Day Night Day Night (2006)

Sadly Over-hyped

How sad is this?

A different way of telling a story

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Once in a great while, the events of my day conspire to keep me awake well past a time one would expect any sane individual to be up. On this particular night, 5am or thereabout, I flipped listlessly through infomercials, recycled newscasts, and whatever Nick at Night has become desperately hoping to find something to justify my being awake-instead of... asleep for 3 hours.Of course, it is during moments like that that one is often lucky enough to find a gem that would have otherwise been overlooked; the unexpected event of finding such a riveting movie only serves to make the film more special. In the case of this movie, simple intrigue over the title and brief summary lead me right into something I was completely unprepared for at 5am.Now, as I mentioned in the summary, this is a movie where the director used extreme minimalism; using it in such a way that the minimalistic quality actually served to give the movie a bare, natural, yet intricate realism. The plot leaves so much to be desired, the viewer is left to make up their own idea of just what exactly is going on. Since I assume you can all read, I'm not gonna bother covering the jest of the plot again when IMDb has already done it so well, but while the plot (and the way its presented) is incredibly important to this movie's vibe... it really is only a small piece to the puzzle of what makes this movie enjoyable.This movie succeeds in getting more from less, on playing against one's own desire to know what makes this story, and the main character, tick, on denying the viewer's need for some resolution or closure; ultimately offering instead nothing but stark reality, heart attack inducing build up that ends just like the film itself-with a whimper. All of this is executed very well thru good acting, body language, and through creating the feeling of an authentically alive environment; and in that unassuming environment is a powder keg trying frantically to die a suicide bomber. The attention paid to showcasing the contrast between the main character and the living environment was superb, although I occasionally felt like I was going to have an anxiety attack due to this film's blatant emphasis on suspense building without an actual climax.Day Night(x2) is not without its flaws; it is certainly not for everyone, and just like real life, this movie isn't afraid to turn unpredictably, build to nothing, or let you down hard. However, if you're able to look past the less than traditional direction and plot, and can appreciate the wonderful wordless nuance in this film it really is worth watching. If you're lucky, you'll catch it the way I did... completely unanticipated when you've just nearly resigned yourself to sleeping like a normal person. Those are the times an overlooked film like this can really shine!

When Hannah Arendt coined the expression "the banality of evil," surely she must have had something like "Day Night Day Night" in mind. With chilling detachment, this brilliant and terrifying film chronicles the last 48 hours in the life of a potential suicide bomber. It is a topic rife with all sorts of potential pitfalls, both political and cinematic, yet the movie succeeds as a work of art because it never resorts to sensationalism or exploitation to get its point across.Filmmaker Julia Loktey has deliberately eliminated any back story that might explain why a beautiful young girl like "Leah" would be willing to perform an action as inconceivable and incomprehensible as the one she has planned here. The whys and the wherefores are really of little concern to Loktey. Instead, she has chosen to concentrate on the almost strikingly banal, step-by-step process "Leah" must go through to complete the deed. Indeed, it's amazing how, through context alone, even the most mundane of actions - brushing one's teeth, taking a bath, clipping one's toenails - can suddenly become imbued with the most terrifying significance and sense of foreboding. It's almost as if "Leah" is trying to hold onto a sense of normalcy for as long as she can, savoring the minor pleasures of life that she knows she will never experience again. In fact, in the stunning final half hour of the film, as "Leah" roams around the streets of New York City trying to summon up the courage to fulfill her mission, she begins to cling more and more to the simple joys of life - a mustard-covered pretzel, a candy apple - before taking that final plunge into the abyss. What's particularly disturbing is how unfailingly sweet and polite "Leah" is to the people around her - be they the common pedestrians or storekeepers who could easily become her victims, or the masked men who calmly, almost apologetically, feed her instructions on what she is to do when the fateful moment arrives. The scene in which they dress "Leah" up in terrorist garb and methodically "direct" her for a video that will be released after her death is one of the most chilling in the entire film.Luisa Williams, who is never off camera for a single moment in the film, delivers an astonishing tour-de-force performance that is guaranteed to leave the audience stunned into silence. With very little in the way of dialogue to work with, Williams is forced to rely almost exclusively on facial expression and body language to convey a wealth of emotion. The incongruity between the character's sweet personality and demeanor and the horrific act of violence she is about to commit throws us completely off balance and makes us call into question our own perception of the world and the way it works.Loktey employs documentary-style realism to tell her story, using her camera to record, almost as a dispassionate observer, the events as they unfold in the course of that 48-hour period."Day Night Day Night" contains more nerve-wracking suspense than a boatload of standard thrillers, yet it is a suspense that is honestly earned, for Loktey never stoops to implausible timing or hokey contrivance to create her effect. This is the stuff of real life - with all its attendant unpredictability and ironies - unfolding before us. We are forever focused on this young lady, who remains a fascinating and terrifying enigma throughout the entire hour-and-a-half that we spend with her.Stated simply, "Day Night Day Night" is one of the most riveting and important releases of 2007.

