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| The Guardian - Culture: Film | | | | The 50 best films of 2021 in the US, No 5: Flee | | by Benjamin Lee Dec 13, 2021 | | An immensely powerful tale of one Afghan’s escape from 1980s Kabul is the most thrilling documentary of the year
It’s a genuine thrill to encounter a film as exciting and immediate as Flee. The true story at its centre is a harrowing and suspenseful refugee narrative of loss and resilience, and director Jonas Poher Rasmussen could have brought it to the screen in many ways, almost all of them more conventionally easier than the one he finally chose. Rasmussen’s friend, known in the film as Amin, is an Afghan refugee who agrees to share how he made his way from war-torn Kabul in the 80s to now, living a settled, open life in Denmark as a gay man, one he’d never thought was possible.
In animating the interviews with Amin and the various events being recalled, Rasmussen finds an unusually immersive way to pull us in even closer, one that’s both emotionally involving and artfully realised. Amin’s childhood, as with many others like him, was interrupted in the late 80s as conflict forced him and his family to escape their home, finding their way to Moscow. Continue reading... | | | | | Castle Falls review – Dolph Lundgren puts on his specs and flexes his pecs | | by Phil Hoad Dec 13, 2021 | | The muscly maestro team up with Scott Adkins in a gleeful film about a rickety high-rise, a criminal kingpin and a bag of money ‘How do you feel about killing somebody? Because us getting out of here is pretty goddamn dependent on it.” Dolph Lundgren and Scott Adkins make a fine odd couple in this meatily satisfying action film – once it gets moving. The ageing hulk is on prime form, juggling directorial duties with a Balboan blue-collar turn in front of the camera, while Adkins, the current king of kickass B-movies, again shows his range and brings the Brit-comedy – a levity that borders on dorky, if that’s an appropriate word to describe a martial-arts matinee idol capable of caressing your jaw with a spin-kick. Adkins plays Mike Wade, an over-the-hill MMA fighter from Birmingham, England, down on his luck in Birmingham, Alabama. Cadging a job as part of a demolition crew stripping Castle Heights hospital, he finds a three-holdall stash of greenbacks in a cupboard. With the building due to be dynamited in 90 minutes, he returns solo for the money – unaware that two other interested parties are also moving in: Lundgren’s prison guard Ericson, who needs to finance his daughter’s cancer treatment, and a gang kingpin (Scott Hunter) out to secure the loot on behalf of his incarcerated brother. Continue reading... | | | | | |
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