FILM REVIEWS:
DELEGATION (Israel/Germany/Poland 2023) **
Directed by Asaf Saban
A delegation is defined as a set of people chosen or elected to represent a larger group. The delegation in the film DELEGATION refers to a class group visiting holocaust sites in Poland. Three Israeli high school friends take part in a class trip visiting Holocaust sites in Poland – the last time together before two of the boys enter the army. During the trip, shy boy Frisch, aspiring artist Nitzan and class heartthrob Ido deal with issues of love, friendship, and politics against the backdrop of concentration camps and memorial sites. This journey is supposed to change them forever.
The Holocaust, known in Hebrew as the Shoa, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The murders were committed primarily through mass shootings across Eastern Europe and poison gas chambers in extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, and Chełmno in occupied Poland. The film claims to be a coming-of-age tour about boys discovering their past.
The film is, however, despite good intentions, boring, tedious, while not offering any new insight into the holocaust cause. Audiences around the world already sympathize with the cause and need not watch the shock boys goof around and flirt with the opposite sex and then sit down to discuss their Jewish past. Audiences are forced to endure the teens’ romantic flings and then have to listen to them talk about how they felt about the holocaust. The delegation also includes an older survivor of the holocaust who talks about his experiences in the camp.
Instead of a thoughtful and compelling film, DELEGATION fans to avoid all the cliches while forcing the audience to sit through a very tiresome road trip. The film emphasizes the fact that teenagers can be terribly annoying and full of themselves.
DELEGATION opens on digital August 1st.
Trailer:
HARLEY FLANAGAN WIRED FOR CHAOS (USA 2024) ***
Directed by Rex Miller
The film begins with a man jogging close to the woods with a guitar strung around his back. He says that he has been angry for the past 50 years, and he says that that is not the man he wants to be. He is next shown exercising - the guy is quite fit despite his stocky build. He goes on to say that only death is certain and everything else, optional.
Who is this man? He is Harley Flanagan. I have not heard of the man, not being in the funk rock scene.
Harley Francis Flanagan (born March 8, 1967) is an American musician. Harley Flanagan founded the hardcore punk band the Cro-Mags. He is currently the bassist, vocalist, and sole remaining founding member of the band. Flanagan began his musical career at age 11 in 1978, drumming for the New York punk band the Stimulators alongside his aunt Denise Mercedes. By the early 1980s, he was a prominent figure in the developing New York hardcore, helping to found the Cro-Mags in 1981 and Murphy's Law in 1982.
Founder of the pioneering band Cro-Mags, Harley Flanagan is a punk rock/hardcore legend who’s defied the odds – along with neglect, sexual abuse, drugs, violence, and PTSD -- and lived to tell the tale. The feature-length documentary, HARLEY FLANAGAN: WIRED FOR CHAOS, dives headfirst into the wild life and times of this larger-than-life icon and is a no-holds-barred ride that isn’t just about the music; it’s about a man forged in fire who’s lived to tell the tale.
Raised by a Warhol Factory “it” girl, Harley was thrown into the Lower East Side’s underground scene in the ’70s. Left to fend for himself, by his teens, he was squatting in Alphabet City, stealing food, dodging gangs, and living in a world that he describes as “some serious Lord of the Flies shit.” But, as his life descended into a hellish day-to-day, he was simultaneously becoming a punk rock legend: at the age of 11, he was drumming at CBGBs and Max’s Kansas City with his aunt’s band, the Stimulators. Sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll weren’t a choice – they were survival. But Harley was a fighter. Whether on stage, in the streets, or the Jiu-Jitsu gym with Renzo Gracie, he never backed down. As the ferocious frontman of the Cro-Mags, he pushed NYC Hardcore into uncharted territory. But violence, addiction and a traumatic past left deep scars. The streets made him, but they also nearly destroyed him.
The film also includes interviews with: Flea (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Henry Rollins ( Black Flag, Henry Rollins Band), Ice T, Ian Mackaye (Minor Threat, Fugazi, Dischord Records), Keith Morris (Black Flag, Circle Jerks, OFF), Michael Imperioli, Lucy Sante (Author), Anthony Bourdain, Matt Serra (MMA, BJJ, UFC World Champion), Renzo Gracie ( BJJ World Champion) among others.
