Reviews

This commercial is Timothée Chalamet's coronation as the new Johnny Depp.

All it needed was on shot of Edward smiling at him at one point for a glimpse of a second.

But if the company who financed this commercial decided against casting JD out of fear that his current situation might backfire thus campaign.

Once they decided not having JD, they should have also decided to scrap this loose sequel to Depp's major break out movie.

Like Tim Burton and Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson reached to point that he is all about refining his style.

Like Tarantino and 90's Burton, Anderson is in a position where he is allowed to do pretty much whatever he wants and there is nobody to question his writing or artistic decisions.

And The French Dispatcher is great example.

While, it's his most ambitious film from a visual point of view, it jas a messy and forgettable first act, underused talents (most notably Elisabeth Moss) and sort if a feeling that he only found his film during the process but with lack of questioning and criticism, he didn't want to change anything when he finally got there.

The three main stories are masterly crafted, they indeed made me shed a tear and I would love to see a longer version of the first two, II felt that Anderson is recycling himself.

As always, the French-Parisian references are something that will be understood by Francophiles otherwise will go unnoticed.

The sams cold acting, admiration for the upper-class style, vocabulary, and humor, and Wes Anderson's unique productions design are wonderful but what else is new?

With each film, Anderson goes deeper into Wes Anderson's universe while detaching himself from ours.

However, he forgot to evolve on sooner or later people will start to wonder what else Me Anderson has to offer beyond magnificent production design.

Tarantino's The Hateful Eight and Burton Sleepy Hollow signaled that these grandmasters are out of ideas on one hand but also unrestrained on the other.

For me, Anderson's Isle of Dogs was his first movie that I felt like I have seen it all before on his previous work.

Question is, do we want him to evolve or we can keel appreciate is even with the feeling if "been there done it"?

I live in Paris where crack is at the moment a very big problem The first part shows a lot similarity between early 80s NYC to nowadays (parts) of Paris.

It is also shows another aspect of the 80s that for a long time now, have been enjoying nostalgic idolization.

But there was a moment when one of the interviewee suggests that crack was a chemical warfare on black community in the the US.

This moment, made me realize that the filmmakers of this documentary have a very clear idea what kind of story that want to tell and it's not about crack It's about corruption in the Reagan administration, corrupted police officers, social workers and doctors who betrays their clients trust etc etc.

In fact everybody are to blame for but the people who were involved in crack either as dealers or either as addicts.

A dealer seat and say with a big smile that he made a fortune and got his dong sucked in the name of "street capitalisation".

But in the part where the movie describes the violent escalation he is not confronted with events that link him directly to murders or loss.

He doesn't show remorse or regret until the very end and even than it feels quite forced.

It could have been a significant and important documentary, but the filmmakers were too busy to ride in the BLM wave and treat the subject harshly and make their interviewee bleed out by confronting them with difficult questions.

As much as there many enlightening trivia moment, the whole is more of a propaganda pamphlet that summarize the whole thing into a us and them short story that fits the format.

If you liked The Toys That Made Us, you sure would like The Movies That Made US too. I never used to watch the extra features that came with the movie on the DVD. A behind de scene documentary, unrefined scenes that were left on the editing floor and other things that were meant to be a filler to the 8.5GB on the DVD and they just paled in comparison to the real movie.

But now, that enough time has passed since they made those movies and miraculously they aged well, watching a new material about them is a blessing. The Toys that made us, perfected a formula that us up to 25 years in making and they have just enough trivia and fun, to make it an enjoyable series.

Finally we get to hear the story and the production process from the point of view of the producers, directors, agents, scriptwriters, stunt coordinators, art and SFX department veterans and co stars. Pretty much everybody but the stars themselves. Besides Ghostbusters, none of them main actors-actresses of those films participated in the show. I can understand that getting a hold of them might costly, difficult and the start themselves probably already said everything that they had in the course of the past 30 years. Yet, a little interview with Jennifer Grey, Macaulay Culkin and Bruce Willies would have taken this show to another level. On Ghostbusters episode, they did included Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson but you really want to see a glimpse of Bill Murray, furthermore a shared Bill Murray-Dan Aykroyd interview. But I guess that will be asking for too much.

I guess that if we had those stars in the movie, most of the attention will naturally focus around them, and sans-the-stars others can have an equal screen time and finally some recognition for making those films so great.

I guess that only solution will be, treating the main stars like anyone else in terms of screen time, questions and make them admit that they are not god's gift to us, just one talent among many other talented people who worked together.

Question is, can we accept just a taste of an A-lister in a 30 minutes show?

When Paul Verhoeven directed the first film no one from the studios believed in this project and therefore he had the necessary artistic freedom to create Robocop's universe and it's themes. The result was an iconic and unforgettable surprise. 17 years later due to greed and demand, the studio made this "reboot", this time they gave it a big budget that came with a lot of expectation from all the involved parties, not to mention the impossible pressure that the studio put on José Padilha. The result? a very disappointing film. After the 2nd time I watched it I realized he made a very clever film. Just take Gary Oldman as the main character who represents Padilha and the struggle he goes through with creating Robocop/Alex Murphy as his product (the film). It is not a film about to good guys versus an army of criminals, it is a story of a story teller (scientist nevertheless) who fight to keep the last human remaining that was part of the original story. Think about this quote - "When the machine fights, the system releases signals into Alex's brain, making him think he's in control, but he's not. It's the illusion of free will."

