Film Difficulty 2

To help you ease your way into our world, we have devised a the film difficulty ranking system to rate the difficulty of each film reviewed on our site. The easiest to watch films (the Rom-Coms and Superhero flicks that you watch anyway) will have a rating of 1. Foreign language films automatically add one point, as do black and white films, and films with strange and hard to follow plots. Welcome to Film Difficulty 2.

Film Difficulty Ranking 2: These films are perfect introductions to those new to foreign films. These one’s may have subtitles, or be in black and white, but these films are all easy to follow and enjoy.

For the next step, check out Film Difficulty Ranking 3.

126

RRR – The Indian Blockbuster to Watch on the Big Screen in 2022

For the first time in my life, I watched an Indian Blockbuster in a cinema. Whilst it wasn’t the full experience I had imagined, the cinema is the only place you should see RRR‘s bombastic stunts and melodramatic bromance.

The Experience

In hindsight, choosing to watch RRR as a Sunday matinee wasn’t the best choice. The Cinemark 18 + XD in Los Angeles was almost as empty as the mall it sits within, which is itself a forgotten mall, across the 405 from the much more popular Fox Hills Westfield Mall. There’s no real need for this mall or the Cinemark itself, as the theater chain has since built a more modern location in Playa Vista just 2 miles away. However, the distinguishing factor of this Cinemark location is that it has become the only theater on the West Side of Los Angeles (Cinemark or otherwise) that consistently screens new Indian releases each week. So if you want to watch Indian films in the city on the big screen and don’t reside in the Valleys or the O.C., this is your best option.

The theater was screening RRR in each of the languages it had dialogue specially written for (Telugu, Hindi, and Tamil), but as Telugu was the original production, we went for that screening. I’m not sure how widely each of the languages are spoken in Los Angeles, so not sure if the Tamil or Hindi screenings might have been more busy, but the Telugu Sunday matinee screening was almost empty. There were just a few families with toddlers and infants for company. As a result, we never heard an audience response to the movie, apart from applause at the end. The only sounds coming from the audience that we could hear were from the kids’ tablets that their parents had given them after they announced they wanted to go home around 30 minutes before the intermission (this film is not for everyone). However, this was never much of a problem for us, because, to the probable detriment to our ears, this film was blasted through the speakers at a noticeably higher decibel level than your typical Hollywood screening. The loud but empty cinema made it feel like we’d arrived early to a music concert. With a crowd, this would have been special.

The FIlm

Despite the small crowd, the film itself was completely at home on the big screen. It’s an action film that the Superhero addicted Hollywood studios have become afraid to make: a completely original story with a big budget. But to be fair to Hollywood, this film wasn’t made by just anyone. It was made by S.S. Rajamouli, one of the biggest name directors in India. He’s the guy that made the #2 and #8 highest grossing Indian films in Baahubali 1 and 2.

Costing $72M, RRR is the second most expensive Indian film ever made (behind S. Shankar’s 2.0). The high budget is evident in the incredible action scenes and CGI – which, whilst still slightly behind the quality of the Hollywood CGI, already looks much better than the Baahubali films. If this is what $72M makes, imagine what the budget of the $356M Avengers Endgame could produce. That is if you can imagine anything being more action-packed and epic than RRR.

There’s so many big moments in this film. It starts with three hard-hitting chapters which introduce ‘The Story,’ ‘The Fire,’ and ‘The Water.’ The Story is the premise – a child from rural India gets ‘bought’ by the English colonial governor to the heart-break of their mother and village. The Fire is the introduction to our villain – a loyal and determined member of the colonial police that single handedly takes on an entire mob of around 1,000 people in one of the film’s best action scenes. The Water introduces us to the kidnapped girls hope at rescue – a man from the forest that protects those that inhabit it. He demonstrates his action chops by taking down a tiger. Even though each of these scenes hits hard and gives you an adrenaline shot to kick start this 3 hour action bromance, neither are the film’s best action scenes. There are just too many action scenes to highlight, which we’ll leave for you to experience.

