2024-01-17 13:56:21
There is such a matter of momentum, that it is easier to write about a film after you see it – or close to it – and close to when it hit the screens and is relevant. It’s not necessarily that the thoughts are sharper or more organized (on the contrary, occasionally the reviews that think about the film longer are better) but that when there is some pressure of time, the words spill out more easily.
Anyway, it’s not like I need excuses: even without all this war business there are movies that just get missed because you’re not sure what exactly to say about them. Because you saw them months before they came out in theaters. Because a host of reasons. Either way, it’s also a shame not to refer to them – certainly for the best among them, for those who are still debating whether to go see them. So below: some recommendations, most of them relevant for the previous year, some for the new year, and all of them for those who wonder whether it is worth watching a movie or not. So below are seven reviews of various lengths on various films.
nobody’s children andThe giants of Easter Island
Let’s start with the slightly less good movies – neither “Nobody’s Children” nor “The Giants of Easter Island” are bad movies, but both movies could have been better if someone had adjusted my genre expectations, or if the director had decided to make his film in a different genre. In the case of “Nobody’s Children” it is understandable: realistic dramas about hard-working people is a respectable Israeli genre, and despite a plot element that makes everything look a little ridiculous, I understand why Erez Tadmor chose to take the story of a householder who discovers that he has to manage A shelter for youth in need, and at a time when the municipality wants to delete it for another real estate project for the rich, seriously. And Roy Assaf, as usual, gives a good performance in the film. For those who have not seen one or another version of such a film – in Hebrew, Italian, English – there is a situation That this version will work well. Those who did see it, can only dream of a day when such films will be made as comedies. In fact, it has already happened, but this is a spoiler for the rest of the article.
But if Damor is still closed to himself, what the hell is going on in “Giants of Easter Island”? Apparently, a drama about a Georgian family, probably in the late seventies. The main protagonist is the little boy trying to navigate the world under the watchful eye of his father, but his older sister and her romantic problems also take up a good part of the film. However, a “family drama” can go in many directions and indeed each actor seems to pull in a different direction: Gabri Nai in the role of the grandfather looks like he’s still in the detective movie, the character of the criminal neighbor looks like he came out of an anime, some of the kids look like they came out of a coming-of-age comedy, and the rest The characters look like they came out of an immigrant drama that has trouble acclimatizing to a new country. Someday all of this is also, it turns out, supposed to become a romantic comedy – something I didn’t understand because at no point did I understand why I should be in favor of the main romantic couple. In short, a mess.
However, a mess is at least something fun to watch. Something that surprises you and catches you off guard. Indeed, with scenes like a chick on a hot air balloon, there is no doubt that there is no real equivalent to such a film. It’s not even the popular Balkan comedies with the strange characters – something is simply out of sync with itself in a deeper way, and there are moments it works, and there are moments it doesn’t, but all along you at least want to know what’s going on here. It’s not “so bad it’s good” or something like that, but yes “interesting enough that it’s worth seeing if you get it”. Not the warmest recommendation I’ve had the chance to recommend, but it’s not a non-recommendation either.
Everything is fine with Georgie andrun on the sand
If the previous films were grouped under the banner of “Israeli films that are not necessarily in the right genre”, then the above two films are grouped under “very cute films about a not so cute subject”. These abandoned children and African refugees are subject to, well, depressing dramas Very lucky that no one told that to Charlotte Regan and Ader Shaffern, the directors of the aforementioned films.
“Everything is fine with Georgie” is a film about Georgie, a 12-year-old girl who lives alone after her mother dies. She lies to the welfare services that she lives with some kind of guardian, and she does the whole part of surviving herself with the help of street wisdom and one lonely friend. And really, everything is fine – until some one arrives, her father (Harris Dickinson), whom she has never seen before.
The film deals with Georgie’s attempt to deal with this bastard who no one asked for and now claims to be trying to take care of her, and with his attempt to understand what it even means to be a father to a girl you abandoned. As mentioned, it’s really very cute, and short and it’s completely enough. “Georgie” doesn’t deliver anything too new, but it’s in the right place on the kitsch-cynicism scale as it doesn’t hide from the hard things Georgie is going through, and still finds the funny and moving moments through them.
If “Georgie” is entirely within the legacy of “cute little films about hard-working people”, then “Running on the Sand” is a little more rare bird in the cinematic area – a sports comedy, without too much sport, on a depressing subject And very political. You can say that it’s something between “Ted Lasso” (because it’s about a cute man in the world of football who makes everyone cute) and “Shoshana Halutz Central” (because it combines football and a dormant political issue), and I’ve already heard that this tone of comedy is somewhat far-fetched (like the best comedies The sport) made him a little upset about the third act in light of the subject that requires a slightly darker world view.
But this is where the main character Omari (played by Shawn Mongoza), an optimistic person who does not know how to think darkly, enters the picture. Even though he has been in Israel for some time and there is no news from his brother who is also supposed to arrive from Eritrea, he does not stop believing that he will arrive. As he says in one of the best punches of the film – “The pessimists died in the desert”.
But he doesn’t just wait for others to do the work for him and when he is caught by the immigration police, he runs away and ends up on the wrong road to a football team because of a mistake in identification that requires a certain response from the spectators. By and large, the rest of the movie is mostly pretty cute behavior on the part of Omari, who has to pretend – at least for a while – that he is a football player, the team suspicious of the new player, and the owners suspicious of his strange behavior.
