Tag: Maria Bakalova

2022 In Film: Day Nine (The Almost Amazing)

On By troubledproductionsIn Year round upLeave a comment

These are films which are incredible, they’re just not among the best I’ve ever seen. There’s some great stuff in this section, most years, these would be among the best, but 2022 was actually an INCREDIBLE year for cinema, as will be proven in the next entry.

Bodies Bodies Bodies

Ups: Very funny.

Some great deaths.

So damn clever at the end.

Downs: You might get frustrated before it gets to the end.

Characters are a bit unsympathetic.

Pete Davidson could tone it down a bit.

Best Moment: The ending, easily.

Worst Moment: The sub-plot about the texts. Could have been done better.

Best Performer: Maria Bakalova

Opening: Bee and Sophie are travelling to a hurricane party. The fact they’re travelling to a hurricane party says everything you need to know about those characters. Perfect.

Closing: I don’t want to spoil it, but trust me, it’s good. It changes the entire film and is everything an ending should be.

Best Line: “I’m not escalating you’re holding the knife and you’re moving your hands while you talk.”

Original Review here

Boiling Point

Ups: The fact it was made. A technical masterpiece.

Downs: It’s supposed to be a very busy night, but never really feels like it. Feels very low-stakes.

Best Moment: Chef Carly bringing one of the front of house staff to tears just through words alone. It’s a long-ass speech and it’s delivered perfectly.

Worst Moment: The ending. Seems a bit too reminiscent of the original ending of Clerks, like they didn’t know how to end it.

Best Performer: Graham. Easily.

Opening: The main character walking to work whilst on the phone, and then meets an environmental health officer. Does a great job of setting up him and the situation. Then the health officer starts criticising people, “I know that’s regulation temperature, but ideally I want it lower”, so he essentially marks them down for following the rules. Sets up the conflict.

Closing: He cries on the phone to his estranged wife, getting her to tell their son that he loves him. He then promises to get into rehab. He then keels over, possibly dying as we fade to black. That’s…….brutal.

Best Line: The aforementioned speech. It’s cutting, and perfect. Can’t type the whole thing here.

Original Review here

Chip N Dale: Rescue Rangers

Ups: Very funny

Very meta

The animation differences actually work.

Lots of cameos.

REALLY dark.

Downs: A bit predictable

Some of the characters from the original series are sidelined.

If you’re a child, are you going to understand all the references and cameos?

Best Moment: When one of the characters uses a Rescue Rangers episode to indicate they’re in trouble. The code is not picked up, but another one with the same message is. Very funny.

Worst Moment: The cheesemonger moment feels a bit of a waste of the performers talent.

Best Performer: Samberg. His child-like enthusiasm is perfect for this.

Opening: Voiceover, showing how the two met. Cliche, but works, also adds some great jokes in there “you’re not Donald Duck, you have to wear pants”

Closing: They decide to release a reboot of the Rescue Rangers TV show. Works. Suits the style of the film.

Best Line: “What’s the first thing that pops into your head when I say Chip N Dale? I’m willing to bet it’s Thomas Chippendale, the london cabinet maker. I bet the second thing is these guys *shows the chippendale dancers*“

Original Review here

Confess, Fletch

Ups: So damn funny.

A compelling mystery.

Great ensemble cast.

Downs: Other mysteries have been better.

Terribly marketed.

Could be smarter.

Best Moment: The scene with the neighbour, chaotic comedy.

Worst Moment: Some of the police scenes undermine their characters a little bit.

Best Performer: Ayden Mayeri. Tempted to go with Hamm, but he has enough recognition, Mayeri doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page. So just mentioning her now so that when she inevitably becomes a huge sitcom star, I can point out I was a fan of her first.

Opening: The lead is sent by his girlfriend to recover stolen paintings. Might have set up the character more if we caught him at the end of a previous job so we get more of an indication of how good he is. But I respect how quickly it leaps into the main story.

Closing: The redistribution of the stolen paintings. In a lot of films, I would criticise this as being too “look, this character is likeable”, but in this, it kind of makes sense with the way the character is written.

Best Line: “We obtained surveillance footage from a store around the corner.”

“Where the fudge is made?”

