Now Over 5500 Reviews and (near) Daily Updates!

WELCOME! Use the search engines on this site (or your own off-site engine of choice) to gain easy access to the complete MAKSQUIBS Archive; more than 5500 posts and counting. (New posts added every day or so.)

You can check on all our titles by typing the Title, Director, Actor or 'Keyword' you're looking for in the Search Engine of your choice (include the phrase MAKSQUIBS) or just use the BLOGSPOT.com Search Box at the top left corner of the page.

Feel free to place comments directly on any of the film posts and to test your film knowledge with the CONTESTS scattered here & there. (Hey! No Googling allowed. They're pretty easy.)

Send E-mails to MAKSQUIBS@yahoo.com . (Let us know if the TRANSLATE WIDGET works!) Or use the Profile Page or Comments link for contact.

Thanks for stopping by.

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

AFERIM! (2015)

The constable from a backwater province in 1835 Romania may be in declining health, but with help from his grown son, he’s still able to track down a runaway Gypsy slave. Charged with stealing money, it’s really the Provincial Lord’s honor that’s been taken . . . or perhaps given. No matter, the punishment’s sure to exceed the crime in writer/director Radu Jude’s award-winning film. Stunningly realized in WideScreen monochrome, with a medieval feel in spite of the 19th Century setting, it consistently finds the horror of rural life and a kind of grisly humor in those unenlightened times. Illiterate peasants, bad enough in ignorance, can’t compete with the ‘educated’ priests & authorities in offering up prejudice & tall tales as knowledge. And beneath both, Gypsy slaves, like one young boy who briefly attaches himself to the constable before a new buyer can be found. Yet, after traveling over this Bruegelian landscape, our constable comes across as one of the more decent souls. A rather terrifying thought.

DOUBLE-BILL: Less second-feature than encore, a contemporary short subject also by Jude included on the DVD, an unexpectedly sweet father/son story, THE TUBE WITH THE HAT/’06.

No comments: