Mario Dhingsa's Blog, page 8

#SilverScreenBlack: 'The Magic Bomb' (2017)

(1hr 24mins)

Mario's rating: 4/5 (love potions)

The Brooklyn Candidate: The chance to cheat a bigot for cash escalates wildly into a catastrophe to bomb Manhattan.

👍 Dreamers:
Strong direction and cinematography from the start, and the soundtrack creates some exceptional scenes.
Marcial Urena and Jonathan Iglesias are my new favourite actors, and the whole crew did an incredible job on what was a $0 budget. Hollywood, where are you?

👎 Schemers:
Having to choose between Lady Macbeth and Stalker Suzy isn't much of a choice, the bigot's dialogue could have been better developed, and third-act resolutions might not appeal to everyone. And no one sleeps with ear rings.

📽️ Favourite scene: Kiel's introduction. The man has a lot to talk about. And most of it's bad news.

🥇 Best quote: "I only kill when I absolutely have to. Unfortunately I have to kill a lot."

🙁 Best depressing quote: "I'm going to go down in history as the Lee Harvey Oswald of New York City."

⏳ Best lockdown quote: "Paranoia will make people believe the craziest things."

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/themagicbomb





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#SilverScreenBlack: 'The Hitch-Hiker' (1953)

(1hr 10 mins)

Mario's rating: 3.5/5 (side roads)

(Hostage) Road Trip: An act of kindness becomes a death sentence for two friends, as they drive a desperate man and his dead-eyed revolver.

👍 In gratitude:
William Talman as the hitch-hiker. The actor does an astonishing job of eliminating every redeeming feature from his character. Talman was slapped in public by a stranger soon after the film was released. "You know," Talman later said, "I never won an Academy Award, but I guess that was about as close as I ever will come to one."

👎 In memoriam:
The screenplay, including several character details, is based on an actual hitch-hiking killing spree in 1950. Six lives were subsequently lost, including the Mosser family and their three children, aged 7, 5 and 3.

📽️ Favourite scene:
The final pier scene: A long walk in darkness, with every finger on the trigger.

🥇 Best quote:
"You stink, Myers! You smell! Just like your clothes! You haven't got a chance. You haven't got a thing except that gun! You'd better hang onto it because without it, you're finished!"

🙁 Best depressing quote:
"You guys are soft. You know what makes you that way? You're up to your neck in IOU's. You're suckers! You're scared to get out on your own. You've always had it good, so you're soft. Well, not me! Nobody ever gave me anything, so I don't owe nobody!"





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#SilverScreenBlack: 'Pulse' / '回路' (2001)

(1hr 54 mins, Jap)

Mario's rating: 3/5 (forbidden rooms)

'You've Got (Death) Mail!': A surprising suicide signals an avalanche of soul possessions from an over-crowded afterlife.

👍 Eternal joy:
The sound design and cinematography are top notch; both stunning and unsettling throughout. As are Haruhiko Kato's choice of shirts. Stunning. And unsettling.

👎 Eternal loneliness:
The writing and editing can be a little muddled. The film's most obvious scary scenes, aren't; while its more subtle moments, are terrifying.
And any film that painfully under-uses a Ferrari speedboat(!) and Kōji Yakusho (one of Japan's best actors!) truly haunts me.

📽️ Favourite scene:
The tower climber. I won't spoil it. Just don't look away.

🥇 Best quote:
"Would you like to meet a ghost?"

🙁 Best depressing quote:
"From when I was really little, I was always alone. Then in high school it dawned on me. You might be all alone after death, too. That nothing changes with death. Just right now. Forever."

⏳ Best lockdown quote:
"Let's just act normal. At least for today."





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#SilverScreenBlack: 'The Ring Finger' / 'L'Annulaire' (2005)

(1hr 40 mins, Fra)

Mario's rating: 2.5/5 (jars)

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Formaldehyde: A French lab frees its customers from their worst memories, but a twisted dynamic develops between the director and the new receptionist.

