Change Your Image
ziyisamcao
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
Young Adult (2011)
The loners belong together, but not really
Have you ever wondered why the "coolest" in the school always ended up hanging out with the "geekiest". That's because loner belongs together. This society is majorly formed with people like Buddy (great performance by Patrick Wilson by the way, so gentle yet so detached, his emotional palette on this role is so subtle, accurate to the bone, he's performance in the his last scene literally made me tremble, with fear) and Beth, and sadly everyone else except Mavis, Matt, and his younger sister.
There is a kind of cruelty inside normality. Because achieving normality means the elimination of the social outsiders. This is like a very scratchy humanity category, you put all these people together and call it proper, and the rest doesn't really matter. Because they don't exist. Mavis and Matt are totally different kind of people. Yet inside that small town, where the majority are people like Buddy, despite of the fact that Mavis and Matt don't really like what each other is doing, they were still drawn, pulled together, forced to seek comfort from each other. Because they don't belong to that "normality", and that, is the solid and solitude similarity between these two. How scary.
So yeah, there is absolutely no warmth in this film. That's the reason I rated 9/10. I'm not against that all "happily ever after" and having house car wife and three kids sort of thing, I'm not. But at the same time I'm a strong believer of "People like Mavis, people like Matt, people like Sandra has all the reason in the world to live their lives in their own way, and not being judged. " Theron is so brave and so adept to carry this unique and not to be liked (by the"normality") character. Even in the end she refuses to take Sandra with her to the big city added a highlight to the film, that totally make sense to me.
Just because we're both outsiders doesn't mean that we are the same kind. Life sucks, everyone is an idiot, some people are more difficult to feel happiness, put down the past doesn't mean the necessity of "change" or "become better". I totally root for Mavis. But I still say she is not likeable. Because that's me, and that's you too.
El búfalo de la noche (2007)
Disturbing and non-sexual connotation sex
First of all I want to give credit to Diego Luna, he's no doubt one of the finest actor in Mexico. Before I watched this I just saw the 2015 TV series Casanova that he played.It surprised me how differently he can be on sex scenes, perhaps seeing some different act from him helps you to understand this film more.
In Casanova you can see how much his character loves women and treasures them like a delicate creation simply from his body movement. But in this one, you feel no pleasure while his character's doing those things to women, pure instinctive, almost insensitive. He's doing these to fill his own void.
Void is one thing being talked about through out this film. We're all capable of hate, and love sometimes. But what if we can feel nothing? This craving of being able to feel was driving people to do things. To have sex, like Manuel, to kill, like Gregorio. This buffalo that only comes to stare at you in the night is the loneliness we all have to face. This is something this film was trying to deliver I guess. Not so successfully though.
This sense of unsuccessful about this film is because it's based on a very poor screen-script. Some of the dialogues are so bad that almost painful to watch. It weakened the plots a lot, though you can see how much effort the director, actors and even the music editor put trying to empower these scenes with emotions.
The other thing this film failed to deliver is the sickness. The earwig that Gregorio mentioned at the beginning, suggested he's suffering from schizophrenia --Gregorio is not the only one. So does Manuel. He saw it as well, maybe this is just a start. In the end when he asked Tania do you love me, it feels like a compulsive invitation, to ask her to join this madness of seeking feelings.
In this world, everyone is sick, no one is satisfied.