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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 5, 2023 16:18:13 GMT
Les Trois Mousquetaires: d'Artagnan is part I of what is probably the big French movie of the year (much more so than Astérix). It is updated just a bit to show us some women's issues of the time and also the fact that Porthos is bisexual ("I appreciate all good things.") But of course, the plot remains faithful to Alexandre Dumas. Part II is due for Christmas, and The Count of Monte Cristo is already in the works, starring Pierre Niney.
The French trailer concentrates more on musketeer banter than the action.
The premiere of the movie was held at the Invalides.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 6, 2023 15:00:52 GMT
Nos cérémonies (Summer Scars) is a strange little film about two brothers (also brothers in real life). They play lots of dangerous games until the day one of the games is too dangerous, and one of them dies. But the brothers are so fusional that the little brother brings his big brother back to life and everything returns to normal. 15 years later, the brothers are back at their childhood home for their father's funeral. The mother had run off with the kids because he was violent. They meet up with a lot of old friends and it's time to party.
Unfortunately, every now and then the formerly dead brother get terrible chills and needs to be killed again so he can be brought back to life. It is mentioned that this had already happened more than a hundred times, and the little brother is really getting tired of killing him. When the big brother doesn't get sibling assistance, he can smash his skull in with a boulder or whatever works. Unfortunately, he has to die more and more often to get his health back.
This cannot end well. Factoid: the older brother really does suffer from alopecia and just has a few random tufts of hair on his head. One of the most important features of the movie is that nobody made an issue of this.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 7, 2023 16:08:27 GMT
A mon seul désir (My Sole Desire) left me perplexed. It is about a strip tease club. A young woman abandons her doctorate and decides that she wants that kind of work. Her audition confirms that she should do just fine. The women there all get along well (hard to believe) and there is a lot of solidarity. Since most of the customers are regulars, the women exchange all of the useful information about them. Although there are private sessions, no touching is allowed, but the employees are free to pursue more complete sessions if they want. The new employee falls in love with one of her colleagues. Even though the sentiments are reciprocal, the colleague has a regular boyfriend, which complicates matters, especially since he doesn't know what work she does. The colleague sticks to company rules, but the new girl teams of with another woman for the extra money. Things become more and more extreme and complicated.
Even though this has only a -12 rating in France, every possible form of nudity is on view at all times, and this is probably what will attract a lot of spectators. The movie is directed by a woman, and she takes advantage of the #MeToo era to go beyond limits that a male director would no longer dare.
I felt that the minor actresses (and probably some of the men) were being exploited because they wanted to break into the film industry and didn't care how they did it. There might be a bit of embarrassment later in their careers.
Anyway, the movie wasn't bad, but I thought the plot was relatively weak. The visuals were clearly more important than the substance, but of course a YouTube trailer doesn't show much.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 8, 2023 10:41:47 GMT
Kapitan Volkonogov bezhal (Captain Volkonogov Escaped) is about as gritty, hopeless and cruel as you can get. It's a Russian-Estonian-French coproduction. Yuriy Borisov was last seen in the amazing Finnish movie Compartment N° 6, but this time things are much more serious. Captain Volkonogov is part of a Stalinist purge squad in 1938, but he runs off when he understands that he is next in line to be purged. We have already seen that this means horrible torture followed by a bullet in the brain, whether or not a confession was obtained. Volkonogov steals the case files of the people who were executed because of him. Instead of running across the nearest border, he stays in Leningrad to visit the families of the people he wronged. He wants their forgiveness so that he can go to heaven. Easier said than done. The squad is hot on his trail and it doesn't take them long to figure out which files he took. They arrest every member of every family concerned and lock them up. There is also a scene where one of the officers demonstrates how to execute people with just one bullet. "You shoot up this soft spot in back of the head." He gets his wide-eyed teenage soldiers to take turns after putting on the leather apron that will protect their uniforms from blood spatters...
