Tag: Netflix

The Top 10 dirty documentaries on Netflix

Posted on by victorfraga

We have reviewed more than 400 documentaries in our eight years of existence, so it was no easy task selecting just 10 of them exclusively for you.

The films below are listed in alphabetical order. Don’t forget to click on each individual film title in order to accede to our exclusive reviews. The availability of these films varies geographically and in order to watch them, we recommend that you use a VPN. A couple of VPNs that work well with Netflix and that we recommend include Cyberghost, Surfshark, and ExpressVPN. To find out which countries each title is available in, you can use the website Flixboss.

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1. The Biggest Little Farm (John Chester, 2019):

The year is 2010. John and his wife Molly are your average Californian urbanites. They dwell in a very small flat in Santa Monica, a coastal district of Los Angeles. John is a established documentarist, while Molly is a chef. One day they adopt a black pooch called Todd, saving him from certain death at local dog pound. But Todd won’t stop barking while his parents are away. As a consequence of the nuisance noise, all three get evicted from the building. They have just 30 days to find a solution and move out.

Giving Todd away isn’t an option because they are firmly committed to keeping the animal for life. Moving into a different block would probably see a similar closure. So they decide to move into the countryside near Los Angeles and set up a farm. They don’t have any money, but friends and investors promptly chip in. The farm isn’t just about Todd’s well-being. Molly always wanted to plant her own vegetables, while John is a also a environment lover, having worked in many nature shows for television. So they set the Apricot Lane Farms, where they grow a plethora of vegetables (from lemons and avocados to tomatoes and greens) and raise a variety of animals (chickens, goats and a pregnant pig called Emma, who succeeds to give birth to no less than 14 piglets). In total they plant 10,00 orchard trees in more than 200 different crops. Their farm is in stark contrast to the neighbouring establishments, mostly gigantic monocultures.

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2. Chavela (Catherine Gund and Daresha Kyi, 2017):

Chavela Vargas was no ordinary singer, no ordinary woman and no ordinary human being. The “llorona” (Spanish for someone who cries a lot) had no crystal-clear and sweet voice, but rather a cannon-like lament that shattered hearts and quickly moistened even the coldest and most hardened eyes. The doc Chavela, which explores the singer’s life from her birth in Costa Rica to her rise in her chosen homeland Mexico and much beloved Spain, is certain to bring tears to your eyes.

Chavela’s explosive and passionate music was deeply rooted in her fiery and assertive temperament and unflinching desire to live. She loved women as intensively as she could, and she was entirely unapologetic of the homosexuality. Her relations were profound and yet dysfunctional (she could become violent), and she counts Frida Kahlo and the wives of many important politicians amongst those whom she loved.

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3. The Edge of Democracy (Petra Costa, 2019):

Brazilian filmmaker Petra is roughly the same age as Brazilian democracy. She was born in 1983, just two years before the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil for more than two decades came to an end. She thought that herself and Brazilian democracy would be standing strong in their thirties. this, that did not materialise. While the filmmaker is now an accomplished filmmaker, now on her fourth feature film, Brazilian democracy has collapsed, and the country is was on the verge of authoritarianism when this documentary was made.

The Edge of Democracy is also pictured at the top of this article.

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4. Hating Peter Tatchell (Christopher Amos, 2021):

Stephen Fry succinctly describes Britain most (in)famous gay activist: “Peter is a performance artist. He deserves an award for his extraordinary contribution to the lives of those who never heard of him”. The 90-minute documentary that follows, narrated by Ian McKellen and exec produced by Elton John and and his husband David Furnish, provides irrefutable evidence that the English actor is indeed right.

Peter Tatchell was born in Australia in a neopentecostal family, which he describes as “close to fundamentalism”. His stepfather was particularly controlling and homophobic. He feared his parents would report him to the police, at a time when homosexuality was a crime punishable with imprisonment. Peter moved to Britain both because of his family and because he wanted to dodge the compulsory military service, which was at odds with his strong anti-war views. He joined the Gay Liberation Front within just days of arriving in London.

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5. Hope Frozen (Pailin Wedel, 2018):

Here’s a documentary with a difference about a family in Thailand. When their daughter Einz falls prey to brain cancer before her third birthday, her parents make the bold decision to have her cryonically frozen at death in the hope that she can, at some point in the future, perhaps in several hundred years’ time, be resuscitated and lead a normal life.

She has a devoted, older teenage brother Matrix who would do anything for her having waited over ten years for a sibling. Their dad Sahatorn is a working laser scientist who starts running experiments on his daughter’s cancer cells in an attempt to fund a cure before the condition kills her. Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t find a cure. Eventually, he talks wife Nareerat and son round to the idea of having Einz cryonically frozen.

Upon Einz’ death, within 60 seconds her body has been frozen for delivery to a facility run by a company in Arizona called Alcor. We watch a representative of this company show the whole family round, which tour includes the cylinder at the bottom section of which Einz has been put into cryonic storage. For the family, it feels a lot like visiting a graveside. They’ll probably never see her alive again.

