Film Review: Jupiter Ascending (2015)

Copyright: Warner Bros. Pictures

In many ways, this movie is similar to Kim Jong-un. Sure, he looks clumsy, fat and has a weird haircut that makes him look even fatter, so it�s really easy to make fun of him (unless you�re living in North Korea or working in Sony).

Jupiter Ascending, just like the chubby Kim, also practically begs to be ridiculed. It is also dumb and over the top in its decisions, probably thanks to a hugely inflated sense of self-worth which is most likely present in both entities.

But, unlike the petit dictator, Jupiter Ascending is not malicious. In the cinematic reference space, for me this means that it does not practice any form of false advertisement. It presents itself just like it truly is and does not use any tricks during its entire length that would show otherwise. In fact, it is a fairy tale, like the ones Lana and Andy Wachowski use to make when they forever changed the movie industry with the Matrix (the first movie, not the horrid series that followed, not counting Animatrix).

Here as well, the audience is introduced to an ordinary woman called Jupiter, who works as a cleaning lady in Chicago. But one day, she is swept away by a flying boots-wearing alien hunk that is there to save her from assassins and bounty hunters from outer space. This begins a huge adventure, sweeping the galaxy and covering many exotic and foreign places.

The Jupiter Ascending film is a space opera in its truest sense. Granted, it is not a masterfully crafted space opera like Guardians of the Galaxy, but it still provides beautiful images and action packed romance story. Sure, it�s characters are flat and the plot is silly, but who goes looking for deep-impacting drama in a film that features skating anti-gravity boots that make it �easy to go down, and hard to go up�? While many of its details could be improved, the main purpose of the film is crystal clear and readable from the first moment when Mila Kunis, who plays Jupiter, falls into the bulky arms of Channing Tatum.

Actually, I�m really glad to see that Lana and Andy Wachowski chose to continue to make films like this. While it might seem that they are going in the direction everyone else is taking by creating popcorn blockbusters (or at least trying to), the opposite is true. Films like Interstellar do not only bring with it absolutely no essence whatsoever (where they are exactly like Jupiter Ascending), but actually produce a strange, negative narrative dampening field, where a movie like that can be declared a masterpiece, although it would be more suitable as a Scientology instructional video on black holes and feeling good about dead parents. In works like the Interstellar I believe true stupidity lies, and that is the one that masks itself in higher knowledge and spiritual presence. I�m afraid that we�ll begin to see more and more films like that, which terrifies me.

Jupiter Ascending is not the smartest film in the world, but it does not hide anything about itself and honesty is always a great thing in art, even if it is soaked in science fiction pulp and undeveloped teenage fantasies.

Film Review: Spring (2014)

Copyright: XYZ Films

Spring movie will not work as a horror film, it dawned on me almost from the first moment the main character Evan enters a conversation with his friends in a bar and right after his mother dies.

Immediately, in a very self-aware and awkward way, the script is trying to convey the idea that it is very much in control of its inherent horror tropes and ideas. It will not cater to our expectation as a horror-loving audience, it body proclaims through witty dialogues and by sending its main character to a part exile, part road trip to Italy.

There, Evan meets a mysterious, but beautiful girl with whom he shares a love of being a smart-ass. But, in the distance of their growing relationship, something is amiss and it involves monsters, but also hurt puppy feelings. Here, the focus of the film is much more honest and relevant. As Even tries to get laid, but then not much later, tries to hold onto the woman of his life, the narrative structure of the film is solid.

But then, the whole supernatural-bodily terror vibe of the Spring movie as a horror has to be shown and like parents returning home too soon to find their child making out with the babysitter, it kills the mood. Here, the film feels forced and robbed of all spontaneity which it otherwise wears with pride when it comes to, for example, acting.

I�m almost under the impression that Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, who directed the film, got stuck with the horror genre through some production deal with the devil and had to make it work. The same can be seen in many aerial shots made by a helicopter drone which would be better suited for a medium-budget tourist commercial of the same area.

