Neptune Frost

It seems like everything went into aesthetics with this one. There are really cool ideas and backgrounds and characters, but instead of plot development, we just get a lot of concepts shouted at us instead. This would have been better simply as an album or long music video, in my opinion. I am a huge Saul Williams fan and had hoped for a more complete movie experience.

Watching this felt exactly like what it feels like to be the only sober person in a club full of drunk people. If you've ever been a designated driver and had to listen to the cooing and obnoxious behaviors of drunk people, that is the equivalent to what watching this movie felt like. This movie was an incoherent acid trip, but not in a fun way. Unnamed characters, with no dialogue, would look at the camera and have post processing special effects applied to them with the same quality you'd expect in a high school film class. Except the high school film class would at least add dialogue and a coherent plot.

I waited optimistically for this film to make sense. You cling to the hope that, if you suffer through 20 minutes of the oddity that you would be rewarded with something that makes it all click into place. But that thing never comes. This movie remains the same pointless spectacle from beginning to end, except at least in the beginning the spectacle is interesting. By the time the audience makes it 5 minutes into the movie, the visual spectacle isn't even interesting anymore.

In this current wokester phase when things become stagnant, repetitive it is very rare to see filmmakers push forward and create something unique. This DIY Afrofuturists utopian musical is one such experiment which we don't see happen every now and then. But it is hard to define "Neptune Frost" to any genre, there's a bit of everything here.

The movie even highlights very significant and deep philosophical thoughts and problems like colonialism, data dictatorship, capitalism and many more. It is a gloomy picture which paints the journey of intersex hacker Neptune and Matalusa. Then we have a community called Digitalisa which is a safe haven for young hackers. There is many more threads going on with and we get a glimpse of lives of both the characters, the past and the coltan mine which works as an allegory for the film with musical numbers as a sign of protest. The soundscapes are in abundance here as they're used to push the narrative and as a harmony for the filmmakers code about technology and its labor. What I found interesting was the sequence here, with each track being different right from the opening ambient followed by the drum thumping in the coal mine and the breath taking finale and the post-credit closing with glitches which is structurally the simplest with just purely ambient eerie drone sound as Neptune looks up and speaks to the camera. Those who are aware of the Burundians and Rwandans history will tend to like it even more.

To summarize, this is a very contemplative, surrealistic meditative musical with stunning cinematography. Few will draw comparison to Bacurau (2019), the works of the legendary Sun Ra, Jacques Baratier. In addition i would love to add Jean-Pierre Bekolo's Les saignantes (2005) which is one of the most overlooked sci-fi. I could say a lot more about 'Neptune Frost', the costumes, art direction but why? I will need to revisit this again and recommend everyone to see this movie for yourself, support a indie films. I also recommend you to watch Night of the Kings from Ivory Coast directed by Philippe Lacôte, Atlantics from Senegal directed by Mati Diop, This Is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection from Lesotho directed by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese.

I knew precious little about this movie before watching it. I may know even less after having watched it...and yet I enjoyed it tremendously

My son had recommended I watch "Quilombo" and this movie could pair well with that. A swirl of sound and color, a story that feels epic with anti-colonial overtones.

While the movie pulses with resistance, traces an odd odyssey of a striking and transforming character. It is like a poem, one tends to feel it rather than follow it.

If reading the one line/three clause official description baffles you, and you don't mind being baffled hop on board this Afrofuturist modern mothership.

I likely will rewatch this again, ideally with one or both sons. I think someone could take various frames and make paintings of them. I was sort of expecting this was a crazed masterpiece of an African auteur from Rwanda, but I guess I better call Saul (Williams) out as the genius.

At times this made me think of Sahel musicians recording music on cell phone chips - that kind of collision of tribal and techno.

Unanimous Goldmine, indeed.

Take Sun Ra's Space is the Place. Update it to modern day Africa. It runs like Powaqaatsi if that movie had an actual plot. Combine liberally with costumes and makeup reminiscent of Liquid Sky. Add in a teaspoon of 2001. A dash of Viridiana. Fold in liberal amounts of Marxist poetry. Beware, it's a musical. Probably the only sci-fi-ish musical ever attempted. The musical parts often drag on in parts, especially the anti-Imperialism poetry jams. However, it's well worth the watch for all the color! Contains enough gender bending to qualify as a product of the 21st century. WTF did I just watch, will be your reaction upon the conclusion. Tunes reminiscent of Aphex Twin, Deep Forest, and the Red Army Choir. Destined to become a cult favorite in 20 years or so.