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Reviews
Summerland (2020)
Quite Good
This is a period piece of wartime Britain and a writer who faces challenges the war brought to the home front.
Summerland is a very beautiful film with a superb script and excellent acting. It suffers only a little sentimentality however it's able to succeed and earn its wonderful denouement.
We stumbled upon the film quite by accident on Sunday afternoon and were well pleased we had. It's the transformative story of a misanthrope; how she became the way she is known in the coastal village where she resides as the "beast on the beach" and how the overcoming of obstacles produces a better version of herself.
Lovely and beautiful.
LandLocked (2021)
Brilliant.
This is the best found footage movie I have ever seen. It travels at the speed of life before slipping into the nooks and crannies of memory and desire. A film about filming. What we we see. What we wish wed'd seen and splitting the difference. A boy and his memories and the importance of salvaging them before it all comes crashing down. And the nexus comes and the point of no return comes and goes; then it happens. And you're never sure it happened at all.
Brilliant filmmaking from a new talent I can hardly wait where he goes next and what he'll find there.
Highly appreciated and recommended to film aficionados and lovers of story.
Nanny (2022)
Heartbreaking and Beautiful
More psychological suspense than horror Nanny is a character sketch of a Senegalese mother in the US working to bring her son to her. Premonitions and fable mix with surreal episodes foreshadowing a most realistic and yet still utterly heartbreaking denouement.
Admittedly this is a film not for everyone but for those seeking the depths of human suffering and resilience will find much here. The acting by lead Anna Diop is superb and the script a brilliantly drawn series of tense line between privilege, motherhood and the capitalism of sacrifice. This is the story of the violence wrought from circumstance and opportunity which ends on a beautiful wave of optimism.
Men (2022)
Constant Craving
Two of the finest actors today brilliantly portray the incessant male gaze (if you will) and the mental anguish it produces in a unceasing maelstrom of dread and horror. An utterly grotesque and perfect transformation of male disturbances come to birth an inevitable plea for love and attention which can only be responded to with resignation and violence.
The Black Phone (2021)
Satisfying
Film has a great conceit (thanks to Joe Hill, right) but with some pacing and acting issues. It's also metaphorically a little on the nose. Stand up to bullies.
This Is Going to Hurt (2022)
Brilliant
TV drama doesn't get any better than this the story of a broken system and the people who do their absolute best to keep it together. Focused primarily on the ravages faced by a young OBYGN doctor, Adam Kay, the seven episode series is often hilarious (gallows humor), sarcastic, beautiful and gut wrenching. Based on Kay's memoir of the same name this is highly recommended television in an age of soap operas and endless superheroes showcasing the best and worst of our actions in a morally ambiguous world.