I really can’t describe why, but the last month’s film offerings were kind of naff. Well, most of them. Some were really good and amongst the year’s best. Others were like watching England play in the Euros, although at the time of writing, looks like we only need to deal with ten more minutes of it.
I know that if you read this blog, you probably scroll right to the end to see the film of the month, realise you haven’t seen it and don’t want to as it’s some depressing artsy black and white foreign film and click away. Therefore, maybe I should excite you by saying something here. There are pixars, bikes… what’s that, you scrolled already? Sure, whatever. Let’s get on with it.
The first two films I saw this month were competitive for worst film of the month. Somehow A House In Jerusalem wasn’t the worst film of the month. This is despite it being E.T. but instead of an alien, you have the ghost of a dead Palestinian child. A girl who’s lost her mother moves with her Dad to a house in Jerusalem, which is haunted by a young girl who seems to have died a while back. She wants to re-unite the ghost with her family, there is a flying bike ride, some nasty police, you know it. While it’s heart was in the right place, this film was awful. Most sentences were three or fewer words “You alright kid?” “What’s going on?” “No, Dad, No!”. The acting was equally naff. Frankly, the whole film was twaddle.
Riddle of Fire was ultra low budget, like ultra low. It had a lot of charm, much like a disney film of old. Three young paintballing bikeriders, follow a cult into the forest to steal an egg back, so they can make their ill mother a blueberry pie. The villains were the right balance of scary and kid friendly, and there was a nice energy. Regardless of the forced music cues and the questionable child acting, there was enough here to keep me entertained, even if the quality was lacking.
Rosalie was a French film about a very hairy bearded woman learning to love her flaws despite pressure from the outside world, eventually embracing her life as a freak show. So yeah, it’s pretty much The Greatest Showman, but as it’s French, there’s less catchy pop bops and more sex scenes. It was a perfectly passable, well enough acted movie. It didn’t really say much, and was kind of just average. Sorry, I’m trying to get the average films out of the way to talk about the good ones.
It wasn’t until a last minute review of the blog post that I realised I forgot to review Inside Out 2. Set two years after the first one, life is going great for Riley, she’s about to turn 13 and is enjoying her hockey playing life. However, when she turns 13 and puberty begins, her emotions become heightened and some new buddies come along in the form of Ennui (boredom), Envy, Embarrassment and Anxiety. While the first three are pretty minor, the latter causes all sorts of chaos. I’d say this film was better than the original, with a deeper and more nuanced message. However, the pacing issues and action adventure can be a bit dull. Anxiety was a welcome heartfelt character, and really brought in a nice message and antagonist to the over-bearing, annoying Joy. If you liked the first, this is a good more of the same. If you didn’t, this is a bad more of the same. It’s fairly standard average Pixar-fare of the last few years with enough feel good and over the top characters to keep the kids and those adults who want to be entertained.
The Bikeriders provided a return to the classic bloke cinema sort of movie. Austin Butler plays a young motorist, Benny who is part of a gang formed by Tom Hardy’s lead, Jonny . In amongst his coming of age, Benny also falls for Kathy. The film documents the start of the Chicago Vandals. We see this group expand from a group of riders to arsonists to a full on gang, with Jonny and Benny seemingly swept along.
While this feels like a well tread set of themes with gangs and passions, it’s fair to say The Bikeriders doesn’t reinvent the wheel (or the other wheel). However, it’s a perfectly solid film. Austin Butler is great, almost to the point I forgive him for Elvis, as re Hardy and Comer. The characters all look like their real life counterparts, and it’s a snappy well paced film. As in most blokey films, the emotions feel little more than surface level, but the general audience for this film won’t care. A perfectly fine day out if it’s hot and you’re looking for air conditioning.
For quite a while, Lumberjack the Monster looked like it might be my film of the month. A solid film, it certainly didn’t feel worthy of such a title. The new film from Takashi Miike (Audition, amongst others) we start off with a detective braking into a home, where two adults have been experimenting on children’s brains. We then flash forward to the future where psychopath Akira (who’s favourite thing to do is monologuing about being a psychopath) is being hunted down by a mysterious serial killer dressed as Lumberjack the Monster. He also wants to find him before the police do.
This “Netflix Original” is a classic Japanese B-Movie with a convoluted plot, plenty of blood and thrills and some nonsense melodrama. It’s a pretty fun movie, and fans of the sort of action murder thriller blood squirt genre will be enamoured by this movie, which I am glad didn’t make film of the month.
From bloody Japanese films to sweet intimate Cape Verdan films about a six year old girl and her relationship with her nanny, Ama Gloria may be the polar opposite of the film I just described, but it was just as interesting. Cleo and her nanny Gloria have a really sweet relationship, particularly with Cleo not having a mother, Gloria has taken over that role. However, upon the death of Gloria’s mother, Gloria must return from France to Cabo Verde, and agrees to take Gloria along for the summer.
A light slice of life film, this certainly has lots going on. Gloria has two children of her own, a daughter who is heavily pregnant and a son, slightly older than Cleo, who is jealous that Cleo essentially stole his mother from him. Everyone deals with grief, Cleo being reminded of her own experience. She also feels that she is about to lose her mother again, with saying goodbye to Gloria very soon. This sort of film can be made or broken by a child actor, and thankfully six year old Louise Panzani is fantastic in her role. The film is a warm hug, with characters having real struggles. It gives a look into island life and into the eyes of each character with their issues in a quiet understated way. It’s a really wonderful movie.
Worst Film of the Month
I know my film taste comes across as pretentious, I’m very aware. However, occassionally I find a film so pretentious, so French and so wanky that even I’m like “Jeez, give me a marvel movie over this”. The Beast does that. It’s a dull film about a woman who replaces her emotions to get a job from AI, except this needs to be done through arduous flashbacks to her past lives where she keeps finding George Mackay. It’s slow, it’s dull and I wanted to leave after twenty minutes as there is no hook. To show how artsy and shite this film is, to make a statement, the credits are a QR code. I would write more, but I’ve already forgotten most of it, thank goodness.
Film of the Month
Sure, you probably don’t want to watch Green Border as it’s a depressing artsy black and white foreign film. However, it is an incredible study of an urgent issue, made with empathy, looking at the best and worst of humanity and how they look at power. This 2.5 hour film starts off with a Syrian family flying to Belarus as they know that Lukashenko will allow them across the border into Poland, in the EU. However, this hopeful film soon takes a dark turn as the Polish border guards send them back to Belarus when nobody is looking. This cycle repeats again and again, with the characters getting weaker and more desperate. The film also focuses on
This incredible movie shows the themes of power as well as society’s perception of these people. Many times they’re called Lukashenko’s weapons, and the cruel treatment is actively ignored, even in people’s faces. There are some genuinely horiffic scenes in this movie as people die and at one point a pregnant woman is thrown over a barbed fence. It really was an upsetting and difficult watch at times. However, cinema is meant to be an empathy machine. It’s controversial in Poland where the Government tried to stop the director making the film. It’s also smart, unapologetically contrasting Poland’s generous response to the Ukraine crisis with that of the Green Border, something I was considering during the runtime, as that was the response I was more aware of.
As well as being evocative, the film was technically great. The cinematography showed some really powerful shots, even in the black and white style. Meanwhile, the script was clever and every single actor was just phenomenal. It was well paced, making all two and a half hours feel important and urgent, even when you couldn’t see the characters. The cast list was so big that at times, you’d lose track of where everyone was, or even not hear about certain characters again, instead fearing the worst in this chaotic uncertainty, a reality for these families.
Green Border is one of the best and most important films of the year, so I do implore you to check it out if you can find it.
Well, maybe one more week of football
The Film Ramble 