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Chung Hing sam lam (1994)
Delightful
Usually romance movies leave me indifferent. For some reason, sometimes, I connect with some of them. I can think of perhaps another two beside Chungking Express: Intimacy, by Patrice Chereau, and The Lowdown by Jamie Thraves. The first one is of clear theatrical / literary derivation, the second one is overly naturalistic, perhaps autobiographical, and then we have Chungking Express, an impressionistic film with observational gags, two fairly flimsy plots and camerawork that wouldn't be out of place in an early MTV video.
What connects these three movies in my mind, is that for all three I was able to go with the flow and let them sweep me off my feet, without even worrying about meaning, or if they were good movies at all. Sometimes you have an affinity with a film -- or a book -- that cannot be explained rationally. I enjoyed the ride immensely, and I couldn't recommend it enough.
They Shot the Piano Player (2023)
Interesting.
This an animation film about the life and tragic death of Francisco Tenório, a jazz piano player. The story is narrated exclusively through the recorded accounts of people who met him, and it's framed through the journey of discovery that a writer takes to write a book about him.
The reconstruction of the interviews that constitute the bulk of the film is painstaking and extensive. Most are slightly unfocused, fogged by the passing of time, and can be resumed with "he was a great guy". It's only well into the second act that we start to get crumbs of information about his cruel demise, and eventually the mystery is solved. Ample context is given, and it sheds light over a very dark time of the history of Latin America. You leave the cinema feeling that Francisco remains a ghost, that his short life in perilous times left precious little trace beside his records, but perhaps it's intentional, and it's laudable that the director resists the temptation of creating an overarching narrative for dramatic effect.
Side notes: I found the "reduced animation" technique exceedingly distracting, and I couldn't quite decide if it was a stylistic choice, or a budgeting strategy. Jeff Goldblum is pitch-perfect in the part of the narrator, although little is made of the cultural difference between his character, a textbook New Yorker journalist, and his subjects, mostly old men from Brazil and Argentina.
Overall, a slightly uneven movie that remains interesting, and tells a worthwhile story. And, ah, Jeff Goldblum.
The Zone of Interest (2023)
Great concept, lazy execution
Caught this at the LFF. As a student of Judaism, the theme of the Holocaust passionates me, and the premise of the film seemed brilliant, and I was really looking forward to it. I started to have a slight suspicion when we were treated to five minutes of a black screen with ominous music just after the opening credits.
To be fair, the film does have some amazing ideas; all four of them would have made a wonderful, thought-provoking twenty minute short. As a feature film, they are not enough. After the first agonising hour, you just want to scream at the filmmaker: you're no Chantal Akerman, no point in trying, just fly lower and put some graft into it. I was seriously tempted to leave before the end, but I kept hoping against all hope; in truth, the fourth and final idea does land in the penultimate sequence, but you still leave with the impression that this should have been a great film, and yet somehow it ends up being a shallow bore.
The Souvenir (2019)
You don't know why you cared. I don't know why I should.
Contains spoilers for Part 2 as well, because I was told it was "even better" than Part 1.
An uber-rich, young aspiring filmmaker falls in love with a bad guy who treats her badly. It's an interesting premise. First-world problems, especially those related to matters of the heart, have produced some fine films; see for example the sophisticated tragedy of Un coeur en hiver.
So, the plot is set. We assist with some bafflement to the horrid behaviour of the guy, and we start to wonder why she remains attached to him. Let's make this clear: he's not a looker, which in itself would have supplied at least a rational reason. He's not smart, he's not funny with his surrealistic dad jokes, he's not interesting: he has constantly painted on his face a sneer of perma-tedium.
The film trudges on. We wonder when we will be shown the motivations of the heroine. Spoiler alert: we won't. She will remain forever this trembling violette alternating between the doleful gaze of a Renaissance Madonna, and the indifferent surprise of a deer in the headlight.
The guys dies. Off screen, just to not give the bored spectator that satisfaction. She is left to unpack her grief which will happen, to excruciating extents, in Part 2. But let's stay with her in Part 1 for now: it's inspired by a true story, the story for the author, and we'd expect her to know her motivations at length. She probably does, and choses to left those mostly unspoken, perhaps persuaded that this will constitute a more objective take on the reality of her past. Which may be true, but will be of scant help to the spectator who has already fallen asleep.
I sort of get, foggily, the point she's making. I however struggle to understand why it took four hours (between the two Parts) to make it. There is material for a short feature at best in this story of confused halcyon days of discovery.
A word of praise for Richard Ayoade. He delivers the only fantastic scene in Part 1, and the only watchable one in Part 2. If only he had more screentime.
