Reviews

This is an impactful movie that I consider to be a cornerstone of modern Turkish cinema. It's title Pardon (Apologies) might as well be directed at the faceless millions who suffer(ed) under fascistic regimes whose human rights abuses will continue to be ignored for political and financial convenience.

On it's surface, Pardon is the story of three hapless mates but it's also the story of a continuous dark period in a quasi-democratic republic, marred with injustice brought on by self-appointed forces tirelessly working to protect the state from its citizens. As the story unfolds, we quickly discover that such protections are nowhere to be found when it's required to protect the citizens from the state, especially during intervals of uninterrupted accelerated authoritarianism.

This is such a bitter pill to swallow that it takes a master like Ferhan Sensoy to wrap it's bitter core up in his humorous candy, enabling us to digest the tragedy through comedy. Ancient Greek playwrights would be proud of his craftsmanship.

It's also a story of human perseverence and companionship which constantly forces its audience to invoke their sense of justice as our unwilling participants are dragged through the sham courts, having their spirits crushed blow after blow, bit by bit until they finally give up and accept their fate. The audience can't help but internalize the depressing feeling of the life being sucked out of these once spirited characters.

Ibrahim, our main protagonist serves as the primary means of conveying the collective humanity of the trio. Through a series of flashbacks We're given a background story covering his desires, hopes and plans for the future. While we're presented with many of his flaws, we also come to understand that he's fundamentally a well meaning person who is at times let down by his own detachment from reality.

His family, especially his father is typical working class with a strictly working class relationship with money and wealth which is also at the core of Ibrahim's problems since he can't seem to find the money to set up a small business of his own, which retards his growth as a person: He can't get married, he can't have a family and settle down so he chases unlikely sources of income such as gambling. It's thus additionally tragic that he has to be forced to grow up in prison, under such dire circumstances while life passes him by, leading to a downward spiral of despair.

Muzaffer and Aydin are seemingly two opposite characters who compliment Ibrahim's personality. Muzaffer is a cynical, somewhat selfish person but he's not devoid of empathy and he always seem to have a soft spot for his friends so while it might take some encouraging, he eventually comes through and does the right thing. Aydin is a naive, optimistic romantic who tries to see the silver lining in everything thus as a reward, the universe in its infinite wisdom punishes him the hardest. He's only involved in this clusterfrack because the police need a third suspect and his name is the one Ibrahim comes up with, he is tortured and convicted for simply having made a good impression.

He also serves as a reminder that if we ever feel inclined to distance ourselves from Ibrahim, as peculiar a character as he is, and mistakenly assume this only happens to people like him who don't have a high regard for authority, we should realize that there is no difference when the blind eye of the justice points at random people to hold accountable for a crime they didn't commit. If you're at the wrong place at the wrong time, it really doesn't matter if you're the right or the wrong person.

Ultimately, this is an amazing movie not just because of the quality of the writing, the acting and the addictively quotable dialogue, it's a movie which, through humor, helps society face the abuses of the so-called justice system and perhaps serve to comfort many open wounds of those who were scarred by it.

This movie demands that you not only suspend your disbelief, you also suspend your common sense, decency, intellectual functions and reasoning skills, in order to work.

I don't expect your average movie going American to know current world events let alone historical ones however, if you take one look at how this movie is constructed (aside from poorly) and not realize the glaring inconsistencies such as supposedly professional soldiers not wearing body armor and the employment of mutated hell-spawn animals recruited to fight alongside what is presumably the Persian army, you're obviously going to enjoy this movie.

It's meant for people who would enjoy, without rhyme or reason, the spilling of blood of those they deem worthy of dying at the hands of the people whom they identify with. That's how propaganda is meant to work to entice cognitively challenged masses. There's nothing beyond reason within reason which could put you off enjoying yourself like you enjoy yourself hardcore erotica, by shutting off a majority portion of your brain which wasn't high functioning to begin with.

If I were to be so generously inclined to assume that Frank Miller and Zack Snyder were out to make a meta-movie about the biased depiction of war throughout history and that their general fan base were even capable of comprehending such a critique masquerading as such, perhaps I could also lump myself with the cognitively challenged.

Aside from the usual Marvel formula of bantering camaraderie, heroic sacrifice, this movie tries to explore, both emotionally and intellectually, a basic idea of rights and worth, so far as life itself is concerned.

