Reviews

It was an exceptional experience, even in a year when the majority of films without an established director proved to be absolutely worthless. Donnie Darko looks like he has been botoxed into a permanent Sean Connery smirk, and even his voice sounds like it has been put on auto-tune throughout the movie. I assume that's what his AI version will look and sound like. Newcomer Daniela Melchior can't act her way out of a cardbox. It's painful to watch her not know what to do with her hands and eyes in every scene. The rest of the cast isn't brilliant either, with the exception of Lukas Gage and Billy Magnussen, although they too don't seem to know how to carry themselves through such a substandard script and such pedestrian direction. Why has this been done? It's not even Halloween yet...

I saw this maybe 14 years ago and I remember thinking it was clichéd and in very bad taste. 14 years later, I find myself thinking about this movie a lot. It's the quintessential type of movie that would never be made post #MeToo, and for a whole bunch of obvious reasons that I don't need to go into here. But the most obvious reason is how the film capitalizes on the cheap thrill and seems to fetishize the method of murder without any satirical perspective or anything vaguely resembling a critical position. Women are treated in the movie as an inconvenience, a reason for horror as much as the freak accident, while the men - killers and accomplices - seem to be portrayed as victims of a party crasher who overdosed or a justice system that ruined their weekend. There is much to mock about these people, but is it ever funny? Is it ever sharp? Is it even remotely interesting?

Today is February 6, 2024, and I just finally quit watching this series in the middle of the extremely boring 5th episode. I have to admit that I really enjoyed the series in the beginning. The first two episodes are quite exciting and stylish, but that's about it. The whole concept is stillborn, the characters are uninteresting and anonymous, the acting is unremarkable, the writing is boring for such a pre-designed genre as a huis-clos whodunit. The luxury yacht setting is embarrassingly déjà vu, and all the characters look like plastic models from a home-deco ad. There is no sense of class struggle, which ultimately seems to be the theme of the story, as everyone looks like they could be having mai-tais on Wall Street during lunch. What's interesting about shows like The White Lotus or movies like Triangle of Sadness and Saltburn is how the creators are aware that everyone looks good as a statement, and because it's either that or the highway in such deluxe hangouts. This murder mystery seems to be ambivalent about a recognizable way to present the characters and totally unaware of a better way to do it. In the end, the whole story development is substandard and very unambitious. Kudos to the lovely Violett Beane as Imogene, witty and perpetually well-coiffed.

Tommy Guns/Nacao Valente is not your run-of-the-mill Saturday movie that might be viewed in terms of what we think we know about film making and storytelling. In all truth, it is a formally radical and sometimes even experimental film in its unique way of employing the viewer's reasoning (and what the viewer knows about genre cinema and its allegories) as a tool to lead them to question themselves and the nature of military cruelty across cultures and generations. In that sense, I had never seen a film that exposed my own prejudices, much less one that was so free of false moralism or the need to satisfy the audience. Nacao Valente risks the opposite: it risks disappointing the audience by suggesting different genre tropes that it will never pursue, it risks confusing the audience by changing the protagonist (and a lot more) half an hour into the film, it risks by mischievously flirting with the political standpoint it ends up condemning, it risks by placing itself for the longest time in the oppressor's point of view, it risks by opening a historical context to a universal vision.

But boy, does the film satisfy! Kudos to Kino Lorber for bringing us this brave gem of auteur cinema which introduces Carlos Conceicao to us as a new name to watch out for. Mandatory viewing for all film lovers!

A couple of actors are really good in their roles in just the right balance between caricature and naturalism. Namely Rodrigo Tomas. Others, like Afonso Pimentel, are over-the-top and right down unbelievable, playing characters that behave as randomly as being catholic in one scene and muslim in the next. But the worst part is that some of the options taken by the directors are simply in poor taste: the cringe voice-over by Pepe Rapazote, the extended disco scenes, the exhausting drone shots, the fact that no-one so poor would look as fit and groomed as Jose Condessa or Helena Caldeira, the fact that almost nobody in the cast has the unmistakable accent of that particular island. In fact they mostly speak in a very metropolitan central-Portuguese accent. Moreover, the difference in quality between the episodes directed by Augusto Fraga and the ones directed by Patricia Sequeira is ENORMOUS, with her episodes very often lacking in ideas, structure (her cutting is absolutely random whereas Fraga's is almost cinematic), or rhythm. It doesn't help that she also gets the least eventful episodes, but still, what she chooses the do with them seems devoid of purpose and often borderlines the telenovela.

Why exactly isn't there one single adaptation that get's the protagonist's age right?

I take my title from a commentary posted here by user aislinismainame.

I consider myself pretty damn forward thinking myself and I thought the greatest part of this show (which actually should not be seen as a remake of the original Heathers but a rather different take on the same recipe under the light of a new age) was indeed the near mocking of a sort of social thinking that nowadays passes for being forward but is indeed a borderline dictatorship of political correctness. The present-day tyranny of good manners that affects the less informed of the informed should, needs to, has to be mocked by all means. There is nothing straightforward about trying to make revolution against the less sensitive or attacking the prejudiced with our prejudices.

Just for the braveness of being counter-trend, of pointing at the hypocrisy of the social-correctness-junkies, Heathers (the pilot) deserves all credibility and should be cheered as an eye-opener!

Now where is the rest of it??

Adjectives will fail you, as you try to classify this load of crap, as you try to get over the sadness of having spent actual lifetime watching this, as you fail to get anything out of it - either artistic or historically relevant.

Nothing. Not one thing.

This is a poorly (seriously poor) filmed 'something' made just to make a fool out of Roman Polanski (something that, among everything you can say about him, he will never be). It's a piece of fundamentalist propaganda that doesn't even try to be smart. It looks like it's done by unloved Sunday-school teachers. One of the guys that was trying to sell this at the Film Market in Cannes refers to Polanski with racist, anti-Semitic remarks. His face trembles in anger as he speaks. "Do you know who's a great, underrated filmmaker?" he asks. "Mel Gibson!" he concludes.

What a load of pretentious crap this film turns out to be. The most absurd and unbelievable premise is taken to extreme cinematic void through a soap opera type script and TV-commercial imagery. The charm and good looks of the two leading actors is enough to make you feel compassion for the characters but then you keep being blown to the sides by absurdly abrupt plot points and increasingly laughable drama. Lots of information is quickly given by poorly written dialogue and then you are given the chance to rest your eyes every so often with montages of extreme happy or sad kissing and making out - all set against a dramatic score that often makes you burst out laughing. The only reasons one can enjoy this film are the same that would make you enjoy an episode of afternoon TV drama as you prepare yourself a tortilla and think of making a dentist appointment... or the same that make you enjoy a Bel Ami porn - although unfortunately there is no actual sex in this one. My advise would be to skip it unless impossible, but never, NEVER, pay to watch it.

Interesting but predictable and gratuitous. Why interesting? The movie has a nice build up of tension and is graphically well achieved.

Predictable: inevitably it reminds viewers of "Haute Tension". However, "Haute Tension" is extremely clever and balanced whereas this one isn't. The explanation of all the violence is frankly poor and it kind of lacks a third act. Options, of course. Every film is a different film. But still, it's unsatisfying.

Gratuitous: the film is quite violent but we never understand why it goes where it goes until the (poor and vague) finale. I'd rather watch a horror movie in which there is tension (logical tension) behind the graphical aspect.

Beatrice Dalle is awesome as always!