Tag Archives: Experimental Cinema

Aftersun – Movie Review

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TL;DR – An emotional whirlwind – Stunning, Beautiful, and Heartbreaking.     

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene

Disclosure – I paid to see this film

Warning – This film contains a lot of flashing lights.

An image of Sophie pixelated by the old camera

Aftersun Review –

If one film has been bubbling away in my subconscious since last October, it was Aftersun. Everyone who had seen it spoke of it almost like a transcendent experience, but it has taken a long time to make it down to my realm and longer for me to make it to the cinema. However, if the saying all good things come to those who wait had a physical manifestation, it would be Aftersun.

So to set the scene, it is sometime in the past [I think the late 1990s before everyone had mobile phones], and Calum (Paul Mescal) goes on a family trip to Turkey with his daughter Sophie (Frankie Corio). Sophie lives with her mother, which is a chance for them to bond, but there is some apparent awkwardness for all. Calum is trying to build a relationship, while Sophie is at the age where she is finding her independence. Is this trip the start of something better or the beginning of the end?

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After Yang – Movie Review

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TL;DR – There is a beautiful sadness to After Yang as you connect with the characters on the screen while also becoming introspective of your own life.   

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene

Disclosure – I paid to watch this film.

Yang's memories.

After Yang Review –

At the start of the year, one of my colleagues recommended that I should check out After Yang, and well as is clearly apparent, I have been quite tardy on that request. But a promise is a promise, and also, a soft-science fiction film exploring the nature of sentience in a shifting world should be 100% my jam, so it is silly that I missed it up until now.  

So to set the scene, we open with a family in a green field trying to take a photo together. While things look fine on the surface, with father Jake (Colin Farrell), mother Kyra (Jodie Turner-Smith), and kids Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja) and Yang (Justin H. Min) coming together to join in on a family dance-off contest. But Yang is an android built by the company Brothers and Sisters bought to help connect Mika with her Chinese culture. However, something has gone wrong with Yang’s central core, and he has shut down, and now Jake and Kyra have the difficult job of finding out what to do next.

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Moonage Daydream – Movie Review

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TL;DR – This documentary is a psychedelic kaleidoscope, but you should come into it preparing for a marathon rather than a sprint    

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene

Disclosure – I was invited to a press screening of this film

Warning – This film contains strobing lights in places.

Glitter falls from the celling into Bowie.

Moonage Daydream Review –

While I have been enjoying this current resurgence of musical biopics, I have connected the most instead when films have dived into the more traditional documentary form to explore someone’s life, like Gurrumul. Today we look at a documentary that might also be an experimental artwork in its own right.  

So to set the scene, well, actually, I am not sure that works in this particular situation because this is a film that does not follow a traditional or even non-traditional form of narrative structure. What we get here is a snapshot of different parts of David Bowie’s life, works, and art, as well as what inspired him and how he inspired so many.

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Movie Review – Black is King

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TL;DR – A visual masterwork and required viewing if you have Disney+    

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene

Awards:

Nominated: Beautiful Cinematography & Stunning Costumes
Winner: Stunning Costumes

Black is King. Image Credit: Disney+.

Review –

Today we review a film that might be the oddest film I have watched from a conceptional perspective. It is a reinterpretation of the story of the Lion King remake, a movie I thought was okay but not much more. But this reframing is the barest framework the film uses throughout to explore everything from religion to music to race and more. This should not work, but it does.      

Black is King. Image Credit: Disney+.
It explores many themes during its runtime and gives each and every one of them the justice they deserve. Image Credit: Disney+.
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Movie Review – Familiar Strangers

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TL;DR – An interesting experimental film that hits that overlap between film and a technology demonstration    

Familiar Strangers. Image Credit: Murat Sayginer.

Review –

I have seen quite a few films that you could call experimental in my time but today might take the cake as one of the more weird concepts that I have ever seen. Something that at first sight is deceptively simple but then it is clear a lot of work has gone into making it come together.

Familiar Strangers might be also one of the shortest films I have reviewed, clocking into only four minutes. However, that is just the right amount of time for you to process what you are seeing on the screen. Which is row upon row of actors faces apparently rendered using deepfake technology while Air on the G String by Johann Sebastian Bach plays in the background.

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Movie Review – Quantification Trilogy

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TL;DR – A fascinating experimental film that I think would work much better as three shirt films that one complete future    

Score – 3 out of 5 stars

Warning – There is extensive use of Strobe Lighting in the second part of the trilogy.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene

Quantification Trilogy. Image Credit: Jeremy Shaw.

Review –


Today we look at a film that is truly experimental in scope and form. It is a film that has taken footage from the past (I believe) and then repurposed it into something new. This transformation in tone and purpose through editing is not something I have seen before.

So to set the scene, in the distant future the human race has become extinct, replaced instead by quantum humans and their universal connection to the hive. However, there are some quantum humans that due to a genetic quirk have reverted a little back to their long-dead human ancestors. These Quickeners have gathered together in Area 23 in the long-abandoned American continent to practice old rituals and to find some meaning away from the hive.

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Movie Review – The Flying Fish

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TL;DR – An interesting experimental short film that unfortunately never graduates from allegory into something more.    

Score – 3 out of 5 stars

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene

Rocky Head in The Flying Fish. Image Credit: Murat Saygıner.

Review –

Today we get to step back and look at something a little bit different with a film that is less a narrative exercise and more an experimental experience. This was a little bit of a new area for us so it was a nice change of pace and an interesting twenty minutes.  

The Flying Fish is a composition of a number of short films by artist/filmmaker Murat Saygıner assembled into one work of art. It is here where the strengths and weaknesses of the work come to the surface. Because it is a collection of many different works, there is always something new entering into the frame to switch things up. However, because there are many different works being combined together there is not a strong unifying force that makes it feel like this is one work.

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