Dude Rates Movies

A very rich movie, with some acceptable weaknesses.

Richness:

• The directing is full of wonderful ideas and interesting camera-work.
• A nice zest of fantasy such as the Cure clip or the beating chewing-gum
• Cinematography, music, sets, which are all excellent craft.
• The story which actually got me hooked.

Weakness:

• Exarchopoulos does not resemble her younger counterpart.
• Concerting the crime plot, the asymmetry between the very detailed first part, and the rushed (basically 1 montage) second part.
• The ending: the overruled foreshadowing of the opening scene would surely have been a superior ending than the actual wishy-washy ending. Him not using violence because he promised to her means he doesn't deeply understand the reasons for non-violence; her not doing anything with her life means she never actually recovered from her teenage trauma (which took off her the desire to have a project). It's a pretty sad ending, which is pretty unacknowledged by the movie.

I still think it's a pretty remarkable movie.

I know this is an audacious comparison, but the level of tension in this movie is comparable to the one I felt while watching Portrait of a Lady in Fire, except trading seduction with... something else. The directing and acting deliver such a strong intensity out of scenes that would superficially appear mundane. It's all in the eyes, reactions, hesitations, and, ultimately, outbursts. With a touch of madness. A work of art, in my humble opinion.

One of the few French high-budget movie that uses the money for good cinema rather than celebrities cameos. It is sufficiently faithful to the novel, keeping the most precious parts as-is, at least to my taste. I was apprehensive of Pierre Niney, but it turns out that he's very good for the cast.

Good movie.

It's hard to find anything bad to say about a movie that is well-made yet doesn't take itself seriously.

The movie opens with Kiss' I was made for loving you to a long-shot of Ryan Gosling getting prepared for a stunt which the character effectively does, and therefore makes you wonder whether this was actually Gosling that did it (since the shot is uninterrupted). I was made for loving you eventually comes back multiple times in the movie in various forms (orchestral, trailer-like cover, etc), and is just one example of the many fun artistic ideas that The Fall Guy has in store, including, for example, a meta-commentary on the usage of split screens, or how psychedelic a fight under influence looks like.

It is quite fun, and hinges on a solid story and solid performances from its leads, including what might surprisingly be the best role of Ryan Gosling, who succeeds in playing a quantum superposition of complete chill attitude and emotional vulnerability (culminating to a remarkably and bizarrely intense scene).

There is of course no lacking of action, with a complete stunt fest. The small bits of making-of shown during the credits offer a glimpse of the logistical challenge that the movie must have been, and proves the grand mastery of the art of crafting stunts from the Fall Guy crew. Bravo!

I found it to be simply brilliant. Casting and dialogues are fire.

The rise and fall of a bikeriders gang in the 60s, under the talented eye of Jeff Nichols, with a banger soundtrack, and pretty solid cast. Not far away from a Scorcese saga, but with a raw aspect to it. Oddly captivating.

This movie has extraordinary qualities that definitely make up for the lack of plot: The sound design, which is basically a second movie inside the movie, and which sets up the terribly heavy atmosphere of the movie. The exploration of the psychology of the main characters, and especially Höss' wife, whose attachment to the home seems insane from an external point of view. The amount of research done by the crew ahead of filming.

Among the movies about the Holocaust I've seen so far (although I've not yet seen Claude Lanzmann' Shoah), it is the one that makes me wonder the most about the sheer magnitude and nonsensicality of the final solution. The constant low background noise constitutes the clearest signal of industrialization of death as anything I've seen in cinema before, while the mundanity of unbothered family affairs contrasting with the distant sounds of violence conveys how numb Nazis had became to their own disgusting enterprise.

A haunting piece of cinema that needs to be seen, once.