Original Review here

Fall

Ups: Effective, to the point it almost made me nauseous watching it.

Likeable characters.

Simple story, done in the best possible way.

Downs: “so it’s just them on a small platform?” If you can’t get past that, you’re not going to like this.

Visuals in the opening are a bit weak.

Might not be able to stomach it more than once.

Best Moment: When the ladder breaks. You know it’s not real, and you know the characters won’t die that early. But you can’t get past the “holy shit, that should not happen” part of your brain. Plus, when it happened in the screening I was at, a guy immediately shook his head, stood up, and loudly exclaimed “nope, fuck that”

Worst Moment: The ending.

Best Performer: Grace Caroline Currey. The film is anchored around her performance, if she fails, she drags the film down and it sinks. Kind of regret saying “anchored” now, feels like it clashes with the metaphor.

Opening: Becky, Hunter, and Dan (Becky’s husband) climb a mountain. Dan makes a quick dismount, by which I mean he falls and dies. The weakest visuals in the whole thing, the backgrounds look incredibly fake.

Closing: Obvious ending. But it happens way too quickly and feels like they cut a 5 minute scene out filling in some things.

Best Line: “If you’re scared of dying, don’t be afraid to live”

Original Review here

Orphan: First Kill

Ups: Actually adds to the mythos.

Great use of practical effects.

Incredible plot that rewards rewatching

Downs: A bit too many “this is a reference to the original” moments.

Best Moment: The reveal. Trust me, it’s glorious.

Worst Moment: “Esther” finding a missing child who looks like her, is like a needle in a haystack. May have worked better if she saw news about the missing child, then decided to make most of the opportunity.

Best Performer: Julia Stiles.

Opening: Leena/Esther escapes an institution by seducing and killing a guard. It’s weird the guy was sexually aroused by someone with a disease that makes them look like a child, right? Very slasher movie, and works well.

Closing: The original film starts. Good to see.

Best Line: What was I supposed to do… put my surviving child in prison over some sibling rivalry shit?

Original Review here

Scream

Ups: Very clever.

Tackles the darker side of fandom.

Good kills.

Has the best use of Red Right Hand in the franchise so far.

Likeable characters

Downs: Wastes some good potential killers.

The twist could have been foreshadowed slightly better.

Best Moment: Dewey’s death. Truly shocking.

Worst Moment: The hallucinations of Billy are an acquired taste that doesn’t fully work.

Best Performer: David Arquette.

Opening: It’s a Scream movie, you know how it’s going to start: ghostface stabs someone. Major difference in this is they survive. It’s a good way of saying “yes we know the conventions, but we’re going to swerve away from them”

Closing: Gale decides to not write about the killers, leaving them anonymous. Good ending, but might have worked out better for the fourth.

Best Line: “See, you can’t just reboot a franchise from scratch anymore. The fans won’t stand for it. Black Christmas, Child’s Play, Flatliners, that shit doesn’t work. But you can’t just do a straight sequel, either. You need to build something new. But not too new or the Internet goes bug-fucking-nuts. It has to be part of an ongoing storyline, even if that story should never have been going on in the first place. New main characters, yes, but supported by, and related to, legacy characters. Not quite a reboot, not quite a sequel, like the new Halloween, Saw, Terminator, Jurassic Park, Ghostbusters, fuck, even Star Wars. It always, always goes back to the original!”

Original Review here

See How They Run

Ups: Compelling mystery

Saoirse Ronan is a ball of energy.

I like that I know there are many Agatha Christie references I missed out on.

A classic throwback to a genre.

Once you realise where the ending is going you’ll laugh your ass off.

Downs: Loses momentum going into the third act.

Some wasted time.

One of the misdirect attempts really doesn’t work.

Best Moment: The murder reveal is executed (pardon the pun) perfectly.

Worst Moment: The dream sequence.

Best Performer: Saoirse Ronan

Opening: Pan down from the theatre down to the eventual murder victim as he monologues.

Closing: Two characters sit down to watch The Mousetrap. Weirdly nice and quaint. Plus it allows the film to end in a thematically suitable way.

Best Line: “What’s next? A caption that says Three Weeks Later” *caption saying Three Weeks Later appears on screen*

Original Review here

The Banshees Of Inisherin

Ups: Darkly hilarious.

