Las Elegidas (‘The Chosen Ones’) follows a fourteen year old who gets kidnapped into sexual slavery by her boyfriend who is himself under the duress of his people-trafficking older brother and father. The boyfriend begs his father but is presented with a stark choice: his girlfriend will be released if he finds another girl to fill her space. So we spend half the film with him seducing another girl, ultimately successfully. His girlfriend is changed forever, sin embargo, and is “released” but only to live with the family and under their supervision at all times.
The film was moving. The sex scenes were disturbingly shot, but featured no actual sex. But this made it all the more disturbing as the sex is in our minds.
However, the film ends rather abruptly. Just as a plotline develops about one of the patrons of the brothel being an undercover would-be liberator of the girls, credits roll.
I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Sadly, I don’t ever want to set my eyes on it again.
Mother! stars Jennifer Lawrence as “Mother”, a devoted wife to emotionally damaged artist “Him” (Javier Bardem) who is suffering a debilitating bout of writer’s block. She single-handedly rebuilds his childhood home, which had mysteriously burnt down, in the hope that this idyll in the middle of nowhere will reignite his creative, and perhaps even sexual, passions. However, this paradise-in-the-making is disturbed as a series of unexpected random visitors pay them a visit from out of nowhere, to catastrophic results. Weird, unique, challenging: director Darren Aronofsky is back.
The acting from Lawrence, Bardem, and Michael Pfeiffer is topnotch, perhaps even Oscar-worthy. Ed Harris is pretty special in this, too. They really are on top of their game here. The set up and first third of the film is wonderful, classic almost Twilight Zone mystery territory: who are these people, what do they really want, and why is everyone — including her husband — acting so off? The film is both a pensive slow-mover and at the same time a rocket-charged rollercoaster. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.
Sadly, I don’t ever want to set my eyes on it again. The film totally goes off its rocker after an unfortunate incident occurs in the house. The imagery and the acting and set design were magnificent and brutal. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. None-the-less, any pretence of story is launched through the window (or the wall) with all the ferocity of Yuriy Sedykh’s hammer throw at the 1986 European Championships. It makes no sense, nor does it want to. Aronofsky is a challenging but brilliant filmmaker (Black Swan, Requiem for a Dream, Pi), but this film just eats itself in pretension (you already noticed the “names” of our two protagonists, didn’t you? “Mother” and “Him”). Both totally open-ended and easy to interpret any way you want — as per our writer’s own work (ooooh meta) — and yet incredibly straight-forward, this movie doesn’t so much think it’s cleverer than it is, but rather it doesn’t give a flying f***. Frankly, it’s bonkers, but in a way that makes no sense (in contrast to Aronofsky’s previous works).
As I have said, this movie has genuine Oscar contender vibes. So why only two stars? Because story has to come first, that’s why; a movie that tosses story out of the window to go down some kind of nightmarish drug trip which makes no sense at all, cannot have a “good” rating no matter how undoubtedly brilliant aspects of the film are. The last section of the film began to genuinely test my patience with its out-and-out nonsense. Being a visionary director who has succeeded in getting first rate performances out of his team is not an excuse for self-wallowy rubbish.
Despite the unbelievability of the premise… entertaining
An action-espionage-drama following Anna, a poor woman from Russia with a heavy burden of suffering who is ready to give up on life. At her nadir, a man swoops in with an unlikely offer — become a spy, in exchange for a decent life.
Despite the unbelievability of the premise, the film is otherwise quite believable. The movie’s made up of several segments which end in a twist, the scenes then rewinding to show us what really happened. Entertaining and shocking, but this shtick begins to wear thin by the end.
An entertaining and exciting flick with good acting all round.
Unorthodox is the story of Esther (Shira Haas), a nineteen year old from a Hasidic Jewish community in New York, who tries to flee her arranged marriage and authoritarian community to build a new life for herself. But will her community, or her husband, let her escape?
Unorthodox is, I believe, the first Netflix series shot in Yiddish, which makes it notable. It’s an engrossing story which paints a powerful picture of a repressive community without ever getting into Judaism-bashing. The limited series was infused with realism.
Live Twice, Love Once a.k.a. Vivir Dos Veces (‘Live Twice’) is the touching story of a retired university lecturer Emilio (Oscar Martinez) who, upon being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, decides to track down the one who got away. Think of it as a geriatric Road Trip, with a less severe neurodegenerative disorder.
Funny and heart-warming, all four of our leads convince and the characters win our hearts. Emilio, a passive-aggressive and sardonic old stick-in-the-mud; Julia (Inma Cuesta), his somewhat naggy but deeping caring daughter; Blanca (Mafalda Carbonell), the cheese to her grandfather’s chalk; and Julia’s online life coach husband Felipe (Nacho Lopez), more believable and less zany than you’d think.
The change in Emilio’s very personality is poignant, and the trip (literal and metaphorical) which our characters embark on is by turns funny and touching. However, I felt there was something lacking in the somewhat forced double climax to the movie.
The Doggerelizer 