👍 Opened windows:
Kurylenko's beautifully buoyant performance (in her first film). She was later awarded Best Actress at the Brooklyn International Film Festival.
The music score by Beth Gibbons (of 'Portishead') is also incredible - searing, soaring and haunting.

👎 Locked basements:
The plot is pretty slow, and viewers who like their film to resolve most of its plot points may be disappointed.
The lab director is also a sexual predator who doesn't receive his comeuppance. Characters that should have been arrested decades ago are always hard to cheer for.

📽️ Favourite scene:
Kurylenko opening a window (really!) and the game of 'ghosts' that erupt around her.

🥇 Best quote:
"My boyfriend was a composer. He wrote this piece for my birthday. It's as tender as being wrapped in velvet. At Christmas he gave me some watercolours and a cameo, on a hatpin, that he had brought back from a journey. After our separation, I flushed the watercolours down the toilet, and buried the hatpin. But I just couldn't get rid of the music."





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#SilverScreenBlack: 'Destroyer' (2018)

(2hrs)

Mario's rating: 4.5/5 (pacts)

(Requiem for a) Destroyer: Greed, guilt and rage corrode away the best of Kidman's cop, leaving the worst of her wanting revenge.

👍 Forest trips:
Kidman's snowballing (self-)destruction from 16 years of regret, repression and outrage. All that's left are her imperfect choices in a near-perfect film.

👎 Heist slips:
No 2019 Oscar noms in any category. Just one Golden Globe nom. Only the Nevada Film Critics Society awarded Kidman for Best Actress (jointly with Toni Collette for 'Hereditary'). Nice work with both choices, NFCS.

📽️ Favourite scene:
Kidman questioning Bradley Whitford's crooked lawyer. The conversation literally crashes one way, then the other...

🥇 Best quote:
"I'm tired. I've spent my whole life scrapping. Jealous, hungry, scared. I just want to spend one day on the other side of that."

🙁 Best depressing quote:
“You want to be powerful. You want to be recognised. You want to be seen. But you can't do what you want. Because someone's going to see you and you're going to get punished for doing what you want. I got good news and bad news. There's nobody watching."

👨‍👧 Best parenting quote:
"I'm not good, I'm the one who's bad. I lied, I stole, and worse. You can be better than me."





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#SilverScreenBlack: 'Kansas City Confidential' (1952)

(1hr 39mins)

Mario's rating: 4/5 (double-crosses)

Reservoir Dodge: Four thieves pull off a heist perfectly, but sharing without shooting becomes the most dangerous part of all.

👍 Back rubs:
John Payne as the framed man, beaten by police and jobless by society, who finds himself hunting the heist gang. In 1952, the New York Times criticised the film as an "... unenlightened dossier..." on crime and violence, and that included our hero.

👎 Back stabs:
None of the movie was filmed in Kansas City (which still makes sense, given all the double-crosses).

📽️ Favourite scene:
Mr Big 'interviewing' the three criminals for the bank robbery, with logic, violence, and anonymity. None of them decline.

🥇 Best quote: " I know a sure cure for a nosebleed: a cold knife in the middle of the back."

🙁 Best depressing quote: "A hero's medal isn't enough when you're alone."

👨‍👧 Best parenting quote: "I found that people rarely look like what they are."





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#SilverScreenBlack: 'Thunder Road' (2018)

(1hr 30mins)

Mario's rating: 4.5/5 (potato salads)

Fury Road: A cop crumbles and collapses as he loses all he has, but the power of Springsteen can bring anyone back from rock bottom.

👍 Dance rooms: Despite the $200,000 budget, the cast is priceless. Exceptional acting all round, including Nican Robinson as Officer Jim's best friend, Chelsea Edmundson as Jim's sister, and Macon Blair as the coolest primary school teacher in cinema.

👎 Court rooms: Nobody dances at a funeral. Nobody.

📽️ Favourite scene: The parent-teacher meeting. Never has hiding a pair of scissors been more appropriate, or more hysterical.

