Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 13th, 2007
Synopsis
Isild Le Besco is a teenager completely bored with the scene at the slightly ratty campsite where she and her family are spending the summer. Enter Denis Lavant, a much older man weathered by life and prison. Though he knows better than to be the moth to her flame, he can’t help but circling closer and closer. A conflagration is inevitable.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 25th, 2006
I watched Ryna while my wife watched Shopgirl on the TV. And aside from watching Ryna because I thought it was going to be a film about a DVD reviewer whose name is misspelled, there were a lot more differences between the two films. As far as I could tell, Shopirl appeared to be about a girl with Down�s Syndrome who falls in love with her Dad but reconsiders at the end (whoops, my wife tells me that I�ve got it wrong), Ryna is about a girl who tries to rise above being repressed because of her gender.
Ryna is the title character of a 16 year old girl (played by Doroteea Petre) who lives with her parents in a small Romanian town. Her father Biri (Valentin Popescu) has raised her as a boy with short hair, because he's disappointed that his only child was not born a male. Together they run an auto repair service that does price gouge foreign travelers from time to time. When a French anthropologist comes into town, he tells her about the world outside of her small town, and she wants to break out and enjoy life, despite her father's wishes.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 2nd, 2006
Synopsis
Emmanuel Xuereb plays Gabe, a man whose dying wife has left him for his best friend. (The psychiatric term for this situation is “bummer.”) His mourning takes the form of attempting to seduce women he doesn’t know, and he beings a relationship with Irene (Charis Michelsen), married but bored with her unimaginative husband. Irene is initially thrown when it turns out that Gabe is breaking into the homes where their encounters occur, but soon she is a willing participant in this game.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 5th, 2006
Let me admit straight away, I generally do not watch very many foreign films with subtitles. If a film is not dubbed in English, I generally pass. It’s not for a lack of tolerance. When I watch a film, I immerse myself into what I’m seeing. Films are total escapist fun. I experience a film more than view it. Having to read the dialogue denies me the ability to experience rather than watch the film. I also find that while I am busy reading subs I will tend to miss some of the film’s subtleties, which are quite important to me. In Gamblers, there is the added liability of dual languages. There is a prominent Asian element to this film. It took me too long to realize that more than one language was being spoken and that some of the characters could not understand others. The subs are presented with no distinction as to who is speaking or what language they are speaking. OK. End of disclosure.
As far as I could make out, Gamblers involves a territorial street gang that is somewhere between the mob and the IRA. In typical “Bloods” vs. “Crips” style, there is a reasonable amount of mayhem between two of these street gangs. Unfortunately we are never brought into the workings of either gang, and the violence appears simply as a result of one Asian boy’s love for an Asian girl. To add to the silliness of the whole premise, the violence results simply because Juen is bothering the girl while she is supposed to be working. A series of inexplicable romantic relationships is never fleshed out enough for us to care. Unless something serious was lost in translation, the dialogue is very simple tripe. An entire romantic conversation seems to be about nothing but another man’s penis. Fortunately much of the music is in English.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 1st, 2006
Echoes of Innocence calls itself an ultimate tale of good vs.evil. Don’t expect Exorcist level of evil quality in this one. Don’t even expect the good fight. Sarah (Simmonds) has a Joan Of Ark complex of sorts. She’s having religious visions, apparently inspired by the disappearance of a boy she once promised to save herself for. He publicly proclaims her commitment to virginity and frequently fasts to the point of near collapse. This is the film’s “good”. The evil is represented in the character of Alec (Vodvarka). He teases folks and is a bit of a womanizer but no head turns or horns to be found. Mostly Alec wants to break Sarah’s virginity vow. You can see how exciting this is going to be. Ho hum.
