Benim Dunyam (2013)

Directed by: Ugur Yucel
Country: Turkey

Movie Review: “Benim Dunyam”, meaning ‘my world’, is a sleazy Turkish drama directed and starred by the actor-turned-filmmaker Ugur Yucel. Ela (Beren Saat) was born deaf and blind and their parents don’t know what to do with her or how to teach her to behave. Her father is growing impatient and believes that institutionalized her is the only solution. However, his wife decides to give a chance to an alcoholic old teacher, Mahir (Ugur Yucel), whose sister suffered from the same condition but was considered mentally retarded. Mahir’s methods are unconventional and even include some slaps, but the little girl needs to be tamed and learn the meaning of words in order to avoid being sent to a madhouse. He even has ambitious intentions: sending her to the university. Later on, it will be Ela who will try everything to help her former teacher, after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer disease. An excessive and forced sentimentality is present throughout the film, which also includes an indigestible score and uninspired approach. The toxic candidness of its longstanding narrative seemed eternal while exhibited a self-contentment in every tear shed. Visually pretty sharp, “Benim Dunyam”, doesn’t shine in any other aspect, becoming one of those slushy exercises that, from wanting to touch our feelings so frequently and easily, falls in complete banality.

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Pizza Shop: the Movie (2013)

Directed by: George O'Barts
Country: USA

Movie Review: I didn’t find any good reason to recommend “Pizza Shop: the Movie”, George O’Bart’s debut on writing/direction. Opening with a scene that is more gross than funny, the film starts to give an idea of the bunch of retards who work in the pizza shop. The moments of tension are created among the shop’s employees, with frequent bullying situations and pranks, and between the deliverymen and the peculiar costumers, some of them ready to pay for the pizza with anything except cash. I understand that the goal of “Pizza Shop” is to ridicule every situation, taking them to the limit, but personally, I prefer intelligent humor. It seems that the film consisted in a reunion of friends who simply wanted to execute something to be catalogued as weird or radical. The outcome was more embarrassing than amusing, evincing an amateurish execution, a lousy production and poor performances. The annoying advertisement between episodes using the logo, just like a TV commercial, along with an invasive score in several scenes, and unnatural dialogues and behaviors, were other factors that didn’t help the final result. The toilet humor became more ridiculous than expected, and an approximation to the comic-horror genre with dramatic hints was also a failure, relegating “Pizza Shop” to immature audiences. Maybe for those, this film can obtain the acceptance that I was unable to consider. Too low-grade to be recommended.

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Alien Abduction (2014)

Directed by: Matty Beckerman
Country: USA

Movie Review: The Brown Mountain Lights phenomenon that can be observed in North Carolina, served as inspiration for “Alien Abduction”, the directorial debut feature from producer Matty Beckerman. It starts claiming that what we’re going to see is leaked footage from the US Air Force that found a camcorder from 11-year-old Riley who disappeared with his family when camping in that area. In a time where found-footage films are becoming tedious and banal, “Alien Abduction” doesn’t bring any creativity or novelty to the psychedelic digital effects and noises that follow the blurred and shaky camera. While the camera movements continues to annoy, the clichés used in the script are numerous, including the family lost on mountain roads in a foggy day, driving a car that is running out of gas, and threatened by mysterious creatures that we only have a glimpse, without having the possibility of asking for help. The concept is borrowed from a thousand other films and “Alien Abduction” becomes nothing else but a tedious exercise in the genre. A totally new approach and storytelling were needed to escape the cathartic panicking of the characters and all those gimmicks that the film relies and just don’t work anymore. I cannot praise the flat performances, which didn’t help to improve this thriller of being formulaic, fatiguing and extremely slavish in its execution. There are very few things to recommend in one of the most dismal abductions in the history of cinema. It was simply too vulgar to be worthy of our time.

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Transcendence (2013)

Directed by: Wally Pfister
Country: USA / UK / China

Movie Review: “Transcendence” wins the prize for the most despicable sci-fi movie of the year, since I didn’t remember the last time I was so bored in a theater. Cinematographer and first-time director, Wally Pfister, should take some more lessons from the notable filmmaker Christopher Nolan, who appears here as executive producer, because his directorial debut seems more convoluted and artificial than any type of super technological intelligence you can imagine. The story follows Dr. Will Caster (Johnny Depp), a reputed scientist whose innovative discoveries in the field of artificial intelligence make him a target for an extremist anti-technological organization. Caster is shot dead, but his wife Evelyn (Rebecca Hall), with the precious help of their best friend Max Watters (Paul Bettany), will continue to maintain Caster’s dream alive, making his consciousness inhabit a quantum computer and connecting it to the Internet. Executed on autopilot, the film is visually uninteresting and deficiently structured, being a catastrophe as a thriller. Jack Paglen’s worthless script made every performance go down in the same wave of ineffectiveness (and Depp and Hall even have my admiration!), in a film that was condemned to failure since the first moment it started to be filmed. The incredibly bad “Transcendence” is one of those films that keeps you eternally waiting for something creative to happen. Parched in emotions and opaque in conception, it’s the perfect example of what a sci-fi thriller should not be.