And it’s very funny and very cute and at times it’s also very beautifully photographed, and it’s just fun. You can certainly complain about the way the film gives the impression that Israeli society is less racist than it is or something, but you can also forget about it and enjoy a laugh-out-loud comedy that becomes a hit in Israel even though it is about a difficult subject. The choice is yours.
The Snow Brotherhood
“Brotherhood of the Snow” by Juan Antonio Bayona (“The Impossible”, “Seven Minutes After Midnight”) is at the same time the kind of film that you never see again and the kind of film that you must see a second time.
There is no chance of seeing it again, because the story is about the rugby team that got stuck in the Andes mountains in 1972 after a plane crash, and the film does not revel in the horrors that follow – from the crash itself to the extreme measures that have to be taken in light of the fact that they are stuck in snow mountains with no chance of being rescued – but he probably didn’t avoid presenting them. The film wisely examines its level of resolution to avoid becoming some kind of trash movie and still make clear the depth of the horror that is in it. Where other directors would have dwelled on the malnutrition or the required solution, Bayona films the black urine of the survivors. Everyone has their own sensitivity, but it’s definitely not “Paddington 3” or something.
You have to see it a second time, because the movie really assumes that you not only know the story and the characters, but that you know who is who, what is his salient characteristic, and what is his connection to each of the characters. And at first viewing, well, it’s a bit difficult with a cast of unknowns who mostly look the same.
But the truth is that even without a second viewing, something about “Brotherhood of the Snow” just works – because more than it is a film about one specific character, it is a film about survival in difficult conditions, and about the question of why survive in the first place. As with the question of atrocities, this is a film that is not afraid of religious connections, but also does not wallow in them at every opportunity (and here, too, each has his own threshold of sensitivity and interpretation). And Iona knows that when your story is crazy enough anyway, you can linger and take a breath and not try to force the viewers to the edge of their seats.
If there’s one gripe about the film, it’s that it’s on Netflix and not in theaters, where it belongs. Because it also works on the small screen, but its stunning views, its immersive music, and its atmosphere should be experienced in the most absorbing way possible and on the biggest possible screen.
rice boy
And from a very big movie to a very small movie: “Rice Boy” is one of those movies that it’s hard to understand why they aren’t and others are. Was there only one place for a film about the transition from Korea to North America, the difficulties it creates, the language and culture gaps, and therefore “A Whole Life” won and “Rice Boy” was abandoned? It doesn’t seem that way, and the main problem was that the film simply wasn’t released in the United States in cinemas, but only on streaming (another proof that this is a method that is mainly a pasture for films). All of this comes to be upset about this miss, because, well, “Rice Boy” is a terribly successful movie.
“Rice Boy” tells the story of a South Korean single mother who moved to Canada and is now trying to raise her child. The story mainly focuses on two periods – when the child is 5 years old and when he is 16 years old, and the focus between the child and the mother shifts accordingly. The film simultaneously tries to reflect the hardships of someone who is trying to raise an independent child who is also her almost only stable connection, and also someone who seems to be torn between two different worlds – the South Korean world full of traditions, and the borderless Western world.
There is not a lot of drama here – as in “A Whole Life”, the main point is in the emotions that accompany the drama, not in far-fetched events and shouts of “You don’t understand me!” such And the beauty of the film is that it manages to connect you to dilemmas and emotions – both on the part of the parent and the child.
In English, “Yild Orez” is called “Yild Orez Yeshan” – a tribute to the album that Anthony Shim, the director, listened to while writing the script – and in Hebrew they dropped the “old” in the hope that you won’t sleep on this film (to borrow American slang for a moment). I’m not sure it worked, but if it’s still showing in a cinema near you, and you’re looking for an exciting, smart, and comforting movie – this is the movie for you.
A look at the relationship
And we’ll end with a movie that actually suits him quite well, and he even came out to Israel with the name… perfectly fine. A lot of people complained about him, and I understand the complaint in principle (“a peek into the relationship” describes almost every movie) but practically I’m fine with him. It doesn’t sound blatant or terrible, and it’s admittedly less cool than “May December”, but that’s about its only crime. We’ve known worse translations than “something that makes it less cool there”.
In any case, “A Glimpse of Relationships” is a quite fascinating film that deserves a complex analysis of how it looks at relationships, at communication, at media in general – except that in the last review I am collecting reviews for a film I saw on a cell phone in the middle of a desert, and it is possible that I am not the person who should do the This surgery.
Instead, as a person who saw this film on a small screen in the middle of a desert with cannons thundering overhead I will say that even in these no-conditions, the film just grabs you. It’s a very funny, very smart film, and it’s played wonderfully by its three main actors – the two women, it’s not clear who’s playing who, Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore, and who’s caught between a rock and a hard place and I wish he’d be able to get an Oscar nomination for this one-off role – Charles Melton.
And since these all sound like pretty small praise, let’s give a praise that is a praise I hate to give – because I hate to judge between films – but is perhaps true in a more analytical context. At the same time as “A Glimpse of Relationships”, “Killers of the Moon Flower” was released – two very different films, but both surprisingly end with a similar beat that speaks of the insignificance of cinema’s ability to touch the real story of people, and how cinema almost automatically turns everything into an unsuccessful joke. Of the two, Todd Haynes did it better.
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