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Reviews
The Little Things (2021)
A film without character or characters
The moment in slasher films where you stop rooting for the soon-to-be victim is when they do something so transparently stupid that you lose the will to care about their fate. The only novelty in this film is that the bafflingly stupid decision to put oneself in harms way comes not from a panicked teen running from the knifeman, but instead from the supposed hotshot cop hunting the perp.
Alas what could be an interesting inversion of the old trope just feels like par for the course for Remi Malek's car crash character. Nothing this character does - from latching onto Denzel Washington's 'Deke' at the start like a lost puppy, to volunteering to dig his own grave at the end - is coherent with the character we're introduced to, supposedly the Dept's star detective.
Washington's character is slightly better, but only in being internally consistent. As a ground-down old timer, haunted by his past cases, he's still amounts to no more than a cliche you've already seen a thousand times before.
Put together this pair have zero chemistry, which should be no surprise because beyond the actors playing them there is nothing noteworthy to find in either of them.
Leto appears to try and inject some charisma into proceedings, but here too finds himself working with the thinnest of material - namely a suspected killer whose totality consists of a very silly walk and some poor personal grooming.
The story itself is slow moving without the rewards of any depth, nor satisfying pay offs. At one point we're encouraged to consider the distraught family of one missing girl, and yet the movie's close gives no thought whatsoever to what it's chosen resolution means for them.
I gave it a 3 because it's shot competantly, and has great actors. Ultimately though this just makes it's grievous failings all the harder to stomach.
The Man Who Saved the World (2014)
Jaded to the point of contempt for it's subject matter
The great irony of this film is that the positive reviews (rightly) focus on the events which the film is ostensibly about, and yet the director of it seems bored by them. He decides the true story of a mid level bureaucrat who happened to save the world from annihilation wasnt enough to occupy two hours of film, so that becomes background material for a fly on the wall road trip. Ask yourself whether the recent Chernobyl TV drama would have been improved by cutting material on the details of what happened in the control room, so that it instead could show one of the engineers meeting American celebs twenty years later. Nope?
Even allowing for that decision, the documentary aspect is grievously undermined by elements which appear staged, most notably the opening in which there is magically a camera present the whole time that this guy is rejecting the media's attention. Elsewhere the editing of scenes is pure reality TV manipulation.
The message conveyed by all this is as confused as the structure is. Early on, before we've seen anything of what actually happened, we get a detour into 9/11 and fears of terrorists getting their hands on nukes. Surely the lesson of the 1983 event is that we can't allow the current obsessions with terrorism to distract from the dangers that our own governments pose with their nuclear arsenals? Why obscure that message? Why obscure it further with cameos from empty American celebrity - are we not distracted enough by these things already? Again it speaks of a director that has no respect for the significance of what he's dealing with.
This film isn't without it's successes, but it so fundamentally disrespects the gravity of events that it ultimately left me angry.
Gangs of Lagos (2023)
Cracks start to show
I watched this as a Westerner - imagine the experience might be different for those versed in Nollywood.
The first half of the film is solid - a brothers-from-the-streets tale of organised crime of the kind that you've seen a dozen times before, but the Lagos setting and solid performances (at least from the leads) help it stand out. The second half limps home though. As the action ramps up the plot becomes increasingly threadbare, as it seems does the budget. It's telling of this decline that - bizarrely - a large chunk of the final showdown is very obviously greenscreened, despite just having a generic rooftop background. Without the grounding in the Lagos streets that carries the opening, the latter stages just feel like a very low budget US action flick.
The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael (2005)
A strong work , but not strong enough to avoid being overshadowed by its final scene
Its sad to see how many viewers have given this film the lowest possible mark purely on the basis of the final scene. Their knee-jerk response to the unquestionably horrific act is interesting in itself though, as it raises the same question I had to ask myself after the film - namely, what is it about sexual violence, as opposed to other forms of violence, that makes it so overwhelmingly unconscionable? There are mainstream films far more gory than this, yet the manner in which the woman is murdered left me feeling physically sick to a degree that I have not experienced before. It cannot be claimed that the film does anything to explore this question, however the (admittedly unsubtle) references to the ongoing war in Iraq reminds us that such brutal acts occur daily, many the result of our own 'civilised' democracy.
Its a shame that this debate has overshadowed what is otherwise a strong work. The film certainly has its problems - I for one struggled to warm to the director's staid style, which at times left me feeling like I was watching a play not film. Also certain scenes were so cringe-inducingly amateurish that I have to wonder whether they were deliberately like they were, to point up the fakeness of some of the characters - the kitchen conversation in particular between the TV chef and his wife felt like some European air freshener advert that had been poorly dubbed into English. The manner too in which the director cuts from the rape to archive shots of war was incredibly crass - the presence of the sword in the house as a decorative item (itself a tool of war), and its usage in the attack, could have been enough to make this link if a more skillful director was in charge.
For all its mistakes though, there were as many positives. The scene in which the boys share a joint on the beach in near silence is one of the highlights, a wonderfully subtle suggestion of their dislocation. I felt too that the narrative was far more ambiguous than to suggest simply that Robert's acts were simply the outcome of his drug use. For me the final message was that Robert was a cypher for all of us that live in western societies - apparently civilised in our behaviour (cf his musical accomplishment), and yet part of a system that relies on the subjugation - often violently - of outsiders.
Basically if you come to this film expecting 'entertainment' then you'll be disappointed, or worse. If you look on it as 'art' you might find a flawed, but still compelling piece of film making. Perhaps ultimately though the film simply isn't good enough to justify the taboo-challenging final act.
Le secret (2000)
Frankly unbelievable
The 3 stars I give this are for the performances - little else is worthy of respect. The direction and cinematography are completely flat, and the script is a mixed bag.
Where the film really falls apart though is in the behaviour of the central character. We begin with a woman who has apparently spent 12 years happily married (at least the couple appear happy at the start of the film), and who remained faithful during that time, save one brief kiss with a neighbour. She begins an affair with a man she meets whilst working, and instantly becomes an entirely new character - one that feels no guilt or sympathy towards her husband, in fact who seems to actively seek to humiliate him, and who almost allows her child to fall to its death. No explanation for this U turn into an amoral narcissist is even hinted at, and the character's own explanation consists of little more than a brief burst of existentialist waffle at the end of the film. Ultimately, the character is completely unbelievable, as her actions are irreconcilable with her history.