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Apples

Mila

2020

Christos Nikou

Aris Servetalis, Sofia Georgovassili, Argyris Bakirtzis, Anna Kalaitzidou ...

6.6

684

Drama Amidst a worldwide pandemic that causes sudden amnesia, middle-aged Aris finds himself enrolled in a recovery program designed to help unclaimed patients build new identities. Prescribed daily tasks on cassette tapes so he can create new memories and document them on camera, Aris slides back into ordinary life, meeting Anna, a woman who is also in recovery.

	Author	Review
United Kingdom	Wendy Ide Screendaily	"This hugely accomplished, satisfyingly textured first feature is really something special"	POS
United States	Peter Debruge Variety	"'Apples' has a ruminative quality that’s fairly uncommon in modern cinema, leaving space for audiences to project themselves into the man’s situation"	POS
United States	David Ehrlich IndieWire	"This is a movie full of lovely and lilting moments that invite you to reflect on the value of your own painful memories, and yet precious little of it is specific enough in a way that makes it hard to forget"	NEU
United States	David Rooney The Hollywood Reporter	"This is a haunting meditation on the manipulation of memory to anesthetize pain, crafted with a meticulous attention to visual and aural composition that makes for arresting viewing"	POS
United Kingdom	Peter Bradshaw The Guardian	"Apples is intriguingly deadpan and sometimes funny, though I couldn’t help feeling that it is also contrived, and even a bit flippant in a middleweight-arthouse mode (...) Rating: ★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United States	A.A. Dowd AV Club	"[Nikou] is like Lanthimos with a soft side. Yet, so far anyway, the director lacks his mentor’s crucial way with metaphor and allegory"	NEU
Canada	Graeme Guttmann Screen Rant	"An effective portrait of ambiguity accompanied by a stellar lead performance, ['Mila']'s contemplative nature hides nuanced questions about modern age (…) Rating: ★★★½ (out of 5)"	POS
United Kingdom	Ian Freer Empire	"'Apples' is an offbeat treat that manages to embrace ironic distance and emotional weight through a prism of perfectly judged absurdism (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United States	Natalia Keogan Paste Magazine	"'Mila' is a metaphorical banquet that provides plenty to chew on, but little in terms of actual sustenance. Visually, however, it's a fairly filling feast"	NEU
United States	Jourdain Searles rogerebert.com	"Nikou blends subtle comedy and tragedy to create a quietly moving cinematic experience. A film about what it means to be alive and part of the wider social structure of the world (…) Rating: ★★½ (out of 4)"	POS
United States	Carlos Aguilar Los Angeles Times	"A subtly thoughtful and soothing approach to probe at existential concerns"	POS
United States	Keith Watson Slant	"'Mila' may be cleverly constructed, but for a film about the interplay of memory, identity, and grief, its rendering of all three of those things remains disappointingly vague (…) Rating: ★★ (out of 4)"	NEU
United States	Marshall Shaffer SlashFilm	"'Mila' maintains the droll wit and entrancing abstraction of Lanthimo. Nikou's storytelling remains deliberately opaque while also leaving plenty of room for genuine emotional connection"	POS
United States	Jonathan Christian The Playlist	"A bittersweet experience that imparts a heartwarming afterglow, encouraging you to contemplate on your past and anticipate the future with optimism"	POS
United States	Eli Friedberg The Film Stage	"Having come upon a provocative allegory for the endemic dissociation of the hyper-digital age, Nikou does not interrogate it as intensely or from as many angles as possible in the lean, character-driven 90-minute film"	NEU
United States	Phil de Semlyen Time Out	"A film that manages it in spades. It's a seriously impressive calling card (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
Canada	Martin Kudlac Screen Anarchy	"Nikou proceeds naturally to a generation evolution pushing the formalism to new territory while reducing the shock-therapy impact without betraying the dark comedy roots of his cinematic ancestors"	POS
Ireland	Donald Clarke Irish Times	"'Mila' works both as an unintended record of the times and as a wry comment on the ancient human condition. Dare we call it 'memorable'? (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
	Kaleem Aftab Cineuropa	"It's that kind of film where highbrow and lowbrow delightfully dance together (...) [It] announces Nikou as the latest in a growing line of excellent contemporary Greek filmmakers"	POS

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