Reviews

Definitely missed a lot of what this film was going for, which is definitely partly on me. A fair bit lost in translation, and it sounds like it would be helpful to be familiar with Ozu as well. Watching this dead tired at 11pm on a Sunday night likely didn't help comprehension. Was a big fan of the cinematography, especially the couple that keeps walking by. Excellent score for this film as well.

Most of the review here are calling this pro-Chinese propaganda. I however, would like to suggest that this is actually anti-Chinese, whatever the intensions of the writers were. Throughout this movie, the only people who are worse than the Chinese special forces are the Chinese mercenaries. The special forces, and the even more elite special forces walk into trap after trap, and are beaten very easily by the international mercenaries. The PLA looks completely incompetent, save for the main character, who just happens to be the director of the film. Whether he made the rest of the special forces look useless so he would look better in comparison, or if the writers just have no idea of any sort of tactics that might be used so just have people run headlong into gunfire is unclear, but it does stand out.

Other aspects of this film are equally poor. The acting and writing are terrible, even accounting for things that are lost in translation, and cultural nuances I might not have picked up on. The sound is also bad, with sound effects I'm pretty sure I've heard used in podcasts incorporated here to represent are character being kicked. The CGI hardly even needs to be mentioned, as I wasn't expecting much from it, but a scene with dozens of wolves attacking soldiers does stand out as especially bad.

To say something positive about this film, the stunts are impressive. No, not the highly promoted martial arts, but there are a lot of explosions in this film which looked like they were very close to the stunt performers, so I want to give kudos to them and the stunt coordinators.

Overall, this film is not worth watching if you're in the West. It is just bad, and not even in an entertaining way. At best, this might give people an idea of how certain Hollywood films look to international audiences, but that is about it.

This film presents the story of the filming of Maria Chapdelaine in 1934 in the town of Péribonka, Québec. This is one of the most famous events in the history of the town, and the film has managed to gather together a number of people with first- or second-hand accounts of the film shoot, as well as historians from the region. The film discusses various locations that the film was shot, and most interestingly has a pair of siblings who were alive and old enough to remember the film production. The director has also managed to track down a relative of the woman the character of Maria Chapdelaine was allegedly based on.

While I found much of the film to be interesting and informative, I thought it was unfocused in its narrative. There did not appear to be a theme running through the various stories told in the film, and was mostly a recounting of the events. There perhaps could have been more discussion of the effects on the town, or other towns with similar contexts where movies filmed. Many documentaries can take very specific stories such as this, and make them appealing to a broad audience by choosing presenting the story as a universal theme or lesson. Unfortunately, without this focus, this film will likely only appeal to those interested in the original novel or film, or who are from the region.

How'd I Get in This Field is a short film focusing on two people who wake up in the middle of the desert in Arizona after a night of drinking at a mutual friend's wedding. The two people, played by Drew Brooks and Cariba Heine, attempt to figure out how to escape.

The film has a number of jokes, none laugh-out loud but funny enough to keep you entertained for the 11 minute run-time. Many of them revolve around Charlie slowly piecing together what happened the night before, such as him telling Ashley he was a scientist.

Initially, Heine's acting experience shows, as she has a fairly naturalistic style, while Brooks' relative inexperience (having only acted in shorts) leads to a fairly loud, scenery-chewing performance. However, as the film progresses, Heine seems to respond more and more, and by the end they are over-emphasizing everything they say and the yelling becomes a bit too much.

Overall this is a well produced short with enough mild jokes to keep the entertainment level adequate for the 11 minutes. However I wouldn't be surprised if most people check this out to see Cariba Heine after her career on the cult show H20.

I think there is a lot of context needed for this film, and will likely only be really accessible to people from Spain, or who at least speak Spanish. This film is "about" a lot of young people enjoying their lives at a party, soon after the Socialist Party came to power in the 1980s. They seem to be having a fairly carefree time, perhaps acknowledging the optimism felt in Spain at the time. The film places as much emphasis on the music as the dialogue, and in the subtitles English version the music is subtitled ahead of the conversations between characters. There also seems to be some attempt to make this look more naturally shot, as there are lots of poorly framed close-ups and difficulty getting shots in focus. The director also inserted a lot of "errors", again I would assume to give it a more homemade feeling.

