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WilliamCrocodile
Reviews
8½ (1963)
10/10
Why should one watch 8 ½ ? For the sake of Fellini, of Marcello Mastroianni. For the sake of cinema.
Because, the more you watch it, the better it gets.
Because, the youngest movie buffs will discover here something they will never see again : cinema as an art apart, with a unique vision, with a budget that no producer will ever give to any director again for this kind of movie.
What Fellini accomplishes here, he couldn't have written, composed or painted it. Indeed, most films can be seen as novels, plays, comics, musicals, operas and they often are adaptations. 8 ½ couldn't be anything else but a movie where photography, music, editing, acting have their own peculiar language. Very few directors have managed to do such a thing. Maybe Welles, Murnau, Tarkovski, a few others.
After 5 minutes, in 90% of all the movies, you know who's is going to win, to die, to survive, to love. What is at stake ? The hero has to lead an investigation, fulfill a vengeance, save the planet/country/community, kill the Beast, seduce the Beauty. Always.
None of all this in 8 ½. What is at stake ? Making a movie. Period.
From the very beginning Fellini takes us by the hand and leads us in a strange country : his brain.
The dream scene which opens the movie brings down the whole Hollywood industry of the last 30 years to what it is : a video game, most of the time very ugly. Whoever has dreamt one day knows, watching Inception (this is just an exemple), that this has NOTHING to do with dreams or even nightmares. It's a game where you have to win to change levels.
8 ½ is a constant surprise and wonder. Memories, life, dream, imagination, fantasies mix to create a maelstrom of pictures, feelings and emotions.
Eventually, a child, alone on a stage, in a halo of light, puts an end to this fantastic parade.
Curtain !
Bravo !
Ciao Federico !
I miss you terribly.
The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)
The Unbearable Lightness of Emptiness
It starts with an operation, « grand » music and slow camera movements. A warning : it's going to bleed and we're going to get to the « heart » of an American family.
It's a story of revenge, meant to be a stressful thriller with tension and suspense and fear. The filming clearly aims at Kubrick's, nothing less.
The result ? A complete failure, pretentious and vain.
As a thriller, it doesn't work, as a metaphor for the vanity of the average American family and its so-called respectability, it is far-fetched and it totally misses the point because it is mostly a caricature and not a funny one, though many critics marveled at Lanthimos sick humour (if anyone really, spontaneously laughed while watching the movie, please let me know.). As to the photography, it is pointless as well because nobody is interested in watching excellent pictures of nothing. A magnificent box which contains nothing only amounts to emptiness.
Others have compared Lanthimos to Bunuel, saying that what Bunuel did to the catholic church, Lanthimos wants to do it to capitalism. If this is what he really aims at, well, capitalism has a bright future. Plus, Bunuel liked some of his characters, he films desire, lust. In Lanthimos'movie, the main failure is the characters. Not one of them is worth saving, not one of them deserves an once of sympathy. If the film was designed to be a slaughterhouse, at least let's have some fun slaughtering ! Kill with joy !
A vain, pretentious movie by someone who doesn't like people, obviously. Become an ermit, Yorgos, and don't inflict us your boredom.
I would have rated it zero it it had been possible. If you have 2 hours, peel potatoes or watch paint dry instead.
Szerelem (1971)
Love, Actually.
Hungary, 1953, during the Stalinian purges.
A woman is waiting for the very hypothetical release of her husband, in prison for political reasons. Unemployed, on the verge on poverty, she takes care of her mother-in-law.
She is regularly harassed by policemen or party members. But she endures, keeps going, keeps caring tenderly. Little is said.
How can you express waiting, longing, tenderness, hope? This is where great acting and directing takes place.
For this is a movie about love as an impetus of life and resistance, love as a politically deviant behaviour. It is also a movie about hope as a force of imagination. This woman and her mother-in-law, without speaking, imagine their life with the missing son/husband. A movie, made of memories and expectations, unfolds in their mind and we can actually understand and see this. Creation also offers a power of resistance. The end of the film, almost wordless in an intense moment of emotion.
The photography is totally stunning.
Under the Skin (2013)
Kill Will
What is this inaugural light? A beginning (birth), an end (near death experience)? What is this language? Inhuman, prehuman?
The first 20 minutes of the movie are mute, repetitive, mesmerizing.
It is a drifting, a hunt, a roaming, a ballet.
With a minimum pitch (aliens tracking down humans). J. Glazer casts a sharp look on our world which is beautiful, swarming but also meaningless and loud.
We understand this is a world of predation only, however gorgeous the predator might be (Scarlet Johansson perfect).
And the predator is also a prey, especially if she is a woman.
There is no such thing as a safe place.
Fire overcomes ice and a fantastic mutation occurs. The skin that we thought soft reveals a black heart. A screams is uttered in the dark loneliness of the world.
At night, the hunters come back in the howling of the mist. Skinless, the prey bleeds on the burning of the sun.
The best movie of 2013.
My Childhood (1972)
Braveheart
The story? The title says it all: a moment of the author's childhood.
The dialogues? Hardly any.
The action? Mostly surviving.
The setting? Scotland
The result? Beyond words.
Either you feel it like a punch in your stomach or you don't and you look away, bored. Period.
You reach here the bare bone of filming and story-telling. But if you can just watch, the cold wind will bite your skin, you'll be hungry and mute with awe and anger. You'll reach the unbreakable core of childhood, the diamond coal that warms up frozen black nights while everybody looks elsewhere.
The pure magic of cinema.
Emotion. Not feelings, not sentiments, not sadness nor love. Emotion, rid of the shell of whatever is inessential.
Ida (2013)
Only God Forgives
She goes to God amidst the deflagration of the snow,
the blackness of Man and childhood thrown out of a window.
