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Riddle Of Fire
I didn't write nothing for quite some time. I was preparing to give a talk at Libre Planet 2024. And now that it is over, I guess my mind is a little bit more free, so I will write some more.
There is a sub genre of film which includes my movie Moria's Race and things like Spy Kids. Those are movies where child characters are opposing adults. And winning them. But there is a kind of spectrum in this sub genre. Spy Kids franchise, for example, is very clean and sterile. Trying as hard as possible to get a good age rating. While others might get a bit riskier. Riddle Of Fire is one such film.
The movie is about a group of little kids ( not teenagers ) who drive around on motorcycles while armed with paintball guns. They wear things that make them look scary and terrorist-like. They curse. Sometimes very adorably. But nonetheless the movie is kind of a kids movie despite all of those things.
I think that the writer / director Weston Razooli ( who plays one of the adults too ) is pulling out a magic trick on the audience and on the rating board members. The movie with all the strong elements got only a PG-13 rating. And I think the reason for it is that most of the "bad things" you can see or hear in the movie are done by adorable little children. Like that one time when that kid says "Son of a bitch!" so cutely that you cannot possibly feel the impact of the words.
The film feels low budget. There is not a lot of action or shooting or whatnot. The filmmakers didn't have the money. But they more than compensated the lack of set pieces with an incredible amount of tension. The writing is rather smart for how limited the resources were.
Camera work in the movie is rather good, considering the budget limitations. There are no crane shots or drone shots or anything like that. Pretty much the entire film is shot on a tripod, with maybe some pans here and there. Thought it has to be said that despite having little money, the filmmakers still shot on physical film. They used a cheaper 16mm film. Most films use 35mm. But I guess the grain of the smaller format added some charming texture to the picture, making the entire thing way more enjoyable, if you dig those kinds of vibes.
There are some things in the movie that I might consider too cringe. Like the dancing scene. So if you have a cringe-phobia, I guess you have been warned. But in my opinion, the cringe adds to the viscerality that is required for a movie to elicit a strong emotional reaction. This movie, being somewhat a children's film, and having a small budget, could not create a lot of viscerality, so cringe was used a tool to combat some of the otherwise lesser moments.
Acting-wise, big shout out has to come to the kids playing the main roles. The adults were all good professional actors. But those kids were something special. There is a famous shot from the movie where Alice played by Phoebe Ferro is looking intensely at the camera, giving the audience the necessary chills. When a child makes a face that makes you respect that child immediately, this is, in my opinion, a skill to praise. So bravo, Phoebe Ferro, Skyler Peters, Charlie Stover and Lorelei Mote. You are awesome!
Skyler Peters in particular in a very interesting actor. He is good at the faces he makes. And he is generally looking very cool on camera. The kid has great charisma. But he can't pronounce English words clearly yet, since he is way too young for this I guess. But instead of trying to look for somebody else, Weston Razooli decided to just add subtitles for this one child. This made the movie even more adorable and made it so the director now has more ways to put jokes in the film. As in sometimes he might write in the subtitles something a bit different than what Skyler was trying to say.
In any way I enjoyed the film a lot and I will not relax until more people see it too.
Happy Hacking!!!
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