Magnus von Horn’s second feature film offers an interesting post-cinematic experience. Sweat encompasses elements of cinematic and social media aesthetics to showcase a perspective of the post-digital, social media-infused quotidian existence of the Generation Z. This aesthetic blend sets out an idiosyncratic interplay exploring the pervasiveness of social media and its effects on young people’s personalities, perspectives, and relationships. Compelling though this melange may appear, it isn’t always that seamlessly interwoven throughout the film. The latter doesn’t reach its full potential, with all the sweat, blood and tears of the lead character not quite seeping through the fabric of a complete creative whole. Still, it is a journey worth exploring and a film well worth watching.
There is a discreet charm about all the mundane and dull moments which appear as fragmented memory projections overriding anything that is happening in the present. Dream-like, cladded with the saturated colours of an almost mythological construction, they seem to operate as distinct units seeking attention. They threaten to compromise the beautiful, harmonious continuity of now and Atom Egoyan carefully connects them through a slow choreography of flashbacks, setting out for a promising, poetic exploration of the residues of the past.
An utterly compelling, gripping drama. The Report is a testament of the integrity and valour in which the everyday person carries themselves. The real life story of USA Senate investigator Daniel J. Jones and his research into the controversial handling of the torturous, enhanced interrogation techniques, which had been employed during the war against terror, is documented every long step of the way.
Drawing on experiences from her life and early career Joanna Hogg delivers a refined, elegant and cathartic coming-of-age film, which feels as personal as political. An amalgamation of powerful memories of incidents, behaviours, emotions and old traumas retrieved just before they start to fade away, the film is an elegiac testament to the protagonist’s self-identification in relation to the socio-political context she grew up in and her decision to assert her re-claimed personality.
There's no doubting the quality of the music. The mix of pop with its skeletal R&B influences permeates throughout the film, extolling the inevitable question of artistic integrity versus tragedy.
Set in the French port city of Marseille, immigrants wait in the hope of acquiring the correct paperwork in order to migrate to a country they see as a safe haven, in this case, Mexico. Seemingly stuck in this self-imposed island territory relationships are formed, dissipated, naturally- or by interfering locals in hoc with the police- or serendipity. In the meantime those who can survive, survive, while awaiting their fate.
