The Kitchen

The Kitchen is a black ghetto in a dystopian near-future London. Izi works in a futurist funeral home where the dead are turned into plant food. Each family is given a plant which will be used in reforesting. Benji is a 12 year old saying goodbye to his mother. Izi recognizes her and stops to attend the funeral. With no family left, Benji believes that Izi is his long absent father, but Izi insists that he's not.

This sets up an interesting world and an interesting budding relationship. It does leave me a little cold. It's a bit too slow. I want the plot to do more. It's a debut indie for many involved. I see potential in these actors and filmmakers.

The acting is incredible, the directing is brilliant, the cinematography is gorgeous. It has been well written and well executed. It's pretty obvious how we have got to this 'dystopian future', so I don't agree with other reviews that this was lacking from the film. In fact, it's more of a reflection of modern society, and says a lot about the world we already live in, today - not so much dystopian at all. There are people living in London today with lives similar to those depicted in this film; waiting for people to come and pull them from their homes, powerless, but finding solidarity in community. Rampant capitalism, large corporations exploiting and disregarding the poor. So many stories are being told, by following the story of Izi and Benji. It's really a beautiful piece of cinema, that manages to say a lot about life.

However, it is a slow film. It's a thoughtful film. I think it will be lost on some people, whose expectations of a Kano and Daniel Kaluuya film will not be met. I think, in some parts, it was too slow - but at the same time, not a scene was wasted, A strange ambivalence to it, as it is, at the end, the sum of its parts.

How frustrating was this! It had potential but it couldn't decide what it was. If you want to produce a character led drama, then invest in your script and your actors. It ain't no ''Children of Men'.

It didn't move me, nor excite me with anything. It just kept teasing me with what could have been. The characters were obvious and lack less, but that's not saying the performances weren't adequate. If only they were given more to work with.

It's a shame as Channel 4 has given us, over the years, some amazing films but I'm afraid, this lacked the grittiness of past productions. Nice idea, shame about the script and direction.

When you watch this movie for the very first time, you will soon realize that you are facing a very bizarre but brilliant atmosphere . Somewhere is London possibly but in the future.

The Idea of this movie is quite attractive, it will engage your mind and your guts in a very emotional way and it tells a story about people's challenges and difficulties as n a different era, it is future and people are changed but not in a good way except technology.

However, it is a shame the director of this movie was not able to deliver the same quality of the initial idea . It is the shame that the DOP work was disastrous, lack of stage direction, lack of right camera movement, incorrect framing , lack of actors direction and not even a good engaging editing . This movie could have been positioned one of the top 30 movies in the world , this movie could have been compared with blade runner at some point but the movie director wasn't chosen wisely and did destroy the whole work.

Finally the production design team did a very good job and it was right for purpose of this movie.

The Kitchen had so much potential with it's premise but ultimately falls victim to a slow moving script and frustrating story. The film depicts a bleak dystopian futurist society in 2044 London where people are seperated by wealth gaps. The pros of this film are the visuals/cinematography and performances. The Kitchen can't make up it's mind what type of story it wants to be which will cause confusion by the viewer. During it's short run time I felt like this movie was over 2 hours long but was only a little over one hour 30 minutes. The ending is also very unsatisfying and leaves up to interpretation. I was interested within the first 5 minutes of the movie but it quickly derails. The Kitchen gets 5 stars out of 10 from me.