🥇 Best quote: "I can't make you leave. You've got to want more for yourself. But I can promise you it's not going to get much better living here."

🙁 Best depressing quote: "I lost my daughter today, and I did everything right!"

👨‍👧 Best parenting quote: "I haven't had a good night's sleep since 2009!"





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#SilverScreenBlack: 'Carol' (2015)

(1hr 53mins)

Mario's rating: 4/5 (space angels)

(Breaking) The Birdcage: Two lovers look into the lethal abyss and leap anyway; willingly, blissfully, tragically, beautifully.

👍 Road trips: 'Carol' was voted best LGBTQ+ Film of All Time by the British Film Institute in 2016. Their survey spanned 84 years of cinema and 12 countries.

👎 Morality clauses: The film was nominated for six Oscars in 2016, but won none of them. Cate Blanchett lost the Best Actress award to Brie Larson ('Room'), and Rooney Mara lost Best Supporting Actress to Alicia Vikander ('The Danish Girl'). And was Mara really a supporting actress if she's in 60% of the film, and Blanchett was in 54%?...

📽️ Favourite scene: The final scene in the restaurant, and one of cinema's best unspoken movie moments.

🥇 Best quote:
CAROL: "There was a time when I would have done almost anything. I would have locked myself away to keep my child with me. But what use am I to her, to us, if I'm living against my own grain?"

🙁 Best depressing quote:
CAROL: "Please don't be angry when I tell you that you seek resolutions and explanations because you're young. But you will understand this one day. And when it happens, I want you to imagine me there to greet you, our lives stretched out ahead of us, a perpetual sunrise. But until then, there must be no contact between us. Please believe that I would do anything to see you happy. So, I do the only thing I can... I release you."





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#SilverScreenBlack: 'Victoria' (2015)

(2hrs 18mins, Ger)

Mario's rating: 4/5 (favours)

Berlin Birdman: One rejection, one romance, one robbery, one release; and all in one overwhelming take.

👍 Night clubs: The tension of the never-ending take. As in life, innocent lies and mistakes can be fatal, and there are no re-takes here. There's no going back.

👎 Night fights: The film was disqualified from being nominated for the 2016 Best Foreign Film Oscar, as it's mostly in English. No German film was subsequently short-listed that year by the Academy, for this category.

📽️ Favourite scene: The baby scene. Smartly done, and simply devastating.

🥇 Best quote: "I've been 16.5 years practicing playing the piano. Every day, seven hours. Our teacher said that 90% of us are wasting our time. You know, when I was 12, I was like an old lady, just always playing the piano."

🙁 Best depressing quote: "I'm not a bad guy, I just did a bad thing."





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#SilverScreenBlack: 'The Lost Weekend' (1945)

(96 mins)

Mario's rating: 4.5/5 (natch)

Whisky Galore: An alcoholic tries quenching the unquenchable, and breaks beneath the unbreakable.

👍 Bottle full: Ray Milland's portrayal of a heavy drinker, who goes from deceit, panic, mania, malevolence, confidence, calm and bliss; and back again. Frank Faylen likewise shines as the cynical, smiling hospital orderly, who has heard every lie, and has sat through every scream.

👎 Bottle empty: The film won four Oscars (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay) and co-won the Grand Prix at Cannes, but is largely forgotten. Only 'Marty' (1955) and last year's 'Parasite' have since won both Best Picture and the Grand Prix.

📽️ Favourite scene: The NYC alcoholic ward, where Milland sees how many are like him, and for how many decades they've been trapped.

🥇 Best quote: "I'm not a drinker. I'm a drunk. The reason is me, what I am. Or rather, what I'm not. What I wanted to become but didn't."

🙁 Best depressing quote: "You know, once I even got myself a gun and some bullets. I was going to do it on my 30th birthday. Here are the bullets. The gun went for three quarts of whisky. The flop suicide of a flop writer."

🍊 Best Trump quote:
"I've never done anything! I'm not doing anything! I never will do anything! Zero, zero, zero!"





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