At one point in the movie, angered by Nebula's shoving of Drax, Mantis screams "You have no right to push him" before she goes off to scold her for failing to understand that the worth of a life isn't measured on a scale of intellect or utility (competence).

"It's all for a purpose"... At the beginning of the movie we see defenseless animals being tortured, killed and discarded like some lab equipment since this supposedly served a higher purpose of helping more worthy creatures to exist. There's no sugar coating here, it's what we do on a daily basis to many animals we arbitrarily decide have lesser worth thus should/could be used in service of higher life forms such as ourselves.

It should come as no surprise, but with a thick odor of hypocrisy, that we see the poor Soviet dog (Cosmo based on the real life counterpart Laika) sent to her horrible death with the perfectly acceptable excuse that it served the advancement of mankind, much like the tens of thousands of animals tortured in much worse ways in the collective west up until that day.

At the end, we see the arbitrary line of worthiness move towards much uncomfortably humanoid life forms as it has happened following the breakthrough years of the so-called enlightenment, the greater good of the selected few always being the go-to excuse of those with the power to inflict damage and destruction.

The native americans, aboriginal peoples all had to make way to the "superior" white man in its quest for advancement and perfection. In this sense, the emotionally charged yet superficial exploration of animal rights begs a really important question.

If we aren't to have any moral qualms over imposing our dominance over lesser beings on the grounds that they are "less" of what we deem worthy, what is the point of stopping at other human beings with similar characteristics for simply being classified as part of our species? There seems to be no objective line that could be crossed in this pursuit if this argument is to be accepted.

Laika was a stray dog someone strapped on to a spacecraft, primarily because they could and because they deemed it to be necessary for the advancement of Soviet civilization. In the absence of a Laika, or in the instance that human subjects are easier and more reliable, I'm sure even any western nation pretending to be for human rights and individual freedom wouldn't hesitate to come to a similar conclusion. Oh right they have, many times... Tuskagee syphilis experiments, the American nuclear guinea pigs, countless other instances of psychological abuse in the name of experimentation, the list is endless.

I hope this movie serves as a mainstream device of at least getting people to notice the very obvious link between treating animals as convenient utilities and treating humans as such. For all our pretentious moralistic grandstanding disguised in our fake self-righteous outrage, the intelligent among us realize there is no objective difference.

I had the same vibe watching this as I did when I watched Tremors. A bunch of people forced into a situation, sticking together against a threat they can't definitively identify while having to come up with at times silly looking solutions for their problems.

The characters aren't what you would call deep or complex but at the end of the day, in how many ways can people react to self-driving monster trucks (not that kind) anyway? The plot is basic but that means you don't have to really push yourself to concentrate to follow it which is a refreshing change at times considering how deliberately (mostly unnecessarily) convoluted plots are basically a prerequisite for modern cinema.

Something hits the fan, people react, adapt and ultimately survive. As old as the history of mankind itself. That's why I'm not expecting much more from this movie and I'm not disappointed after watching it.

This movie was released in 1996, way before I had the chance to watch it on some local TV channel years later. At the time, I enjoyed it so much that I believed this movie was some grand theatrical release which I somehow had no clue existed until then. It turns out that I was wrong. I wasn't guilty of missing out on a widely known movie for years, in fact, it was never theatrically released where I lived at the time and hardly anyone knew about it. I'm glad though, that the art director of the TV channel I watched it on wasn't one of these people.

In essence, I enjoyed it very much. It does portray a clear, raw picture of what young veterans of the Vietnam War suffered through as they returned to their quiet, suburban homes while their clueless families expected them to just get on with their lives.

Emilio Estevez does a brilliant job, both as an actor and as a director to demonstrate the frustration and desperation of a young man whose entire belief system has been shaken to the core but can't find the proper words or means to express his trauma. A monumental task made even more difficult especially when the family of the young man doesn't even want to acknowledge the trauma.

You can see in Estevez's eyes during so many scenes, the pent up anger that wants to come out and burn the world around him, metaphorically of course. By that I mean Jeremy (our protagonist), so fundamentally disillusioned with where his framework of beliefs had led him in Vietnam, is constantly deconstructing the values and the claims instilled in him as a good American boy which leads him to clash often with his father, who still lives in that perspective, unquestioningly.

