Film Review: Kajaki (2014)

Copyright: Alchemy Releasing

To a degree, it is safe to expect a significant level of brutality from a war film. Last year, Fury managed to shock me to the core, even though I thought I was desensitized to the Hollywood-type depiction of modern-day combat, especially for those films that are set in the WW2.

Kajaki is also a brutal film, but not in the sense that it presents the physical suffering of its characters (even though there is plenty of that as well), but because it shows the terrifying virtual environment where minds and bodies can exist in a parallel dimension of pure horror, but which is determined not by physical laws, but by a decision of some individual or a group of individuals which declared that a war is worth fighting for.

In the case of Kajaki movie, that imaginary environment is a valley in Afghanistan, where a detachment of soldiers ends up getting bogged down not by enemy fire, but by forgotten cluster of landmines. Here, their options are fenced in by the physical reality of the mines and the responsibility they feel for each other. In this setup, located on a space smaller than a surface of a larger house, completely in the open, the characters suffer, risk life and limb and make choices under the Afghan sun.

The film�s director Paul Katis explores the spaces of both the landscape and the minds of those who linger on in this deadly afternoon, some because they do not have legs to walk away on, others because they do not have the heart to leave the wounded behind. Kajaki narrative is so masochistically to its characters (even though it is based on actual events and depicts them truthfully) that the audience has to be appalled to some extent. Here, there are no bad guys getting killed and no civilians getting saved like in the Lone Survivor, another true tale from the same land. Almost like a pseudo-religious experience of martyrdom, the film shows what war can mean when dying is pointless (from a geopolitical point of view) and being a hero makes you one of the victims in a split second.

Kajaki is a brutal piece about war and we need films like these badly. It shows us what happens when reality does not follow a flag-waving narrative about the glories of combat and simply serves meaningless misery upon all those who happen to be in a wrong place.

Crowdfunding Push: iSyndrome

A new interesting crowdfunding campaign is looking to make a short science fiction film with the topic of terrifying psychological disorder called iSyndrome. The film plans to focus consciousness and the way it is represented in the minds of individuals, but also in a wider cultural context. The iSyndrome official Indiegogo page states:

iSyndrome is a 20-minute narrative short film about a young and brilliant brain researcher suffering from Depersonalization Disorder, losing his mind. His wife, a post-materialist researcher, tries everything she can to save him, even if it means reaching the end of life, and going to the heart of consciousness. 

Barak Shavit, an Israeli filmmaker is the man behind this film and it�s impressive to see him go for the mixture of science fiction and hard-hitting drama. Films like these are usually difficult to pull off because most see Sci-Fi as a collection of tech gimmicks and visual amazement that is not primarily cerebral in nature, where the added drama often feels forced and unnecessary. But, Shavit seems to have a clear vision and has already measured up the atmosphere he desires to achieve, making iSyndrome seem very promising.

Currently, the film raised around 30% of its target. Visit the film's Indiegogo page and see how you can help make iSyndrome come to life.

If you're looking for exposure for your film-related project, contact me right here.

Film Review: The Gunman (2015)

Copyright: Open Road Films

Right off the bat, the Gunman fails to properly present a time transition which bridges a 7-year period. In this timeframe, the main character goes from a mercenary and a cold blooded killer to a humanitarian well digger. But, the film is not able to present this jump in any other shape or form apart from shaving off Sean Penn�s mustache. As the story progresses, its director Pierre Morel continues to make mistakes basically in the same manner � he does what needs to be done, but the same simply does not successes in making an impression or being coherent with the broader story.

And the story is ripe with politics, danger and betrayal. Set in the Congo, England and Spain, it is worth of a thriller built on the Bourne model. Its action sequences are dynamic, fast and well crafted, providing the film with its main driving force. The talking part, however, is a lot more lukewarm and anemic, mostly because it struggles to focus on the plight of central Africa, the greed of the corporate white devils and the idea of the main character going through some form of repentance, all at the same time.

But, during his adventure where he leaves a trail of bodies behind him, Penn is equally unable to provide a tangible person. While he looked just fine in the trailers, the film�s full exposure of his character brought about a space filled with an alliance of movie tropes. He desires to be saved, but also resents his criminal deeds. The love of his life is the most important person in his universe, but he still left her in an African civil war. He is determined to find who is after him but does not have a clue what to do next. To say it mildly, the Gunman movie is not very convincing when it presents its most important element. 

While it does offer some excitement and unexpected action segments, it is clear that Pierre Morel is a lot better when it comes to presenting a series of combat vignettes similar to his Taken than a thriller dense with political context. Sean Penn, because of his interest in the plight of the Third world, must have been drawn to the script�s ideas. Judging on the success of The Gunman, he should probably find other ways of sharing his ideas about the issues of Africa and other not-so-well-to-do  places.