A lot of beauty in the shots.

Tremendous attention to detail for the sets and costumes.

Incredible performances.

Downs: Relentlessly bleak, which stops the emotional moments from hitting quite as hard as they should.

Repeats narrative beats.

Best Moment: When Colm actually cuts his fingers off, brutal.

Worst Moment: Dominic dying, only because it’s handled very quickly.

Best Performer: Colin Farrell. Could easily be Gleeson though.

Opening: Pádraic goes to see his friend Colm, who ignores him. That’s it. That’s also the opening 30 minutes or so. It works though.

Closing: The former friends aren’t so much at loggerheads anymore, but definitely won’t can’t be friends again. It’s good as it shows you although this is the end of the film, it’s not the end of the story.

Best Line: “Look at this I found. A stick with a hook. What would you use it for, I wonder. To hook things that are the length of a stick away”

Original Review here

Turning Red

Ups: Likeable characters.

Has something to say, you can tell this is a writers dream project and is deeply personal to them.

Downs: The animation isn’t as good as Pixar usually is.

The characters are slightly obnoxious at times, but then again, they are teenagers so….

Best Moment:

Worst Moment: The furore about “sexualising children” that surrounded the release of this.

Best Performer: Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, brilliantly deadpan.

Opening: Mei doing the usual “so this is me” opening. Instantly sets out who she is, and her relationship with her family. She’s incredibly likeable and her personality shines through.

Closing: The family relationship is fixed, and the red panda is now a tourist attraction at the temple. Kind of obvious was going to end that way, but allows some sweet moments.

Best Line: Honoring Your Parents Sounds Great, But If You Take It Too Far, Well, You Might Forget To Honor Yourself.

Original Review here

Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022)

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick synopsis: A group of 20 year-olds party in a mansion during a hurricane and decide to play a party game. The bodies start piling up, as does the tension.

Occasionally a film completely dies because of the ending. My hatred for Unfriended and The Gallows partly comes from how much they fucked up the final minutes of their respective runtimes (or in the case of Unfriended, the final 2 seconds). This did the opposite, the final minute or so of this film completely saved it. Before that, I enjoyed it, but it was slightly frustrating and felt kind of unfocused.

The ending changes everything. It does what an ending like this should do. It recontextualises everything that happened before and makes you want to watch it again. It does have the slight downside of turning it slightly into a farce, but it works. The audience in the screen I was at seemed to enjoy it, and there was a delightful 10 second period where everybody in the audience knew it was happening and was just waiting with bated breath. Before that, it is an enjoyable watch, don’t get me wrong. It’s funny, looks great, and is full of good performances.

On the subject of performances, a lot of people have highlighted Rachel Sennott, making a point to talk about how good her performance is. It’s…..alright I guess. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with it, but it didn’t really stand out to me. In my head when I try to recall it, for some reason I can’t picture her performance, instead I imagine all her scenes playing out the same, but with her replaced with Jessica Knappett. To me, the real highlight was Maria Bakalova. She graced our screen in the Borat sequel a few years ago, you know, when COVID was around and people in America were being openly racist to the point where it looked a bit violent and scary, thank god that’s not the case anymore. Here, she shows that her performance in that was not a fluke, she is, in fact, very talented, just as much in scripted as she was in the more improvised setting of Borat.

The other performances are good, and almost everybody comes out looking good. I think it helps that outside of Bakalova, Lee Pace, and Pete Davidson, I didn’t really know the performers in this. They were all fresh talents to me which allowed me to go in without preconceptions about who they are. Pace and Bakalova are talented enough to overcome them anyway, Davidson? Still a little unsure. I only know him as a performer through brief glimpses of SNL sketches I’ve come across, so I don’t know enough to judge him fully but it really does seem like he’s just playing himself in this. There’s nothing in it that feels like a “performance”, instead just feels like they filmed him on set.

