Smashbomb

"Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1900 is one of my favorites. It’s epic — when I saw it at a film festival, they literally had an intermission where they served pasta and red wine. It was wonderful. It’s a thin, handsome Gérard Depardieu in the prime of his youth, and Robert De Niro doing a great aging character, the rich boy. Depardieu [as] the poor boy. Probably one of the greatest entrances in the history of cinema for the beautiful actress Dominique Sanda. And Bertolucci uses this town, this little village — and you see it go from the turn of the century to WWII, and it changes with the seasons, and the time. And one of the best villains ever, Donald Sutherland, as this sort of grand guignol, a fascista, brown shirt — you know, black shirt — that is corrupted by the Mussolini movement in Italy. And he just completely surprises you with his performance. It’s really wonderful and kinky, and strange and beautiful. And the music is extraordinary. Yeah, it’s really a great film — a long movie, but a great movie — and it really left an indelible stamp on my brain. All these movies in my top five are what I call “desert island” movies. These are films that I can see again and again, and they have sequences or images in them, or they’ve left such a film memory in my imagination — such a stamp on my memory and imagination — that I can see them again and again."

Source

Kudos

BookInspector (124 KP) rated Hank Brodt Holocaust Memoirs: A Candle and a Promise in Books

Sep 24, 2020

For me, it is always incredibly sad to read holocaust memoirs or any memoirs related to concentration camps. The amount of suffering it has brought to the innocent people, it is hard to comprehend.

The description of this book is pretty accurate. This book is a story of a poor polish- Jewish boy called Hank, and how he survived the Holocaust. The story starts with Hank’s childhood to post survival activities. After being taken to the concentration camp, Hank did not stay for long in one place, he was transported many times to different camps, and he shared the events he had to endure and people he met.

The book is accompanied by plenty of photos of different events, different concentration camps which Hank was transported to, and also pictures of Hank’s family. I loved the short chapters, and I finished this memoir in one sitting. For me it was gripping and I really wanted to find out what happened next after each chapter. So, to conclude, I am very happy that Hank had a chance to survive and shared his experiences with all the readers. It was a horrible period in human history, and I believe that it should not be left forgotten. So, if you into WWII books, give this book a go, it is a chilling read, filled with pain and sorrow, but it shows, that even in the worst of times, some people can still keep their kindness.

Kudos

LoganCrews (2861 KP) rated Ip Man (2010) in Movies

Sep 19, 2020

Ip Man (2010)

2010 | Action, Drama

7.7

(6 Ratings)

Movie Rating

My undying love for martial arts films relinquishes me my right to justifiably dislike this rather disappointing experience. Don't get me wrong, it's a rock-solid actioner filled with crunchy, brute fight sequences that always left me with a big, dumb grin on my face - choreographed to blissful perfection. But I just can't with the rest of it man, I'd be lying if I said it didn't have its moments but does every one of these mopey WWI/WWII films have to be so lusterless and conventional? I found the melodrama here to be particularly dry, simple, and flat - seemingly inert - at *least* 17 minutes too long. Feels like a clunkier and cheaper riff of Jet Li's 𝘍𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 but more repetitive and way less exciting, even the fights start to wear as it continues to slug on. Donnie Yen carries it well and almost personally saves it from mediocrity, I'm really sure this means well but I feel like I've seen this film fifty times - thank Lord for the A-class martial arts because the war stuff has the same invasive yet stagnant existence as a much less visually accomplished 𝘔𝘦𝘮𝘰𝘪𝘳𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘢 𝘎𝘦𝘪𝘴𝘩𝘢. To me this feels like an inexperienced director's first movie (even though it isn't, apparently) but then Yen comes in and beats the shit out of people with a hilariously long bamboo stick and everything is okay again.

Kudos

LoganCrews (2861 KP) rated The Guest (2014) in Movies

Sep 20, 2020

The Guest (2014)

2014 | Horror, Mystery, Thriller

7.9

(15 Ratings)

Movie Rating

You'd believe this purposefully sidesteps its possible themes or commentary on the adverse effects on war and a government that will sooner do shady things to save a microscopic smidgen of face rather than its own supposed heroes (though it still does a vastly superior job of showcasing them than most autopilot, sleep-inducing, reductive, and recycled WWII movies as of late), hell it hardly even sets up its own backstory let alone the potential depth of it all... but also who *really* cares when the resulting product is a legitimately balls-to-the-wall, terminally fun blast of awesome sauce like this? Wingard is the fucking man, the amount of directors I'd excuse a plot execution as flawed as this for I could probably count on one hand but the sheer lunacy of this unrestrained pulp powerhouse is more than enough evidence of his gift for unforgettable roller coasters of trash. This all - of course - would be next to nothing if not fueled by Dan Stevens in one of my new favorite performances of all time as a re-educated government massacre machine who behaves more like an inherently hostile alien body snatcher than a human being. Pair it with some cerebral editing, point-blank violence, real propaganda era-esque nuclear camerawork, Lance Reddick, and one of the most euphorically implemented soundtracks in all of film and it was impossible for this to ever fail from the get-go. Loved every second of it.