Harley Flanagan has had a tough and intriguing life, creating lots of trouble as well as ink hits. A doc is often as interesting as its subject, and the saying is true here. The doc bears Flanagan's life, warts and all, together with his philosophy of life, distorted, and whether one wants to accept it at all.
Harley Flanagan: Wired for Chaos is a 2024 American documentary film that follows the story of Harley Flanagan, directed and produced by Rex Miller. The film premiered at the Doc NYC on November 14, 2024, and will be available online for a One-Week Run Beginning August 8th.
Trailer:
AN HONEST LIFE (Ett ärligt liv) (Sweden 2025) ***
Directed by Mikael Marcimain
When a film is entitled AN HONEST LIFE, one can be sure that dishonesty is the main subject.
This new Swedish Netflix film covers several points of interest popular among film audiences. One it is the fickle story of fate. Simon (Simon Loof) is about to study law as he believes that he cannot be a success as a writer, only to learn that what he thought was an established life would all be about to change, and naturally, in ways not only never expected but for the worse. When the film starts, he witnesses an angry riot clash with the police before checking in at his new lodging while studying at the prestigious Lund University. One also loves a mystery thriller in which a protagonist is an underdog, who exposes the evils of the wealthy while wishing to be one, by hook or by crook.
Lund University is a public research university in Sweden and one of Northern Europe's oldest universities. According to the film, the university is well-renowned for its law studies. The university is located in the city of Lund in the Swedish province of Scania. The university was officially founded in 1666 on the location of the old ‘studium generale’ next to Lund Cathedral.
Simon's law school dreams fade as he meets Max (Nora Rios) during a protest. For one, Simon gets disillusioned pretty fast. Simon was always at the top of his class, but in this law school, every undergraduate is top of his or her class. Max initially saves him from being beaten by a riot cop. Their paths cross again. Her anarchist lifestyle of excess and deception entraps him before he can recognize the destructive path he is on.
Simon boards at a residence with Viktor and Ludwig, who represent the wealthiest 1%. “They cannot help it if they are the top 1%,” is Simon’s answer when asked by Max why he stays with them. This is Simon’s story, as he toys between playing with fire by associating with Max. Max takes him in to meet her commune led by an anarchist professor named Charles, pretty much like Oliver taken into a children's gang of pickpockets by the Artful Dodger in OLIVER TWIST.
Based on the novel by Joakim Zander with a screenplay by Linn Gottfridsson, the film, a coming-of-age fable, benefits from a Nordic touch in theme and look. The film was shot in contrasting areas from the oldest University in Sweden to the cheap dance bars in Lund, while interrogating themes of rebellion, social class, betrayal, and ideological seduction.
AN HONEST LIFE op[ens for streaming on Netflix this week.
Trailer:
MY OXFORD YEAR (USA 2025) ***
Directed by Ian Morris
Two films open for streaming on Netflix this week that share similar themes. Both involve romance at a prestigious university, one at Lund and one at Oxford. Both involve plans gone awry. Just as one thinks life is planned with study at the university, fate proves otherwise. MY OXFORD YEAR has a female premise and the other, AN HONEST LIFE, features a male. Both films are not half bad, but stress different genes within a romantic setting.
The film is adapted from Julia Whelan’s bestselling novel (itself based on an original screenplay),. It explores themes of love, loss, timing, and living deliberately and follows Anna De La Vega (Sofia Carson), a driven American student who receives a scholarship to study at the University of Oxford. Her academic and political ambitions are rock‑solid—until she meets Jamie Davenport (Corey Mylchreest), a charismatic and privileged British poet who also happens to become her tutor.
The film, shot in Oxford, with the academic buildings that make the city deliver a more respectable romance, with a light comedic rather than dramatic touch, though one can complain fit bing a bit slow in development. Those familiar with Oxford, closer to London than Cambridge) will recognize local university landmarks like Magdalen College, Christ Church, the Bodleian Library, Sheldonian Theatre, and Windsor Castle.
The film is directed by Iain Morris, responsible for the hit British series THE INBETWEENERS, a series that never made it to Canada, though I did manage to watch a few.. The inbetweeners are the kids in school who are not jocks or swots. They fall in between.
MY OXFORD YEAR opens for streaming on August 1st.
Trailer:
