Erkki
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Posts posted by Erkki
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BTW Just to show that I'm not entirely off base here, here's a review that is counted among the positive ones on RT, but ends up saying that he found the acting great, but the whole movie basically disappointing (he also doesn't go into a lot of details, though). I would say if there's are many similar opinions and on the other hand a lot of love for the movie, it is still somewhat divisive, despite the fact that the lower opinions don't fall into the "rotten" category ( I don't know how much lower the 3.2/5 score would have to be to count towards "rotten").
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Sure, by divisive I didn't mean universally divisive so I should have clarified. I'm not sure if it's idiosyncratic because I also saw some filmmakers like Sean Baker comment that he didn't find it effective. Well, what he said was that his partner cried a lot and he didn't, but that's what I read into it. But to go into specific details what I think were wrong, I would have to rewatch it, which I'm not planning any time soon. I think there were (editing) issues of timing of some deliveries, there seemed issues of selecting the wrong shots (I think there was a bigger close-up of a random dude playing guitar than any close-ups of the main characters, but I could wrong) and shooting with the wrong kind of lighting - main characters in a key scene moving in and out of shadows, suddenly being overexposed in the shot. But it also could have been that the director was intentionally going for something where he downplayed the importance of the main characters, but in that case that didn't seem to connect with the story that was being told, because then the whole movie should have put much much more time into portraying the community.
[edit]Also, about the story, I think it's a good story in the sense that it's somewhat unique, but I didn't really see that the strong motivation for this dude to live in the forest was explained.
I mean, it was so strong that he just abandoned his daughter. But nothing in the film explained why he wanted it so badly. I could not imagine the connection between PTSD and not finding any joy from your relationship with your daughter even as you obviously care about her, but then abandon to fate, leave her to a place where she owes a lot do people around her and probably doesn't even go to school.
The daughter's character was perfectly relatable, though.
[edit2]Actually, yeah, the more I think about the story itself or at least as much of it as this film chose to focus on, the more I think that it's really told ineffectively throughout. Every good story has a conflict at it's heart and smaller conflict arcs to give interest to individual parts of the story. In this move the conflict is totally abstracted away and left to the imagination of the viewer. Even a scene near the start where they are discovered is told without any tension, they are just suddenly seen by someone random who appears almost after the fact. In some way it's consistent with being told from the perspective of the girl, but it's not the most effective storytelling. It seems to work for a lot of people though, and I can kind of see why - if you just let yourself be drawn into it and don't see the problems I see, I guess on some level it emotionally clicks, even if what's on the screen is not 100% working towards enhancing those emotions. Damn, now I already feel like Leave No Trace is 2018's Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing Missouri for me - a movie most people love but I have many issues with.
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It seemed divisive based on some letterboxd reviews (and IRL chat). But I didn’t really seek out the wider opinion about it so what I saw may be skewed. Anyway there seems no question to me that its approach in cinematic storytelling is somewhat different (I would say subpar) than what I would expect from a great movie.
On rotten tomatoes the 100% shows that everyone thought it was good rather than bad, not whether it was thought to be just above average or great.
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So this year at PÖFF, the local film festival, I conciously selected more films by women for viewing. And the selection was actually not just to give women more of a voice, but I think after seeing hundreds of movies per year for several years I'm actually a bit tired of the kind stories men tend to tell with cinema, and I'm actually finding that watching more movies by women can expand the space of the kinds of stories that I see.
I saw a total of 34 screenings. 2 of which were cassettes of shorts, so a total of 42 movies. 15 of the movies were directed by women, so not exactly half, but close. What I noticed was that not all women make films where women are depicted as equals of men. Especially a slavic film used many of the old patriarchic stereotypes. And actually one movie made by a man that by the description I thought would be somewhat sexist (The Bra), left an actually good impression with it's treatment of women, and actually somewhat less good with it's depiction of "normal men" (the main characters were somewhat of weirdos/outcasts).
Ok, I will now list some directors and movies that I liked.
