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Reviews
Home (2023)
Gripping, sad, angering and moving. Well worth the watch.
When I first decided to go to this Israeli movie, showing at the Jewish International Film Festival in Australia I just knew the bare bones of the plot outline - an ultra orthodox Haredi man, Yair, living in an ultra orthodox enclave in Jerusalem decides to suspend his yeshiva studies to start his own business, namely a computer shop. As the community he belongs to disapproves of modern things like radio, TV and the internet which they consider to be evilly corrupting, he has his work cut out for him to gain acceptance of his shop. As I watched the movie which movingly depicted his struggles with the organised community and the effect of this on him and his wife I really felt for both of them. The villains seemed to be realistically portrayed and I had very little sympathy for them and their attitudes, quite apart from their thuggish and corrupt standover tactics. Yet the movie seemed very much about real people rather than a simple polemic. Of course the ultra orthodox people against whom he struggled will never see the movie as they don't go to movies either. But I felt the story was one which was worthy of being told. I was mildly surprised to read on screen at the end that the movie was actually based on fact and later read that it is actually based on the life of the writer/director. I'm so glad he made this moving and meaningful movie.
Long Story Short (2021)
Charming with simple message.
For a movie with a magical premise this is meaningful and smile inducing funny. Not quite romantic comedy, not quite morality take, it's just a fairly simple story with a fantasy premise. Although the protagonist (Rafe Spall) is a procrastinator par excellence we feel for him as his life goes haywire, advancing one year every few hours or minutes. We also care about the various people in his life. There are no villains - just essentially nice humans with various degrees of imperfections. The only character with no flaws is his young daughter, played successively by three charming young actresses. The movie finishes in a predictable but satisfying way.
A Good Person (2023)
A movie for people who care about people.
Zach Braff wrote and directed this excellent movie which is all about real flawed people you care about. You want to hug them at times, kick them in the backside sometimes and sometimes just cry for them or cry with them. While there is tragedy at the beginning which provides the impetus for the rest of the narrative, it is essentially a positive movie which shows people linked by family or by events helping and hindering each other in their struggle to get on with life despite the setbacks of events, the traumas of their pasts, addiction issues and their own faulty actions. The acting is uniformly superb, including of course that of Morgan Freeman. Almost all of the scenes are entirely believable and the overall flow of setbacks and redemption rings true. A great movie for people who want to spend a couple of hours feeling empathy for others.
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2020)
Vomit worthy gross out unpleasantness.
While there are a few laughs to be had in this concoction, the disgusting attempts at gross out shocks are not funny or clever or nice. Getting an actress to portray a fifteen year old girl doing a dance at a debutantes ball in which she lifts up her skirt to expose her menstrual bleeding crotch in front of stunned legitimate ball attenders is sick. If Sacha Baron Cohen is trying to satirise himself it might just pass, but as an expose of anyone else it fails miserably. Yuck!
Knives Out (2019)
It's more fun reading the 1 star reviews
I thought this movie was supposed to be a mystery comedy. The only mystery was why it was made and the only comedy was Daniel Craig's unnecessary half hearted attempt at a southern accent. Having a plot in which not a single character has any resemblance to an actual human being is not funny - it's just stupid and boring. The horrible dim yellow green lighting and art direction throughout hurt my eyes. And one last thing not mentioned by any reviewers who either favoured or like me hated this waste of electrons - the accompanying score was the most unimaginative generic movie score I've ever heard.
IMDb Originals: Rian Johnson: Crafting the Perfect Plot Twist (2019)
Pleasant 5 minutes of information.
This is not meant to be an academic exposition of how to write a brilliant plot twist. It is just a pleasant talk about the idea of plot twists giving examples of different movies with different kinds of twists without actually revealing any spoilers. Makes me want to see some of the movies described.
Roma (2018)
Don't bother.
With all the rave reviews I can only imagine that there has been a sophisticated hacking of IMDB by someone who would benefit. Having watched this boring nothing of a movie I totally agree with all the one star raters. Pretentious bilge.