Gemini

ኢትጵያ በንድራ ስረኝ

"Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul." Marilyn Monroe Gemini is cinematographer Andrew Reed's film, from the glamorous long shots of LA at night, the hideaway bars in the seedy sides, to the dazzlingly modern flats. Any weaknesses in the film itself are swamped by the visual grandeur. It's neo noir in muted neon and low-key suspense. Movie star Heather (Zoe Kravitz) has charmed everyone who attends to her, even her not-rabidly devoted PA, Jill (Lola Kirke).Trouble brews when Heather bows out of a starring role and compromises several interested parties. After introducing a gun, director Aaron Katz has nowhere else to go according to convention other than to have the weapon return with its bloody purpose. The thriller part is set, now, to be augmented by recurring motifs of friendship and loyalty, and something of a gay immediacy, lesbian to be precise. While the principals and their pals flirt with possibilities, the film is noir, after all, and requires detective work to flesh out the murderer with the attendant bad guys and girls and bleak setting. The surprisingly low-key denouement with no appreciable thematic commentary leaves the mystery solved but weightless in human terms. Even a gloss of the industry's shallow hucksterism and uncontrollable ambitions would have been appreciated. In the end, loyalty is the trump card that will propel the actors into another film with the same challenges and disappointments. Hollywood lives one despite intrigues and occasional murders. Thrillers about the biz will never die, and they will continue to draw us in given our fascination with tinsel town's ersatz loyalty. It's the only royalty we really have anymore.

I watched Gemini on a whim. It was at the library and so I just grabbed it. I must say, I was surprised and impressed with this original and fresh Neo-Noir film. Gemini follows the complex relationship of a Hollywood star and her assistant. A terrific crime sends the assistant across Los Angeles to unravel the mystery. The film leaves you curious and wanting more after every turn. These days, movies are getting less and less original, but Gemini was fresh off the rack. With amazing and mysterious cinematography, fast paced dialogue and a suspenseful soundtrack, Gemini is a must watch that I highly recommend!

GEMINI (2018) ** Lola Kirke, Zoe Kravitz, John Cho, Greta Lee, Michelle Forbes, Nelson Franklin, Ricki Lake. Disjointed neo-noir lite drama about the fragile relationship between friends - one a celebrity (Kravitz) and the other her assistant/BFF (Kirke) - that comes to the ultimate display of friendship involving a violent crime and the aftermath it incurs. While filmmaker Aaron Katz utilized the locales of LA to the nth degree with some truly gorgeous set-ups (thanks to clear-eyed cinematographer Andrew Reed) and sequences the film overall is tedious, predictable and weighs far too heavily on the thin shoulders of one-note Kirke (not a good thing).

"Gemini" (R, 1:33) is a mystery thriller that explores the down-side of celebrity and does so in a darkly comedic and insightful way, packaging it all in a semi-serious who-dun-it. The movie is directed and written by Aaron Katz ("Land Ho!", "Cold Weather", "Quiet City") and stars Zoë Kravitz as a Hollywood starlet, Lola Kirke as her personal assistant and John Cho as a detective investigating a murder. Heather Anderson (Kravitz) is a movie star, but she doesn't seem very happy about it. She has decided that she doesn't feel like doing a movie about which she is about to have a meeting in a restaurant. She sends Jill (Kirke), her assistant and best friend, to tell the producer the news. After the producer storms off, Heather comes in and sits down, where she is approached by a young woman who insists on joining the two women in their booth and asking Heather very personal questions. In the midst of all this, Jill fields a phone call from another actor who is very angry with Heather about something (threatening Heather) - and the women have to deal with a paparazzo who's so persistent, they know him by name. When they finally leave the restaurant, Heather wants to stop by Jill's place and asks to borrow Jill's gun so she'll feel safer. The women then call over another female friend and they just hang out at Jill's place. Jill gets drunk, so Heather has to drive herself home (with Jill in tow) and Jill asks to sleep on Heather's couch. The motion-activated lighting then comes on outside. Jill thinks it was just an animal that set off the light, but Heather's worried and Jill ends up sleeping in Heather's bed. And now... the stage is set. The next morning Jill gets up early to go tell another producer that Heather isn't going to do the required reshoots on a film she completed. Before she leaves Heather's house, Jill takes her gun back out of Heather's purse, thinks about taking it back home, but decides to put it back... and then it goes off. Heather comes running, but isn't upset about the damage to her house; she's just glad Jill isn't hurt. When Jill gets back, she has to call the police to report the lifeless body on the floor. Detective Ahn (Cho) starts questioning Jill as if she's responsible. When Jill finds out she's about to be arrested for Heather's murder, she runs off and, on her own, starts investigating the people who might want Heather dead. "Gemini" is an interesting, but silly mystery. At times, it's unintentionally humorous, with more than its share of plot holes, but it's fun to try figuring out the truth, with so many possible suspects and scenarios. The relationship between Heather and Jill feels authentic, but the rest of the supporting characters... don't. Most of the acting is merely passable and the characters that the actors play... do things that don't make sense. Wasted potential. "C+"