If you speed this up to 8X, you won't miss a thing. The camera lingers on every gesture and movement far longer than any human can pretend attention. This film could be edited to 15 minutes and it's obvious that the people responsible for it are shameless boors. The raters must be the producers, cast, and crew's family & friends or folks who saw an entirely different film. I would be as dishonest as they are if I pretended that there was more to add to a review of this "movie", but IMDb requires 10 lines as a minimum for a review of this waste of footage.I CAN NEVER TRUST AN IMDb RATING AFTER THIS.

I've seen some real dogs in my life, and I'm not easily bored. Christ. I would rather watch Empire than this self important art school version of the Bratz movie.We're meant to be bowled over by the banality leading up to the ultimate devotional act of mass homicide (not)committed by this cardboard, racially/nationally/faithfully indeterminate ideological stand-in. Unfortunately, we're treated to what could be generously described as a middle class fantasy of martyrdom. The filmmaker intentionally removes racial, locational and religious motivation from every.. Well, I'm loathe to even describe them as characters.. but every human being shoved artlessly into what would barely qualify as a visual graduate thesis paper.So, yes. Our heroine is dedicated to cleanliness in the lead up to her promised terminal act. This is explored in the sort of plodding detail so common in independent, lousy film recently. Again, my complaint isn't that $#%$ wasn't exploding in every other frame, but that the creator's reaction to that sort of crudeness was not only as gauche, but also not stimulating mentally or visually.Additionally, the terrorists she meets with are so unconvincing and self conscious - constantly readjusting the knit brims of their St. Marks Street wanna be Jihadi masks - That by the middle of the movie (which feels like the 5th hour) when she asks them to share her pizza with her, any mentally stable viewer is wishing for an orgy of art student actors in pretend terrorist masks to choke to death en masse on pizza crust.I'm not sure if i should blame Wes Andersen or Sofia Coppola for this sort of twee garbage. To their credit, at least those hacks avoid tackling something as heavy as the motivations for suicide bombing. I name them because Andersen elevated a phony emphasis on cutesy detail and sentimentality, and Coppola feminized and trivialized the trivial even further. Either way, the stage was set by them for any halfwit with a camera to drain dry any thinking viewer with extended shots of day to day activities leading up to seemingly profound acts.This movie is a meaningless waste of time, a retread of inferior student films exploring important themes with the clumsiness of a tip-toeing giant. The viewer doesn't anticipate the death of the main character with the sadistic glee of an adolescent. It's with the sense of justice that is never explained in even the most cursory sense for the supposedly righteous heroine of this mastubatory ferris wheels of a movie. And we don't even get the satisfaction of her elimination. This is a repetitive and mundane movie that trivializes something that, as a New Yorker, I should feel a little justified being frightened of. Self important and ultimately boring? Yes. Hypnotic? My ass.