What I like most about the movie is that it really doesn't have a classical ending, let alone a happy one. So much is left unresolved and there's no conclusion. I like it better this way, it would be near impossible for Jeremy to come back to a world and fit and fill in some hole that he created when he left for war, since he's not the same person after he returns, he occupies a space much bigger by the load on his shoulders and the weight of these horrible memories bend him into an unrecognizable shape.

All in all, very much a recommended movie.

It's a solid 5. The acting from Sawa, Wilson and most of the supporting cast is good to decent. Willis' character doesn't have anything interesting to say or much at all and when there's finally something to be said, it's delivered without any care for cadence or tonality.

The weak point is the script. The dialogue is stale and painfully forced at times. The script is predictable and fails to build any mystery or tension around the murders so there's not much to be released emotionally when the situation is finally resolved. Directing is poor for mainly the same reason, however the cinematography and the selection of scenery as well as the locations chosen are pretty enjoyable to watch. This all helps stomach the rest of the shortcomings of the movie and grips you as the previously mentioned flaws try to keep you at an emotionally non-invested distance.

I must also admit I had a some guilty pleasure (I don't exactly know why I felt guilty) admiring Irina Antonenko's captivating beauty in the scenes she performed. She seems like she has the potential to attract some admiration, I think she has an intensive and authentic quality about her. Might like to see her tackle some more nuanced roles in the future.

This is the show for you if you're a lazy, uneducated redditor posing as an intellectual

You see, superhero comics as a genre had pretty solid yet simple foundations. It was a therapeutic reflection of the human psyche in a world where technological leaps required a truly rapid emotional/ethical reaction to process that is if people were awarded that luxury at all.

In essence, the fantastical and the unbelievable was fast becoming a part of daily reality in a world which became smaller overnight, which resulted in a phenomenon that pushed people into either a state of nightmarish dystopian fatalism or a utopian dream of endless possibilities.

This isn't that dissimilar to how transhumanism and cyberpunk was born out of the same age of nuclear power and space exploration which flourished in the 60s under the looming shadow of the cold war and the break up of traditional social norms.

It was in this now so-called bronze age of superhero comics that the general sentiment represented by the classical superhero archetype failed to convince the audience, being somewhat replaced by stories of dystopian or horror survival, following in the footsteps of newly emerging sci-fi literature, well into the 80s. It's also when we can find the most remarkable deconstructive works, which both goes to explore and to explain the failures and shortcomings of the original formula.

The more adult-oriented (not talking about Erotica here) themes of some of these works eventually gave way to comics becoming a self-parody of aimless gore and violence for the shock value. This also coincided with the change in the general attitude of western societies towards media consumption, with the constant need of being stimulated as a result of desensitization, always requiring a higher dose of the fix to relive the feeling. It's not a coincidence that the 24-hour news cycle also took hold in the public pscyche in this era, culminating in the live broadcast of sanitized (yet tempting to many) visions of conflict in the 20th Century.

So, as can be seen from this brief historical exploration that nothing that Invincible tries to do or to mimic (mime would be a more appropriate word) is new or original. Part of this is forgivable, most of it is not, mainly because in a piss poor effort to recreate the original shock value, emphasis is put directly on the shock and very little effort is given to the value which made the early deconstructionists so enjoyable to read.

Yet from a distance, the mere expressed/inferred attempt at deconstructionism that tackles the ethical underpinnings of classical superhero construct seems to be apparently enough for the modern day "geeks" who are desperate to find any excuse to prove their credentials to jump on the bandwagoning occasion. These people are no different than the many fake enthusiasts of the high arts or the pretentious, clueless wine connoisseurs, always on the hunt for the next opportunity to display their assumed pseudo-ranks.

They don't need more of an excuse than the thin veneer of a weak attempt of tackling complex themes so as to provide a shield to justify why they like Invincible, rather than admitting the real reasons, which don't differ much from why your run of the mill mountain dew drinking cod/bf player or the six-pack drinking UFC follower enjoy their particular brands of entertainment, violence. Pure, mindless violence...

