film reviews, interviews, features | BRWC

Author: BRWC

  • Homeward: Review

    Homeward: Review

    Homeward: Review. By Julius Tabel.

    This Ukrainian production is about a father and his youngest son who want to go back to their former home in Crimea which is under Russian control in order to bury the older son who died in war. On this long trip starting in Ukraine, both get to know each other better, and especially the son takes a very big development.

    Overall, I found this construction to be very interesting, although I at first had no idea if these people are Russian or Ukrainian, but once you have that figured out, you also have to remember recent history and what happened to Crimea in the past years. Furthermore, the character developments are more or less sensical, and at the end, faith is a big subject that suddenly becomes an important, but still meaningless thematic.

    As I said, I was interested right from the start, and I think that everybody who is a fan of discovering culture and history will be interested as well. The film provokes many questions at first because it starts right off in the middle of the plot. It gives no time to introduce, but as a compensation, there are many silent moments during which “Homeward” gives you certainly enough time to think about it.

    This also means that it is very slowly told. While this kind of storytelling was good and well inserted in the first half of the film, as it gave the viewer time to process the story, the later in the movie, the more boring it became. The climax isn ́t really intense, although it wants to be, and there is no real change of tempo nor any twist in the plot. There wasn ́t one moment when “Homeward” grabbed me and shocked me. My interest slowly shifted into thin air. There is nothing convincing to see.

    However, when “Homeward” still had part of my attention, it took some time to develop its two main characters which was perhaps the best decision the director Nariman Aliev made. Although it is never really explained, Aliev finds a way to show the relation between father and son. The rule of “show don ́t tell” was very well executed. The family isn ́t really close, but on their way home, the two build up an importance for each other. The bound that was created between them is probably the strongest reason for watching this film.

    Nevertheless, if you only look at the boy ́s development, it simply isn ́t reasonable. It makes no sense. Normally, he studies at a university and is far away from the spiritual stuff of his father because his family is Muslim. For whatever reason though, faith becomes the most important thing for him over the course of the story without any motivation. I understand that his personal tension grows, as he is about to enter annexed land, which was once his home, but his decisions come from nowhere. Additionally, especially the first half has some very questionable moments that wouldn’t actually happen.

    From time to time, you may smell the scent of an idea behind “Homeward” as it criticizes the political situation, fatherhood, war, and even marriage, but overall, it has no powerful impact. I can ́t imagine that somebody would be so focused on these small passing mentions, as that “Homeward” could be a truth-speaking drama. Its intentions are somewhere hidden, but I don ́t think that anybody really wants to find them out. The film isn ́t attractive enough for that to happen.

    All in all, I don ́t see “Homeward” being a solid movie. For me, it ́s not a good film. The characters are inconsistent, although their inner relation makes sense. The message is hidden, but doesn ́t want to be discovered. The story is interesting at first, but not attractive at the end. I cannot recommend “Homeward” because I don ́t see anyone actually liking this. Nevertheless, if maybe this construction is really personal to a viewer, then it might speak into his/her heart from time to time.

  • Apples: Review

    Apples: Review

    I have to admit, the first time I saw Apples, I did not think it worked for me. Many of the movie’s themes and concepts were something I could not fully grasp. It also put me off the first time because it felt like a part of the rash of pandemic-related movies that have came out, where people get affected by some ailment or the other. On that same note, I was glad I watched it a second time.

    It was a heartbreaking movie about heartaches and the lengths we sometimes go to forget. To paraphrase from a recent interview of the director, Christos Nikou, “When all of those familiar markers of time and place are removed, you have to ask yourself, ‘Who am I? Who are we?’. ‘Am I a product of what I’ve remembered, or what I’ve forgotten?.” That sums up Apples, right from the horse’s mouth.

    Apples start with Aris (Aris Servetalis) banging his head repeatedly on the wall. Various reports come on TV about the looming pandemic that has been causing a rise in amnesia cases in people. We never know why he is torturing himself, whether it’s a side effect of him having lost his memory or reacting to something else.

    Soon, he is woken up on a bus by a fellow passenger with no memory of who he is or where he lives. As there is no memory and no record of his whereabouts, he is sent to a unique rehabilitation clinic where the doctors can study him further. They give him a list of tasks to help him trigger his memory or even create new ones which they instruct him to capture with a Polaroid camera and save in his album.

    The tasks range from pretty simple tasks like riding a bicycle to some weird derivatives, like taking part in a protest with other patients but in cosplay, and things get rather bizarre from there. The gist of it is that the more task he does, and the more invested he becomes, it is apparent that he is becoming more uncomfortable. Perhaps recalling some pretty painful memories, he may want to forget.

    Things also get more complicated when he bonds with a fellow patient Anna (Sofia Georgovassili). She is ahead of him in the order of the tasks and may or may not use him to complete her own list.

    The most significant success of the film is the fact Aris Servetalis manages to sell the incredible premise of the film. It is hard to figure out whether he has lost his memory or if he has been playing along all along. Or if he gained back his lost memories throughout the movie.