Jose Padilha actually addressed to us, the audience. Explaining about the illusion of free will as a director under the intruding executives/system.

Anyway, 17 years of mythology, expectations form both fans and shareholders guaranteed that this will be a flop. It could have been a good film if the executives would have let him do his work, but we will never know.

Each episode is usually about 55 minutes long, take out the ridiculous 2 minutes (!) intro and final credits and you get 52 minutes which suppose to cover more than 10 story lines. In a good episode we get to see about half of them. In a very good episode something actually happens in the sub plots.

Sooner or later we will get tired of waiting, so why not to put some more meat into the story and make longer episodes?

Don't tell me it will be expensive because they will cover it with 3 more commercials..

There is more than enough material to write longer episodes and the production value of the series will be able to hold it.

Who else think that each episode should be 90 minutes long?

When I watched the trailer for Low life I got the impression that I am about to watch an subversive contemporary french film. But when I am writing these words, an hour after I left the theater I feel like I was cheated and misguided. It is like someone seduced me because they knew what I was looking for but eventually these were nothing but two hours of bad cinema.

I don't want to discuss much about the plot, but do like to discuss the way it was told.

The premise of the film tells the stories of bunch of young activist who dedicate their lives to protect illegal immigrants in France while they all live in a squat located in the city of Lyon. One of the main story lines follows after the love story of Carmen and Hussain who has no legal staying visa.

Immigrations is a burning issue in Europe and especially in France, where every 8th person is an immigrant. But when it comes to independent cinema it is just one of these themes that you can exploit in order to be accepted to big film festival as much as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or hunger in Africa. The movie discusses heavily about the immigration reality in todays France but instead of trying to create a dialog with the audience and send them home with some thinking material, it lectures them. The creators even twist the truth here and there in order to justify the phrase "we live in a reality that acts like we are the Vishy regime" as it had been said by one of the characters. It is a soft and cowardly way to say that the French government treats it's immigrants is similar to the way that the Nazi's treated the Jews. To support this argument there are many visual and textual references during the movie such as presenting the police as the gestapo and the police camera coverage on the streets as a self-fulfilling prophecy of 1984. The most developed character in the film is Hussain, an Afghan refugee poet who has to struggle everyday between his will to experience and enjoy life to the very basic need of existence which is survival by forcing him to hide from the authorities what later becomes a solitary. Unfortunately due the directors choice to tell multiple story lines that never really cross each others way, we never get to feel and experience with the character what is a so- called modern version of Anna Frank.

The director's intentions was to create a non compromised realistic film. In order to do so he uses method that 15 years ago could have been considered dogmatic: Hand-held camera or street view camera, rough cuts, natural light, Hyper realistic sound (apart from some very few scenes with music), the characters consciously looking directly to the camera while a meaningful texts are being heard on the background. All these artistic choices were suppose to hit the spectator in the stomach and open his mind to the "real other truth", But it doesn't work. This "shtiks" are nothing but a sand that is being thrown to the spectators eyes in order to blind them from the lack and shallowness of the story. Maybe the director should have gave up the need to have a plot and than it could have been a better film. But instead there are couple of plots that are not fully explored. In some point you find yourself putting the pieces together while asking yourself will this lack of coherency and overloaded texts will get any better? The director had all the components to create something different and strong - the subject - immigration in France, artistic freedom, very motivated cast but judging by the result he wasn't able to put all these elements into a shocking or moving film. I sense that the directors aimed to high, I guess that he wanted to achieve to many goals and it leads to disorganization that might feel cool on the set but doesn't pass the screen test. As a result the acting suffered as well. While it seems that the actors worked hard to develop their characters by creating multi emotional layers, it still feels like you watch an acting class more than a film. I don't blame the actors at all, I blame the script writers for writing long pretentious pseudo intellectual monologues and dialogs and the director (who was one of the writers) for his inability to actually direct his actors and use their abilities. Most memorable was that very annoying emo kid, instead of letting him whine about his difficult life he should have gone to a homeless shelter or to the Holocaust memorial museum or at least someone could have slapped him so he will realize that his life are far from being dark, sad and horrible.

The movie demonstrates unexplained and undeveloped relationships and story lines, comes with a strong message by stating that the life and condition in France for immigrants are unbearable. But it draws a reality where you either support this message and you are a good liberal person or you either one of the french gestapo and you probably will vote for Marine Le Pen. But as it already known the reality is much more complicated than what is being demonstrated in this film. It doesn't do justice with nobody not even with the immigrants. in in the end of the day it is an arrogant self righteous caricature of of unfortunate reality.