Crowdfunding push: The Price of Love

In this crowdfunding campaign called The Price of Love, a documentary examines the harsh nature of immigration laws currently in place in the UK. The film's official Indiegogo page states:

Thousands of British citizens have lost the right to have their non-EU husband or wife live with them in their home country, simply because they do not earn enough money. The level set at �18,600 per year is considerably higher than the the national average wage, meaning that many Brits have effectively been told they cannot afford to fall in love.

Tragically, this rule has meant that many young children are being kept apart from a parent for prolonged periods of time.

The Price of Love takes a closer look at these rules and asks whether it is morally just to keep families apart based purely on income.

The film is a creation of Don McVey, a director who first noticed this story in 2012, but struggled to find the funding for it. From the looks of the shots in the promo, it dives deep into this problem, but also into the phenomenon of subtle (and less subtle) immigration fear that continues to grow in the European states and shows the human cost of it all. The campaign is currently in its final hours, having reached almost 90% of its goal. Check out The Price of Love Indiegogo page and see if how you can help.

If you're looking for exposure for your film-related project, contact me right here.

Review and Ending Explanation: Whiplash (2014)

Copyright: Sony Pictures Classics

Amazed by this film from the first moments, I quickly realized that Whiplash movie is neither about J.K. Simmon�s great acting nor the drama that occurs between his character and the pupil character played by Miles Teller. Instead, Whiplash is about the consuming power of music and the need music plants in those who hear its calling the strongest.

Damien Chazelle, a newcomer to the directorial role, made this film in a very bold way. It includes a lot of jazz, but not in a way that will be interesting to those who think they love this music genre, but prefer to listen to it while they meet friends for a drink in a local classy bar. Instead, Chazelle focuses on the hard mechanics of music seen through the eyes of the students in a Shaffer Conservatory in New York.

There, a student named Andrew wants to become the best drummer in the world. A teacher named Fletcher, played brilliantly by J. K. Simmons, runs a studio band and Andrew is soon desperate to become its primary drummer. But Fletcher method resides on torture, humiliation and mocking his band members.

As a story, Whiplash emits a strong, frantic energy which is both foreign in nature and clear in its drive. I bet that few people know what it is like to be an aspiring student of jazz music, but in the film, Andrew�s desire to become one of the great ones is clear as a mountain stream in the moonlight. Like the acting of Simmons and Teller (who plays Andrew), Whiplash is intense and continuously building its own pressure, leading to an eruption. Simmons already received much praise for his work, but for me, Damien Chazelle should also be congratulated for writing and directing this marvel of cinema.

Whiplash shows us that music is not always beautiful and is often dirty and bloody, but that all of this does not matter if it can deliver that single pinnacle moment of being totally immersed in it. There, greatness is found in all its pain and glory.

Whiplash Ending Explanation

Spoiler Alert

Although this film is really straightforward, Whiplash ending might seem ambiguous. The movie ends with Andrew finishing his grueling solo, with Fletcher looking at him. At the last moment, it is shown that Fletcher gives him only the slightest smile and a weak nod, but their meaning is clear � Andrew did what was expected of him and grew into something that no one could have predicted. He managed to surpass himself and grew through pain and misery into a great player. Fletcher was there only to witness it, as the Whiplash ending suggests and feel moved by it, but the entire notion is at that point, out of his hands.

His role, as Fletcher sees it, was to stage the environment where a new music legend could be born. With his invitation in the bar (after they are both kicked out Shaffer�s), he continued to provide this environment and did not know that Andrew would prevail. He just knew that a brilliant musician has to prevail in those circumstances, which is the reason he is not mad or sad when Andrew finds a way out of his embarrassing moment. Fletcher�s motive was never to humiliate him and get back at him for getting him fired, although he would be fine with the possibility of Andrew walking out of the concert and music altogether. Through Andrew, the notion of grooming a legend came true and in the final last moment, we see Fletcher realizing his life goal is accomplished.

Coming Soon: White God (Feh�r isten)

White God (Feh�r isten in original) is a strange film that looks beautiful, original and very unnerving. This Hungarian surreal drama was directed by Korn�l Mundrucz� and it follows a story of a little girl who is torn away from her dog called Hagen thanks to a unjust government regulation. Abandoned, Hagen decides (maybe decides isn�t the right word) to start a revolution against human oppressors. The film did exceedingly well at Cannes Film Festival and now it�s getting a release on March 27.

Watch White God trailer below.