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When Time Becomes a Woman (2012)

Directed by: Ahmad Alyaseer
Country: Jordan

Movie Review: Talky, minimal, and tiresome is what comes to my head when I first try to describe Jordanian film “When Time Becomes a Woman”, Ahmad Alyaseer’s directorial debut. The poor, stagey script only needs two actors and repetitive shots from the same landscape, to tell a weird and futuristic story about the end of the world. Zad is a confident, controller, and egocentric revolutionary who unintentionally was responsible for the destruction of the Earth in an operation called M16. In a remote place somewhere in the mountains, he tries to convince the last woman on the planet to go with him in order to save the world. The confusing dialogue becomes insufferable, in a mix of elaborated philosophy and mechanical questions and answers that seemed almost a hide-and-seek game that tries to confront fantasy and reality, knowledge and unawareness, trust and suspicion. He tells her about his past deeds in 2050’s when the Earth was invaded and a dangerous virus infected most of the inhabitants, while she keeps questioning about his methods, motives, and intentions. With a nauseating fatalist score accompanying all the extremely glossy images, “When Time Becomes a Woman” cannot be seen as a serious film (at least in my eyes), being a complete failure in all the genres that is categorized: drama, mystery, and sci-fi. Its 73 minutes were more than enough to running out my patience.

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Wrong Cops (2013)

Directed by: Quentin Dupieux
Country: USA

Movie Review: If the plotless adventures of “Wrong”, released last year, were in the edge of being watchable with its purposely ambiguous machinations, “Wrong Cops” is simply unbearable, being a satirical film about police corruption that was taken to the extremes of ridiculousness. After a promising start, the film quickly falls in such stupid and childish situations that are nothing more than forced and unfunny attempts to shock, making me gradually exhausted and completely drawing out any effective surprise factor with its obnoxious characters and cheap jokes. Some good ideas, like a cop selling rats stuffed with weed that he buys from the Chinese, are wasted in the whirlwind of other inconsequent scenes and impertinent humor. In the end I had the perfect notion that film director Quentin Dupieux (also known as Mr. Oizo in the world of French electronic music) dug a big hole with absolutely nothing inside, since most of the scenes seemed unfinished, contributing for the glaring disconnections evinced in the poor script. So, how could I recommend a pretentious, hollow movie? If you’re searching for a smart, balanced, and funny story, don’t waste your time with these imbecilities. “Wrong Cops” is just another wrong film taken out from the wrong mind of Dupieux who seems incapable to create something more coherent or smarter than this cartoonish foolishness.

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Tango Libre (2012)

Directed by: Frédéric Fonteyne
Country: France / Belgium / others

Movie Review: “Tango Libre”, 2012 Venice’s special jury prize and Warsaw’s grand prix, is a shallow drama with humorous touches that completely fails to be credible. The story is based in a fatal attraction that develops between a prison guard, J.C. (François Damiens), and a lonely young mother, Alice (Anne Paulicevich), after they met during a tango class. Emotional conflict arises when he finds out that Alice’s jealous husband, Fernand (Sergi Lopez), together with her depressive lover, Dominic (Jan Hammenecker), are both inmates in the same prison he works. At first sight, this already confusing threesome relationship didn’t have enough space for another person, but J.C., violating the prison rules, will try anything to gain the trust of husband, son, and lover, just to be close to Alice. Everything was wrapped in Argentinean tango and an irritating, self-indulgent pose that takes beyond proper limits the already strained plot. The tense moments seemed untrue and from an early stage, I lost the interest in what was coming next. Do you imagine incarcerated tough guys giving tango lessons to their fellows in prison? I don’t! “Tango Libre” wanted to be so ‘libre’ that seemed widely ridiculous, superfluous, and never funny, becoming a film to be skipped.

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Touch of the Light (2012)

Directed by: Rong-ji Chang
Country: Taiwan

Movie Review: “Touch Of the Light” is a soapy drama based on true events that constantly tests your patience with its sweetness and all-smile characters. The story follows two teenagers who are searching for recognition in what they love most. Siang (played by himself), blind since childbirth and with a special ear for music, is trying to adapt himself to his new school where he studies piano, while Jie (Sandrine Pinna) is unhappy working in a drink shop and wants to dance professionally. The two will bump into each other by chance and the encounter will be fruitful for both. Nothing stood out in this romanticized melodrama filled with manipulated tensions and encased in the same music and dance sequences. It was clear that Taiwanese director Rong-Ji Chang’s debut on fiction was aimed to reach the masses, creating an uninteresting atmosphere of frustration and personal struggle that completely put me off. The tedious pastiche that comes out of the story, written by Nyssa Li (director’s collaborator in two previous documentaries), only aggravates its lack of originality and monotone tones. Despite its numerous critical problems, the film won the PIPRESCI prize at Golden Horse Film Festival in Taipei, place where director Chang was also considered best new director. To finish, I must say this sentimental flick is totally dispensable.

