movie reviews
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Cinema, mon amour (2015): Or Existential Limbo
One of my first writings here told a bit of the story on the run-down state of our own Cinema Timis. Cinema, mon amour tells a similar story from a humanistic angle, with a humble house of film in Piatra Neamt at its core. Read more
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Ilegitim (2016): A Difficult Tread
It’s rare that all the possible twists of a movie be so obvious just by looking at a poster. But Illegitimate still manages to make it work, in spite of its self-indulgence – it’s an entertaining story of how a family implodes. It simply fails to punch as high as it aims to do. Read more
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Amores perros (2000): Self Redemption
God, the turn of the millennium was such an awesome time for mainstream movies. One of the guys who has since become the Hollywood auteur is Alejandro G. Inarritu. Two Academy Awards for best director in consecutive years? Quite the feat. But to me, Inarritu has been insanely hit and miss. Not to say that Read more
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Perfetti sconosciuti (2016): The Undergrowths of Married Life
So here’s an actual recommendation for people to see, not some obscure, self-indulgent piece on how eclectic my taste in movies is. A great, little, Italian dinner table film to make your ‘relaxing’ evening. Read more
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The Girl in the Book (2015): Wayward Tales
The latest in a series of small-scale but not unambitious movies starring Emily VanCamp is a tale of abuse with literary entanglements. A fine concept, which ultimately is not fleshed out sufficiently. Read more
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Ronaldo (2015): Competent. Inauthentic. Fascinating.
Having watched de la Iglesia’s Messi documentary, I thought of going all in and looking at Ronaldo’s as well. And although this one tries so hard that it frequently seems inauthentic, at least it provides direct feedback from the horse’s mouth: there are no doubts about what Ronaldo feels and believes – but only concerning Read more
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Autobiografia lui Nicolae Ceausescu (2010): The Spectacular Reality of Nicolae Ceausescu
It is unfathomable to think that this is a part of our human heritage, and the film leaves the impression of being a document of society, culture and politics that’s out of this world. Read more
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Amy (2015): Discovering Anew
The 2015 documentary about Amy Winehouse, a strong follow-up piece from Senna’s (2010) Asif Kapadia, is a grueling, yet riveting portrayal of assassination by fame. Read more
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Bacalaureat (2016): Defying Compromise
Films rarely put forward leading characters that they then choose to vehemently punish throughout. But this is Mungiu, who has already proved more than adept at creating authentic and ruthless portrayals of society and in Bacalaureat (English title: Graduation) he scrapes at the edges of our souls. His tale of generational change is predicated on Read more
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The Family Fang (2015): Sibling Togetherness
After ‘Bad Words’, Bateman the director appears to be heading in the right direction and takes on a more ambitious, layered project. This film deals not only with a dysfunctional family, a concept that has fascinated American cinema ever since American Beauty (1999), but also with the relation between art and life. Thematically, the family Read more
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Freakonomics (2010): Lukewarm at Best
I’ll admit from the off that I was skeptical regarding this documentary ever since I first heard it was in production. Having read the book, I felt that what made it enjoyable could not really be transposed onto film. Economics, being such a science of numbers, even in its freakonomic form, does not really lend Read more
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