staryarabbi

Its the greatest film made on the Iraq War and the US hegemony of 2000s. This monster stands both for the US war machine and the lies it produces (opening scene) out of some corrupt politicians' decisions. It narrates the struggle of an individual (stupid father) against that inhuman condition of brutal neoliberalism by mixing different cinematic genres. Great on many many levels.

40 _19%

Shame (1968) - Rated 20 Mar 2015

Bourgeois couple facing the cruel and harsh realities of the bleak side of human violence confronts with their animalistic drives to survive and bla bla... We witness Jan's transformation to a tough guy and Liv Ullman is a hysteric character without reason as always. I insist that Bergman's movies are too theatrical and they constantly state the obvious. Tarkovsky's "Offret" surpasses this in all cinematic aspects.

85 _88%

Pickpocket (1998) - Rated 12 Oct 2013

Jia Zhangke pays tribute to "nouvelle vague" by reinterpreting Bresson's "Pickpocket". He himself becomes a thief as he uses different cinematic styles from nouvelle vague for example when Wu and his girlfriend ramble like Michel Poiccard and his girlfriend in "A Bout de Souffle". And I think at the end he lets the camera be handcuffed because he thinks that this has no place in China: this is a culturally closed country to such unnecessary tricky cinema like the unnecessary burglar Wu.

95 _96%

The Wailing (2016) - Rated 19 May 2016

A film beyond good and evil. A masterful compilation of borderline human emotions and a meticulously balanced realism-fantasy and comedy-horror. Na depicts every value and person as ambivalent and manifold, questioning hospitality (the Jap), science-belief conflict and the thin lines between good-bad/Jesus-devil. Shot in epic grandiosity but still with a huge attention to tiny details, Goksung blends "Memories of Murder", "I Saw the Devil" and hardcore Japanese horror genre. Great cinema.

10 _6%

Birdman (2014) - Rated 18 Jan 2015

"Medium is the message", and if a director tries to show the rotten and sick relations behind the curtains of the entertainment world (which is what every Hollywood movie does today with a hypocrite mask of self criticism), he should try not to turn his movie into such a show of empty visuality. What does Innaritu aim when he uses those long moving shots? It only creates another buble instead of the Broadway's. If you adore long shots Sokurov already did it. :)

0 _1%

Vanya on 42nd Street (1994) - Rated 15 Nov 2015

There is something wrong with the idea of trying to catch the essence of human beings always in a more accurate and refined way with digging deep into them as they "perform" in the classical theatrical way. Eventhough it is essentially humanistic and assumes them to be good by nature, it's made from the same element of fascism: it assumes an essence and tries to capture it in vain. That can only evoke a feeling of death as it is in the end. That's not cinema that's human pornography.

80 _79%

Woman in the Dunes (1964) - Rated 16 Apr 2015

It deals with the phenomenon of "institutionalization" which delienates and habituates simply everything in our lifes, in that sense this is an ontological experiment which puts our entomologist in the place of the insects and makes him the object of our view, of the villager's entertainment. And it proves that men has a tendency to institutionalize every habitus, unlike insects which die when they can't adapt. Could be easily a story by Franz Kafka.

75 _68%

Day of the Dead (1985) - Rated 19 Apr 2024

Usually when zombie apocalypse hits, it hits a liberal consumerist society where market, instead of the barrel of the gun rules. This time, humanity is stuck in a military regime of scarcity, where a group of barbarian men oppress others, and science is nowhere to rescue us. The filmic unconscious can only cope with the inevitable bleak end by showing that it was just a dream and there is still hope for humanity. Could have been much better if there was no cope but brutal honesty. Still good.

95 _96%

O Fantasma (2000) - Rated 08 Mar 2015

Great movie about the discontents and chasms of capitalism and the homogeneity it requires to continue its economy. We witness a cycle of dirt, garbage and ugliness which have to be overtaken by the outcasts, in a similar manner director prolongs the unorthodox ugly shots of movie. Sergio is an outcast at every level: he is poor, a homosexual and envies animals, but through that animalistic identification he achieves an existence beyond good and evil, in which he literally fucks the bourgeois :)

100 _99%

As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2000) - Rated 09 Dec 2015

Nothing happens in this film.