Tuesday 1 August 2017
permalinkMy love for characters played by Lily James, such as Natasha in BBC's War and Peace, turns my sensibility into this of a little girl. Cinderella is no exception, and I'm not even mad about it.
2019-05-05
This movie is one dependable ally when you've caught a nasty cold. Just slip in under the cover and let you be taken away in this beautiful tale. Relish watching the delightful direction of Kenneth Brannagh and listening to the sweet music of Patrick Doyle. Jubilate as Cinderella and the Prince meet for the first time in the forrest and flirt like two loving souls. Remind yourself that everything will be alright as long as you have courage and be kind. Oh boy this movie is close to perfection.
Sunday 30 July 2017
permalinkThe editing of car chases is, as usual, an endless source of frustration caused by each little stunt being cut right before its proper finish when it should have been shown in a single shot. Entertaining nonetheless, and also has Lily James.
Friday 28 July 2017
permalinkNolan finally gets back down to Earth (and to Sea, and to Sky). The impersonal subject of war is a perfectly suited canvas for his absolutely masterful directing, and isn't polluted by his usual i-am-very-smart ramblings. The result is a stubborn, simple, and efficient masterpiece.
Sunday 11 June 2017
permalinkMy trouble with this movie (and the entire Indiana Jones franchise) is how it displays a sort of comical and light-weight atmosphere when the characters are always in imminent danger of death. Indiana Jones and his friends wouldn't win the natural selection since their top priority in any situation is to joke about it. Public Service Announcement: in reality, you probably need to panick about the idea of being killed.
Sunday 21 May 2017
permalinkThe director wants to stand out and desperately tries to be original, most notably with the unusual aspect ratio and the weirdly-fitting pop songs. His talent at directing is well enough in its own right, as it captures so well how the brutality of the main character affects the lives of people around him, and his own. This is beautiful and tragically breathtaking.
Monday 3 April 2017
permalinkFirst opus in the « side » narration separated from the mainline sequence of episodes, where Disney lets subpar directors demonstrate their incompetency and effectively steers the saga to shit, as if the story choices of the mainline weren't efficient enough in doing that already.
Tuesday 14 March 2017
permalinkAfter the awesome It's a Beautiful Life and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, I decided to explore more of Frank Capra, but this one is less approachable a bit more rooted in its time (understand: borderline sexist)
Sunday 12 March 2017
permalinkAfter his alarming vision of a world ruled by genetic perfection and his radical satire of reality TV, Andrew Niccol, the talented writer of (respectively) Gattaca and The Truman Show, still has things to say, about gun trade this time. His incessant need to remind us of how immoral it is is a bit heavy at times (compare that, for example, to how Martin Scorcese just goes full on with organized crimes epics, letting the spectators process the ethics in their own ways), but can we really reproach to Niccol to commit when that's what he does best, especially when the result is otherwise an excellent movie.
Friday 10 March 2017
permalinkSteve McQueen continues his one-word filmography, after the brilliant Shame. The usage of the long-take, including an unedited 15-minute dialogue on suicide, as well the glacial approach to violence and suffering, makes it, once again, an incredible cinematographic experience.
Sunday 5 March 2017
permalinkKenneth Lonergan early work is a minor drama, but it's nonetheless the occasion to witness a little known but impressive performance from Mark Ruffalo, and overall a good alchemy between a good cast.
Sunday 26 February 2017
permalinkI've always felt that film is a somewhat arbitrary medium for a play, and this one really gave me this feeling hard. The way it's done you can tell that it must be a play. So I'm kind of perplex as to the whole purpose of it, if not to showcase the stellar talent of Viola Davis.
Monday 20 February 2017
permalinkThis suffers from the Oscar-targeted dramatic-acting-outburst syndrome, with Dev Patel going off the mark in the middle of the street to tell us about his existential crisis because of some random word the other character made the mistake of using. Fortunately most of the time the movie has a more subtle emotional approach, so it ends up pretty good.
Sunday 19 February 2017
permalinkThose types of life chronicles simply aren't my cup of tea. I see the point, this is touching and all, but there are just so many stories like this in the world, it's quite random, and it doesn't even pay off with a resolution.
Tuesday 7 February 2017
permalinkDenis Villeneuve commits the cardinal sin and adds a non-diegetic soundtrack over scenes where diegetic sounds are of paramount importance. I'M TRYING TO LISTEN TO WHAT IS GOING ON COULD YOU PLEASE CUT THE MUSIC GOD DAMMIT. To add to the crime, the music is a variation of the tripods' siren in War of the World and has a tone similar to the diegetic sound we're trying to listen to. The resolution might be a bit too mind-blowing for me as I can't fully make sense of it without resorting to Laplace's determinism, and the implications about free will aren't satisfyingly resolved. Reaching this level of discussion in a first place sets the bar quite high.