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6. The Last Forest (Luiz Bolognesi, 2021):

The Yanomami tribe have been living in the Amazon rainforest and mountains of the Venezuela-Brazil border region for over 1000 years. Today their total population stands at around 35,000. Over several decades, various Brazilian governments have disturbed their natural habitat for the sake of infrastructure development, bringing along outsiders who spread diseases to the natives. The biggest threat came in 1986 when the discovery of gold deposits in Yanomami land led to an invasion by 45,000 prospectors and the subsequent death of 1,500 to 1,800 natives. And, after the notorious Haximu Massacre in 1992, international support started pouring in for the Yanomami people, and their leader Davi Kopenawa got the Brazilian government to enforce a law that would keep the prospectors out of Yanomami land. But 25 years later, since Jair Bolsonaro took office in 2019, over 20,000 gold prospectors have penetrated their living environment, bringing with them Covid-19.

Brazilian filmmaker Luiz Bolognesi (Ex-Shaman, 2018) teams up with Davi Kopenawa to document the grave and dangerous situation in which the indigenous people are living, and through his ethnographic documentary, The Last Forest attempts to draw the world’s attention to a neglected community and their way of life.

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7. Moonage Daydream (Brett Morgen, 2022):

Afilm of chaos and mayhem, but also one that’s as poetic as anything I’ve ever seen. This might be the most accurate way to describe Moonage Daydream, a film that transports us to another realm where we become mere passengers in the journey of this arthouse anomaly. To capture the life of David Bowie as he would have wanted is no easy feat, a man who lived his life with so much vibrancy and creativeness, and with a need to enjoy life no matter what, because as Bowie says in this film “I worship life, I love living”. Brett Morgen (the man behind the acclaimed 2015 documentary Cobain: Montage of Heck) has created a cinematic marvel, this film is the embodiment of everything that Bowie professes; it is unhinged, it is not affected by a need for acceptance or tethered down by cinema’s restrictive ropes, nor should it be because it’s near to being perfect the way it is.

The film was created in a way that Bowie liked to think of himself: as a blank canvas of creativeness with no limits to what could potentially be achieved. Moonage Daydream features never-before-seen footage and performances of the man himself, while taking you on a journey of exploration to investigate Bowie’s creative, spiritual, and musical adventure.

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8. My Octopus Teacher (Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed, 2021):

This Oscar-winning documentary film is produced, shot and narrated by Craig Foster. The story is told in a first-person confessional style interspersed with interviews carried out by the directors Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed. The film started as a love project by Craig with the directors, producer and Netflix coming onboard further down the line.

Craig’s explorations of the kelp underwater forests are very moving. His attachment to the octopus begins when there is very little else to inspire him in his terrestrial life. The octopus’s various adventures, from either hunting crabs or being hunted herself by a number of times by the sharks, to playing with fish and Craig himself, to her finally becoming a mother and dying are extraordinary.

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9. Retratos Fantasmas (Kleber Mendonca Filho, 2023):

Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonca Filho is best known for his three internationally-acclaimed fiction features: Neighbouring Sounds (2013), Aquarius (2016) and Bacurau (2019; co-directed by Juliano Dornelles). Pictures of Ghosts is a documentary. Yet this is hardly new territory for the helmer. Few people are aware that the director had already made a string of non-fiction movies, and that – despite making his first feature at the age of 45 – he devoted his entire life to cinema as a movie-goer, a videomaker, a filmmaker and a film programmer. Mendonca Filho started experimenting with film during his youth in his hometown of Recife, a bustling metropolis located in Northeastern Brazil.

Blending shelf-shot footage, archive images, clips from his own movies, and narrated by the filmmaker himself, Pictures of Ghosts is divided into three parts: the filmmaker’s neighbourhood, the movie theatres and the churches. Images of the past are a regular occurrence in Mendonca Filho’s filmography: his three feature films open with archive pictures of Brazil in the early 20th century.

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10. The Sparks Brothers (Edgar Wright, 2021):

The documentary is from British director, Edgar Wright, who also directed Shaun of the Dead (2004), Scott Pilgrim vs the World (2010) and the upcoming Last Night in Soho. This is Wright’s first documentary, and the result is a long but very entertaining two hours and 15 minutes, and one of the best music documentaries writer Ian Schultz. The outcome is an album-by-album story with every side project they’ve ever done. Sparks have made 25 albums in a career spanning five decades, hence the length. No fans will be able to say: “why did you leave this out?”.

The top 10 LGBT+ dirty movies on Netflix!

Posted on by victorfraga

Sexual diversity is at the very heart of our vision and mission. Unsurprisingly, in our four years of existence we have come across and helped to promote LGBT+ of all types and from every continent on Earth. Most of these films started on a conventional distribution route, opening in cinemas, then DVD and finally on to the major VoD platforms. Netflix has since grown and taken up many of these dirty gems, which are now an integral part of their selection.

One the films on this list (Isabel Coixet’s Elisa and Marcela; also pictured above) is a full-on Netflix production, meaning that the movie giant was involved in the project from its very conception. This is perhaps a sign that many more LGBT+ films will follow a similar route in the near future. This isn’t good news for traditional distributors with a niche focus, such Peccadillo films.

The films below are listed in alphabetical order. Don’t forget to click on each individual film title in order to accede to our exclusive reviews. These films are available on Netflix UK and Ireland; there may be variations in other countries and regions.

