Judicial Joe
11Apr12
Either he got a finger transplant, or he lied about losing the finger to make himself seem tougher. He definitely has the traits of an unreliable narrator.
afuchs: Filmography
The characters are a caricature.
Stupid plot, bad acting, sloppy CGI. "Get someone from Linguistics!" To look at the crop circle? WTF?
Nicely filmed, poorly conceived, poorly directed, pretentious, boring, vapid, void.
Very nice, but too much Kusturica.
This film gets a special mention as it is better than its three opponents in my mind, in the category "please, think of the children" of the new Russian cinema: "The Italian", "Koktebel", "The Return". It is much better than those in that it is good.
I can't give four stars out o five to a film I spent 4 hours on.
I want the rest!
Love the way Horatio discovers Hamlet's left boob!
Well made and pointless. But fun to watch.
I really liked the filming, the cinematic aspect - most of it. What disturbs me is the explicative and the apologetic. The Demon moving SG to do stuff he wouldn't do otherwise and the like is not especially original or moving in this context. And while more or less unimportant strands find their conclusion (lying in the street with Boris Vian, for example), the driving moments are left hanging (the redhead).
Is there any special meaning to the fact that RDJ's hero has all his fingers back in the last shot?
Non-professional actors may be cool and very artistic, but they can also ruin your film.
Erik Gregersen likes this
Beautiful (as expected) and sometimes unreasonably profound.
Zac Zellers likes this
It's a shame mermaids have no nipples.
The astonishing, disarming beauty of Sarah Pratt!
nel likes this
The most beautiful woman in your life must probably be the one who wiped your ass in kindergarten.
The holocaust sequence is absolutely out of place.
Seems to be somewhat better than the book.
Monica B. is hilariously vulgar in the first half of the film and carries it as if it were her demo tape. Then Depardieu appears and steals the show, which, one must admit, having no tits, is not easy to achieve. Even Farida Rahouadj, attractive as she is, hair and all, has her difficulties pulling the blanket. Bertrand Blier, you trickster! I've been watching you!
alianat likes this
Sexological obscurantism with a political flavour (or vice versa). Cool phallic/vaginal/testicular/clitoral symbols (in every frame). Uncool granny and the marmot.
Beautifully filmed and absolutely incoherent, with some characters who would have been disgusting had they not been so underdeveloped.
The score is great, yes, and colonialism and greed are bad. Apart from music and great ideas (and the big great mad Kinski) everything else is sloppy, subordinated to the extremism of filming in ultra harsh conditions, i.e. living the art. Actionism is not my kind of cinema. "Long arrows seem to be in fashion these days"?! Seriously! What's with the histrionics?
alianat likes this
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RusticMachine
25May11
You're criticisms are baseless and exaggerated. "Long arrows seem to be in fashion these days"?---You've perhaps picked the only line in entire film that was overly theatrical and out of place. You're nit picking.
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afuchs
25May11
Rustic Machine: What about the severed talking head? What about Kinski's final monologue? What about non-verbal theatrical symbolics like that ship on a tree-top? And most of all - what's with the sloppy German dubbing over English speaking German and Spanish actors? I know it's all insufficient funding and harsh conditions, but it does not make the movie any better - for me, at any rate.
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RusticMachine
27May11
"What about the severed talking head? What about Kinski's final monologue?"---What about them?Are you telling me that those theatrical elements negated the rest of the film for you?Your entitled to that viewpoint,I just don't understand it.Bad dubbing? Sure,I didn't find it distracting though.If you simply don't like "histrionics" in general, then say that(it's a valid reason),but don't present some pseudo-critique as if "being theatrical=bad film " or "bad dubbing=bad film".Also you critiqued it for being sloppy,and that's personally what I liked about it, I thought it fit the story well. I guess we can agree to disagree.
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afuchs
27May11
I should probably add a disclaimer at this point. Every opinion I allow myself to publish here is a personal view. I do not pretend to be objective. (This column does not seem to be a column in Cahiers du cinéma). What I write means explicitly or implicitly "why I did not like this movie", or, in extreme cases "why I do not understand what others liked about this movie". So, yes, I am perfectly at piece with your view. Moreover, I am sure our tastes in cinema might overlap greatly even despite our decisive disagreement on "Aguirre". --- More to the point though: yes, I do not like histrionics in cinema, and still, somehow, find it highly amusing in Hal Hartley or Aki Kaurismäki. Maybe it's because they counterbalance it with a fair measure of self-irony. And bad dubbing - yeah, I hate it. There must be a really really good reason for that. In Aguirre, I did not find any of the other qualities redeeming enough - for my personal taste or view or opinion or however you may call it.
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RusticMachine
28May11
Fair enough. I suppose I only responded the way I did because I've noticed a tendency for people on MUBI to be dismissive of films for absurd reasons(generally completely unfounded political/philosophical reasons). However,you haven't done that here, so I apologize for assuming you to be one of those people
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Orphaned dancers venture into empty spaces encountering Wim Wenders filming vacuum in 3D. It could be conceptually excellent if the concept weren't quite so worn.
Mayukh, I think what Scherfig/Hornby are trying to tell us is that you (a girl) shouldn't face the dilemma; it just oughtn't to be an exclusive choice. You may frolick with an evil Jew all you like, and then go and finish your education without having to beg and so on. It's a rather simple idea, too simple to base a movie on, but there you are.
Is it a coincidence that the star of this doggie movie commenced her cinematic career as a fourteen-year-old with "Lassie" (1994). It might be.
A sterile, devastating film. Carefully and painfully dissecting its plot from the "big picture" that you'd so much like to see, it makes you desperate to ignore it, and leaves you in a state of excruciating, unresolved awareness. And still it is a film about a family. It seems to draw heavily upon Middle Eastern drama, of which I am no expert, and nods skillfully to Amos Gitai, the maestro.
Nothing makes sense in this movie, and I still like it.
Ten years later I cannot understand what I liked about this film when it came out. The scene where JJ Lee gets pissed on? Probably, but that wouldn't suffice nowadays. I guess I have grown and my tastes have evolved.
I wonder whether the "Job" pun (everybody is talking about their jobs, the job is the beginning and the end of the movie) is intended. It probably is.
I love movies with a Cortázar connection. And this one is strong and explicit, too.