So Bad it�s Good: The Counselor (2013)

Copyright: 20th Century Fox

Many films demand a certain state of mind if they are to be experienced to the fullest. For the Counselor, that state of mind should be something between feeling very sleepy and being exceedingly agitated. In this golden zone of inactivity (sleep) and frantic activity fueled by anxiety and frustration (agitation), it produces a unique experience. Here, the film shines like a true diamond of total overconfidence, in spite of the fact that it was built on devastate foundations of a script that is not simply overly ambitious, but aims for the spot of a modern masterpiece. The result is a funny and pointless film, but not because of its plot holes and illogical series of events, but because it seems to believe that not many thrillers of modern time can be compared with it.

This is seen from the first moment when the basic relations are set. In it, Michael Fassbender plays a successful attorney and a man who desires to get into drug trafficking, but knows nothing of it. Javier Bardem plays Reiner, his guide on this perilous journey, who has more experience and a lot better fashion style. Together, they initiate a financial series of events that gradually summon a Mexican cartel to their lives when all begins to fall apart.

Aside from these two incredible actors, there are many other who know their craft, but nothing of this is relevant next to the script. Here, the writer, who is a brilliant man by the name of Cormac McCarthy, a man who created the masterpiece called The Blood Meridian, managed to cook up a mixture of speeches which are all twice as large as life. Everything in the film is followed by a witty narrative segment and every line is not only a punch line, but a wrecking ball when it comes to its desired impact. In every minute, some character says something worthy of Cesar or Napoleon during their most important battles, and the sheer amount of serious situations clutters everything. 

The film�s director Ridley Scott, just like in the case of Prometheus, once again fails to successfully wrestle with inadequate scripts and instead tries to glide through them, resulting in complete calamity. When the talking stops, the film switched gears into a gritty action film with bursts of Uzi automatic fire and machine-induced beheadings, which makes even less sense then the overspent cerebral approach and mastery of introspection, which is a trait of every character that appears on screen for more than one minute.

In some variations, the McCarthy�s script would work, if the setting was rural Arizona where everyone was dirt poor, but still behaved like a Harvard philosophy professor without any explanation who this came to be. Rian Johnson and his movie Brick managed to pull this off a decade ago. But when McCarthy�s work was brought to life using Scott�s blockbuster approach and set in a super-glamorous setting, it lost all meaning and become infused with presumptuousness that is rarely seen in this magnitude. Unlike other badly devised but presumptuous films like Before I Go to Sleep, this one is not flawed when it comes to its story. This is definitely a plus, but at the end, as Linking Park says, it doesn�t really matter. 

The Counselor is a hilarious concoction that can only be enjoyed as a disfigured reminder that some things don�t work well together, even if they are great separately. Also, it is a reminder that Ridley Scott really didn�t make a good film since the American Gangster.

Coming Soon: The Stranger (2014)

Written and directed by Guillermo Amoedo and produced by Eli Roth, The Stranger tells a tale about a man who arrives into a small town looking for his wife. He soon finds the thing he is after, but this also unleashes carnage upon the same place.

The film seems really low-key, focused mainly on the actors and the rather ordinary-looking violence (which makes it all the more awful), but also pushes a supernatural premise in the mix. Recently, Roth showed that he is really keen on producing interesting mystery-horror films and The Stranger looks exactly like this.

Its official trailer weirdly reminds me of the No One Lives movie, but I'm not sure exactly why, or even if this should be a good or bad thing for the film.

The film starts its limited cinematic run today in the US and you can watch its trailer below.

Film Review: Run all Night (2014)

Copyright: Warner Bros. Pictures

Judging by his recent films, the director Jaume Collet-Serra really digs funky camera tricks and hiring Liam Neeson as that washed-out guy who suddenly has to save the day. Run all Night film fits into this category, just like last year�s Non-Stop did. Once again, Neeson settles into the role of a guy who likes to drink and just wants to gradually and quietly kill himself via autodestructing when cruel faith decides to draft him into a noble cause.

This time, he assumes the role of Jimmy Conlon, a former organized crime hit man who must save his son from both the Irish mob and the local police during a single night that will either kill them or result in redemption. Neeson slides into Conlon like a coin into a 30-year-old pay phone, but there is a serious lack of any substance that plagues this film from the beginning to the end.

Collet-Serra focused on the visual, making run all Night film dense with virtual camera transitions which show what occurring to different characters in different parts of the town. He also obviously enjoyed making the chase segments of the film, but the glue that should bind them is sorely lacking. For a film that has Ed Harris, Vincent D'Onofrio and even a few minutes of Nick Nolte, it completely fails to do anything meaningful with its characters. The segment with Nolte, where Conlon remembers his old crime (which is totally irrelevant to the audience to be shown as a flashback) clearly testifies that Collet-Serra did not have a clue how to unravel the narrative so that the audience gets a real grip of the people in it.