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1. Beach Rats (Eliza Hittman, 2017):

It’s New York, it’s Summer and it’s sultry. The tarmac is sizzling, and the pavement scorching hot. And so are the libidos of young men. Frankie (Harris Dickinson) is no exception. The problem is that he is very confused about his sexuality. The extremely attractive young male is dating an equally stunning female called Simone (Madeline Weinstein, who’s not related to the now infamous Harvey), and he hangs out with young straight men of his age. She struggles to have sex with her, and instead fulfils his sexual needs through online gay chat rooms and stealthy sexual encounters with older men.

This sounds like an ordinary predicament, familiar to many gay men. There’s nothing unusual about a teenager grappling with his sexuality. What makes Beach Rats so special is the director’s sensitive gaze, and the very realistic and relatable settings. The young female filmmaker Eliza Hittman, who’s only on her second feature, managed to penetrate (no pun intended) a male and testosterone-fuelled territory to very convincing results.

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2. Call me by your Name (Luca Guadagnino, 2017):

Our writer Maysa Moncao argued that Luca Guadagnino twisted Death in Venice (Luchino Visconti, 1971), and that he had the right to do so. Times have changed. A queer movie can be treated as a universal love story. Call Me by Your Name was praised by public and the critics at 2017 Sundance Film Festival.

In the summer of 1983 in northern Italy, Elio Perlman (Timothée Chalamet), a 17-year-old boy, is about to receive a guest in his aristocratic house. He is lending his bed to Oliver (Armie Hammer), a 24-year-old American scholar who has some work to do with Elio’s father (Michael Stuhlbarg), a professor specialising in Greco-Roman culture. Elio and Oliver will share the same toilet as well as a desire for each other.

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3. Elisa and Marcela (Isabel Coixet, 2019):

This is a film about two women in love, and directed by a female. And this is cinema at its most universal. It will move you regardless of whether you are a male or a female, Spanish or British, progressive or conservative, or anything else. This is the real-life tale of two humans being who fell in love and took draconian measures in order in order to remain together, against all odds.

Elisa (Natalia de Molina) first meets Marcela (Greta Fernandez) on the first day of school in 1898. They are immediately fascinated with each other. Their tender affection gradually develops into a full-on homosexual relation. Marcela’s parents intervene and send Marcela away to a boarding school in Madrid for three years. The two women, however, resume their romance as soon as Marcela returns. The residents of the parish of Couso too realise that their share more than a friendship. Elisa is branded a “marimacho”, and the couple become increasingly despised and isolated.

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4. Girl (Lukhas Dhont, 2018):

This is a remarkable movie for many reasons. First of all, Flemish Director Lucas Dhont was only 26 years old when he finished a film that he first conceived at the age of just 18. The fascination with transgender people is conspicuous nowadays in cinema. Filmmakers want to investigate the saga of transitioning, and how to reconcile it with with the mixed perspective of outsiders. The fluid sexual/gender identity and the intense transformations in both the mind and the body allow for the construction of very interesting characters. There has been no shortage of such films in then past couple of years. But there are still topic areas waiting to be addressed in more detail, and this is exactly what Girl does.

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5. Handsome Devil (John Butler, 2017):

Ireland is a fast-changing nation. The profoundly Catholic country was the first one in the world to legalise gay marriage by the means of popular vote, despite fierce opposition from the Church. The society has suddenly come out of the closet, and cinema is keeping the closet doors open so that no one is left inside.

But gay marriage isn’t the only issue that matters to LGBT people. Handsome Devil touches is a very touching and moving gay drama, urgent in its simplicity, delving with two woes that remain pandemic: gay bullying in schools and LGBT representation in sports – the latter is often described as the last and most resilient stronghold of homophobia. The movie succeeds to expose both problems and the destructive consequences for the afflicted with a very gentle and effective approach.

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6. I am Michael (Justin Kelly, 2015):

Executive produced by Gus Van Sant, this is a brave movie for anyone in the US to write, direct or star in given the seemingly irreconcilable positions of openly and happily gay people on the one hand and the bigoted anti-gay sentiments of right-wing fundamentalism on the other. Its starting point is Benoit Denizet-Lewis’ fascinating New York Times magazine article entitled My ex-Gay Friend.

In the article the writer goes to visit his former colleague at San Francisco’s young gay men’s XY magazine Michael Glatze who is now studying at Bible school in Wyoming to become a pastor. The XY period is covered towards the start of the movie while the Bible school episode appears in its last third. In between Michael and partner Bennett (Zachary Quinto) try and build a life together which later becomes a ménage à trois with the addition of Tyler (Charlie Carver).

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7. Ideal Home (Andrew Fleming, 2018):

The tale of accidental “parenthood” (or, more broadly speaking, of the awkward and unexpected bonding of a child and an adult) is no big novelty. They includes classics such as Central Station (Walter Salles, 1997), Son of Saul (Laszlo Nemes, 2015) and also the more mainstream About a Boy (Chris and Paul Weitz). Ideal Home is a welcome addition to the list, providing a very gay and Camp touch to the subgenre.

