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| Conquest Join Date: Mar 2002
Posts: 4,894
+16 Internets | Paris screenings, a work in progress I am in Paris for a little less than 2 months for a work that leaves me plenty of time to watch movies, so I decided to try and keep up to date a list of the movies I see with brief comments. Now since I must do that on public computers the thing may be updated erratically and with a spelling of uneven quality but heh. Here is for now the list of movies I have seen sofar, I'll edit the post to put comments in. The Life of David Gale by Alan Parker A journalist has three days to try and find the truth about the rape and murder of an abolitionist activist before David Gale gets executed for it. Parker is used to this kind of heavy thematical movie, but it seems that the argumentation distract him from doing a solid thriller. He never managed to drag me in the investigation and to interest me in the outcome. The fact that Gale defends a good cause and has solid arguments but yet fight for it the wrong way (through manipulation) is pretty original and not very PC though. Parker does not seem to fully pay this card though. Nothing too memorable about the film making other than the nice idea to not show one of the key element of the movie (the one who saw the movie will know what I mean). Auto Focus by Paul Shrader The life and death of Bob Crane, famous radio host, famous TV actor (Hogan in Hogan’s Heroes – the sitcom in the WWII PoW camp) that goes in a downward spiral because of a sex overdose. I don’t know well the work of Shrader as a director other than his magnificent Mishima (and I really would like to see Affliction for which I only heard good things), so I came with curiosity and without too many expectations. It was a good idea because the movie does not have a lot to offer, because the source material is odd and in a way exemplary, but it seriously lacks depth. Fortunately, a solid cast, and great art design manage to kinda save the day. Shrader provides also an interesting idea: the filmmaking evolves with the main character. At first slick dolly moves and travellings, we are almost in disneyworld, but later in the film, the camera is hand held, shaky and the image seems devastated (dark image, big contrast). Not revolutionary, but pretty efficient (I am thinking at one of the last visit of Crane to his agent). Oligarkh (Tycoon) by Pavel Lungin Another tale of rise and fall, but this time of a russian businessman managing to make a fortune avoiding both taxes through subtle tricks and the rampant corruption through an iron will. The movie is built like Citizen Kane since it starts with the death of the main character and then a judge investigates and every testimony triggers a flashback. Well paced, well written, the movie manages to reach that kind of scorcesian epic feel, even if the film making does not have the brilliance of Scorcese’s. Note that it is based on a book, which is based on a true (and recent) story. It sounds sorta embellished ŕ la HK gangster movie founded by the mob, but, heh, just be entertained and take it with a grain of salt :P Il est plus facile pour un chameau… (Translation: It Is Easier For a Camel…) by Valeria Bruni Tedeschi Federica is unhappy with life and she has the feeling it is because she is extremely wealthy. The fact an ex lover is back into her life, that she has troubles with her current lover and that her father is dying, creating tensions in an already chaotic family, do not help. Well known as an actress, that’s Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi’s first movie as a director and writer. You might know her sister better, the former top-model and now acclaimed singer, Carla Bruni. VBT choose an easy subject for her movie since it’s her own life through the angle of a light comedy. I would say its best quality is to not take itself too seriously: it’s funny, pleasing, fast paced and light as a soap bubble. VBT does not hesitate to portray herself as someone bigot, not self-confident, in doubt, in a word: vulnerable. This harsh yet funny self portrait legitimates the also harsh and also funny portraits of her family and friends. A minor but enjoyable movie. Oh! Soo-jung (Virgin Bare Stripped By Her Bachelors) by Hong Sang Soo A girl working as script is loved by bother the director and a friend of his. Who will she give her virginity to, if she does? The main interest in the three films of Hong Sang Soo I saw is the narrative structure. Virgin, the most recent of the three, is built in chapters categorized under two entries “Maybe by chance” and “Maybe by will”. The story told in each is somewhat the same, but the characters act differently, we see scenes from a different perspective, follow different characters, etc. If the first half of the movie is rather bland, the second half is very enjoyable because you are constantly surprised by what happens in regard to what you allready saw. Kangwon-du ui him (The Power of Kangwon Province) by Hong Sang Soo Narrative structure at work here too. In the first part of the movie we follow the two trips