FILM REVIEWS:
BIGGEST HEIST EVER (USA 2024) ***½
Directed by Chris Smith
The strangest of heists and the strangest of criminals - a married rapper couple, make BIGGEST HEIST EVER one of the most intriguing true-life crime Netflix dramas, Married couple Heather “Razzlekhan” Morgan and Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein, whom the Justice Department accused of conspiring to launder $4.5 billion in stolen bitcoin. News of the arrest immediately went viral, not only due to the sky-high amount of money involved but also because of the perplexing ways Morgan and Lichtenstein documented their lives online. In 2019, Morgan adopted a rap persona called Razzlekhan (“like Genghis Khan, but with more pizzazz,” she wrote on her website) and filmed hundreds of cringe-inducing YouTube videos with crypto-themed raps.
$52 billion. To understand the size of the amount, the film breaks it down to spending $100,000 every day of the next 100 years and still has a billion left over. This is a true crime drama of cryptocurrency and is THE BIGGEST HEIST EVER. Netflix delivers true crime documentaries regularly and this one involves the largest amount of money yet.
The film is fascinating for those who have dabbled in cryptocurrency like Bitcoin and others who might be interested. The doc is necessarily technical and tries its best to explain a very involved market with Otis of crypto terminology. There is a lot to learn even for those involved in Bitcoin. The film attempts its best to make the flow as smooth as possible.
Terms like Darkweb, Blockchain VCE (virtual crypto exchange), Alpha Bay and popular companies like Bitfinex are used throughout the doc.
As the cost of 1 bitcoin has crossed the threshold of $100,000 dollars and the Trump presidency fancies the cryptocurrency, one can o lh wonder what will come next.
To refresh, a bit of info about Bitcoin.
A cryptocurrency, crypto-currency, or crypto, is a digital currency designed to work through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it. Individual coin ownership records are stored in a digital ledger, which is a computerized database using strong cryptography to secure transaction records, control the creation of additional coins, and verify the transfer of coin ownership. Despite the term that has come to describe many of the fungible blockchain tokens that have been created, cryptocurrencies are not considered to be currencies in the traditional sense, and varying legal treatments have been applied to them in various jurisdictions, including classification as commodities, securities, and currencies. Cryptocurrencies are generally viewed as a distinct asset class in practice. Some crypto schemes use validators to maintain the cryptocurrency.
The first cryptocurrency was Bitcoin, which was first released as open-source software in 2009.
Myself, I have lost $4000 through an investing scam that involved the transfer of money through Bitcoin like using Kraken, so there is a huge risk involved whenever one trades and transfers money in Bitcoin. Fortunately, banks are cautious and provide warnings.
BIGGEST HEIST EVER is a must-see, not that it is the best doc ever made, but that it covers one of the most important media of exchange that has affected or will affect everyone sooner or later. The doc, like cryptocurrency, is scary as it is complicated, weird but the doc is both informative, educational and intriguing
THE CHILDREN’S TRAIN (IL TRENO DEI BAMBINI)(Italy 29024) ****
Directed by Cristina Comencini
A seven-year-old boy named Amerigo (Christian Cervone) 1946 leaves his impoverished family in Naples and gets on a train to go live with a wealthier family in the north as part of a postwar initiative to rescue children from poverty. The setting is 1946 which is right after the Second World War had ended,
THE CHILDREN’S TRAIN is based on the Italian novel of the same name. Of course, separation of a child from a parent is never pleasant and quite the ordeal. The children on the train are at a loss as to what to believe. They think they are sent to the north to have their hands cut off, only to realize after that the living conditions up north beat what they are used to. Many do not wish to return, This is a story told from the point of view of Amerigo as he learns about life, thus coming of age in an emotional and dramatic piece of cinema.
The film moves up a notch in the last 30 minutes when Amerigo returns to his mother in Naples. His transitions are not as smooth as he or his audience expects. His mother, Antonietta is jealous of the mortadella sandwich he had brought home from his Northern mother that he kept for her to try. Antonietta freaks out when she sees the violin Amerigo has bought home. She believes that music is for rich people and there is no place for it in the home. She wants him to learn a trade instead so that he can earn money. She forbids him to play, But one knows from the beginning scene of the film that Amerigo eventually turns into a world-class orchestra maestro. And at the beginning of the film, he mourns the death of his mother, Though the film contains this spoiler at the start, it does diminish the emotional impact of the film.