In the Spring movie, the beautiful shots of the Italian coast just look like they were shot because the directors had to take that damn drone, so they crammed its footage into the film no matter how needed (or completely unneeded) it actually was.

But still, there is a spark of really potent energy in this film. I was most impressed by its quirky and unexpected humor, but also by the general vibe of other films that feature an American lost on the old Continent. Unfortunately, these bright spots were drowned by the unnecessary long ending sequence and the horror angle that just was not there. While films like Housebound and Suburban Gothic use elements of humor and characters that don�t fit into their new surroundings and make them work with the horror and the tension, this one mishandled it all the way through.

Crowdfunding Push: Spectrum

Mystery movies are probably one of the most engaging film genres. At the same time, they are also a genre that is notoriously hard to pull off without seeming goofy, predictable or plain bad. A new IndieGoGo crowdfunding campaign is looking to develop a surreal mystery film that will from the get-go embrace its funnier side. This film is called Spectrum and its official page states:

Charlie wakes from a coma into a world seemingly run by the corporation �Spectrum�, who offer personality implants to those willing to pay. Not funny? Buy an implant. Want to stop caring? Buy an implant. Reassembling the pieces of his lost life, Charlie is faced with the tough decision of whether he wants to remember who he was or joining the new world, where he can pay to be anything he wants. Occasionally, he finds, the decision will even be made for him.

Michael Henry is the man behind this project and the artists that inspired this film include David Lynch, Paul Tomas Anderson, and Terry Gilliam. At the same time, the film was also influenced by darker things like the Rupert Murdoch and the global trend of corporations intruding into private lives. Watching the trailer, I also noticed bits that resemble the broad feel found in things like the UK TV show Utopia, Upstream Color and maybe even a few hints of the classic TV show The Prisoner. In total, Spectrum seems like an ambitious project that deserves a chance, especially because of its humor and a really modest asking budget. Its IndieGoGo crowdfunding campaign just started, but you can check it out here and see how you can help.

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

Film Review: A Most Violent Year (2014)

Copyright: A24 Films

Both interior and exterior of this film are about control. Inside of its plot, the main character Abel Morales, superbly played by Oscar Isaac, is a young New York businessman who desires to expand his heating oil enterprise. But, he chose to do this in 1981, one of the most violent, crime-stricken years in the history of New York. At the same time, his delivery trucks start to get hijacked, often involving violent attacks on the drivers while the same danger begins to gradually cross over into his private life.

In spite of this, Morales is determined to stay in control and do not stray from the path of doing business legally, even though his wife Anna, played by Jessica Chastain, continually pushes for other alternatives, some of which involve crime figures.

On the outside, J. C. Chandor directed this film by also providing it with a large level of precision and control. Like his miniature masterpiece All is Lost, Chandor has a talent for making compact cinematic pieces that are tightly wrapped, but still manage to feel very natural and organic.

In All is Lost, the sea and the weather made the film seem that way while, in this case, something similar is achieved by a masterful soundtrack. At some points, the film�s music number seem larger than life in their melancholy and without a doubt strike the same tone as soundtracks from films like Once Upon a Time in America.

Alex Ebert, who created the film�s soundtrack, utilized the groove of things like Miami Vice or Scarface, making it laden with the 80�s atmosphere. But, for me, the track work much more as a soundtrack of the city itself, which is an empire built on ambitions, desires, money and schemes, where the streets are dangerous and dreams bigger than the skyscrapers. American Hustle had some of that on its surface, but this film drills deeper and thus finds something more than costumes and haircuts.

While the music colored the atmosphere, the great acting cast provided the main construction of A Most Violent Year narrative. Primarily a crime drama that intentionally struggles to keep its crime element on the margins, where it constantly threatens to erupt into the main fold, the film produces a whole and stable story about the struggle between ambition and principle.

This all makes it a unique movie that shrouds itself in the real history of one of the most fascinating places on the planet, but still remains a clear and hard-boiled thriller. In other words, J. C. Chandor continues to impress me in ways I don�t see coming.