Erasmus (Steve Coogan) and his partner Paul (a heavily bearded and mega cuddly version of Paul Rudd) lead a mostly pedestrian life, and bickering seems to be their biggest source of entertainment. Erasmus is an accomplished and respected TV boss, while Paul is some sort of younger househusband. One day, the 10-year-old grandson that Erasmus never knew he had shows up for dinner, and he has nowhere to go. That’s because his father, Erasmus’s estranged son, has been arrested on domestic violence charges. The two men are forced to look after the child (Jack Gore), who refuses to reveal his own name.

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8. LOEV (Sudhanshu Saria, 2016):

The first gay kiss in Bollywood happened just ten years ago in the movie Dunno Y (Sanjay Sharma), a year after the decriminalisation of homosexuality in India. Sadly, the country has now moved backwards and two years ago it recriminalised gay sex. This makes the graphic content of LOEV, which includes a gay kiss and violence, very subversive for current Indian laws and standards.

This is a very unusual Bollywood movie, not just for its audacious content, but also for its narrative and format. The film shuns easy entertainment devices in favour of much more complex personal and social reflections. Also, the film has very little music, which is also memorable for a movie made in Mumbai.

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9. The Miseducation of Cameron Post (Desiree Akhavan, 2018):

Hitting somewhere between the picaresque brilliance of Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig, 2018) and the corny idealism of Love, Simon (Greg Berlanti, 2018), Desiree Akhavan won the Grand Jury prize at Sundance for her second feature, which takes the personally revealing, post-mumble aspects of her first feature film Appropriate Behaviour (2015) and places them within a YA adaptation that retains her touch but is more accessible, simplistic, and perfect for its teenage target audience.

Chloe Grace Moretz plays Cameron Post, who in 1993 is caught with another girl on prom night and shipped off to a gay conversion camp in Montana. There, she finds herself stuck in a ritual of self-blame, repression and increasing hostility as she and the other teenage inmates attempt to quietly subvert the system and survive their miseducation.

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10. My Days of Mercy (Tali Shalom Ezer, 2019):

Mercy (Kate Mara) is a woman unwilling to offer her own mercy to the criminal who killed her father’s police partner. Across from her, Lucy (Ellen Page) fights for the innocence of her incarcerated father, convinced that he did not end her mother’s life. They meet in a line of picketing protests, where flirtations quickly make way for more romantic endeavours.

This is a profoundly romantic movie also dealing with the impact of grief on our daily lives. Fittingly for a subject on death, it concerns itself on the living and how people live in the face of their mortality. The interchanging lines on the death penalty is strangely hushed at points, Tim Robbins’s Dead Man Walking (1995) dealt with the subject more abjectly and thoroughly.

Tell Me Who I Am

Posted on by victorfraga

Seventeen-year-old Alex Lewis suffered a near-fatal motorcycle accident in 1982, which left him in a profound comma. Upon waking up, he immediately recognised his identical twin Marcus, who was on his bedside. However, he failed to identify his mother and his very own identity. He also forgot everything that he had experienced up to that date. It was like being born again. Marcus had to remind him of his past, and to teach him the most menial tasks, such as operating household devices.

Alex gradually realised that there was something unusual about his aristocratic upbringing. His mother was caring and yet very distant. His stepfather was entirely emotionally absent. He learnt that the brothers only went on holidays with friends, and never with their own parents. Fifteen years later, their mother passed away, and Alex came across come unsettling evidence that something very untoward and non-motherly had taken place throughout their youth. He confronts Marcus, but his brother is simply too scared, and refuses to open up.

More than two decades later, Oscar-nominated Ed Perkins interviews both brothers separately in the first two acts of the movie. They are now married men in the fifties with children of their own. They are given the opportunity to open up and to face the demons that have tormented them for so long. At one point, a teary Marcus reveals the morbid details of what had happened in their youth. It wasn’t just an isolated event, but instead a harrowing and yet normalised pattern. His confession is recorded and played back to his brother, who is perplexed to learn the truth. In the third and final act, the two brothers meet up and finally talk about the unspeakable, in an attempt to reconcile their differences and leave the horrific past behind.

The gigantic mansion where the family lived (located somewhere in rural England) is constantly featured in the film, from both inside and outside. It gives the film a sombre and mysterious tone. The old-fashioned timber frame house has a dark driveway and a creepy pearly gate – the stuff of horror movies. The naked tree branches cast a shadow over the dwelling and the existence of the two adults. The photographs from a disturbing past in the attic provide the final touch to this sinister story.

But this is not a horror film. It’s not exploitative, either. The brothers open up at their own pace, and the director seems to respect their wishes and fears. This is a movie about reconciliation. It’s also a very brave endeavour, which will encourage other males who have suffered a similar ordeal to come forward and heal their very own wounds. There is a taboo associated with masculinity that makes this story very painful and embarrassing. Horrific things can happen to people regardless of class, gender and nationality.

Tell me Who I am is in UK cinemas and also on Netflix on Friday, October 18th.

