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Reviews
The Lovely Bones (2009)
What was the point? was this made solely on the purpose to show how much Peter Jackson can do with CGI?
This is so unlikely that it is insulting.
This was one of the lamest epilogues I've ever seen in a movie
maybe the worst ever! It was so bad I got out angry and frustrated. It felt like Jackson and his all crew of writers and co-producers (whom I used to admire) looked down on the viewers as if they were fatuous candid dumb people.
I mean, how might this even most remotely be? Here are three scenes that utmostly ruin it all.
1°) The sister of the missing girl has "the creeps" about an odd neighbor. So she breaks into his house, where she finds evidence that the odd man actually killed her missing sister. He notices that and chases her down. She manages to escape though he was close to catch her. And then (while he might still have been chasing her) for i-don't-even- know-why-or-what, after she reaches home, she just stands there, open- mouthed, because her mom finally got home after leaving them to grieve on her own. She doesn't tell what she knows, until and ridiculously long moment, after her father had shown how much relieve and happy he is to have his wife back
Come on! Is this really to prevent a fragile return to happiness in the family that she held such an important information for... i don't know... too long anyway!?? Moreover, the scene cuts where she finally gives the proof to her grandma, leaving you wonder what happened. We can see, for a rdiculously short shot, the police at the killer's house after the "family would-be so beautiful reunion", but the man seems to have escaped
so easily?! How come? A dangerous man is out there, and you waste time like that? how genuine is that?
2°) And what about the odd girl, who "can see things"? She saw the missing/dead girl while she was already gone... but never use that information in any way. What was the point in the odd/psychic one seeing the missing/dead one if she could not tell it to anybody or the family or police to take some kind of benefit of it? Even at the dump nothing happened at all! Even there she won't tell she could see the missing girl; nor the missing/dead girl who knows now for a fact that the odd one can see her, she won't tell her who killed her in order to have him stopped from further murders... Again what was the point in them to have this contact/connection they have?
3°) Finally the death of the killer... My, oh my! this was insulting, literally insulting. That was lame, so lame!
The casting was more than good, their performances was very much good actually (left aside Susan Sarandon and Rachel Weisz characters during the grieving process, who both were not quite moving, if not rather irritating or... just unlikely). Visual effects show real achievement in art direction and CGI. But there's no storytelling here, no actual plot. The overuse of CGI overdosed the acting performances, the potential story and ultimately the whole film itself.
I am giving it a five stars rate out of then because of the performance by the actor, and the cinematography... otherwise, this movie is a very frustrating movie.
Damages (2007)
Has its own place within the best TV Series of those 5 last years... Exhilarating in its genre !
I discovered it (the pilot at least) as I was searching for something Glenn Close would have done after her appearance on "The Shield" (where she blew my mind !)... I'm just delighted. While the story is not, however, of the latest originality, the acting, the photography and the editing are just too damn perfect for a TV show (the acting more especially : Rose Byrne as well as Zeljko Ivanek (bad on Die Hard 4, but wonderful here) on one hand, and on the other, of course, Glenn Close).
The sole flat I must put here is in the character played by Ted Danson: he has no CEO billion company charisma. He is more like a gangster than a smart businessman who achieved his company from the ground to its $2.5 billion value. But I kind of liked him though, because this gangster-indeed-side fits the purpose of why he is to be sued for what is called in french "délit d'initié" (I don't know how to put it in English, sorry!)
Jacquou le croquant (2007)
A motion picture with no story but with beautiful photography
I had the memory of a "Jacquou Le Croquant", hero of a TV mini-series of my childhood, who had lost his parents by the fault of an aristocrat and more generally because of the post-Napoleonean social classes system, and who came to a revenge by leading a revolt especially against that social system and against the man which incarnates the cause of the tragedy of his family. On the basis of that, one expects to see a social fresco full of various emotions that goes along with the rich History of France of that period: tragedy, love, revenge, popular revolt (revolution against the established order), freedom seeking, and other great emotions which accompany this kind of epic stories
But it is not the case.
The narration is too slow and really insipid. The actors are just as pale as the story and its rhythm. What a waist for such a beautifully photographed picture! If one can afford to see Laurent Boutonnat's version of "Jacquou" is solely because it's good-looking at. Costumes and the decoration are really really superb! The director definitely is a good director of photography, and even a good soundtrack composer but certainly not a storyteller, definitely not a director.