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Les rivières pourpres (2018)
Occult cop show wasted due to bad show execution
A French-Belgian cop show where all crime stories involve occult or mystic plot lines, and sometimes imply, but never turns into supernatural solutions.
Most of the ideas behind the episode plots are actual quite good and deserved better elaboration, but the execution and show running are burden with so many flaws: the conclusion must be a grade below average.
The limited success and pick up of the show outside French and Benelux is therefore understandable taken the fierce competition on the tv and streaming market into consideration: there is a lot of better shows out there.
To go in-depth with a variety of the flaws:
1) If you want to make feature film long episodes or justify double episodes per plotline, you can't wast too much time on transportation and "mood shots". I have never seen a cop show spending so much time showing cops driving cars or people walking around, showing landscapes, rural villages or administrative buildings, showing faces or looks between people. Yes, scenes like this can create the setting, moods and atmosphere of a story, but the use in this show is so excessive. It becomes fill and plaster dragging out the plot to the point of irritation.
2) Perhaps it's a French humourist act in an otherwise very dark and serious show, but I don't get it and it feels very odd: Most of the secondary characters in each episode are portrayed like caricatures or burlesques. Every stereotype or prejudices you could hold upon a farmer, doctor, clerk, worker, executive, priest, administrator, foreigner, teenager, ect, are confirmed and exaggerated. Most gendarmes with dialogue in the show are like characters in a Asterix comic. It's an consistently anachronism throughout the show that makes it a lot less credible, and most times just interfere the story trief to be told.
3) There are only two main characters appearing throughout all of the show, but you never get under the skin of them. Some of the time spend on the mood shots mentioned first could have been used to elaborate on or develop the characters, but it doesn't happen. There's a small fling related the to female protagonist and her past and son, but it turns out only to serve as the plot background for the season 2 finale episodes. I never get to know or to care about the main characters, what happens to them, wether or how they solve a case or not.
So, you got at show where don't care about the protagonists. You don't care about the victims because they are rarely anything but dead corpses, rarely introduced as persons/humans. The one thing left to care about are the vilians, and some of them are featured with compelling background stories. But still, it's hard to care or feel sorry for lunatics butchering others in sadistic ways.
4) The storytelling and editing are abruptly and full of micro plot holes. Each storyline features a lot of characters, and phenomenons that are explained/explorated, so there's a lot to keep track of. Sometimes I had to ask myself if I had fallen asleep during an episode, because I didn't get how the plot had moved from one key to another. But when rewinding I could conclude that I didn't fall asleep: the intermediate conclusions were simply missing, as like some scenes had been edited or cut down, or the writers just jumped to conclusions the lazy way. Again, time wasted on countless mood and senic shots could have been used to close some of these small plot holes making the storylines coherent.
5) When you build stories with heavy elements of mystery and occultism, and want to keep the setting and storytelling serious, you need to keep everything else straight and tight. You can't make your protagonists do outrightly stupid acts, or try to spice up the drama with contradictory character jumps. When you do so it becomes ridiculous. Like other reviews mention such major plot holes do take place in the show, making some episodes cringe to watch and make you ask yourself: Do I want to wast time watching the next episode?
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
Remake, remake, remake.....
It can be put short: If you have seen the original Swedish version don't waste your time watching this one.
Forget all the talk about "this is not a remake - this is a new adaptation". If you hear or read somebody state that, they only prove they have not seen Arcel & Oplev's version because this American try out is most of all a scene by scene remake - even many of the locations are the same! The pro of Finchers version is the performance of Rooney Mara. It is very close to match Rapaces international breakthrough.
The no. 1 con is Finchers total lack of adding anything new or original to this remake. The only major contributions Fincher brings to the table is a fat and slick visual style, and a rude Hollywood simplification of the storyline presented in both the novel and the original movie adaptation.
I rate 5/10 - a simplified copy cat of a (only) two years old movie... what a waste!
Män som hatar kvinnor (2009)
Some must penetrate the HYPE!!!
First - I have not read the book, so I'm not one of these hardcore but also biased Millinium fans.
2 1/2 hour is far to long for this movie. Especially when it takes almost 3/4 hour before the plot starts to roll, and the plot pushing mystery is solved 1/2 hour before the end credits - I and the others in the cinema did a lot clock checking during this show...
