Well this was utterly ludicrous.
In Porto Alegre, Brazil, Mathias is an aspiring actor, competing for roles with his flatmate, Fabio. Mathias hooks up via an app with a new man, and they quickly discover how much they enjoy the thrill of having sex in public. Unfortunately, this isn’t very compatible with Mathias’ fledgling TV career, and still less compatible with Rafael’s attempt to run for mayor.
There’s some serious points in here about social acceptance of gay men (someone says something like “gay men are accepted now. As long as they’re private”) but its rather buried beneath the lurid, fast-paced plot - with sex in car parks, covert filming, blackmail and violence.
It’s quite good fun.
Very much my sort of horror. This is a solid entry in the “it’s rough being a teenage girl” genre, with a gentle touch of supernatural thrown in. For me, the pacing was spot on. It felt slow but with a constant sense of threat, that only very rarely bubbled to the surface. Natalia and friends are all falling for Diego, but he’s been swept away by worldly, older Silvia. Natalia’s anger and hurt surface in sudden moments of violence and power (or are they just accidents and power-cuts?). It’s menacing and threatening without ever being gratuitously nasty. I loved it.
Though Diego seemed like a berk.
An animated, dialogue-free journey, following dandelion seeds on a (surprisingly cosmic) journey to where they can grow new plants. Or, as an allotment gardener: proof that even if you nuke the planet, the damn dandelions will manage to escape through a black hole to an alternate world and grow more weeds.
This was very beautiful, with a frankly jaw-dropping blend of live-footage and animation. We see ferns unfurl, oyster mushrooms grow, and even make a getaway with a pair of slugs. There’s no escaping that it did still feel a bit long though, even at just 75 minutes. This felt like a very cool 30 minute episode that someone had extended into a film. And I could have done with a bit less anthropomorphizing the seeds. That got old fast.
A curiosity. An Estonian triptych of loosely connected stories. It’s a weird mix of serious issues (Estonian economy, emigrating for jobs, domestic violence) and uh… aliens.
There are some fun bits (removing all of one willing alien-experiment volunteer’s limbs, putting the other volunteer in some sort of alien washing machine), but also quite a lot of ponderous bits.
A really powerful documentary. It centres on the right-to-roam movement, and how their aims come into conflict with the landed gentry of the country. Several landowners pop up and manage to be not-totally-awful human beings, treading a fine line between holding on to their inherited wealth and, somewhat grudgingly, consenting to share it.
The villain of the piece, who’s name I didn’t catch and don’t care to research, calmly looked in all directions and said “I own all that I can see. This is my garden. And it’s a fucking big garden”. He went on to explain how Black people didn’t really belong in the countryside, and how the general public were mostly too “fucking stupid” to appreciate the land. A horrible person, through and through.
The true star of this is Nadia Shaikh, who is both fierce and compassionate, outspoken and humble. She’s prepared to admit that she understands the landowners' very human desire to hang on to what they possess, all the while advocating for change that will benefit those not born into land ownership. An inspiring spokesperson for the movement.