It’s nice to see gay representation on screen, especially this openly. Normally it’s reduced to “they shared a look”, “oh look, they alluded to something” so they can get plausible deniability (or edit it for certain markets). This is a film that’s open with sexuality, and I can’t help but feel that part of that is because the director (Halina Reijn) isn’t American, she’s Dutch, which means she doesn’t have the same puritanical attitude to sex as an American director would. Also, when she shows lesbian physical affection on screen she doesn’t do it for a male gaze, which makes it seem more real and less “performative”, there’s genuine affection in the physicality here. This is her first English-language feature that she’s directed, when I heard that I assumed she had a long career in Dutch cinema. This is the work of someone who is comfortable behind a camera and knows the best way to express a script. But she’s only directed two films before this, and one of them was a short (For The Birds). That astounds me, I really hope this film is a success and it leads to a long career for her, if she’s this good now, I want to see what she’ll be like 3 films down the line.

The look for this is unique, the darkness combined with the neon lights gives the whole thing a slight “drunken party” vibe. The music also helps add to this. Very female-fronted rap and dance. Essentially it’s Frat-House Horror, the type of film you watch with a group of friends while drunk and high.

On that note, if EVER a film was crying out for some Ashnikko it’s this, I mean, Charli XCX is great too, but she’s not giving us lyrics like “you better stock up on tissues, jacking off to all my pictures”. That kind of open sexuality and party vibes would suit this film perfectly. It’s a minor gripe I know, but it feels so obvious that I have to say it.

2020 Awards

On By troubledproductionsIn AwardsLeave a comment

Worst Film

Babyteeth

A film that by all rights, I should have loved, instead I hated it with a passion. Part of that is probably just because I didn’t like the characters. But part of that also might be because it has a euthanasia sex scene.

Fantasy Island

The only film I paid to see at the cinema this year. But even if I got in using my trusty cineworld card, I would have been disappointed with this. A lot of the things made no sense. Character motivations were muddled, and it was a complete waste of the potentially exciting premise.

Brahms: The Boy 2

I’m assuming this is bad, I genuinely can’t remember anything from this movie. For all intents and purposes, it’s like I never watched it.

Unhinged

An ugly film with an ugly soul, seemingly directed at similar people.

“Winner”

Artemis Fowl

Fuck you, disney. Your desire to do a book series yet take out the one thing that made the series stand out is a ridiculously stupid idea. It would be like if the makers of Harry Potter didn’t want to put any magic in the films. This film was doomed from the moment they posted the casting notes. I don’t get how you can fuck up a property more than this unless it’s deliberate.

Most Disappointing

See the section about the worst? Yeah, but every single film from that list (with the exception Of Brahms: The Boy 2 Electric Boogaloo) there. All of them I had, well maybe not high, but I had hopes for them. I expected them to be fun, or in the case of Babyteeth to make me feel things. But added to that list are:

Harley Quinn

No I’m not putting the full title here. I really wanted this to be more fun, but for a lot of the time it felt restrained, like it was an 18 film cut down to a 15. It had bits of brilliance, there’s one set-piece in particular which is creative and a lot of fun to watch, I just wish the rest of the film was like it.

Run

Controversial choice, as I did really like this film. But this subject is “most disappointing”, and that, sadly, is the case for this. I went in with incredibly high expectations, I expected this to be a 10/10. I wanted this to be one of the best films I’ve ever seen, and it’s not, it’s just very, very, very good. So yeah, that’s on me.

The Witches

Again, that might be on me, in retrospect I should have realised beforehand that this would not be a good movie, based solely on the complete lack of advertising for it. I really, really wish this was better. I wanted to love this movie. I love the original, and I love Anne Hathaway. Plus I wanted it to be so unquestionably brilliant that racists wouldn’t be able to attack it “see, you change the leads to black people, and it ruins it”. Truth be told, they could have done more with the racial aspect and played it into the story, especially considering when and where the film was set.

Winner

Tenet

The film that was supposed to save cinema, and which had such bad sound design that it would have been better to watch it at home where I could have had subtitles. I’m starting to realise I don’t love Nolan films as much as it seems I should. Interstellar, Dunkirk, they all left me feeling emotionally hollow if I’m honest. They’re very well made, and I appreciate the undeniable genius of the craft that goes into them, but I have no love them. On a personal level, they mean nothing to me.

Best Music

1917

Glorious and epic. Just what a film like this needed.

