Today's Review: Alias Maria

The number of reviews written for FilmTotaal still grows:

Alias Maria - recensie

Director José Luis Rugeles has nothing but the best intentions with Alias Maria, but he tries a little too hard to show the full horror of being a young girl growing up in the FARC guerrilla movement. Of course there's little joy to be had and mostly despair to feel, but ninety minutes of watching nothing but misery without offering the tiniest shred of hope makes the audience equally miserable. We can do nothing but sit back and cry injustice about the horrors inflicted upon both women and children in the Colombian jungle, so we end up numb to the entire issue by the time the credits start rolling.

Part of our inability to feel for the plight of Maria, the young female protagonist who ends up pregnant in a society where babies are forbidden save for those of the man in charge, is first time actress' Karen Torres own inability to properly emote. It's laudable Rugeles opted for realism by using people who have lived through some of the same ordeals as their characters, but in terms of acting, it simply backfires. Torres' continuing stoic gaze and the few lines bestowed on her character throughout the piece, don't aid us in rooting for her or her unborn child. Like ourselves when watching this film, she simply undergoes everything that happens with little hope of changing her situation for the better. She and the other FARC guerrillas are like the ants Rugeles highlights throughout the piece: little soldiers with no discernible will of their own who fight and die for the only thing they know. In what few moments of reflecting upon their life Rugeles offers Maria and her fellow drones, contemplating a life outside the terrorist movement never seems to be considered a realistic option.

And their lives doesn't count for much as it is. Children are not allowed to be children here. If they can carry a gun, they are soldiers and so they fight. Same rules apply to them as to their older brothers/sisters in arms. Whoever refuses is shot on the spot, no matter their age. Needless to say, we witness quite a lot of death in Alias Maria. Rugeles doesn't go for excessive gore and violence, but there's still a few moments that show or at least suggest enough to make our stomachs turn. Children are obviously not spared. You'd think an organization that sees its losses mount on a daily basis would be happy with whatever new recruits babies eventually offer. But that's not the case, as baby noise proves to great a risk, even in the dense jungle. Rugeles' point that the FARC has no future, and nor do those who grow up in it, is hammered home quite adequately for his purposes, but at the end, we have simply grown as tired of all the suffering as Maria must be. But lucky us, we can simply leave all her misery behind us and go home...

Today's Review: How to Be Single

Oh look, it's another movie review!:

How to Be Single - recensie

A typical romantic comedy for Valentine's Day, I expect the concept was here. But actually, How to Be Single isn't quite so typical. It just plays with typical characters in typical situations searching for typical love. And atypically, not finding it. Because the ultimate message is that you need to get to know yourself and your own desires before you can adequately satisfy or be satisfied by someone else's. And to do that, you need to know how to be self reliable. Like the titel says, how to be single. Seems easy enough, hardly a novel life lesson, but not for these women who prove blind to this notion for far too long. Which also hinders the comedic element quite a bit, and thus the level on which this movie can be enjoyed.

Revolving about the romantics of four different women - plus several men, who all are relegated to the side, since the target audience of course is female - How to Be Single follows their desperate attempts to hook up with members of the opposite sex (quite a conservative approach, there's no other options that characterize our contemporary multisexual society explored here). They suck at it. Young Alice just got out of a relationship and doesn't know how to rely on her own in the busy night life of New York City. Fortunately party animal Robin is willing to teach her, but she specializes in one-night stands, so her advice proves to be of little use for something more serious, nor should her wild tactics be considered exemplary at all. Alice's sister Meg wants a child, but due to her busy career she has no time for a man. Does she have time for a baby then? Not really, it seems. Lucy keeps looking for any available men online, rather than seeing the obvious partner right in front of her. Her story and character are sadly underdeveloped, which is made more regrettable by the fact that this also means underusing Alison Brie's considerable comedic talents. It would have been better if her story line had been eliminated altogether to make room for the others, but since the modern notion of looking for true love on social media is her angle, it was kept in so the movie could appear to say a thing or two about digital dating, which it hardly does.

In terms of comedy, How to Be Single also proves a letdown. The characters of Meg and especially Alice are bland and naive and provide mostly predictable melodrama. It's up to Rebel Wilson's Robin to ensure the laughs, and at least she succeeds admirably at that. In fact, the movie seems to drag and drone on whenever she's off-screen for too long. But when she's involved, the atmosphere quickly gets more appreciable. Makes you wonder whether a movie dealing entirely with her character would not have been preferable. But then, films about loose female characters with questionable dating ethics and a taste for alcoholic indulgence screwing their way through the male portion of humanity are hardly unique. Then again, neither are mosaic romance pictures like this flick. And there's better examples of those available than How to Be Single.

Today's Review: Walk of Shame

Took a while, but here's finally a new review I wrote for MS:

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/155776/walk_of_shame_-_recensie

Not the greatest comedy, as I anticipated. Filled to the brim with sexual and racial stereotypes for cheap laughs. Neverthless, many of those laughs still worked. You won't be roaring with laughter, but there's many a playful smirk, some moments of malicious delight and snickering aplenty to be had here. It's really too bad a reasonably talented actress like Elizabeth Banks functions mostly as the butt of these jokes though, best jokes being dlivered by others bouncing off her, instead of her being allowed to really demonstrate her own comic abilities. And the romantic subplot is hardly worth mentioning due to its dull and predictable processions. Overall, this movie is a decent bit of entertainment on long winter nights when there really is nothing else worth checking out. In these modern digital times where almost everything you could ever want to behold is just a click away online, such a scenario is a rarity though.