I tried to be positive but as someone living in Canada, with no connection to Spain, I felt absolutely nothing watching this film. In fact if anything, there was a sense that the future was not as bright as the people hoped. The film often cut out in the middle of scenes, and the film stock gets progressively worse throughout the movie. I would also say that it seems somewhat strange for this movie to be made in 2013. If it were from the era it portrays it could be a bit more of a "capturing the mood" piece, but unless it is supposed to be a metaphor for the post-2009 recession issues for Spain, it seems somewhat behind the times/ I have no idea who to possibly recommend this film to, but at worst it is only 67 minutes long.

This is a short from the comedy website Funny or Die and as such cannot be expected to take a concept too far. However, in this case, I believe they took a funny concept and didn't take it as far as they could have.

The film follows Judy, who is very good at meeting the needs of her best friend, but doesn't have much of a life on her own. There are references to several rom-com tropes, which are funny enough. Judy finally meets a guy who might be interested in her, but she quickly sets him up with another friend of hers.

At this point, this short had me laughing enough that I was intrigued to see this film carried on a little bit longer. While there certainly is the risk of repeating the same joke over and over, I think this could have been stretched out to seven or eight minutes and still been as funny.

Overall, this takes a funny idea and delivers, but ends a bit too abruptly.

Getting Christopher Doyle for this project was a major coup for creator Jason Wishnow. It is an absolutely beautiful looking film, with top-notch CGI to boot. There is no doubt that Wishnow got some talented people to work on this film. Unfortunately, like most short film, the story is somewhat lacking. This film is set in China in a future where there is a severe water shortage. Despite this interesting premise, most of the film is taken up with a love-triangle which might be more interesting if this were a feature film, takes up far too much time of the precious few minutes available. It seems that Wishnow was not able to flesh out the other aspects of the story (although there were many interesting teasers) so added the love story to fill time.

Overall I give this a seven out of ten, perhaps a bit higher but I am always a sucker for high-production short films and this is top quality.

To start off, I will acknowledge that this looks and feels like exactly what it is - a semi-professional film production. Don't expect high production value, award-winning acting, or hip soundtracks. However, for an eighty minutes, it left me with a lot of laughs.

The premise of this is one that could almost come out of Hollywood. Pete is left with $80 million from his grandfather who he hates, and he decides to spend it on an island. He takes his three friends to the island and they quickly discover that it wasn't quite the paradise they expected it to be. To add to their challenges, Pete's grandfather eventually comes back in search of the money.

As I stated above, the acting in this movie certainly leaves much to be desired, and it feels like an amateur production, but for the group who it is aimed at, it is incredibly funny. I would guess that this film is targeted at people in their young twenties, as this is who most of the jokes are catered to. Being in the age group I found myself laughing quite often throughout the film. I began watching it expecting very little, so was surprised by the humour.

In summary, there are obviously much better films in the world than this one, including others that you can watch for free. That being said, if you want to try something different, and get plenty of laughs along the way, watch this film.

To start off I think a lot of the negativity surrounding this movie is because of the touchy subject matter. Were it not such a controversial film it could easily have a rating above six stars.

It is certainly not the best film ever made, Scacchi didn't do a great job as Rabe and the chemistry was not great between her and Prochnow. However, both Sutherland and Prochnow did a good job acting and I also enjoyed Jürgen Schornagel in a smaller role. More than anything however, I enjoyed the feel of this film. The colouring and cinematography seemed to very much fit the mood that the film was trying to achieve. It doesn't have the atmosphere of a big-budget Hollywood movie, which I think would have been completely inappropriate for what the director was trying to convey.

I would certainly give this movie a try, particularly if you are not aware of the incident which this film is based off of and can view it objectively.