Winona

"Winona" (2019) is one of those films that you have a strong suspicion they will be really bad right from the first few minutes....and they don't let you down. Loaded with cacophonous music and nonsensical dialogue, the film plays like a bad imitation of Lanthimos, or maybe a failed experimental work of the 1960s. And at the end it tries to wring genuine emotion, which is very hard to do out of something so - deliberately - stilted and posè. At least the four women range from attractive (the redhead) to gorgeous (the one in the red bikini top), which, along with the secluded-beach setting, are the only things keeping you watching, really. 0.5 out of 4.

Nonsensical dialogues, unbelievably slow and almost like watching a (bad) Lanthimos film. The acting was decent - maybe even it was quite limited due to weak plot.

Then you have the fact that the movie feels EXTREMELY pretentious. What I mean by that is at first that it's filmed in 2019, on 16mm film. Well ok, it's possible but to prove what?

Also it's completely unclear when does the film take place. Is it the 80's, the 90's or in 2019? We see an analog camera, a very old radio/cassette player, but at the same time a modern house on the hill. If it's set in 2019, what's with all this hipster aesthetic with the retro glasses and the retro tech?

To sum up the steps: Step 1: Get some young pretty actresses Step 3: Make them memorise all Woody Allen movies (insert Allen tribute here) Step 2: Let them (mainly) improvise Step 4: Add a few almost sexual and other provocative scenes Step 5: ???

Step 6: Profit

Clearly a film made on a budget - nothing wrong with that - but it just feels that it doesn't have what it takes to make you get absorbed.

Having a recognised director father does not mean that anyone can also become a director as well - it doesn't work like any other family business.

I wanted to add extra stars to Winona, the movie... People in the comments are getting a bit harsh. Sometimes the question is, why do you watch movies? Personally, I crave emotions-and Winona really gave me that! Some people comment that all of this was nonsense... but so is our everyday life: a break from routine, a form of exploration, a question and, at the same time, an answer to our identity. I think this movie is pure, not pretentious. More than that, movies are not meant to give us a precise mirror of our lives, but to give us reasons to daydream and expand our headspaces. Also, I believe that before writing a critique, it's better to have a full picture of the filmography and the artist's work.✨✨✨✨

Fought to stay awake through it.

Seemed like mediocre writers generated large volumes of inane, vapid dialogue hoping that some it would be good enough for the final script and all of it got used, even though almost none of it was any good.

The story is known. From sunrise to sunset of a late summer day, four young women kill their time in a deserted beach. They are saying corny (let God make them) jokes, sing discordant songs, recite reams of non-sense together, talk a lot about Woody Allen, managing to say absolutely nothing (which is a feat by itself). They tear up and laugh by themselves, they put up sunscreen, dive into the sea from time to time and create pointless fictions about the only house overlooking the beach. I believe i am getting understood.

But wait a minute! There is suspense also. A car is there and they are probably being watched, but may be not. Probably there is something else going on also, and if this can't be deciphered from the movie, then there are those courteous cinema "critics" who point it out in their "critiques", so that the viewers will expect it and not leave in the middle of the movie. Of course, at the end of the film, even this "something else" is unclear whether it is happening or not. The emotions that the director probably aimed to are lost and sunk in the general boredom that he has successfully generated thus far. The viewer can't take seriously this new discovery, when the director is not taking it seriously himself. There are some Latin American movies that use the technique of the last minute revelation very skillfully and the director should probably want to go and look them over.

However, this movie has a real achievement at its disposal: 14 hours of cinema time are condensed into 2 hours of real time, but the viewer is sure that it is rather 24 hours that have passed by. Since it seems that the director/script writer likes cinema jokes, he should have called his movie "The Big Sleep" instead of "Winona".

This is a typical example of bad Greek cinema that is promoted by certain critics. It reminded me of "Blackout" (1998), that had also been promoted at its time by certain critics. However, "Blackout" had been, even unintentionally, amusing in its pompousness. "Winona" is unable to even offer this shallow compensation for the the two hours waste.