2073**

Just watched Asif Kapadia’s new film 2073. It’s an odd and not particularly successful mashup of 80pc contemporary political doc and 20pc dystopian fictional film. The doc is depressing but doesn’t have anything new to say about how Big Tech is subverting democracy. And even Samantha Morton can’t save the awkwardly morose 2073 sections set in a climate-ravaged world. I think the problem may be that in a week when Elon Musk is literally trying to subvert British democracy and Mark Zuckerberg decided to appease the Felon-In-Chief, we don't really need a nicely edited clip reel of how the world is going to hell in a hand basket. The issue isn't complacency. The issue is that we are all too well-informed and all too clueless as to how to stop it. (You notice here, that I assume no-one who like Musk and Trump are going to watch this, let alone be persuaded by it). So, in the final analysis, this is just a pointless but worthy agit-doc that is preaching to the converted.

 

2073 has a running time of 85 minutes. It played Venice, Sitges and London 2024. It opened in the USA on December 27th 2024 and in the UK on January 1st 2025.

SELMA

You can listen to a podcast review of this film here or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes:



SELMA is a handsomely made, beautifully acted and devastatingly searing movie about the 1965 Voting Rights March from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.  It's also a movie about the difference between having a right in theory and having a right in practice, and as such, is a profoundly important and timely film.  What it isn't, and thank goodness for that, is a conventional hagio-biography in the Great Man does Great Things genre.  This isn't, and sorry to keep going on about it, as dumb as THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING.

The movie opens with Martin Luther King already a major political force. He has the ear of President Johnson and wins the Nobel Peace Prize. But despite the end of segregation by Federal Law, in Governor George Wallace's Alabama, African Americans are still subject to extreme racism.  In an elegant, swift and brutal opening triptych we are therefore given King's Nobel acceptance speech; the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing; and Annie Lee Cooper being denied her application to register to vote on the most spurious and humiliating of grounds. 

A MOST VIOLENT YEAR

You can listen to a podcast review of this film here or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes:

A MOST VIOLENT YEAR is a bad film that could've been iconic - a movie so steeped in cinema heritage that it slides into pastiche - a movie that reaches for greatness but trips over its own shoelaces in a final act that had the audience laughing at it rather than being awed by it. 

All of which is a great shame because the writer-director of the film, J C Chandor, is a great director.  His film MARGIN CALL remains the most powerful and understated examination of how Wall Street really works that I've ever seen.  ALL IS LOST pitted Robert Redford against the elements and in doing so created something like a profound exploration of character and worth.  These films had a style and a set of concerns that were new and unique to J C Chandor.  They felt authentic and urgent.  By contrast, A MOST VIOLENT YEAR seems like a slow and lingering meditation on an earlier time, both in New York history and in cinema history.

AIN'T THEM BODIES SAINTS

AIN'T THEM BODIES SAINTS is a handsome but derivative drama from first-time feature director David Lowery. It owes all its award-winning cinematographical style and thematic concern to Terrence Mallick - at best a homage and at worst a pastiche.  It's all dappled sunlight across flowing wheatfields and a moody melancholic folk violin score.  There's the omnipresent voice-over and young lovers pitted against impersonal forces.  That the movie is for the most part well-cast is just a waste of talent.

The movie stars Casey Affleck as Rooney Mara as young couple Bob and Ruth living in the rural South.  Early on, they carry out a heist that goes bad and Bob takes the jail-time to allow the pregnant Ruth to raise their daughter in safety - their only communication doleful letters. Four years later, Bob escapes and makes the journey home pursued by bounty hunters, while Ruth is courted by the local sheriff (Ben Foster) and sheltered by Bob's father (Keith Carradine.)

The resulting film is slow-paced to the point of tedium. There are shoot-outs but this isn't a heist film. The emotional chords are stretched so far they snap and while nicely done, the film just feels sub-Mallick. To be honest, you'd more profitably spend your time re-watching BADLANDS.

AIN'T THEM BODIES SAINTS has a running time of 96 minutes and is rated R.   The film played Sundance, where Bradford Young won the cinematography award, and Cannes 2013 and was released earlier this year in the USA. It is currently on release in the UK, Ireland and Israel. It opens later in September in France, in October in Greece and Singapore, in November in Belgium, in December in Sweden and Turkey, in March 2014 in the Netherlands and Japan, in May in Spain and in July in Brazil.