Coming Soon - Monsters: Dark Continent

A few years back, when Monsters came out, it really made an impact on me as a slow-moving, indie drama/social commentary set in a very imaginative science fiction world. Now, Monsters: Dark Continent takes place a decade later when the alien infection spread to the rest of the world.

This time the plot is set in the Middle East, where a US army fights both an insurgency and the aliens at the same time. I'm hoping that some of the same grim feel and subtle US foreign policies metaphors that the original included will be present in this part as well.

Tom Green is directing the film as his first full-length piece, which comes out today, on April 17, in the US theaters. Check out the trailer for Monsters: Dark Continent below.

Film Review - Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief (2015)

Copyright: HBO Documentary Films

For a religion that believes in weird aliens and events that include dropping nuclear bombs into volcanoes full of dead bodies 70 million years ago, Scientology can sure be much grounded in the present time and things like lawsuits and harassment.

In this documentary by Alex Gibney, the same religion/corporation/cult is shown through the perspective of those who have left it over the years. While this might seem like a narrative which offers only a single vantage point to an issue, as the documentary proceeds, it becomes clear why David Miscavige, Tom Cruise and all others who might represented Scientology declined to appear in the film.

Generally, Scientology can be perceived as a single man�s desire to find wealth, power and personal emotional and psychological healing through the same endeavor. This man is L. Ron Hubbard, a sci-fi writer who transformed his fiction into pseudo-psychotherapy, and then transformed it into a religion.

While the tone of the film is very somber and dark, everything about Hubbard to me seem really uplifting and energetic, in spite of his obvious serious mental issues. Here, the documentary shines in depicting an emotionally extremely unbalanced person making up total nonsense and then channeling it into a system to be sold to others.

The same system gradually becomes a corporation worth many billions of US dollars, masked in a religion (mainly for tax purposes). As the history of Scientology begins to unravel over the years, so do different characters begin to enter the fold. They all became part of the same religion at some point in their life, but then decided to get out for different reasons, which can be boiled down to insanity of the original creation tale and the tyrannical relationships that became a regular occurrence inside of Scientology hierarchy. The film juggles these stories really well, producing an overarching idea that there is something seriously wrong with the entire Scientology deal.

For me, the most fascinating thing about the entire documentary is the fact how Scientology simply sucks in anything resembling PR. Instead of taking some pointers from Coca-Cola, the Vatican or any other large corporation on the planet, David Miscavige and the rest of the top Scientology circle decided to make up their own system for combating any dissent. For them, there is obviously no soft approach or making an effort to absorb the blows. The only way to combat those who disagree with them is to fight them, internally and externally. At the same time, their assets and revenue stream continued to grow. The result is a strange group of people wielding so much money and power that they could truly present a global danger.

Fortunately, thanks to the fact that their belief system is so fundamentally weird, even for religious standards, they do not have it in them to communicate their message to a broader audience, especially one that does not have any substantial amounts of money (the poor masses have always been the top audience for a growing religion). Instead, Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief show they have the power to really mess up individual lives, but even that seems to be dwindling.

Great thing about documentaries like is the fact that they are extremely entertaining and really do provide valuable insight that will probably help some people to say to their potential Scientology recruiters that they are not interested in becoming a new paying customer for their cult corporation.

Film Review: The Dark Valley/ Das finstere Tal (2014)

Copyright: Films Distribution

I�m pretty certain that almost any Dark Valley review will conclude that Austria and neo-westerns actually go pretty well together, in spite of the fact that this combo at first sounds likes a beginning of a really bad joke that few people will even get. 

But, just like the militant outlook on life or we-took-some-gold-from-some-really-bad-people-and-still-don�t-want-to-give-it-back mindset that are still apparently lurking in the depths of the region�s nations collective unconscious (for me, the film seems like it is actually located more in Switzerland that Austria, which was anything by decentralized in that period), but are rarely (if ever) present in any open discourse, this film also deal with things that are apparent and those which are dark and hidden.