The only moments that took me out of the zone were the intermission and the ‘Naatu Naatu’ dance scene which both doesn’t fit the period or the serious action/cheesy tone that the film had already established. Plus the nod to Black culture by tokenizing a Black drummer (the only Black character in the film) just feels awkward. But luckily the film quickly resumes the melodrama and action pretty soon after both scenes to build the adrenaline and emotional connection back up. This is the ultimate ‘Theme Park‘ movie that needs to be seen on the big screen.

The Future

Before the pandemic, there was a John Woo double feature at The Aero in Santa Monica. It featured The Killer and Hardboiled, two stylish (and often cheesy) classics of the action-film genre. They’re both incredibly fun films to watch, and it was even more fun to watch them with a full audience that responded to the film’s iconic moment with cheers and shouts of appreciation. I believe S.S. Rajamouli deserves the same love that The Aero afforded John Woo. It may sound strange saying this as S.S. Rajamouli is a hugely popular director around the world that has drawn a relatively massive box-office total. But, whilst his films are massive in India, they haven’t found much of a cross-over audience amongst film fans in the U.S. Like John Woo, his films are iconic, melodramatic, action films that are best experienced with friends or a crowd. They should be seen by all action and superhero film fans, but I’ll be happy if they manage to form a cult corner like John Woo managed to do, and screen to sell-out shows in Art-House cinemas in the not too distant future.

127

Life is Fare – What it Means to be an Eritrean in America

Life Is Fare Film Difficulty Ranking: 2

Life is Fare is a Tigrinya/English feature film exploring three different experiences of the Eritrean diaspora living in the U.S. It uses different styles (drama, documentary, animation, fantasy) to construct a range of views on what it means to be Eritrean and living abroad. So, if you’re looking for a unique exploration of the immigrant experience in the U.S. Life is Fare is a movie to add to your watch-list.

From: U.S/Eritrea, North America
Watch: IMDb, Watch for Free on Film's Website
Next: Farewell Amor, Burial of Kojo, The Infiltrators

128

The Fabulous Ones – Outfest Los Angeles 2023

The Fabulous Ones is a warm home-made story featuring real friends reuniting to relive their memories from 30 years ago. The drama comes from a fictionalized will of one of their old friends, but the personal, real stories provide the substance for this docufiction.

From the tone of the film, it feels like most of this film is a documentary. The characters all get along too closely for it to feel fictionalized. However, the director uses different film types to blur the past and present, and also reality and fiction. Sepia-tinted film makes some shots feel old – as if shot 30 years ago in the character’s past – and these are edited alongside clearer shots to indicate the present. Some scenes also alternate between these two types of film to make it unclear what is fictionalized and true to reality, such as the seance and re-enactment of their ‘dead’ friend. The blurring of reality and fiction and past and present through the type of film also fictionalizes their pre-transition lives. Home footage and photos of the characters pre-transition, look like the scenes of the seance, making their pasts feel less real than the present.

Whilst their pre-transition lives are made to feel like the fictionalized parts of this documentary, The Fabulous Ones doesn’t shy away from sharing the characters’ real experiences as Trans-women. Throughout their reunion, the camera focuses on each character to hear their queer coming of age experience and how their individual families and the society around them reacted. These scenes draws you closer to the characters by sharing their more intimate experiences, and in doing so, holds the film back from going full happy-dream with the fictionalized elements of the film. These moments ground the film in the unfortunate reality that not everyone is able to be who they are without prejudice.

If you’re looking for a quirky docufiction that lightly explores some heavy personal experiences through a fictionalized will left by a ‘dead’ friend, this film is for you.

129

Papi – Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival 2021

Sonia is a precocious 8-year-old girl with a vibrant imagination. Her flashbacks and surreal flights of fancy help her navigate life as the daughter of Papi, a drug dealer who returns from New York to become the biggest crime lord in the city.