Film Review: Chappie (2015)

Copyright: Columbia Pictures

So far, Neill Blomkamp�s films weren�t works of art that felt completely organic to me.  When District 9 was hailed as the future of a gritty, dark, socially sentient science fiction, I wasn�t convinced that it truly had a real message to transmit. Instead, it seemed to me that Blomkamp figured out how his work can seem deep and meaningful while it had nothing new to say, apart from the fact that people tend to be racists and savage in many different circumstances.

His new film Elysium was, for me, the crown evidence for this theory. In this awkward mixture of Hollywood A-list actors and high-budget CGI, Blomkamp delivered a shallow story that neither sold its drama nor its action. It was District 9 all over again, but it lacked the charm of a small production set in a real exotic, turbulent location.

This is why I was even less excited when I heard that the same director was making a movie called Chappie. To me, it seemed like he decided to retreat even further back into his original breakthrough film and I doubted it could result in something interesting. I was completely wrong about that.

In Chappie, Blomkamp dug deep to reconnect with a totally personal narrative, free of forced social commentary. In his new film, a tale of a police robot that gets hijacked and reprogrammed so it develops full consciousness, is funny and fun, but still managed to deeply resonate with something in me which differentiates between a living thing, and those things that are not alive (or so I judge them).

In the whirlwind that follows after the mechanical birth of Chappie, the childlike robot is left with Ninja and Yolandi, South African street gangster (and in real life, two of the core members of a band Die Antwoord). These two act as surrogate parents to the intellectually young Chappie, who grows up in a matter of days under their completely opposite directions. The additional element is Deon, a young and idealistic programmer who created Chappie�s intelligence and dreads to see him joining a criminal lifestyle.

In its course, the film deals with the nature of life, death, violence, creativity and the needs of individuals that come into conflict with the needs of others around them. At moments, Chappie�s growing up is hilarious (the segment with stealing cars), while in others it is totally terrifying and even disturbing. All these ideas are fantastically presented by the incredible acting skills of both Yolandi and Ninja. I knew that they were great performers, but in Chappie they show an impressive range that covers deadly serious, sadistic to a scary level and completely goofy, especially in Ninja�s case.

The larger narrative ideas of the plot seem irrelevant when they are is compared to the character of Chappie itself. Like Wall-E and other great robot characters, I experienced the film from his perspective and it was an impressive ride. For me, the entire Chappie movie was a vessel that delivered a complex, believable character to whom I could relate completely, even though he (or it) is not even a human being.

Film Review: Black Sea (2014)

Copyright: Universal International Pictures

If submarine movies taught us anything, it is that the bottom of a sea is a great place to die in many different and colorful ways. Starting with drowning, exploding and suffocating, there is no doubt that submarines in films usually present steel coffins in which people rarely experience anything nice.

Black Sea brings about a similar idea, but places it outside of a military context. In its plot, there is no World War II or even a Cold War. Instead, the film takes place in the present day, where a washed out (pun not intended) salvage submarine captain called Robinson loses his job and then accepts a shady offer of taking a boat to the bottom of the Black sea near the Georgian coast, where allegedly a German U-boat sub has lain since 1941, full of dead German submariners, but also 2 tons of gold bars.

Robinson agrees, takes a crew of Westerners and Russians and sails to the location, where he needs to get the gold, but also dodge the Russian Navy. In no time at all, the whole idea of how all subs are submariner�s coffins begins to take its familiar form.

Directed by Kevin Macdonald, the Black Sea movie brings about an interesting twist to this genre, while it also manages to create something of a sub-genre that can be called a civilian salvage underwater thriller. With a good cast lead by Jude Law, but also by the very impressive Ben Mendelsohn and Scoot McNairy, translating this script into a film was not a huge challenge. Like in his recent film How I Live Now, Macdonald is apt in presenting a simple plot in a fresh way.

Here as well, while the story does have many plot holes and adventure tropes (like the moment where Captain Robinson brings along a completely unskilled young man on the mission, mainly out of pity), the overall dynamic of the film leaves the viewer interested in the characters on a very basic level. Also, Macdonald steers clear of overplaying dramatic segments which could have easily sunk this film (it�s easy to make sea-related puns when writing about submarine films).

The best thing about the Black Sea movie is the fact that it brings a focused thriller full of hard-boiled submariner-type characters, free of any unnecessary cinematic noise. Like the narratively completely different Maps to the Stars, this film pulls the viewers in and keeps them near all the way to the end.

Coming Soon: Man From Reno

Directed by Dave Boyle, Man from Reno is a thriller about two separate stories set in California, connected by the notion of one particular Asian country � first one is an random road accident that includes a sheriff from a small town and a Japanese man, while the other follows a fiction writer from Japan who travels to San Francisco to escape the media pressure of her new book release.

