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sammymar999
Reviews
Africa addio (1966)
This is the most impressive documentary I have ever seen.
I watched this film last month and I was blown away. In the documentary form, some film makers use a narrator while others let the subjects tell the story in their own words. This film uses bold and dynamic cinematography to tell this gripping and sadly true tale in a way more powerful than any other narrative format. This movie was filmed using a variety of 16mm and 35mm motion pictures cameras. Virtually all of the shots are hand held and I was not surprised to later learn the the Director of Photography was awarded an Oscar for one of his previous works. I spent the summer of 2002 touring Africa and I stayed in a few of the locations shown in this film. I was amazed to see the splendor of the cities in this film which stood in stark contrast to the squalid ruins I witness less than forty years after this masterpiece was made. It was amazing to see how beautiful and vibrant these areas once were. Now it's a wasteland were life is both short and very cheap. This film is pure genius. It also represents a cautionary tale to other peoples of what can happen when the political and economic stability of a society dissipates. Also, one can't help but realize the severe consequences visited upon those naive souls who traded their prosperity, freedoms and security with the avid encouragement of those lefty do-gooders who led them down the path of ruin in the name of "casting away the chains of imperialism." After the continent imploded, these would be social engineers disappeared in the dark of night returning to their homes in London, New York and Paris to see what other societies they could ruin with their idealogical snake oil. They, by default, left to other the impossible task of cleaning up their mess.
The democracy our hapless African brothers and sisters thought they would receive never materialized and when their paternalistic European guardians left, most of these people suffered under the most brutal forms totalitarianism, crime, starvation and tribal genocide. They jumped blindfolded from their frying pans and landed in the fire. Would anyone dare say they are better off today then they were forty years ago? Food for thought.
Once and Future Queen (2000)
Wow
This thing just stinks. Weird! I have to complete ten lines in order to have my comment posted but I just don't know what to say. Yeah, freak city to the max but it's like these freaks are playing mind games its like they made this piece of crap and the joke is on us because we actually watched the thing. I just see them laughing their freak asses off because another sucker like me watched their crap. This thing is just sick and gross. Who would make such a thing? I just kept waiting for the punch line or some major turnabout or climax that would make sense of it all but it just never happened. Somebody obviously bought a camcorder and just went around the weirdo hangouts filming people and passed it off as a movie. This is like some type of fraud or scam that is being played on people for the amusement of the jerks that made it.