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Reviews
Beasts of No Nation (2015)
Agu the Child Soldier
The Netflix movie, Beast of No Nation, directed by Cary Fukunaga, is about a young West African boy named Agu. The specific setting is unknown, but it is somewhere in Africa. Agu lives in a village that is protected by Nigerian soldiers. Since it is a buffer zone, many things are run down, so there is no schooling. The families inside are suppose to be safe, however the village gets ambushed by rebels. Unfortunately, Agu's father and brother are executed by the rebels. Agu manages to escape into the forest just to be captured by another rebel group. He will later be brainwashed and become a child soldier for the Native Defense Forces, NDF. The director's background includes a couple of movies and a TV show. He is definitely qualified for motion picture production since he has won a Primetime Emmy along with 25 wins and 22 nominations. The budget he had to make this movie was 6 million dollars. This movie's settings were realistic because it was shot in Ghana. SInce there was not many special effects needed for this film, viewers got a great visual for how these West Africans lived and what they went through. Although the places the movie takes place are beautiful, the conditions many of the people lived in are horrible. The village Agu was in at the beginning of the movie was rundown and dirty with lots of garbage around. On the outskirts, refugees would surround the village pleading their way to get in. There was not a lot of money to be made inside the village, so the kids made a buck where they could. For example, Agu took apart the shell of the TV in order to try and sell to someone in the village. Another way Agu and his brother made a few dollars was by purposely blocking the roadway and making people pay to get by. These two examples show how rough it was for kids to be living in this village because there is simply no schooling and money. One of the camps that the commandant and the others started for themselves was extremely unhealthy. One of the promises of the commandant was to give the kids better than what they had. Instead the kids were left digging trenches and cleansing themselves with muddy water. The living condition was not the worst thing for the boys though. It was the fact that they were child soldiers brainwashed to fight and kill who they were told. The movie does a great job with these scenes, especially with the acting from the kids. Agu definitely did a great job persuading the audience that he went through a mental change from the commandant. After the brainwashing, Agu's attitude toward everything changed. He turned into a soldier. One example of is true change was when he killed an innocent man. This shows how he was manipulated into thinking he was doing the right thing, but in reality he was turning into the type of person that killed his father and brother. Since this movie is not strictly based off of a true event, rather based on general true information, it is hard to know what the purpose of the film really is. One way to look at why it was made is how it portrays the brutality children went through during these war times in African places. Also, there really is not any factual or historical errors in this film. This is because there is no answer to base the movie off of. This movie was produced by Netflix, a company famously known in the United States. This can show who the movie movie was made for. It was made for the audience of the United States because that is the audience it is mostly targeting. Overall, the movies overall filmmaking and performance of the actors was top notch. The sequence from the beginning to the end was very clear and fluent. The acting from the commandant was excellent. This is because he plays the strong leader during a war while being able to be somewhat of a "father figure" to the kids. For a child, Agu's actor did a great job narrating and acting out the different emotions of his character from when he was with his family to when he was a soldier. In conclusion, this is a great movie to have have open ideas as to what is the true events it is based off of because there is no backstory to it.
The 33 (2015)
The dramatic true event that happened in the San Jose mine. The 33.
The 33 Review
In 2010, 33 miners were trapped nearly a half mile underground in the San Jose Mine that has been operational since 1889. The 33 men were without contact from the outside world for about two weeks with limited food and water. The 33 is a great movie for a dramatization of the historical events that happened in Chile. The special effect were were very realistic.
The director of the movie was Patricia Riggen who is known for her movie Under the Same Moon and Lemonade Mouth. She was definitely qualified to make this movie because she has experience working for one of the biggest movie companies Disney. Patricia Riggen had a budget of 26 million dollars to make this movie and it was spent properly. It was filmed in two mines in Colombia and some scenes were shot in Chile. This is good because it uses the actual setting of the true event in the movie.