a girl makes to the province of Kangwon (once with two friends and once alone to meet a cop she is found of) and in the second part we follow the girl’s ex-boyfriend going to Kangwon at the same time than the girl’s first trip. This time it’s not the variations that are compeling, but the links, sometime logical and sometime almost magic between the two stories. Daijiga umule pajinnal (The Day a Pig Fell Into The Well) by Hong Sang Soo This movie follows a pattern similar than the one of The Power. But this time there are 4 main characters and the temporality is a bit less clear than in the previous movie. We begin with a failed writter, then we follow the husband of the writter’s lover, then a young girl in love with the writter and we conclude with the story of the unfaithfull wife. More complexe, this movie is also less playfull than the others. Here the narrative structure is mainly used to show the loneliness of the characters ather than just play with the fiction material. Hong Sang Soo, a corean director to follow ![]() Dancing by Patrick-Mario Bernard, Xavier Brillat and Pierre Trividic An homosexual couple consisting in a writter and an artist lives in a house that was formerly a Dancing. The artist slowly begins to be haunted by a double of himself in a weird outfit. First movie of the authors (2 of them play the main parts too), entirely shot in DV, this pretty odd and nonsensic fable does not lack in mystery and in plastic beauty. The fact that the whole thing ends unresolved is a bit frustrating too. The 25th Hour by Spike Lee Convicted of drug dealing, Monty will be sent to jail for 7 years. We follow him on his last day of freedom he spends with his dog, his father, his girlfriend and his two oldest friends: a professor and a trader. I must say I know close to nothing about Spike Lee. As a matter of fact, 25th Hour is even the first movie I see from him and I must say I really enjoyed it a lot. First of all because of the impeccable cast. Edward Norton is very charismatic and always on the right tone, Phillip Seymour Hoffman is one of the very best american actors and is always a pleasure to see (directors beware though, he begins to overplay and to caricature himself a bit), Rosario Dawson, who I already liked a lot in Men in Black 2, seems to be made of unlimited sweetness. Big discovery with the impeccable and electric interpretation of Barry Pepper: casting directors, hire this man right now! We demand to see more of him! Gratz to Brian Cox and Anna Paquin too (oddly, both in X2 as Stryker and Rogue), the first for the very powerful ending monologue (corny in a good way hehe ) and the second for defending a pretty ingrate part with conviction (the not so cute and not so clever but yet attractive ingenue teenager).Spike Lee does not only a good work at directing his actors he manages to be very inventive all along the movie when 90 percent of it is people discussing (in bars, disco, bedroom, apartments, restaurants, class room, parks, etc). We can accuse him of doing a bit much though when the scenes become artificially over-edited (876764 shots in 20 sec in the class room for example), but most of the time it works well, even in very risky moments like the opening, Norton’s monologue in front of the mirror or the ending that could be very cheesy, but are not. A solid movie, a very pleasant surprise. X2 by Brian Singer Shared my thought on it in another topic. To sum it up: entertaining but the fundamental problematic of the X-Men is not really adressed (how to live with mutants). But since it's obviously not well adressed in the comics eighter... Kagami no onnatachi (Women in the Mirror) by Yoshishige Yoshida This is my favorite movie of them all for now (a little above 25th Hour). The daughter of an old women seems to finally be found 20ish years after she disappeared from the hospital where she gave birth to her daughter. The runaway has now a new name and is amnesiac. Is she really the missing daughter? If she is, can she come back in the family like nothing happened? Will her 20ish year old daughter accept her has mother even if she abandoned her? Do the grandmother really care if she is her daughter or not, now that she found someone to take her place? And what dark family secret took place around the atomic bombing of Hiroshima? Three generations of women collides trying to find who they really are. There is a tension of every instant in this movie. Not in the scary movie kind of way, but the secrets and mysteries are made so tick and omnipresent, thanks to the precise and cold directing and to the dissonant music, that they are almost tangible. The tension literally explodes in the sequences where the grandmother tells her secrets or when the granddaughter visits the Hiroshima memorial. A solemn movie of a rare intensity (or a snore-fest if you do not get dragged in it I guess :P ) Note that if the director made many movies (including the famed Eros + Massacre) he did only 4 in the last 30 years :/ I hope well see another from him in less than 7 years. Honogurai mizu no soko kara (Dark Water) by Hideo Nakata I seem that horror