Rotating the camera and adding laser sights to bad guys, on the other hand, is something with which Collet-Serra is completely comfortable. For me, run all Night film would have much more sense if it was something similar to an all-out action film like The Equalizer (which is far from perfect, but at least it is true to its visual form), instead of going for that thick layer of life associated with the old school organized crime in the eastern US. Recently, A Most Violent Year showed how this can be done so that it encompasses both a thriller element and the overall feel of a hard drama.

Run all Night film on the other hand, did not turn out to be an interesting action piece, while it also definitely did not turn out to be a gripping crime film.

Crowdfunding Push: Black Angel

Epic fantasy is something that is currently really popular in many formats, especially video games. But, at the same time, apart from Peter Jackson�s not so brilliant Hobbit trilogy and many fringe, sort of fantasy young adult adaptations of successful novels, there aren�t many movies that delve straight into this territory. Now, there is a crowdfunding campaign aimed at funding a film called Black Angler that is going for the full epic fantasy feel. The film�s Indiegogo page states:

Think Game of Thrones meets Valhalla Rising, Excalibur meets Lord of the Rings. A powerful tale of ancient Celtic magic and Nordic Paganism, it�ll be gritty, dirty and heroic � everything great fantasy should be. The story follows a knight as he journeys deep into the dark underworld with the daughter of a rival king, to meet the face of evil itself and fight the Black Angel in combat. Full of drama, action and heroism, pure light is pitted against eternal darkness and damnation.

The film will be created by Roger Christian, who worked on projects like the original Star Wars and Alien. With this experience, he plans to reimagine his short film by the same name made in 1980 into a full, feature-length epic adventure. The thing which I really like in Christian�s presentation is the vintage fantasy feel that many of its concept art pieces carry with them, but the project as a whole does not seem like a futile push to bring back the �good old times�. The recent Mad Max: Fury Road is a perfect example of how modern cinema definitely has a lot to learn from the semi-forgotten approaches of the previous decades, I�m certain that Black Angle can turn out to be a really good action adventure.

The film campaign started out really well and it�s currently close to 90% of its goal. Check out the film�s official Indiegogo page and see how you can help.

If you're looking for exposure for your film-related project, contact me right here.

Review and Ending Explanation: It Follows (2014)

Copyright: RADiUS-TWC

The beauty of this film is that it really makes you watch it. Unlike regular horrors, or even other films, in its case, watching is not just looking at what the characters are doing, but also what is happening around them. While many scare-based movies go for this, the director of It Follows, David Robert Mitchell took this notion one step further by making the audience into a type of lookout system for the main characters.

In the film, a young woman called Jay has sex with her new boyfriend. But, immediately after, she learns from him that he actually transmitted a curse (sort of) to her, the same one he got from someone else. It involves an invisible creature that walks towards its victim � it does not run, just walks, but can take the appearance of any other human being. If it reaches her, she is dead. After that, he flees and Jay is left with the curse and must find a way to get rid of it or do something about it.

Mitchell uses a weird soundtrack, similar to the film Cold in July, which is also strangely filled with 80�s sounds and synth-pop melodies in a terrifying way. In the film, Jay and other characters are often surrounded by people and some of them do walk towards them. Whenever this happens, the audience has to wonder if they really are stalked by the monster or is the same figure just an ordinary person. This stroke of genius is what makes If Follows a movie full of suspense and terror that comes from expecting something grisly to happen.

Of course, Mitchell is a young filmmaker and the movie is not perfect. Mainly, it rushes to demystify its creature to a certain point, its pacing is uneven and some elements are completely off as if they were taken from some other film of his (the boat scene, for example). But, its strongest suits make it a film that cannot be compared to many others currently out there, especially when it comes to those which try to advance the horror genre.

It Follows is a film that took horror into new and interesting waters of suspense and audience immersion, along with its symbolic message of STD�s. Because of this, it is a small genre masterpiece.

It Follows Ending Explained

Spoiler Alert


This is how I understood the ending of the film (ignoring the notion of sexually transmitted diseases and watching the film just as a horror) � Jay gives the curse Paul after they have sex and Paul is later seen driving by some prostitutes. In the last scene, the figure that is seen following Jay and Paul. This figure is not the monster � it is just a regular person (most likely). Here�s why:

The idea is that Paul had sex with someone who has intercourses many times a day. This means that the same prostitute will spread the curse without even knowing she has it. If the next victim (the prostitute�s customer) is then killed, the curse goes back to her. But then, she once more has sex in less than 24 hours (most likely), giving it to someone else, whom the monster then needs to start following.

This way, Paul brought the curse to a �sex nexus� where it can linger on without anyone noticing that murders are taking place, especially because many of the prostitute�s victims are not locals, but only passing through and the curse is not activated the same second it is passed on. Because of that, the ending explanation can only be that the person behind Jay and Paul in the last scene has been just a passerby.

Because of Paul�s intercourse with the prostitute, both he and Jay are safe for the time being.