Dir - M. Night Shyamalan
Overall: MEH
At this point, going into an M. Night Shyamalan movie has become a predictable endeavor. Meaning that the standard, botched end product that is Old hits all of the frequented, frustrating notes. An adaptation of the graphic novel Sandcastle by Pierre Oscar Levy and Frederik Peeters, Old is photographed lushly, with beautiful scenery and inventive camera work doing its best, (yet failing), to distract from the abundance of problems at hand. These problems are well established, Shyamalan trademarks; comically unnatural performances, often preposterously silly dialog, numerous plot holes, and a forced, twist-ending that fails to land. There is something to be said though for this round in that the nature of the premise, (which again, like all Shyamalan films, is adequately strong), does somewhat lend itself to the messy presentation. For a film that examines the emotionally devastating nature of the passage of time, the cruising pace does have a bombardment quality that narratively "works", at least on paper. With all of its components fairly taken in though, it is a distracting movie to say the least. Well-intended and plenty stylized yes, but when you are simultaneously scratching your head, laughing, and getting annoyed at what is on the screen, such issues are difficult to forgive.
Dir - Baptiste Rouveure
Overall: MEH
The full-length debut Anonymous Animals from filmmaker Baptiste Rouveure presents its one-note premise in a rather meandering way. Enormously heavy-handed, it is the type of movie that one can theoretically get the gist of within the first five minutes, at which point they can then leave well enough alone. Featuring no dialog and running just over an hour, it takes a highly simplified, moral high-ground in its humans vs animals role reversal. Though to the film's merit, it may not be trying to convert the unconverted. Instead, by transposing a Homo sapien point of view to abused pets and terrified livestock, it goes for visceral impact exclusively. There are no nuances presented as far as the ethical merit of free-range, population controlled hunting per example. While the blunt themes are just as easy to forgive as they are wholly easy to understand, sadly the presentation itself is faulty. Even with its no-dialog gimmick, Rouveure largely relies on criminally played out tropes like white-noise build ups on the soundtrack followed by abrupt cuts to black, plus the stock, horrory musical score would have served far more effective if it was turned on mute. Worse, the hand-held cinematography is probably intentionally claustrophobic and off-putting, but it is also frustratingly dizzying. This is a bold, serious attempt at something bold and serious, but it falls considerably short in too many ways.
Dir - Lee Haven Jones
Overall: GOOD
The Welsh, theatrical debut The Feast from television director Lee Haven Jones and screenwriter/producer Roger Williams may be too much style over substance, yet it is still boldly enticing. There is a dark fairy tale undercurrent to the story, one that is never at least directly explained and it produces a barrage of bizarre, unsettling moments. Such moments can be chalked up to the repercussions of man's insistence on interfering with nature to enhance their own personal wealth and prosperity, yet Jones is much more interested in concocting a cinematically ethereal mood as opposed to slamming home an obvious, moral message. Numerous scenes are designed for gross-out and/or bewildering shock value, yet they fit the gradual, sinister tone. The more disturbing that things get, the more that the film leans into its surreal atmosphere with little to no concern for spelling too much out for the audience. It is certainly arty in an unapologetic sense where it is probably just best to just sit back and enjoy the evocative, supernatural nastiness, all while trying to shake some of the images from your brain hours after finishing it.
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