Anybody who is wondering how the Russsian army of 2023 can commit atrocities in Ukraine in total cold blood will not be wondering anymore after this movie -- it's just in their DNA.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 9, 2023 17:33:41 GMT
After my Russian stalinist apocalypse, I decided that I should see some gentle American entertainmsnt. So I saw a movie where cities were destroyed, people were blown to bits, nasty creatures attacked everything in sight, and there was also a princess.
Yes, I went to see Super Mario Bros. Luigi didn't do crap. He was not super at all.
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Post by whatagain on Apr 9, 2023 17:52:16 GMT
Well Kerouac, what do i tell my daughters ? Go or no go ?
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 9, 2023 18:27:18 GMT
Oh, it is mindless. They will love it even if they are not mindless themselves. It is currently the #1 movie in the world. Isn't that supposed to be proof of its quality?
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 10, 2023 18:05:49 GMT
Sur les chamins noirs (On the Wandering Path) is a true story about famous French author Sylvain Tesson. He is an adventurer and a globetrotter and wrote about that, except one day he was drunk in Chamonix and decided to climb up the outside of a building to surprise a friend. He fell 10 metres and completely broke his head and body. After a week in a coma, he was transferred to Paris to convalesce. He was told he might never walk again, so he concentrated on this and walked again.
When you see him on television these days, he looks weird because half of his face is still paralyzed. They didn't do this to the actor (thankfully) but put some impressive scars across his face.
Anyway, the movie is about a promise that he made to himself -- to walk across the entire length of France from the Italian border to the English Channel. And he did it, with a number of incidents like an epilectic fit and various tumbles on difficult terrain.
The movie is an ode to nature and also to determination, and the visuals are magnificent.
One almost forgets that the real person is a complete reactionary that many of us might like to spit on.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 12, 2023 14:25:15 GMT
Brighton 4th is an excessively grim Georgian movie that takes place in the Brighton Beach neighbourhood of Brooklyn. Retired wrestling champion Kakhi leaves Tblissi to go and help his son Soso who went to live the American dream. Well, the American dream of Brighton Beach looks like total shit with the immigrants living in decrepit boarding houses that look more like prisons. Almost none of them are legal, so it is a hardscrabble existence with tiny salaries paid in cash, rarely for the correct amount if at all. Kakhi dies at the end, but mom is satisfied because Soso is bringing the corpse back home, and mom's main request was that Kakhi come back to Tblissi with Soso. Happy end?
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 13, 2023 14:00:57 GMT
Your Name and Weathering with You were already masterpieces directed by Makoto Shintai, but I would venture to say that Suzume is his best film yet. 17 yer old Nanoka is biking to school when she encounters mysterious stud muffin Soto. He is on a mission, and Nonoka's curiosity gets the better of her so ehe follows him. Soto is one of the guardians of the world whose mission is to close doors in abandoned places to prevents leaks from the universe of catastrophe. They team up but then the kitten from hell traps Soto in the girl's three-legged kid chair that her mother made before being killed by the tsunami. The chair becomes animated and follows her around. The trailers of these movies are never very good, but anybody who saw Spirited Away by Miyazaki, which won the Oscar for best animated feature and crushed the Disney and Dreamworks domination in 2001 will know that the trailers never reveal anything of importance.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 13, 2023 15:35:45 GMT
Les âmes soeurs (Soul Mates) is a typical André Techiné movie -- an uncomfortable situation with more discomfort to come. David is a French soldier in Mali. He is seriously injured when his convoy vehicle is blown up, so he is repatriated for medical treatment to the military hospital at the Invalides (It is much more than just Napoléon's tomb; there is also a nursing home for old soldiers besides the hospital.). David is kept in an induced coma at first due to his serious condition. His sister Jeanne comes from the Alps for a few days. She is his only family. But the doctors persuade her to go home and wait until his condition improves. Lots of scenes of changing bandages, you know, when you pull gently at the gauze but you get a lot of skin and blood with it. Ick. But he gets better although he has total amnesia. He even has to learn to talk again. But finally he is in good enough condition to be released, and he goes to live with Jeanne, who has been trained in bandaging and other medical needs. Of course he doesn't even know who she is, but there is enough photographic evidence, so he accepts the situation.
Life isn't bad, if a bit boring, but he is not nostalgic for the military life anyway since he doesn't even remember it. Their location is pretty isolated, and they have only one close neighbour, old Marcel, who also owns the building. Sometimes he dresses like a man, sometimes as a woman, but a frumpy old one. This is accepted.
A year goes by. David is almost completely healed although he does seem to enjoy when his sister rubs the antiseptic cream on his chest. "You're having an effect on me." "Stop it!"
Finally, his memory begins to return, including the brother and sister incest, which she had initiated but which they both enjoyed. In fact, the reason he joined the army was to put an end to it.
What next?
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Post by whatagain on Apr 13, 2023 16:53:00 GMT
I just don't understand rhe attraction some moviemakers have for scripts like that. Life is complicated enough and dark enough, i don't see the need to be reminded of it. All things consider I prefer Winnie the Pooh... Fortunately i am not necessarily representative of the whole audience.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 14, 2023 6:34:24 GMT
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 14, 2023 15:58:13 GMT
Playwright and director Alexis Michalik thinks that he is god's gift to French theatre (fighting for that title with Florian Zeller, probably). He has about 5 or 6 plays on the stage in Paris at the moment, so he is probably right. But the theatre is not enough compared to the cinema, which reaches far more people, so now he makes movies (Florian Zeller not far behind). And he is also an actor and not bad looking, so he also milks that for all he can get. He is in two movies on French screens at the moment. One of them is Une histoire d'amour (a title used so many times already that it is difficult to find the right answer on Google). He directed and has a major role in this story. His character is a successful author who is often helping his gay sister, so in a flash he manages to set her up with another woman, not even gay but languishing from the fact that her partner is on a long business trip in Japan. In no time, we are having hot lesbian sex, hot lesbian holidays in Corsica, hot lesbian strolls through the Buttes Chaumont and finally a hot lesbian engagement ceremony at the brother's perfect country home. We are somewhere in the recent past and same sex marriage is not yet possible. I was irritated. Like most people, I have nothing against hot lesbian activity in a movie ( ), but this was all too perfect. Everybody lived in perfect flats, there were no obstacles, there was no sign of any work except in a cute organic grocery store. It just did not look like the real world. And then there was a little problem. One of the women would like to have a baby. The other one is not very enthusiastic but wants to do whatever makes her partner happy. So they set up the insemination process in Spain (not legal in France), two sessions for 10,000 euros, cheaper than Belgium, it is mentioned. When they go for the appointment, it is decided at the last minute that they will use both shots at the same time, one for each of them. Well, the less enthusiastic one gets pregnant and guess what? Her partner breaks up with her before the birth and takes up with a man again. We have a fast forward 12 years, very well done with little snippets from the news, the same sex law in parliament, the terrorist attacks, the election of Macron, the yellow vests, the fire at Notre Dame... And the mother with the 12 year old girl has terminal cancer, only a few weeks to live, and her brother has become a useless alcoholic, has stopped writing, and is the only family member who could possibly take care of the girl or else she will be put in foster care. The perfect life that everybody was having has definitely come to an end.
