The Little Death (2014, Josh Lawson)

This film is about how to experience the little death.. It is thus a film about sex, situated in an Australian suburb. It is about five  couples that try to spice up their sex lives trying out different shades of kinkiness. These isms and philias are:
sexual masochism: sexual gratification from humiliation, pain and suffering (Paul & Maeve)

roleplay fetishism: sexual arousal by pretending to be someone else (Dan & Evie)

dacryphilia: sexual pleasure in seeing someone cry (Richard & Rowena)

somnophilia: sexual arousal from watching a person sleep (Phil & Maureen)

telephone scatalogia: sexual arousal from making obscene phone calls to strangers (Monica & Sam)
Then there is Steve, the friendly sex offender. The court has him obliged to inform the neighbors about that conviction. We never know what Steve did, but he seems to be lonely. Is this funny? I don't think so.
In my opinion a comedy about sex needs to be light-hearted, but this one isn't, except for the "scatalogia" segment where a sign language translator has to translate a naughty call to a sex line for a mute boy. There is occasional chemistry between the other couples, but in general they are too full of themselves.
5/10

West of Sunshine (2017, Jason Raftopoulos)

There is a certain bias on IMDb. For this little film there are already listed five external reviews, while films in other languages remain without review. IMDb focuses on productions in the English language, both in searches and for indexing reviews.
So here is another contestant for the Horizons competition. It is about fatherhood.
Jimmy is addicted to gambling. He has debts and tries desperately to collect the money for a loan shark. He  has also to take care of his son Alex. They have a strained relationship.  Gradually we learn that Jimmy is copying the pattern he experienced with his own father. He decides to break with the past and make way for the future.
Much of this plot has been seen before. The gambling part is default household inventory, such as the run against time to get the money. Also the final shift, yeah, he was a good father after all is less than surprising. This could be labeled as Australian social realism, but Australia appears only as backdrop.
On the whole this appears more like a journeyman's piece - and a promise that we might expect more from this director in the future.
5/10

Being Julia (2004, István Szabó)

It is always dubious when the consensus of the reviewers says that the best of a film is the achievement of the actors. What about the plot?
This film is based on a novel by W. Somerset Maugham. It is set in the 30s, although there is no real necessity to have it as a period piece. The cinematography resembles yellowed
A somewhat older actress (Annette Bening is indeed marvelous) falls in love with a man who is about the age of her son. The convention is that the older part is usually the pathetic one. The younger guy, a gigolo, dumps her after a while. His new girlfriend is also an actress who is cast to play together with Julia. She humiliates her younger rival and thus takes revenge on her former lover.
Is this funny? Not really. It could be amusing if the script had been more witty. Now it is like a faded copy from former times.What ever became of István Szabó?
5/10

Strange Colours (2017, Alena Lodkina)

Milena, a student of psychology, travels to a remote mining community to visit her dying father. Her father's buddies try to tell her how alluring that country is. Milena, however, rests a stranger in that community.
Strange Colours refer to the magic light in the opal mines. There are some beautiful pictures in this film. It proceeds very slow with lots of atmospheric shots.
However, the characters are rather flat. Yes, Milena is afraid of her father, but we never know why. The characters remain, unfortunately, flat.
4/10

The Slow Business of Going (2000, Athina Rachel Tsangari)

Petra Going (the character "translates" her name as Rolling Stone) is working for Global Nomads. They travel around and collect impressions that later are uploaded to a database. Petra Going meets on her frequent travels different types, a slapstick, k man, a tango man, a hypothermiac, a gunman. They talk, they interact and there is in my view no point to all this.
This film is as if someone took a manual of art house film making, tore it into pieces and followed the recipes in a random order. The result is a hotchpotch of different styles and manners which is almost impossible to watch.
Few people came to the screeing I attended, almost half of them left the hall before the end of the film. This might indicate that this film is mainly for hardcore indie film lovers.
I don't mind seemingly pointless films. Holy Motors is a film with a similar departure, but without the amateurish acting and cinematography.
2/10

Naked (1993, Mike Leigh)

O my orphaned blog. November went by surprisingly fast and I am thankful for that. Of course I saw films, many, but I would have liked to see even more. But time and energy are limited.
So where to start my backlog? I think, today I want to write about Naked. I saw this already some time ago and I am re-viewing it now.
Everybody says that this is an eminent film. But it's also extremely hard to watch. There is bleak all around and misery. The intellectuals say it is a fascinating portrait of British post-Thatcher society. Anything can reflect that society. even a film like Lake Eden can be made a political movie.
How does Naked work as a movie? How do I feel about it out of the context of the beginning of the 90s in the last century?
First of all, the acting is quite superb. Johnny is a thoroughly unsympathetic character, verbose and abusive, a rapist - and a character who would have become a loser even without Thatcher.
To me this is a period movie; maybe it had a certain impact when it was published, but what  does it have to say now, after 22 years. Most of al we learn, that some people then were bastards without future. So what?
4/10

Misery, Misery, Misery

The yuppie of the set

More misery

The yuppie is a bit like British Psycho

Let's have a look at a self-contented bastard

Still more misery

Evenmore misery

Limping misery

Chloe (2009, Atom Egoyan)

