confidencegame

I didn't have much expecatation going into this at the Zagreb Film Festival, however Garbura still fell flat, for the large part.

Plot is rather all over the place, very much feeding of the traditional stereotypes built around the low to mid income Dalmatian suburbia, which results in a film that is tonally disconnected and hard to gauge. Also through it all, the plot was also way too predictable and overlong.

Another problem I have with this one is a heavy dose of HRT (Croatian national television) product placement. It's no secret that HRT always insist on "casually" inserting themselves into the movies they help produce, but in Garbura it really goes off the charts and turns off putting. I counted no less than 5 (!) times a television with HRT on was shown and heard in this film. This includes their New Years show program which was very conveniently shown in both households. Enough is enough. Stop it already.

The Anthrax Attacks is pretty average as far as Netflix documentaries go. It is long, fairly dragged out, sometimes tedious (in particular during the dramatized parts) documentary on The Anthrax Attacks that happened soon after the 9/11.

And despite its length, the documentary is really not that compelling, or even comprehensive. Main motive of the prime suspect, i.e. The anthrax vaccine program which rejuvenated after the attacks, is not even mentioned until the very end of the documentary. And even then it was like in one sentence.

Dramatized parts were overlong like the rest of the documentary and featured some mediocre acting with only a couple of exceptions. It really didn't do anything for me and the documentary would be better off without them.

The filmmakers went out of their way to suggest that, if you are not an anti-gun activist or a "survivor", then your mental health does not matter. You just have to deal with it and move on. Apparently it's that easy? What qualifications do the filmmakers have to pass this kind of judgement? Shame on them.

"Not Okay" lost all sense of reality once they decided to make Danni the most hated person on planet for what she did. It makes no sense. Her actions were really not *that* despicable. If anything, it was an obvious cry for help more than anything else.

But that's not enough. The filmmakers also had to accuse her of being a "white woman" who sees herself "as the main character in her life". Excuse me? This is what exactly what the so-called underserved groups are consistently making the point out of. Has the concept of equality really gone that far off the cliff?

P.s. The way Danni's fake story got found out was just so bad. Not even worthy of a first draft. Would have been better if the coworkers connected with Danni and then got her drunk/drugged in order to confirm their suspicions, for example. But of course, for it to be believeable, it would require having coworkers who are not hating Danni based on her identity.