I already mentioned Alice Rohrwacher and Happy as Lazzaro (Lazzaro felice). I've now also seen Corpo Celeste by the director and I think she's really a master already and can't wait to see her next movie. I find them really refreshing compared to most of cinema today.
Tatiana Margaux Bonhomme's feature debut is a really well made film Head Above Water (Marche ou crève) about a girl having to take care of her sister with a disabilty, while her parents' separation has made it harder for her. I had some issues with it, but I think overall it is an excellent debut.
Katherine Jerkovic also makes a strong feature debut with Roads in February (Les routes en février). It's a story of a young woman returning from Canada to Uruguay to reconnect with her grandmother after her father has passed away. Really beautiful scenery and relaxing atmosphere in this one.
An even stronger feature debut by Angelica Zollo is her experimental film Trauma is a Time Machine. The title is very apt: it explores how trauma (of rape) influences both the future and the past.
Cristina Callego is also a first time feature co-director behind Birds of Passage. She has also produced movies like Embrace of the Serpent. Birds of Passage tells the story of how the drug mafia got started in Colombia through the fall of tradition-respecting families for whom the business was too much. Quite impressively told.
Debra Granik's (Winter's Bone) new movie Leave No Trace is somewhat divisive. I thought the directing and cinematography were a bit weak, but some people love it. It's definitely a good story worth seeing.
Emily Atef's black and white 3 Days in Quiberon is an example of perfect photography in film. The contrast in each shot is incredibly well tuned. I think it's actually tuned way before shooting - even the shade of the costumes seems perfectly selected and I read somewhere that the film was based on real photographs of the event depicted, which is the German actress Romy Schneider being interviewed in a spa hotel over 3 days. I don't know much of the background but I think this interview is famous due to how personally revealing it was. And I think it's really well done not only visually, but also in tempo and everything. Plus it has some Denis Lavant in it.
Nadine Labaki is the Lebanese director responsible for Capernaum ( کفرناحوم ). This is a really harrowing story of a 12-year-old boy who has to take on more responsibility than even adults around him can handle.
Claudia Priscilla co-directed Bixa Travesty, a documentary about Mc Linn Da Quebrada, black trans woman, activist and performer from Sao Paolo. The film is really full of positive energy (and some nudity).
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The PÖFF festival is over and I can go back to normal life (of watching only one movie per day on average). The last movie I saw was also one of the strongest, The Tap Box, about a Vietnamese thug, who is also into the arts and is torn between having normal human feelings and wanting to do his job well. It features some great (to me) theater performances in costume.
[edit] the original title is Song Lang.
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Congrats! Very nice photos.
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Life
in Idle Banter
Yeah. I think we had many commonalities also, that even other people have noticed. And we shared some hobbies. But there were always big differences as well in the way we thought about everything. I thought I could ignore that to some degree, but eventually the differences grew more noticeable and it anyway led to what I now feel was an inevitable breaking.
I even now feel like maybe I should have broken it earlier, because I sometimes already felt these differences quite strongly 5 or more years ago. But he is a very active person in some ways and mostly he kept initiating things and often it was good to hang out together at least when certain things didn't come up. We also have a very large group of people in common - we worked together and even might again in the future, although I think I will now avoid going to work in the place he went to if there are other good options. And besides that I'm also now friends with a few of his childhood friends, with whom I now get along somewhat better than with him, even if we don't share as many hobbys and interests.
Anyway, I hope this will actually give me the push to make some new friends or strengthen some other friendships with people I have much more respect towards.
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I don't know how easy this movie will be to see, but Wandering Girl, while not perfect, is a really pretty movie about sisterhood and grief. I think with this film it really hit home for me that we men really need to find new ways to express masculinity that are free of the still current (toxic) idea of masculinity that is mostly related to aggression and emotionlessness. After seeing the movie I really feel in a bigger way than before that there's a big hole there that needs to be filled. I think the movie still has some male gaze in it (being directed by a man, even if with a mostly female crew and cast) but maybe the conflict between what seemed to me to be the male gaze and the tenderness of the rest of it, was deliberately so in the movie. I wanted to ask the director, who was there, but couldn't formulate the question well enough during the Q&A.