The two most emotional scenes of the film both occur at the railway station. The first is when the boy Amerigo leaves his mother, Antonietta at the film’s beginning, where she runs after the train as it leaves the station. The second is when Amerigo’s northern mother cries when he leaves back for Naples to return to Antounetta. The husband tells her: “You know that he has to leave,” he tells her, tears also rolling down his face. No fault placed at Steve McQueen’s BLITZ, but that film has less emotional impact than this wartime entry.
Christian Cervone is nothing short of excellent as the scrawny 7-year-old starving boy. He looks like a skeleton on legs, suitinh the role he is playing.
The recent Steve McQueen’s movie BLITZ and THE CHILDREN’S TRAIN, both from Netflix tell the same story of children separated from their families because of the war. While BLITZ takes the route of the mother searching for her lost boy, THE CHILDREN” 'S TRAIN looks at the 7-year-old’s point of view as he is forced to evaluate his choice of where his life will lead. Both are excellent films and THE CHILDREN’S TRAIN has the emotional impact from the child’s point of view that BLITZ lacked. THE CHILDREN’S TRAIN arrives on Netflix this week without much fanfare but deserves my high recommendation as an excellent beautifully crafted and performed emotional drama.
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LA COCINA (Mexico/USA 2024) ***½
Directed by Alonso RuizpalaciosLa Cocina
LA COCINA mans The Kitchen in Spanish. Though based on a play adapted into a 1961 British film, L COCINA has a different setting around Times Square in New York City.
Firstly to better appreciate this new version, a bit of history of the evolvement of the film.
The Kitchen is a 1957 play by Arnold Wesker. It was Wesker's first work and is his most performed play. It has been produced in sixty cities including Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo, Paris (where it was the first widely recognized production by Théâtre du Soleil in 1967), Moscow, Montreal and Zurich. The play follows the staff in a cafe's kitchen during a busy morning. It has been adapted as a film twice: The Kitchen (1961) and now, the latest LA COCINA (2024). The time span is now stretched out, which takes the staginess out of the film, making the story more credible.
In the play and British film, there is no traditional plot. The film looks at the various relationships between different staff members, a large part having immigrated from Continental Europe. The kitchen staff is almost exclusively male and the waiting staff is exclusively female. The presence of one new member of staff allows each person to be introduced in turn. The owner wanders around checking things. The story looks at the workplace stress, unhealthy environment, bickering between staff, petty thievery, and rather excessive drinking of more than one staff member.
In LA COCINA, Rashid (Oded Fehr), a successful Arab American entrepreneur, runs "The Grill" - a large-scale Times Square tourist trap. The kitchen, located deep underground, is staffed by illegal immigrants, mostly Latin Americans with some Arabs, who must work at breakneck speed in the rush hours to fulfill the orders brought to them by the waitresses who are predominantly white Americans. Rashid regularly promises to obtain legal status in the US for the cooks but fails to act on such promises.
The film centres on Estela (Anna Diaz), shown at the start of the film as a newly arrived Hispanic immigrant who does not speak English. She comes to work in "The Grill" as she knows Pedro (Raúl Briones Carmona), one of the cooks, and gets introduced at record speed to its staff and the restaurant's rough ways. Pedro - a charming, hot-tempered Mexican cook - and Julia (Rooney Mara, the only well-known actor in the cast), a white American waitress, quarrel over their relationship, with some accusing Pedro of dating Julia only to get his visa. Relationships between Hispanics and "Gringos" - and specifically, between male Latin American immigrants and female "Gringas" - are a constant subject in the conversations of the kitchen staff. Julia is pregnant and is determined to get an abortion; Pedro, deeply in love with her, wants her to keep the child and engages in a fantasy of the two of them running away to an unspoiled beach in Mexico, where his son could run free on the shore. However, Pedro does get her the 800 Dollars needed for the abortion and she eventually goes through with it, alone.
LA COCINA is necessarily depressing with hardly any light touches, the climax being an all-out hell broke lose in the kitchen. Still, LA COCINA breaks the heart in a story in which nobody wins in a country where everything is a business with no heart.
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DRIVE BACK HOME (Canada 2024) ****
Directed by Michael Clowater
DRIVE BACK HOME is based on true events but from the film, the events have obviously been modified for artistic and entertainment value. One thing is certain about this film: it is quite artistically done and highly entertaining while still conveying its powerful message. No complaints here!
