DesertTalkies Film Reviews!

  Midnight Express [1978] Starring Brad Davis, John Hurt, Irene Miracle Direction by Alan Parker, Adapted from Billy Hayes' novel, Midnight Express  Language: English  When you hear about a movie about an attempt to escape from prison, you would typically think of some oversensationalised drama, dramatic to the point where the story is devoid of realism. It's a very childish genre when it is fictional: a staple of 'young adult' or preteen film. There has never been a situation until know where I have seen a movie that is so raw, so real. I loved everything about this.  Firstly, it was an interesting choice to have extended scenes in untranslated Turkish; whenever there is a scene in a film where something is not spelled out for you, so are almost forced to revert to a basic, human level of emotion, to empathise with the untapped emotions of fear, of suffering, of longing, of disillusionment. To see everything from a point of view where you are the one feeling this sw...

 White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch [2022] Direction by Alison Klayman Language: English This was one of those things that gets recommended to you on Netflix that you watch to kill time. Whilst I don't anticipate this documentary winning an Academy Award or something of that nature, it looked flashy enough to the point where I thought that it would be worthwhile to watch it. I had my own little Abercrombie & Fitch phase when I was younger, and, having watched this documentary, I'm almost ashamed to say that I had one. And whilst visually the documentary was enticing, there were some problems that were quite obvious to me.  Firstly, I felt like the pacing of the documentary was not quite right. The movie focused heavily on the 1990s and early 2000s, which made sense considering that those were the times were when the brand was at its biggest. However, the documentary goes onto discuss events in the late 2000s and 2010s. It was almost as if the documen...