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I think I might add more to this thread after PÖFF, because here I'm watching many movies that are directed by women this year, but I want to mention one immediately.
Alice Rohrwacher is a very interesting director. I discovered here only now at the festival - her Happy as Lazzaro was the first movie I saw here and it was magical and touching. Then I proceeded to find her previous feature - the Cannes Grand Prix winner The Wonders, just saw it, and that is just as wonderful. Both movies are about people living somehow outmoded lives in modern Italian countryside. There is some kind of dreamlike magic in these movies that feels a bit like Tarkovsky. I like it a lot and I think she might become one of my favourite living directors.
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Life
in Idle Banter
About two weeks ago I got into an argument with a friend of 10 or so years that ended up breaking our friendship. So now I’m going through a sad period because in some ways he was a good friend and losing him hurts somewhat.
But on the other hand I’m feeling incredibly relieved, because we had been growing apart for the last several years and I hadn’t actually realized how burdensome his friendship had been mentally. It’s mostly about his worldview - he always presented himself as liberal, but in all arguments seemed to be taking the side of pick up artists, trolls and even neonazis up to some point for some inexplicable reason. He respects individual freedom and believes people should have equal opportunities, but then is completely privilege blind, believes himself to be higher than others (esp. e.g. restaurant staff), keeps insisting on using insulting terms for black people at least when none are around, thinks feminism is stupid etc.
I’m so glad to not have to deal with that any more.
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Long Day’s Journey Into Night is a really trippy movie. I don't know if it's the first movie to ever do this (someone tell me if you do know any others), but I think the director purposefully tried to make the viewers fall asleep during the first half so that they would identify better with the main character in the second half, which is a single hour long take in 3D. It worked in my case, but it also meant I didn't really follow the story up to the point where that starts.
Anyway, I'm kind of happy that I experienced it this way (accidentally), thanks to being really tired.
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Mandy and Ultra Pulpe (Apocalypse After) (short) are two movies I saw that have really cool audiovisual style. However, Mandy's (Nicholas Cage in the lead) plot is really straightforward revenge story that doesn't really have any interesting angle besides the style of the movie being kind of like Heavy Metal albums (kind of like the doomy parts of Brütal Legend I would maybe say).
Ultra Pulpe is made by Bertrand Mandico, who I find to be one of the interesting directors at the moment. It's somewhat erotic, like many (all?) of his films.
I thought both of the movies have somewhat of a Mario Bava like lighting style, and now it has made me want to do some rewatching of Mario Bava movies.
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Yeah, about two a day. So far it's been good mostly, today I gave up on Tumbbad, was too tired to see a third session, but now I see that it's getting some good ratings, so maybe it was a mistake... Anyway it seemed really overacted and a bit dumb in the 10 minutes I saw.
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I found it to be quite entertaining. Favourite is the prospector story. The limbless thespian story seemed to play with color correction too much, it even dipped into black & white, I think?
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I don't know if I want to dump on you all the good movies that I'm going to see at PÖFF during the next few weeks, but I saw two really good ones today, so very happy with how the festival is starting for me.
Happy as Lazzaro by Alice Rohrwacher is amazing, and I think it's on Netflix in some countries (not here)? It is emotionally very strong, it made me cry a bit and not a lot of movies have managed that lately. Initially I had a question why it looked technically almost sub-par but it seemed deliberate so I didn't let it distract me and I think in the end it's a justified look for the film. There is some magical realism which seems slightly off putting but also somehow feels justified in the end. There is complexity to this that I haven't seen in a lot of movies lately. I felt very emotionally connected to the movie throughout and maybe that just pushed the logical thinking to the background, but I got a feeling of mystery that I also haven't gotten lately from any other movies. Definitely recommend!
Also, I saw The Greenaway Alphabet, which is a movie about Peter Greenaway (The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover) made by his wife and with his daughter as the interviewer. It's quite interesting, and gives a little glimpse into who is Peter Greenaway.
