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Old 11-05-2022, 11:39 AM
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TrueFaith77 TrueFaith77 is offline
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65.Please Baby Please (Amanda Kramer); grade: F
66.The Ambush (Pierre Morel); grade: C


Is all content propaganda? Even when I go in “blind” to a movie, filled with hope for personal expressions, filmmakers either proselytize or get appropriated by ideological agendas.

Please Baby Please (Amanda Kramer)
Kramer proves utterly incapable of utilizing the Panavasion camera Please Baby Please boasts. It results in garish colors smudged across straight-on tableaux compositions, nauseating fantasy sequence dissolves, and, in the year’s most queasy shot, a close-up of a deluded drag queen played Cole Escola mid-pop aria (is his creepy Search Party psycho just his usual schtick?). The movie means to deconstruct codes of gender from the era of Marlon Brando—in a style stolen from Fassbinder and Bidgood. However, the didactic structuralist jargon spewed by the actors ignores the surprise of sexual attraction and gendered sympathy. It’s a performance-art scam—paid for by celebrity benefactors—reminiscent of St. Vincent playing second bill. Only Karl Glusman’s mesh-attired biker—a symbol—seems a recognizable, tactile human being.

The Ambush (Pierre Morel)
The need for content (released on streaming the same week as its theatrical run), the endless revenue streams from governments (here, the UAE), and the market for cheapo action films (another Saban release) provides job opportunities for capable genre filmmakers like Morel (of the Besson-produced Taken and From Paris With Love). With The Ambush, Morel demonstrates his frankly excellent montage—delineating the ever-widening fields of defense and attack in the UAE’s response to an insurgent ambush—and compositional sense—the clarity of lighting and camera placements inside of tanks under assault. Morel achieves narrative economy as well, establishing each character’s motivation. He expands narrative economy into into thematic economy (one solider justifies the sacrifice of UAE’s fathers for the children of Yemen). Finally, he extends thematic economy into symbolic economy, climaxing with the gifting of a handmade toy horse. Morel fails to clarify the larger impetus for the war or to explore the complexities of character under durress (elements present even in his previous Peppermint). Ultimately, propaganda reduces his skill to sentimentality and manipulation, lacking intensity.
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