Incannerax
What a waste of my time!!!
Reptileenbu
Did you people see the same film I saw?
Majorthebys
Charming and brutal
Edwin
The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.
speeddrunner
This was a good movie, but it could've been better. A lot of people have written glowing reviews about how much they liked it, while some people have given it 1/10 because of unreasonable issues and grievances.I have a few issues with the film and I'll focus on that.The biggest issue is the lack of consistent tone. Is it a drama? A comedy? A tragedy? There are dramas with plenty of jokes, there are tragicomedies, there are black comedies, but this one doesn't feel like any of the above. I'm a huge fan of Kusturica (Underground is my fave of all time), but although this reminds me of it at times (the attempt at noise in the cinema) at other times it's just inconsistent and weird. The funny parts are not that funny, more amusing than hilarious, but tragic parts are very sad, too sad to fit with the others. The musical parts are very odd and seem out of place. The part with the Russians is also given too much time, as if that's the main part of the film, even though it's just a loose end and is forgotten. The beginning of the conflict has a very intelligently-written domino effect of escalation, but later schemes have no consequence and are forgotten. The Russians just go home. The tape recorder is forgotten. The hidden guns are forgotten. Chekhov's gun means nothing here.The story didn't know which direction it wanted to go to.The ending scene captures this idea very well. They don't know where to bury the boy and are stuck in the middle, between two sections of the cemetery. The movie doesn't commit to a style and doesn't commit to an ending. They could've buried him in the middle, signifying a bridge between the two faiths. The mother could've insisted on burying him deep on the Muslim side, stubbornly continuing to play the role of switching sides. They could've buried him in another cemetery, a new one for people that don't want to be a part of this conflict even in death. Cremation and spread the ashes... anything.It's too late to start listing possibilities, but there are so many things that this movie could've done but didn't for lack of ideas."There's taking a side and there's taking a stance" but this movie takes neither.
scotthvincent
"Take the finest Hash
Worth its weight in gold
Yellow or Brown, it makes no difference
Add some more, don't be shy
The Hashish comes from my heart"
----- Excerpt from the greatest impromptu and cinemagraphically unneeded musical number in the history of film.In a person's life, they may have a cinematic experience that completely changes their life. A movie so powerful, so raw, so honest that the annals of moviemaking are opened immediately for its lifetime preservation."Where do We Go Now?" Is NOT that movie. But you know what.... It's not a bad one either!"Where Do We Go Now?" Is set in a Lebanese village which is primarily cut off from the rest of the region by a field of landmines. One small bride serves as the only contact with the outside world. In this village, a tight-knit community of Muslims and Christians have lived together peacefully for years. However, unknown forces pull the village into strife, pitting neighbor against neighbor. It is up to the Mayor's wife, Yvonne, and her cohort of respected ladies in the village, to keep the men from killing each other. They also make hash brownies.The first time I attempted to make hash brownies, I completely forgot about the importance of ensuring you have a well-choreographed musical number to perform during their preparation. While I am not as crass to assume that all Lebanese ladies burst into song and dance while making marijuana edibles, I certainly have never had the foresight to do the same. As such, my hash brownies did not turn out nearly as kind as the ladies of the village make them. To prove my point, their husbands end up getting so high that they completely forgot why they we're fighting each other. Which brings us to the moral of the story: Marijuana can end war! This movie is rife with comedy, tragedy, violence, love, forgiveness, and even redemption. It tells a story and teaches a lesson that moves the viewer into a sense of empathy, coupled with the emotional raw power of what could be construed as one of the funniest sad movies I've ever seen, or one of the saddest funny movies I've ever seen. Either way, the character of the village mayor looks very much like Danny Devito, an observation I happened across after smoking what some might consider a to be a heroic amount of cannabis.But the most intriguing thing to a viewer that is only vaguely familiar with middle eastern culture would be the fact that as tough and as macho as these guys want to be, these sisters run the friggin' town, best believe dat! As an example of their political savvy, at one point In the plotline, this seemingly innocuous band of sweet little old ladies hire what seems to be...well...hookers. Why they do this, I have no idea. But it was certainly funnier than anything Ben Stiller ever did. As such, the men of the village are temporarily distracted by bountiful Ukrainian cleavage and the perverse thoughts that come with it as they regress back into adolescence, leaving the women of the village to further their plans. In summation, "Where Do we Go Now?" is a lighthearted romp mixed with gut-wrenching tragedy that serves to entertain even the most skeptical of undergraduate Beginning Arabic II students at the University of Colorado Denver. A movie well worth your time, especially if watching it saves you from taking what could have been a very painful exam but you have a super-awesome professor that knows you need a nice bump in your grade so you do the review and try to make it funny because the movie was actually really, really, funny and I literally played the hash brownies song over and over again because it's the best thing I've heard all day.Final Rating: 7/10. It may not be "Along the Waterfront", but if you've watched everything on your Netflix queue and your girlfriend wants to watch something that doesn't involve explosions and fart jokes, "Where Do We Go Now?" is certainly worth a rental.
gradyharp
Lebanese actress/writer/director/producer offers on of the most poignant statement about the struggle in the Middle East, a struggle between Christians and Muslims for power and dominance -a struggle that while real is the most preposterous argument tow 'religions' based on love could have. Would that more people would watch this film there would probably be a better understanding of why the ongoing wars there are likely to never be settled.The story as written by the gifted Nadine Labaki (who also stars and directs) is that of a little village in Lebanon that is half Christian and half Muslim: the church and the mosque stand side by side and the morning bells from the church play at the same time the Muezzin calls the Muslims to prayer, the cemetery is divided between the Muslim side and the Christian side, etc. The balance between the two factions is tenuous and the men are always looking for ways to start war among themselves. The women of the town try everything to ease the tension - create a café, import Ukrainian belly dancers to distract them, ply them with hashish-laden foods. But when a stray bullet kills the male child of one of the mothers the division stops, the mother hides the slaughtered child, attempting to keep peace until silly arguments among the youths result in the discovery that the endless bilateral taunting has resulted in a tragedy. At the end of the film the narrator speaks: 'My story is now ending for all those who were listening, of a town where peace was found while fighting continued all around. Of men who slept so deep and woke to find new peace. Of women still in black, who fought with flowers and prayers instead of guns and flares, and protect their children. Destiny then drove them to find a new way' - to which the pallbearers ask of the divided cemetery, 'Where do we go now?'Labaki understands the need for comic relief in a story of this nature and she provides that in some very warmly funny ways - the women walking along in groups sing and do a choreographic step that makes us smile. But the power of the film is the message of compassion and the desperate need to re-think the omnipresent crises that tear the Middle East apart. And it is quite proper to find similarities in every part of society. Grady Harp
PipAndSqueak
This is a beautifully executed story that will get you angry, sad, confused, enlightened and amused as it unfolds before you. This is the story of a small community barely keeping itself together, surrounded as it is by violent conflicts between opposing religious groups. Here though, the religious leaders are in unison with the women - they do not want to see any inter-religious strife. They do not want to witness any more deaths amongst the young men. The cemetery is full of the bodies of the village's youth and tended by the weeping women who's hopes and dreams for the future are prematurely ended by the deaths of their sons. With slightly inept determination the women decide to take matters into their own hands. They achieve an unsteady truce but at least life goes on. Hope is given a second chance. A lovely, heart warming film.