She is as naked in her walk as she was yesterday in the arms
of her first lover, barefoot on the cold tiles on which she danced.
She goes to God in silence and no one knows if she hopes and seeks a shelter, a light, a remedy, a stronger embrace, or the forgiveness of the forests in which the dead awaited her step on the leaves.
She goes to God now alone, widow of this woman drunk with memory.
She goes to God and doesn't look back.
Sur (1988)
Coming Home
Through the window-pane, she is waiting. She imagines his look and his body.
Through the gate, through the bars, he speaks to her, dreams her, rails against her.
Through the night, he speaks to death, summons the shadows.
Through time, he bumps into walls, blows, the skips of memory.
Through life they love each other, like lovers do.
Through another body they love each other differently.
Through the South they wander, they continue the work of living and saying goodbye to the departing.
Through the window-pane he comes, to shut exile, and open desire again.
Lu bian ye can (2015)
The birth of a great director.
There is the pitch: A man looks for his nephew mistreated by his brother. The scene is set in a small province Chinese town.
Then, there is the style. The long sequence shot in the middle of the movie is mindblowing. The talent, the timing it requires for shooting such a scene are incredible.
This style takes us in a strange country where memory, periods of time, people, names blend and mix to create a unique atmosphere.
If you let yourself drift in this journey you'll be mesmerized.
This movie is an emotion, an experiment in itself.
And if you like it you MUST watch Bi Gan 's second film: "Long Day's Journey into Night" , which is even more.a successful achievement.
Welcome Bi Gan in the club of great and unique directors/creators, such as Fellini or David Lynch.
Midaregumo (1967)
The surface of the volcano
Regardless of Naruse's whole career and movies (which are great), this last one is remarkable in many ways. But above all, what best defines the movie is what it is not: loud, flamboyant, predictable. Given the same script who would have made such a movie? Even Douglas Sirk, the king of melodrama would not have resisted the temptation of something more dramatic and controversial .
Naruse's movie has what 99% of all movies lack: discretion, delicacy, respect.
Yet it is a passionate movie if you can imagine and feel what the characters experience, what is boiling under the surface of the polished Japanese volcano.We too want to yell and free the caharacters from all the weight and pressure of a rigid society.
Experience something different: no sex, no killing, no bloodshed, nothing low. Feelings and inner turmoil, at the highest degree, near incandescence.
A great movie!
En kärlekshistoria (1970)
They are young. They meet. They fall in love for the first time.
Down the tenements, watching the train below, she's waiting for him. Here he comes and it's suddenly summer. On the dusty playground, he leaves her, she runs after him, he comes back, he hugs her, and it's suddenly summer. In the park, eyes meet, first sight. Through the window-pane, leaning on his silhouette, she searches for his perfume. Down on his knees, his face on her belly, he closes his eyes, and it's suddenly summer. On the countryside platform, alone in the morning,she stands, and looks away, she is suddenly summer. Against the mist,against the bitter wine of the grown-ups,against their renunciation and everything we have lost, they kiss, each the other's world entire, and are for ever, summer.
This movie is a jewel.
Identificazione di una donna (1982)
A recently-divorced film director is looking for a woman who would eventually inspire his next movie. He meets two women.
I think there are no such things as popular movies or intellectual films. there are good films and bad ones. Whether they are westerns, film noirs, comedies or action movies is irrelevant. some of them speak to you as if you were a nut-head, others as if you were able to share their vision and if necessary think by yourself, not mentioning others who would simply insult a 5-year old. This movie definitely falls in the second category. First of all it is visually rewarding. Antonioni is a painter in films and every scene, every shot is beautiful and interesting. As to the plot and characters, they are puzzling, for, as in all Antonioni's movies, they never act or react as expected. There is mystery, in every scene. It is so modern that not many films of today can compete. The love scene for instance is unrivaled in today's cinema and makes "Basic Instinct" look like sexual excitation seen through the eye of mickey Mouse. It's a film about creation, fatherhood, what it is to watch and to be watched. it's about cinema!
The Tree of Life (2011)
How can you sum up trees? and life? If a summary was possible then the film it'd deal with would be artificial.
Many things have and will be said about this movie. Regardless of the easy critics: it's boring, there's no action, it's self-indulging, etc.., I would only add this. There will always be 2 kinds of people (whether they are film-goers, tourists, readers..): the ones who like to "recognize" things (the same stories being told, who is the hero, who is the villain? the same places to go to, the same food...) and the ones who like to discover new things. As to the film, why don't you try it? How many films have you seen that take your hand and take you to a place you've never been before? On the contrary how often do you understand everything from the very first minutes of a movie? who is going to marry who, who is the bad guy, who's going to betray, will there be a happy end? Aren't you ever fed up with this? Try and see The Tree Of Life. It's about growing up in a family. It's about seeing the world through children's eyes. It's a very American story, and what it's like to be torn between religion, ideals and the lust for success and power and money. It's about betrayal by the people you trust. It's about love.
You may not like it but at least you'll have tried. Be curious! Stop being cinematographically correct.
Man jeuk (2008)
Four pickpockets fall in love with a Hong Kong belle, whose husband, a local "don", holds her prisoner. She tricks them into setting her free.
Elegance is an attitude.
J. To invites us to a dance. Plainness.Lightness. Four men pick pockets. A girl steals four hearts. A camera.The same caress.
Did you like "The Mission", this almost silent action movie? Did you marvel at the first magical five minutes of "Breaking News"? Then you will enjoy "the Sparrow" because you will find again To's touch: skill, virtuosity and above all pleasure. Plots are "thin" but efficient, and we are quickly tricked into following the different characters. Once again, with not much of a story and a beautiful music J. To portrays his city (Hong Kong). A ballet of umbrellas adds the final touch to something rare: make much with little. Smiles and jubilation.