Any filler subtext such as manufactured beefs between fighters and/or neutered single player campaign existing to explain why as the player, you're blowing the head off of some enemy on the other team is purely intended to further glorify, rationalize and contextualize the need for said desired violence. It's basically all there as MSG sprinkled over your gore pizza dough.

Continuing with the cousine analogy. Just because it tastes better when you dip your chicken in honey before you fry it, doesn't mean covering it in honey is a good idea before eating it. I mean, sure, you're free to like it but it clearly doesn't taste the same as the initial recipe. Invincible ultimatelys fail in this exact particular manner. They see the honey in the recipe and how honey plus chicken tastes better than chicken itself alone so they, in their infinite wisdom, dip it in thick honey before serving the chicken, Well, now it's just a dessert with fried chicken in it. Some people will enjoy it, the people who enjoy honey fried chicken OG recipe, most likely won't.

If you desire for the interesting and insightful challenge of taking on some of the mental quandaries based on millennia old philosophical issues in the context of a world where superpowers exist, this isn't for you. If you enjoy cheesy, overplayed melodrama enacted by characters whose depths can only be matched by the emotional suffering of emo high-schoolers and pretend there's some great tragedy going on when all can be explained by temporary hormonal imbalances.

The absolutely hilarious yet annoying desire for these pretentious little dweebs to over-emphasize the presumed intellectual underpinnings of their choice of media consumption needs to stop. You're free to enjoy simplistic themes, you shouldn't feel ashamed if you do.

Invincible has a simplistic plot, simplistic characters, a simplistic progression and a simplistic core argument. It shouldn't try and pretend to be anything else to give an excuse so as to help relieve the guilty conscience of the geeks who enjoy it for reasons that they're not comfortable admitting publicly. In fact, they'd rather try and rationalize it with a hundred different but all roughly equally inadequate excuses shrink wrapped in pseudo-intellectual overthinking, than to admit they're not so different than the UFC fan who used to bully them in school.

The adjectives they might use to define Invincible start with the rather inane cliches such as "fun, provocative, unusual"...

sure kids, but what does it provoke you to do or think? The answer is usually a big fat nothing or too vague and low resolution to discern from the background noise. As stated previously, all that edge and still lacks any definition.

It is not unusual for such pretentiousness to come from a handful of usual culprits in the anime community who like to indulge in self-worship through their select niche tastes while being offensively defensive about those who critique their favorites.

When not engaged in some online debate over how it's totally not morally problematic that a significant number of their favorite adult anime heroes have relationships with consistently sexual overtones with characters that are clearly minors, they'll be busy explaining how something must be inherently wrong with the critic and their cognitive abilities regarding rational thinking if the critic doesn't hold in high regard the particular mediocre crap which they hold dear.

I'm only harping on about this to explain why Invincible, a sub-standard series in my opinion, has created a cult following that is pretentious and misleading at it's core. The consistent need to pose as appreciating of higher arts can only find a home of cognitive dissonance if mediocre art can be labelled as such.

The effort needed to over-intellectualize the reasoning that would serve to act as the reconciliatory catalyst for this compound formula of enjoying mediocre art aimed at the masses with the belief in one's intellectual superiority to the average person is indeed vast and requires collective collaboration that morphs into group-think where adoption of slogans masquerading as ideas become massive obstacles to overcome in coming to the realization that farts indeed smell unpleasant.

It's always been entertaining for me to watch vapid self-absorbed western(ized) "intellectuals" try real hard to read some deep, spiritual understanding of the human condition in the context of media related to the good old Soviet Union. These people are clearly cut from the same cloth as the useful idiots who tried to make a sage and a literary genius out of Solzhenitsyn but that's a matter for another roast.

If you're already someone desperate to be a proxy-depressed liberal (or conservative, same crap) waxing poetic about how badly the soviet people had it in the 1980s without ever having lived there or spoken to people who lived there and if your only "experience" of the USSR is from secondary sources with lets say an artistic license guided by a political motive, you might be tempted to buy the hilariously crappy reviews treating the movie as a masterpiece exposing deep layers of human misery encapsulated in the Soviet regime that a free thinking westerner could only imagine through the medium of cinema or literature.

Of course, as I said, if you're not the above, as in you're a normal human being, you won't read too much into this movie rather than somewhat politically filtered story about the banal nature of authority and it's abuse, something which clearly never takes place in our modern, capitalist, democratic nations.

