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Reviews
South of Hope Street (2024)
Excellent Sci Fi film with Big ideas
It's refreshing to finally watch a sci fi film that harkens back to films such as Jean Luc Godard's Alphaville or Terry Gilliam's Brazil with an updated spin on it. Director Jane Spencer (Little Noises) has created a cryptic cinema of ethereal mystery where characters attempt to unlock the meaning of their own existential dilemmas. It avoids pretentious monologues but instead focuses on the inter relationships between multiple characters attempting to make the most of the catastrophes looming around them, where the only solution appears to be in fostering a new form of collective resistance of non violence. In many ways this film parallels the ideas of Ibsen's An Enemy of the People. Nobody will believe the main character who consistently brings up to a passive and conformist public that there are 2 moons in the sky. How does this affect their psyches - what are they going to do about it - and why is the government so keen to cover it up? This phenomenon drives home a deeper metaphor about the meaning of how humanity neglects what is most important until it's too late. This is not a movie that follows a plot line with predictable choices made by its characters but instead allows the audience to reflect on the big ideas presented. The cast is exceptional and is fully invested in this bleak world where poetry is dying to be reborn.
Faces on Mars (2003)
What Cinema should be
If you like films like Withnail and I and television shows such as The Young Ones, you will simply adore this gem from the director of past Sundance hit Little Noises.
A mixture of Brecht, British Social Realism and Reality TV - this low budget indie digital film, dark comedy depicts the true underbelly of "artists as struggling workers" in Los Angeles (or rather in a city on the outskirts of Tinsel Town) - all competing and conspiring against one another in a society geared toward unbridled individualism and self-promotion.
Two Brits on the run from the INS in Los Angeles find themselves hiding out in an apartment inhabited by struggling actors - all of whom are taking advantage of a rich man with a trust fund who owns the apartment and wants to create an experimental/egalitarian habitat.
What ensues is a hilarious examination of human behavior and the excesses of the pursuit of self-interest at the expense of solidarity.
Moreover, Director Jane Spencer is highly successful on giving the film some depth through psychological side stories for our main characters. Everyone has a wound - everyone is trying to resolve it in some way. Everyone needs love and attention - but can't find it in a society where everything is for sale.
The cinematography is functional and serves the chaotic purpose of the narrative.
This director should make more movies - as substance of storytelling and political focus is sorely lacking in todays hyper stylized monstrosities masquerading as cinema.