Go/Don’t Go: Review – Adam (Alex Knapp) has a quiet life, he never really wants to get in anyone’s way and prefers to be in the background, just enjoying his own company and whoever wants to join him is just fine. He’s the definition up ‘failing upwards’, he lets the world go by and whatever happens happens.
Then one day as Adam goes about his daily routine the audience finds him repeating that same routine over and over again until they may start to realise that Adam is alone. Not alone in the sense that he’s lonely, but in the sense that there’s literally nobody else in the world.
Soon Adam starts to think about things he’s never really thought before; he thinks about past loves, about past relationships good and bad and although he’s usually used to his own company, he’s starting to feel that loneliness and along with that comes regret of missed opportunities.
Adam also starts to imagine the people who he had in his life and he’d sit down and talk to them. Even though he’s really talking to himself. He does anything that would stave off the boredom and monotony, but at least he’s alive.
Go/Don’t Go is a post-apocalyptic drama written, directed by and starring Alex Knapp. Taking inspiration from movies such as The Last Man on Earth, The Omega Man and I Am Legend, Knapp’s story takes away all the sensational science fiction aspects, focussing on one man and how he would deal with being the only one left. However, the slow burn aspect of the drama on which the movie sells itself could feel a little grating and may test the patience of people expecting more of a story.
There’s no world ending bomb and no virus that destroys humanity (thank goodness), but what’s left feels a little too slow for its own good and a little conflict no matter how small may have livened things up.
Knapp does a great job and it’s no easy task to try and hold a movie entirely by yourself, but perhaps now is not the right time to watch it if you’ve spent a certain amount of time alone away from everybody else you love.
Lucia (Silvia Novak) is a mother to two adult children. Rebecca (Paula Edwards) brings her husband, Octavio (Benjamin Gorrono) to live with her as they are in financial trouble and Lucia’s son, Antonio (Mario Olivares) has a drinking problem and is constantly asking his mother for money.
However, Lucia has decided that she wants to live on her own terms and while she’s having an affair with Octavio, she also enjoys dangling the promise of inheritance in front of Antonio, while she spends it on the most extravagant things.
Lucia’s marriage to her children’s father, Silverio (Ricardo Herrera) has also left him in tatters. However, the question is how long Lucia can go on living the way that she does until her children take matters into their own hands.
Pelícano is a Chilean arthouse film written and directed by Gustavo Letelier, adapted from August Strindberg’s classic tragic play, The Pelican. It tells the story of a family on the edge of ruin, told with all the heightened drama that an audience may come to expect from such a tale, but thankfully never going too far over the top.
By using black and white scenes and colour, Letelier’s update on Strindberg’s play shows the audience a story told in reverse, with the colour scenes being told in the present and the black and white telling the story of how the audience finds the family at the start. There are even times when both scenes intermingle to show how close the past is catching up and how different characters are affected.
All the cast play their parts very well, particularly Novak as the self-absorbed matriarch who revels in the drama and chaos around her as she lives her life without a care. There are some scenes that may be a little confusing to some people who may be new to the arthouse genre (such as Antonio’s drunken oboe playing).
However, if the audience just goes along with it then they will be satisfied by the film’s melodramatic finale. Tragedy never looked so good and was never done quite as stylishly as Pelícano.
Battle in Space: The Armada Attacks is an anthology movie with five different stories that mostly take on a very similar tone. The first one sets up a con artist living in the 25th century where the Earth has been taken over by ‘Space Wizards’, the second is about a couple of men tasked with tracking down and important item on an alien planet in order to bring it back to its rightful owners.
The third one is about a spacecraft whose captain has been taken over by an alien entity. The fourth is about a man and a woman alone on a spaceship where one of them may be lying to the other. Then the final one is about a girl trying to connect with her lost family by playing a sci-fi video game.
It’s just a shame that the movie doesn’t give any indication whatsoever that it’s meant to be an anthology.
