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Reviews
Bosta (2005)
It wasn't abhorrent, nor was it any great film. This is no start to the Lebanese film industry. (Time has proved so as well)
This film starts with an old man holding up traffic and taking a pee, right in the middle of the road, on a car battery to get it started. I thought for 35 minutes inward that this was a bad comedy, I thought it had way too much music queues, (not singing just background music or Alia singing into a microphone for a recording) but yet all that time I thought so differently from what this movie actually is.
Without any knowledge of what this movie was about going in, I could not possibly tell you early in the film that this is a Musical Drama, with themes of both the aftermath of the Lebanese Civil War and creativity in dance. As a viewer outside of the Middle East you can probably tell now this movie threw me off guard a bit.
The acting in this movie is not very good, not horrible by any means, but noticeable. I liked some of the music, mainly the dabkes oddly enough I found them quite enjoyable. The songs in this musical however are quite bad, mostly unimportant and seem like filler. They could've made this film better by only having the actual dance scenes as the music.
Speaking of which, the "score" or "Soundtrack" or whatever you would want to call it (ambient noise mixed with queues of a woman singing) are very odd. There is a lot of landscape shots of the Lebanon countryside and city shots that have this exact same queue over and over again. It often looks and sounds like a horror film at times whenever these shots occur, or at the least the use of these queues are just inappropriate with their frequency and even timing in a lot of scenes.
The rest of the movies elements are in the actual story, which I shall sum up as a troupe of dancers are dancing this new form of the traditional dabke, and while I didn't really get it in the beginning of the film, which is just confusing, this difference really made a showing at the wedding scene later on, where they perform and tick a lot of traditional older men off. They essentially then have a dance off and its not the worst thing. It was a bit of fun.
I won't tell the ending of course. But I will say overall the story while its not great is probably the best thing with the movie alongside the dabke music if you like it. (If you don't, avoid this film like the plague) So I can give it a mediocre rating, it's not the worst thing I've seen, not nearly.
Freak Out (2003)
Haunting performance/story. Great small movie for Brad Jones Fans
THIS IS THE WEBSITE CUT OF FREAK OUT // Its a good movie for what it is, Brad Jones' first movie with small budget. The reason I say this is it's an acquired taste. The fact is however, it is only on release at thecinemasnob.com and has no DVD release. Any viewer of the film almost certainly is a Brad Jones fan, and will probably like this movie.
The greatest part of Freak Out is its horror, characters, and plot. The story is well paced and developed. Brad Jones is great as Dean Corll, pulling off a very, very haunting performance. (Warning: a very NC-17 serial killer performance. I don't want to get into further details, and I don't even think IMDb would let me.) The second and third acts of this movie are chilling and completely unpredictable, if you stuck around through the first act, just be ready for anything...
Acting outside of Dean is a bit shaky, ranging from just adequate to almost mediocre. Line delivery can be very boring, and seem to actually fit into the cheap style of this film, which seems unintentional in my eyes. It felt that supporting characters acting in this film are just simply not ambitious at all. This doesn't mention the fact that many of these characters are supposed to be teenagers, which just doesn't look right. Everyone seems to be in their mid-20s.
The cheap technical style of this movie seems to be the strongest in this movie, making the film a little less appealing than Jones' others. Editing in this movie is also a little off. There's a scene in this movie which has a random cut to somebody putting on a backpack. Never to be seen again. Also the sound quality is a bit on the mediocre side, music is playing in the actual scene usually rather than in post-production, the car scenes are OK with this at the very most, but the opening disco scene feels horribly cheap.
I am personally a big Brad Jones fan so I may have a little bias, but I can assure you, for those who like these types of movies, meaning low-budget alternative B-movies, this is a excellent film.
King Candy (2015)
Easily earns the "Ralphthemoviemaker" title.
I started watching Ralph Sepe's YouTube channel a couple months ago, titled "Ralphthemoviemaker". It was always kind of funny as it seemed a bit pretentious. He looks very young and hasn't made any movies I have heard of, in addition his IMDb page is very small with many short films. Now, I think this movie earns him that title alone...
This story is incredibly compelling, and his performance is perfect. Even for a very short feature film, Sepe's movie achieves perfect dramatic pacing. It's a very smart, somewhat unpredictable, and certainly entertaining story. There is definitely some Goodfellas inspiration in this movie with its narration. But unlike Goodfellas, it plays Glenn (Ralph Sepe) as an increasingly successful and smart character rather than the downfall in the third act such as Goodfellas does.
This movie is completely well written, well directed, and well acted. It would be a 10/10 for me if its supporting characters had some more development and emotion throughout the movie, but this really does not hurt the film as you watch it, it's simply something that could have made the movie even better. I'm looking forward to his next movies now, this movie was just short of a masterpiece that must be seen.