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Blind Detective (2013)

Directed by: Johnnie To
Country: Hong Kong / China

Movie Review: If some weeks ago I have said that “Drug War” was one of the best films by Hong Kong filmmaker Johnnie To, now I have to say that “Blind Detective” is one of his worst. With a proven track in the action-crime genre, Johnnie To tries to add some humor into this distasteful plot and the result becomes too childish to impress. The film stars Andy Lau as the blind detective, Johnston, and Sammi Cheng as Ho Ka Tung, an attractive female inspector who becomes his partner in a special investigation case. Both actors had worked together for several times, including other rom-coms from this same director. During its overlong and mind-numbing 129 minutes, the film failed to be eccentric or funny, and the screenplay by the long-time collaborator Wai Kai-Fai (“Drug War”, “Mad Detective”) left much to be desired. The unintelligent humor never caught me, the dialogues were tiresome and almost unbearable, the attempts to create tension were never exciting enough, and finally as romance the film fell in the ridicule of stereotyped moves. I would be much happier if Johnnie To remained faithful to the underworld crime thrillers, which are what he knows to do best, instead of wasting time with these hollow experiences. “Blind Detective” became the biggest disappointment of the year so far.

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Sandcastle (2012)

Directed by: Shomshuklla Das
Country: India

Movie Review: “Sandcastle” is the first film written and directed by Shomshuklla Das (also poet and singer), resulting in a personal vision about the role of women in Indian society. The film starts to introduce us Sheila (Shahana Chatterjee), a successful writer, exposing her thoughts by a long monologue about freedom and how to find the ideal man. That's when Maya (Malvika Jethwani), created from Sheila’s imagination, gained life of her own. In the next scenes we understand that Sheila is disappointed with her marriage; she starts taking advices from her brother, the fictitious Maya, and also from her real friend and publisher, Koushik. With constant social pressures, what will Sheila decide to do about her private life and work, which is always under judgment? Despite the valid idea, the film gives the answers to this question in a disjointed way, using long, dense, and unsatisfactory dialogues that made me disconnect completely from the characters. This aspect was reinforced by the constant changing of chapters (in a total of 20), breaking down the flow of happenings. Repeated close-ups of feet, food, and hands, were used in an attempt to approximate viewer and protagonists, but this tactic only distracted me from the central point of the debates. With theatrical tones and an almost amateurish style, “Sandcastle” weighs tradition and emotion without a favorable outcome, losing itself in spiritual and literary considerations that were never exciting or even inspired.

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After Earth (2013)

Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan
Country: USA

Review: “After Earth” is the confirmation that M.Night Shyamalan is losing strength and confidence behind the cameras. His first hits, “The Sixth Sense” and “Unbreakable”, made us foresee a promising and solid career as director and writer, but the lack of quality in his next steps made him fall in a category of unbearable. “After Earth” delivers a very poor sci-fi experience, telling the adventures of Cypher Raige (Will Smith) and his son Kitai (Will Smith’s real son Jaden), when their spaceship crashed on Earth, leaving them exposed to a group of rival aliens. Cypher ended up with the two legs broken and Kitai, as their only hope, will have to fight to retrieve a backup beacon and avoid death. Shyamalan, inspired by an unsophisticated story by Will Smith, was incapable to create a firm pace or any kind of interest with a bunch of animals’ attacks that seemed more an insensate animation than a sci-fi adventure. The monotone voices repeating military orders, the stupid facial expressions of its characters, and the miserable scenes containing special effects, made “After Earth” absolutely ridiculous. With the boredom installed and several laughable scenes that were meant to be taken seriously, this is one of the worst films I’ve seen this year and a complete failure in terms of script, performances, and execution.

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Olympus Has Fallen (2013)

Directed by: Antoine Fuqua
Country: USA

Review: Antoine Fuqua continues his persistent incursions into poor action, with lots of noisy splurge and meaningless results. “Olympus Has Fallen” is a cartoonish farce that even the staunchest action fans must be tired of. The story consists in a North Korean terrorist attack to the White House, where the president was made hostage along with several Governmental workers. What the terrorists didn’t know is that Mike Banning (Gerald Butler), the Presidential security guard was inside the building, ready to save his fatherland and become a new hero. While Banning was gaining ground inside the building until reach the president, the negotiations continued between the leader of the bad guys and a group headed by the acting president Speaker Turnbull (Morgan Freeman). The usual clichés, irksome violence, and basic dialogs, were set just to help filling a plot full of holes. Everything was ridiculous, starting with the tortures imposed to the hostages and ending in the body-to-body fights decorated with the stamp of Bruce Lee (nose wipe with thumb). With a tasteless direction, this is a case to say: Fuqua has fallen.

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