reviewville asked: when are you going to do more updates?

Honestly?  I don’t know.  I know that I’ve been really slow putting up new reviews the past couple of months, but I’ve just had other things going on in my life, particularly with business picking up for Planet Sun, and frankly, writing reviews isn’t a top priority, because I don’t make any money from doing it, and it takes a significant amount of time for me to get the reviews done.  I’ve got a few in the pipeline - Spring Breakers, Evil Dead, Room 237, and the last part of the Requests & Dedications - but I’m not going to make any promises for when any of those will be done. 

I will keep answering asks quickly though, because they don’t take me nearly as long to write and because the conversation and interaction part of Tumblr is what makes it worthwhile for me to keep doing, so if any of you out there are particularly jonesing for more Cade Snyder, send me your questions about anything and everything movie-related or not movie-related and I’ll be happy to answer them.  Otherwise, thanks for your patience and understanding, everybody.

taylorosborn-us asked: In respect of your time, I'll be forthright. Would you author a brief criticism of my thesis film teaser "Exclusion And"? I can't link it in tumblr ask, but it is on my blog and youtube (search Exclusion And Teaser). Regardless of your resolve,Thanks,Taylor

Well, I’ll be honest, I don’t really know exactly what I would say to critique your teaser.  Obviously I can’t critique the film that is being teased, so do you want me to critique its effectiveness as a teaser?  If so, I’ll say that it is definitely intriguing.  It doesn’t say much about the what the story would be, but my guess is that the film isn’t so much about plot as it is visuals and mood.  If that’s wrong, well then, there’s your critique.

I hope that you didn’t want more than that, because I don’t know what more I can say about a teaser.  What I can do is publish this to my blog, so any of my followers who are reading these very words right now can follow your directions and watch the teaser for your animated thesis film themselves.  And if they have better criticisms to give, perhaps they’ll be so kind as to send them your way.

Anonymous asked: I've recently seen this movie, 'Ginger and Rosa', about a girl growing up with the threat of nuclear war in the 70s, and critics lauded Elle Fanning's performance. They say that she was depressed without being self-righteous or mopey, but how does one see that? and also, I found the cast to give great performances, but I don't get how the critics could single out Elle's as the most outstanding.

Hmm, well unfortunately I haven’t seen Ginger and Rosa yet; as far as I know, it hasn’t shown anywhere in Nashville yet, so I cannot answer your question directly.  Hopefully some of those critics that praised Fanning’s performance explained why they were so impressed by it, so I’d recommend trying to read through those reasons and then examine your own response.  Can you understand why the critics liked it more than you did?  Does it change your response at all or do you still feel the same way, that her performance wasn’t remarkable?  It’s perfectly okay if your opinion doesn’t change, as long as you have some justification for it, and it’s just as okay if your opinion does change after reading the criticisms.  Sometimes you miss something in a film or performance until somebody points it out to you, and sometimes you’ll never be able to see what everybody else sees.  Anyway, if I get the chance to see Ginger and Rosa anytime soon, I’ll throw my two cents in on the matter.

voteforpedro11 asked: do you have any favourite perfomance by an actor/actress? or at least someone that you think represent an ideal one

Well, again, there really isn’t one ideal performance; there are too many factors involved in film acting for there to be one universal ideal.  Picking favorite performances is tough, because I could probably make a list with a hundred or more names on it.  I’ll feel like an asshole if I don’t give some sort of answer, though, so I’ll say that one of my favorite performances is Takashi Shimura in Ikiru.  He does a fantastic job understanding the complexities and many emotional states of his character throughout the film; his performance is truly affecting and says something powerful about life and finding meaning and purpose in life.  If anyone reading this hasn’t seen Ikiru, you really should.

velours-blue asked: hello, I'm an aspiring film critic. how do you review performances? how do you know if they're good, if their performances are powerful, and truthful, and not too melodramatic, etc.

