Day Sixteen - Done and done.

What better way to finish off the festival than with these two movies:


AMREEKA

Trailer:


Mood Before movie: Last day, what could go wrong.

Ass-o-meter: Great.

Comments:

Amreeka is the story of a mother and her son making the move from the West Bank to America. The film is also set in the time at the start of the Iraq war when Americans were at their least tolerant of anyone from the middle east.

The beauty of this movie is that it's not based around a family escaping the troubles of the middle east, but instead, are moving because the opportunity (visa) happened to come unexpectedly. So instead of the usual tragic tail that you might expect from this topic, this film has a much lighter edge.

I quite enjoyed the approach of this movie, and the fact that the characters were not really ever in a crazy movie type plot, but rather in much more true to life circumstances. It's definitely worth watching.

Rating: 3.5/5


BRAN NUE DAE

Trailer:



Mood Before movie: Last movie!

Ass-o-meter: Good.

Comments:
Going into this movie I knew it was a musical, and I can't remember a good musical since Julie Andrews was still making them. My biggest problem with musicals is that generally the musical pieces are shoe-horned in amongst the dialogue and it all feels very unnatural. My other general annoyance with the musical is that it always seems even more staged because everyone is always lip synced really badly with the music and there's always a disconnect between the audio and visuals (which always takes me out of the experience).

So with the above issues that I have with musicals and the fact that the title of this movie looks like it was text messaged from a twelve year old, I'm happy to report that this movie wasn't half bad... Yep, you heard me... The main reason why this movie worked is that it doesn't take itself at all seriously, and exists in a hyper real version of 1969 and all the characters seem to know it. Sure, all the dialogue and singing is ADRed, and a few of the songs are a bit lame, but the fact that this movie has it's tongue firmly in it's cheek makes it quite a fun ride.

I RECKN IT WOS PRETY GOOD.

Rating: 3.5/5


It's sad to say that my holidays are over, and it's back to my day job... Well, that is until next year!!

TO BE CONTINUED....

(Roll Credits)