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Barely a Splash

Barely a Splash: A Review by: Nicole Klein How does one take the sport of large-waving surfing, a sport where one risk serious injury of a slow and painful death   by drowning just to skate along on 30 foot wave boring? It seems the director of the documentary Heavy Water aimed to do just that. Aside from way too many slow motion pans across mountainous gushing waves, this documentary seems to lack the stakes this real-world story already had. Heavy Water focuses its attention on a series of surfer Nathan Fletcher’s exploits, leaving little more than talking heads and those same shots of Hokusai-esque waves over and over and over again. It isn’t until the tail end of the documentary that a pattern starts to emerge; fletcher seeks to honor deceased friends and family members through pioneering what he calls the ‘acid drop’, a dive from a helicopter onto the largest wave he can find. It’s quite a shame that this was the most compelling story this film could muster, as it only o...
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#MakeRacismScaryAgain

#MakeRacismScaryAgain A Review by: Nicole Klein For quite a few years now, many have doubted if Spike Lee’s directorial stylings were what they used to be. Needless to say, Spike Lee’s newest offering, a little adaptation by the name of BlacKkKlansman feels like the triumphant return that fans of his work have been dreaming of for years. Although darkly comedic in an in-your-face, almost Tarantino-esque way, BlacKkKlansman doesn’t shy away from the timely social criticism when needed, quite the contrary, BlacKkKlansman is a dual-natured film. At times it delivers deadpan humor and dry wit. However, when it comes time for the discourse, BlacKkKlansman unapologetically aims to make racism downright scary again. In this fictionalized adaptation of an autobiography of the same name, John David Washington plays Ron Stallworth, the first black police officer of the Colorado Springs police department. Ron Stallworth, at first assigned to grunt-work by his chief, quickly moves to the r...
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Cannes Day 12

Ah the final day of the festival; it certainly didn't disappointed. I got into Cannes at 11 and Immediately got busy getting all I could into the day. I went around to souvenir shops for my dad and I and got my mom some fancy french chocolate. I went again to look for my tiny phone, but had no such luck. Oh well, I guess I'll have to bite the 50€ bullet. It could be worse. I was lucky enough to find my way into a screening of Blackkklansman , a film all my peers have been raving about. The hype was not unwarranted; it was easily one of the best films I've seen throughout this whole festival. After that, I tried begging for closing tickets, to no avail. Oddly enough, some little old woman interrupted my begging, just by approaching me asking what I was doing. Then we ended up getting into a 40 minute conversation about God, her acting career, and the sorry state of the world. I'm not sorry I had that experience, even if she wierded me out a bit. I ran into another gro...
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Cannes Day 11

Yesterday wasn't all that interesting a day. I spent the morning on reviews and missed blog posts, delaying my arrival into Cannes to 2:30. When I got there, I tried a restaurant Namita recommended; I certainly wasn't dissatisfied. After having a lunch of duck breast (a cut of the bird that tastes remarkably like a good bloody steak), I went into the festival in search of my small phone. Unfortunately, they didn't find it. The only film I saw was Lazzaro Felice which was damned outstanding. Seeing that film definitely gave me an appreciation for 'arthouse' cinema. I rode the train back to JLP and just kinda explored for a couple hours.
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THE CITY THAT SHOULDN’T BE FOUND

The Last Prince of Atlantis seems to be an endurance test. It seems to dare its audience how long it is willing to wade through a Dantean river of excrement before it wants to pull itself out of the muck and leave. The Last Prince of Atlantis is a lesson in its own regard, a lesson on how not to make an animated feature, a lesson in what happens when one waits through something seemingly exciting that will ultimately offer only disappointment. Truly it was a spectacle to witness a film where everything was done absolutely incorrectly, but it is not a spectacle I would eager recommend others partake in. Quite the contrary, this little film is a spectacle on par with a destructive volcanic eruption or a massive hurricane; it is devastating and tragic to behold, but one can’t help but keep their eyes glued to it. The Last Prince of Atlantis juggles way too many plot lines for its own good. The first features an Indiana Jones-type character dismissed as insane by his peers for seeking...
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Savauge: Heartbreaking Melodrama, or Well-Shot Porn?

I’m not quite sure how to feel about Savauge . On the one hand, it’s a well shot, well-acted film that’s incredibly aesthetically pleasing and offers a tragic tale that will haymaker-punch you in   the heart down to the last second. On the other hand, it’s essentially explicit gay porn, with full frontal nudity from its actors and all. The pornographic elements pull no punches either, as the sound designers have made sure you the viewer can hear every swallow of semen. I get that the film’s leads were male prostitutes, but I felt the film’s desire to get as explicit as it possibly was quite distracting from the emotionally weighty story this film was trying to tell. This isn’t to say that this is a bad film by any stretch of the imagination. Quite the contrary; when this film’s plot can climb above the mountain of penises, its character interactions and cinematography are impressively emotional. 6.9/10 ·       Producer: Emmanuel Giraud ·  ...
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Cannes Day 10

Yesterday was quite eventful. I got into Cannes at around 11 and got breakfast at what's easily my favorite bakery in the damned city. I took it with me to the palais and scheduled out my viewings for the day as I ate. It seemed as though the herds have thinned, as market screenings have all but ended. Luckily for me, this meant I could get caught up on the competition films I'd missed. You see, I've gone about this festival with a philosophy of just seeing movies based on title alone to go in more unbiased. Doing so has given me a whole spectrum of movies to view, be they the next classics or worse than The Room. Now I can catch up on the best things since there's no more muddled water to wade through, so to speak. What I ended up seeing were Savauge, La Hora de los Hornos, and The Harvesters.  Savauge  is a film I can only describe as gay porn with a melodrama's plot. La Hora de los Hornos  was Argentine communist propaganda from the 1960's filmed like a c...
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