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dmanchon
Reviews
The House That Jack Built (2018)
The House That Lars Built
This is not a film that everyone will like or understand. The extreme amount of physical violence and cruelty, and the unconventional storytelling vehicle (a conversation between two people over five episodes in the life of a serial killer) are a huge wall against which most of the public will crash into. But, if the spectator manages to embrace it, the movie its really unique and powerful experience.
1. I really liked how the story is told. Five separate episodes explained during a conversation between a killer and a classic ancient roman poet. The extreme violence of the captured episodes contrast with the calm conversation tone and the highbrow nature of it, without being too pretentious (just a little).
2. The victims of the killer shown a high detachment and a very passive attitude, far from trying to portrait a realistic vision of those horrible crimes, later the director reassure himself by citing 'The lamb' poem of William Blake. I appreciate that approach since otherwise the kind of cruelty shown by the killer will be totally unbearable to watch, and helps to focus on the character and not on the actions.
3. Love the editing of the movie and how the director intertwine recollections of the killer with stock material during the conversation excerpts, i found it very entertaining and pleasant to watch.
4. I admire the epilogue, i found it brave and i liked the style choices, but, it is something that probably will put some people out of the movie.
5. Without trying to analyze much the message of the movie, i enjoy the extreme experience, visually its stunning, the acting is amazing, the storytelling really engaging, editing is great, good use of the music, probably length can shortened a bit.
Epilogue: Overall is a movie that sticks with you some time after watch it, and that is basically what i expect in a great movie. To this day is the LVT movie that i like the most.
Atomic Blonde (2017)
A two hour long tobacco commercial within the Ms. Theron personal show (Borinnnng)
Disclaimer: I saw this movie in a secret screening in Barcelona's Phenomena theater. So i really didn't have any preconceived idea about it and i wanted to like it, but...
Did i like the movie?
Short answer: No, its pure crap, well its more like a really shiny polished turd, its very shiny in the outside, but still disgusting.
Long answer (no spoilers): This movie is one of the laziest productions i have seen this year, and boy, its wrong at so many levels:
- The script is based on a graphic novel titled 'The coldest city'. I haven't read it, but i hope its better than this. The history tries hard to be twisted and convoluted to look smarter. What writers created in reality is the most generic spy history that you could think about. The twists are obvious, the characters are poorly defined, almost ridiculous, the dialogues feels out of place, trying to be smart but sounding hollow and superficial, bringing you out of the movie, plot motivations are just insulting excuses, you don't care about the double agent and 'the list' after 10 minutes into the movie. I have read in one of the comments here that this movie is 'feminist', come on, Are you kidding me?, this is the opposite of feminism, or maybe the commentator thinks that being feminist means to be lesbian and manly, the representation of strong female characters in this movie is a complete disaster full of stereotypes.
- Insulting use of references: Don't use the name of Tarkovsky and Stalker in vain! Its like having a reference of Citizen Kane in a Rambo movie, it just don't feel right.
- Use of music: After the success of Guardians of the galaxy seem that everyone wants to replicate the formula by including a nostalgic soundtrack full of old hits. Here its annoying, every two minutes, before every scene, we have this little music clip, performing Bowie, Depeche Mode or a couple of creepy covers of ' 99 red balloons'. The first and second time, its OK, after that its really annoying and its a sign of laziness and lack of resources of the film. Directors, editors, JUST STOP doing this please, its not cool.
- Action scenes: Probably the producers love movies like the ones in the Jason Bourne franchise and the 2006 Bond's 'Casino Royale', they also most likely admire the work of Tarantino and Guy Richie, they thought that the long sequence shots of 'Children of the men' are super cool and ... you get it, right? They try to emulate all the nowadays trendiest action movies, rough, physical violence, but they end up being dull, boring, foreseeable and ... arg i just don't care, spectator will be trapped between horrible dialogues and plot, and boring/cliché action scenes.
- Smoke: They should allow smoking in theaters. At the movie ending i was craving for a smoke, and you know what? i don't smoke!! There are so many scenes involving smoking and shot of cigarettes, that its difficult not to think about product placement. Talking about this theory of tobacco industry marketing, also the length of the movie seems weird to me, its very long (115 minutes) but it feels longer (i was praying for it to end), and that is a trend that we are keep seeing more and more, and my theory is that this movie is targeted directly for the Chinese market. Lower income population in highly populated areas of China seems to consider the cinema as a pure entertaining, and going to theater as a 'full day' activity, so movies should be 2h or more in duration to be considered by the Chinese audiences, and of course they want 'easy' and highly stylized action movies, what in other words is called, garbage. This is of course my opinion, but i think that trying to market the blockbusters to the Chinese audiences is damaging the quality of the movies, the 'Fast and furious' franchise and this very movie are clear examples.
Ghost in the Shell (2017)
Ghost in the shell for dummies
Maybe I had my hopes too high for this one. Like many other fans of the original material, this adaptation has intrigued me since the first trailers were available online, because it really looked nice visually, but, Is this movie worth to be part of the GitS universe?
- Short answer: Not really. Not even nice try.
- Long answer: The cinematography its truly remarkable, it somehow reproduce the atmosphere of the original anime, the decaying, depressing, dark megalopolis is correctly reproduced here (despite the giant weird advertisements that are spread around, that doesn't really make any sense, and didn't appear in the anime, what are they trying to sell?), the costumes, robots, and the general look and feel of the characters are quite satisfying and solid. The music is not bad at all, includes some of the original score and it work towards creating a dense and dark environment. The acting is standard, not bad at all. The script is.... ohhh boy, let me breath... to use nice words, the script seems to be written addressed to children or to very 'slow' people. All the rich complexity, all the mature and philosophical themes, all the sides of the story that the original material let out to be imagined by the viewer, all that is gone here. Here you can find a bland, generic script, that explain a generic origin story, that never tries to get into the philosophical or ethical implications of human body enhancements or AI. Where the characters are one-sided, good vs bad people. We are use to that over-simplification of a movie plot, since we sadly live in a world conquered by the 'marvel'/'batman' method of making a movie, where the plot should be simple and thin, the characters shouldn't have any grays and the action should be convoluted and confusing, full of minions to destroy for the sake of fill 100 minutes (well at least this adaptation has correct action scenes, that are easy to follow and most of the time are not annoying). To wrap up, a correct movie, that shines in the visual and action sides, but has a forgettable script and characters. It will probably perform good in the box office, and that worries me because what could come next, it will be really sad to see how they reduce Akira, Jin-roh, Evangelion or Cowboy bebbop to a generic action blockbuster without any of the things that made those stories great.
Turbo Kid (2015)
The effort is not enough
A can understand why many people are rating this movie high just for sympathy with the effort to bring back the 80's b-series films vibe.
But i think that is not enough, and is a total failure as an homage, for the following reasons:
- Has an horrendous script, with ridiculous dialogue lines, that couldn't pass for intentional, since there is no intended humor anywhere to be seen.
- The acting is forgettable and the FX cheap.
- The 80's references are limited to spread all over the shots vintage objects like action figures, Walkmans, BMX bikes and VHS cassettes
- Photography feels cheap and camera angles and shots are sometimes poorly chosen (i.e. the ridiculous bike chasing scenes filmed with a wide angle lens)
Wrapping up, if you like 80's homages better watch some product that has that real vibe in it (like 'The guest' for example) and not a collection of references or symbols without soul, and poorly written and produced.