Spree

If only for the SENSATIONAL use of “I Will Follow Him” over the end credits, will definitely use that in my own stuff.

Babyteeth

One of the few good things about this film. I’m not going to buy this film, or even watch it again. But if possible I would purchase the soundtrack. It created an aural soundscape that complimented the colour scheme. It was weirdly beautiful, and fantastic.

Winner

Bill And Ted Face The Music

OBVIOUSLY! The music is a big part of this, bigger than it has been in any of the previous two films. So if it didn’t work, the film wouldn’t have worked. The final scene with the song is a moment of pure beauty, and the music is a big part of that.

Best Moment

Sonic The Hedgehog – Closing Credits

Weird choice I know, and this won’t be the last time I mention a credits sequence in this section. But the closing credits are essentially the film told but in the style of the old sonic games (a.k.a, the only good ones). No reason for them to do that and nobody would have noticed if they didn’t, but they did, and it’s wonderful. It felt like the only part of the entire film made with love for the source material.

1917 – The Trench Run

Incredibly tense and wonderful. Weirdly enough, it seemed to be improved by a mistake. There’s a moment during this run where the actor stumbled and nearly fell over. It was kept in and it weirdly enhances the scene. It makes you realise that for all the chaos going on around him, he is essentially just a scared youngster. He’s not a badass super soldier, he’s human, fallible, and fucking terrified.

Vivarium – The Drive

There’s a short moment in this film where the couple drive to a house. That’s all it is, a couple driving to look at a new house whilst a song by The Specials plays. Yet the way it’s filmed means it’s one of the best things I’ve seen. Incredibly tense and creepy, a great example of how a director can change a written scene so the ordinary becomes extraordinary.

Underwater – Opening Credits

Again, a weird choice. But the way these were done were almost perfect. They set the location up, gave us plot background, and let us know the tone of the movie, so by the time the actual film started you were not only informed of what was going on, but you were also in the right state of mind and knew exactly what film you were about to see. Other films have done this, obviously, but few have done it quite as masterfully as it was done here.

Winner

Parasite – Peach Fuzz

When the family put their plan into action to get the housekeeper fired. It has the pacing and style of a comedic heist movie. It’s interesting to watch, the performers absolutely nail every moment of it, and most of all, it’s fun and playful. A bit of lightness in the darkness of the rest of the movie. If you showed someone this with no context they might think it’s just a cheerful light comedy as opposed to the genre-defining genius it is.

Best Looking

Babyteeth

Considering this was one of the worst films I saw this year, it’s appearing a weirdly high number of times in positive awards.. That’s how good it looked, good enough for me to look past the annoyance I felt. The colour schemes, the saturation, it reminded me of Lady Bird in terms of visual style. It seemed like a throwback of some sorts, but not to a specific time in reality, but to a specific time in your life. Very strange, but very good.

Birds Of Prey

Not a great film, but it had a great look to it. Like being shot in the face with a cocaine paint gun.

Onward

It’s Pixar, their films always look good. They have a certain elastic reality to them so they look both real and fake at the same time. Also, the colours! OMG the colours. Watching this film is like eating a unicorn laced with LSD.

Parasite

The colours! Nah I’m just kidding, this is not about the colours, I’m not some kind of weird person with a child-like mind who looks at films like “ooo, look at the pretty colours”, nope, this is about the pretty shapes instead. The way the director constructed each shot and used the straight lines visible in modern architecture to highlight the class divisions between the characters is masterful.

Winner

1917

This would be there based solely on a single shot. The shot of the town at night, the way shadows and light were used is a showcase for how great cinema can be sometimes. As it is, the rest of the film looks great too.

Best Character

Birds Of Prey – Huntress

Part of that is due to how Mary Elizabeth-Winstead plays her. A superhero lacking confidence and who is slightly socially awkward due to how they know they are supposed to behave. I would definitely watch a solo film by her. I really wanted more from her in this. Maybe if there’s a sequel it will be more focused on her.

JoJo Rabbit – JoJo

Brilliantly played, and brilliantly written. Yes, he’s a nazi, but he’s not fuelled by hate, more by ignorance. He has a definite innocence to him, Difficult to do, if you make him too innocent he comes off as stupid, if you make him too knowledgeable, he’ll come off as, well, like a nazi.