From the trailer, it looks like Boyle created a minimalist thriller with a strong sense of a compact mystery. Currently, the film is hitting the festival circuit, but I�m guessing it will find a wider release date very soon.

Check out Man From Reno trailer below.

Film Review: Wild (2014)

Copyright: Fox Searchlight Pictures

At some moments in this film, I felt that something very wrong is about to happen. For example, a woman all alone in a desert is about to jump across some large rocks. I was almost compelled to say out loud to the main character of this film:

�What are you doing, haven�t you seen the 127 Hours? Keep it up and you�ll have to cut off your hand with a pocket knife!�

This alone is a big cinematic achievement. In it, its director Jean-Marc Vall�e made a devious pack with Nick Hornby, who wrote this screenplay. With Hornby�s talent for making sad tales engaging to a point where Disney went when they killed off Bambi�s mom, Vall�e created an inspirational story which doesn�t state the obvious and doesn�t pamper us in happy-go-lucky feelings. Not all the way, at least.

The tale, based on the true adventures of Cheryl Strayed, a woman who hiked the Pacific Crest Trail accompanied only by uncomfortable shoes and some camping gear, is really unique. In it, this trail, which wasn�t really famous outside the die-hard hiking community, plays an equally important role as the main character. Its beauty and indifference are stunning, captivating, and perfect for Vall�e to transform it into a mirror for the protagonist, who is in a deep spiritual, emotional and personal crisis.

Cheryl is played by Reese Witherspoon who acts her heart out and it really shows. Along with Hornby�s writing, she made sure that her character didn�t become some bland heroine who is determined to show the nature who is the boss. Instead, her Cheryl is someone who is much realer and a lot faultier than the average nature conqueror.

But, while Wild is a very stunning movie that draws you in a very poetic way, I was really impressed with the director�s readiness to make the film more gritty. Using frantic editing and cuts, he obviously became even more advanced in his trade since he made Dallas Buyers Club.

Still, I feel underneath that underneath all of the grandeur and greatness, there is still that sticky touch of Nick Hornby. While films like All Is Lost have that moment where the viewer is captivated and terrified by the collision of nature with a single human being, throughout this film, there is the slightest but the constant feel of that undercover Disney approach Hornby does so well.

This is why the film forced a verbal ending and few epilogue-type sentences on how all of this fits together, ignoring the fact that it could have ended without it. But then, in that case, the audience might be just a bit less satisfied and a bit more confused, and Hornby just couldn�t let that happen.

Coming Soon: The Gunman

Although Sean Penn isn't an actor who is immediately associated with action films, he looks perfectly suitable in The Gunman. The effectively named film is hitting theaters on March 20th and seems like an engaging spy-gone-rogue action thriller. Aside from Penn, the cast is led by Idris Elba, Javier Bardem, and Ray Winstone, and directed by Pierre Morel, who made the first film in the Taken trilogy (he was dearly missed in the lukewarm Taken 3).

Check out the Gunman trailer below.

Crowdfunding push - Extinction: Prologue

A new post-apocalyptic short film is looking for crowdfunding help in realizing its vision of a deserted and destroyed planet Earth. The film�s Indiegogo page states:

Twenty-five years after a cataclysmic event killed most life on Earth, a lonesome wanderer discovers an abandoned housing complex in the middle of a forest. There he meets another survivor � a weird old man who constantly talks about a long-lost friend called "Matthew". When the hermit is willing to share his greatest treasure, the wanderer decides to stay for a while. However, there is more to this strange place than meets the eye, since the apocalypse unleashed something that was hidden for a very long time...

Although it is not too original in its setup, Extinction: Prologue is being produced by the Avenir Film Company and judging their ambitious teaser, they seem really capable of making a nice post-apocalyptic story (especially in the area of photography and how they position and operate the camera in the shots). Also, they are aiming for more films in the same narrative universe (another sign of ambition). Currently, their campaign crossed 30% of the funds they are looking for, and if you think you can help them, check out their official page.

If you're looking for exposure for your film-related project, contact me right here.

Film Review: What We Do in the Shadows (2014)

Madman Entertainment

The combination of Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi is obviously something that continuous to make pure comedy gold for more than a decade now. Although these guys are obviously multi-talented, things like What We Do in the Shadows underline that their humor skills are simply incredible.

