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Reviews
Bodkin (2024)
Uneven Tone Kills A Promising and Funny Premise
There's a problem from the very beginning of the series. There's a horrific thing that happens in the very beginning , but the very next scene is comedic, and rather than black humor, it just seems jarring. The kind of funny where you wonder whether you were supposed to laugh at that?
The tonal problems continue throughout. The basic premise is entertaining - 3 podcasters, one of them a seasoned journalist, go to rural Ireland to talk about a series of murders that occurred 20 years ago, at Samhain. The mystery's intriguing but very clichéd and so are the characters. Will Forte is playing Ted Lasso podcaster edition, and Siobhan Cullen is the female version of every angst ridden investigative journalist in a British series. Lots of moments land as well - the sight of Siobhan on her scooter, dark glasses on, never failed to elicit a laugh.
But the portrayal of Siobhan being angsty to a downright irritating level, Will Forte's hapless Americanisms seem to go on and on. There's no end resolution in sight and we had already reached ep 5. The series could've been much better with just a few tweaks.
Hermana muerte (2023)
Atmospheric horror, let down a bit by the story
Beautifully shot in the manner of old style horror films, Sister Death is suffused throughout with a gentle glow, mainly focused on its beatific looking central character , Sister Narcisa. The entire action takes place after the end of the Spanish Civil War and you can feel it's reverberations throughout the story. I was impressed by the atmosphere that felt convincing and plausible. It feels almost dreamlike (nightmarish?) and you can understand how the protagonist 's mind might have begun to give way under the circumstances. A lot of scenes made me think of someone experiencing auditory and visual hallucinations. It holds up very well till the end - but there it falters. Apparently the perpetrators of so much hellish suffering aren't going to be visited by spirits, however people who were victims too are the ultimate ones to be punished. Additionally the ending sequence with the nun being struck blind sort of tips over into being absurd, which I'm sure wasn't the filmmaker's intention. Flaws in the screenplay of this kind bring down an otherwise beautifully shot and enacted film , however it remains an elegant horror film to watch.
Do Your Worst (2023)
Funny and Brutal
One of the worst problems in romcoms is the 'quirky' heroine - inevitably a perfect person with one or two so called flaws introduced just to make her more relatable. In contrast, Sondra, the protagonist here, is flat out terrible. She seems self obsessed and self deluded at the same time - it's a tribute to the lead actress's skill and charm that she makes Sondra somewhat likeable or atleast someone you can root for.
I also liked the relationship between Sondra and Carla, low-key toxic though it is. Like a real life friendship, they love each other deeply but loathe each other at times. They feed into each other's energy and are similarly self obsessed - it was interesting to me that Carla forgives Sondra so fast, because I think the director wanted to show that they are each other's companions and sisters for life. Their relationship is flawed but strong.
There are many things the director's underlined in the film - how letting go and planning your life afresh after a certain age is difficult, parental anxieties and tantrums, how temporary fame can spoil your life in the longterm. There's a vulnerability in the underlying message. I wish they had not gone through the compulsory happy ending but shown how Sondra accepts her life instead. I think the idealized ending took away from the impact of the film somewhat.
Dubai Bling (2022)
Just too manufactured to be fun
Dubai Bling wants to be the mashup between Bling Empire and Selling Sunset that no one really asked for. The cast seems to have watched every reality series there is, and come up with a way to behave. By the 2nd episode you're already tired of them. Zeina seems the only one who genuinely works, but is a back biter. Safa seems to be hiding under a cloak of 'ideal marriage' and getting stifled. Loujain is genuinely, entertainingly vile but too irritating. Lojain is warm but surprisingly hidebound in her ideas, and seemed terrified of stepping even a little bit over the line of Arab social codes. Farhana's just not memorable. Ebraheem is a mama's boy,and needs to sort that out. Fahad telling his wife she better produce a kid on an international streaming platform was not pretty. No relatable characters, no quirks, little fun. The trouble is that these people are simply not wealthy or interesting enough to be presented as people living wealthy, interesting lives.
The House (2022)
Darkly Funny, Yet Horrific Saga Of A Very Strange House (Mild Spoilers)
One of the best animation films I've seen. All 3 parts are very competently directed, and the animation captures even subtle movements extremely well. The voice actors deserve special mention for being uniformly excellent. The story begins with a story set in what seems to be late Victorian England, with a mysterious man promising much to a young family without asking anything in return. The voice actors , Mia Goth and Eleanor De Swaef are so extremely sweet and expressive in this segment. The atmosphere is deeply unsettling and reminiscent of a story by E F Benson or Algernon Blackwood.
It leads into the second one , with a tonal shift regarding the time period. It deals with a young, harried developer trying to create this showpiece-type home to sell. The building is in shambles but he keeps trying to paper over the cracks. While this seemed a bit gimmicky compared to the first, what it shows and what it reveals will leave you thinking for days after. Though one of the scenes made me wonder if the director was hinting at an immigrant intrusion, and I hope not, because it is a brilliant short otherwise. The third one is far more benign on the surface than the others and seems to hint at a happy ending, but then this house is not what it seems. This part had some beautiful scenes in the end on par with a Ghibli movie.
I both liked and disliked the mysteriousness of the house and its origins, keeping in mind how sinister some of the scenes are. It's one of the most engaging films Netflix has ever made and is a must watch.