Put aside the forced religious symbolism and you have no film. The acting is absolutely horrid. Everyone is pretty much a one dimensional symbol. It might have been better to label them and save us two hours of film. That’s a long time for virtually nothing to happen.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 21st, 2006
Synopsis
Lydia (Sara Wiseman) is in her thirties, is a costume designer, and is desperately in love and lust with her childhood friend Christian (Philip Brown), though he clearly doesn’t think of her in the same way. One day, on the run from an angry pursuer, Luella Miller (Sia Trokenheim) turns up in Lydia’s home, and our heroine gives the interloper shelter. She soon comes to regret this kindness, as Luella begins to weave a destructively sexual web around all the men in the small town, including C...ristian.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 29th, 2005
Sorry for Kung Fu tells the story of a woman, who has defied her staunchly conservative heritage by getting pregnant out of wedlock. Not so big of a deal, except she's returning home to live with her parents, and must deal with the tension that comes with having gone against the ways they have taught her. In spite of it all, she manages to enjoy a truce with mother and father until the baby is born - and it's of Asian descent. With family turmoil and racial bigotry within family bloodlines to propel its conflict, you'd think this film would have a lot to recommend it. However, it can't jump that one final hurdle of execution in order to make it all happen. Part of what makes it not work is the fact that it's a family drama with an incredibly unsuitable potty mouth.
Before you label me a prude, allow for explanation.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 5th, 2005
Titus De Voogdt, Delfine Bafort, and Johan Heldenbergh head a mostly forgettable cast, which tends to fall so far into the background, you'll often forget more than just three actors are in Steve + Sky... and for what it's worth, I believe this stems more from the supporting cast's lack of charisma than it does from any real star power the three headliners bring to the table. The film is more of an inciting situation which throws Steve and Sky together, followed by randomly pointless character bits, which stil... could have worked had either star been in the least bit interesting. De Voogdt does the best he can with the main role, but unfortunately, his Steve acts with little-to-no rhyme or reason, and ends up condemning the film's status as a mindless romp through the lives of two deadbeat characters.
I don't have to like characters to enjoy a film, but I must feel drawn in to their plight, if for nothing more than to see them get their just desserts. With Steve + Sky, the film plods along in an effort to achieve "character piece" status, but all that's really accomplished is they simply "do stuff" for an overly long 100 minutes, when writer-director Felix Van Groeningen finally -- and mercifully -- calls an end to the proceedings. At the end of this ride, I honestly wondered what point the film had just made that hadn't already been made far better by many a crappy film. Hopefully, Van Groeningen's next effort will focus more on storytelling aspects in addition to his characters, and less on the aimless A.D.D. brain droppings that too often pass for good cinema, both here and abroad.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on September 14th, 2005
I am a foreign film fan, so I was quite excited to find this disc in my queue of DVDs to review. From the cover, this looked like just the kind of thing that I typically enjoy. Unfortunately, as the saying goes, you shouldn't judge a DVD by it's cover... or something like that. The plot of this film sounds reasonable enough; a couple of documentary filmmakers set out on a quest to try to find out what happened to a beautiful missing girl. Now, this is not a film shot in a “mocumentary” style, it is just a fictional f...lm that happens to feature documentary filmmakers.
Only it's not, really. This is a film that seems to be suffering from multiple personality syndrome. On the one hand, it presents itself as a movie about the filmmakers' search for the truth. On the other hand, so much of the film includes scenes presented “flashback style”, that the segments with the documentarians are the ones that seem out of place. This is a story that would have worked much better if it had followed a more basic storytelling style, instead of dragging extraneous characters into the mix.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 28th, 2005
I remember a couple of years ago when MTV produced The Real World Movie: The Lost Season. I was sitting at home on a Saturday, and didn't know exactly what I had tuned in to. At first, I was just watching the show as if it were any other first-episode of a season of The Real World. It wasn't long, however, before I realized that something strange was going on. Once I realized that the “documentary” was an elaborate hoax, I promptly changed the channel. Let's be honest... reality shows are manipulated en...ugh on their own, why would producers intentionally make it worse?
This documentary falls somewhere between and actual episode of The Real World and Fahrenheit 451. The film follows the members of three couples after their respective break-ups, and chronicles what it is like to move on and find someone new. Just when the documentary starts to get sincere, viewers are treated to a scene with one of the actors arguing with the producers or the camera crew about who they should ask out or what they should do next. Like I said before, I am certain that kind of thing happens, I just don't want to see it blatantly portrayed on camera.
