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 3.
Film Difficulty Ranking 3: More of a challenge for those familiar with foreign films. Level 3 is like a mix between an intriguing European mime artist and your most interesting and demanding school teacher.
If you’ve mastered these films, move onto Film Difficulty Ranking 4.
If you’re a boxing fan or simply a regular gym rat, you’ll be able to sympathise with Christ in Boxing Libreville. He’s a boxer who trains all day and works all night to try to become the best boxer in Gabon as the hope of a new political future builds in the background.
From: Gabon, Africa Watch: Trailer Next: Makala, The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki, Fruitvale StationContinue reading “Boxing Libreville – Boxing for Freedom in Gabon”
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Set in a dystopian future where society is crumbling, Akira is the anime equivalent of The Matrix. Pay attention to the superbly animated setting of ‘Neo-Tokyo,’ a city which resembles a mix of Bladerunner’s Los Angeles and the Hunger Games’ Panem. See the original before a Hollywood studio remakes their live-action version (which has been in the works for years at various Hollywood studios).
From: Japan, AsiaContinue reading “Akira – Visit a Dystopian Animated Tokyo”
Watch: Trailer, Buy on Amazon
Next: The Matrix, Bladerunner, Tron
With her mother dead and her father in prison, Nevia and her little sister live with her grandmother in a container park on the outskirts of Naples. It’s not the best place for her to grow up. Her grandmother rents out her rooms to prostitutes and runs odd chores for the local crime boss to try and repay the debts Nevia’s father owes. Nevia despises her grandmother for bringing men into their home.
Nevia’s other problem is that Salvatore, the 30 year old son of the crime boss, is infatuated with her. Even though she’s only 17 (and looks younger), he’s already asking her grandmother for her hand in marriage. The prostitution to many men or prostitution to Salvatore is what Nevia fears is her fate.
To escape, she finds work with the local circus. They provide her independence and a more complete family then the one she has at home. It allows her to wean herself away from her grandmother and Salvatore. But when she finds the circus leader has his own problems, she’s redirected to the fate she tried to escape.
Nevia looks a lot like the recent Neapolitan films of Matteo Garrone (Gomorrah, Dogman). It contains the same grimy urban landscape of rubbish strewn across roads, battered apartment blocks, and lots of concrete and tarmac. It’s a hopeless forgotten Italy in which opportunity doesn’t exist. The only people who succeed are involved in crime, and those that don’t are inevitably linked to them whether they want to or not.
Like Dogman’s main character, Nevia is linked to the criminal underworld by means outside her control. She comes into contact with the criminal bosses because of her father and grandmother. She’s doomed to Salvatore just for living where she grew up. It’s not a problem with her but a condition of the hopeless environment she grows up in.
The welcome difference of Nevia is that it’s led by Nevia, a young female protagonist growing up with her female relatives. It therefore provides a female perspective of life in the hopeless outskirts of urban Italy. The environment for them is much more restrictive than the criminal freedom it afford the men.
If you’re looking for a drama about a man blinded by his pride forced to look at reality, you’ve come to the right place. A Screaming Man follows former swimming champ, Adam as he lives a life he loves, working as a pool attendant at a luxury hotel. However, as Civil War looms, he’s forced to reconsider what he values most in life.
From: Chad, Africa Watch: Trailer, JustWatch, Kanopy, Tubi Next: Felicite, A Touch of Sin, A Man of IntegrityContinue reading “A Screaming Man – A Former Swimming Champ Blinded By His Pride”
Factory Film Difficulty Ranking: 3
You’ve got no excuses for ignoring Loznitsa’s documentaries. They are available on YouTube (links below) and are only 30 minutes long. If you are looking for a portrayal of 1930s Russia go watch Portrait. For an otherworldly depiction of a working factory, watch Factory. You’ll be hypnotised by the mechanic sounds and glowing lights in a world where humans have become machines. Is this the future of humanity?
It is still dark. There is a light blanket of snow on the ground. A long billboard of portraits is illuminated by the golden light of two small lamps. A few people walk by, their silhouettes blending into the darkness. The people walk from the darkness into an entry room lit in a spacey green. They all pass through a small turnstile and into the factory to become part of the machine.
In the factory a man crawls out of an orifice in the metal machinery. He picks up a long rod and starts to shovel metal back into the mouth of the machine. A group of women alternate grabbing a metal slab from a slow moving conveyor belt and shelving the blocks on a shelving unit behind them. Both men and women have become parts of the machine. Their movements have become as coordinated and reliable as the machines they work with. Have these people become robots? Are they losing their humanity?
The colours and sounds of the factory create a weirdly relaxing atmosphere. It reminded me of the warm feeling you feel when someone softly speaks to you as you are slowly falling asleep in a warm bed. The sounds of the machinery represent almost every onomatopoeic word. You hear bubbling, grinding, rattling, sloshing, and hissing. Then there are the colours. The warm reds and oranges of the molten metal against the otherwise dark factory and the futuristic greens and blues create an otherworldly environment. It could almost be an image of a dystopian future where humans work for/with the machine.
“What interests me is the possibility of realising thoughts with the resources that make up cinema. The rest is secondary…First an impression, then reflection, then realisation”
– Loznitsa (the director)
In Factory Loznitsa focuses on the physical stuff that makes up an image, namely the location and occupants. Here he moulds an extraordinary film of a Russian factory by depicting the harmony between machines and man. He makes what is real seem unbelievable – as if we are witnessing an alternate dystopian reality.
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