Film Festival Reviews. Part 6.
The Revenant
We got to see a slightly damaged screener DVD version of this movie, which was a shame. There were pretty bad green artifacts obscuring the image at times. Still, this is the best movie of the festival so far.
Bart’s been killed while serving military duty, and the movie starts out with his funeral. There’s some fast and
funny dialogue to set the tone of the movie, which is intelligent and funny. Then Bart wakes up, and he doesn’t feel
well. He crawls out from his grave and goes to see his friend, who obviously is shocked to see him. In what is
probably the best scene in the movie, Bart tries to convince his friend that he really is there, and that he really
is dead, and that he won’t hurt him.
Accepting just single unbelievable event (him being undead), the rest of the
movie feels very realistic. That initial meeting is probably very similar to how people would react in real life,
and Barts reaction to being undead feels very believable. It’s very refreshing to see a “realistic” zombie movie
like this, even if it’s primarily a (quite funny) comedy.
There are a few scenes which i feel step too far away
from the realism for the sake of what I assume is satire, but overall it’s more or less perfect. And the gore is
beautiful.
Best part: I’ve never seen anything like this. Wow.
Worst part: A drawn out and unrealistic sequence of several
innocent people dying. Fortunately, the rest of the movie is much more accessible.
Score: 5/5
White Lightning
I think for artistic reasons, this movie has the saturation turned way down, almost to the point of being black and
white, is shot in 4:3 ratio, and has very grainy photography. The entire movie is narrated by the main character,
who we get to follow from his troubled childhood up to the current day as he tries to explain why he’s recently
murdered several people. The tone of the movie is interesting, as most of the world in the movie feels relatively
good and wholesome while the main character repeatedly seeks out the worst, abusing drugs and being violent.
He
claims there’s an evil in his blood, and that he tries to stop it. But it mostly seems like he’s just trying to
sabotage for himself as much as he can.
Carrie Fisher plays a part in this movie, which was a bit surprising.
Best part: The actor who played the narrator as a child was very good.
Worst part: A bit inaccessible due to being
too “artsy”, and too long winded.
Score: 2/5
(Initially, I thought it was a 1/5 when I first saw it. But that was 5 am in the morning. The movie’s better now in retrospect)
