Reviews
late night reviews and rants about film and other media
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review · Berlinale
What Does That Nature Say to You
A gentle, artistic boyfriend postpones meeting his girlfriend's parents out of fear of rejection and clashing expectations. When it finally happens, awkward, stifled laughter and superficial conversations make place for the inevitable after a few drinks too many.
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Juror #2
Overly borrows from 12 Angry Men and never reaches the heights or ambiguity of Anatomy of a Fall.
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Companion
Ostensibly a darkly satirical revenge comedy about misogyny, female empowerment, and agency against male abusers, the male writer/director makes sure you never forget it is foremost a metaphor, beating us on the head endlessly with a surface-level understanding of abuse dynamics and foregoing any consistency in plot in favor of witty, ironic oneliners aimed at the audience instead of organic dialogue between and towards the on-screen characters.
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Heretic
Let's feature Hugh Grant as a charming, manipulative villain in a film that deconstructs religion. Slowly make the main characters question their core beliefs and sanity as they spiral downwards into the web of a reasonably intelligent narcissist hellbent on control of young women but too self obsessed to see the flaws in his actions---slowly giving himself away.
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Gladiator II
Entertaining if bloated Hollywood romp that manages to subvert enough of the tropes of the original to not make it feel like it's too much of a complete retelling, even if Ridley Scott is constantly shoving pieces of the original in our faces to the point I feel Russell Crowe should've been properly credited as lead actor.
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The Substance
A fun, satirical metaphor on the consequences of dealing with male-dictated beauty standards in media, ageism and self-worth determined by vapid objectification.
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Perfect Days
In Perfect Days, an aging restroom cleaner finds daily, fleeting moments of happiness through a mindful awareness of beauty in chance encounters and his temporal surroundings, yet can never truly hide a deep underlying sadness.
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Evil Does Not Exist
Starting of as a slow, contemplative exploration of a small, rural community faced with an ecological disruption at the hands of an ill-planned and predatory development project, Hamaguchi's Evil Does Not Exist is tense, layered and never overexplains itself.
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Civil War
Essentially a Last of Us-style zombie roadmovie, a genre that is already practically one layer of abstraction away from what this film explores, Civil War is a provocative film, but ultimately too shallow.