Reviews

When the Russians came nearer, Azov laid waste to the city. Over and over the locals say that the Azov Battalion ruled with an iron fist. Azov were placed there because the population was pro-Russian, so Azov were sent for the purpose of repression.

Families were not allowed to leave using the humanitarian corridors set up by Russia and were used as human shields, as testified by Natalia Usmanova who worked at Azovstal. "Ukraine has died for me as a state," she said. But what can we expect from the Azov Battalion? (And the 36th Marine Brigade.)

This isn't in the film. Okay, but there's a lot else that could be in there. Let's see.

Dozens of residents said that Azov would occupy one floor of a building and put the people on the next floor. They would establish fire points from there--mortars, machine guns, and in the courtyards, artillery and mortars. No one was allowed to go. Textbook definition of human shields.

Not in the film!

Over and over it's heard from Mariupol residents that Kyiv is the occupier and Moscow is the liberator.

Ukraine cleared out a maternity hospital and put gun emplacements there. So, more of the same from Azov.

I didn't see anything like this in the film.

A theatre full of people in Mariupol was "bombed". Except there was no crater that there would have been from an aerial attack. Simply more propaganda for Western audiences to lap up.

None of this is on the film. It can't be in the film because we are watching propaganda.

Did we get to see the Azov Battalion and the symbols they wear on their fatigues? No. Was there a history of the thousands killed by the government in the east and then 60,000 troops on the Donbas border before Russia finally intervened? No, we didn't.

Or a history from the Maidan Nuland audio regime change after NATO right up to Russia before this, only Russia not allowed to join. Simple history lesson. No.

Italy hosted an exhibition "Revival of Mariupol" in January. It's instructive as a good juxtaposition to the movie.

"Symbol city of the popular revolt of Donbass against the Kiev junta, martyr city of Bander's occupation which lasted 8 years, now faces a rapid reconstruction process under the aegis of the institutions of the Russian Federation of which it has become an integral part...the results of the new city administration after the definitive liberation in the spring of 2022, with the surrender of the Azov battalion barricaded in the "Azovstal" steelworks."

The Old Oak is more "I, Daniel Blake" than "Sorry We Missed You". Those films were both new-peak Loach, I, Daniel Blake with two strong roles as in The Old Oak, and Sorry We Missed You, with a handful.

Like I, Daniel Blake, in The Old Oak, the local person aids strangers with whom he has no connection through his strong moral bearings. In both films, an older man helps out a younger woman, dispensing with the need in movies for a love story, and dealing instead with feelings of community.

The Old Oak is a melancholy tale, but these are the twists and turns of ordinary, real lives described and the results in how people act, shown, rather than dumb show. Loach's films offer a different kind of uplift, that of getting a little more insight into humanity, the insight that few filmmakers are capable of.

The strangers are Syrian refugees. How their story is depicted is the disappointment of the film. It's as if the film was made 10 years ago rather than today in the sense that in 2013, Wikileaks hadn't revealed the damning evidence for what the Syrian war was and why it was depicted as it was.

The film unfortunately even talks about "Assad's regime." A pity to put the phrase into the mouth of a Syrian refugee in a film by a leftist. The chemical attacks the character talks about have been debunked by Seymour Hersh and Aaron Maté among others as having been committed by the Syrian government.

Wikileaks with Grayzone "leaked documents show how UK government contractors developed an advanced infrastructure of propaganda to stimulate support in the West for Syria's political and armed opposition." Of course, the character in the film relating her story can't be expected to know this. But a leftwing filmmaker, the same as any informed leftwing person has known this for a few years now.

This review has become political because Ken Loach is a political filmmaker. Such a filmmaker you'd think would know better and have learnt 3/4 years ago that British intelligence services ran training from the ground up for propaganda units to provide "evidence" to all the major news networks from Aljazeera to CNN and the BBC. Even the Washington Post wrote that the Syrian War cost the US as much as a $1 billion annually. The US funded the Al Qaeda offshoots being portrayed as moderate rebels.

It turns out that Loach took the cowardly route, surprisingly, with this film, as he simply echoed the Western propaganda produced by UK government contractors of the Assad-devil regime and what people faced from him in the war rather than dealing with the actuality of extremists funded by the US warring on Syria to overthrow its non-compliant government on behalf and under the pay of, the United States.

It's all very well showing the difficulties of culture clashes, how relations are strained but can be mended through common humanity, but to get overtly political and not by now see through the concerted propaganda campaign and fall for those lies and get it wrong as if this was 2013, well, there's really no excuse.