The Invisible Man – Cecilia

Obviously, for the reasons listed in the best performer, oh no, I’ve spoiled that section now. Ah well, I’ll live.

Winner

Onward – Ian and Barley. 

I put them together as they function as a pair. Without the relationship between the two, the film would be a lot worse. It’s essentially a family love story. It goes through the same story beats, just without the kiss at the end obviously.

Best Performance

An American Pickle – Seth Rogen

Anybody who plays two roles convincingly in the same film is doing a good job. Especially when you can always tell which character is on screen all the time. He carries both of them differently enough that even when they’re not speaking, and are in the same clothes, you know exactly which one is which. That’s not that easy to do unless you resort to extreme physical performances which can be distracting. The differences here are different enough for you to pick out, but subtle enough that you can’t define them.

JoJo Rabbit – Roman Griffin Davis

He’s 12, and this was his debut. How the hell did he manage this? I assumed he was one of those stage-school kids who’s been acting his whole life due to being related to someone in the industry. For him to come in and do THIS well shows he’s either got a hell of a future in acting, or a hell of a drug problem in his mid 20s. Either way, big things are coming.

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm – Maria Bakalova

Another great newcomer. and something even more surprising considering it’s not her native language. Not just that, but she’s anchoring the film alongside someone who is an expert in this field, and she more than holds her own.

Winner

The Invisible Man – Elisabeth Moss

She has strength, but is fragile. Kind of like a flower made of iron. A lot of that is due to how well the character is, so I’ll go into that in that section. But the way Moss plays her is perfect. She needed to play her as someone who has gone through severe trauma and is still suffering mentally from the damage done to her which restricts her ability to live a normal life, yet also strong enough that you know she has the mental strength to do what needs to be done. If Moss played her too far towards either side it would have been ruined as she would have either come off too weak, or so strong that you don’t believe she’s still suffering. It’s a REALLY difficult line to walk, and she not just confidently walks it, she’s doing fucking cartwheels.

Best Film

1917

January was a great time for cinema, saw so many good films in that month (including JoJo Rabbit, which you’ll be hearing more of), but this was the first film that was simply stunning from a technical view.  Not included as the best because I’ve only seen it at the cinema, I’m not entirely sure whether it will also work on a small screen or whether you’ll lose something.

JoJo Rabbit

A film with this subject has to be REALLY good or it will be deemed a failure. It has the potential to offend so many people that the slightest flaw will cause the general public to circle around it like sharks circling around handbags at a disco, or food. Trust me, this is superb, one of the funniest and sweetest films I’ve seen all year. The rest of 2020 may have been bad, but at least it gave me this piece of brilliance.

Onward

Not a lot of love for this film, and I don’t get why. Even by Pixar’s incredibly high standards, it’s still really good. The voices are well-suited to it, and the story is emotionally satisfying. It deserves it’s place among Pixar’s greatest, and it disappoints me that people don’t seem to love it as much as I do.

The Invisible Man

A real surprise. I expected it to be kind of cheap and schlocky. Like it would not be great, but would be entertaining and fun. I was very wrong, this is not a fun watch, and it’s not cheap. This is a script that you felt the writer HAD to get out of them. It has the air of a passion project for everybody involved. The best part? It didn’t NEED to be this good. It didn’t need to have this much care to make money. It could have been made cheaply and still made money. But the fact that they spent enough money to get this film made, the fact that the script is THIS good, the fact that it has power and emotion to it, THAT’S why I love this film. A film about an invisible man has no right to be as well-crafted as this is.

The Personal History Of David Copperfield

A late entry, but deserves it’s place. This is the best of British film-making, showing the best writing, the best actors, and the best locations. The whole film is basically a showreel for British cinema. Despite watching it at home, I felt like I was watching it at the cinema. It just sucked me in completely until I forgot that I was just sitting in bed watching it while eating pringles.

Winner

Parasite

Incredibly haunting. Been almost a year since I saw it and I’m still not entirely sure I’m over the ending. This is one of those films that sticks with you, the kind of film where after seeing it, you want to have hour-long discussions in the pub afterwards. It’s annoying that soon after this we were banned from going outside, because I wanted to go out onto the streets and tell everybody to go see this film.