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Post by mickthecactus on Apr 14, 2023 16:24:23 GMT
Another film I can miss.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 15, 2023 18:16:21 GMT
For some unknown reason, The Quiet Girl was released in France very late compared to most of the neighbouring countries and nearly a year after Ireland and the United Kingdom. I suppose that it frightened many distributors -- a movie in Gaelic about a house in rural Ireland in 1981 where nothing happens. There is very little dialogue and even less from the little girl in question. Cáit comes from a turbulent family where her mother seems to be popping out babies one after another. She is placed for the summer with some relatives she doesn't even know, but the calm farm life compared to home obviously does her a world of good. And then the summer ends and it is time to go home. Everybody cries, including the audience.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 16, 2023 13:08:16 GMT
Looking for an appropriate companion piece to The Quiet Girl, I went to see Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. I kind of expected to hate it but I was in for a surprise. It is excellent. Okay, yes, of course it is a piece of shit, but for once I understood the plot which actually made sense, the cinematography was excellent (not quite Lord of the Rings but getting there), the dialogue was crisp and very witty, the creatures were excellent. I particularly liked the obese dragon who had to drag itself and roll around to get anywhere.
On the down side, there were Chris Pine (principal hero) and Hugh Grant (principal villain). In most of the scenes they both looked like they had just stepped out of the same Beverly Hills hair salon even though that was a medieval world of fantasy. Chris Pine can't act and Hugh Grant seemed to think he was in one of his British rom-coms of olden times. The supporting actors were fine. There was a bit too much swashbuckling for my taste (probably not enough for standard spectators). Why so many swords when you have so many spells and magic weapons at your disposal?
It wasn't too horribly long (2h14) and did not scream "sequel" at the end even if it is inevitable.
It's always amusing when they figure that they got the first trailer wrong and do another one.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 18, 2023 20:07:11 GMT
Les Complices (which means The Accomplices, but the international title is Killing Blues) concerns contract killer Max who discovered that he can't stand the sight of blood after his wife left him. Any drop of blood, even if he just cuts his finger, makes him faint. This is a huge handicap. His new naive nerdy neighbours don't know any of this, and that is the main reason they get sucked into helping him even though at first they don't understand what is going on. But once they understand, they find it kind of exciting especially since their call centre jobs are totally boring.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 18, 2023 20:23:55 GMT
Le prix du passage (English title The Channel) is part of the growing genre of migrant movies, so of course it takes place in Calais. It's a Franco-Belgian movie about a trashy poor woman who can't pay her bills or her rent. One day she encounters an Iraqi migrant (by almost running him down). She helps him and a friend reluctantly, first of all to make money by charging to use her shower, even though she has no hot water. But once she discovers that the going rate for crossing the Channel is 5000€, it doesn't take her long to propose doing it for 2000€ in the boot of her car on the ferry. She gets away with it because she doesn't look like a "passer." So it becomes a mini profession so that she can settle her debts. You always learn things in movies like this, such as filling your pockets with coffee beans because it prevents detection by dogs.
The Iraqi, who remained behind because he is waiting for his brother is the voice of reason, but not enough. On top of that the official passers have learned of the situation since they lost some of their customers, and they are not happy.
There are some very tense moments.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 19, 2023 19:03:34 GMT
I have mixed feelings about Avant l'effondrement (Before We Collpase). The dialogue was stilted a lot of the time and did not seem to be at all the way real people talk. But the protagonist Tristan is the campaign manager for a local politician, and I think we all know that those people don't know how to talk normally anymore. Anyway, there is a major heat wave during the entire film and everybody seems at wit's end. Besides the campaign problems, Tristan receives in the mail an anonymous positive pregnancy test. He clearly has an active sex life, but who would do that to him? He has three suspects, but that isn't even the main problem. His mother died of a rare genetic disease. He might have it, but has never dared to get tested because he doesn't want to know if he is going to die between the age of 40 and 50 like his mother. He is 35 years old now, and the chance is 50%. If that weren't enough, his father with Alzheimer's is in a provincial nursing home and clearly going to die soon. His brother is there, but he and his brother hate each other.