The film opens with a funeral service in which a family patriarch has passed on.
In the winter of 1970, a cantankerous, small-town plumber, Weldon from rural New Brunswick, must drive his beat-up work truck (actually his boss’s truck that he took without permission) 1000 miles to Toronto to get his estranged, gay brother, Perley out of jail after being arrested for having sex in a public park. The two men are then forced to drive back home together at the behest of their hard-nosed mother before they kill each other. Inspired by a true story.
The main cast consists of just two persons, as most of the film is the road trip taken by the two brothers from Toronto back to Stanley, New Brunswick. Alan Cumming is arguably his career-best role despite this being a small movie, playing the gay Perley while Charlie Creed-Miles plays his brother Weldon.
The film contains well-conceived and delivered segments—even inspiring—covering key issues like gay rights, small-town prejudice mentality, and the triumph of the human spirit against diversity, all in a Canadian context. One of the best segments has Weldon speaking to a Quebec man who the brother seeks help from after their truck breaks down. Weldon does not speak French and the Quebecois does not speak English. Weldon speaks his heart out in English to the Quebecois while, he not understanding a word replies in French. It is an extremely moving scene showing the need to communicate one’s troubles regardless of the other's understanding or not.
The family concerned has lots of skeletons in the closet that are revealed to the audience in flashbacks.
The film is set in the 70s before the catastrophe of global warming, Set in winter, there is snow all around and director Clowater shows the harness of driving during winter. At present, the wintry scenes in the play in the film will be sadly missed,
The film is also timely in its portrayal of gay rights and how gay rights were absent in the 70’s - which is the reason Perley got arrested for having sex in public) and the shame he had caused the family.
For a film with such a serious agenda, the film surprisingly contains lots of humorous moments. The humour is often laugh-out-loud and credit must be given to writer/director Michael Clowater who can be seen to contain a keen sense of humour. No matter how serious a situation is on play, director Clowater often sees an opportunity for humour.
DRIVE BACK HOME is set to be released theatrically across Canada on December 6, 2024. It is one of the best surprises of the year - it's a Canadian film that came out of nowhere. Highly recommended and DRIVE BACK HOME is definitely one of the top Canadian films of 2024.
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ERNEST COLE: LOST AND FOUND (France 2024) ****
Directed by Raoul Peck
Director Raoul Peck’s (I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO) latest doc is a mind-blowing one that won the Best Doc Prize at Cannes this year. As the title implies, the doc would not have been made if not for the revelation in 2017, when 60,000 unknown negatives of Ernest Cole’s work were discovered in a Swedish bank vault. Through all his adversity, Cole never lost his power to take stunning pictures, trying to see those who spend their lives going unseen. “It’s a matter of survival,” he wrote, “to steal every moment.” Director Peck tells Cole’s story, like a biopic mainly through voiceover using mostly the photographs he took in South Africa and the United States. The plight of the black men and all the adversity is vividly portrayed and deeply and emotionally put across to audiences in what might be deemed a must-see well-crafted documentary.
GET AWAY (UK 2024) ***
Directed by Gordon Green
Writers Simon Pegg and Nick Frost collaborated in the past in the British TV series sitcom SPACED. They reunite in this hilarious comedy horror, at least part of it anyway, a genre they are both expert in, about British family holidays with a bed and breakfast on the island of Svalta (the original title of the film) in Sweden only to find themselves the victim of a serial killer on the loose. Svalta is a fictitious Swedish island. Though set in Sweden, the film was shot in Tampere, a southern city in Finland.
This is the isle of Svälta during Karantan (likely meaning quarantine) celebrations, including an hours-long stage play. The Smiths are intruders during Svälta’s remembrance of a cruel British-imposed quarantine that killed many locals and pushed the rest into cannibalism. As Islanders practice their scenes, workshop props, and execute ceremonial traditions, the Smiths focus on having fun and bonding as a family!
What makes it very funny and different is not the story but the characters that make up the family. Richard is a sweet bearded guy wearing glasses who seems to be a real dork, but a lovable one, while the wife quotes from all kinds of material trying to impress anyone, but not her kids.