This movie is pretty straight forward for the audience to understand what it is about. The point of the movie is stated in the trailers and descriptions, as well as in the movie itself. This movie was made for the United States since there were plenty of commercials and trailers released in the United States. Also it was made for Chile since this is where the real events take place. The 33 miners that were stuck underground watched the movie as well alongside the actors that portrayed themselves in the movie. I feel that this movie did a great job with the actors emotions. When the actual survivors watched it, I can only imagine how they felt thinking back on the event. Since this movie is based on history, it is important that it is historically accurate and true. One example of an inaccuracy is the drills that left the scene due to accidents and damages. The true event actually kept another drill drilling as a backup in case the United States drill plan did not work. Another inaccuracy of the movie, is how close the family members actual were to the rescue hole. In the movie, it shows them crowded around the hole some what close, but in reality the family members and journalists were about ninety meters away on a wooden platform. Another thing that was not in the film was how the miners were airlifted to a hospital as soon as they were brought up to the surface. Therefore the scene where the miner reunites with his sister would not have happened. I think this is an important topic that was omitted because it does not show how much danger the miners were still in once they reached ground level. This movie also seems to have some biases because it makes the United States look the best and get all the glory of the rescue because every other country left. Also it targets the Bolivian in the movie, so the viewers can guess it made for more of a Chilean audience. However this bias does not get in the way of telling the historical event the right way. Viewers still get a great representation of what happened in real life. Overall this film was properly made. The sets that they used looked realistic and believable considering they did shoot the film in a mine in Columbia. The special effects that they used did look as if a real mine was collapsing. Also, the characters that this film used were believable because they acted the part; meaning they looked and acted as if they were starving, going crazy, or at the brink of dying. The language that the characters used seemed appropriate for the situation they were in as well as the time period. Although this film was remarkably made, I think that there are some areas to improve on. Just to name one, I think they should have showed the airlifts to the hospital that happened in real life. Also real life footage could have been useful for the movie. This would get some personal emotion to some viewers so they can look at in a different way than just another movie. Another thing they could have added was a few scenes showing what the miners might have done once they got out of the mine a few later. In conclusion, The 33 was a great film that gives a great representation of what happened to the miners in the San Jose mine a half mile into the ground for 69 days in Chile.
Allende en su laberinto (2014)
This movie is not good. Poor special effects and bias.
The movie Allende en su Laberinto was directed by Miguel Littin in 2014. It seems that the director wanted to create a film that showed the true events that happened on September 11, 1973 at the Presidential Palace. It wanted to show how the Chilean military partnered with the United States in order to overthrow Allende from his power. This movie was created for the people of Chile in order to give them a dramatization of their own history. It was created to inform people about the topic and so Chileans do not forget what had happened. The director makes a point throughout the movie to show how the people in the Palace were all alone with no one to help. The police retreated and many people left the building. Allende was informed that the military has turned against him completely and no one would come to help. Allende finally established that he would stay to his death. The message of the story is very clear. It is obviously showing the viewers the events that happened on that day. The viewers did not have to dig in order to understand the movie. Throughout the movie, there was not any historical errors. The movie uses the accurate names and time of day the events happened. Overall, the director failed to inform the viewers enough on the reason as to why the military was overthrowing Allende. This film does seem bias because it shows the United States as the "bad guys" and the viewers do not get enough information about them in order to make their own judgement. Up until this point, there are documentaries about this topic. The way the director portrayed the events seemed to be accurate and reasonable. The film showed the events that happened accurately to my knowledge. Overall, this film was poorly made. The way the special effect were created were terrible. When the palace was getting blown up, the sound portrayed glass breaking and the walls collapsing, however none of this ever happened in the movie. Also the fire that was in the movie looked beyond fake and did not seem to affect any of the people in the building. As far as the acting goes, it seemed as if some dialogue did not belong in relevance to what was going on around them. There were people shooting and explosions sounding, however Allende had time to have deep conversations with people. Another issue was the audience did not get a view of what was happening on the outside of the palace. The movie did not show the opposing forces at all.