Things get a lot more interesting when he tracks down his 3rd suspect, who lives in a radical ecological commune. This leads to several political debates among the members and the visitors (Tristan is travelling with a platonic female friend from childhood.). And there was a major scene which I have to admit that I have never seen before -- a big political debate between two women, where the men shut up for once. The men just sit and watch. It made me realize how much it is always the men who do most of the political talking in situations like this and it was immensely refreshing to see a different perspective.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 23, 2023 12:00:56 GMT
Chien à la Casse (Junkyard Dog) is a movie about friendship and what can mess it up. Dog and Morales are best friends since childhood and are inseparable. Morales is gragarious with a big mouth and definitely dominates the relationship, but they are still a perfect match. But one day Dog gets a girlfriend and suddenly he is standing up to Morales, who is eaten with obvious jealousy. The movie does not give any overt sexual connotations to this, but it was pretty obvious that this could be more than a bromance. Both actors are sensational.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 25, 2023 4:13:46 GMT
Dany Boon is one of the most popular comic actors in France and had a mega hit in 2008 with Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis (Welcome to the Sticks), where he co-starred with Kad Merad. Ity mae fun of someone from southern France being transferred to extreme northern France, with different customs and accents. It was one of the top grossing films of all time in France. Will Smith purchased the rights for an American remake, but that never happened. In Italy there were two very successful remakes, one for southern Italy and one for northern Italy.
Anyway, Dany Boon has made lots of movies since then, almost always very successful but not to the degree of the that one. Now he has teamed up with Kad Merad again in La vie pour de vrai (Life for Real). He plays a man who was born and raised in a Club Med in Mexico, where his mother home schooled him. So he knows nothing about the way the world works, since he has seen only happy holiday makers his entire life. He was also very unhappy because he made new best friends every week and a week later they were gone. Anyway, he has never forgotten the love of his life when he was 8 years old, so after 42 years he decides to go to Paris to find her... He is lucky to have a half brother that he didn't know about, because he also discovers that his pesos do not go very far.
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 25, 2023 4:25:36 GMT
Looks cute. It deserves an award for the premise alone.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 25, 2023 17:32:46 GMT
Habib, la grande aventure is a disconcerting Belgian movie that is hard to define, which probably explains why they couldn't think of a proper title. Habib is an aspiring actor in Molenbeek. His parents are Moroccan, although the father ran off to the mother country to get a new extra wife. They haven't seen him in a long time. Habib is working on a play where he plays Saint Francis of Assisi, and he is really absorbed by the subject matter, to the dismay of his mother and sister. His mother finds this somewhat blasphematory, but who understands one's children these days? Meanwhile, the father has sneaked back to Brussels since he requires medical treatment. He has stage 3 Alzheimer's, not that he has the slightest idea what this is. (I confess that I squirmed a bit when I saw the doctor giving the cognitive test, because I sat through the same one with my mother.) He has brought his new wife, who is about the same age as his son and daughter. She looks like a whore. The father asks the son to look after her. He fobs the girl off to the young man in charge of the play, a rich brat. This seems to suit both the brat and the wife.
To muddy the water, Habib's mother finds out that the father of her children is in town. News gets around in the Moroccan community of Molenbeek. So she shows up at the hospital, too. Meanwhile, Habib has found another acting job, just a one day affair but he will be a gigolo seducing Catherine Deneuve. The whole Moroccan community quickly finds out about this, too, but they think it is wonderful, much batter than a Catholic play.
Eid al-Fitr rolls along, and everybody is suddenly together, like it or not, mother, father, sister, new wife and friends of the family. They bring a sheep home for the ritual slaughter, but Habib points out that it is against the law in Belgium (in France, too). That doesn't stop them, but the father is too weak to perform the ritual, so he tells Habib that he has to do it. The sheep is put in the bathtub, where it proceeds to shit (who wouldn't?). Habib is totally impregnated with all of his research about Saint Francis, guardian of the animals, so there is no way he can do it. He manages to get the sheep to escape out the bathroom window, assisted by his sister and her girlfriend...
