Malarkey

I was aware of Belarusian totalitarianism, but until I saw this movie, I wasn’t able to find a deeper connection to this country. Hats off for being able to write such a story. It’s basically nothing more than a human story about a boy who gets taken down by a regime, therefore it’s a similar story as those created during totalitarianism in Czechoslovakia. The only difference is that while it’s all in the past over here, it’s harsh reality of the present times in Belarus. I must pay my respects to the director for having the strength to tell such a story. After the viewing, the movie had an even greater impact on me when the director passionately told us about how it’s practically all true. That makes it harder to even imagine it all. Don’t even get me started on the fact that it was hard for the Belarusian actors to even manage to shoot such a movie in their country. Truly, hats off! The only reason I’m not giving it five stars is because I got a little bit lost in that Belarusian jungle from time to time. While we complain about our president being a caricature, we must realize that things can always get worse. I must thank the 3Kino movie festival for letting me view this movie.

The purpose of this film isn’t to like its main characters, because that certainly won’t happen, but it demonstrates the acting skills of Al Pacino and Helen Mirren. And that’s about it.

Guillermo del Toro can create an atmosphere and a beautiful scenery; you can’t deny that with any of his movies. But the flow of storytelling can sometimes be an issue and it doesn’t let his movies be perfect experiences.For the first 50 minutes, I thought I’d die of the worst possible movie boredom. It wasn’t until Mia found out that she was on Crimson Peak that it all started to get good. Especially since the atmosphere of the house itself began to show. I must admit, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen two completely different movie halves. While the first half of the movie is awfully boring, the second half is what makes the movie worth watching.

Every now and then, it’s nice to watch a movie and have no idea what it’s about. Every now and then, it ends up bad. This time it ended up bad. I chose it because I saw Sweden as the place of filming. During the film, I quickly realized what it was all about. But I must admit that the story was told in quite an interesting way. The couple was terribly selfish, but it all seemed pretty realistic. I finally gave it a chance and despite a fewuseless scenes I managed.

I am aware that alternative realistic dramas can come up with different opinions and ideas here and there. But the Sleeping Giant tells the story of three bratswhose fingers I wanted to break as I watched everything they did in the otherwise beautiful countryside around Ontario. The scenes where they’re bashing a dead pigeon with a stick or burning some sort of a bug alive made my blood boil.

When Hoodwinked! appeared on the TV, I was thinking to myself how America is suddenly swarming with digitally animated movies that don’t really have an amazing animation, but to make up for it, they’re full of fresh and sometimes even adult humor, at least for a fairytale. But that was before I knew that Hoodwinked! was a success, even though the animation truly isn’t amazing in any way. This movie also rode that wave and just like Hoodwinked!, at moments it brought quite a vulgar humor that isn’t childishly kind like in Pixar movies. Don’t even get me started on the quality. However, it’s funny and it was a certain fresh charm. It’s sort of a punk amongst all the other animated fairytales.

The description and synopsis really enticed me to watch what they promised was a good Nordic drama flick. However, already as I was watching the film, I felt as if some Danish guy had felt like making a proper and depressing Scandinavian drama but had forgotten to include in it everything that makes these movies so unique. I didn’t like the fact that they were speaking English, the nonsensical bits in the screenplay were striking and the only thing that tended to have any kind of value was the cinematography.

A very nice final performance by Vlastimil Brodský. With a story as wacky as this one, the result couldn’t have been different. With the second half of the movie you can clearly see how hard our significant other can affect us and how much we’re able to get isolated in ourselves afterwards. But in the end, the ending was good, so all was well. Autumn Spring contains a beautiful story-telling magic and it presents the fact that you can live your life to the fullest regardless of how old you are. All it takes is not giving up.

Kevin Spacey plays the part of a poor guy beset by tragedy and the atmosphere of the film is really bleak and depressing. But in the setting of Canadian Newfoundland, it all comes together to form such a magical whole that even when not much was happening in the movie, I was really enjoying the shots of the countryside, which literally took my breath away.

I do admit that at first I didn’t really feel like watching this flick. It was somehow getting under my skin that animals in a real, non-animated world could speak and that they spoke English. But after about ten minutes and several nice shots, I decided to bear with the film to see what would come out of it. I mean the book itself, written by Rudyard Kipling, had a very clever plot. And well, what eventually came out of it was one of the most beautiful digital films that I have ever seen. I don’t think you will be able to see such beautiful shots of the jungle anywhere else. It might be because of the digital effects. But it is a treat to watch it and once you’ve watched it, you will realize that you will never see a better adaptation of Kipling’s book in your lifetime.