ikadery

After finishing the film, I was supposed to be emotional, even for a bit. Unfortunately, I was nonchalant, forcing myself to question what had happened? Why I didn't care that much? Then I realized what's wrong with this film.

First of all, I only at best superficially empathized with June while she's trying to find her mom. Why's that? I think I know the answer! I recently read a book called 'The Personal MBA' by Josh Kaufman, there's a lesson named 'Novelty', which basically says that if you throw new new things at people after short intervals, they'll never get bored, many companies use this strategy, that's why we never get bored at scrolling facebook, playing video games, or surfing the internet. Now, this film is far from boring, because there's new developments in every 2-3 mins, the writers used the 'Novelty' concept successfully to grab the attention of the audiences. But in doing that, they failed to develop something crucial, they forgot to develop June's character and her relationship with her mom properly, so it's difficult for the audiences to be emotionally invested in June's Story.

Secondly, the end of the movie was anticlimactic at best, even the villain is underdeveloped here, used a stereotypical villain to wrap things up, which accentuates the writers' incompetence in engaging the audiences emotionally with the film's characters.

It's not a bad movie, acting was good, no complaints there, but this film had great potential, which is squandered by the people behind this film.

The plot of this film is nothing new, it reminds us of 1950s sci-fi horror films, especially 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers(1956)', which probably was sampled to write the story of this movie. The two leads gave stellar performances, no doubt, but their talents are kind of wasted in this film. The film has its twists and turns, some are intriguing, but still, holistically they couldn't interweave a story absorbing enough even for a B movie. And the film's botched attempt to preposterously philosophize about how 'love' is unique and all, in the whole universe is quite dreadful. Other aspects of the film like photography, editing, score etc. Is spot on, the runtime is perfect, this film truly deserved a better plot which would've been commensurate with every other aspect of the film.

Willem Dafoe, Christoph Waltz, and Rachel Brosnahan- by looking at the top billing of this film and the name of the director, it's not wrong to expect a decent film. But this movie fails at almost every aspect, from the cookie-cutter revisionist western storyline to bad editing, it's atrocious, maybe only apart from the acting. There are so many unnecessary scenes that even someone who doesn't know the ABC of film editing would agree to the fact that there are so many needless scenes. And also, this film feels like it's overrun by at least 20 mins, good editing would've kept the runtime under 90 mins, just like most of Budd Boetticher's famous westerns, whom this film is dedicated to.

For the first 3 or 4 episodes the story was progressing as Sabila's story and developing a feminist angle, then suddenly after the murder of Khairul, the story backslid into a cheap cat and mouse crime-murder thriller and undone all its promising groundwork. Some dialogues were too superficial, specially in the conversations between Sabila and her husband, these dialogues tried to be too poetic as if they were cut out from a classic novel or something and were devoid of realism.

The plot is quite similar to many films you've already seen. Shlesinger tried to use that familiar framework to prove some of her points, but failed miserably to convince the audience, mostly due to the fact that instead of diving deep into those issues, the film kind of grazed the issues, and it tried to do too much at a time. Acting, production, casting and everything else looked solid about the film, apart from the content.

Oxygen is a very interesting film. This film never stops taking turns, making it very difficult tot predict what's coming next. From the first scene to the last, one revelation of the storyline segued into another so swiftly, the credit goes to the director for managing to build the film so craftily. The audience will hardly be able to digress from the film, it is quite enthralling.

The film started off steadily, kept the audience almost in the dark until the middle of the film. Then in the midway after revealing some strings of the plot, some might think they know where this is going, though it still made many swift unpredictable turns, but still by midway you would start to care about the character and keep on going. This is not a dumb movie, it grazed many ethical scientific issues which are already in motion or pretty soon the humanity will face, which will make you think long after finishing the film.

Melanie Laurent did an wonderful job, her performance was pivotal for the film's success.

The film had a brisk start, in the beginning it promised so much, the real-life pranks were well executed. It was refreshing to see real, genuine expressions from common people, which is rarely seen nowadays in mainstream movies. Stylistically the film was refreshing for the first 20 minutes, then it's steam kind of ran out, what the rest of the film would be was very predictable. It was fun for the first 20 minutes or so, but after that it became a drag, for those who have watched 'Harold and Kumar' it would feel even worse, because they have already seen the almost same thing before. Anyway, there is no complaint about the acting, and the pranks were executed deftly, but apart from that there is nothing much to talk about this film.

It's very difficult to showcase such great stories around 30 minutes each, but the filmmakers did a great job.

The Grand Prize Expo Winners- this episode was cream of the crop among all the episodes, made me really emotional. That episode was written for the screen and directed by Tze Chun- who is the son of real life Ai- maybe that is why that particular episode was so good. Second best episode was- The Jaguar, I'm amazed that under 30 minutes the director showcased such a story! Anyway, the other episodes are very good as well, you won't regret watching this series.

A whistle-stop tour about the horrors the victims went through in the Nazi camps. The photographs and footage shown in this documentary are heartbreaking, it made me more empathetic to the victims of the Nazi camps and the horrors they went through. Alain Resnais did an extraordinary job making this concise, thought provoking, and essential documentary. It can be easily considered as one of the greatest documentary films ever made.

Convoy is not just a movie about truckers! It is so much more.

The film starts with an altercation between some truckers and a dirty cop. As it progresses more and more truckers join the original bunch of truckers with a sense of camaraderie. The way their convoy was feared by the government and the state shows how the government fears average people stand for their rights. The film is full of allegories. But some might argue that all the allegories presented in this movie are shallow ones. Well, in that case I would like to say that all the allegories were pretty effective and I felt empathetic.

For those who felt the allegories were shallow I would like to add that Peckinpah's original rough cut for this was 220 minutes whereas the version we all saw was about 110 minutes. That tells something! The studio was trying to ride on the success of previous year's release "Smokey and the Bandit"- which might explain why the first half of Convoy was only consists of chase and action scenes which was very unlike of Peckinpah. But the 2nd half of the film shined brightly, it brought all the allegories into play. I wonder how great would be the Peckinpah original 220 minutes cut! I don't know if we ever get to see that version, but I pray we do!

It's a rare film that showcases the hardships of everyday Americans. Hollywood seems to be too busy nowadays with Superhero films, Sci-fi, Historical dramas etc. and seems to have forgotten about the dreams and hardships of average Americans. This film tries to showcase that, and it succeeded without being overly dramatic. Regina Hall delivered an excellent performance in this film.