This movie was weird and fascinating, and Catherine Deneuve is really in it. On top of that, Habib was played by a French actor from Alsace, not Moroccan at all, even though he fit the part. It's nice to see typecasting dissolve in Europe.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 26, 2023 15:36:12 GMT
I am not at all a fan of 18th and 19th century period movies and even less of 18th and 19th century Asian period movies. This movie is about the artist who painted The Great Wave of Kanagawa. Even if you have never seen the name before, you know which painting I am talking about.
I thought it was quite boring even though it was beautifully filmed, and I learned quite a few things. The artist was censored by the emperor because he was a non conformist. Troops were sent to destroy his decadent art more than once. But the movie is too incredibly respectful of all possible customs, and the scenes are set up with totally unbearable (to me) symmetry. I cannot believe that everybody lined up perfectly every time they were sitting or working. I don't want to believe it, but I know nothing.
On the bright side, I received a nice print of the Great Wave of Kanagama, as did all of the other spectators at the first sceening today, so all is not lost.
You have to click to activate the subtitles.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 27, 2023 18:36:04 GMT
I saw Mad God today. It has no dialogue. I am still in recovery.
It was amazing. You might not want to take the kids or grandkids to see it.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 27, 2023 18:40:05 GMT
Oh, I actually found a synopsis of the plot. That helps.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 27, 2023 19:05:35 GMT
Two French comedies can cure almost any trauma even if it just because they are so stupid. The first one was Notre tout petit petit mariage (Our tiny little wedding). Major French comedian Ahmed Sylla wants to discreetly marry his girlfriend to improve their chances of adoption. The tiny marriage of course becomes a monster against their will. This sort of movie has a thousand gags in it, so of course some of them are funny. In my book, maybe 4 or 5. Most spectators will laugh probably 50 times, so it might actually be a success.
Ma langue au chat (The Cat's Got my Tongue) is the sort of plot that has been done dozens of times all around the world and particularly in France. A group of family and friends gather in the country house for a birthday celebration. They all get along purportedly, but they all have issues and more and more as the days pass. For a start, someone runs over the ultra beloved cat even though specific instructions were given not to let the cat out. But the person who killed the cat shouldn't have been outside, so he doesn't want to admit it. But somebody saw him. This person was getting blow job at the time from a neighbour, so neither of them can say anything, since the cat killer saw him standing in the window. And things go from bad to worse over the weekend with all sorts of lies, betrayals, secret bankruptcy, menopause, needs for Viagra, shifts in sexual orientation, etc. All of the usual issues of people in their 50s.
I've seen these stories so many times, but this was very well written, clever, witty and well acted.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 28, 2023 11:41:50 GMT
Kurak Günler (Burning Days) convinces me once again that Iran and Türkïye make by far the best thrillers in cinema. They are tense, they are scary, there are no silly car chases or gun fights, and above all, the people in the movie seem totally authentic. In Burning Days, young prosecutor Emre is sent to a provincial Turkish town, where all of the local politicians appear to be corrupt and the local form of amusement is to kill wild boars and drag their bloody cadavers through the city. Emre lives in a shitty flat full of rats with water that rarely flows, to the extent that he drives to the local lake to bathe. Later he is invited to dinner by the mayor and his son and forced to drink so much raki that he pukes. On top of that, it was probably drugged because he blacks out and can't remember what happened. A local gypsy girl was beaten and raped the same night. See where this is going?
Well, yes and no, because he also meets Murat, the local opposition journalist. Everybody tells Emre to stay away from him even though he is about the most sympathetic character in town. Or are there ulterior motives?
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 29, 2023 12:49:45 GMT
Anybody who saw Ari Aster's Midsommar knows that Beau Is Afraid should be handled with care, especially when putting it in your brain. Unfortunately it lasts 3 hours which is about one hour longer than that from which one can derive pleasure, even if the giant penis hiding in the attic comes in that final hour.
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