The Footage Detectives (2021)
Great idea, atrocious execution
I love found footage, investigations and mysteries, so this seemed the perfect program to watch. Unfortunately, it's terrible. First, the hosts act like they had taken valium; very little beforehand research is done on the clips they show: they leave it to the viewer, which entails inane, tedious follow-ups with captions like :"I used to go on holiday there in 1932. Jim from Catford". There is nothing investigative about this: whilst the clips are occasionally marginally interesting, the result is just one step above from the internet groups devoted to the "good old times". I guess the target audience is the old and a tad reactionnary who thinks that the world of their teenage years was just perfect, and nothing ever since compares to that.
While We're Young (2014)
Brilliant, satisfying film slightly let down by its ending
This is a very well written film, which weaves Allen-like genuinely funny comedy with a clever reflection on the ontological nature of showing reality, or what we assume is reality, onto a screen -- the way authorship always necessarily has an agenda.
Another theme is GenX vs Millennials, and whilst very very funny, perhaps it's somewhat underdeveloped. Regardless, everything comes together really nicely, and there is so much going on: this film is truly a hearty meal for your viewing pleasure.
I would give it a 9, if it wasn't for the last 10 minutes, where the film shifts gears and settles in cruise mode: the ending is disappointing, and feels unimaginative and saccharine. It's really quite sad to part from this film on such a false note. A cynical ending would have made it an instant classic: what a shame. Still, worth watching for everything that comes before it.
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a #@%! (2023)
Unwatchable
This is terrible. I am oldish so probably not its target audience, but I am not convinced that what GenZ want either is to listen, for one hour and a half, to a laddish guy droning on about his past mistakes and lessons learned, delivering platitudes with the smug matter-of-factness of someone who is persuaded to have figured it all out.
His philosophy is a mishmash of Stoics and Pessimists, blended with a serious amount of banality, and without the intellectual honesty to derive the logical consequences.
In short, this is one hour and a half of my life I'll never get back. My bad, the omens were terrible from the title onwards.
Barbie (2023)
There is an art-house movie under all that pink
I tend to gravitate towards French cinema and the classics; the idea of watching a franchise movie about Barbie seemed mildly repellent at first. Well, I am glad I kept an open mind.
This is a riotously funny, zany meta comedy with touches of Wes Anderson and Bollywood; yet also strangely affecting. The idea of giving a plastic doll an existential crisis may seem gimmicky, yet it works. The cracks showing in the perfect façade of the perfect Barbie world are rendered through metaphors that hit the mark, full of a strange melancholia. I am usually put off by sentimentalisms: here, thankfully, they are kept at a bare minimum, even in the ending.
Overall, I am astonished this film exists at all. I imagine the authors meeting with a slightly distracted Mattel executive, being given a gazillion of dollars with the vaguest of briefs, and running away with it, to make a film that would send any corporate committee into a tailspin -- I imagine a first projection with the producers fainting and having a heart attack -- yet also make them laugh all the way to the bank. However it happened, chapeau. I am glad I went, I'll buy the dvd as well. I can see myself rewatching it to be sure I got all the micro gags and layers of meaning, but also putting it on when I need a little pick me up.
À plein temps (2021)
Wow. Just wow.
Laura Calamy runs for her life, in a sense, and for the live of her children. There is no monster or serial killer out to get her: the challenge of this divorced mother of two, who has dropped long ago out of her career to raise her offspring, and now has to eke out a living by working as a chambermaid, is to make ends meet. We are in Ken Loach territory here, but À plein temps couldn't be more different, and frankly it's heads and shoulder above most of Loach's works. For a start, it's shot like a thriller: it's fast paced, and dry. It doesn't hector or guilt-trip the spectator; it doesn't depict its protagonist like a saint either: Julie Roy is as flawed as most people are. She is smart, can even be crafty, but has no time for moral refinement: for her, it's sink or swim, and she is determined to not sink (her only moment of genuine doubt arrives in the last third of the movie, in the scene at the station. The camera lingers on her back in one of the rare long shots in the film, and yet somehow we can read her thoughts -- this is the work of an author who truly masters their craft).
What put Julie in this situation is ultimately left to the spectator to decide. Has she at least partially brought it onto her by buying into a 50s-style suburban life myth? Is it society who has lost all empathy? Is there hope for her? I won't spoil the ending, but suffice to say, it's as powerful and dry and hard-hitting as the rest of the movie.
À plein temps is giving me hope for French cinema. It's a great movie. Don't miss it.
Interdit aux chiens et aux Italiens (2022)
An undivided delight
This little stop-motion film is fantastic. I loved the way where the reality of the little clay figures and their author interact, I loved how the tone is always measured, never shrill or pathetic, and how the story is simple and relatable, even if you are not an Italian or an immigrant.