The movie starts out with a rather stoic and stern voiceover informing the audience that it’s the 25th century and the world has been taken over by Space Wizards. This could have been the perfect opportunity for the movie to subvert the audience’s expectations, but unfortunately it keeps up this serious tone which completely lacks any sense of self awareness.
For the most part each of the stories are mind numbingly generic and if they were given more time may even turn out to be something more interesting and maybe even funny. However, this is where the movie gets even more frustrating as just when the audience may think that the story will get somewhere – it cuts to the next story with little to no warning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMbJ9Lta5bE
The visuals in some of the short stories admittedly do look great when considering what a low budget the anthology must have, and the way that each story instantly evokes another movie that it’s clearly taking its influence from is effective.
However, in the end apart from the last story, they are all excerpts from movies we have seen before. A confusing experiment in how to give your audience the bare minimum.
A Thousand Cuts: Review. Journalist Maria Ressa’s perilous mission to report on the current state of the Philippines. By Ray Lobo.
The Philippines has had a challenging historical journey: Spanish colonialism, American and Japanese occupations, the Ferdinand Marcos years, spiraling crime and terrorism, and the meteoric rise of President Rodrigo Duterte’s populist cult of personality. Maria Ressa, and the team of brave journalists she assembled for her news network Rappler, are sentinels keeping track of the Duterte regime’s policies.
Director Ramona S. Diaz’s documentary A Thousand Cuts drops the viewer into the hot stove that is the Philippines. Diaz introduces us to a motley cast of characters ranging from the young reporters on Ressa’s staff facing daily threats of imprisonment or death — journalist Pia Ranada is the very definition of courage in scenes where she resolutely asks Duterte challenging questions — to Duterte’s cronies — Mocha is a former dancer and social media hype-woman for Duterte and Bato Dela Rosa is Duterte’s national police chief head and a senatorial aspirant. When combative authoritarianism runs into dogged journalism, A Thousand Cuts shows us that the odds are heavily stacked in favor of the authoritarian.
Duterte’s bark matches his bite. When Duterte was still a candidate for the presidency, Ressa got Duterte to openly admit, “It’s going to be bloody…I have already killed three people.” Since becoming president, Duterte’s killings have grown exponentially. Duterte’s war on drugs has led to thousands of extrajudicial killings. Duterte is part Dirty Harry — a nickname given to him while still a mayor — and part Travis Bickle determined to clean up the “scum” of the Philippines.
What makes him all the more terrifying when compared to those film characters is that he has the executive power and popularity to kill en masse with little opposition. His threatening words to journalists like Ressa require a sangfroid the likes of which many of us are not capable of summoning.
The most insightful aspect of Diaz’s documentary is the commentary it makes, without naming any names, on the West’s authoritarian leaders. Ressa notes how Duterte and his followers managed to weaponize the internet. The Philippines was a Petri dish on how to mobilize people who exist in radical internet spheres and social media bubbles, and get them to vote, not for substantive change, but on the basis of resentment. A polarized information ecosystem, if tapped into effectively, not only mobilizes voters, but also gets fans of the elected authoritarian to harass truth-seeking journalists.
While Duterte’s war on drugs is a disguised war on the poor and political opponents, his many supporters living in their media bubbles, don’t see the forest for the online insults and character assassinations. Duterte’s tactic was mimicked by an orange-hued Western authoritarian we all know. Duterte was also able to mobilize an identity politics based on resentment. In one scene Duterte calls out Ressa’s company — Rappler — for being foreign owned and “pierc[ing] Filipino identity.” Calling out foreigners is yet another tactic mimicked by the previously mentioned orange-hued leader. Authoritarian mimicry comes full circle when Duterte accuses Rappler of being “fake news.”
