Neptune Frost

I watched this film with 3 of my friends. 4 of us together, all young white guys, and we all liked it.

I especially LOVED IT! <3

This is a unique, creative masterpiece of a film. It's artsy, experimental, clearly limited budget - but it all works out great.

Sure, there's little plot. But not every movie needs a plot to be good, some movies are just great pieces of art, an experience - and this is one of those.

I can promise you, as far as such promises are possible, that you have never seen anything like it before. And as a development in the new genre of Afrofuturism, I personally believe that this movie could be a pivotal moment in the history of African film. A pioneer to inspire others about what can be made.

Don't judge this movie by any standards you're familiar with (especially Hollywood). View it through the lense of something new, fresh, exciting, and I'm sure most would agree with me that this is something truly special. An experience absolutely worth watching.

Neptune Frost is completely trippy. Black codes from the underground meets cloud networks but all expressed as some kind of extended contemporary dance piece.

Parts are simply incoherent but there is always something to look at. It is interesting to have 2 or three characters in the foreground having a poetry recital while in the background there are often dancers interpreting the music that we are all hearing.

There are a number of ideas going on here and I really enjoyed this film as a creative and engaging although the stilted dialogue was a bit too theatrical for its own good.

It was very much like some kind of theatre / contemporary dance piece where the words are clues to the story but not the whole story at all.

I read somewhere that the music was 3 albums worth and when I saw the drummers at the end I was ready for the film to finish so that editing felt like a natural arc. I saw this film at a film festival and I hope it gets wider release. It is exciting and visually and musically very much a success on its own terms. There is a narrative but I think that is secondary.

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.

Originally premiered at the 2021 Toronto Film Festival and 2022 Sundance Film Festival.

This is the first movie I have seen made in Rwanda (also the United States took part of this project as well) and it is directed by Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman and it is about an intersex African hacker, a coltan miner and the virtual marvel born as a result of their union. This movie is pretty strange, but I quite liked it.

Williams and Uzeyman is able to create a weird African musical science fiction type story through strange colorful production designs, weird performances, poetic dialogue, and very strange narrative choices throughout this movie. It felt more like an experience then actually watching a movie about characters roaming around the planet earth. The dialogue is interesting despite some of the wording feels a little fake. But the poetic lyrics and tone helps to keep it from falling. The colorful production and colorful background really helps to keep your eyes glued to the screen. All the performances are strange because I can't tell if they are being good or bad on purpose. Like it's trying to be an experimental still of filmmaking. Almost like something The Weekend would do but this is much more poetic then a The Weekend music video.

I don't often see movies from Africa and there are some really hidden gems in the African landscape. Movies like "Black Girl, Borders (2017), and Lingui, the Sacred Bonds" shows that African cinema is out there but you need to just look for them. I recommend this movie. It's weird but interesting.

Rating: B.

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.