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His House (2020)
Brilliant and devastating.
An ambitious film that seeks to cast off the shackles of the haunted house genre in order to create something more impactful than your typical horror flick. This film has impressive visuals and tremendous acting especially from Wunmi Mosaku who plays Rial. What is truly remarkable about this film is the way it toys with the viewer's relationship to different aspects of the film including characters and the horror itself. This film packs so much emotional depth in only 93 mins. My only negatives are that at certain points the movie becomes a little ungrounded with the extent of the hallucinatory/dreamy imagery. Also, I'm not exactly sure how I feel about some of the horror imagery being traditional African body art. I'm certainly not sufficiently knowledgeable of the subject to judge whether there is narrative significance to the art or if the filmmaker just thought it looked spooky.
Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen (2020)
Absolutely Essential.
One of the best documentaries I've ever seen. If you've ever wondered if representation really matters, this documentary shows how bad representation can be harmful in countless ways and good representation can be life-changing for people finding their way.
Joker (2019)
I really don't understand.
Joaquin Phoenix is good. The directing is pretty good. The writing is absolutely awful. This movie is trying so hard to be relevant and to have a 'message' that it just throws a jumbled mess of quasi-commentary at you hoping something will stick. It is completely unclear what exactly writer/director Todd Phillips is actually trying to say, if anything. Is Joker a hero of the resistance or is he an incel? Does he go crazy because he's mentally ill or because people are mean to him? Both rich people and poor people are horrible to Joker so what exactly is the class commentary? It's also confusing how Robert De Niro when this movie is clearly ripping off Taxi Driver in many ways, also with a little Mr. Robot thrown in. There's also a subplot with a neighbor that is so incredibly stupid and pointless, which actually has no bearing on the story whatsoever. The movie is also just listless and boring throughout much of it. A movie can be slow-paced without it being boring if interesting things are happening that are driving the plot towards it's conclusion. The only thing driving the story in this movie is knowing that he's going to become joker at some points, not anything that actually happens in the movie. The movie also spends like 5 minutes making fun of a little person for no clear reason. Also for people saying that this movie does a good job saying why you should be nicer to people especially if they're lonely or have mental health issues: firstly you shouldn't need a movie like this to be nice to people, secondly you can make a movie like that where the lonely/mentally ill person doesn't become a murderer since mentally ill people are more likely to be victims than perpetrators of crime, and thirdly if you want a movie showing why you need to empathize with criminals why not movies about all the people of color who have been victims of mass incarceration and were locked up on nonviolent charges instead of a movie about a white male becoming a mass murderer. This movie is terrible.
South Side (2019)
Fast and funny.
Based only on the first episode, this is a very funny new show from Comedy Central. The pace and editing means that the jokes come at you fast with basically no time to catch your breath. The first episode does a lot of leg work establishing the characters and the world and it does a great job doing so. For people who have watched Reno 911! and Workaholics, South Side will definitely feel familiar in a general sense, but also fresh and new because of how underrepresented Black creators are. There are times where you can feel how the actors are improvising and playing off each other, which is very reminiscent of the other shows I mentioned and it's something I personally love. I love comedies that feel just a bit unpolished.
This show is good. It's fast paced, the characters are great, the world is interesting and it's very funny. I'm definitely tuning in again.