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Chained To My Bully Stepbrother (AI Vertical BL Drama)

This is the second vertical AI BL drama I've sat through, and honestly I went in knowing better. I had it on while I was doing cardio at the gym, and what struck me was just how much the plot echoed the last one I watched. Same step brother romance angle, same mystery girlfriend showing up near the end, same extra guy pining after one of the leads. Genuinely the only thing going for it was the runtime, the whole thing wrapped up in forty five minutes flat.  The setup kicks off with Finn moving schools because his mom just married into money. He finds out his new step brother Aiden goes to the same place, and he's warned to keep his distance from him. Their first run in at school is rocky, just like you'd expect, but there's this odd pull between them neither can shake off. Finn keeps telling himself not to read into it because Aiden's straight and openly homophobic. Things shift when some kids start bullying Finn and the student council president, Ryan, steps in to ...

Apo Thavma (Greek) [By Miracle]

This was an interesting and a weird film at the same time. I haven’t seen any film from Cyprus before, so its hard for me to say how developed their film industry is. I am nostrum, if that’s something that should change my views about overall film in general but personally, it does change my perspective a bit.

The story has 2 parallel tracks running, whose characters occasionally cross paths. In the first we have Aliki and Andreas, a couple in their thirties, who have lost their 4 year daughter in an accident. They are leading a very depressive and mundane life which is putting their married life at risk. I got the impression that sometimes they wanted another child but other times they didn’t. Parallel , we meet Marios, a teacher in his twenties living with his mother. He is gay and satisfies his sexual urges with random hook-ups, but things change when he meets a young choreographer in his swimming club, but he is too scared to fall for him, because he doesn’t know what future will hold for him. Back to the couple, the wife gets fascinated by a sudden miracle of statue of Virgin Mary shedding tears and hopes that soon a miracle will happening their life.

There is no proper ending to the film, because when Aliki leaves her husband, I am not sure if thats for good or she wants to come back. Does she blame her husband for it? Why is Marios afraid of committing to the guy. How much does he really care about his mother finding out the truth about him? Many such questions and acts of the individuals are left unanswered. Acting by the actors is decent but overall the direction is quite poor. The scenes look very well rehearsed. And to be honest, there wasn’t much sense behind the plot. The only positive I can think of is that in society like Cyprus, it wasn’t probably easy to make a film with almost 50% of it focussing on a gay issue.

Its a very below average film from story, direction point of view. Something that would have been better as a short TV show episode. (3/10)

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