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Reviews
36 quai des orfèvres (2004)
Terrible Screenplay
Since The French know how to make top-notch crime and action flicks and since I saw several good reviews of this movie I had quite some expectations when I started to watch it on DVD. And indeed: '36, Quai des Orfèvres' started out suspenseful and interesting. But the story started spiralling out of control while the movie wasn't even halfway and eventually it literally lost the plot, making it a laughable failure. Director Olivier Marchal went out of his way to try and make Gerard Depardieu's dirty cop Denis Klein The Most Evil Character You've Ever Seen In A Movie, and in his attempt he sacrificed every inch of credibility of the whole story.
SPOILER WARNING!: '36, Quai des Orfèvres' focuses on the struggle between good cop Leo Vrinks (Daniel Auteuil) and bad cop Denis Klein (Gerard Depardieu). When Klein messes up a big operation this leads to Vrinks' best friend getting killed. Vrinks wants to testify against Klein but Klein has got some dirt on Vrinks. Instead, Klein gets Vrinks sent off to jail for seven years and gets promoted to be commissioner even though no one likes him and all the cops threatened to resign if he'd get promoted. But... to show how Klein is not just a regular bad guy but a really really evil guy, sirector and screenplay writer Marchal thought it would be a great idea if Klein also kills off Vrinks's wife while he's in prison. His corrupt henchmen are witnessing this happen but no one says a thing.
Look, I know police corruption happens everyday in every country in the world, but to try and tackle this subject by having a cop send another cop to jail and while he's there also killing his wife for no reason is a shocking example of blatantly stupid screen writing. Not even in Cambodia or a similar armpit-of-the-world would one get away with this so easily, let alone in France. This movie is insulting to the intelligence of it's audience.
Great cinematography by Denis Ruden though! But aside from that, a turkey that needs to be avoided.
Across the Universe (2007)
Extremely Disappointing
I love the music of the Beatles and was curious to say the least when I happened to catch this movie on an intercontinental flight the other day. The fact that this movie, that hardly made it to theaters outside of the US, was on an in-flight program should have made me suspicious: after all, airplanes is where box-office bombs usually go to make up for revenue lost on the ground.
The movie started out quite pretentious and even though the start - with Jim Sturgess' weak rendition of "Girl"- wasn't promising, the idea of a musical full of Beatles-music still sounded intriguing. However, not too long into the movie I was quite appalled by the exploitative character of this musical: the story hardly gets a chance to develop since every 5 minutes the story takes a U-turn because another excuse needs to be made for another actor or actress who takes himself or herself too seriously to start blaring out another Beatles-tune. To make it even more pretentious the history of the sixties is intertwined in the whole thing. Sometimes this makes for some unintended laughs, especially since the acting is usually quite bad. You can tell every air-headed cast member in this turd is convinced that his/her below-par rendition of any which Beatles-track they're singing is their big break, so they try and make it more "emotional" with meaningful contemplative dreamy look son their faces that make soap-opera acting suddenly look quite intense. You'll have a hard time taking any cast member (but especially leads Sturgess and Wood) seriously in any role after this. I know I will never be able to.
To say this musical is a beautiful tribute to the music of the Beatles feels like saying that Heather Mills truly loved Paul McCartney. This musical is exploiting the Beatles just as much as she is.
To Beatles-Fans and movie fans worldwide: stay as far away from this dud as you can. It bombed at Box Offices worldwide, with all the right in the world to do so.
Immortel (ad vitam) (2004)
So awful it truly deserves a high ranking in the Bottom 100 of all time
I love science fiction, I am fascinated by Egyptian mythology and I appreciate digital animation. I figured a movie that combines these three would be at least enjoyable. I could not have been more wrong: The story (or actually the lack there of) was completely uninspired and lacks imagination - while imagination usually is the biggest component of any science fiction story. The dialogue and acting are even worse than in an average porno movie. Especially Thomas Kretschmann gives new meaning to the term 'bad performance'. Bad acting wouldn't have been such a huge problem if only 'director' Bilal didn't take himself so seriously; all the lines sound like they are supposed to be poetic, it looks like Bilal really thinks he has made a piece of art here. Well, there's no art or poetry to be found in this piece of junk, only pretentiousness! This man should really stick to making comics, since he fails on all possible accounts as a director. Worst of all is the terrible digital animation, which is so ugly that it actually turns watching this movie into a physically painful experience. The graphics look so fake they even make the werewolves in 'Van Helsing' look like live actors! And since half the characters are CGI-animated, it is quite a problem that the CGI-effects look so fake. If the Egyptian Gods actually exist then Bilal's a dead guy, since they will no doubt take gruesome revenge on him for the ridiculous way in which he portrays them in this disastrously bad movie.