i liked the thread we had for this in the old forum, maybe a new one will still have legs here?
i watched Black Coal, Thin Ice (original title: Daylight Fireworks Club), which got a netflix release after it won at the berlin film festival last year almost out of nowhere. most reviews weren’t written until after the festival and the ones i read seem really off-base to me.
it’s a neo-noir film with a good understanding of understatement and visual storytelling, and great (but not ostentatious) cinematography. of the two shootouts in this film, one is depicted almost entirely in a single tableau shot, with no camera movement, that lasts less than ten seconds; it’s an incredibly readable action scene, and in a movie that avoids action almost entirely. at one point the protaganist is trying to follow a suspect across a crowded bus without attracting their attention; it’s basically the slowest chase scene i’ve ever seen, and it works well. the film aggressively avoids a three act structure and the effect is interesting
the “twist,” that the detective exploited wu zhizhen for sex just like the man she had to murder, and that he had never really changed from the abusive man he was at the very beginning of the film, could maybe have been handled better. looking around briefly i didn’t see any critics that i think “got” it, and that weirds me out. [spoiler]it’s possible i was the one to not get it. i read it as a criticism of the misogynistic james bonde or “man’s-man” noir detective archetypes, including the fact that the man gets away with it, but that could be off-base.
i bet he’s the one shooting off fireworks at the end of the movie.[/spoiler]
anyway. you should post screenshots for movies you talk about because those are always good