Honestly, judging performances is very subjective, even when dealing with a performance that is widely regarded as ‘good’ or ‘bad’.  The trick is to make sure that you’re judging performances based on the movie they’re in, not on some universal ideal of good acting, because there is no such thing.  For example, acting doesn’t have to always be realistic or natural, because the film may call for a melodramatic performance.  What’s important is that an actor’s performance stays true to the character they are playing and the world that the director has created for that actor to play in.  Great acting happens when an actor not only stays true to character, but finds ways to reveal something about their character and the story through their performance that can’t be found anywhere else in the film but in the way they say their lines, the way they use the silence and space between their lines, the way they look at another character, the way they move their body.  The best thing is to listen to your own instincts; if you watch a film and a certain performance jumps out at you as good or bad, try to really take a moment to think about what it is that that actor did to make himself or herself stand out for better or worse.  The more you watch, and the more you dig into what you watch, the better you’ll get at recognizing and appreciating great acting.

braylynf asked: k im going to sound dumb so u make movie

Yes, I make movie!  I directed a short film called Window, and I’ve also worked on several more short films, music videos, and whatnot with Planet Sun Productions, the production company I started up with my friends.  You can see many of those videos on the same YouTube channel that you’ll find on the other end of that Window link up there and at our Vimeo page, and we have a few music videos and documentary shorts in the works for this summer.

Also, I don’t think you sound dumb.  I think you sound like a stereotypical Russian character from an old Hollywood movie, which is considerably better than dumb.

Yes, I’ve given out five suns quite a lot actually, some would probably even say too much, although those people are silly.  For example, I gave five suns to a few of the Oscar films this year - Django Unchained, Zero Dark Thirty, Paranorman.  I’d probably give a lot more if I actually reviewed every movie I watch like I used to when I first started this blog, but alas, that is no longer the case.  Two sun and one sun ratings are far more rare from me, but that’s because I tend to choose to watch movies that I think I’m going to like since I am a normal human being.  Good luck with your school paper gig!

Cade Snyder Takes Your Requests & Dedications! - Part 2

Frogs (1972) - If I was content enough to boil a movie down to one snarky comment, I would say that Frogs is basically The Happening with slightly less production quality and slightly more logic.  The film falls into the ’70s B-movie cycle of absurd killer animal movies, with a wealthy Southern family finding themselves the victims of the many animals surrounding them, apparently because the family’s patriarch hasn’t been very respectful of nature.  As you can imagine, the movie is fairly ridiculous.  The deaths are all hilariously strange: the son who is mummified by sentient moss and spider webs, the other son who is killed by noxious fumes from lizards knocking over chemicals in a greenhouse couple with his own inability to figure out how doors work, the mom lured by a butterfly into getting covered in leeches and bitten by a rattlesnake, and further deaths via crocodile, water moccasin, and snapping turtle.  And then finally the frogs, who have been swarming in impressive numbers the whole movie, make the final kill, although the film clearly doesn’t know how frogs would kill anybody, so they just show them piling up around the old man, cut to a wide shot of the mansion, put in the sound of him screaming, and boom, credits, movie done.  Perhaps more ridiculous than the deaths or the idea of frogs as ominous (which the filmmakers try to push really hard by cutting to shots of frogs over and over again) is the fact that despite members of his family dying around him, the father of the family still refuses to cancel his birthday party.  Even The Beastie Boys weren’t that committed to partying.  Frogs isn’t a great movie by any stretch, but compared to other B-horror movies of the ’70s, it stands up fairly well.  The film is competently shot and has surprisingly fine acting thanks to a young Sam Elliott and an old Ray Milland (who was certainly at a low point in his career but still an entertaining performer), and to its credit, it at least tries to put some real ideas behind its horror.  It’s smart to set the film in the South, considering that Southern conservatives tend to be the most opposed to environmental regulations despite the region’s economic dependence on the environment.  The film also plays up some of the racial tensions of the South too, although it somewhat bungles that by taking the three black characters and having them be chased out of the movie by birds, as if the filmmakers didn’t know what to do with them anymore.  Don’t expect to be scared or otherwise impressed by Frogs, but you can definitely bank on you and your friends having a few laughs from it.  Also, seriously, it’s way better than The Happening.  That movie is dumb.