Not a film about so-called spirituality but one about moral choices that just happen to be the middle-man that religion represents. Better though to go straight to the moral choices and cut out the middle-man but communities brought up on religion have trouble with that.

Here, the religious are shown to be more hypocritical than others without religion by holding to strictures of religion in appearance while not doing so.

A ridiculous summary of the film presented by IMDB: "Daniel experiences a spiritual transformation in a detention center. Although his criminal record prevents him from applying to the seminary, he has no intention of giving up his dream and decides to minister a small-town parish."

This is not how the film goes at all. How the character gets to where he does is accident. The perfect comparison to religion itself: there is no intention or control to events, just accident.

A film about the complexity of human nature: embracing a so-called religion of forgiveness and doing precisely the opposite, and about how someone can have a vocation.

The first minute of this film is better than entire acclaimed English-speaking movies of the year I'm watching it; 2020. But the film is ultimately disappointing.

Every movie director can take nice pictures, but this is a film of not only stunning visuals but stunning visuals time and again imbued with meaning in relation to society and environment.

The film is actually several separate short stories. Short stories can be perfect ideas uncorrupted by the extrapolation necessary for full-length films. But these short films reveal the weakness in lack of depth usually associated with the short film form: the limited time in which, with depth, to tell a tale.

Each of the main characters are victims of their situation, exploited by others in positions of authority in a society built this way. The users are not seen as such by the general mass of the people, who the director shows as dumb animals, most clearly in a scene with a mistreated animal in relation to the scene that it follows.

Though the short films are fleshed-out snapshots, they are snapshots all the same, wasting the promise of meaning imbued in single images. But the great failing is the lack of resolution to each story. A fatuous comeuppance is stuck on almost all as the director takes the easy way out.

These dim-witted "resolutions" are as if these days to end a film this way is more than acceptable, it is acclaimed. It is too easy to simply give up and do a Tarantino. The stories haven't quite lived up to their potential and then are given up on.

Still, despite its flaws, what is good about the film shows a great filmmaker at work.

Whit Stillman's masterpiece? It's hard to say, not because of any doubts about this film but because Stillman only makes great films. The dialogue is never wilfully obscure and is never provocative for its own sake, but sparkles with intelligence, wit and alternatives. Barcelona gains a whole extra dimension (and several new elements within that) by being in and, in part, about another culture. There is even suspense, which is usually an empty ingredient in movies leaving us with nothing when it has culminated, but here happens in a wonderfully natural way. The film is wonderfully engaging and can be approached from many directions for appreciation: sociologically, politically, culturally, intellectually, sexually while still being buddy-buddy and for laughs. Certainly one of the greatest films of the '90s and one of the greats of the last 25 years.

James Stewart is the saving grace here, but it's not enough. The story has a few characters, which ought to make it interesting, but it's just blah, blah, blah. James Stewart's fellow actors in this film are pretty wooden, one opponent being out of control, the other being a tough guy like Stewart. Neither have any subtlety or any nuance to their acting. They talk a lot, while little was worth saying. The female interest offers a waste of space, while an older woman gets a few good lines before petering out into yet another without any character. The plot moves along pointlessly, like a sort of Western soap. This film is after some realism, but real people can be interesting too! Here none are other than Stewart. Even he seems to be repeating the expression Mann wanted from him, discovered in their previous collaborations the fear and anguish. Here it looks like repetition rather than what was needed for this particular film. Mann has quite some reputation but here it's as exaggerated as this film is underdone.

A sappy love story between 7 year-olds. Ratatouille was marvelous, the perfect film being as appealing to adults as to children. Wall-E on the other hand dumbs-down to be a film where only the visuals can appeal to adults. Finding Nemo was a great adventure, not wrecked by its celebrity voices as are many animated features (or by their obsession with celebrity voices). Wall-E avoids the celebrity voices route but falls down by being an adventure without detail or substance. This one is weak the whole way through after its intro, in contrast with 'Up', which falls down completely after a wonderful opening. A shame in both cases that the flagship company for animated features (their animated shorts are like out-takes only) would go ahead with either of these films that could only be badly flawed.

A very beautiful silent film, composed of brave and rewarding static shots. The film seems to have been made by something of a master, though he is unknown. A woman waits for her man, and has been drained completely by the experience. An exquisite meditation and wonderful surprise. The attention is locked on her face and situation, and it completely holds that attention. There were many types of silent film, but few eschewed narrative, and this does so in quite a masterly fashion. The ending is not predictable, and so the film retains its quality until the last moment, even exceeding that of before with nothing redeeming. One to look for amongst the many, many superb silent films from the period.