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (2020)

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Well this was a shock. The character of Borat was thought to be dead, and for good reason; how can you trick someone when everybody knows who you are? Plus, what would it have to say? Didn’t it say everything it needed to say in the first movie?

So it was a genuine shock when they announced this film, not that it was being done, but that it had already been completed and was being released in a few weeks time. I love a surprise release, and they haven’t come more surprising than this.

What’s a bigger surprise is how easy it was for him to get people to say some really stupid shit. The character may be from Kazakhstan but the film is very reminiscent of Russia, in that it’s funny, until it very suddenly definitely isn’t. And it happens very quickly when he goes into a shop and asks whether one of the gas they sell will kill gypsys. The shop assistant replies that he needs to get the bigger one.

It gets much worse, with a scene late on in the film where he gets a festival full of people to sing that journalists should be executed, after choosing between that or injecting them with COVID. Oh yeah, this film mentions COVID, and brilliantly. COVID is the first pandemic in the age of mass misinformation, and the stuff that people say in this is shocking, but also not unexpected. Maybe that’s a weakness. A few years ago, someone saying that the leader of the opposition in America created a disease in China and then unleashed it on the world just to take down the president would seem insane. Today it’s actually US government policy. So how can it be possible to shock and surprise when stupidity and hate is the default setting of half the population?

Enter Rudy Giuliani, a guy who led New York through the aftermath of 9/11, and has since destroyed his reputation with, well just his general personality, although launching a fundraiser and asking guests to donate $9.11 probably didn’t help. In this film it’s not so much what he says, but what he does, he goes to a hotel room of young woman who is interviewing him, lays on her bed, and then he, well he fluffs himself. It’s incredibly creepy and is filmed in almost haunting silence, like you’re watching a slow-motion disaster. This was huge news, in that it made the actual news. On the downside this meant you knew it was going to happen, on the upside it means that there’s a slight chance (very slight) that Borat decided the election, weird.

What’s also weird is that this actually has a good plot(brilliant segue there, fucking seamless). It acknowledges the first film, and focuses on Borat living in shame and Kazakhstan being ashamed of him (which is very based in reality considering their reaction to the film), which causes him to have to go in disguise for this, travelling US with his daughter. Oh yeah, he has a daughter (Tutar, played expertly by Maria Bakalova), and truth be told she provides some of the most shocking moments. Not only the aforementioned Rudy moment, but she swallows a plastic baby from top of a cupcake and goes to get an abortion, saying her dad put it inside her. To which the doctor tries to talk her out of having an abortion because America.

She also provides a lot of the emotional weight. Particularly when a babysitter (Jeanise Jones), is genuinely shocked and tries her best to help Tutar. She’s not scripted, her initial behaviour was to help this poor woman, that’s her genuine human nature, and it’s wonderful to see it in this film. Obviously people agree, as they raised $150,000 for her. I think that’s thee important message of this film, and I don’t know where it was intentional or not. But when rich white guys are dicks to people, there will always be others there who are looking to help. Whether it’s a black babysitter who is concerned for Tutar, a young white girl who calls her own father out on being a creepy bastard, there will always be kindness in the world, you just need to find it. There’s a moment where Borat goes to commit suicide by hugging a Jew (it makes sense in context) and ends up having a beautiful conversation with a holocaust survivor. Keep in mind he enters the synagogue dressed in what can only be described as “Jewface”, dressed head to toe in hate. And this woman, who has seen what this hate leads to, she approaches him without hesitation and gives him a hug. It’s stunningly beautiful and incredibly heartwarming. Sacha Baron Cohen obviously thought the same as he actually broke character and told her that he was just playing a character.

The most beautiful moment comes at the very end, and I’m not entirely sure if it’s Sacha Baron Cohen as himself, or as Borat. He tells Tutar (or Maria), “you were amazing”. It makes sense in the film to be said by Borat, but he says it in Hebrew, which makes me think it was Cohen. It’s…..it’s beautiful. And weirdly, that’s what I’ll remember from this film, the love. And I NEVER thought I’d say that coming into this.