and freedom, between seen and closeted, between newness and inexperience of youth and the gravity of old age. Go back to where you started, or as far back as you can, examine all of it, travel your road again and tell the truth about it. Sing or shout or testify or keep it to yourself. It's about what people feels on the inside versus how they come across on the outside, and that in many ways all of us share a certain set of feelings; loss, despair, impossibility. The main one is the looming sense of existential dread, the idea that just living your life authentically, being who you're might be the cause of your own death is a staggering heaviness to deal with, not knowing who's going to live or die, this is part and parcel of being a 'Jew', an immigrant, or a homosexual. We don’t like to equate the 'Holocaust' with anything, it’s sui genesis in terms of the brutal, cruelty and terror and mass killing, there are parallels to what 'AIDS' did to the gay community, the wiping out of almost an entire population; and we feel like survivors share an emotional landscape with other survivors.

(Release Info London schedule; Sat May 29, 2021, Curzon Soho, 99 Shaftesbury Avenue, LONDON W1D 5DY, United Kingdom/Sun May 30, 2021, Curzon Victoria, 1.1 mi·58 Victoria Street, LONDON SW1E 6QW, United Kingdom/Mon May 31, 2021, Curzon Bloomsbury 0.9 mi·The Brunswick, LONDON WC1N 1AW, United Kingdom, 11:00 AM) https://www.google.de/search?q=the+killing+of+two+lovers&stick=H4sIAAAAAAAAAOPgVeLVT9c3NEwrKjQ0tjAw28SkzsXrWlqUX5Cq75Ofl5KfJ8UGoZW4eJl4_ZxEvbex7tNiKs2-wMS4iFWyJCNVITszJyczL10hP02hpDxfISe_LLWoGAApYU7zWgAAAA&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiYofGNmeLwAhULhf0HHQI2AsEQxyZ6BAgFEAo&biw=640&bih=287#wptab=s:H4sIAAAAAAAAAOPgVeLVT9c3NEwrKjQ0tjAw28SkzsXrWlqUX5Cq75Ofl5KfJ8UGoZW4eJl4_ZxEvbex7tNiKs3excTllpmTG5KZnJ1acoGJcRGrcklGqkJ2Zk5OZl66Qn6aQkl5vkJOfllqUbFCcUZ-eUlmbmoxAG2UKhBxAAAA (Release Info UK schedule; June 4th, 2021, Curzon Home Cinema) https://homecinema.curzon.com/film/the-killing-of-two-lovers/ "The Killing Of Two Lovers" Local odd-job handyman David (Crawford) is trying to keep it together. He and his wife, Nikki (Sepideh Moafi), are going through a time of transition and allowing each other space to figure out whats they want from life and from their relationship. But there's one major issue; David doesn’t want space. Forlorn and frayed, the conflicted David is devastated when he learns that there may be another man sharing his wife’s bed. He just wants things to get better, and he plays along with Nikki because he suspects it’s the only thing that may keep them and their four kids together. His reluctant consent allows him to still visit his four children Jesse (Avery Pizzuto), Alex (Arri Graham), Theo (Ezra Graham) and Bug (Jonah Graham), while holding Niki to mandatory date nights in hopes of fixing their marriage. Now living with his Dad (Bruce Graham), his mental health begins to deteriorate and paranoia consumes his sense of hope, forcing him to confront personal demons in order to save his family and future. He's hotheaded, jealous, and terrified of losing his family. An explosive combination in a claustrophobically small town where private lives seem impossible to preserve; leaving him with only one possible solution. In general, people in life are more complex than we paint them out to be. We don’t know if anyone is inherently all evil or inherently all good. There's a complicated aspect of that. It's really exciting the way we approached it. And for David there's no life outside of his family, so he’s trying to wrap his head around how he will even continue if things go south. His job is a means to an end and he even says, 'I wish I could have had the children and stayed home with them'. David is losing his family and trying to figure out how to fight for them while at the same time giving his wife this room that she’s asking for, which is extremely scary for him. Niki is really in love with two people, which is so complicated to understand when you’re told as a young child that you’ll grow up to get married and only love one person. In the film Niki is loving two people and on top of that her career is blossoming, which is something that was unexpected when she took a job just to take a job and then all of a sudden realized she’s really talented and has skills. And for Derek is interested in settling down and that in his mind, he thinks he may be able to be a part of these children’s lives. He’s dealing with the complicated aspect of loving a woman who has children and a husband, but may be willing to take on all these responsibilities for how much he loves Niki. Then you take all these people who've good intentions in this small town environment and it gets incredibly complicated. The three main characters, David, Niki, and Derek (Chris Coy), continually surprise the audience with the duality of their behavior. We all understand betrayal, we all understand sadness, and if you've a child in your life you understand that love is unlike anything else in the world. It's a gift to be a dad and to have an opportunity to show this thing that we've inside of us just naturally. We never know why David and Niki broke up, we find them just as David is beginning to understand that his wife is sleeping with someone else and this is really all happening for him, he may not be at his dad’s for just a brief stint. The most pivotal moments of the film are defined by epic long takes and stunning wide shots. Think about the rocket scene, it’s like a photograph, framed from the position that Niki would be in if she's taking a picture. What this does is allow us to be in the moment