Roma

Posted on by victor@dmovies.org

Overwhelming, confounding, peerless. To watch Roma for the first time is to know that you’re in the presence of something special, an artist at the top of their game, a feat of formalist, analogue filmmaking, the kind of great movie that only comes along once or twice in a decade. It’s a year in the life of a family in Mexico City 1970-71, and particularly Cleo, their maid, as director Alfonso Cuarón takes the opportunity to provide the audience with an experiential roller coaster of set pieces, through high and low society, political upheaval and intimate chamber moments.

This approach has led to critical rapture (including 10 Oscar nominations, tied with the most ever for a foreign language film) but questions have also been raised about the minimisation of a largely silent maid by an upper-middle-class filmmaker. You might find those problems too, but this is a film searching for answers, rather than the open ignorance of your problematic fave. Every time Cleo seems to behave as an organic part of the family unit, by joining in conversation, or sitting with them while they watch TV, it’s stopped dead by someone giving her an order.

Cuarón never allows you to forget about the master/servant relationship, and that’s the point. Especially when the film’s exploration of Los Halcones and the Corpus Christi Massacre becomes the focal point of the narrative, these contexts of power are revealed to feed into each other. True, Cleo doesn’t talk much, but no one does. And when an outburst does finally come toward the end of the film, it is crushing, snapping Cleo’s entire psychology into place and questioning how much we have actually known about her interior life. Gladly, the Academy has seen enough in what Yalitza Aparicio and Marina De Tavira as the family matriarch do to reward their subtle work.

You have to look at this as less about a particular character than it is about the place, the time, the memory. You might think of Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Weerasethakul, 2010), or Distant Voices, Still Lives (Davies, 1987), how the camera monitors these ghosts as though unbound by time. That distance is the major change in Cuarón’s style. Where he once relied on the Chivo driven, Steadicam heavy technique as means to immersion, here his distance, heavily detailed production design and costuming, and a well-timed cut creates, funnily enough, a stronger bond with the film than those twirling camera moves of his past few films.

And it’s the details that transport the movie into a poetic realm where we really do feel as though we are watching memories projected: like a man being shot from a canon, a car driving through marching band, children at a New Year party running from a man in a bear costume. The cinema scenes grabbed me. Curtains closing on a film as soon as it ends, so the credits still project onto velvet, is a little touch that puts you into the mind of a young Alfonso Cuarón. The director inserts you into his brain by inserting images from his other films, like locations from Y Tu Mamá También (2001) and a clip of an astronaut from Marooned (Sturges, 1969), which nods to Cuarón’s inspiration for Gravity (2013).

And then there’s the motif of water, from a bucket washing away dog poop to those climactic waves. Cuarón uses them like Woolf did, as a visual expression for bouts of pain and depression. But at times in Roma, water can mea n the very opposite. Because it’s a film of rhymes both visual and audible. The maximalist sound design plays a large part in how we experience and are immersed into this world. The direction is so muscular, it’s a vast undertaking of David Lean proportions where they’ve built full streets and inhabited them to create the most epic experience. That appeals to the Film Twitter bros, and Cuarón always has the tendency to lean into that stuff. But if we accept immersion as his aim, then each moment is imbued with an honest to God purpose that pays off in a way that his other similarly bloated compatriots, ‘The Three Amigos’ do not with their own recent grandiose epics. The Revenant (Iñárritu, 2015) delivers shot after shot of impact, without any camera motivation between shots. The Shape of Water (Del Toro, 2017) is like an episode of Riverdale, empty pop culture references softening the patronising social message. Roma is imposing, it loudly pronounces its cinematic lineage (the Neorealists shout loudest, Fellini and Pontecorvo especially). But it’s the real deal.

I have now seen the film three times: in the cinema, on television, and on my laptop. To complete the cycle, I really need to stream it on my phone, as Cuarón (or at least, Ted Sarandos) intended. I can’t pretend that there isn’t a best way to see it. As with any film, cinema is king. But see it wherever suits you, whenever suits you, just make sure you see it. Because this might be one for the history books.

Roma is available on Netflix and in Curzon Cinemas now!

Revenger

Posted on by victorfraga

After the release of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny (Yuen Woo-ping) back in 2016, Netflix has produced or distributed just a handful of martial arts-driven action-adventure original films, and fewer still in their country of origin’s native language. Looking through Netflix’s back catalogue of original releases it seems only Timo Tjahjanto’s Indonesian crime-thriller The Night Comes for Us (Timo Tjahjanto, 2018) and, now, Seung-Won Lee’s South Korean action flick Revenger are categorised as both ‘international’ (read ‘foreign-language’) and ‘martial arts’. Though its recent release doubles this narrow on-demand subgenre, Revenger also dilutes its already middling quality.

Lee adopts Tjahjanto’s approach to narrative, using what little there is of a plot as a framework to exhibit highly-choreographed action sequences. Indeed, Lee opens his film in an almost identical manner to Tjahjanto, a mother and daughter at the mercy of criminal goons before they are saved by each film’s respective protagonist. (Come to think of it, the beach on which this opening scene takes place looks suspiciously like that of the opening scene to The Night Comes for Us).