    That becomes more pronounced in the film’s best scene, where he breaks into an impromptu dance at a party after beginning the scene as a mute spectator. He looks like he was doing his best impression of the famous dance from Bande à part.

    Sofia Georgovassili also stands tall against Aris’s powerhouse performance. The scene where she tells Aris the story of Titanic as if she is seeing it for the first time (which she is as an amnesiac) says a lot about rediscovering something like a long-lost friend or memory.

    There are a few things that are hard to digest in the movie, though. Like the glacial pace tests your patience sometimes, despite the short running time. It is also hard to believe that there are no records of the lost amnesiacs anywhere where these guys have to start almost from scratch down pat with a new apartment and locality.

    All these can be minor critiques as it is a movie that needs to be viewed, even multiple times, to get a hold of it to gratify you. Especially by the time the film climaxes and pulls the rug from underneath us.

    Apples might be a complicated watch, but it plays out like a fairytale about wanting to start afresh, often at the expense of trying to forget all the wonderful memories of your life to erase a few bad ones.

  • Black Bear: The BRWC Review

    Black Bear: The BRWC Review

    Black Bear: The BRWC Review. By Alif Majeed.

    Black Bear is a very tricky movie to write a review because discussing the film would open it to spoilers. But the catch here is spoilers are inevitable while discussing a movie like this one. If you have to talk about it in a nutshell, the movie is about the creative process, what the director has discussed in various interviews. I think that would be the best way to describe it.

    Instead of talking about what the movie is about, it would be better to talk about how it begins, with Aubrey Plaza’s character sitting in a cabin house’s dock overlooking a lake. It is a scene that continues to recur through the movie, and the way it does further adds to the mystical element.

    We then have Allison (Aubrey Plaza), who comes to stay in a creative retreat run by Gabe (Christopher Abbott) and Blair (Sarah Gadon). She is a writer (and is implied to have been a failed actress) who plans to use her quiet time at the retreat to write her next feature. There is clear and immediate friction between Gabe and Allison, with the former being the more attractive person. Still, she recognizes a significant part of Allison’s charm is because she is a much more interesting person among the two.

    The casting is uniformly excellent as the three actors toys with the perception the audience has about them. For example, Aubrey Plaza seems to be cast as Allison in a role that she can almost sleepwalk in. A woman with a sassy tongue who likes to stir the pot which is a role she has done countless times. Only this time, the director uses our perception of her to deliver a truly eye-opening performance.

    If you watch some of her interviews, you often have other people getting interviewed strangely trying to impress her or even try to sound or say something funny even if she doesn’t put any pressure on them to do so. That works to her advantage when Gadon and Abbott’s characters, especially in the first half, try to impress her and then tearing into each other without even realizing it.

    It is amusing when Plaza’s character actively provoking them to see their reactions, gleefully imagining it as fodder or inspiration for her writing. It comes to a head when the character’s arc shifts in the later portions of the movie where Plaza stuns and surprise when her character takes a heartbreaking dramatic turn. You can’t take your eyes off her and stay transfixed at her as the other characters do in the later portions of the movie.

    Even though Plaza steals the show here, Gadon and Abbott also deserve praise here for their layered performances that may not be as showy as Plaza’s, but the subtle changes they bring to their characters throughout the movie literally pushes Plaza to deliver a performance she would be remembered for.

    Lawrence Michael Levine, the director who also wrote the movie, is definitely someone we should eagerly await to see what he cooks up next, given his short and admittedly quirky filmography so far. With Black Bear, he has left enough room so that people would be curious enough to keep thinking about it some time after, trying to figure out if the titular black bear is a metaphor or something they had missed.

    Black Bear is definitely a movie that is destined to develop a following no matter how small, among people who would spend a lot of time dissecting, replaying, and analyzing the movie to death. That is a pretty big compliment to give to the film.

  • Mortal Kombat: The BRWC Review

    Mortal Kombat: The BRWC Review

    Written by Alif Majeed – Given how divisive the Mortal Kombat movies have been, fans have been curious to see what the new reboot brings to the table. The first movie is often listed among the better video game adaptations, while the sequel is easily counted among the worst. So the question is, does the film live up to the expectations? The answer would depend on who you ask.

    The makers have foregone the original movies’ campy nature of the mid-90s and took the Batman Begins reboot route from a decade later. Only this time, Batman butchers and brutalizes in true Mortal Kombat style. 

    The story is pretty faithful to the video games, or rather, as much as it could afford to be. It starts with a rather detailed prologue involving the characters of Sub-Zero and Scorpion set in Japan a few centuries ago. The movie moves to present day, where the forces of Outworld (read EVIL in bold letters) and Earthrealm (as in the good guys) have been duking it out in the Mortal Kombat tournaments for a long time. As they need to win one more tournament to conquer Earthrealm, Outworld warlock Shang Tsung (Chin Han) orders his fighters to kill all the Earthrealm fighters living on Earth to ensure that they don’t have any champions left by the time the next tournament starts. 