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I just got tickets for 33 movies at PÖFF, and this means I’m going to watch 33 movies in cinemas during the next two and a half weeks, starting tomorrow. It’s a similar number of movies for the third year in a row, but I think this is the last time I’m going to do it at such a scale. It’s a bit overwhelming to make a plan to see this many movies. This time I mostly did it out of habit and because I was gifted a pass that gave me 30 free tickets that I can only use for myself.
I deliberately chose movies that would not be in cinemas after the festival, so it’s going to be a hit and miss probably. I think I also chose very different movies than on previous years, because I’ve seen a lot and I don’t want to necessarily see something similar to what I’ve seen before. That’s why I think that next year I will even not have a lot to choose from that won’t remind me of something else.
Also, on my mind lately is how to get back to watching higher quality movies, rather than a wide variety of different movies. Mubi has been great for me but it seems to be endless mediocrity lately.
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Has anyone seen Dirty Computer, the "Emotion Picture" by Janelle Monáe? I just watched it and it's visually amazing. Kind of a cross between movie and music video, I guess in the same way as Beyoncé's Lemonade, which I haven't seen. It reminds me a lot of Claire Boucher's (Grimes') videos and it's really just perfectly shot.
I don't know if it should be called movie? But then again I'm not sure if calling it an "emotion picture" is a bit pretentious, as if something completely new had been invented. Anyway, it's worth a watch, but most of it is just her music videos + some more stuff in between to tie some kind of basic boring story together.
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BTW. I realize I should have added an example. I don't know if I have a favourite, but this was pretty good analysis of some cultural aspects of The Love Witch
He looks at what the critics think are the influences on this film and then contradicts those with what the filmmaker Anna Biller has cited and explicitly referenced herself and then connects it to feminism and the male gaze of film historians. There's almost always something surprising an insightful (to me) similar to this in his videos.
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I've recently discovered a good film criticism channel on YouTube by Kyle Kallgren called Brows Held High: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0KaZd_ki4l2EUc1GY9u5Ew
I find that he draws interesting connections between things that I haven't usually thought of myself. Somewhat thanks to him being educated in theater IIRC. He is occasionally awkward and somewhy explicitly dwells on being awkward in the videos, but I got used to it. But anyway I find some of his reviews / vlogs really intriguing.
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I feel like I should give Annihilation another chance. I watched the botched release on Netflix that was 480p or something. And then I kept noticing all the other problems. Maybe a second watch sometime in the future if I manage to forget the plot...
I second that American Vandal is great and that Mute is horrible garbage and one of my biggest disappointments in a director ever.
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Sounds like I might want to check it out eventually despite the samey writing and cutscenes/gameplay separation. I will probably get the game after Sony releases a PlayStation with support for 4K Blu-Rays, although I still don't have a 4K display.
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Yeah, I caught up with the series now, that was a great episode.
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Oh yeah, I think it went well! Of course I did about half of the amount of shots I had planned, this is becoming normal. There was a lot of hassle moving the camera and lights around. Also there was a lot of trouble with a certain performance in the finale, but I think we got a good result. Just one minor scene left to shoot now, outdoors. Well, and a stop-motion animation, which I have very little idea how to shoot but I should be able to pull it off with relatively few stress compared to today.
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Well fuck me, I let my to-do list grow so long that I forgot to pick up lights from rental today. I feel so stupid. Luckily they are not essential for the location, there's enough natural light there... But I still would feel much better if I had some extra, so now I'll have to spend probably a good part of tomorrow dealing with finding some lights... (might be difficult here on a Saturday)
[edit]Yay, I got the lights, and even a better one, from a guy on local facebook group.
Movie/TV recommendations
in Movies & Television
Posted
Suspiria is great! It's really strange to think about the fact that the director's previous film was Call Me by Your Name, though. They are of so different genres. I think I miss some of the symbolism in Suspiria, but I think it does a really really good job of being both a good remake and a good film in its own right. Thankfully I have a really shitty memory so I don't even remember how precisiely it matches the oiriginal. But I think at least the ending is quite different. And maybe a bit over the top... or well... a lot over the top. The top is blown away by it... Not just the top.