Rating: ☀☀☀
Three out of five suns

The Rutles: All You Need is Cash (1978) - A spiritual predecessor to This is Spinal Tap, The Rutles is a mockumentary on The Rutles, a.k.a. The Pre-fab Four, tracing the route of the band’s career from small clubs in Liverpool to super-stardom and finally to the band’s demise, a route that quite conveniently the career path of another famous Liverpudlian foursome.  Monty Python member Eric Idle wrote, directed, and starred in dual roles as Dirk McQuickly, the Paul of the Rutles, and as the film’s narrator and on-screen interviewer, which naturally gives the film’s humor just a hint of Python absurdism, exemplified in various scenes of the narrator struggling to stay in the camera’s frame or in a scene late in the film when the press agent (played by another Python member, Michael Palin) of the band’s record label, Rutle Corps, gives an interview about the stability and security of the company while an unending stream of thieves pours out of the building’s front doors carrying out increasingly large objects and pieces of furniture, until the interview is ended by a thief stealing the microphone.  The film isn’t wholly Pythonesque, however, as it is mixed with the comedy style of ’70s-era Saturday Night Live.  The film was actually produced by the famed SNL producer Lorne Michaels and co-directed by Gary Weis, who shot many of the shorts seen in the first few years of SNL, and first aired on NBC, and featured cameos from several recognizable SNL faces.  These two styles are further mixed with the style of the band the film is parodying, The Beatles, and the various videos and films that they were a part of, with the film doing a fantastic job of recreating the sound of the band in its various periods and the look of their many television and film appearances.  The combination of all these elements succeeds in creating a unique, entertaining, and, most importantly, funny film.  Appearances from Mick Jagger, Paul Simon, Ron Wood, and even George Harrison (as the interviewer whose mic is pilfered) add to the experience; it’s entertaining in and of itself seeing that these figures can get in on the joke and laugh on themselves.  Perhaps the film’s only flaw is the music itself - not because it’s bad, but oddly enough, because it’s too good.  The parody songs by Neil Innes (who plays the John character in the Rutles) are very convincing facsimiles of Beatles songs, but aren’t necessarily laugh out loud funny or even any more ridiculous than some of the original Beatles song (which is partly the point), and since many of them are featured in their entirety in the film, they tend to derail the momentum of the film’s humor at times.  Otherwise, though, the film is as hilarious as a good episode of either Monty Python or SNL in the ’70s, and it’s a treat for any Beatles fan too…which is basically everybody on Earth, right?

Rating: ☀☀☀☀
Four out of five suns

Unbreakable (2000)- An anecdote: I remember very specifically seeing the trailer for Devil in movie theaters.  When the trailer started, nobody had any particular reactions, and as it went on, still no reactions, until it got to the title proclaiming it based on a story by M. Night Shyamalan.  Immediately upon seeing Shyamalan’s name, a guy in the audience groaned loudly, and the entire audience started to laugh, and it was at that point I realized how poisonous Shyamalan’s name had become in film.  Devil wasn’t even directed or for that matter written by him, and yet seeing his name was enough to make that entire audience immediately sour on the film.  There are a handful of other directors who can illicit the same reaction, like Michael Bay or Uwe Boll, but none of those other directors ever had the critical clout that Shyamalan once did with The Sixth Sense and in the following few years, before he was so thoroughly rejected by audiences.  With Shyamalan’s current reputation in mind, it’s interesting to watch a film like Unbreakable and see how solid a filmmaker he once was as well as the seeds of his eventual fall from grace.  Unbreakable stars Bruce Willis as David Dunn, a security guard who miraculously survives a catastrophic train crash without any injuries.  Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), a seller and collector of rare comics stricken with a rare disease making his bones easily breakable, has theorized that if he is one extreme - very breakable - then there must be someone in the world who is the other extreme - unbreakable - and he sets out to convince David that he is that unbreakable man, the real-world version of a superhero.  Unbreakable is a genuinely unique and smart take on the superhero genre, taking the fantastic idea of a super-powered man and putting it into a surprisingly plausible real-world scenario.  Willis and Jackson play a large part in this, playing both of their roles completely straight without any hint of irony, both reacting to unlikely circumstances in a very believable and, most importantly, subdued manner.  Part of the film’s charm is that it does make subtle nods at comic book tropes, such as the alliteration of David Dunn’s name (a la Clark Kent, Bruce Banner, Peter Parker…), the assigning of color schemes to the hero and villain (David is green, Elijah is purple), David’s weakness to water (an odd choice to be his kryptonite, but still), and the choice of camera angles and framing to mimic comic book panels, but it does all of that subtly, so as not to become too tongue-in-cheek or cartoonish.  The grounded nature of the film’s plot and visual style separate it from other superhero movies, and even arguably makes it ahead of its time, five years before Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins started the overall trend in the superhero genre towards more realistic, grittier films.  As unique as it is among superhero films, however, it’s not unique as a Shyamalan film, i.e. it has a twist ending, the kind that is synonymous with Shyamalan and that has very much haunted his career ever since The Sixth Sense.  In fact, although reviews of the film when it was released were mostly favorable, many reviewers were disappointed with the ending, some even blatantly saying it wasn’t as good an ending as The Sixth Sense’s.  In hindsight, this criticism seems unfair; the ending fits perfectly with the film and the idea of opposites and extremes established in the film - if David Dunn is a superhero, there must be a supervillian - and it’s hard to see what other ending could be hoped for.  That criticism says a lot about how Shyamalan’s name ended up where it is now, sunken under the pressure of living up to The Sixth Sense, a problem exacerbated by his insistence on putting twist endings on so many films in a row.  While the ending isn’t as weak as the critics suggest, there are still other weak points in the writing.  A great example is the scene where David’s son, who has become convinced that Elijah is right before his dad has come to accept it, frantically points a gun at his father wanting to prove that he can’t be hurt.  The scene, in relation to the relative reality of the rest of the film, comes off as absurd and overblown, a moment of emotion far too extreme and, in light of that extreme emotion, relatively unconsequential to the rest of the plot.  Giving David ESP powers also seems at odds with the reality of the film; another draft of the script and Shyamalan could have easily carried the plot along without the ESP, keeping the film wholly grounded in reality.  Such problems in the writing don’t entirely derail the film, however (hey, that’s a train wreck pun!); it’s still a unique entry in the superhero genre, and genuinely one of the better films in that genre’s history, and it makes its message about everyday exceptionalism and self-fulfillment quite ably.  One hopes that maybe one day Shyamalan can make his way back to making films as assured as Unbreakable, but if the After Earth trailers are any indication, it doesn’t look like that will be any time soon.