Set in Wellington in New Zealand, this mockumentary follows the lives of four vampires who live there. Every one of them comes from a different era, but Viago, a former German dandy, mainly acts as the camera crew�s host and narrator. His vampire friends/roommates are more focused on other things, mainly drinking blood and finding ways to get into new and hip clubs and bars (they have to be invited in, of course). When a new vampire, a local by the name of Nick enters their small crew, things start to change and get even weirder.

This is the primary focus of the film, and more or less, the only one. The entire cast of the film provides one great performance where each character seamlessly fits into the bigger picture. Here, Clement and Waititi once more show off their ability to merge absurd ideas with the odd pacing of a New Zealand popular culture and a distancing mellow vibe that covers everything and everyone.

But, their talent for finding humor included very small details as well. For example, the costumes of the different vampires are completely phenomenal, but at the same time, they are not just there so that they can look nice. Instead, they are also an integral part used for the development of the jokes. For example, the vampires don�t have a reflection, so they must resort to drawing one another to show how they look during their long dress up sessions before hitting the town at night. This alone shows the meandering thought process of both authors, which lead to a hilarious film.

Like Housebound, another solid horror comedy from New Zealand, What We Do in the Shadows is also ready to go all out on some cinematographic element that is totally unexpected. In this case, the levitation of the characters is used as a great comic device, although many smaller horror films like this would simply go for verbal jokes throughout (which are much easier to do). As a whole, regardless of what is taking place on the screen, it never loses its pacing.

This What We Do in the Shadows film review should be clear about the fact that I think that Clement and Waititi are comic geniuses and this film is the direct result of that fact.

Film Review: Tusk (2014)

Copyright: A24 Films

It is rare to see a film where the crucial moment of failure is clearly visible and easy to identify. For me, Tusk is without a doubt one of these films, which was blessed with big potential, only to see it destroyed by a single miscalculation.

Kevin Smith directed Tusk, partly I believe, as his way of showing everyone that he really doesn�t care about what other people think is a good movie plot. In it, he tried to connect apparently random things which hold absolutely no intrinsic terror in them, like walruses and Canada and mold them into a horror tale.

As his means of delivery, he chose body horror, a genre that is even at the best of times hard to pull off and often in recent history, ended up as disastrous movies. Tusk continues this trend.

In his tale, his main character, a comedy radio DJ called Wallace travels to Canada to interview a young man who cuts off his leg in a funny blooper video that went viral. He fails to meet him thanks to a suicide by the same man, but instead finds a letter from an old sailor, taped to a bar�s toilet wall. There, he reads that the man is calling people to come and meet him. Recognizing the scent of odd comedy potential, Wallace decides to go to his house, unknowing that a walrus-type of terror awaits him there. 

Smith wanted to gross people out with this film, but also to make them laugh. At first, he succeeds, mainly thanks to the incredible talent and allure of Michael Parks who plays the weird sailor. In the first half, Tusk is smooth and funny, trapping the viewer in its tale. Like Suburban Gothic, it has the chops for great laughs, but in the background, the terror of its story continues to swell towards a setup made famous by films like Misery.

But then, the character of Guy Lapointe enters the fold and destroys the film like a bear tearing up through a tent made of bacon. Lapointe is played by Johnny Depp, who wears a lot of makeup and nose prosthetics, and is supposed to be a Canadian washed-out detective on the trail of a serial killer. His introduction into the story lasts for more than 15 minutes and includes a mind-numbing flashback segment where he recounts his accidental meeting with the old sailor, whom he suspects to be the killer.

This entire segment of Tusk is almost unbearable to watch and made me cringe with all kinds of unpleasant feelings. Depp uses a heavy and drooled accent of a fake French speaker and makes Lapointe character into a kind of depressive, slowed down, and an idiotic version of Inspector Jacques Clouseau. With this role, not only did Depp go completely off, but he also killed the film. From that point, the story implodes as the narrative splits until it ends abruptly in a euthanasia-like move by Smith. 

In a single moment, all that was good in Tusk movie was lost and forgotten, replaced by Lapointe, who hijacks the film and takes it deep into the water of unfunny stupidity where it quietly drowns.

Crowdfunding push: Bad Acid

Mixing hard drugs and horror tales already sounds like a good idea, but when you throw a washed-out hypnotist in the mix, you get the basic outline of a very promising short film called Bad Acid. The plot of the film goes like this:

Marvin Maskelyn is a hypnotist and magician whose success has come and gone leaving him a bitter divorcee with nothing in the bank and a penchant for getting stoned. After a performance that went from bad to bloody awful, Marvin acquired a black eye but lost his beloved prop of a genie lamp. Visiting an antique dealer friend who pities him, Marvin is given an antique lamp with a chequered past and a secret stash of LSD blotters within. With nothing left to lose, he takes one.