The film opens with a woman carrying a bay surrounded by strange and ugly human beings, They torment her. She screams. The film fast-forwarded 200 years later. A family the Smiths, led by the father Richard (played by co-writer Nick Frost) takes his family on holiday to an island in Sweden. They are all excited but things turn weird. At the ferry port, the restaurant owner discourages them warning them to turn back and not go to the island. Richard insists otherwise, as he had booked the family with a bed and breakfast. On the ferry, all the other passengers stare disapprovingly at the family. Anyone in their right mind would have turned back or run for their lives. But this is a movie and the family decide to grin and bear it. At the island, things get worse with a funny unwelcome welcome where the villagers tell the Smith family to basically fuck off led by an old woman, an elder (played tongue-in-cheek by Anitta Suikkari) who ends up licking Richard’s wife’s face. Apparently, she rules the island and all the islanders respect her. Then Matt, the owner of the air band, appears and tells the village that he had rented them from his late mother's house. That is not allowed in the rules of the commune, Matt is warned who replies that they do not own the island.
Matt is also as weird as they come which adds too the hilarity especially when he starts hitting on the daughter. Matt also wears women’s clothing. All this has happened and the serial killer has not arrived yet. The script offers plenty of opportunity for humour which are taken uo well.
There is a huge twist in the story midway (which will not be revealed in this review). Unfortunately, the film goes haywire from this point. Even in an insane movie, there must be some point of sanity for things to make sense. This is where the film fails.
GET AWAY is on December 6th.
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THE GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE (Pigen med nålen)(Denmark/Sweden/Poland 2024) ****
Directed by Magnus von Horn
Premiering at Cannes this year followed by screenings at the Toronto International Film Festival, THE GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE is an excellent historical drama though a very depressing one. The film is shot in black and white with a setting in post-WWII Denmark made even more depressing by the story in which bleakness piles upon bleakness. If one can stomach the bleakness, a superbly crafted film is in for the taking, though definitely not of a feel-good nature. The film is based on true life events - that of a baby killer, one of Denmark’s most infamous killers. A woman pretends to take in babies from mothers who seek a better life for their babies, but the woman kills babies instead using several methods.
The protagonist is Karoline, a young woman trying to survive after the war. Vic Carmen Sonne is remarkable in her portrayal of Karoline, a young seamstress trying to survive on her own since her husband was declared missing in action. Fortune smiles upon her when she develops a connection with Jørgen (Joachim Fjelstrup), the factory's owner. Yet a cascade of misfortunes soon reminds her of how little protection she enjoys. As the film progresses, one can only pity Katroline as things get from worse to worse.. Can things improve even a little? Firstly when the film begins, Karoline is evicted from her squalor apartment. She finds lodging in an even more horrid room with no running water and a window that cannot be opened. She is warned not to have any visitors though one can only imagine who would want to visit such a place.
Her woes improve a bit as the events set her on the path toward Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm), a shop owner she works for as a seamstress, who offers a particular service to women in need. The dynamic they form will have major repercussions for them both. They fall in love and she is impregnated by him. Just as one can think the film is leading towards the kindness of human beings, Dagmar’s mother stops the romance between her son and her and tosses her out on the street. She takes a needle to a public bath and tries to abort the unborn child, hence the title of the film THE GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE. There she meets the baby killer and things do NOT get any better. Karolyn and the baby killer strike up a camaraderie, even when Karolyn discovers the truth. More of the darkness is included with the reappearance of Karolyn’s supposedly husband missing in war with a disfigured face. Why he has not responded to her letters is not really explained in the film. The horror of his facial injury is not hidden from the audience.
For all its bleakness and depression, THE GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE is a compelling film with strong performances and stunning cinematography and production values, marking it as one of my Top 10 international films list of 2024.
THE GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE, the Danish entry for Best International Feature for the upcoming Academy Awards opens in theatres on December the 6th, 2024.
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THE RETURN (UK/Italy 2024) ***½
Directed by Uberto Pasolini
THE RETURN is based on Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’, one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. Like the Iliad, the Odyssey is divided into 24 books. The story follows the Greek hero Odysseus (Ralph Fiennes), king of Ithaca, and his journey home after the Trojan War. After the war, which lasted ten years, his journey from Troy to Ithaca, via Africa and southern Europe, lasted for ten additional years during which time he encountered many perils and all of his crewmates were killed. In his absence, Odysseus was assumed dead, and his wife Penelope (Juliette Binoche) and son Telemachus had to contend with a group of unruly suitors who were competing for Penelope's hand in marriage. The film THE RETURN deals only with a portion of the story that is his return and hence the title of the film being so called. It deals with Queen Penelope and his son contending with the unruly suitors.