In this aspect, the movie really provides ample opportunity for the western liberal to self-congratulate and virtue signal using the most cliched pseudo-intellectual posturing. In another one, this movie should be taken as seriously as a "state of the union" or a complex analysis of the Soviet method as Rain Man should be on the world of gambling or intricacies of autism.

Before I started typing these words, I used my gmail (google) account to sign in with IMDB, which tracks my phone and other activities. It tries to learn what I like, what I don't, where I've been, where I've avoided... so there's that. Perhaps we're another form of luddites here in 21st century thinking we're entitled to our privacy in an age where "connected" is the norm.

In any case, the psychological aspect of the movie is just as interesting as the political. Having the power to anonymously look into other people's lives is tempting but ultimately corrupting to the soul. How would that effect you knowing that you could be watched just the same? What would that say about you as you're having so much fun with your peep show into a bystanders life?

Perhaps we all do have something to hide and perhaps we'd like to keep it a secret no matter how trivial but that never stops us from wondering about what others might be hiding or how they're acting when they don't know when somebody is watching them, mundane as it might be. It's perhaps got something to do with power or some form of conditioning where we separate our innate desires and public persona from an early age so that we are all destined to be paranoid schizophrenics.

Nobody (excluding her) knows how I have sex with my girlfriend. That's not something I'd like to share with the world, especially people who know me. Is it because I think what we do is depraved? That's what a lot of people would think first, before questioning why anyone would like to share intimate parts of their lives with strangers, against their consent. If someone had the power to peek into my world, could they be trusted to not peek for their curiosity or amusement?

then there is the flip side of the coin, where we want to be seen and heard. This very forum where we share some part of the inner workings of our mind reviewing movies. A psycho-analyst could have a field day following our comment thread, what we choose to reveal about ourselves given the opportunity. Social media shows us the worst in us at times, where we're most transparent when we think we have the protection of anonymity. If there was nothing but anonymity, would our civilized society crumble when we no longer feel like we have to follow social norms linked to our identity?

This movie is so relevant, because at some point we have to decide what the future will look like and like any good cyberpunk fiction, the emphasis is on flawed humanity rather than the tech itself. Maybe we just have to fix ourselves before we fix our tech.

Whether it's the tired trope of a princess asserting her independence and feminine powers or whatever against the cultural orthodoxy, whether it's cliche coming of age / growing up as a person story line... four episodes in, I have yet to be invested in the story of the main characters perhaps because the princess is a lying, murdering, which makes it really difficult to root for anything but her quick demise, perhaps because this sort of behavior reminds me of a ton of boring, uninteresting, spoiled, protected teenage girls doing stupid. I know, I know, it's just a cartoon, I should lighten up. It's boring though, I don't see any reason as an adult to keep watching the story arc of a fundamentally broken character (or two) so they eventually get to have their moral redemption after a series of enlightening experiences, breakthroughs or epiphanies. It's not like the princess is flawed by a tragedy, she's the cartoon equivalent of every dumb future "instragram model" in training because she felt like she didn't get enough love, attention and affection from her parents. That sort of "white, suburban, first world problems" doesn't click with me to waste hours of my life until she finds out she has been horrible and she should be a better person and the world forgives and even cherishes her courage etc.

This movie, at its heart, is about exploitation of man. It's about critiquing existing power structures, questioning of traditional values and trying to make sense of it all. Our protagonist, Feyzo, pleads with the judge (audience) at the end of the movie: "I don't know where this leads to, you're the state (power), you know better. You be the judge of this, who's to blame?" and in this plea we see a summary of the movie, a man who was born into circumstances he didn't create tried his best to live a life in pursuit of happiness but his initial ignorance, his relative powerlessness and his inability to figure a way out of it led him to become a suspect in a murder trial. In a sense, he's pleading for us to judge the circumstances of his "crime" before we judge his actions.

The main issue with the movie is that the characters all follow points to a plot line like just a means to an end. The true clashes and contradictions worthy of the story aren't explored enough, people are either angry or sad, empathetic or vengeful. It feels like they were just filling out a form to get the movie out the door. The core is there, every once in a while they tap into it but leave the audience wanting for a lot more at the end so when the story climaxes, there isn't much tension revealed, leaving a shallow feeling of sympathy.

