Maximus Powers' Short Film Collection

[Alpha Blondy]

 

Shot on location under dangerous conditions, "Paradise Now" feels both realistic and fictional. The awful reality of the situation is driven home through conventions we can recognize--the pining mother, the botched mission, the last-minute love affair, and the humor that somehow always finds its way into the most serious moments. "Paradise Now" goes down easy but is difficult to digest. Abu-Assad makes it possible to understand how a person, driven by desperation, hatred, and shame, might end up committing the most heinous acts. But understanding is not the same as sympathy or forgiveness.

 

8.5/10

[Alpha Blondy]

 

A police procedural like no other, Bong Joon-ho's Memories of Murder (2003) has the epic aura of a sociographic novel, but you won't see a less pretentious movie this year. Set in 1986 and loosely based on what's been called South Korea's first serial-killer case, the film encourages ambivalences to grow like super-weeds, gumming up what is traditionally experienced as the most logical of narrative pleasures. An entire battered swath of recent Korean history sneaks into the movie's margins, underneath its deadpan surfaces, and amid the unsolvable mysteries of dark places, moonlit fields, and unseen events. It's an altogether remarkable piece of work, deepening the genre while whipping its skin off, satirizing an entire nation's nearsighted apathy as it wonders, almost aloud, about the nature of truth, evidence, and social belonging.

 

9/10.

 

Dedicated to the memory of Dr. Adam Zayla, a friend and a Korean Cinema Expert. Dr.Zayla, died earlier this year from leukemia. Our thoughts are with his loved ones, indeed.

[Alpha Blondy]

 

Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, Armin Mueller-Stahl, and Vincent Cassel star in this David Cronenberg's thriller concerning a London midwife who unwittingly stumbles into a clandestine Russian sex trafficking ring. An unidentified Russian teen has been rushed to a London hospital after going into labor. Though midwife Anna Khitrova (Watts) does manage to deliver a healthy baby girl, the newborn's mother dies tragically during delivery. But the deceased mother's secrets did not die with her, because she has left behind a diary.

 

8/10.

[Alpha Blondy]

 

 

A powerful, complex Iranian drama centres on a conflict that cuts across boundaries of gender and class. An unhappily married couple break up in this complex, painful, fascinating Iranian drama by writer-director Asghar Farhadi, with explosive results that expose a network of personal and social faultlines. A Separation is a portrait of a fractured relationship and an examination of theocracy, domestic rule and the politics of sex and class – and it reveals a terrible, pervasive sadness that seems to well up through the asphalt and the brickwork. In its depiction of national alienation in Iran, it's comparable to the work of Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof. But there is a distinct western strand. The film shows a middle-class household under siege from an angry outsider; there are semi-unsolved mysteries, angry confrontations and family burdens: an ageing parent and two children from warring camps appearing to make friends. All these things surely show the influence of Michael Haneke's 2005 film Hidden. Farhadi, like Haneke, takes a scalpel to his bourgeois homeland.

 

9/10.

[Alpha Blondy]

 

Two boys learn the hard way about how a marriage falls apart in this independent comedy drama. Bernard (Jeff Daniels) is a novelist whose career has gone into a slow decline as he spends more time teaching and less time writing. His wife, Joan (Laura Linney), meanwhile, has recently begun publishing her own work to widespread acclaim, which only increases the growing tension between them. One day, Bernard and Joan's two sons -- 16-year-old Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) and 12-year-old Frank (Owen Kline) -- are told that their parents are separating, with Bernard renting a house on the other side of their Park Slope, Brooklyn, neighborhood. As the parents set up a schedule for spending time with their children, Walt and Jesse can hardly imagine that things could get more combative between their folks, but they do, as Joan begins dating Ivan (William Baldwin), Frank's tennis instructor, and Bernard starts sharing the house with Lili (Anna Paquin), one of his students. Meanwhile, the two boys begin taking sides in the battle between their parents, with Walt taking after his father and Frank siding with his mom. Based on writer/director Noah Baumbach's own childhood experiences with his parents' divorce, The Squid and the Whale won prizes for writing and direction at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival.

 

8/10

[Alpha Blondy]

 

In a small, remote mountain top primary school in the Kenyan bush, hundreds of children are jostling for a chance for the free education newly promised by the Kenyan government. One new applicant causes astonishment when he knocks on the door of the school. He is Maruge (Oliver Litondo), an old Mau Mau veteran in his eighties, who is desperate to learn to read at this late stage of his life. He fought for the liberation of his country and now feels he must have the chance of an education so long denied - even if it means sitting in a classroom alongside six-year-olds. Moved by his passionate plea, head teacher Jane Obinchu (Naomie Harris), supports his struggle to gain admission and together they face fierce opposition from parents and officials who don't want to waste a precious school place on such an old man.