By removing the travels, monsters and gods, the film gives the story a more human element, focusing on Homer’s last chapters. There are not one but three protagonists in the film - Odysseus, the Queen Penelope, and the son, with close to equal screen time given to each. The difficult Greek names are not used but the characters are referred to as the king, queen, or son
The film begins with Odysseus (Ralph Fiennes) washing up on the shores of Ithaca, assumed after a shipwreck as remnants of wood can be seen floating in the sea. With an unkempt beard and attired in rags, the king is obviously unrecognizable. But he has childhood scars that will remind those close to him of his true identity.
Despite the 3000 age-old story, director Pasolini and the script make the story relevant, with meticulously calculated dramatic and action set-pieces. The drama comes from the family relationships. The son despises the mother as she keeps waiting for the king to return. His life is also at stake as the rebels wish to take his life. He has to escape from the island and when he returns has to head up and hide in the hills. The confrontation between mother and son is toxic with name-calling. The fight scenes are also well orchestrated with older weapons like the bow and arrow and sword. The first action scene comes only mid-way through the film where the king, treated as a beggar is forced to fight a rebel. The climax of the film is an all-out battle with Odysseus killing off all his enemies. The ultimate question is whether the queen can still love the same man who has left her for 20 years.
The actors provide excellent performances. Fiennes went on a strict diet to obtain his sinewy-wired boy with veins protruding while Binoche learned to weave for her role. Realistic production design and wardrobe add to the period Greek authenticity,
THE RETURN opens December 6 in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal! The film also opens throughout the winter in other cities.
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THAT CHRISTMAS (UK 2024) ***
Directed by Simon Otto
THAT CHRISTMAS, a holiday film based on the children's Christmas book trilogy That Christmas and Other Stories by British filmmaker Richard Curtis, will be released by Netflix on 4 December 2024.
Locksmith Animation is hardly a known name, but things are about to change this Christmas with their new Netflix original animated feature THAT CHRISTMAS.
Locksmith Animation was founded in 2014 by media executive businesswoman Elisabeth Murdoch and two Aardman (WALLACE AND GROMIT) Animation collaborators Sarah Smith and Julie Lockhart. Locksmith was named after Lockhart and Smith's surnames. Locksmith Animation (also known as Locksmith) is a British-American independent computer animation feature film studio owned by Sister Group. Headquartered in London, England with an office in Los Angeles, California, Locksmith is best known for producing and developing independent computer-animated feature films. Locksmith Animation's first film, RON’S GONE WRONG was released on 22 October 2021 by 20the Century Fox.
The film follows a series of entwined tales about love and loneliness, family and friends, and Santa Claus making a big mistake, not to mention an enormous number of turkeys!
Sanat Claus is voiced by Brian Cox, a serious British actor. Hearing him do whimsical comedy is a real treat. Bill Nighy voices Lighthouse Bill whose work guides Santa’s reindeer. On Christmas Eve, the last English town on Santa’s list is facing a problem with a massive snowstorm.
What is next for Locksmith? The studio's next films are Bad Fairies, a subversive original musical-comedy film set in contemporary London, to be released by Warner Bros. Pictures on 23 July 2027, and The Lunar Chronicles, an animated feature film adaptation project based on the author Marissa Meyer's four young adult science fiction fantasy novels by the same name.
THAT CHRISTMAS is an entertaining enough festive fare with adorable characters of varying ages in inter-twined stories with British fare. Bonus are voices provided by Bill Nighy, Brian Cox and Fiona Shaw,
The film premiered at the BFI London Film Festival on October 19, 2024, and opens on Netflix this week.
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Y2K (USA 2024) *
Directed by Kyle Mooney
Y2K is a movie that arrives almost 25 years after the Y2K problem. It was an overstated silly and overblown problem that never came to be. There were idiots at the time who started storing food and yes, again toilet paper for fear of an apocalypse.
The film depicts an imaginative version of the Year 2000 problem. While two loser friends, Eli (Jaeden Martell) and Daniel (Julian Dennison) crash a high school party on New Year's Eve 1999, the bug causes all technology to come to life and turn against humanity.
The term year 2000 problem, or simply Y2K, refers to potential computer errors related to the formatting and storage of calendar data for dates in and after the year 2000. Many programs represented four-digit years with only the final two digits, making the year 2000 indistinguishable from 1900. Computer systems' inability to distinguish dates correctly had the potential to bring down worldwide infrastructures for computer-reliant industries.
