It's fine to see history as a struggle between oppressors and oppressed—but does that mean a film denouncing colonialism needs to sanitize a figure like Fidel Castro? It's a mystery. Inserting product placements for Apple and Tesla also doesn't help—it just makes the filmmaker look less interested in exploring colonialism (or neo-colonialism, if that's his point) and more in signaling his own fashionable moral stance. It's disappointing, because there's a lot to like here. Excellent music and use of typography.
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Strong Island 2017
The film practically dares you to leave within its first five minutes—it's deliberately confrontational, and I appreciate the director making such a bold choice. It might benefit from tighter editing, but it uses film as a form of active grieving. I'm all down for that. The rawness is compelling, especially during the phone call with the detective and, even more powerfully, in the moments that follow, uncomfortable as they may be.
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Southern Comfort 1981
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
If you value your life, don’t steal another man’s canoe. The fragility of macho men. The final 15 minutes are incredibly effective, ramping up paranoia between the last two survivors. The cutting—between the men slogging through the swamp and the empty, early-morning landscape—feels less like a stylistic choice and more like a tic. You can tell the shots weren’t captured at the same time, and the repetition starts to pull you out rather than draw you in. But when the film closes in, when the Cajuns and the wilderness swallow these men whole, none of it matters.
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