 

9/10

[Alpha Blondy]

 

In 1999, retired Argentinian federal justice agent Benjamín Espósito is writing a novel, using an old closed case as the source material. That case is the brutal rape and murder of Liliana Coloto. In addition to seeing the extreme grief of the victim's husband Ricardo Morales, Benjamín, his assistant Pablo Sandoval, and newly hired department chief Irene Menéndez-Hastings were personally affected by the case as Benjamín and Pablo tracked the killer, hence the reason why the unsatisfactory ending to the case has always bothered him. Despite the department already having two other suspects, Benjamín and Pablo ultimately were certain that a man named Isidoro Gómez is the real killer. Although he is aware that historical accuracy is not paramount for the novel, the process of revisiting the case is more an issue of closure for him. He tries to speak to the key players in the case, most specifically Irene, who still works in the justice department and who he has always been attracted to but never pursued due to the differences in their ages and social classes. The other issue is that Gómez is still at large, no one aware if he is alive or dead. But as Pablo at the time mentioned that passion is one thing that cannot be changed in behavior, Benjamín learns now that that premise still holds true.

 

10/10.

[Alpha Blondy]

 

Widowed for a long time, a mother lives alone with her only son. He is 28 years old, a shy and quiet young man. One day there is a terrible murder, and the woman’s hopeless, helpless son becomes the prime suspect. There is no real evidence against him, but the police groundlessly suspect him almost instantly. The trouble is that there is no way he can prove his innocence. Eager to close the case, the police are happy with their cursory investigation and they arrest the boy. His defense attorney turns out to be incompetent and unreliable and a conviction seems inevitable. So, faced with no other choice, his mother gets involved, determined to prove her son’s innocence.

 

9/10.

[Alpha Blondy]

 

Espinoza (Ricardo Darin) is an introverted taxidermist who dreams of executing the perfect robbery. On his first ever hunting trip, in the calm of the Patagonian forest, Espinoza accidentally kills a man who turns out to be a real criminal and becomes heir to his scheme: the heist of an armoured van carrying casino profits. Caught up in a world of complex rules and frightening violence, Espinoza's inexperience puts him in real danger. However, he has another liability: he is an epileptic. Before each unexpected seizure he experiences the "aura": a paradoxical moment of confusion and enlightenment.

 

9/10.

[Alpha Blondy]

 

In a village in Protestant northern Germany, on the eve of World War I, the children of a church and school run by the village schoolteacher and their families experience a series of bizarre incidents that inexplicably assume the characteristics of a punishment ritual. Who could be responsible for such bizarre transgressions?

 

9/10.

[Chimera]

So this is what the leader of the inaar-inkaar crew keeps himself busy with when not torturing innocent maids? Alphy son, I am disappoint. The entire topic is filled with melo-dramatic crybaby nonsense hoping for Oscar glory, while in the process raping the countries and cultures the films are set in.

 

What a waste.

[Alpha Blondy]

D/P

[Safferz]

You have a great taste in movies, Alpha.

[Alpha Blondy]

^ thanks. that's the nicest thing you've ever said about me. thanks.

 

 

Biutiful is the journey of Uxbal, a conflicted man who struggles to reconcile fatherhood, love, spirituality, crime, guilt and mortality amidst the dangerous underworld of modern Barcelona. His livelihood is earned out of bounds, his sacrifices for his children know no bounds. Like life itself, this is a circular tale that ends where it begins. As fate encircles him and thresholds are crossed, a dim, redemptive road brightens, illuminating the inheritances bestowed from father to child, and the paternal guiding hand that navigates life's corridors, whether bright, bad - or biutiful. At the heart of Biutiful is the intimate, powerful story of Uxbal, a man who finds himself desperately alone, trying to maintain his balance between survival in a marginal neighborhood and safeguarding the future of his young children who are floating aimlessly through life.

 

10/10.

[SomaliPhilosopher]

Alpha Blondy;927275 wrote:

 

From its arresting opening to its shattering conclusion, the Canadian film Incendies is muscular, emotional film-making of the highest order, self-confident in its delivery yet always respectful of its characters' plight. A bona fide masterpiece. As simple as that. It is ironic that one of the best films about the Middle East conflict, and specifically the tragic civil war in Lebanon, should be made by a Canadian film maker. Incendies is based on a play but it feels as though it has been adapted from a great literary work. In fact there is no specific mention of any country in the film but no one can be in any doubt that the unnamed country is Lebanon.

 

There are extremely powerful and unforgettable images and scenes in Incendies. The result is a staggeringly powerful film whose story is so well revealed by a cast of sterling actors that telling too much of the plot would be a disservice to those who come to this experience for the first time. Incendies is simply one of the finest films of the decade and it bound to become a permanent part of the cinematic library.

 

10/10

 

Dedicated to Oba. To whom, I'll forever be grateful for recommending one of the greatest films I've ever seen. Thanks inaar. Al.

Boy did this movie take a turn...