Duterte also weaponizes gender. In his speeches he makes references to his genitalia and his potency. There is a scene in A Thousand Cuts of a speech in which Duterte jokes about the smell of women’s genitals. His audience heartily laughs. If that were not enough, he calls his journalist enemies “presstitutes.” All the while, Duterte rallies often feature young women dancing provocatively in order to pump up his audience. A Thousand Cuts makes us aware that the total breakdown of political rhetoric is now an international norm.
It is easy to be seduced into believing that Duterte is a harmless demagogue or that he is at least harmless to high-profile journalists with Western connections — Ressa has worked for CNN, and has received support from Christiane Amanpour and Amal Clooney. We must remember that a high-profile and Western connections were not enough to save journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Even if Duterte does not order the killing of journalists, he can make life miserable for them to the point where the harassment makes them give up. Ressa has been arrested twice on libel charges. Ressa was recently given six years in prison — a punishment she is currently appealing.
A Thousand Cuts makes it quite clear that Ressa is fully reconciled with the possibility of death or imprisonment. In an intimate scene her sister breaks down and cries over the possible fate that awaits Ressa. We as viewers share her dark foreboding. The existence of serious journalists is as precarious as ever.
Like their inspired forefathers, several modern science fiction yarns utilize contemporary plights to ruminate on vital cultural conceits. Our society’s over-reliance upon AI technology meshes seamlessly with the genre’s explorative idealism, allowing adept filmmakers to digest this ever-changing dynamic. Netflix’s latest sci-fi actionerOutside the Wire utilizes genre machinations to highlight society’s distrusting and abusive attitudes towards tech. Its thematic grasp may outstretch the narrative’s reach, but director Mikael Håfström ably constructs a capable meat-and-potatoes actioner around its intriguing ideas.
In a near-future where robots serve as hapless grunts, Outside the Wire follows Thomas Harp (Damon Idris), a decorated drone pilot sent on a dangerous mission after breaking orders. He teams up with Captain Leo (Anthony Mackie), a top-secret android officer attempting to stop a nuclear attack. To prevent a new world war, Thomas must preserve in his challenging new role while debating whether to trust his sentient captain.
An AI-driven future isn’t particularly revelatory, yet credit to screenwriters Rob Yescombe and Rowan Athale for carving their own pathway amongst the crowded subgenre. The two wisely ruminate on the moral and personal conflicts inherent within AI warfare, with robots matter-of-fact decision-making failing to assess a situation’s humane circumstances. Like astute science fiction films should, the duo draw upon our tech-dependent environment when critiquing society’s over-reliance and lackluster understanding of tech’s limitless potential. Athale and Yescombe also draw an engaging actioner yarn in the process, including a clever third-act twist that spices up the familiar formula.
As a straight-forward actioner, Outside the Wire delivers what audiences are looking for. Mikael Håfström continues to operate as an assured director-for-hire, aiding the film’s busy action frames with his poised camera work (it’s refreshing to see an actioner not overplay the shaky-cam trope most films overuse). Håfström and his team also build a lived-in dystopian setting for audiences to invest in.
He meshes the boots-on-the-ground grit of war procedurals with textured sci-fi design work, which helps further ground the material in a level of realism. Stars Damon Idris and Anthony Mackie further bolster the film’s appeals through their capable abilities. I especially enjoyed seeing Mackie play off the typically cerebral presence of AI creations, infusing the character with a raw bravado that keeps audiences on their toes.
Outside the Wire rarely takes a major stumble, but the film can’t shake its lingering sense of familiarity. The script’s Robocop-lite ideals aren’t infused with enough brains to re-work their inherent purpose, often reminding audiences of superior science-fiction efforts. One could see how the script could unleash a substantive experience, but Athale and Yescombe’s effort largely settles for your standard tropes. The central narrative falls into mostly routine territory while the characters are left feeling paper-thin in the process.
Hardened science fiction fans may not take to Outside the Wire’s simplistic approach. For what it is though, Håfström cooks up a competent vehicle with his familiar ingredients.