Bad acting, story line. Waste of time.,one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Who the heck films a movie like that ?

The set-up and acting in "Gemini" is excellent...and the film really sucked me into the story. So, when in the end NOTHING satisfying occurred, it left me angry...and angry that the title itself betrays much of the ending. The story is about some obnoxious actress (Zoë Kravitz). She is freaked about...but exactly WHAT you don't know. But she doesn't want to be alone and stays with her assistant, Jill (Lola Kirke). She also asks if she can borrow Jill's gun. Soon after this, Jill has to run an errand and returns to find what she assumes is the actress...dead on the floor in the mansion...riddled with bullets from Jill's gun. So what does she do when the police investigate? Yup...she runs and tries to solve the crime herself. The biggest problem with this film is that while I COULD accept the cliché of Jill trying to solve the crime (common in older film noir pics), I could not tolerate the finale...where, essentially, you learned that no real crime occurred!! What???!!!! So, apparently the entire film you just saw is a waste of time AND the title betrays the ending....wow...what a wonderful setup all amounting to nothing.

I'm not sure where these starred reviews are coming from. This is a terrible film. It is prolonged agony begging to be over. There is no real plot or action. When the ending revealed, it doesn't matter. Waste of my time and money! It's one time I would like a refund.

Imagine the following situation. You go to a restaurant. You've never been there before, but you've heard a lot about the food, especially the desserts, which are supposed to be out of this world. You order. The soup arrives : it is tasty. The main course arrives : it is pretty good, too. Meanwhile waiters and fellow diners speak in hushed voices about the superb dessert being prepared by the great chef himself. Suddenly the chef shows up next to your table and says "I've prepared a truly glorious dessert : baked pineapple with three kinds of honey and chocolate cake. It's the best work I've done in my career. I'm just telling you about it ; you can't order it, you can't eat it. In fact you've been loitering in this restaurant too long. Pay up and go home." If you, dear reader, have been longing for the cinematic equivalent I can recommend "Gemini" to you. "Gemini" is deeply annoying, in the sense that it has all the makings of a good thriller of the noir (or neo-noir) variety but neglects to provide a decent resolution. Near the end, it simply states that person X killed person Y. As to the "how ?", "why ?" and "what's going to happen now ?" your guess is as good as mine. In other words, the movie does not keep up its end of the bargain : you have given it your time and attention, but it does not reward you by telling you a coherent tale with a clear, satisfying solution. It's a pity, since "Gemini" really had promise - think good performances, a stylish look and an interesting setting. It even contained some darkly satirical accents about our contemporary way of life, with its obsession with celebrity and its disregard for boundaries. The ending (or rather the non-ending) rather shot all that down...

If this movie was Swiss cheese the massive # of holes in it would make it a celebrity cheese. 1. Actress - background, history, income all unknown. Decides, unknown reason, to drop out of a movie at last second in a cold standup sort of way. Only one person representing film interests was told in a restaurant of all places, his response was equivalent to being stood up for a date. 2. Actress wants a gun for unknown reasons. Actresses' agent accidentally fires gun thus leading her to be a suspect in a scene that makes no sense; was inadequately explained; seems to end up as meaningful as cheap tabloid. 3. There's a police investigation. What on? Not really important because it was so shallowly & stupidly conducted you would think you were watching a cheap movie within a movie. 4. Diversions & misdirection suspects were not presented as serious thus not taken seriously. Acting and scene time? Lots of short sentence rehearsed dialogue talking heads. 5. Typical non-conclusive ending w/knowing smile by one of the main characters. Meaning? A forgettable movie.