MamaGravity good back-story, and good acting

Claysaba Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Gutsycurene Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

amberckerr It sounded like a great idea: a patchwork picture of human life on Earth created from thousands of videos contributed by individual citizens. I eagerly looked forward to this movie, but in the end, I was disappointed overall. Here's why: 1. The geographical distribution of the selected video clips was not at all representative of the Earth's population. Instead, they were heavily skewed toward wealthy English-speaking countries. Out of the 90 minutes of film, only a few minutes were devoted to Africa and South America. And, among all the thousands of clips, there was not a single one from China - home to one-fifth of the world's population! 2. Women were severely underrepresented, both as filmmakers (judging by the narrators' voices) and as subjects. I would estimate that no more than 20% of the content was contributed by women. The few substantive clips that did focus on women often portrayed them in a context of helplessness (dead; gravely ill with cancer; complaining about their husband's lack of help; crying over an absent husband, bemoaning their ordinary lives).Apparently the filmmakers did try to increase representation from the developing world by sending envoys of videographers and cameras, but their efforts fell far short in that regard.3. Many of the longer clips that they chose to feature focused on families in terrible situations, people doing weird things, and melodramatic monologues (all from white people). Contrary to what other reviewers have said, I do not feel that the overall effect of the film was very positive. I know that the filmmakers strove for a balance between the ordinary and the extraordinary, but I think they erred too far toward the extraordinary and bizarre.4. There are some shocking and prolonged scenes of graphic animal cruelty. I had to cover my daughter's eyes during these moments. They were upsetting even for me.There were some parts of the film that I enjoyed. It was very clever how the filmmakers seamlessly spliced together common elements of an ordinary day from across the world: eggs frying in Spain and Canada; toilets flushing in Dubai and Sydney. (These sorts of collages were actually done better in the "Deleted Scenes" than in the movie itself, I thought.) Also, if you are watching on DVD, I would highly recommend turning on the titles that name the location of each clip. Without those titles, I would have spent the whole movie frantically trying to guess each place.

omar_hima Most of people are not attracted to documentaries , but after seeing this movie i guarantee you will become a fan of this kind . Life in a day is a cinematic experience that attempts to capture what life looks like around the whole world in one day which is ( 24th of July,2010), thousands of videos were recorded from all the world - even from Egypt !- and were sent to the filmmakers whom they made a great effort to produce such a documentary . The movie is engaging from the first scene to the end , although there are different people , languages and cultures but it goes in a brilliant harmonic sequence . I strongly recommend this movie , it will extract your deep inner feelings of love , peace and happiness .

aronjackson1995 My first impressions of the film were that it was fairly confusing and had no sense of order. However, if you paid close attention, you could begin to tell that the film was telling a story, beginning at the earliest point in the day. Immediately, you expect the ending of the film to be the end of the day. My initial thoughts would be that the film would be rather boring and something which I would not pay to go and watch at the cinema. However, it is completely mind-blowing. The way in which the editors used clips generated from YouTube from hand-held cameras and adapted them into a way in which a professional film would be made is astonishing. The film is slickly edited to a high degree; it breaks the codes and conventions of a documentary, but was successfully pulled off by Kevin MacDonald.The film is mesmerising in terms of the thought process behind it. The idea to film a worldwide society on one single day and create a film from clips uploaded to YouTube is extremely unique. To add to this, MacDonald has included third-world countries by providing them with cameras, which further builds on the uniqueness. The film shows the contrast between light and dark, day and night and the contrast between life and death. The contrasts, we would have thought, would be obvious to the audience, however they were relatively subtle and disguised; it took detailed analysis and observation to see these contrasts but I believe that this subtleness draws the audience further into it and makes them understand the concept behind the film.However, some of the scenes included in the film, such as the slaughter of livestock, questioned the appropriateness for younger children, despite being rated 12. Yet, this theme of death is emphasised here. At times the film became tedious and the audience often found themselves distracted. The lack of voice-over pushes the audiences focus away from the film as does the lack of dialect in certain places. One certain point, where racism is shown, may cause offence to people of that religion and create a negative opinion, of the film, based on one specific scene.Overall, I thought that the film was unique and exciting in places. However, some aspects often left me distracted.

thecatcanwait A mish mashy melange was my first reaction on watching this. Then i watched it again and could see more coherence in it.It's structured around all the ordinary small stuff we have to do to get through the every day: waking up, washing, brushing teeth, shaving, making breakfast, lunch and so on.And then there's the bigger life-events like coping with illness, getting married, having babies.Questions are asked like, "What's in your pocket?" or "What do you love/fear? A lonely guy loves his cat… another guy loves his fridge.. another guy fears his hair falling out… a woman fears "not being a mummy"… and so on..At times the editing is very fast: periodic montage sequences whizz by a conveyor belt of micro images like a Planet Earth ad break.But then there are several personal pieces that follow individual situations. I liked these slower stories better, such as The post-graduate returning to Essex to catch up with his "old man" dad, both sat in the car, sharing a burger.The gay guy coming out to grandma on the phone ("I love you too" he's saying to her) And the sad scenarios: of the father lighting incense at shrine of dead wife – and the little sons perfunctory remembrance of his mother; or the "Family project" of mother dying of cancer, trying to help her anxious young son make sense of it; or the thankful – tearful – Aussie in hospital after major heart surgery "I'll be out there again, doing crazy things, and enjoying life" he says. But you sense he probably won't.There's smiley bits too, like the Peruvian shoeshine boy; the rude wedding vows read by the English vicar.And some nasty bits, like the slaughter of cow, its throat being slashed into to let blood – and there's a rapidly cut together montage of scenes of violence and fighting – deliberately rushed through so as not to dwell too long. The shoplifting Russian/Slav is a bit dismaying too (firstly, that he's filmed getting away with it; secondly that the clip gets sent to be included in the film; and thirdly – that it is included!) Throughout, is the continual narrative thread of a Korean cycling around the world for the last 9 years – feeling homesick for Korean flies.Come the afternoon outdoor pursuits – like skydiving out of planes – and Life in a Day has got to feel exhausting.So much packed in, so much to pack in. I think a million sub-editors were needed to prune the 4500 hours of submitted footage into a mere 90 minutes – just a blink of the Earths eye really.To begin with i was wanting not to like it, but come the end i was won over. Out of all this mashed up diffuseness something cogent got produced. Although I wonder how much actual directing input Kevin MacDonald did to it. It looks more like a cut and paste collaboration, the chopped up product of countless hours of endless editing – rather than something that's been singularly created.Question is, would selective clicking on any YouTube vids on any day of the year produce the same result? No, cus this is more of a polished product. But watching a load of randomised clips would probably seem as arbitrary as this film feels. And the effect would feel similar: trawling in too much information just makes the net of your attention go saggy.I might watch this again one day (Unless they come up with another life in another day next year) At the end – 2 minutes before midnight – there's a girl in a car bemoaning the fact that "I spent the whole day waiting for something great to happen….all day long nothing really happened…i want people to know that i'm here…. i don't want to cease to exist" "I don't want to cease to exist". As long as you're seen on YouTube, you can pretend you don't. If you get my drift.