This is a weird take on the Dark Phoenix saga, it reads more like a purposefully self-inflicted wound throughout rather than a tragedy of circumstances. When that is the case, it fails to invoke a true emotion out of the audience or provoke any thoughtful insights into the human condition. Jean, as the mess that she is, could be a golden opportunity to contemplate on a lot of issues, you know, themes such as remorse, acceptance, family, abandonment etc. Instead we get complete reversals and changes of heart triggered in a couple of sentences just so we can skip to the next act.

That being said, the nerd rage 1/10 scores hardly reflect the actual quality of the movie but serve more of an indication of the emptiness in the reviewer's life putting a lot of expectations and placing a lot of emotional attachment on the movie. Anyway, it's still good enough for keeping the franchise going someplace, hopefully better. If you really believe it deserves better, there is always fan fiction to contribute to.

Lets face it, Kevin James is a talent-free hack who can't be counted upon to carry his own belly for more than an hour, let alone a movie. This movie deserves all the credit in the world for exposing this blatant fact once more for the public to see. Not realizing he was already pushing his luck tumbling his way onto becoming a C-list TV "star", ol' chubby James probably thought he could make the transition to the big screen and carry over his dumb, clumsy, man-child persona successfully, riding on the coattails of his shmucky looking face and folksy mannerisms (the relatable round shape of the body for the average American also helps).

Well, he didn't. The movie is a flop in many ways. The plot is stale and predictable, the characters are bereft of depth, intelligence and nuance. The tired old shticks such as the underdog tale (professional and romantic) don't even come close to being emotionally invested in. Kevin James does nothing to improve any of the above, either.

Needed to take a hot shower to cleanse myself after watching this disaster of a movie. It felt like a violation of my basic human decency. I'm against capital punishment but I'm willing to make an exception for once for the director, scriptwriter and cast of this trainwreck so that future generations can live without fear of coming across such abominations.

Comedy in general isn't about innovation but execution. This particular flick is no exception to the rule as it's filled with tropes and the usual comedic tricks available in the author's bag. That being said, Birsel does indeed show a knack for the rhythm of a scene and has become quite competent (if not masterful) in blind-sighting the audience leading up to the punchline. The characters and the script however aren't anything particularly original so it would be a stretch to give any scriptwriter credit for this. What really saves the day is the chemistry between the two lead roles and the brilliant acting overall. This is to be expected since all the actors picked to perform in this movie have proved themselves as top-notch comedic actors time and again. Well, I've enjoyed it and would definitely recommend to those in need of a good laugh.

Sadly the jingoistic elements, more prominent in the earlier stages of the movie, and out of touch unrealistic fighting scenes take too much away from what could be a memorable experience thus rendering it incomplete and hollow. The old adage less is more is once again proved correct.

What's not to find here that you would expect in an elaborate tragedy: War, corruption, greed, betrayal... At its core Windaria is about the journey of a boy, ambitious yet unaware of at what cost his ambitions will come to fruition. Buyer beware, true love doesn't conquer all in this, mostly unknown in the west, gem. Quite the contrary, blinded by greed, lust and the desire for self-worth through the admiration of others, love takes a distant fourth place right up until the end when our protagonist repents for his sins and decides that love was all he needed after all. As it stands, it works more of as a cautionary tale.

Full disclosure: I watched it first as a young boy at the age of 8 or 9 and it had quite an impact on me so that years later when I managed to drag it from the collective knowledge of the interwebs, I had no idea whether the actual experience of it would match the memory. In all fairness, it came as close as possible.

Well, what can be said of this movie except that it is a highly overrated spy parody, which is quite a feat considering it is rated 1.5/10 on this very site. At some point you wonder why Didem Erol's character Kosovali is wearing a work suit (or some sort of costume) with a cleavage cut out, strolling around in the sewers but the answer is clear: the whole premise of the movie is to watch this boring thing long enough to get a glimpse of her assets. Sadly, the promise is much better than the delivery though so even that is a fruitless endeavor. Anyway, shame it isn't a worse movie maybe it would've ended up being so bad that it's good but it also manages to miss that target.