However, the action sequences are progressively undermined by the continual lack of character development: Bruce Khan’s Yul Kim – a former police detective looking to avenge his murdered wife and daughter, introduced wearing a straightjacket and Hannibal Lecter-type bite mask – remains mute and passive for much of the film, his character defined almost entirely by a desire for revenge. This lack of a personality makes it difficult to invest in the outcome of Yul Kim’s many fights, a shame given Khan’s exceptional martial arts skills.

But it’s difficult even to appreciate Khan’s phenomenally-fast handwork and gravity-defying kicks on an aesthetic level given the intermittently shaky camerawork and distracting CG blood splatter. Lee’s camera is repeatedly intrusive, moving to within such an intimate distance of his actors or cutting at certain moments as to miss parts of the action. Even when employing a simple two-shot, Lee finds it necessary to add superfluous zooms every couple of seconds.

With no main character to invest in and the martial arts spectacle often spoiled by stylistic choices, all that’s left of Revenger to engage with is its barebones story – a combination of elements from Kinji Fukasaku’s Battle Royale (2001) and John Carpenter’s Escape from New York (1981) with a supplementary revenge angle. One early scene, in which Yoon Jin-seo’s Maly recognises Yul Kim as the unscrupulous police officer who sent her to the prison island on which they both now find themselves, promises to elevate the narrative beyond mere framework, though any potential future conflict and self-reflection fails to materialise.

Likewise, a post-credits sequence, in which Yul Kim braves an unfinished-CG sandstorm as an incongruously spirited score builds, promises Yul Kim’s return. Given the success of other foreign-language martial arts series like The Raid (Gareth Evans 2011) and Ip Man (Wilson Yip, 2008), a sequel to Revenger isn’t an impossibility. In fact, if Netflix can convince Iko Uwais and Joe Taslim to join Bruce Khan for Revenger 2 (maybe snag Donnie Yen for Revenger 3), they’ll quickly expand their foreign-language action repertoire. Better yet, retcon The Night Comes for Us as a Revenger prequel and Netflix could start their very own on-demand martial arts extended universe – Netflix Revengers Assemble!

Revenger is available on Netflix from Wednesday, January 15th.

22 July

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

The date is July 22nd, 2011. After detonating a bomb in Oslo, a far-right terrorist traveled to the island of Utøya to massacre teenagers attending a youth leadership Summer camp. Once he was apprehended by police, the country had to come to terms with his actions while the survivors had to rebuild their lives and, if they chose, confront the terrorist in court.

Not to be confused with the bravura single take, Norwegian language film U: July 22 (Erik Poppe, 2018) about the massacre on the island itself, due for UK release two weeks after this one, 22 July is the English language film by UK director Paul Greengrass using a Norwegian cast and crew which covers not only the massacre but events leading up to it and its aftermath. It’s based on the book One of Us: The Story of a Massacre and its Aftermath by Åsne Seierstad, a renowned Norwegian war correspondent whose expertise Greengrass says he found invaluable in making the film.

Greengrass’s background in journalism and documentary led to feature films like Bloody Sunday (2002) and United 93 (2006), about the 1972 Derry, Northern Ireland ‘Bloody Sunday’ shootings and one of the commercial flights involved in the 9/11 US terrorist attacks respectively, which dramatise actual historical events with documentarian accuracy. He uses this approach again in 22 July, which shares a great deal with United 93, another film about a terrorist attack perpetrated against a Western democracy.

Whereas 9/11’s terrorists were immigrant Islamists from a culture beyond the target country, the lone operator behind the Oslo and Utøya attacks was a far-right extremist and a Norwegian national, the enemy within. Both United 93 and 22 July start with the terrorist preparations and follow them as they put their plans into action, but where United 93 followed both what went on in the aircraft and events on the ground e.g. in air traffic control up to the point the aircraft was destroyed in mid-flight, 22 July covers not only the Oslo bombing and the Utøya shootings in its first third but also the survivors – both teenagers and terrorist – up to and including the point where the former group confronted the latter individual in court.

Thus, in addition to one plot line following far right terrorist Anders Behring Breivik (Anders Danielsen Lie), another follows two teenage brothers at the camp Viljar and Torje Hanssen (Jonas Strand Gravli and Isak Bakli Aglen) in their attempts to survive. Viljar, who helps his younger brother flee to safety, receives a gunshot wound to the head and shoulders and for months after the incident must undergo hospital treatment and therapy. As he does so, he must face his own demons: will Viljar be able to confront the terrorist in court and show the world that there is a better way? A third plot strand involves the Norwegian PM Stoltenberg (Ola G. Furuseth) as he struggles to deal with the unfolding terrorist incidents.

It’s gripping and terrifying material, impressive not least for the huge amount of research that Greengrass, Seierstad and team have clearly put in. On a really big screen it’s visceral and harrowing – apart from Viljar’s sustaining his injuries there isn’t a great deal of graphic detail shown, but the fact that these are carefully crafted recreations of actual events that took place in recent history lends the representation considerable gravitas.

Controversially, Greengrass has chosen to make this film with online movie streaming service Netflix and while we would encourage you to see it in a cinema with a decent sized screen if you possibly can, those with Netflix accounts may, understandably, choose to watch it on that platform instead. (Hey – go and see it in the cinema first!) The teenage survivors are the next generation, so Greengrass’ stated intention of reaching that audience via a familiar streaming platform makes complete sense, much as I hate to have to write that this is the case.