There are so many things which I don't know; so many things to see and experience. And every day something new is added to the backlog.
I have been told that Atom Egoyan once made important films, but at that time my focus must have been somewhere else. Now his talent is used up and he mainly produces trashy output.
This kind is often labelled as "romantic drama". Wikipedia thinks, it is an erotic thriller.
Well, here it goes: Catherine, a gynecologist, fears that her husband David, a college professor has an affair with a younger student.  What to do? Right, you hire a hooker to see how far he is willing to go. When Catherine learns that David agreed to be kissed, she gives green light to see if he will go any further. At some point Chloe's graphic descriptions are not longer enough and she wants to get the full picture, i.e. have sex with Chloe. Then David and Catherine discuss if they have been cheating on each other. But then they find out that the detailed sexual descriptions were entirely made up by Chloe and then they eventually reconcile, aging couple, they still feel attracted to each other and blabla. So finished? No way.
Chloe goes to Catherine's house and has sex with their son. Then Catherine arrives and interrupts them and now Cjloe is in love with Catherine. Bitch fight and Chloe falls to her death.
There is a lot of  promising material in the plot, but Egoyan realizes none of them. There is no character development (Catherine sees a lot of vaginas, so what is special about Chloe's? That she is sharing that one with her husband?) The web of lies is not developed either. The make-belief facade they build up, thereby losing each other out of sight. Why are they lying? What is in it for Chloe?
Acting is not so great either, as if done with pulled hand brake. Was it really necessary to make this film, just to get Amanda Seyfried out of her gear?
Neither erotic, nor thrilling, just plain: 3/10

Catherine and David have almost forgotten that they are parents to a sn with awakening libido

Same-sex passion in Canada

Chloe goes off with a bang; the movie is still a flop.

Eden Lake (2008, James Watkins)

This was shown in a series of horror movies, t I think it is misplaced there. However, it doesn't hurt if fans of that genre once in a while are exposed to some other kind of film.
Eden Lade is about a romantic weekend that goes as wrong as it can. It starts very calm and quiet, but then a group of bullying adolescents start to terrorize the young couple. It gets from bad to worse, violence escalates and in the end the fittest survive.
The escalation of the violence is staged with merciless consequence. Anything can be interpreted as provocation by these juvenile hooligans, also because the leader of the gang has to prove his authority by extra mischievous sadism. Yes, this is not a sociological study, but a sinister and exaggerated look at unpleasant sides of contemporary society. A post-Thatcher society that has become "Broken Britain".
And when The Sun, the mouthpiece of this segment in society pronounces the opinion that this movie denouncs working class people, it may not be so unrealistic anyway.
Of course this is not a film for in-depth meditation, but it still gives some gory entertainment for the   non-admirer of standard horror movies.
6/10

Eden Lake while being unspoiled

The kids have an odd sense of humor

Jenny's last option: disguise herself as garbage

The Cry of the Owl (2009, James Thravers)

I saw this, because it was based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith. But either it was an uncommon bad novel or an extraordinary sloppy adaptation, in any case: the film is virtually unwatchable.
There are plot holes of the size of mine fields and our gullibility is stretched to inhuman dimensions.
Robert stalks Jenny. When she finds out, she invites him for coffee and then stalks him instead. She also quits the relation with her boyfriend Greg. Greg is not very happy with this and gets into a fight with Robert.Then Greg disappears and Robert becomes a murder suspect. Jenny has come to the idea that Robert is a messenger of death, so she kills herself. Then somebody shoots at Robert. Greg has come back and now he has a liaison with Robert's ex-wife. And so on
The confusing plot is executed in a polished manner, but no matter what, it is very hard to relate to any of these characters
0,5/10

Lost in a messy plot jungle (James Gilbert as Greg)

One of the most uncaptivating thrillers I have seen; suspense-free and 100% confusing

Heavenly Creatures (1994, Peter Jackson)

YES! a movie by Peter Jackson that is worth the time it takes to see it! Pauline and Juliet are two schoolgirls with a vivid imagination. They inhabit their fantasy world and thus the real life becomes more and more repugnant. The grown-ups want to expel them from their home-made heaven. Especially Pauline's mother becomes gradually their main adverser. So they decide to kill her.
All thsi is based on a real story that happened in the beginning of the 1950s in New Zealand. It seems that the juvenile murderers still are alive, one even became a writer. Before the credits we are put into the picture about the trial  - the later lives of the girls are not mentioned.
I liked how Jackson blended reality with the fantasy creations of the girls, they appear as overlapping reality. (Oh - if Jackson never had touched the Tolkin world and had stuck to movies of this kind, then he might have become an instructor whose output is worth to follow Wasted talent.
Solid entertainment : 6/10.

Two girls in their homr-made fairy tale country.

Australia (2008, Baz Luhrman)

I am still waiting a lot from Baz Luhrmann after the brilliant adaptation of Romeo and Julia. Maybe I should give up. This film was higly appreciated by a friend whose critical instinct in other cases helped me to avoid major failures. But this film is neither epic nor breath-taking. It's long and long-winded. It has its moments,yes, but at best it is just entertaining and that's it.
I started to watch it several times, but now I may have been too lazy to reach for the remote, so I watched it until the sweet-broth ending.
On the way almost no cliché is left out. You could even make a check list and wait for all those worn-out stereotypes: weak but resolute women, a drunkard, a maverick drover, servile and friendly natives, mischievous colonists, all that makes up a western. I am not interested in westerns, not even as Australian rehash. The film tries to avoid the racial per-conceptions about the Aborigines and promptly falls into another trap: they become a romanticized  version of the sage and mysterious child of nature, a noble savage as it were.
The story is fueled by different obstacles, however: amor vincit omnia. If only it was gone with the wind.

On the other hand - the movie is still entertaining, filled with opulent images. It also manages to maintain a basic suspense for all its long running time. It loses focus on the way and remembers after some time the main thread again.
This is entertaining, but not ambitious. So be it. There also have to be films we can can watch during rain days when there is nothing on TV and the video shop is closed already.
The actors portray types and not so much persons. However they do their best to fill their speech balloons, even Hugh Jackman.
As it is so-so, it gets also a so-so rate: 5/10.

Odi et amo -- the proven recipe for blockbusters.