Rating: ☀☀☀☀
Four out of five suns

Cade Snyder Takes Your Requests and Dedications! - Part One

And then takes an inordinately long amount of time to write them.  I’m going to split this into multiple parts for the sake of time and length.  This one will only have Merantau and Sucker Punch, mainly because my review of Sucker Punch ended up way longer than I intended.  Frogs, The Rutles, and Unbreakable will come soon, followed by The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly and The Man Who Fell to Earth.  I like taking requests, because it virtually guarantees that at least one person will read the review, and it makes it easier to decide what movies to write about, so if more of you followers have films you’d like me to discuss, send your requests my way!

Merantau (2009) - Follower vindaningrum requested that I review some Indonesian films back in January in the midst of my Oscar movie watching splurge, and now I can finally attempt to fulfill the wish.  Unfortunately, it turns out that it’s hard to find Indonesian films to watch on Netflix, either by DVD or streaming.  If any of you out there know of good Indonesian films anywhere on Netflix or that’s free to watch elsewhere, send me a message and let me know!  Until then, I hope that Merantau will help fill the void, even if it’s the same director and lead actor as the other Indonesian movie I’ve reviewed that spurred the request, The Raid: Redemption.  In this earlier film, Iko Uwais plays Yuda, a young man who has decided to follow the tradition of “merantau”, leaving his home and family to find work in Jakarta as a teacher of silat, a style of martial arts traditionally used in Indonesia.  Unfortunately, instead of becoming a teacher, he instead finds himself fighting off a criminal gang dealing in slaving teenage girls after chivalrously saving a poor girl named Astrid (Sisca Jessica) from the clutches of the gang’s lead thug Johni (Alex Abbad).  Merantau is a thoroughly entertaining martial arts film with a simple but entirely logical and believable plot (not always the case with the martial arts genre), solid acting, and exciting and plentiful fight scenes.  Having seen The Raid first, however, it’s hard not to make comparisons to that film, which is better in almost every way.  The dark, gritty, even grisly photography and atmosphere of The Raid is more interesting than Merantau’s visual look, which is brighter and otherwise not very notable (although not at all bad).  The plot of The Raid is more concise, with not a second of action unrelated to that basic plot, and yet just as full and meaningful as Merantau, and the action is far more intense, thanks not only to better fight choreography but better camera choreography to follow the action and better editing to go with it.  It’s usually not fair to compare one film to another, but in this case, I don’t feel too guilty about it, because all I’m really saying is that Gareth Evans and Iko Uwais have grown and improved as director and actor, respectively, which is nothing but a compliment.  Even if it’s not as impressive as its successor, Merantau is still a very fine martial arts film in its own right for any fan of the genre or, for that matter, anyone who’s only vaguely familiar with the genre.

