The Fifth Wave
We’ve seen and heard this before. Aliens to take over Earth so they can have our planet. The first four waves of the invasion pretty much destroy everything but those resilient humans just won’t die easily.
Liev Schreiber is the Commander of the military trying to round up the remaining humans and protect them from the aliens. Humans discover a way to identify the aliens who in the fifth wave are waging a ground war to finish off humanity. Or so we think. What they are actually doing is recruiting the young to fight the aliens supposedly by killing the humans who have been “occupied” by the aliens now controlling the human hosts brains.
Oh, human girl falls for alien human. ( I cannot explain it, just trust me.) So so special effects, a weak science fiction thriller. Much to our surprise the somewhat younger audience applauded at the end. At almost two hours, we were just relieved it was over.
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Aferim!
This story is set in Romania, 1835. It is filmed in black and white. It is the story of a constable and his son in search of a runaway Gypsy slave after having an affair with the nobleman’s wife.
They journey through many different villages each with different nationalities and beliefs. They finally capture the slave, hobble him and embark on the journey back home. There are glimpses of what it might have been like then. Village life was remote, crude, uncivilized, dangerous, yet in some way adventurous. The power structure of the feudal lords and Orthodox Church was absolute and unforgiving.
The pace was quite fast. Subtitles flew past by on the screen and required significant concentration. There was an old Western quality to the production. Ultimately, we were disappointed. It was an interesting experiment that just didn’t work. Bulgarian/Romanian/Czech Production. Romanian with English subtitles.
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