The Dark Valley (Das finstere Tal in original) opens by showing that it is really easy to live however you want if you�re in the 19th century and located in a remote, almost unknown valley in the Alps region. There, a village is run by the Brenner clan, a single family whose sons are the only ones who can carry firearms. One day, a mysterious stranger bearing a photographic camera arrives in the village with the purpose of making some photos. The Brenner brothers agree and gradually, winter sets in, meaning that no one can leave the village until spring.

Dark Valley begins in a strong manner, showing a world ruled by fear and much localized, but still very brutal tyranny. Here, director Andreas Prochaska makes most of the barren settings, both interior and exterior. There, in the snow-covered wilderness or inside of humble village homes, there is nowhere to hide and nowhere to run. No one will offer aid and there is nothing to grab onto once the monsters begin to converge on you. This claustrophobic and grim certainty is perfectly presented by Prochaska and is a fine springboard for Sam Riley who plays the mysterious stranger.

Unlike the villagers, he is not afraid. Instead, he is there with a clear purpose and this determination, often completely unspoken, shines like a torch in a blizzard. Riley, who is not even a native German speaker (the entire film is in German, spoken in a weird, presumably mountainous accent), pulls the role in a great style which he has not present since the movie Control. Once the narratives of the film begin to converge, so does a presence appears over the village, bringing retribution and resolution from below its dark winds.

Like The Salvation, another non-US neo-western, Dark Valley shows that there is a strong European drive in this unlikely genre, which is for me very exciting. I would not go so far in this Dark Valley review to state that there is some kind of a broader sociological exploration of a mountain-dwelling culture (hint � Switzerland of today), but still this film provides a lot of substance with its undoubtedly impressive visual presentation. This combination made it into a very good final product that is both a US culture export and local Austrian-Swiss-German work of art.

Coming Soon: Ex Machina (2015)

Copyright: A24 Films

For me, the most important thing about Ex Machina is its writer/director Alex Garland. Garland already proved himself as a great writer in films like Sunshine and 28 Days Later.

Now, he is making his directorial debut in a story about a reclusive computer genius who summons a younger computer genius named Caleb to his mountain home. There, Caleb discovers a synthetic life form called Ava that might or might not be fully self-aware, sparking the plot of this compact-looking sci-fi thriller.

Ex Machina comes out in the US on the 10th of April and you can watch its trailer below.

Film Review: �71 (2014)

Copyright: StudioCanal

Northern Ireland during the Troubles was undoubtedly a horrible place to live in, but now, decades later, it provides a fantastic setup for a thriller. Like the Shadow Dancer which came out in recent years, �71 is bleak and brutal, but unlike the previously mentioned drama, has a lot bigger action flavor to its thriller core.

In 1971, a young British recruit by the name of Gary Hook arrives in Belfast; a city divided by red bricks and spilled blood. Gary does not seem like a violent man or someone who desires to become involved in local politics in any possible manner. Instead, he is there to do a job.

One day, his unit is deployed to act as a backup to the local constables who go on a raid of suspected IRA supporters. The scene quickly turns into a riot and Gary and one of his brothers in arms are separated from their fleeing comrades. They get a beating by the local teenagers before a man walks up to them and shoots the other soldier at point blank range.

Gary makes a run for it, knowing that his failure to escape will lead to his death. Yann Demang, who previously worked in the TV industry, made this film is a manner that can only be described as gripping. His editing, along with the pacing he forces upon this film makes every moment a tense experience, where death lurks around every corner, both accidental and intentional. But, although he did create the film to be primarily, an action thriller, there was still plenty of room for history and bitter political comment on the entire time, where IRA, Provisional IRA and the British power structures all made decisions that lead to too many deaths.

In this perspective, Sean Harris is especially interesting as Captain Sandy Browning, a ruthless pain-clothes member of the military who seems to be running the entire city. Harris is terrific as the shadowy figure and should be given more roles like this one because he delivered his character flawlessly.

�71 is a film that makes history into a thrilling movie but does not add glamour or flair to it.