Not every film can be great, but these are decent and if you’re into whatever their niche is you should give them a try.
The Other Laurens, a French neo-noir (but high color saturation style), a private detective’s estranged twin brother dies and his niece dupes him in to investigate and you know, rich people, bikers, smuggling, betrayal. Slow burn but enjoyable, watch if you like French noir, 3/5
The Silence Project aka Project Silence, where a bunch of squalling Koreans get stuck on a bridge with escaped military-enhanced murder dogs. Modern, slick, serviceable. For God’s sake Koreans in crisis shriek and yowl and beat their breast and fall down in an outpouring of emotion a lot. They go for a satisfying “punch the guy in charge after the rescue” ending but the lead character was a dirtbag politician until close to the end which robs it of some of the satisfaction. Think of it as “Train to Busan but not as good.” Watch if you are super into Korean movies, 3/5
Tiger Stripes – A Malaysian girl gets her period and as is traditional that turns into body horror, and ends up with some possession by/turning into a tiger (maybe?). Looks at the separation that happens between children and young women when they hit that age. Good child actors! And I liked the look into Malay culture. Well done, 3/5
Eileen – Based on an Ottessa Moshfegh novel (which I then bought at the fest book fair!) in which a young Massachusetts lady is working in a prison and taking care of her drunk widower ex-cop dad in a realistically unpleasant New England. She has her sexual awakening, like most of us, via Anne Hathaway, who plays an elegant prison psychiatrist. Some great lines like “Did she seem angry to you?” “It’s Massachusetts, everyone is angry.” It goes quickly from coming of age story to crime investigation to crime committing. Sometimes it’s not a good idea to liberate the quiet ones, 3/5
Acide – French movie about acid rain attacking. I was excited and from the intro and opening I thought we were gonna get something good, but then… The color was trash, like ultra compression artifacts trash, but I heard from someone later that was our projection setup not the movie. But then there were very very few people-melts, and I had been led to expect many. Was it not finished? There was a blank spot for 15 seconds when I think horses were getting acid rained on… And like I get it, they’re French, but the amount of flopping to the ground when in danger and total lack of survival skills was shocking. Not gonna put some plastic sheeting over that car eh? Gonna wrap your feet in aluminum tins not plastic bags? No one has baking soda or hydrogen peroxide to treat getting splashed by acid? The choices (repeatedly) to drive around screaming in the rain instead of just parking inside something was infuriating. I have never said the sentence “Roland Emmerich should remake this” in my life, but now I am. 2/5 but that is influenced by the poor video quality of the version I saw, may be 3/5.
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