In short, this is a well researched, realised and performed and to boot a highly effective docudrama about devastating events that remind us to be vigilant in combating and confronting terrorism, whether perpetrated by right wing extremists or anyone else. It would make a terrific double bill if preceded by United 93 for those that have both stomach and stamina to cope with both at once, however it’s undeniably an effective piece of cinema in its own right. You might wonder why Greengrass would need to make a 22 July after having already made a United 93: the answer is, the Islamist terrorist atrocity and the right wing extremist terrorist atrocity are two sides of the same coin, so the pair of films presents us with some sort of wider, balanced view. The new film is absolutely essential viewing in much the same way that the earlier one was. Don’t miss.

22 July is out in cinemas in the UK on Wednesday, October 10th as well as on Netflix. Watch the film trailer below:

Cargo

Posted on by victorfraga

Adapted from their own short film of the same name, Ben Howling and Yolanda Ramke’s Cargo is a competent but forgettable Australian zombie film, with a touch a psychological thriller. Though it tries to emphasise character over action and gore, as well as incorporating an intriguing racial commentary, it fails to reach its full potential on both counts.

Martin Freeman stars as Andy Rose, husband to Kay (Susie Porter) and father of one-year-old Rosie (played by twins Lily Anne and Marlee Jane McPherson-Dobbins). The family travel along a river via houseboat, refusing to step onto dry land for fear of the zombies (referred to as ghosts by Simone Landers’s Thoomi) that stalk the Outback. Once Kay is bitten, however, the family are forced to moor. Soon, Andy also finds himself infected and with only 48 hours to find sanctuary for his daughter, before he himself turns into a flesh-eating ghoul.

The premise is a clever one, combining John Hillcoat’s The Road (2009) with The Walking Dead (Preston A. Whitmore II, 1995), and allows Howling and Ramke to downplay the genre thrills expected of a zombie film for something more low key. As such, the co-directors steer clear of bites and blood as much as they can, though their obvious cutaways and fades to black early on not only underline this lack of action but may suggest, perhaps, that the means to construct such scenes were not attainable for the filmmakers.

That Vic (Steve Bannon-lookalike Anthony Hayes) – a seemingly affable stranger whom Andy encounters on his journey – cages indigenous people to bait zombies before shooting them, is an exciting inclusion, but Howling and Ramke don’t take this racial commentary any further; by the end, you can pretty much chalk these actions down to those of a singular racist, rather than centuries of racial discrimination and colonial oppression that one suspects the directors are trying to highlight.

Martin Freeman is his usual solid self, shining when he’s chained to Simone Landers à la Stanley Kramer’s The Defiant Ones (1958), but is responsible for some of the film’s unintentionally funny moments. After Kay is bitten, Andy asks the offending zombie, in a typically British, mildly irritated way, ‘Do you know what you just did?’. That Andy might expect anything other than for the zombie to lunge at him and try to eat his face off is laughable.

A slightly comical climax and a sugary conclusion has Cargo end in disappointing fashion, but Howling and Ramke do deserve some credit for their refreshing take on the zombie formula. Had they cut these more sentimental moments and followed through more thoroughly on their racial themes, Cargo might have been something very special.

Cargo was released exclusively on Netflix on Friday, May 2018.

The curious case of marketing Netflix

Posted on by Alasdair Bayman

In an ever-growing era of competitive streaming services, the internal marketing of Netflix and Amazon Prime are quickly becoming pivotal parts in selling a film to the viewer. Scrolling and swiping at the speed of light, audiences on these services are prone to ‘binge-watching’, leaving little room for time to read more than the synopsis or look at the image given. A consequence, this small image internally becomes the streaming services form of distribution.

Though most of the time Netflix do get the marketing of their content correct, when they do not, it consequentially stands out from the crowd. In the very recent example of Annihilation (Alex Garland, 2018), its images on the service do not advertise the splendour of the film justice. Likewise, in the Netflix cards of Elle (Paul Verhoeven, 2016), Mudbound (Dee Rees, 2017) and Okja (Bong Joon-ho, 2017) the images that are given do not corroborate with the essence of the films. The antithesis to designers like Saul Bass, these small yet vital images do not evoke the film’s themes. Comparably, Netflix lacks clear marketing campaigns when selling their original content. In their recent success, indie kings A24 have regularly deployed a cohesive set of campaigns to maximise their film’s reception, most efficiently in publicising Robert Egger’s The Witch in 2015. Through their mis-selling, Netflix tarnishes the reputation of some of the best films available to stream.

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Marketing is everything

Cinema before the internet was a very different place for marketing. Including radio clips for trailers, the introduction of social media- particularly Twitter- has widened the capacity for innovative types of distribution. Starting with The Blair Witch Project (Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick, 1999) and Cloverfield (Matt Reeves, 2018), these two theatrical campaigns, specifically the latter, created viral conversations of deep anticipation. Capitalised on by A24, the demonic figure of Black Philip in The Witch gained his own Twitter profile to a rapturous reception. Taking nearly $40 million worldwide, the whole strategy deployed by A24 led to financial and critical praise. Admittedly, Netflix does not release their films at the box office so this form of reward is exempt from them. Nevertheless, the mode of business success still does.

