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  • Rialto: Review

    Rialto: Review

    Colm (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor) has seemingly got everything sorted in an idyllic life. He’s married to Claire (Monica Dolan) and they have two teenage children, Kerry (Sophie Jo Wasson) and Shane (Scott Graham) and he’s had a steady job for as long as he can remember. However, when Colm’s father dies his life starts to spiral into a deep depression where he contemplates his place in life and what it’s all meant.

    Then one day he meets Jay (Tom Glynn-Carney), a man around the age of Colm’s son and instinctually Colm decides to pay for Jay’s services as a male prostitute. Unfortunately, Jay’s services come at a bigger price than Colm was expecting, however what starts out as a seedy relationship soon turns into something deeper and satisfying for Colm.

    Rialto is an independent Irish film backed by the BFI, directed by Peter Mackie Burns and written by Mark O’ Halloran, adapted from his award-winning play. Rialto explores a man’s life as it seemingly unravels, forcing Colm to lose everything he’s ever valued, wondering how it got to that point.

    With a script that feels authentic, Rialto gives a slice of life in an ordinary Irish town where men like Colm need an outlet before they lose themselves entirely.

    Vaughan-Lawlor gives an outstanding performance as a man who’s starting to realise that he’s lost everything and the relationship between Colm and Jay plays out well, seamlessly turning from one of an illicit encounter, to that akin to a father and son.

    The events of Rialto are also realistically grounded and although the audience knows that Colm is going through great inner turmoil and emotion, it’s never pushed to the front. This makes the audience feel for Colm as he silently deals with his grief, his delayed resentment of his father and his worries for his own children.

    In the end there may be a little light as Colm starts to come to terms with who he is and what his life has become, but the ambiguous ending will be up to the audience to decide whether Colm deserves a better life.

  • Sanjay’s Super Team: Disney+ Talk

    Sanjay’s Super Team: Disney+ Talk

    One of the most underrated Pixar shorts is ‘Sanjay’s Super Team’. Released in 2015, and shown before ‘The Good Dinosaur’, it revolves around a father and his young son. The son, whom the short follows the perspective of, loves nothing more than to watch his favourite cartoon, Super Team, and draw the characters.

    The father, on the other hand, wants his son to join him in the daily Hindu meditation sessions and follow the family’s religious beliefs. Through an adventure that only Sanjay’s imagination can take him on, both characters learn that they can accept each other’s beliefs and hobbies.

    Not only is this short an underrated one, but it is also one of my favourite Pixar shorts. Loosely based around writer/director Sanjay Patel’s childhood, this short film paints a beautiful story of connection between a father and son. 

    The short also shows that there can be other ways of teaching religion. As a young boy, Sanjay can’t connect with the daily meditation and prayer sessions. At the start of the short, we see that he’s bored of them; all he wants to do is draw his favourite superheroes and watch cartoons. However, he finds a way to connect with Hinduism, by imagining the Gods as strong and powerful superheroes wanting to protect Sanjay and his family. By viewing Hinduism in this way, the young boy is able to connect with the religion and, furthermore, his father, who then takes an interest when Sanjay draws the Gods as heroes. 

    ‘Sanjay’s Super Team’ has two styles of animation; the 3D CGI animation style, similar to that of ‘Tangled’ and ‘Big Hero 6’, and a more 2D-looking style. The latter style is used during the Super Team cartoon and when Sanjay is imagining the Gods as superheroes.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=222ztGhX4SE

    It’s not only a gorgeous art style, but it’s a fantastic way to show the differences between reality and fiction. The lighting in the imagined sequence is also beautiful and vibrant, especially when the three Hindu gods are shown. They shine brightly in their greyish surroundings, giving them a sense of importance and empowerment. 

    Overall ‘Sanjay’s Super Team’ is a wonderful short film that revolves around family and religious connection. The different animation styles used make this a beautiful and visually spectacular short film to watch, and it also shows that there are other ways of teaching religion. This is a very underrated short film, so I highly recommend more people watch it now that it’s on Disney+.

  • I’ll Be Around: Review

    I’ll Be Around: Review

    I’ll Be Around is set against the backdrop of a post punk festival, filled with bands with names like Jentacular, The Motion Pictures and Attempted Choke.

    Most of the band members are in their mid-thirties and considering the way their musical careers are going (standing still), other things start weighing heavily on their minds when they’re not screaming down a mike or writing another song. This is the story of those different groups, the fans and the legends that inspire them and how they all fit together.

    Co-written and directed by Mike Cuenca, I’ll Be Around takes a lot of influence from other films that have mulled over a certain time in people’s lives while those people are still trying to figure it all out. A lot of Cuenca’s script speaks directly to the kinds of people who like the music, are still thinking over their own lives and even film fans who want to be reminded that films are not all laugh out loud, gross out comedies or action blockbusters.

    I’ll Be Around is Scott Pilgrim meets Clerks with a Woody Allen aesthetic for Generation Y. Without speaking about the wider world around us, I’ll Be Around still speaks to its audience, offering up some experiences and feelings which mainly go unspoken and it will make you laugh out loud while doing it.

    From crying in a public bathroom about the best years of your life being behind you to nervously babbling at someone you’re attracted to that you meet in a coffee shop; these are the kinds of things that the film tells its audience that it’s ok to have done. Because we’ve all been there – haven’t we?

    Starting off slowly, I’ll Be Around intentionally introduces the audience to its vast cast of characters and before you know it you’ll realise you either relate closely to a few of them or at least know one for real.

    The film may overstay its welcome a little as it reaches its final act, but like the characters, life does go on and it shows that it’s ok not to have everything worked out just yet.

  • Antebellum: The BRWC Review

    Antebellum: The BRWC Review

    Unnerving audiences with an uncanny sensibility, horror films continue to excel as the genre reaches for new substantive heights. Filmmakers like Jordan Peel, Ari Aster, Jennifer Kent, and Robert Eggers have imbued a new sense of artistry and purpose into the familiar framework, setting a new high-bar for filmmakers to follow. Writer/Directors Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz attempt to follow suit with their first feature Antebellum, a promising, yet misguided attempt to confront systematic racism.

    Antebellum follows Veronica (Janelle Monae), a successful author and political pundit who works to confront society’s uncomfortable truths. After being kidnapped, Veronica awakes as a slave stuck in a pre-Reconstruction time period. Left to fight for her life, she attempts to discover what’s going on under the surface of this bizarre reality.

    Observing slavery’s discriminatory practices to reflect on modern prejudices stemmed from that antiquated era, Bush and Renz certainly have a pulse on a wide-spanning conceit. The problems arise from their inability to illustrate deeper nuances within their high-concept set-up. Like many first screenplays, Antebellum rests solely on the laurels of its intriguing premise, implementing wooden dialogue and a lingering sense of inauthenticity that stunt the narrative at every turn.

    The scenes set in the modern era are especially flat, revolving around over-written caricatures that muddle the filmmakers’ tangible intentions (a Fox News-esque sequence lands with a clunky obviousness). These issues severely hamper star Janelle Monae, whose previously shined as a multi-faceted talent with radiant charisma onscreen. As Veronica, Monae is letdown by a thankless role devoid of personability and weight, leaving audiences with nothing to attach to.

    Antebellum sells itself as a horror film, but without proper gravitas, the execution lands closer to uncomfortable exploitation. Slavery has morphed into tired subject matter, often relegating talented black actors to submissive roles that only work to trudge up an ugly, well-known reality. Attempts to build a sense of atmosphere and unease through these depictions land with an awkward thud, lacking the grace and substantive core to give purpose to these actions. There are some promising frames that have me intrigued by Bush and Renz’s future (the final frames evoke a visceral impact and emotional power), although it’s clear there’s room for refinement.

    While constructed with noble aspirations, Antebellum’s clumsy execution fails to evoke the weight of its subject matter.

  • Lucid: Review

    Lucid: Review

    By Thomas White. 

    Zel, a lonely introverted young man, is offered the chance to overcome his social anxiety through lucid dreaming. A simple plot holding sufficient psychological interest for the makings of an engaging thriller, being a curious subject, and one less commonly associated with the genre. 

    Director Adam Morse, in his debut feature, creates an effective and appropriate sense of sleep depravation (satisfyingly ironic, since the feeling is brought on by Zel’s sleeping), with the waking and dream states merging into one. There is little if no distinction between night and day. The nocturnal lighting of the streets and artificially lit interiors is disorientating. You get the sense of being trapped inside a world of permanent semi-consciousness, an after-dark existence in stasis. 

    It is let down, however, on a number of levels. The story is played out by a cast consisting of fairly standard one-dimensional characters, each derivative and stereotyped versions of their various roles and functions; shy loner, abusive boss, aloof showgirl. This was as much down to the writing as the performances, they could have done with a bit more fleshing out. 

    What might also have helped was to have some distinction between the realtime world and the dream states, bringing some dynamism to the overall pace which was, for the most part, fairly flat. Although understandably this could have been a conscious and creative choice, to blur the lines between wake and sleep. 

    What cannot be so easily overlooked was the decision to shoot with such a dimly lit visual aesthetic. Bordering on gloomy (not in a good way) the darkness was extreme and just made things difficult to see and follow the action. The story became equally laborious, losing its initial intrigue from a general sense of apathy. 

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8pvkRCem_E

    Billy Zane, one of the two ‘name actors’ attached to the project, elevates the scenes he is in playing Elliot, the neighbour who teaches Zel the concept of lucid dreaming. Sadie Frost, who plays Zel’s mother, has rather less to do, appearing in only one scene. It would have been nice to see more of her character. 

    Laurie Calvert gives a believable but rather flat performance as Zel, which made it hard to relate or warm to him. The character who I felt most held the story together, and propelled Zel’s personal journey, was his co-worker Kat, played by Sophie Kennedy Clark, a character with a kind-heart and genuine sense of empathy and friendship. She was a figure of normalcy in the chaotic nightlife filled with toxic characters, providing some grounding for the plot and, in the end, Zel himself, as they start to form a relationship.