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Reviews
The Next Man (1976)
A drama for our time
I was able to watch the remastered version on YouTube. The original theatrical release was mangled by small cuts, 18 minutes of them,
and panned by critics. Even the restored version is not really a great film...but it is a very well made political and social drama, like SYRIANA. And so pertinent to today's world. Should be watched for that reason alone. Sean Connery plays a great Arab, like he did in Wind and the Lion (I know, that character was a Berber). Cornelia Sharpe is exquisite. If you blink a few times, you imagine we are in Bond territory again, especially when they go to the Bahamas. Highly recommend!
The View South Pumas in Patagonia (2019)
Landscapes shown like you have never seen...unless you go there!
The filmmaker has produced a meditative elegy on the naked beauty of Patagonia. Highly recommended use of your 23 minutes ! Patagonia is such a pristine area, mostly untouched by human "civilization", and this film captures that raw quality in such a way, you will be transported out of your world and into this one...which is the objective of great cinema. There are moments of true "awe" The way Jason Silva displays in his "shots of awe" series. In fact, Pumas of Patagonia reminds me very much of Baraka and Samsara, an observation i made to the director, Richard Szkiler, at his premier at the Wildlife Conservation Film Festival in New York. He was unaware of those films by Ron Fricke, which surprised me, pleasantly. When an artist does not know about an obvious similarity to another work, genuinely unaware, this provides more evidence of the collective unconscious at work in the creative world. Another point; despite the title, this is not a traditional documentary about an animal species. Instead, it is a portrait of earth, upon which a group of animals calls home. The Puma is almost secondary to the magnificent portrait you witness on the screen.