Besides the standard form of teaser trailers and posters, Netflix lacks a clear cohesive or innovative formula when it comes to releasing their films. In the case of Annihilation, the film’s riveting production design could have been extrapolated away from, leading towards a marketing campaign on the botanical plants and creatures of the mise-en-scene. Simple, still effective, Cloverfield’s campaign underlined the importance of creating curiosity. Granted, acquiring the right for Garland’s sci-fi piece from Paramount in a rushed fashion, the team at Netflix may have just decided to focus their efforts elsewhere. Regardless, a film with the nuance of Tarkovsky and one that is only available on streaming deserves to be promoted in the correct fashion.

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Design Matters

As recent as 2015, the American entertainment company redesigned their browsing system to squeeze as much content onto the page. Vice President of Product at Netflix, Todd Yellin, stated at the time that “We’re not just looking for clicks here because that’s not a good metric. We’re looking for finding the right people to watch the show because we want to promote our shows to the right people who will actually play it through.”

In the example of Elle, the lead protagonist, portrayed by Isabelle Huppert (pictured below), is replaced with the more youthful image of actor Virginie Efira. In the narrative, Efira’s character is a supporting role, not the lead. In their attempts to marketing Elle with an attractive younger woman in the central role undoes the attempts of Verhoeven highly the life of an older woman.

It comes as a strange decision that the internal promotion of Netflix Original films as Mudbound (pictured above) and Okja feature peculiar images that do fit the narrative, selling a false product. In the case of Dee Rees’ Mudbound, a classic American story of a white family is fostered in their image. Such decisions are not down to pure chase as ‘By the time you see the cover for the next season of House of Cards, it likely will have already gone through several rounds of virtual focus groups to see which design drew the most intrigue.’ claims The Verge’s Josh Lowensohn. If these images have been filtered through different levels at Netflix, then why do they not correctly sell the films in question?

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Room for growth

With around 99 million users and a plan to increase original content spend to an eye-popping $8 billion, its undeniable that Netflix is a true force in the industry now – besides the teething problems it faced last summer in Cannes. Though a handful of films are represented poorly this is simply an anomaly in their system. Sticking out like a sore thumb, however, every film on the service, big or small, deserves the correct marketing to respect the efforts of all those involved in the work. Let’s just hope they do not market Martin Scorsese’s upcoming The Irishman wrongly or else….

I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore

Posted on by mjbstaging

To begin with, everything about this movie is strange. The title is difficult to memorise. It comes from a gospel song, released in 1993, but does anyone recognise it? “Oh Lord, You know I have no friend but you/ If Heaven’s not my home, Oh Lord what would I do?/ Angels have taken me to/ Heaven’s open door/ And I can’t feel at home in this world anymore”. Strangely enough this is the kind of movie that will harrow you to the point that you won’t feel at home in the cinema anymore. It is a sweet discomfort, though.

There is this girl, Ruth (a splendid performance by Melanie Lynskey). She works as a nursing assistant, and she is a baby sitter on the side, but she is so bored!… She spends her time drinking beer from the bottle and chasing her neighbours who walk their dogs in her garden. She can’t stand that they don’t clean up their dog poop. One of those days, she meets Tony (the almost unrecognisible and sexed up Elijah Wood). He apologises for the negligence as his dog is not trained. Tony is also weird. He is a combination of a nerd and a ninja fighter. It feels the film is an ordinary comedy. Well, that’s not the case.

The film genre is unclassifiable: it shifts from comedy to drama, then veers to horror and finally turns into a thriller. There is a little bit of romance too. Not even the smart Quentin Tarantino, who worked in a video rental store, would find the right shelf for this movie. He would have to have four copies of it, at least.

Ruth’s days of boredom are about to end. Someone enters her house and robs her computer as well as some silver heirloom from her nanny. In fact, it was just a spoon, but nevermind. She goes to the police. In vain. They won’t move a single cop in search of her possessions. Enough is enough. Ruth incarnates a female version of Agent 86 – from the American comedy TV series Get Smart. The outcome is hilarious and irreversibly innovative. She and Tony pursue a gang only to prove them that people cannot be such assh***s.

Macon Blair’s debut picture – he appears as an actor in Blue Ruin (Jeremy Saulnier, 2013) and Green Room (Jeremy Saulnier, 2015), both of them are considered 21st century cult movies – conquers with its dark tone and captivating characters. The narrative is inventive and the music score is very catchy. It will drive you away from your seat, to a place where imagination and pleasure rules. This is all we ask of a movie, isn’t it?

Blair conquered Netflix: they produced the film and they will release it worldwide on February 24th. Blair also conquered Sundance Festival audience: its second screening was in a midnight session completely sold-out. Blair conquered Sundance Jury: the film was awarded by the Grand Jury Prize: US dramatic. Will it be a unanimously acclaimed? Maybe not. Who cares? I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore is a very dirty movie indeed.

The good news is you can catch I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore from the comfort of your home from February – the film has been produced by and is soon available on Netflix. Just click here for more information!