and have all the elements within that moment be rooted to that period of time. The rocket scene, again, is a great example of a memory that would occur. What would the kids remember? How would David and Niki remember this argument? And the other aspect with this shooting style is that, when you film longer takes, you don’t allow the audience to relax, you remove the breathing room that multiple cuts often provide. "The Killing Of Two Lovers" is a story about a father going to pick up his kids who gets into an altercation with his wife’s boyfriend. It's about the period of life that we're in right now. We've seen the marriages of several friends and family members end in recent years and it gets us thinking about our male friends who really define themselves as good fathers and enjoy being fathers. Losing the everyday experience of putting your kids to bed, or sitting on the couch and watching TV with them, caused a few of them to start acting out of character, which is so interesting to us; to see the way in which they responded to this aspect of their life change. The film explores this kind of experience through a character like David because that it’s something you don’t understand until it happens to you. It's also about the idea of masculinity and the role it would play in a situation like this, when a man is fighting for his desired life while at the same time trying to respect his partner, which is a complicated thing to explore in-and-of itself. 'Kanosh' is a town of only 300 people, and it’s a tight-knit community, but houses are dying within that town. Every other block there’s a house falling apart. The landscape is perfect as a background for a marriage, because the onset of marriage is always very beautiful, but the nitty gritty is always more complicated and tight. The possibility of having that background against this intimate town while dealing with a failing marriage would be really valuable. Kids like movies, but we like the organic nature of their touch. The way that they climb over each other and the way they comfortably interact with each other, there’s an element of realism that you can’t really get if you cast actual actors in those roles. It allows us all to live free in the moment and to truly buy into the circumstances. The film is.a transfixing drama without a wasted word or a single inessential scene. It's an absolute marvel in execution that combines the naturalistic, languid life of a one-street town with the simmering suspense of a thriller. Each scene of 'Lovers' threatens to explode as it dives deeper into a torn soul just trying to do the right thing.

Yardie, based upon the book of the same name, is James Bond’s…sorry Idris Elba’s directional debut. It focuses on a young man who tries to escape his troubled past on the streets of Kingston, Jamaica, to London; only to remain on the same path that led him there in the first place. When he was a young boy, his peaceful older brother was gunned down by a ‘supposed’ member of a rival crew. It led D (Aml Ameen) to want revenge against the killer, only to find him on the streets of the East End where his old flame, and mother to his current child currently lives, in peace, away from the bloodshed.  I love Idris. He’s a brilliant actor and his performance as Stringer Bell in The Wire is the only reason I carried on watching it. I know, controversial, but christ that show is slow and tedious. As a director, well Yardie didn’t cut it for me. There were a lot of good things about it. The mise-en-scene was brilliant, in every scene I felt like I was in Jamaica in the 70′s, or Hackney in the 80′s. The music, the sets, the costumes were brilliant. King Fox, for example, just oozed class throughout the film. I was convinced by that. I just wasn’t convinced by the story. I wasn’t gripped. There seemed like a lot of ideas that put together, just created a complete jumble of nothing. At certain points in the film I thought to myself ‘ooo this is like City of God’ ‘oooo this could be Scarface’ ‘ooo this could be 8 mile’ ‘oooo this is could be This Is England’. But it didn’t pack a punch like these films did. I was disappointed that it felt like this, and this could be due to the trailer. A trailer that featured music that was prominent at the time the film was set, about a young man trying to find his way in the world, set in England and with action scenes. You tell me that isn’t a City-Of-God-8-Mile-This-Is-England-Scarface mash up and I shouldn’t get my hopes up about that.  📷Originally posted by dancebang The two lead actors were wonderfully chosen for the film. D (Aml Ameen) was very charismatic and lead the film superbly. Whilst the narrative was full of exposition, the acting was brilliant. Yvonne (Shantol Jackson) as the mother of his child and girlfriend was beautifully cast. She drove her scenes with the passion and emotion that she produced. She is a wonderful actress and she deserves to be in much more because in Yardie she was sublime. The worst thing for me about this whole thing though was the casting of Stephen Graham as Rico, one of the villains in the film and the drug dealer based in London. Stephen Graham is one of my favourite actors. As a character actor there aren’t many who come close to him. He deserves to be A-List. But my god what was going on here. I’m not annoyed that he was in the film. I’d cast him as anything. Working class hero. But throughout the film he put on a Jamaican accent, it wasn’t a bad accent but he kept flicking between this and the cockney accent because of Hackney. Now I was confused as to why the Jamaican accent was needed. I didn’t know if it was because he was trying