rumblechris Reviews

Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow (2010)

Strange environments

[7/10 · 8 December 2017]

Deeply meditative film, by which I don't mean boring. It's a film that demands a lot of concentration. Aselm Kiefer is a German artist working in France. The film is quite simple in trying to show and not tell us how Kiefer works and the strange artworks he produces in what looks like an abandoned village. Are they really artworks? Some of the things he makes are difficult to categorize. Sculptures that look like piles of rubble, because they are. Or are they? Does the artist's involvement make them other? Reminded me of Tarkovsky at times with all the underground scenes of strange environments.

Marx Reloaded (2011 TV Movie)

Cult Classic

[10/10 · 1 November 2017]

I'd never even heard of this film until a couple of weeks ago. I'm a recent convert to the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek. He writes about popular culture but does it in a really surprising and non-intuitive way. He's also a fairly compulsive writer about Marxism. Unlike in the other films he's made (which gradually I'm staring to watch) in this he's one voice among several other philosophers and critics. What I found fascinating and really energizing is the way you get a sense of a Big Question playing out in real time. The film is talking about the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 but it's still a film that talks to the here and now: from national debt crises to ecological crisis, it's all brilliantly pieced together like a global jigsaw. Zizek argues that communism today is actually a question of salvaging "the commons" by which he means the "commonwealth" or the combined value of the natural world and its resources. We all breathe the same air and drink the same water. It sounds simple but when you start to unravel the threads it goes to the heart of the way the global economy is run and the profit motive driving it. Doing some research on the other philosophers involved it seems this is a forgotten classic of a film. I can't find anything to compare it with. I recommend it to anyone studying politics or economics.

Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

Touching rather than moving

[6/10 · 10 October 2017]

This is a good film by mainstream Hollywood standards. The drama is well written and paced. There is genuine suspense. But when compared to the first film it was mediocre, I'm afraid. The cinematography was bland. Too much light in the interiors. The original was very dark, which is extremely difficult to film but fascinating to watch. Whereas here you see everything and the actors are put in these silly little rooms. Why would you flood those rooms in light if there's an energy crisis? Too many American shots -- not surprising as you have no options in these tiny rooms. It's like they were filming it to be watched on mobile devices. I also found Wallace pure comic book nonsense, spouting cod philosophy. Why make the inventor of replicants a replicant? We don't learn anything about his motivation, other than he's mad or fanatical. Why? What's driving him? The first film was in mode of classical Greek tragedy. Sacrifice and redemption. This film is rather too Hollywood, about a father who loses contact with his child and wants to see her again. The replicant becomes the conduit or plot device for a family reunion. It's not a story that moves me. But overall it had some touching moments.