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MikeyYip
Reviews
Badpakje 46 (2011)
Should have won the Golden Palme
Personally, this was much better than Cross Country and deserved the Golden Plame much more. The synopsis for this film really gives off the wrong impression, it paints it almost like a cheesy sitcom episode when in reality it is far from it. Yes there are moments of sentimental exaggeration and the methods are defiantly in vain of the tired short film trends, but the film makers arresting passion amends most of these annoyances.
The leading girl puts on an incredible performance that makes you forget about some of the weaker ones in the film.
The film is well structured, well directed and nicely shot. It was given the Critics prize at the 2011 Festival De Cannes and rightly so.
David (2005)
So much with so little words.
There are so many movies (especially fictional shorts) about brief encounters and usually they rely on substantial amounts of "character building" dialogue. This film on the other hand does the exact opposite and it is the characters situations that enable this to work so effectively.
A middle aged jobless man meets a mute film buff, their methods of communication alone force the filmmaker to adopt quite, subtle and meditative techniques.
The two men discover each other (body and soul) whilst at the same time discovering how to communicate. It can be said that their relationship develops at the same pace as their scattered dialogue. Then in good "brief encounter" fashion, as soon as they get close they have to part ways.
David is a beautiful and lyrical film about the smaller less dramatic seeming moments in life that can only be captured by true poets.
Luv'in the Black Country (2010)
Subtitles anyone?
This movie was heavily neglected at its screening because of the lack of subtitles. If you have not seen this film or no little about the regional accents and dialects of Britain then my statement may confuse you. This is a British film and is spoken in English, but an English only people from that area of Britain could understand.
I know very little about Britain other than its popular culture and the occasional Lyndsay Anderson movie, so the "Black Country" region I had no knowledge of prior to seeing this movie. The movie begins with some old documentary footage of the local canals and a voice over expressing how important the canals were to the region, but due to modern rail roads being built the canals were no longer needed. It then fades to a beautifully quiet shot of the canal in present time, moving along lyrically with the wind. Also, this is when the movie began to separate the audience in to two groups, those that were patient and those that were not.
It is a very slow documentary, that focuses more on the meditative state of the canals and passers by, rather than tangible information. Only one or two people the movie encounters could I understand fully what they were saying, so its only natural many of the other people watching began to loose patience. However saying that, many people I spoke with after said they were too busy absorbing the harmonious visuals and sounds to bother trying to work out what the interviewees were saying.
It is certainly a shame something as stupid as subtitles could prevent this small movie from being fully appreciated, but that is something the distributors of this movie should have taken into account.
Despite that if you allow yourself to become lost with the lyrical value of the piece it is a very exceptional little movie.