Jasmim Talks Cinema

The Academy Awards - Ranking of Best Picture Nominees This year was the first year I managed to watch all the Best Picture nominees before the ceremony, and so, I decided to rank them and writing a little something about each of them. I'll rank them from the one I least liked to the one I most liked.  8 - Bohemian Rhapsody - directed by Bryan Singer Bohemian Rhapsody is one of the most underwhelming films I have seen this year. There is almost no cinematic value in this film, with sloppy editing, terrible directing and horrible writing. This is a film clearly just made to pander to Queen fans, with no depth given to it. It's a complete disservice to the legacy and life of Freddie Mercury and it reaches a point where it's almost offensive in its lack of depth. It's a perfect example of how Hollywood mishandles LGBTQ stories for their own profit. It's certainly appalling how it's nominated for Best Picture. The only reason it's nominated is probab...

Sex Education - A Modern Take on Sex  Netflix's original series never disappoints. In a time when there seems to be so much awkwardness surrounding the theme of sexual education, Laurie Nunn comes around with a refreshing new look at this sensitive subject that is human sexuality. In an incredibly well-written comedy series that has a very John Hughes feel to it, making it strangely anachronistic yet modern, we are invited to reflect on various issues ranging from abortion to homophobia in an exceptionally mature way, with such compassion for the various characters that make up this quirky story. I usually write about films, but TV series are no less deserving of being written about, especially one as intelligently crafted as Sex Education . This is not only a series about sex. It's a very necessary and modern take on sex of all ages and orientations. It's talking about sex the way it should be talked about.  We are introduced to this series by the most proper way to...

Wildlife - The Disintegration of a Family  What is the symptom of the failure of a family? Is there a cause for this phenomenon that affects so many of us? What is the reason for the behavior of adults? What is the effect of this on the children? In Wildlife we are invited to witness the disintegration of a family in the early '60s from the point of view of the child of the family and what he has to go through in order to fend for himself in such a tense environment.  This is a beautiful coming-of-age story like none other I have seen before, and it's dealt with such sensitivity by first-time-director Paul Dano, in one of the most impressive debut features of the past few years. With stunning, softly lit cinematography that both reflects so well the time period and makes the film feel modern and up-to-date and an incredible score, this is definitely a fascinating and intriguing masterpiece with some of the most interesting characters ever written. This is a reflection on ...

Sorry to Bother You - A Crazy New World  In Brave New World , Aldous Huxley describes a stratified dystopic society where dim-witted workers are genetically engineered and instructed through subliminal messages to live happily under servitude, producing for a highly intelligent elite. In Sorry to Bother You , Boots Riley proposes a similar dystopic world, or the beginning of such a world, creating a smart commentary of our current world, which is moving closer and closer every day to that dystopic Utopia of Brave New World . In an insane film with hallucinatory visuals and a beyond-awesome soundtrack by The Coup, Riley shows us how crazy our world really is, commenting on racism, classism, and capitalism. And he shows us that it's not a "brave new world" we're leaving in - it's a crazy new one filled with greed-induced insanity.   Sorry to Bother You is the title, as if Boots Riley is asking us politely to disrupt our lives as he reveals some truths with t...

2018: A Year for New Voices in Film  Another year has come and gone, and it was a weird and chaotic one. With world leaders that make no sense, populism overtaking all corners of the world, and climate change looming ever closer, our world may seem hopeless. Fortunately, we have cinema to lighten up our lives and give us hope the future. This year we've had some of the most original and important films of the century, with incredible masterpieces one after the other. And one of the most evident aspects of this year's cinema is the dominance of stories about those who are usually silenced by society and dominance of female-lead stories and female-directed films.  For far too long, these stories have been side-lined and ignored. For far too long, women have merely been the observed, the target of the male gaze. But not anymore. If we have seen anything this year, it's that the world is changing, and as misogynistic and racist leaders are gaining power, artists and audien...

Illegal Being - A Distant Future Not So Distant  If Look What I've Got In My Shopping Bag was the birth of a new talent, Illegal Being  is the maturation of that talent. Far from giving us any disappointments, Matthew Reynolds reveals that his talent wasn't just beginner's luck in Some Guys With a Camera's most ambitious project to date, being able to execute it and revealing a versatility in genres and themes. In a brilliantly written film that englobes political satire, romance, and Lynchian imagery, Reynolds proves that he's a very promising filmmaker of our Generation Z. This is an extremely important and original look at our current political climate, where we see a world where the word "alien" employed by so many conservative politicians is a bit more literal. Through this, we are shown an intelligent satire that will grip you from beginning to end and make you think. This is a film about a distant future that may not be as distant as it may see...

Roma - An Intimate Panorama of Life  Sometimes there are moments in our lives when we look back at our past and look at it in a different light. We remember how things were in a different way and maybe we give more value to certain things that we may not have valued while we were living at that moment. Sometimes we need to stand in a certain distance in time to fully understand these moments. We create a panoramic view of the past when we do that. And this is exactly what Alfonso Cuarón does in Roma , and that's why it's so easily such a personal and yet, at the same time, universal film. It's a look back into his childhood. However, what he reflects on isn't exactly his own childhood per se. This is a story about life and everything that it involves in all its complexity, simplicity, realism and contradiction. It's a reflection on the past while looking from the present, and not in a nostalgic way, but in a compassionate way. It's a beautiful look both at ...