In my attempt to watch 100 movies in 2016 I move swiftly on with the next two movies I watched. They're very different.
This is the movie Jon Stewart made in 2014 when he took a break from the
Daily Show. It’s based on the actual event of Maziar Bahari being jailed as a
spy in Iran. It was recently put on Netflix, and it was really great. So
basically what happened was that Maziar is a Canadian-Iranian journalist, he
was in Iran in 2009 around the time of the controversial re-election of
Ahmadinejad covering it for Newsweek. While he was there he did an interview
with Jason Jones for the Daily Show where Jones pretended to be a spy. This was
part of the reason Bahari was arrested, they used this as evidence that he was
colluding with America. He was jailed for 118 days, kept in solitary,
interrogated and tortured.
The movie was really good.
I was fairly unaware of the situation, because you know, I’m a dummy. It was an
interesting insight into the whole situation, how the Musavi supporters
rallied, how they tried to do everything in their power to win the election,
and how hard they fought back when Ahmadinejad won. It was beautifully shot,
and the music was beautiful. It felt really grounded in reality, probably
because they used a lot of news clips from the time. Because Bahari’s wife was
expecting him to come home, and his mother was there when he was arrested they
got him a lot of attention, and he got a lot of coverage in the news.
It was really weird to see
these interrogators having pretty much nothing on Bahari. They accused him of
being a spy for talking to Jason Jones, and Bahari literally says: "why would a
spy have his own TV show?" And why would a spy tell you he is a spy? And yeah,
it was so weird. And it was so sad to see how scared they were of America, and
of change. And the last scene is a voice over saying that these unimaginative
people are scared because they know they will lose, and that is so sad to me.
There’s also another really sad scene when Bahari is released from jail, which
is obviously nice, but there is a group of people waiting outside the jail, and
when he comes out they all, except his mother, look so disappointed. Because
they spend their whole days there waiting for the doors to open and for their
loved ones to come out.
Yeah. It was so sad, and so
beautiful, and for a debut director I think Stewart did a spectacular job. He
also wrote the script, and the script is great. I was taken out of it a bit by
everyone speaking English to each other. Even when everyone was Iranian. The
only Iranian languages were on the TV clips. I assume it’s because none of the
main actors, Gael Garcia Bernal, Kim Bodina, and Dimitri Leonidas, are not Iranian, so I
assume they don’t speak Persian. It just took me a bit by surprise, so yeah. It
was amazing though.
I went and saw the new adaptation of Macbeth, staring Michael Fassbender
as Macbeth and Marion Cotillard as Lady Macbeth, because nothing says Scottish
queen quite like French actress. Anyway. It’s about Macbeth, a Scottish Thane who
supports King Duncan (David Thewlis) in the civil war. He goes into his last
battle, wins, but takes heavy losses. Then he’s approached by three witches,
with a little girl and an infant, and he is told that he will be king of
Scotland, and Banquo, another Thane, will be the father of kings. Then they
walk off. Macbeth originally thinks he won’t do anything about this and just
let it happen, but his delightful wife wants him to go for it. So Macbeth kills
Duncan. Duncan’s son runs away, putting him under suspicion, and somehow
Macbeth is made king, because logic. Macbeth goes to the King’s castle, is
crowned, and goes batshit. He starts seeing things, he is furious that his child
is dead, and they can’t seem to have more kids, because then he’s gone through
all this just for Banquo’s kids, so he sends his soldiers out to kill Banquo
and his son Fleance. Macbeth gets more and more tyrannical, he kills the wife
and children of an opponent by burning them to death. Which was awful.
Finally Malcolm, Duncan’s
son, returns with an English army to take his throne back.
It was incredibly
beautiful. It was shot really beautifully, and the use of colour was
outstanding. There is a lot of fire and blood, so the colours red and orange
are everywhere. The last fight between Macbeth and Macduff is absolutely
gorgeous. Macduff has set the woods on fire, and they are surrounded by red and
orange, by smoke and fluttering ash, and it’s so beautiful. It’s also full of
slow motion shots and then sped up shots, and it’s magnificent.
Michael Fassbender is as
always a gorgeous unicorn genius. He is incredible. Marion Cotillard was also
incredible. Her accent wasn’t completely on point, but who cares, because she’s
beautiful and amazing. The rest of the cast was also great, so yes.
This has nothing to do with
the movie, but there was a dude behind me in the cinema eating crisps and they
were so loud, and he chose to eat them whenever there was a really quiet and
intense scene, and I hated him with a burning passion.
Rosewater 
I went and saw the new adaptation of Macbeth, staring Michael Fassbender
as Macbeth and Marion Cotillard as Lady Macbeth, because nothing says Scottish
queen quite like French actress. Anyway. It’s about Macbeth, a Scottish Thane who
supports King Duncan (David Thewlis) in the civil war. He goes into his last
battle, wins, but takes heavy losses. Then he’s approached by three witches,
with a little girl and an infant, and he is told that he will be king of
Scotland, and Banquo, another Thane, will be the father of kings. Then they
walk off. Macbeth originally thinks he won’t do anything about this and just
let it happen, but his delightful wife wants him to go for it. So Macbeth kills
Duncan. Duncan’s son runs away, putting him under suspicion, and somehow
Macbeth is made king, because logic. Macbeth goes to the King’s castle, is
crowned, and goes batshit. He starts seeing things, he is furious that his child
is dead, and they can’t seem to have more kids, because then he’s gone through
all this just for Banquo’s kids, so he sends his soldiers out to kill Banquo
and his son Fleance. Macbeth gets more and more tyrannical, he kills the wife
and children of an opponent by burning them to death. Which was awful.