REVIEW: Un monde [Playground] [2021]

Don’t get involved. The camera never leaves young Nora (Maya Vanderbeque) throughout the entirety of Un monde [Playground]. Writer/director Laura Wandel needs us to follow her closely and understand the ups and downs of adolescence through eyes yet unversed in the unfortunate drama life has to offer. All this girl knows at the start is that she’s being left alone. Dad (Karim Leklou) isn’t allowed past the school gate, so his “goodbye” occurs well before the classroom door closes behind her. Older brother Abel (Günter Duret) has his own friends…

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SLAM22 REVIEW: Gleich zurück [Be Right Back] [2022]

Circles everywhere. Hearing director Frauke Havemann‘s story about traveling into the woods with her dramaturg to discuss a new project at the onset of COVID-19 feels crucial to understanding the experience that she and her co-writers Peter Stamer and Matthias Wittekindt have brought to the screen with Gleich zurück [Be Right Back]. The initial sense of escapism. The inevitable introduction of that nightmare via social media and the internet. The increasing emotional uncertainty and existential crisis born from knowing you must return to the world as it’s shutting down. The…

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SLAM22 REVIEW: کشتن خواجه [Killing the Eunuch Khan] [2023]

Where is the escape? It would be a mistake to take the synopsis for Abed Abest‘s Killing the Eunuch Khan at face value because this is not a film about a serial killer in the generic sense of the word. Khan (Ebrahim Azizi) isn’t some cult leader a la Charles Manson sending his disciples out into the world to murder people in his name. He’s not a monster in the vein of Jigsaw either, entrapping victims to do his dirty work in the hope that doing so will earn them…

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REVIEW: Deserto Particular [Private Desert] [2021]

I need this break. Writer/director Aly Muritiba said something very interesting about his new film Deserto Particular [Private Desert] in the lead up to its Venice debut last year. He spoke about a desire for its success to not simply be of the “preaching to the choir” variety. Rather than hope an artist, who already understands the breadth of love, could find something at the core of his love story, Muritiba wanted to open the heart of those trapped under the oppressive force of conservatism and traditionalism. This tale of…

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REVIEW: A Nuvem Rosa [The Pink Cloud] [2021]

It must be a joke. Despite bowing a year into the COVID pandemic, Iuli Gerbase‘s A Nuvem Rosa [The Pink Cloud] was shot two years prior and written two before that. It’s a point of clarification made at the start of the film due to how familiar its themes and events prove when placed in context with our current reality. It’s necessary too so audiences can’t pretend that what’s happening wasn’t a foregone conclusion. Whether a deadly virus or, in this case, a mysterious pink cloud that kills anyone who…

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REVIEW: Babardeala cu bucluc sau porno balamuc [Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn] [2021]

It’s never anyone’s fault. Did Emilia (Katia Pascariu) and Eugen (Stefan Steel, although we see little beyond his penis) purposefully upload the sex tape that opens Radu Jude‘s bold satire Babardeala cu bucluc sau porno balamuc [Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn]? I think we should assume they did. That doesn’t, however, mean they meant for it to be circulated beyond the niche fetish site to which it published. She’s a respected history teacher at a prestigious middle school and thus beholden to certain morality clauses that would deem pornographic…

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REVIEW: Madres paralelas [Parallel Mothers] [2021]

I don’t regret it. Janis (Penélope Cruz) and Ana (Milena Smit) find themselves as roommates in a Madrid maternity ward—two single women about to give birth to their first child. The former is a successful photographer who conceived while having an affair with a married man (Israel Elejalde‘s Arturo). The latter is a teenager, the father and circumstances surrounding her pregnancy not yet explained. Ana is trepidatious about the whole ordeal for obvious reasons while Janis is looking forward to the experience, her maternal instincts already kicking in as a…

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REVIEW: 竜とそばかすの姫 [Ryû to sobakasu no hime] [Belle] [2021]

Come now, change the world. If Suzu (Kaho Nakamura) had her way, she’d melt into the floor never to be seen or heard from again. It’s been like this for the decade since her mother put on a lifejacket to wade through the choppy river and save another girl her age stranded and crying in the middle of the water. The girl came ashore in that jacket. Her mother didn’t. Suzu has often wondered why she wasn’t more important than that stranger. Why staying with her and her father (Kôji…

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REVIEW: Benedetta [2021]

We’re all entitled to a sin. Even as a child, Benedetta Carlini (Elena Plonka) believed herself protected by Jesus. As director Paul Verhoeven and co-writer David Birke portray it, her arrival to the convent in Pescia was one dripping in entitlement. She belonged there. It was her destiny. And we believe it because her conviction is immovable thanks to a steady stream of miracles occurring whenever anyone doubts her bond with God. Where did that confidence come from? Was this desire to be Jesus’ bride her own? Was it something…

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REVIEW: Verdens verste menneske [The Worst Person in the World] [2021]

No safety net. No holding back. Writer/director Joachim Trier and co-writer Eskil Vogt complete their thematic “Oslo trilogy” with Verdens verste menneske [The Worst Person in the World], a film told in twelve chapters, a prologue, and an epilogue. What’s intriguing, however, is that it actually begins with a glimpse of Julie (Renate Reinsve) from the middle. Before traveling back to watch her overachieving university student change majors every time something shinier and new comes along, we see her smoking a cigarette in a black dress, gazing off into the…

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REVIEW: قهرمان‎ [Ghahreman] [A Hero] [2021]

The unexpected visitor. Rahim (Amir Jadidi) is embarking on his latest two-day leave from prison in the hopes that it will prove long enough to earn his freedom. He’s serving time for his inability to pay a debt of 150,000 toman and his creditor (Mohsen Tanabandeh‘s Bahram) has been the opposite of helpful as far as facilitating a road back. The reasons are complicated by the fact Bahram isn’t some banker or loan shark. He’s ex-family who did his sister-in-law a favor by compromising his own savings to protect her…

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