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Reviews
Rising Star (2019)
Well-Made/Well Meaning Film
This is an impressive, organic documentary which shows the "warts and all" elements of being on the road as a struggling musician. It's equal parts heartbreaking and inspiring. As well, the fact that Shane Drake crafted this piece on his own is mind-blowing. For anyone who travels as a musician, oftentimes playing to half-filled venues or for a handful of ecstatic fans, this piece will definitely resonate. The film exists as a slice-of-life curiosity, of sorts. The viewer truly "feels" the early load-in to cold bar rooms and the solitude of the road in winter... and the ache of missing home and family. I highly-recommend this documentary. Well done.
Love (2015)
Brave, Sultry, Feeling-Oriented Filmmaking
Both effective and affecting, Gaspar Noe's "Love" (2015 France) will make you FEEL... intensely, albeit emotionally ambiguous, at times. This is a sensual (not suitable, at all, for young audiences), heartbreaking, histrionic piece, the final minutes, of which, have haunted me/saddened me/enlightened me throughout today. Critics and most audiences will not accept or understand this film (read: which means it's good), but I think this is honest, visually- succinct/dreamy, brave, and aware filmmaking. There are no rules here... socially or personally. I actually woke up today with the final line of this picture wooing me awake... and it kind of hurt, in a life-affirming way. Excellent film.
Yes, Your Tide Is Cold and Dark, Sir (2013)
Review by writer John A. Snyder
Review by writer John A. Snyder...
"Yes, Your Tide is Cold and Dark, Sir:" A review.
"Tide" is a psychologically-sophisticated drama touching on a basic human dilemma: the experience of relational estrangement and the desire for emotional closeness. The composer Gustav Mahler once said "All great music or art must express a deep longing." Malinowski captures this longing in spades. From the opening scenes to the dramatic close, Malinowski pulls us into the existential longing for intimacy, along with the myriad ways we can mess it up; from the highly ambivalent longing of a son to reconnect with an emotionally-distant father, a man who can establish unusually close emotional connection with his students; to examples of true emotional connection destroyed by a unilateral push toward sexual expression, to a rather common attempt to overcome painful estrangement in sexual expression without intimacy. Finally, in a dramatic conclusion, Malinowski, with great sensitivity, displays how an unusual capacity for emotional intimacy between two lovers can be destroyed by anxiety and vulnerability turned into suspicious questioning and attempts to control. If you are looking to be taken by the hand through some tedious plot, you will be disappointed. But only the most defended intellectual can leave this drama without being bombarded by, and pulled into, the complicated feelings of existential estrangement and deep longing for human intimacy. "Tide" will grab you where you live, hold you, and not let you go.
-------------------John A. Snyder