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Reviews
Haar (2023)
Wonderful little film
I really enjoyed this. I saw it at the Prince Charles during the London film fest. It's very tender, genuinely funny, moving in places, looks gorgeous and has two really solid performances at its core. I went to see this film because it was shot on Super-8 (I think it was actually shot on DS8, using a Canon Scoopic 16mm camera - something like that at least) and I was pleasantly surprised to find it was an enjoyable story, as well as being very beautiful. The S8 shines, and in places it almost looked like 16mm.
Kate Kennedy was excellent, really carrying the film, and she was supported by a wonderful performance from Balázs Czukor. It's a promising first feature. In places it does feel a little like a student short, with some fairly superficial performances from minor characters, but nothing that detracts from the gravity of the main story.
The music was lovely. In places the sound was a little rough unfortunately - one of the standout points of the film is the production dialogue, an unusual thing to see on a narrow gauge film (typically shot without sync and ADR'ed) - but in places it was a little unintelligible. You could also hear the camera running in several scenes, and sadly quite a few rough dialogue edits throughout the film.
On the whole, very enjoyable - I hope it finds distribution.
Kate Kennedy was excellent, really carrying the film, and she was supported by a wonderful performance from Balázs Czukor. It's a promising first feature. In places it does feel a little like a student short, with some fairly superficial performances from minor characters, but nothing that detracts from the gravity of the main story.
The music was lovely. In places the sound was a little rough unfortunately - one of the standout points of the film is the production dialogue, an unusual thing to see on a narrow gauge film (typically shot without sync and ADR'ed) - but in places it was a little unintelligible. You could also hear the camera running in several scenes, and sadly quite a few rough dialogue edits throughout the film.
On the whole, very enjoyable - I hope it finds distribution.
The Novice (2021)
A film that doesn't know what it's meant to be
I was totally sold on the trailers for this film, and went to the cinema really wanting to love it. It looked like the kind of thing i'm into. But I was disappointed. I think fundamentally the film just didn't know what it was meant to be. Tonally it felt like 3 films in one.
I didn't understand what the motivations of the main character were. She's meant to be this obsessive, narcissist type, who will go to extremes and even hurt herself to achieve greatness. The problem in this film is that there wasn't any credible background to the character to convince me of the legitimacy of her obsessive nature. Maybe a bad parent or sibling relationship resulting in her seeking approval elsewhere would've been a more convincing story. There's meant to be tension between the main character and an antagonist character, but I didn't really pick up on that until the last 3rd of the film.
At the start of the film the main character is shown to be broody, dark, quiet, super obsessive. But then in the next scenes she's having booksmart-esq banter with her friend. It just felt contrived and weird. There were a bunch of scenes where her character felt totally inconsistent. I feel like it's okay for stories to have characters who exhibit challenging or unexpected behaviours, but in the case of this lead, the weird erratic behaviour just didn't make any sense. It's almost as if the writer didn't do the old test of sitting back and thinking, "would someone actually do or say this in real life"? No-one asked that question at any point during the making of this movie. The self-harm scenes particularly were totally contrived and almost gratuitous on the part of the filmmakers, which I found pretty insulting frankly.
I also didn't know who any of the characters were. There were a couple of occasions in the film when characters were audibly named with the intention of provoking an emotional response - but I didn't know who those names corresponded to on screen, so any impact was completely lost. There were three blonde stereotypical white girl characters that ALL LOOKED THE SAME. They weren't introduced and I didn't understand what part any of them played in the story. The 'Coach Edwards', 'Groundman', and 'Erin' characters might as well have been the same person as far as I was concerned. Utterly confusing. There's also a character at the start called 'Winona' (I only know that thanks to IMDb) who basically disappears and has nothing to do with the story past the 20 minute mark.
I feel like the film fundamentally was telling the story from the point of view of the wrong character. The Brill character was far more compelling and had something to lose by not being the best rower. Dall had nothing to lose and no motivation, so I just didn't buy her. A much more interesting story would've been a girl who had a lot to lose by failing in competition with a girl who had nothing to lose, but was obsessive out of spite. There were hints of that but it wasn't really fully explored.
The climax wasn't really a climax. There wasn't really any resolution. They did a race in the lightning and not a lot really happened. The main character didn't change or transform in any way.
The editing was pretty weird. Not in a kind of cool, arthouse kind of weird, in a more - 'was this intentional?' - kind of weird. The 'stylistic' editing choices killed the story flow in many scenes. The pacing was way off. It felt contrived and uncomfortable. The sound design did this also. The trick of 'character becomes distant and detached from reality so let's low pass everything and cut in a tinnitus sound' was used no less than about 20 times. Fun and interesting the first time, I can buy it the second, but after that it just becomes tiresome. In parts it intentionally detaches the audience from the story, which is just confusing and unhelpful, especially when the story needed all the help it could get. The music was tired and unoriginal. Again - play an old soul tune to juxtapose the harsh imagery once, and I'll dig it. Twice and it's fine. Beyond that it's tired and unoriginal. This film entertained that trope about 5 times.
But what was good about it? SURELY something. The performances weren't awful. I loved the Dani character and felt that relationship subplot was more compelling that the main storyline. The cinematography was pretty cool in places. That's about all I've got for positives. It felt like a first draft screenplay turned into a feature.
I didn't understand what the motivations of the main character were. She's meant to be this obsessive, narcissist type, who will go to extremes and even hurt herself to achieve greatness. The problem in this film is that there wasn't any credible background to the character to convince me of the legitimacy of her obsessive nature. Maybe a bad parent or sibling relationship resulting in her seeking approval elsewhere would've been a more convincing story. There's meant to be tension between the main character and an antagonist character, but I didn't really pick up on that until the last 3rd of the film.