The man behind the crowdfunding campaign that aims to make this film a reality is David Chaudoir, who wrote the script and plans to direct it. Chaudoir explains that he has gathered a lot of filmmaking experience, but that now, with Bad Acid, he desires to make something truly his.

While LSD and supernatural elements seem to fit perfectly into a horror tale, I am really impressed with the Bad Acid pitch on their Indiegogo page. By the looks of Chaudoir presentation and underlining (and a very natural and unforced) passion, I can�t see how this film can turn out anything else by awesome. Bad Acid crowdfunding campaign began on this very day, so the film has 30 days to find the money. If all of this sounds interesting to you, check out the film's Indiegogo page.

If you're looking for exposure for your film-related project, contact me right here.

Review and Interpretation: Maps to the Stars (2014)

Copyright: Entertainment One

David Cronenberg is clearly very smart, but this special kind of intelligence of his allows him to examine both the current and future world. Back in 1983 he envisioned a TV audience glued to the scenes of death and torture, backed up by a weird financial system which provides the same entertainment to the masses for profit and kicks. Today, in the era when burnings and beheadings present the main fuel for global Breaking News segments, Cronenberg emerges as a dark prophet of our own even darker nature.

In Maps to the Stars movie, he gutters the notion of child celebrities and the wider arena of Hollywood showbiz. The story of this truly scary film begins with a young girl arriving in Los Angeles, apparently shielded by total anonymity. In the same town, Benjie Weiss, a child actor and a superstar is on a strict sobriety regime enforced by his team of parents and agents, in spite of the fact that he is only 13 years old. Of course, this doesn�t stop him from being a total egocentric jerk.

Not far away, an aging actress is desperate to do anything so that she can secure the role of her own abusive mom in a new version of the mother�s decades-old classic and celebrated film. As the stories converge, so does the madness grow on the margins of this glittering world, along with the promise of a violent and nihilistic culmination.

Maps to the Stars is a perfect movie, delivered and executed like almost nothing before it that tells a tale set in the world of Hollywood, especially with this kind of strange and counterintuitive topic. The filmmaking of David Cronenberg is hard to explain but simple to experience. He presents his characters in a raw form, yelling in agony or joyful celebrating a child�s accidental death because it brought them some unexpected benefit. Just a minute or two later, he shows a young girl covered with the blue ink of a star map, reciting a poem both beautiful and haunting.

In his lens, all actors are perfect masters of their skill. Younger cast members, like Mia Wasikowska and Evan Bird, hold the promise of redemption and youth that might overcome the horrible secrets of their predecessors.

Older ones, like Julianne Moore and John Cusack, provide his film with substance and true wickedness, which is not brought about by emotions, but sheer opportunism. I was especially impressed by Cusack, who created a character equal to Frank T.J. Mackey from the movie Magnolia (which is the closes thing to Maps to the Stars I can remember).

Cronenberg made a film that is a eulogy of perceived celebrity glamour and innocence, sang by mesmerizing voices that are not afraid to poke holes in their own fragile skin and reveal the hideous tumors beneath. Like Nightcrawler, it doesn�t want to compromise or tranquilize the impact of its presentation or ideas. Because of this, it�s a masterpiece of enormous weight.

Maps to the Stars Movie Explained

Spoiler Alert

In my view, the key element of the meaning of the film Maps to the Stars is the lethality of parental decisions and secrecy that follows them. In the story of both families (Weiss and Segrand), the decisions of the parents, made for personal gain or pleasure, end up heavily impacting the next generation.

Havana Segrand is haunted by the abuse she felt as a child and contributes it to her mother, although it was committed by her stepfather (as explained in the massage by the pool ghost sequence). Havana is in a desperate need to connect with her mother, even if it means blaming her for what she didn�t do (but was most likely aware on some level). At the same time, she desires to become her mother, just like Agatha Weiss desired to become wed to her brother Benjie.

After she found out the family secret, she desperately wanted to emulate their parents, who are also brother and sister, but added the fire into the equation as a final element that can cleans them all of this transgression, possibly  before they evolve into the horrible, calculated creatures their parents were even back then. Benjie, as a small child, just goes along with it all, but later clearly understands why Agatha did what she did, and goes along with it once more.

In this sense, the explanation to the Maps to the Stars is the idea of younger generations living in the sins of their parents (like Havana) or trying to cleanse these sins in themselves (like Agatha and Benjie end up doing). In both cases, the resolutions are either horrible life of suffering and greed (Havana) or an exit from the world of living altogether (Agatha and Benjie).