I wish that I could conjure my grandmother how the author does, and portray my own family past in the same vivid way. I am surprised that this film, at the moment of writing, has only a rating of 7.2. This is a mini masterpiece, full of creativity and emotion.
There is a little mystery around the runtime: I saw it today at the Italian Film Festival in London, and it was definitely shorter than the advertised run of 1h 20m. Some themes, like the titular one of anti-Italian racism, are very underdeveloped, barely touched at all. I wonder if it has been re-edited after release.
Nevermind, go and see it, it's a delight.
Il colibrì (2022)
Imagine I start this review with a strangled gurgling
There is one thing I did like in this film: the complete freedom it takes with the representation of time. One sequence that starts in the 00s can end in the 70s, or the other way round, or it may span several temporal plans. It deliberately plays with our concept of filmic present time: it's hard to tell what is flashback, what is "now" and what is flash-forward. Given it represents the inner life of a single individual, and his family and friends, it seems a courageous and appropriate stance to take.
But... this is a turgid, empty drama, with a body count that is truly massive for a film that doesn't deal with war or terrorism. It's like a long episode of Eastenders, but in Italy and with a lot of dosh. I know that it is extremely faithful to the original novel; if I didn't know that, I would guess that the author made a film about the life story of a very unlucky rich man, then realised she had made a crushing bore of a film, so instead put all the shots in a randomiser, and gave it a good shake in the hope of coming up with something better. Which it does... somewhat.
In the end, what is left? I would have to gesticulate and hum and moan my disappointment, it's really quite hard to put it into words. Even my beloved Moretti can't salvage his fairly pointless character. Why Italian cinema seems to revel in giving us stories so geared towards triggering random emotions, without even a nod of acknowledgment to the brain of the unfortunate viewer?
Les amours d'Anaïs (2021)
Portrait of a scatterbrain
Sometimes, rarely, you come across a film that is so disappointing that you are sort of reeling from it the morning after, thinking you'd better done the accounting, washed your hair, or stared at a patch on your carpet.
This is one of those blessedly rare films.
This film lives or dies by the amount of sympathy you can summon for the scatterbrained, narcissistic, hyperactive protagonist. If you attracted by her, or aspire to be like her, you may make it to the end.
For the rest of us, what remains is a sort of 21st century French comedy cliche' bingo: manic pixie girl? Check! A touch of Amelie Poulain? Check! Slightly nauseating sex scene with an extremely older guy? Check! Mother who has cancer, because that's what older women do right? Check! A touch of sapphic love? Check!
I gave up about two thirds in. I don't know how it ends but I can sort of figure it out. I am also slightly outraged this has been compared with the much superior "The worst person in the world", which features a similar protagonist and similar themes, but with so much more originality and insight.
Interior. Leather Bar. (2013)
Disappointing
I love reconstructions, forensic investigations and film mysteries, so I was really looking forward to this. Alas this film lost me about five minutes in, when Mathews casually declares they haven't got the money or the time (nor, I imagine, the discipline or the ability) to reconstruct the missing footage, so they are going to do a bit what they want. Ah, great -- not. It goes downhill from there, pretty much. In reality it isn't even a re-imagination: it's more like a making-of of itself. A big theme is the squeamishness of the straight actors, which is so very 2005. Perhaps at the time it was still a big deal for a straight guy to play gay, I am not sure. In any case, this is pretentious, meaningless rubbish.
James May: Our Man in... (2020)
Very sympathetic and well researched
Thank you James May: you have showed me things about my own country I had no idea about. I think this series is quite insightful, entertaining and treats the subject matter in a sympathetic way, acknowledging its beauty and its many contradictions.
My only criticism is that it's too short. Most of the topics explored would have deserved a much longer screen time. One wonders if half of the footage remained on the cutting floor. I have quite often this impression with May's programs: they are haunted by a little inner voice wondering "I am not boring you, right?". You would like to reassure them: no, you're not boring. Show us that sequence of woodwork or cheese making, unleash the geekiness!
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011)
One of the worst films I ever watched
I approached this hoping to find some lightweight fun, and because I like Bill Nighy. I instead witnessed a cliche-filled, lazy, conventional and faux-philosophic cinematographic disaster. I actually keep watching to the end just to see how bad it gets. Answer: very, very bad.
I don't even know what to start. They kill the gay character, the only vaguely interesting one, fairly soon, so they don't have to get tangled with potential developments of that subplot -- and his rekindled love affair remains sexless and "pure". Shortly after his death, the Judi Dench character visits the wife of his former lover to "learn how much she knows" -- seriously, that's a real The Room moment, one of several, and I hope that Tommy Wiseau won't be offended by the comparison.