Rating: ☀☀☀☀
Four out of five suns

Sucker Punch (2011) - You would think that Sucker Punch would be a winner on the premise alone - attractive women in short skirts fighting giant things.  Maybe that’s not a guaranteed good movie, but it’s a guaranteed entertaining B-movie, surely.  Really, the fact that this movie is about girls trying to escape a mental health institution that protagonist Baby Doll (Emily Browning) imagines is a dance hall brothel could place it into the Women In Prison subgenre, which is full of B-grade movies that mostly suck but have some spark - tongue-in-cheek humor, charming actresses, actual sparks from things exploding - that makes them, at the very least, watchable.  Sucker Punch, however,doesn’t really even have that.  What it does have is a really odd relationship with rape.  Rape is used as the catalyst for the whole story - Baby Doll’s little sister is raped by her stepfather, Baby Doll tries to kill him and accidentally kills the sister instead, then ends up committed in an insane asylum that she imagines is a high-end dance hall brothel.  The fact that the girls in the brothel are forced into prostitution further implies rape, and beyond that, there’s the implication that every time Baby Doll dances to distract a man in her brothel fantasy, she’s actually being raped in her asylum reality.  This last point is particularly thorny, because the film sets up her dancing as an act of control and personal empowerment, which is why she has her further action/war fantasies as she dances, but that then associates the same power to her position as a rape victim, which is troubling.  This is the main reason many have claimed the film sexualizes rape, although some have also argued that it’s actually a feminist-friendly portrayal of the coping mechanisms rape victims really use.  I can’t say which argument is right or wrong, because truly the film isn’t explicit enough about what’s actually happening in the reality of the mental asylum to firmly claim either side as the “right” argument.  Either way, though, the ending is subsequently awful, because it sets up Baby Doll as a sacrifice without making a good case in the film for why she has to be a sacrifice in brothel world or asylum reality, and, to be fair, it really only adds to the argument of the film glamorizing victimization, because she fulfills her duty in a hero by making herself a victim for a final time.  Also, isn’t it odd that in asylum reality, we have to assume that the girls ended up dead there too and that the girl who escaped may actually have needed to be institutionalized, as in, maybe Baby Doll just helped release a mentally unstable murderer back into society?  The whole triple-layer narrative structure is confusing, not because it’s hard to follow, because it’s not, but because it’s hard to understand why a girl wanting to escape the reality of one awful world would do so by imagining herself into another equally awful one.  Zach Snyder doesn’t do enough to explain and give motivation to Baby Doll’s layers of fantasy, and so it’s hard to believe and emotionally invest in anything that’s happening.  The same problems apply to the characters themselves.  Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish) gets enough characterization to actually be a definable character, but the other girls in Baby Doll’s posse are incredibly undeveloped.  At most, we get that Rocket (Jena Malone) is nice and was a runaway, and then absolutely nothing about Jamie Chung and Vanessa Hudgen’s characters beyond their names.  Even Baby Doll herself doesn’t actually get much; the opening scene gives her back story, and from then on she’s a rather blank character.  This makes sense for being a victim of trauma closed off from the world, but it really doesn’t help the audience establish a connection with her.  It’s hard to salvage a film that has an overly-convoluted, poorly written plot and underdeveloped characters, but some might say, hey, at least the films looks good, right?  Actually, no.  I hated the visuals too.  The production design really isn’t anything special - the mental asylum looks like a mental asylum, the dance hall and brothel looks like a dance hall and brothel.  The CGI isn’t anything special either, and what’s more, it only makes a film that’s already failing to make me believe in the world it’s creating even more unbelievable by being so clearly fake and devoid of real danger or stakes (also, the choice of villains in the dance fantasies are so random that I have no reason to actually care about who or what they’re fighting).  But what’s most damaging to the film’s visuals is Snyder’s extreme overuse of slow-motion.  Clearly he’s trying using the technique to make everything more intense and powerful and epic, but he uses slow-motion over and over and over again, so much so that by trying to make everything epic, he succeeds in making nothing epic.  I know some of you will think the rating I’m about to give Sucker Punch is too low or too harsh, but the fact is, even while I don’t find this film as outright offensive as some other viewers have, I can’t come up with a single thing in this film that is worthy of praise.  I can’t even give it credit for being a film about women, because it’s not a film about women; it’s a film about men objectifying women and pretending that having them commit violence is somehow a form of empowerment.  If the film had been an exploration and critique of men objectifying women, it may well have been a great film, but it’s not that.  It has nothing of merit to say about objectification of women; it merely participates in it.  It’s exploitation without the decency of traditional exploitation films like the WIP movies to embrace its status as exploitation.