For a first time feature, Noelia Quintero Herencia captures the slightly zany tone of Rita Indiana’s novel very well. She creates 8 year-old Sonia’s world by depicting her imagined fantasies alongside her reality. Doing this makes it harder for the viewer to figure out which scenes are real, making Sonia a pretty unreliable narrator. However, it also paints an interesting picture of her relationship with her dad.

Her two main fantasies consist of her leading a TV game show and spending time with her dad in the U.S. Both feel upbeat and happy, deliberately contrasting with her lonely reality at home. However, they both contain her dad’s vices – vices that at her age she’s just becoming aware of, such as her father’s infidelity and life as a criminal.

Her fantasies capture her changing perception of her dad as she grows up. She still imagines him as her hero, and herself as his princess, in a way that feels like she’s trying to hold onto her happy childhood memories. However, coming to terms with his criminal character, represents the end of her childhood alongside her idyllic childhood fantasies.

For an imaginative coming of age story that leans heavily on visualizing a kid’s imagination, Papi is well worth a watch.

Head to our LALIFF 2021 Hub for more reviews from the 20th edition of LALIFF.

130

Hairareb (Namibia) – Pan African Film Festival 2022

Hairareb follows the relationship between Hairareb, a middle-aged farmer, and Innis, his new bride. As they begin to get comfortable with their new life together, the secrets behind their marriage and from their past lives roll out into the open, creating a whirlwind of trouble for their budding relationship. Can they weather the storm, or will they fall back to the mistakes they made in the past?

There’s a lot going on in the opening scenes of the movie. The opening scene shows a man riding a horse into the sunset accompanied by a loud soundtrack and voiceover like a Hollywood Western. It introduces us to Hairareb’s narrative voice. The next shows a young man unlocking a chest of someone’s mementos. It’s not clear whose mementos or how he’s related to them. The film doesn’t give too many clues in the next few scenes either as it jumps straight to Hairareb and Innis’ wedding. From there, the jumping back and forth stops for a while, until the film delves into the two main character’s past lives, which by this point at least, helps to clear up some of the confusion from the start of the film and provide a bit of character development. However, for the most part, Hairareb feels unfocused. The drought, relationships, character backstories, and life in rural Namibia are all sacrificed for the sake of creating domestic melodrama, leaving the film feeling pretty hollow.

As you’ll notice from the start, this is a domestic melodrama. The loud soundtrack and overwrought narrative voice give that away. The use of a narrator feels a bit unnecessary at times, as everything Hairareb says could be built into a more natural script. It feels like it has been included to cut corners in the character building and plot to advance the plot quicker. It’s also always full of writing that feels a bit overdone, especially when it’s read alongside an overbearing soundtrack that doesn’t leave anything to the imagination. The soundtrack also often gives away the direction of the scenes before they’re acted out. Upbeat musical interludes play a few scenes before the newlyweds are happy and the villains are given away before the reveals by the loud ominous soundtrack accompanying their face on screen. A little more subtlety may have created a bigger surprise for these reveals, however, viewers used to melodramas may not be as put off by these moments as it’s all part of the fun.

The language choices were also interesting. Whilst the film was mostly shot in English, there were some moments where the cast started speaking the indigenous Khoekhoe language. Presumably English was chosen for the film’s marketability abroad, but why not then just run the whole film in English for this reason? The Khoekhoegowab words seemed to be included randomly and not for certain characters or moments so it wasn’t clear why they were included. If the director wanted to include the language, it would have been great to have used Khoekhoe throughout the movie. I don’t believe it would have made much of a difference to the international audience viewing it and maybe the actors would have been more comfortable using it.

Overall, if you’re looking for a Namibian domestic melodrama, you’ve come to the right place. Every scene of Hairareb is filled with it, from the music to the relationship reveals. There’s also some beautifully framed shots of rural Namibia to showcase the landscape. However, if you’re not familiar with the domestic melodrama genre you’ll probably find this example overdone and lacking in substance.

Check back to our Pan African Film Festival 2022 page for more reviews coming out of the 30th edition of the festival.