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gorimlongbeard
Adding missing sountrack information on imdb as I go through my filmic vault.
Rating info:
10: Masterpiece
9: Near perfect
8: Very good
7: Good
6: OK
5: Flawed
4: Bad
3: Very bad
2: Close to nothing
1: Unwatchable crap
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
Vienna Calling (2023)
Solid, but nothing more
Vienna Calling is neither a full on documentary nor a feature film, it is a little bit of both. What could have been an interesting mix in theory does not work on all levels due to musicians not being actors, but nevertheless it is an interessing mix.
In my option the film suffers from a few things:
- as an avid follower of the austrian and viennese music scene for the last 25 years there are simply too little artists presented in the film for my liking. It looks like the producer (Gutlauniger) presents only his close friends, but that is not the case as he him self stated in the interview following the screening I attended. He said, there is no special close releation more than simply knowing each other for being artists in the same city and being loosly connected
- also while some of the artists featured on the poster have a lot screentime, others that have extremly little are featured on the poster the same way
- the project has started 5 years ago and therefore there are quite a few covid era scenes in it. I just can't stand anymore seeing people in stores with face masks or how inconsequetly the mask policies were handled in bars
On the bright side I see:
- beautiful images of nighttime vienna, full of places, venues and bars I went myself
- as a fan of "Der Nino aus Wien" and "Voodoo Jürgens" the film does a lot of fanservice for me as both artists are featured heavily and with wonderful intimate scenes and music
- while I'm not a real fan of Esrap the scenes with her & her brother are very interesting, funny & witty - some of the best in the movie
Smoking and drinking is featured heavyly through the whole film. There is close to no scene without it.
Umibe no eigakan - Kinema no tamatebako (2019)
Strong anti war message in a 3 hour cut up movie
The plot:
A japanese cinema opens one last night and shows japanese war movies all night. Various villagers come and watch. A girl (Noriko) doesn't know about war and wants to find out by going directly into the films.
3 men (a yakuza wannabe/monk, a film critic, and the girls lover) follow her to rescue her from various dangers, the girl being present in different incarnations within the movies. The four encounter various battles of japanese history starting from the 1860s with the fall of the samurai and ending with the bombing of Hiroshima, making friends and enemies on their way.
The movie:
First I have to say despite this being Nobuhiko Ôbayashis last movie it was my first from him. I was told about his experimental roots beforehand and knew the anti war & movie topic. Still, this movie has a very special style. Instead of using actual old japanese war movies they get kind of rebuild. The first ones in 4:3 and b/w with intertitles before we head to talkies. Generally Ôbayashis choice in most of the scenes is to have two layers in it: the background & the characters, by choice badly cut in.
You get 3 hours of very fast paced dialoge, singing, a lot of cuts & repetitions, panels with poems, semi-documental scenes, overlays with facts/information in japanese, overlays of circles, etc.
Storywise, although its meandering style, it all concludes fine in the end & has a strong as well as important message. But still a very hard one to sit through.
The Alfred Hitchcock Hour: Night of the Owl (1962)
Night of the Owl
While the two bad boys (as the brain and the muscle) as well as the father act very well in their roles, this episode suffers from various problems:
- There isn't a case in the first place. After the blackmail attempt daddy just needs to tell his daughter that she was adopted and under which circumstances ("Honey, we need to talk"). THE END.
- All scenes between the parents and the kids, but especially the scence between the mother and their two daughters are a pure cringefest.
- Even with the blackmail going along the climax in the woods could have been handled so much better. If the daughter just went home as told to do and daddy shoots the remaining bad guy off the tree (could easily plead selfdefence / defence of property as the attacker was armed) all problems would have been solved and the daughter would have never known.
5/10