Really, there are two documentaries here, each made with a different approach. And while they are both searing fusions of the personal with the political, the attempt to meld them together doesn’t wholly work, undercutting the momentum of both. However, Coexistence, My Ass!, remains a compelling front row seat to a country on the brink of implosion.
Mr. K succeeds as both an homage to Kafka’s fascination with the absurdity of life, and especially with the socio-bureaucratic systems we humans have wrought upon ourselves, and as a sumptuous and surreal feast for the eyes. It poses many questions, leaving them for the audience to ponder for themselves after the screen fades to black.
For all its filmic flourishes, this a sweet film at its heart, one interested in the darker side of childhood, not just the fears we have as children, but the anger as well.
The film largely feels like an echo of something that was once great, a bit like the dilapidated manor in which the party takes place, and can’t quite reach the height of its own ambition.
Ultimately, “Roofman” is a slick but incurious film that is so preoccupied with showing the what of Manchester’s story that it doesn’t bother to examine the why.
Lasse Hallström‘s latest film, The Map That Leads to You, has the makings of a Gen Z “Before Sunset” meets “Eat Pray Love,” but unfortunately, it also has the depth of a mediocre beach read weepy. That is to say, I enjoyed it as I watched, but it has had no lasting effect on my memory or, even worse, my heart.
The writer-director’s sharp script examines the many ways that the pain of grief can manifest, physically, mentally, and emotionally, and how it can fracture relationships if you let it. But his film is not all dark. It’s edited with a delightful humor, often landing a laugh with a quick cut or sly pan.
Imagine a J-horror plot involving a child possessed by a swamp demon told through the aesthetics of the screenlife found footage subgenre, and you can pretty much imagine how writer-director Pablo Absento‘s new film, “Bloat,” will play out.
Like the worst kind of voyeuristic, heterosexual swingers, the film dabbles in non-monogamy and same-sex attraction solely as a means to heteronormative ends.