In the years leading up to the turn of the millennium, the public gradually became aware of the "Y2K scare", and individual companies predicted the global damage caused by the bug would require anything between $400 million and $600 billion to rectify. Contrary to published expectations, few major errors occurred in 2000. Supporters of the Y2K remediation effort argued that this was primarily due to the pre-emptive action of many computer programmers and information technology experts. Companies and organizations in some countries, but not all, have checked, fixed, and upgraded their computer systems to address the problem. Critics argued that even in countries where very little had been done to fix software, problems were minimal. The same was true in sectors such as schools and small businesses where compliance with Y2K policies was patchy at best.
Y2K the film works best when it recalls the nostalgia of the turn of the century. As shown in the film, lots of email users were using AOL with messages like: “You Got Mail” still heard over the speakers of their PCs. At its worst, the film morphs into an outer zombie movie, as if the Y2K scare was real with the fix of the problem at the end of the film totally unbelievably stupid.
The best thing in Y2K is teen actor Julian Dennison as Danny. It is a pity the script kills him off before the halfway mark of the movie. The lead Martell looks like a teen version of Macaulay Culkin, the HOME ALONE movie kid.
The film is also totally socially improper in its condoning of teen theft. It is shown as cool for teenage girls to steal beer from the local grocery store. Later in the film, it heralds the good of humanity to forget the difference in the wearing of different clothes or listening to different music as everyone is human despite differences. Going through the backdoor by Laura to hack the system and solve the problem of the apocalypse is the most ridiculous thing in the movie.
Y2K arrives from A24 films that has the knack of producing excellent films, Y2K is clearly the worst of their lot. Y2K opens in theatres November 29th, 2024.
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YOU ARE NOT ME (Spain 2024) ***½
Directed by Marisa CrespoMoisés Romera
Aitana returns home from Sao Paolo, Brazil, for the first time in three years, excited to introduce her wife and their adopted infant son to her extended family and celebrate Christmas together. The family villa in the Spanish countryside is exactly as she remembers – except for the addition of Nadia, a Romanian refugee who has claimed Aitana’s bedroom, her clothes, and her family heirlooms. Nadia has replaced Aitana in the family, and here is the film’s title YOU ARE NOT ME. Why have Aitana’s conservative parents, long suspicious of immigrants, embraced the mysterious Nadia with such uncharacteristic warmth? There is much more than meets the eye and nothing is what it seems, with everything explained at the very end. There is also a question of Aitana’s mental state, as she had problems in the past. All along, the audience is left wondering too, if Aitana is actually seeing or imagining all that is happening. She also has frequent episodes, like horrid nightmares. All these events take place during the Christmas season which makes things look even more sinister.
There are many positives on his lively little horror thriller that would keep audiences glued to their seats. For one, the incidents come across quickly in the story with many surprises in the plot. The film is also politically correct in addressing the gay issue, Aitana is gay with a wife and the baby adopted is coloured. The immigrant issue is also considered with the family taking in a Romanian refugee. There is also a character with a disability - Aitnana’s brother stuck in a wheelchair, also with some mental challenges. The film appears to have all corners covered in correctness, and all done seemingly effortlessly.
Clever and fresh, YOU ARE NOT ME is a surprisingly wicked horror thriller that teases and excites while never disappointing in its delivery. Set during the festive season, the film also might make it as a dark Christmas classic as in Christmas classics like THE SILENT PARTNER and BLACK CHRISTMAS.
The film’s best moments share many scary traits with Polanski’s ROSEMARY’S BABY. A Spanish ROSEMARY’S BABY? Unfortunately not, as it is hard to reach the genius of Roman Polanski’s classic horror on pregnancy under a covenant of witches but the new Spanish horror YOU ARE NOT ME, is often just as scary. For one, Aitana. like Rosemary is alone in her horror. The audience witnesses her paranoia. And she is betrayed by her family with a covenant of witches. There is also nothing scarier than seeing naked old flesh - especially when they are about to perform a ritual, The ending in ROSEMARY’S BABY has Rosemary waking up, as if from some dream and approaching the cradle to observe her baby. A similar approach is used in YOYU ARE NOT ME, when Aitnana wakes up at the end of the film, as if waking up from a nightmare, wondering if whatever happened has happened or not.
YOU ARE NOT ME opens in theatres and on digital Friday, December 6
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