Movies
Amusing film that maps out how Tommy Wiseau's The Room (famous for being one of the worst films ever) came to be. The Disaster Artist is funny but never feels like simple or cheap amusement at the expense of Wiseau, no matter how bad his film was, nor how excentric his personality is.
Simple but fun sci-fi/post-apocalyptic action flick. It's clearly trying to bank on the success of the Mad Max reboot. While obviously cheaper, I was pretty surprised to see a bunch of familiar faces show up. Not real A-listers, but certainly actors who enjoyed their time in the spotlight. The plot is trivial, but what did you expect. After the Earth has gone to shit (again), a biker gang is looking for one of the last remaining androids. They finally find her and take her along with them, but a boy looking for medicine gets into their way and takes the android for himself. The cinematography is pretty decent, the score is effective, the styling is nice and the pacing is excellent. It's a short film that doesn't waste too much time on specifics, since this is all very familiar territory. Simple genre entertainment, in other words. If you like a bit of post-apocalyptic filler, it's not a bad choice.Read all
A Dangerous Method meets Eyes Wide Shut and Pit & the Pendulum. There's a lot of potential here, but the result feels a little cheap. The film tries to come off as serious and deep, but it can't escape its shallow foundation, nor some dubious performances.
Venice 70: Future Reloaded
I'm a big fan of anthologies, and this project sounded very promising on paper. Seventy renowned directors give their vision on the future of cinema. With just one minute per short, there isn't much time to make a point, but it's disheartening to see how few of them even managed to stick to the topic. The saddest part was that many of the short didn't even deal with the future, but openly referred to or praised the medium's past. There's also a lot of doom and gloom, with some very basic visions of people not caring enough about arthouse cinema, or playing movies on their phones. Your typical old-man-yelling-at-cloud stuff. There is only a small selection of directors who seem to have understood the brief, and they struggle to make the most of their limited runtime. What remains is a complete mess, with most shorts looking like they were made on people's afternoon off, and hardly anything that stands out. A disappointment.Read all