to fit into the Jamaican community in London so he could get their respect and trust. He had Jamaicans working for him, who respected him, who at no point looked pissed off with him. Or if the character was culturally appropriating their lifestyle. By flicking between the two he is undermining them. But again, they were never any scenes where the other Jamaican characters looked pissed with him. I think it ruined the whole scene. He was much more menacing just doing the cockney accent. I cringed whenever the Jamaican accent was used. 2/5 Unfortunately as much as I was looking forward to it, and as much as I was hoping it would be amazing, it wasn’t. This could be down to the story not being originally written by Idris. There’s always a conflict when using an adapted screenplay. I hope and I’m sure we will see more of Elba in the director’s chair. There are far too many white, university educated film directors churning out the same pile of Hollywood crap. I want stories by a director from a working class background, I want stories from the Nigerian family, I want stories from the Muslim community. We need stories like Yardie to entertain, and more importantly, educate us. Just hopefully the next film from Idris is more entertaining than his first. p.s I really hope Idris doesn’t become the next 007. And not because I’m a right-wing gammon. But because he’s too good of an actor to be tied down to such a dead franchise. For sure he’d make it exciting. He’d bring it to life and bring the charm back to it. But he’s too good to be stuck as Bond. I wouldn’t complain if he was, I’d rather it be him than Tom Hiddleston or Henry Cavill or *insert another generic middle class name here*

Everyone has to pay for the pain that they’ve caused. Pain needs to be balanced. Armomurhaaja (original title) Every detail was just perfect in this Finnish low-budget indie. From the first second this film intrigued me and managed to hold my full attention. Not only the magnificent acting of Matti Onnismaa and Hannamaija Nikander, as the bitter and sinister person Veijo and the strange figure Lotta whose sexual preference is also rather lugubrious, caused that. The narrative and the message that simmered under the surface also fascinated me. Yet it’s not an easy, everyday film. On the one hand, there’s the language. Finnish isn’t something I’m confronted with on a daily base (well, for everything there’s a first time), so I understood absolutely nothing. On the other hand, the story itself is rather unorthodox with the euthanizing of pets as a central topic. Not exactly cheerful material, even though it sometimes felt comical. After ten minutes I knew this was an extraordinary movie. Veijo is the local freelancer who offers his services to help pets out of their misery in an inexpensive way. He’s, therefore, a not so well-liked competitor of the local veterinarian. To be honest, nobody likes him. Veijo thus creates its own Pet Sematary. Dogs are simply shot in an adjacent forest, after which their necklace is dangling from a branch as the only remembrance. Cats and other minuscule creatures from the animal kingdom are gassed in a pimped station wagon. A cat carrier graveyard next to his meager shed is the final result. The first ten minutes alone made it clear an extraordinary film was presented to me. Pain needs to be balanced. “Euthanizer” is a film about pain and suffering. And according to Veijo, pain needs to be balanced. And that’s something this pipe-smoking anti-social person applies in his life. Also on himself. The owners who bring their sick, disobedient or simply annoying pets can expect a psychological analysis first. Veijo apparently has the gift of being a dog whisperer. And some of those owners get a similar treatment as their pet. In the same way, he approaches his dying and suffering father. An alcoholic who apparently treated Veijo very badly and brutal during his childhood. Not just an odd couple. It’s a bizarre couple. The moment Lotta enters Veijo’s life, a life in which human contact is quite an obstacle for Veijo, I can vividly imagine his confusion about his feelings towards her and at the same time about her reasonably perverted fantasy. The reason why she feels attracted to Veijo was unclear to me. Was his aloofness or morbid profession something she related to? Or did she have suicidal thoughts for herself? Is she fascinated by death in a macabre way? It was a mystery to me. But they certainly go down in history as the most bizarre couple. Let the singing begin … The weakest element in the whole film was for me the would-be Finnish neo-Nazi club “Soldiers of Finland”. Notwithstanding that Petri (Jari Virman), who is only too keen to be part of this gang of jackasses, has an important part in the denouement, I thought it was a laughable fact. Apart from stealing some car tires and some provocative behavior, they seem far from being dangerous. And when they are singing as four choir boys for a karaoke machine, the image of these pseudo machos changes into purebred sissies. There’s even one of them who can’t control his emotions during that musical moment. It’s cruel. Rough. And it’s non-mainstream. “Euthanizer” is a cruel and filthy film. Filthy in multiple ways. A film that shows how cruel people can be. A film with contradictions as well. Gasifying animals with the exhaust fumes of an old station wagon is, in my opinion, not a peaceful and pleasant way. And yet Veijo is an animal lover who wants to put these poor creatures out of their misery. “Euthanizer” is breathtaking. A gem. Fans of small-budget non-mainstream films will enjoy this. I did for sure. My rating 7/10 Links: IMDB