POMO

This documentary is shocking in its depiction of the conditions in which American authorities allow anyone to keep an animal in captivity, including Lolita, a well-known killer whale held for decades at the Miami SeaQuarium. It’s as if there are no laws against animal cruelty, or no one is enforcing them. The film follows a group of Native Americans from the orca’s territory of origin as they strive to secure her freedom. They explain their spiritual connection to the killer whale and the importance of returning her to her native waters, where she can still encounter her mother again after fifty years. Don’t expect a story like My Octopus Teacher and the emotions that it evoked, as Resident Orca is purely a television-style documentary featuring interviews with people involved in the issue. Its power lies in the question of whether the orca will be freed and in the unexpected outcome of the story. [Miami Film Festival]

Here and now I understand what kind of actor we lost in Heath Ledger. A masterfully written and directed “unconventional western romance” set in incredible exterior compositions, while also being viscerally and powerfully intimate, with hidden emotions and the tragic nature of happiness long held just out of reach. Ang Lee guides the lead and supporting actors in the images and editing compositions as if he is painting a picture. In the atmosphere of the rough American retro-rural setting, he composes a perfectly focused mosaic of quiet desires and dreams, into which the tones of Santaolalla’s subtly complementary music hesitantly bring the cold mountain wind and the dust of the prairie. Every scene is a demonstration of filmmaking precision in constructing characters and telling a story covering twenty years in the lives of two people who could neither live together nor live without each other. And the lives of the people around them, affected by the resulting sad events. ___ Brokeback Mountain devastated me with the minimalist conclusion to the story in the most dignified form of cinematic art – without a trace of kitsch or tear-jerking by any means other than a softly spoken offscreen ending of the story that connects so powerfully with the preceding events that it’s heartbreaking. When they are done right, like Brokeback Mountain and Call Me By Your Name, these sad gay romances have, in the characters’ suffering over their social differences and difficult lot in life, a much more dramatic foundation than conventional hetero relationship films. Another probable reason for that is because it is so much easier to find a new girlfriend when things didn’t work out with the last one than it is to find a strong connection with someone from a group that makes up only two percent of the population. Perhaps it is something like a movie fan coming across a film that’s so well directed only once in a few years.

Dynamic, lively, emotive and technically brilliant. The plot is formulaic and the dialogue is ridiculously straightforward, but all of that is overcome by the fact that this is a true story that we wouldn’t believe if it hadn’t actually happened (!). The incorporation of gaming elements into the real world is done so tastefully and skilfully that it make Gran Turismo the best and, mainly, most meaningful film adaptation of a video game so far. Therefore, let’s not compare it to the more mature and thoughtful, but diametrically different racing dramas Rush and Ford v Ferrari.