movies become somewhat of a meta genre in the US. I mean that the american horror movies try more to be clever, to play with the codes of the genre, to use tons of references than to actually be scary. It certainly can produce good movies (I am a big fan of the Scream serie myself) but these are not really horror movies, they belong to a sub genre. On the other hand, japan seems to still be able to produce movies that are very straight forward and only meant to creep and/or scare you. Hideo “Ringu” Nakata’s Dark Water falls in this category. In this tale of a women living alone with her daughter, waiting for her divorce and facing a number of water related odd events there is not a single joke, not a single side story or romance, no digital special effects: an old school movie. Yet, in an old pot one can make good soup and Nakata is certainly not a bad cook. Nothing very innovative, nothing that will make you jump out of your seat, but a solid suspense, a tension that never lets you go once it catches you. A good old school horror movie and a nice score by Kenji Kawaii (Ghost in the Shell, etc). Habla con ella (Talk to Her) by Pedro Almodóvar El Bonaerense by Pablo Trapero Sud sanaeha (Blissfully Yours) by Apichatpong Weerasethakul Les corps impatients (Translation: The Impatient Bodies) by Xavier Giannoli Double Indemnity by Billy Wilder Final Destination 2 by David R. Ellis The Blackout by Abel Ferrara New Rose Hotel by Abel Ferrara The Rules of Attraction by Roger Avary Baise-moi (Fuck Me) by Virginie Despente and Coralie Trinh Thi Yaju no seishun (The Youth of the Beast) by Seijun Suzuki Shoujyo (An Adolescent) by Eiji Okuda Werckmeister Harmoniak (Werckmeister Harmonies) by Bela Tarr (accents are missing thanks to keyboard) Last edited by Szlia : 05-08-2003 at 04:02 AM. |
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| | #8 (permalink) |
| I AM LEGEND - Searyx is pedophile Join Date: May 2002
Posts: 241
| Um yea, I'll be catching this new film called Eh"$%^ fegalito*& us des FEE KIKI (*^ lw1d Should be entertaining. It's about this guy, and he like can't live with his past, and then he like has stragne nightmares, and his wife is hving an affair, and they wanna save the whales and all kinds of shit. Anf then they wanna save poor peolple and the homeless and they champion all these wacky liberal causes, so like all the movie rags that nobody reads gave it an A+. Then like, the guy finds out he wants to be a transexual, so then all the liberal rags that nobody reads gave it an A++. Then the council of French socialist films gave it a bunch of awards, cuz like the guy found out he likes to eat his mom's poo, and they have this really graphic rape scene where he pees on his girlfriend, so then the academy of motion pictures nominated it for best picture. Then I saw this movie. it's starred Rob Schneider. It's from the creators of DER and TOTALLY TITILLY TUM TA TOO. Actually it's a trilogy of 4 movies. I was impressed with their depth and cunning. Very informative, very relavent in this day of racial discrimination. I've provided links the trailers if you wanna listen. The Stapler http://www.mattntrey.com/sounds/SP/Schneider01.mp3 The Carrot --this one is very deep- http://www.mattntrey.com/sounds/SP/Schneider02.mp3 Thsi next one is by far, the most meaningful movie I saw at French, socialist wacko movieothon, it's called Derp. i would highly recomend this film, the tital says it all, as well as speaks volumes for the loads of crap nobody is ever gonna fcking watch above ^^^^ http://www.mattntrey.com/sounds/SP/Schneider03.mp3 And finally, the classic kenny movie. it's about a young troubled lad. I cried, really , really hard. SO DEEP. A pleasant surprise. http://www.mattntrey.com/sounds/SP/Schneider04.mp3 Oh, and yea i like saw X2, and it was ok. it didn;t tackle the serious issues of Mutants living with humans enough for my taste, and how this just ruined all those cool fucking special effects, and fight scenes, and hugh jackman totally opening up a can of CLAW UP YOUR ASS on a bunch of rich white guys. Seriously, I wish they would of gone into boring detail about how racial discrimination against mutants, and less into the whole Wolverine kicking mega rich whiteboy ass. I needed to see more crying, and less ass kicking in X2.
__________________ "If the GOOD pedophiles had a legal way of getting off, it might help." --Searyx You need to curb your irrational hatred towards those that find children attractive. --Searyx- Hi, this is Ecksi. The other night I was eating a hamburger and got a giant chubby. Killing and sex ar the same~ |
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| | #10 (permalink) |
| I AM LEGEND - Searyx is pedophile Join Date: May 2002
Posts: 241
| I am Legend
__________________ "If the GOOD pedophiles had a legal way of getting off, it might help." --Searyx You need to curb your irrational hatred towards those that find children attractive. --Searyx- Hi, this is Ecksi. The other night I was eating a hamburger and got a giant chubby. Killing and sex ar the same~ |
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