    All this makes more sense in the games, but it sounds somewhat convoluted in the movie. The prime reason for that is also the ban of most origin stories: too much exposition. By making the lead character Cole Young (Lewis Tan), a new character created for the movie, the makers use that to overload him with information and, by default, on us.  

    The byproduct of all that data dump is that too many characters spend a good chunk of the movie explaining the tournament and the universe’s rules, and the movie then rushes towards its ending, leaving a lot of debris behind. The abrupt way the movie tries to end the proceedings feels like a setup for a future series rather than a sequel.

    But this is clearly a movie made by fans, for the fans of the game franchise. Often slavishly so, as they have gone into great detail to show how each character gets their powers, scars, even metallic arms and the likes. They are trying to be as faithful to the games as possible with as many references and callbacks, including many of its catchphrases and fatalities. It was amusing to hear a couple of guys in the theatre hoot in excitement when a character proclaims “Flawless Victory” after defeating another fighter.

    They also really went to town with the violence. All the skull smashing and spine crushing and bodies getting sliced through metallic hats are all there from the games. Blood doesn’t just get spilled out here, but also does a crazy tribal dance before falling to the ground. 

    But it might also disappoint some of the same fans that for a film titled Mortal Kombat, the titular tournament is pretty non-existent, which is shocking (saved for the sequel perhaps). Some of the notable characters from the games also become mere sideshows at the expense of an expansive role for the new character who is not from the games. 

    Among the cast, Joe Taslim is pretty effective as Sub-Zero and scores significant points for rolling along with the movie’s more absurd parts. That could be because he is one of the few characters who doesn’t spend most of the film spewing reams of exposition. Also, Josh Lawson, (going the Jay Courtney route in Suicide Squad to play up the Crazy Australian stereotype to over the top glory), is the only guy who is trying to have fun with what he has.

    It is a movie that is bound to make a lot of fans of the series happy. It is violent, gory, and remains faithful to the games to a fault while being hampered by too much exposition and very little of the titular tournament.

  • mother! – Classic Review

    mother! – Classic Review

    mother! – Classic Review. By Julius Tabel.

    Darren Aronofsky created yet another fantastic and sick movie with “Mother!”. Watching this on April Fools day, the biggest joke I noticed was that Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, and Aronofsky were all nominated at the Razzies for their work. I mean, this is certainly one of those movies that not everybody likes, but everybody will agree that the performances and the direction were on point. “Mother!” is in its entirety one single climax that gets crazier and crazier with every second, which is why I absolutely loved it.

    After seeing just three of his seven features, Darren Aronofsky turns out to be one of my favorite directors claiming the number 2 spot in my Directors Ranked list. Nobody can create horror quite like him. I love how he perfects his character ́s transition into madness. “Mother!” may be very much his craziest and most surreal movie, but I think that ́s exactly why I loved it so much. Although I feel a pinch of David Lynch, Aronofsky ́s approach is quite unique and really superb.

    Without asking any questions, he puts the viewer in a position that feels mysterious, but still very normal at first. But the more time we spent with the protagonist discovering the surroundings, we find out that we are in a lonely house in the middle of nowhere. It feels normal, but yet we are in a very surrealistic world. With every second the events catch up to the surrealism and join in in confusing the viewer ́s mind. “Mother!” is a sick – a very sick piece of craziness. Call it senseless, call it exaggerated, but I absolutely loved this craziness.

    The thing that I found to be most interesting was the pacing. “Mother!” is one big climax that is stretched out for a very long time. At first, it feels peaceful, and out of nowhere endless noises appear and suddenly you find yourself in a massive crowd intensely panicking for an escape into silence only to find out that the silence is the true scary thing. When the vociferation silences, “Mother!” will grab you and throw you on the edge of your seat. I was constantly afraid of a jumpscare or the next mind-blowing thing.

    Aronofsky tells a one-sided story. The focus is on Jennifer Lawrence all the time, and the camera never leaves her. Overall, the cinematography felt very close to the characters which made things very personal and mysterious. In order to do this, you need a very good protagonist, and well, in my opinion, Jennifer Lawrence was amazing. We can embody her pretty well because we are just as confused as she is. We follow her step by step and while I enjoyed the craziness, I could also feel her pain very much. 

    Furthermore, “Mother!” is very uncomfortable and sometimes even disgusting. The ignorance of other people even triggered my nerves from time to time which is a signal that I was tied to the plot. I can understand that some might find this repetitive knocking on your head that everybody around is discourteous very annoying, but for me, it made this entire madness way more intense. Not to forget that the biblical and apocalyptical circumstances at the end are just out of this world; I totally didn ́t expect it to go that far. “Mother!” made me scream, it made me scared, and it even drove me a bit into madness myself. I loved this experience.

    All in all, you could very much argue that “Mother!” is way over the top from time to time, but I loved the madness and the mystery beneath it. It was sick, it was thought-provoking, and it was a crazy experience. Aronofsky certainly didn ́t make something for everybody, but if you love surrealism combined with horrific madness, this is a perfect fit.