Monday 6 February 2017
permalinkI always picture old people as sort of easily-shocked conservative ones, especially when they're respected, classy, artists. So I wonder how the discussion between Tarantino and Ennio Morricone went when they discussed the score for the flashback where Samuel L. Jackson is nasty with the general's son, which I found to be too-much myself. Asking important questions.
Monday 6 February 2017
permalinkThis movie tricked me with such power. Considering the mysterious setting of the first act, I assumed it belonged to an entirely different genre than it was, a more metaphorical one. The revelation came up to me with such sheer brutality, I felt weak in my inability to consider things through a rational eye. It's absolutely brilliant.
Monday 6 February 2017
permalinkOh this is way too didactic. Alex Garland uses dialogues as a way to broadcast his dissertation on AI. It's cool that not a single innovative idea about AI has emerged in movies since decades. I guess we just have to wait for it to play out live in society.
Friday 6 January 2017
permalinkIt looked to me that the movie didn't realize the implications of the resolution. If each new try from Gyllenhall was happening in a new stand-alone parallel universe, then by trying again and again he just generated copies of the same bombing and added more and more victims across the multiverse. So if at the beginning of the movie there were 1000 people sad from having lost a family member, after 5 failed tries now there are 5000 people sad. The only procedure that minimize the loss is to succeed on the first try, or to stop.
Wednesday 28 December 2016
permalinkJournalist (pointing at a big poster on the wall): “Who is this one?” Steve: “Alan Turing. Single handedly won World War II and for an encore invented the computer. He won't be part of the campaign though.” Journalist: “Why?” Steve: “Because you just had to ask me who he was.”
When I was in college a guy in the class said that Steve Jobs was such an historical figure because he invented the computer. Since he was a Job fan I hope he went to watch this movie.
Friday 11 November 2016
permalinkNo more no less than torture porn. It's stylised enough so that it isn't creepy, just utterly violent. I don't know what to think of that. This is kind of films I rate 5 just in case. In case of what, I don't know. But just in case.
Tuesday 11 October 2016
permalinkIt's about the only heavy-action franchise that hasn't self-alienated itself and that still delivers solid entertainment with decent directing and even some artistic attempts, like the mixing of Turandot opera main theme (the opera that takes place during an action scene in the first act) into the soundtrack. Tom Cruise seems to have this thing under control.
Sunday 9 October 2016
permalinkAs it happens, this has nothing to do with the cult Bad Lieutenant, if not for the theme of corrupt police. I like to think of Nicolas Cage as as crazy in real life as he is in this movie.
Sunday 9 October 2016
permalinkHarvey Keitel performance is off the chart. I'm not especially a fan of the direction the plot was taking, but the dark and captivating atmosphere of the movie will make me dig more into Abel Ferrara filmography.
Wednesday 7 September 2016
permalinkSilicon Valley's TV series creator first movie about office workers that piss code and change date formats in endless source code to prepare for the 2K bug. This is delicious and still curiously relevant.
Saturday 27 August 2016
permalinkFirst episode of the 30-years Before trilogy of Richard Linklater. The three films (Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight), featuring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, are about a couple of strangers who briefly meet 3 times in their life, 10 years apart, everytime proving to be a love escape. Linklater being Linklater, the 3 movies were actually shot 10 years apart each. I'm sold.
Tuesday 2 August 2016
permalinkI'm not gonna denied that this was original, but this was weird as fuck. Mud, the previous movie from Jeff Nichols, already flirted with the fantastic, or at least with a tale-like storytelling. This one goes full-in, and I find the result quite awkward.
Saturday 25 June 2016
permalinkWhy is Sean Connery, from Scotland, playing a Russian officer? Why do the Russians even speak English. Alright I quibble. Actually, the first few dialogs of the movie are in Russian but then they switch to English on the word « Armageddon », which is the same in English and in Russian, and also a Michael Bay movie, although this has nothing to do with this trivia.
Sunday 6 August 2017
permalinkFaut le voir pour comprendre les références autour de soi, et il faut dire que c'est bien marrant. J'ai toujours du mal avec ces comédies où le seul intérêt est d'attendre la prochaine pitrerie du comédien et qui sont de qualité nulle outre mesure. Elles semblent appartenir à un art entièrement différent qui, par simple coincidence, partagent avec le cinéma le fait d'être filmées.