If cliche' bingo was a thing, this film would fill the India and Elderly cards in one hour tops, and refill them in its second hour. The couples that form on screen possess all the chemistry of a tea cosy and are as credible as flying pigs. Most of the actors look embarrassed of being in this movie, in fact it's surprisingly poorly acted considering the stellar cast, but with such a lazy, stupid script, what else could happen?
So why a vote as high as 2? Because the images of India are sort of nice, and you can watch the background instead of the action. Also because objectively I can think of one film, or perhaps two, worse than this one, therefore it's fair to establish some hierarchy. Let's say, this is at the bottom, in fact it's a bottom quite deeply dug it lays on, but there is worse. Just, but there is.
Strappare lungo i bordi (2021)
Uneasy adulthood
A bittersweet portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, steeped in the difficulties of becoming an adult in a stultifying Southern Europe society, where the past matters more than the future -- a society that has little use for its young. However, the discourse of Tear along the dotted line is way more personal than political, and it's full of straight-faced humour and wild imagination, fast paced and with almost no sentimental excesses. After watching it, you'll want to read all the comic books.
Spencer (2021)
Not a biopic but a really good horror movie
The story of Diana is more than a pretext for this film, but it's less than a subject. It's a vehicle to narrate the depersonalisation engendered by living inside a total institution, like could be a panopticon kind of prison, an asylum or a cult, but happens here to be the Royal Family. The control of the body becomes a subtle or not so subtle proxy for the control of the mind.
Spencer is not factually correct nor it tries to be. It's not a biographical movie by any stretch of the imagination, it's a creepy, dark fairy tale, more similar in intent to Psycho than to your average biopic. The structure reminds me of some 70s art house horror movies, where there's a vague intimation at the end that maybe it was just all a dream, that the protagonist was an unreliable narrator and if their struggle was very real, the film definitely isn't a documentary about it. Indeed the details are used in an impressionistic manner instead of a chronicle. Like in all the self-respecting nightmares, at the end we wake up, in a sort of reassurance for the spectator: "don't worry, you'll escape from the haunted house / you won't die", which has an additional dark overtone here because it's based on a real story that actually doesn't end well.
It's a surprisingly good movie, also superbly acted and with great music. I recommend it also -- and probably especially -- to those who have little interest in the British Royals.
Mixte (2021)
Sex and lies in 1963 France
What a great surprise this little series! Acerbic but fun portrait of a microcosme straddling conformism and modernity at the dawn of sexual liberation. Everything works, from the historical context to the characters, well conceived and well acted. A great little soap opera with a surprising deep insight into the gender politics of the period, and into the eternal dynamics of power and generational conflict. A world away from the usual cookie-cutter Amazon series. Bravo les français.
Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)
My least favourite Tarantino movie
Kill Bill be like: put every 70s exploitation subgenre in a blender, add a generous sprinkle of manga, tons and tons of fake blood, actionate.
After a while you are led to expect the same loop: search for enemy, find enemy, fight, fight, fight, slice, cut, shoot, pierce, hit, bang, slap, blood, blood, blood, blood, enemy succumbs, rinse and repeat.
How those loops are accomplished is often surprising and endlessly creative, but in the end it always boils down to the same. More frequently in vol. 2 you get inbetweening speeches of almost comical pretentiousness and vague pseudooriental fuff. It's a bubblegum film that proves surprisingly tedious, considering how much is going on on the screen.
Clarkson's Farm (2021)
Rural escapism
I have no idea how this will be seen by people who know about farming, but for a city girl this was quite illuminating. Basically Countryfile but in a version that doesn't make my eyes glaze over.
Clarkson tends to be polarising, people seem to take him as a symbol of a certain kind of politics, but in fact it's pretty much your genial bumbling uncle, not more, not less. I may not really be into un-PC jokes, but I would have happily watched another ten hours of this.
Intimacy (2001)
One of the films who made me
I credit this film for making me realise I wanted to live in London; which is sort of odd, as the alienation and loneliness depicted in Intimacy are very real dangers of the life in The Big Smoke. In this respect, as in all others, this film doesn't lie. Yet, in a way that I can't quite put into words, this film showed me this city is a new light, it explained why I was supposed to love it.
Much has been said of the sex scenes. Yes, they are the pivotal feature of the plot; I remember someone went through it with a chronometer and found them totaling some nineteen minutes. However, there is so much more to Intimacy: the wonderful acting of both protagonists and secondary characters, the delicate nuançes of situation and dialogue, and indeed London which has never been so beautiful on a screen.
