Drama
Noah’s Barks pages relating to the drama genre.
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Bronson
An entertaining but ultimately shallow waste of potential. Bronson hints at social commentary beyond the story of its character with its metanarrative’s stand-up sections that seem to be leading into discussions about goading the mentally ill into stardom and exploiting it, but instead the film drops this for nothing. This flavor of Bronson as a… (read more)
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Fallen Angels
Fallen Angels is better than Chungking Express. More effort is put into having the disparate stories connect to each other both literally and thematically. As a wandering city romantic I wanted to like this more than I did, but Wong Kar-Wai’s excessively quirky characters drag down the genuine emotion in the narrative and make the… (read more)
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Ivan’s Childhood
Very solid stuff. Burlyaev’s performance is one of the best I’ve seen from a child. Tarkovsky’s dream sequences and the lighting techniques he uses to divide them from reality are a highlight. Otherwise, Ivan’s Childhood didn’t grab me too much on a personal level. With so many “horrors of war” films, something either connects or… (read more)
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Belle de Jour
I continue to like the ideas of Luis Buñuel more than his actual films. His humiliation of the bourgeois continues in Belle de Jour, but there’s an additional element I’d not seen before: an actual sympathy towards sexual deviants as people repressed by the expectations of society. Catherine Deneuve becomes a victim herself as the… (read more)
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Antichrist
Antichrist is a good counterexample of what kind of horror works best on me. The atmosphere is there, the imagery and implications are all shocking, but I’m unmoved because I never establish a connection and empathize with the characters. It’s all fictional regardless, but identifying with fear is the only way I can feel it… (read more)
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Death in the Garden
Death in the Garden is a fairly typical escape/wilderness survival story with the usual themes of psychological degradation. Something so standard is disappointing coming from Luis Buñuel, and while the characters all develop the direction doesn’t transcend the basic plot. And while the premise had not become tired yet, even identifiably unique things like the… (read more)
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Paterson
Focuses on a normal life in Paterson, New Jersey but while the characters are likable it becomes unrealistic to insist on such surface characters and a stiff script. It’s often about complacency and so dedicated to that that the movie stays in one place too. What do this couple have in common? What does this… (read more)
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Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
One of the very rare movies I watch that I feel could benefit from being significantly longer. Tim Burton‘s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street adaptation cuts out parts of the original play, and it can blatantly be seen through the story’s ruthless pace and sudden character development. And yet, its tone saves… (read more)
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Mermaid Forest
Legendary manga author Rumiko Takahashi’s series of parables about immortality are adapted in Mermaid Forest. Why didn’t that equate to a good series? (read more)
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Fate/Zero
‘Fate/Zero’ completely botches the potentially interesting things about its own premise, and all it gets in return is weightless drama between poorly-defined characters and stakes. (read more)