I don't have the exact numbers but I'll guess this is serial killer movie no. 427, and it's serial killer movie no. 423 where quotes from the Bible are a (or THE) major key in solving the riddle - To put it nice the murder plot was a perfect cliché and so predictable it almost became a joke.
The movie introduces a lot of characters but all except one are through the movie presented as shells and not persons we get to know and therefore understand. The exception is the Lisbeth character but the portrait of her insists on her being so mystique that she ends up being an impersonal caricature.
The conclusion is that the movie is a standard Scandinavian socio-thriller very suitable for a 1 1/2 hour TV-show in the style of Beck or Wallander. As a cinematic movie it's mediocre - to long, to full of clichés, character building to flat & impersonal and the plot to predicable.
Himmerland (2008)
Don't wast your time
This movie demonstrates far to good what happens when one man will do it all himself:
He acts the leading character, he directs the movie and he has shot most of it.
It will work if you are a big talent, Woody Allen or just a genius. But James Barclay is probably just an ordinary guy of the business.
Especially when it comes to the script and the storytelling it's very clear that he could have used someone to challenge him. A strong producer who could have put his finger on the points of weakness in the script, storyboard and cutting. Or could have hired someone to do that.
Bad dialog - Bad acting - Dull zzzzzzzzzztory - Slow, slow, slow pace - Boring and one-dimensional characters.
Pretentious put together with flash backs, odd angles and far to long scenes.
Only thing making this movie worth seeing is a few good cinematographic shots.
Don't waste your time - see the real thing: Fargo, Get Shorty, Pulp Fiction...
Los sin nombre (1999)
This movie is a paradox...
... because it's a perfect recipe on how to make an awful movie:
First you screen the last 40 years of horror movies and pick out the worst and most repeated clichés. Then you mix and put them together randomly, and if this mix makes just the hint of a meaningful plot... you remix. When you have a script with no meaning or logic at all you progress to the next step.
The actors. If you can't find amateur theatrical actors, you will probably have to pay professionals to over-act like it was a junior high school parents play: They cry, they shout, they make funny (scary ??) faces and strange looks with their eyes, they break down, they pretend with all means from their body language, they cry again, pretend again... and on... and on again.
Then you will need a sound design and a sound track. Because you have decided that this is a horror movie, you off cause need violins playing and strange, SCAAAAAAARY sounds. And a lot of it! Actually, you need so much of it that there isn't no room for it in the movie. But don't worry - you just toss it in. Don't care whether or not the sound fits what happens on the screen - you just turn up the master volume so loud that it shocks the audience when effects or music starts. It's a horror movie... so it's OK.
Now you are so deep into the production process that you have reached the point of no return. Despite the fact that you have realized that the ingredients have no taste, and the dish will end up with no flavor at all, you try to save it by using some spices.
You hire an artist to make an impressive set design: Strange, abandon houses with mysterious interior, decorations and symbols. But the artist can't help you with a new problem: How to connect this design with the story? Then you try a last way out: The picture. You find a skilled cinematographer who shoots the film beautiful, and one of your tech guys turns out to be a true magician when it comes to color grading.
You screen your final cut and realize that using the spices was in vain: The fine visual style of the movie turns pretentious when it's made to cover up a bad movie... like to much make up on bad skin.
To give yourself an artistic excuse for making and releasing the movie, you decide to make a new end, and a new title to the movie. The common factor of the movie, the title and the final scene is now the total lack of meaning...
--- This movie is a serious contender to the title of the worst movie ever made. It's a must see - must have: You can't conclude that you have seen a bad movie before you a seen this one. It has set a new standard for movies released for cinemas.
The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005)
Disgusting
This is properly one the most disgusting films ever made.
In the mid-70th a German girl was killed by a Catholic priest and her deeply religious parents. The murder took place in the form of an exorcism performed because of the girl's epilepsy and borderline personality.
I could have accepted the concept of plain horror movie based on that story, but to turn this sad event into a defence for cold religious fanatics that killed in the name of God - and for two of them even their own daughter - makes me wanna p***.
Taking into consideration the fact, that more and more innocent people are being killed directly and indirectly by religious fanatics of various kinds through wars and acts of terrorism, just makes the purpose of this film even more disgusting.
If you want to see a horror movie about exorcism go see an "The Exorcist" movie - if you want to see the true story about the case this movie claims to be based on go see the German movie "Requim" (2006).