Intimacy is a very London story seen through the eyes and mindset of a Frenchman: you won't find any of the urban shibboleths you might be used to. Coincidentally, since a few years I live round the corner from the pub which was used for the exteriors of the theatre scene. It's no longer painted in blue, and it's no longer a pub (it's, predictably, luxury flats): the London depicted in Intimacy is mostly gone. Yet its idea of the city, and its preoccupation with the very real struggle -- and for some, impossibility -- of getting closer to another human being, warts and all, are very much extant.
Brel (1982)
An (almost) lost jewel
I saw this documentary a couple of times in the 90s and it made me understand the art of movie editing. The balance of action and stillness, silence and music: it's a visual symphony built from Brel songs and images. It has no commentary and it doesn't even attempt to supply factual information, but it certainly succeeds in giving you the impression of a time and place(s) and of an artistic journey.
I confess that I am not a massive Brel fan anymore (we sometimes grow apart from our loves, after all) -- I can now only truly enjoy his very last album and some select other works. Yet, I am sure that if I would be given the chance of watching this movie again, I would love it still. Its substance truly transcends the subject matter -- it is has meaning for and in itself. Unfortunately, it was only released in VHS a long time ago, and doesn't exist in dvd nor streaming, so this is not going to happen. Unless, finally, it gets the modern re-release it deserves. Much more obscure stuff is available nowadays -- why "Brel" isn't? Not even as a bootleg on Youtube. A shame, really.
L'amour dure trois ans (2011)
Funny!
I am surprised that the score of this movie is so relatively low. Whilst it's nothing special, it's also really funny, shrewd and almost never facile: a little comedy about love and life with several laugh-out moments (the sequence of the fake "documentary" towards the end, with the famous philosophers saying trivialities with utter conviction, is worth the price of the dvd alone). Lightweight but not pedestrian. Recommended.
SanPa: Sins of the Savior (2020)
The roads to hell are paved with good intentions
In the 80s in Italy there was a very well known rehab, San Patrignano, which apparently made miracles in the rehabilitation of former junkies. Its founder, Vincenzo Muccioli, was a charismatic man with the allure of a secular televangelist. He rode the wave of the heroin moral panic that had Italy in thrall at the time with great media and political awareness. Soon he was exceedingly famous and unbelievably powerful. All was well -- till allegations of violence and torture started to surface.
In a nutshell, this is the story of Sanpa. The first part establishes the scene, and then it becomes pretty much a procedural thriller. If you are not Italian, if you don't have a special interest in contemporary Italiana, or if you weren't yet alive at the time, your appreciation of this documentary will depend on your ability to survive the first hour. If you do, your patience will be rewarded: it becomes more and more gripping as the story evolves. The denouement will keep you on the edge of your seat.
For the moral implications of the character and the story, the documentary casts no judgement, and neither will I, at least not for the main subject, the accusations of violence, whose resolution I won't reveal.
However, I can't suspend judgement for the extraordinary misogynistic scenes where Muccioli states, in various separate occasions, with the help of a smug, self-satisfied metaphor, that a woman cannot be raped if she doesn't want to. I understand that MeToo was still a long time away, that it was a conservative country with pockets of astonishing ignorance and machoism -- but for me it was too much, and I lost any empathy for the main character; from that moment on, regardless of the final outcome, for me he was the villain. The abundance of supporters that show on screen to defend him blindly and paint him as a martyr becomes very strident, to the point that one wishes for more time to go by and wash away the last relics of a very unsavoury Italian past.
In any case, the documentary is totally worth watching, quite illuminating in fact. At the very least, it will make you appreciate how the 80s were different from the present -- really, like the poet says, a foreign country.
Je ne sais pas si c'est tout le monde (2019)
Rather impressive
This film is a documentary about existing in time, quite literally. Those who were and aren't anymore, those on the cusp of non-being (Jean Rochefort who died shortly after filming the sequences for this film), those who are and those who are beginning to be. The film doesn't try to explain or to analyse, but presents sequence after sequence of brief reflections from its subjects, interspersed with long, slow surveys of their worlds: the matter is approached in a soulful, gentle manner, trying to communicate a general sense of being more than an intellectual abstraction. Sometimes it feels superfluous or cringe: among many moments of harrowing emotion, there are others who feel quite self-indulgent, or heavy-handed with symbolism. And yet, it certainly works, and it's occasionally very powerful (the sequence of the swimmers, Diabolo Menthe, the guy who has catalogued every single incident of his life, the breakdancer). One can only wish it were perhaps longer and broader in scope, but it's totally worth seeing even if slightly short of breath.