This movie is a cult classic for a reason, a reason I can't firmly grasp nor articulate for that matter. On the surface, it is just your ordinary guy meets girl traveling and they fall in love script. Hardly original and only superficially interesting unless it happens to you, but it captures that mood exceptionally well, that feeling which we get when we're on the verge of starting something new, meeting that someone who gives us renewed hope to live and love again, when we're slowly but surely convinced that this is a turning point, a new chapter in our journey through life. It is a unique accomplishment to do this in a way that doesn't come off as either cynical or corny. To witness these young people inadvertently and carelessly take the steps which would deviate them from the path of their pre-arranged course is an empowering experience, no matter how you think their stories would unfold. As our heroine states, "it must be in the attempt of understanding someone sharing something.... the answer must be in the attempt".

In this day and age of cynicism above all, Before Sunrise blossoms as the wild flower of optimism and innocence cracking through the cement pavement. The movie does all this as it also manages to walk around, through and over certain subjects which have puzzled us all at some point or another, in casual conversations had by our fresh couple, helped by beautiful scenery of Vienna and exceptional music by artists which span generations of lovers. Before Sunrise is one of those movies which can be best described as an experience in and of itself. I certainly hope it will continue to inspire.

Unfortunately much of the humour in this Atıf Yılmaz masterpiece is lost in translation, many of the stereotypes that are hilarious to witness for the local audience will go right above the heads of the international viewers, fortunately the comedic and dramatic strength of the movie is not limited to such a narrow scope so what's available there for the outsiders looking in, is still plenty enough to enjoy this wonderful movie which has a theatrical play quality to it along with a strong cast (the infallible Duo of Sen and Salman to begin with) and an unlikely love story.

What gives this movie a unique worth is the way it absolutely makes a mockery of the post-military coup Turkey that was in a rapid transformation towards a wild west like economic system, leaving all those behind who weren't smart! (read:shrewd) enough to keep up with the evolving times yet ironically witnessing many of the plagues which killed the Ottoman Empire (the setting of the movie) such as corruption and the facade of morality in an outwardly religious society which is only enforced on the weak and the vulnerable, staying just the same.

The symbolism of the characters is not coincidental either but a deeper analysis will take too much space on what is only meant to be a review of the movie. Still, it should be safe to say that the morally corrupt police chief represents the wayward and abusive authority of the morally bankrupt state, the morally upright whore represents the marginalized urban outcasts trying to survive the times and her "savior" the do-gooder police officer represents the middle class in search of a better tomorrow.

Demirkubuz sets out to explore the marginalized, the downtrodden and the hapless as he ends up provoking the audience to explore their own realities, to see if their grounding in existence holds up to such a merciless scrutiny. Devoid of all roots and conformities, his characters are free to roam the earth in search of peace and happiness in any way they can and perhaps in the only way they know how, in many instances in spite of themselves. That's a misfortune (or a fortune) depending on which side of the coin you prefer to look at. One thing is certain though, this coin looks shiny side up and once you pick it up off the dirty street, it will be too late to ignore the muddy flip side.

Juxtaposing rural town folksiness and shrewdness with metropolitan contradictions of Istanbul makes for a genuinely funny flick. Every single character the audience witnesses has a few nuts and bolts missing, their grounding ever so shaky as they are veered off course easily by distractions, coming up with wacky ideas along the way in pursue of their goals. For being such a light-hearted movie poking fun at various facets of the seemingly normative and counter-cultural elements of society, unfortunately, it lacks any further depth and ends up being easily forgettable. However, for the duration of your stay, it will bring the laughter out of you, kicking and screaming. Recommended.

Represents all that fails about the Turkish Cinema of the 2000s. Cheap sexploitation, a cast of randomly assembled semi-talented and semi- famous actors (and non-actors), a series of randomly scattered simplistic pop references, a non-realistic plot which could be written by a 10 year old as summer homework, appeals perhaps only to the kidults who long for their wasted high school years in search of a daydreaming flashback moment.

Lacks the charm, ingenuity and authentic warmth of the original series as well as the chemistry of the original cast which made it work as well as it did. Wasting the memory of a franchise for a quick buck isn't something I'd put past Turkish producers but one expects at least a modicum of care for a piece of work that you put your name on. Alas, it wasn't to be.

Just that horrible, don't waste your time watching it if you're over 12 years old and even if you are there are much better flicks worthy of your time.