At the start of the film the main character is shown to be broody, dark, quiet, super obsessive. But then in the next scenes she's having booksmart-esq banter with her friend. It just felt contrived and weird. There were a bunch of scenes where her character felt totally inconsistent. I feel like it's okay for stories to have characters who exhibit challenging or unexpected behaviours, but in the case of this lead, the weird erratic behaviour just didn't make any sense. It's almost as if the writer didn't do the old test of sitting back and thinking, "would someone actually do or say this in real life"? No-one asked that question at any point during the making of this movie. The self-harm scenes particularly were totally contrived and almost gratuitous on the part of the filmmakers, which I found pretty insulting frankly.
I also didn't know who any of the characters were. There were a couple of occasions in the film when characters were audibly named with the intention of provoking an emotional response - but I didn't know who those names corresponded to on screen, so any impact was completely lost. There were three blonde stereotypical white girl characters that ALL LOOKED THE SAME. They weren't introduced and I didn't understand what part any of them played in the story. The 'Coach Edwards', 'Groundman', and 'Erin' characters might as well have been the same person as far as I was concerned. Utterly confusing. There's also a character at the start called 'Winona' (I only know that thanks to IMDb) who basically disappears and has nothing to do with the story past the 20 minute mark.
I feel like the film fundamentally was telling the story from the point of view of the wrong character. The Brill character was far more compelling and had something to lose by not being the best rower. Dall had nothing to lose and no motivation, so I just didn't buy her. A much more interesting story would've been a girl who had a lot to lose by failing in competition with a girl who had nothing to lose, but was obsessive out of spite. There were hints of that but it wasn't really fully explored.
The climax wasn't really a climax. There wasn't really any resolution. They did a race in the lightning and not a lot really happened. The main character didn't change or transform in any way.
The editing was pretty weird. Not in a kind of cool, arthouse kind of weird, in a more - 'was this intentional?' - kind of weird. The 'stylistic' editing choices killed the story flow in many scenes. The pacing was way off. It felt contrived and uncomfortable. The sound design did this also. The trick of 'character becomes distant and detached from reality so let's low pass everything and cut in a tinnitus sound' was used no less than about 20 times. Fun and interesting the first time, I can buy it the second, but after that it just becomes tiresome. In parts it intentionally detaches the audience from the story, which is just confusing and unhelpful, especially when the story needed all the help it could get. The music was tired and unoriginal. Again - play an old soul tune to juxtapose the harsh imagery once, and I'll dig it. Twice and it's fine. Beyond that it's tired and unoriginal. This film entertained that trope about 5 times.
But what was good about it? SURELY something. The performances weren't awful. I loved the Dani character and felt that relationship subplot was more compelling that the main storyline. The cinematography was pretty cool in places. That's about all I've got for positives. It felt like a first draft screenplay turned into a feature.
Uncharted (2022)
Tired, boring, cliche, not worth 2 hours of your time
YET ANOTHER trash video game adaptation. I went to this film really wanting to be entertained. I REALLY wanted to like it. But it was just awful.
The core of the problems lie in the screenplay. It was lazy, riddled with logic problems, cliched as hell, the dialogue was sloppy and bloated, and vast amounts of the storyline made absolutely no sense. It feels like it was written by a teenager.
I sat in the theatre thinking about Indiana Jones, and how this film managed to land so far from from those movies did so well. Indiana Jones has such a simple yet solid storyline that made perfect logical sense. This movie seemed to string together 'moments', character introductions or sassy one-liners or needlessly elaborate set-pieces with almost no visible connections between them. A couple of moments I laughed out loud - at the film - not with it - on account of the ridiculousness of the events on screen.
The really bizarre thing about it, is the nature of the original material. It seems to be mostly based on Uncharted 4, with the main storyline reflecting that game and snippets from the others. I LOVED that game. It was cinematic, well paced, interesting, and looked fantastic. I don't understand how a video game managed to look more cinematic that a big-screen version of that game. This looks a lot like the recent tentpole movies that have been released in the last few years - super plastic. Awful CGI plastic. It looked like a Netflix film. Which is sad because the DoP has done some great movies in the past.
Who put 120 million dollars into this? I understand these kinds of films have to appeal to a mass audience, but at least have a bit of decency about it - and make something with a bit of character to it.
The core of the problems lie in the screenplay. It was lazy, riddled with logic problems, cliched as hell, the dialogue was sloppy and bloated, and vast amounts of the storyline made absolutely no sense. It feels like it was written by a teenager.
I sat in the theatre thinking about Indiana Jones, and how this film managed to land so far from from those movies did so well. Indiana Jones has such a simple yet solid storyline that made perfect logical sense. This movie seemed to string together 'moments', character introductions or sassy one-liners or needlessly elaborate set-pieces with almost no visible connections between them. A couple of moments I laughed out loud - at the film - not with it - on account of the ridiculousness of the events on screen.
The really bizarre thing about it, is the nature of the original material. It seems to be mostly based on Uncharted 4, with the main storyline reflecting that game and snippets from the others. I LOVED that game. It was cinematic, well paced, interesting, and looked fantastic. I don't understand how a video game managed to look more cinematic that a big-screen version of that game. This looks a lot like the recent tentpole movies that have been released in the last few years - super plastic. Awful CGI plastic. It looked like a Netflix film. Which is sad because the DoP has done some great movies in the past.
Who put 120 million dollars into this? I understand these kinds of films have to appeal to a mass audience, but at least have a bit of decency about it - and make something with a bit of character to it.