Rating: ☀
One out of five suns

Tabu
2012
Directed by Miguel Gomes

Tabu, a Portuguese film by director Miguel Gomes, is one that I would gladly recommend, but that recommendation comes with a caveat: if you watch the film, don’t give up too quickly.  The film opens with a poetic, slightly surreal tale, narrated in voice over by Gomes himself, of an explorer with a broken heart who jumps into an African river and is devoured by a crocodile.  This prologue is revealed to be part of a film being watched by Pilar (Teresa Madruga), a religious and somewhat lonely middle-aged woman.  The first part of the film, entitled “Paradise Lost”, deals with Pilar and her relationship with her apartment neighbors Aurora (Laura Soveral), an eccentric elderly woman who is also lonely and becoming increasingly senile, and Santa (Isabel Muñoz Cardoso), Aurora’s African housekeeper who struggles to take care of the obstinate old woman.  This first half of the film isn’t terrible by any means - in fact, the relationship dynamics between the women are quite interesting, with Pilar acting as a surrogate for Aurora’s absent daughter, Pilar taking responsibility for Aurora despite having no material relationship with her beyond being her neighbor, and Santa’s stoic frustration at having to be responsible for Aurora and getting no respect (and presumably little pay) in return - but it is decidedly slow in its pacing, and that slowness is compounded by the absence of music, the subdued nature of the acting, and the relative mundanity of the story.  I still appreciated the atmospheric nature and the simple beauty of the black and white cinematography capturing the urban environment, but I can’t deny that this first section is in no way exceptional.

That changes, however, as soon as the film enters its second half, entitled “Paradise”, which is why I implore anyone who watches this movie not to walk out or stop the movie before it gets to this second half.  At the end of the first section, as Aurora becomes more ill and is placed in the hospital, she asks Pilar to find a man named Gian-Luca Ventura (Henrique Espírito Santo).  After Aurora’s death, Ventura relays in voice over the story of how he knows Aurora, that story comprising the film’s second part.  In it, a young Aurora (Ana Moreira) is living with her husband at the foot of Tabu Mountain in Portuguese Africa in the 1960s.  Ventura (Carloto Cotta) is a young womanizer and wanderer who finds himself living with a close friend of Aurora’s husband near Tabu Mountain when he meets Aurora.  Initially, the two know each other only casually, meeting when Aurora’s pet crocodile escapes and ends up in Ventura’s bathtub, but the two eventually start a sudden and passionate love affair, one that naturally becomes increasingly more complicated and difficult to maintain.  The main draw of this final section is that it is filmed entirely without dialogue.  Characters speak to one another, we see their mouths move, but we don’t hear them speak.  We only hear the voice of the elderly Ventura as he tells the story of his past and, quite ingeniously, the sounds of the African wilderness that surrounds the young lovers as well as the sound effects of their movements (foot steps, doors closing, music from the record player, etc.).  This technique is highly evocative, acting both as a tribute to the storytelling power of silent film, where gestures and looks convey the desires and regrets of the two lovers just as well as any dialogue could if not better; and as a filmed interpretation of how we remember our past, often remembering the general details of what happened and smaller sensory details of sight, sound, and touch without remembering exact conversations, and how we create images in our mind when we hear stories, again forming the general details of what a scene might look like, sound like, smell like, without necessarily creating entire dialogues between the figures in our mind.  The technique thus gives this second half of the film an aura of dreaminess, as if Ventura himself remembers it like he was remembering a dream, not his own past.  This aura is further established with the cinematography, still black and white and even more beautiful in capturing the details of the love story and the environment, the animals, and the people around them, and the occasional use of ’60s music, songs that are particularly heavy on reverb and already sound dreamy even outside of the context of the film.

This second section is romantic, inventive, and thrilling, a nearly perfect little piece of filmmaking that truly feels like the visual equivalent of the mental images created by someone remembering or hearing the story of an old love affair - idealized, romanticized, full of joy and tragedy.  It’s more than worth it to make it through the first half of the film to get to it, even if you’re someone who has little patience for “slow” films.  I wouldn’t recommend skipping the first section and watching only the second section, either, because that first section helps to establish a counter-tone to the second section.  That overall feeling of loneliness and unfulfilled longing makes the second section more powerful in comparison, and it adds a further level of meaning and tragedy to the story knowing what was eventually to come for Aurora and Ventura in their older years.

Rating: ☀☀☀☀
Four out of five suns