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Reviews
In the Land of Saints & Sinners (2023)
Liam Neeson's best in a long time
Oh Godd Grief ! Can't everyone just acknowledge this is Neeson's best film in a loooong time ? It is a fine piece of work and a moving film. Neeson is marvelous in this, the overall period look and feel is genuinely great on what is probably a very low budget, the dramatics are compelling, and Liam is at the top of his game here... he can be so ggod an actor when he gets into what he is playing, one of the best really. A small film perhaps, but beautifully executed and flawless IMHO. I love this actor but really, this was the perfect vehicle for him and a real pleasure. Bravo to everyone involved in this beautiful, splendid piece of work. It sure got me hooked. Thanks to the team.
Ferrari (2023)
So much better than ratings and what I thought it would be !
A true gem, if a bit flawed by overwhelming dramatics in a few scenes. A marvelous picture fom Amazon, for once. Amazing recreation of the 1950s by master director Michael Mann who is still going exceptionally strong at this stage in his carreer. The man is a treasure for film lovers, and has been for 40 plus years now, oh so classy ! Lively vivid stunning atmosphere. Beautiful photography, really awesome at times, amazing jaw-dropping racing scenes. An incredible visual treat for people who understand what classical Hollywood cinema, and Italian 1950s/60s aesthetics, were. Cruz is a bit on the heavy side, but Adam Driver quickly made me forget he wasn't Enzo Ferrari. Good work ! I interviewed Michael Mann in 1981 when I was in my early years as a journalist just after he directed Thief with James Caan and I am still in awe of his incredible talent 40 years later. Michael is one of the greatest directors ever. Period.
Babylon (2022)
Repellent, bloated, pretentious, self-indulgent, vacuous mess. A complete disaster.
Rarely have I experienced such a horrible way to waste 3 hours and 10 minutes. This supposed homage to Hollywood at the time of its transition from silent film to talkies is in reality director Chazelle's embarassingly stupid vanity project. Whiplash was excellent, La-La Land was hit-and-miss, but this is all a downhill-crashing debacle. We get everything but the kitchen sink thrown in at us in a heap, and in a particularly offensive way, especially to any true film lover with any knowledge of Hollywood in the 1920s to the 1950s. Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon, Fellini clowns, Tod Browning circus freaks, Orson Welles camera angles, a grotesque final montage that preposterously attempts to sum up over a century of cinema in 3 minutes, from Méliès to Avatar... There is no end to the ridicule here.
The director's gross fascination with body fluids is another embarrassment -- and as repulsive as can be, as we are treated to a non-stop avalanche of feces, urine, fake semen, vomit, spit, blood, sweat and (justifiably) tears. It is a sorry affair indeed, when a director shows his inner world to be so repulsive.
The three main characters are totally one-dimensional and don't evolve in any discernible way throughout the narrative. Brad Pitt as a Douglas Fairbanks / John Gilbert analogon is his old reliable self and does the job, with no particular intensity though. Margot Robbie is pretty good, in a hysterical sort of way. Tobey Maguire's performance seems so out-of-control one wonders how he managed to get away with this. The other performers are all very much bland and no secondary characters stand out or even seem to have any depth, thanks to dull, superficial writing.
The lengthy clips borrowed from Singing in the Rain at the end only help nail the film's coffin, so good it is to see a real piece of moviemaking after suffering through this. Many scenes are lifted from other, better films without any remorse and there is no script in sight.
This is the absolute anti-Fabelmans. It even makes Once upon a time in Hollywood look good. Good Lord !
Innocence (2004)
A wonderful, unexpected surprise
Amazing. Not for all tastes, to be sure, but infinitely intriguing and accomplished. Great movie. After all the previous not totally successful, or barely watchable or downright awful fantasy movies that have come out of France in the last five years or so, French cinema turns out to be capable of producing an intelligent, beautiful, original work of art with its roots in the fantasy field which is both a treat to the eye and intelligence, and a graphically arresting piece of movie making. The film, dealing with strange ongoings at a remote boarding school for young girls in a mystery-ridden forest somewhere, is incredibly catching, full of hypnotic images. It is indeed closer to the spirit of silent movies, in particular the German school of Fritz Lang, Murnau, Pabst, etc, than to most modern movies. But so brilliant and respectful in its approach that it soon makes you forget its origins. The are dreamlike visions by the dozen in Innocence, superior or equal to Lynch's best films, to Jackson's Heavenly Creatures, or to Jane Campion's cinema in its finer moments, for instance. A painter in terms of framing and composition, the director is always lifting the material up into poetry country. See it and you will not be left untouched. Few films ever reach that kind of weirdness and movie magic. It has no comparison. Really.
Sheitan (2006)
Terrible, offensive, ugly trash. Yeccch!!!
How could anyone give these people money to make a film ? What a poor excuse for a bunch of morons to waste some footage. This is really rock-bottom movie-making, amateurish, trashy and offensive, degrading in the way it treats women, really ugly in the worst sense, without any redeeming features. Compared to this, Hostel is a masterpiece among horror movies. This has just a sorry excuse for a plot, no direction, no actors trying to act, it's just total rubbish. Seeing this is really such a painful experience I even shiver at remembering it... It seems unexplainable to me that any producer would hand over some cash to a bunch of idiots like this in order to have them put together such an awful mess. Avoid it and you'll thank yourself for it.
Les corps impatients (2003)
incoherent, pretentious dung. Avoid at all costs!
Just the kind of film that gives French cinema a bad rep: incredibly boring, dull, overblown trash about coming-of-age uneasiness, sex without love and so on. Hasn't all this been forever buried with the worst of 70s cinema ? Lord, we even have teen angst pangs and struggling with illness subplots, and all filmed with leaden camera-work by a director with as much lightness of touch as an anvil. Keep the guy away from a camera, for God's sake! The film's only selling point seemingly was the nude appearance of a French pop singer as the 'star' of this dud. Good grief! Better read the tabloids if you're into that sort of thing. What a waste of celluloid!!
Brocéliande (2003)
Fun homage to B-pictures full of winks at Euro movie buffs
A rather enjoyable debut from a director who seems to have a sincere fondness for horror films of a bygone era. In this fairly simple storyline (a murder mystery that turns into a monster movie), film buffs will find a hodge-podge of references to many genre classics, like Dario Argento's thrillers of the 70s or English Hammer films (in particular John Gilling's Plague of the Zombies for its ritual scenes), and even to stranger oddities like Jack Arnold's "Monster on the Campus" or the Avengers British TV series. Add a bit of Celtic mythology for a background, some fight scenes, and stir well... Now mixing all this into a pleasant, if air-headed, B-movie makes for an interesting challenge! It doesn't always succeeds but is certainly better than other French genre efforts in the field. The direction is often stylish and the performers have fresh faces, the music score is quite good.
Of course this is a low budget production (it probably didn't cost more than a couple million dollars), and does suffer from it: several scenes could have been helped by better production values. And there are a few plot holes and a couple of long stretches. But it finally wins the day by retaining its charm to the end just out of sheer unpretentiousness. Not so common a feat, these days.