Change Your Image
boomeran
Reviews
Machine (2024)
Nice try
Because the idea was refreshing, I was ready to swallow all those marxist contradictions, or the fact that the girl beats everyone and there are no consequences (the police don't come, her colleagues treat her the same way), or her past so mysterious and well-constructed, like in Van Damme movies, or the embarrassing scenes with the Korean boss and the shy maid.
But then came the scene in which our heroine of the class struggle beats up some Polish drivers, whose only fault was that they had been contracted to transport the machines from the factory. Typical of American scenarios, where the need to feed the belligerant hero with faces to stump is above the humanity of the collateral victims.
Plus the fact that she breaks the driver's arm, after which he continues to hold the steering wheel with that arm, and even tries to hit her again, with the same arm...
Tokyo Vice (2022)
Boring theatre of clichés
So an American goes to Japan and becomes a police investigative journalist. But he is shocked by the rules of the Japanese people, by their way of doing things and so the Western viewer will find very satisfying the way the American hero tramples the subtelties of another culture, in the name of "law", "truth", "transparency", "democracy " and other beautiful words that we display when we don't have the ability to adapt and respect a culture different from ours. So what a luck with the young American, because otherwise Japan would have been left behind in journalism.
Then the film has no suspense, my senses remained inert throughout the 4-5 episodes that I insisted on watching, hoping that something interesting would happen. Thin script, clichés upon clichés, the Japanese culture very little present (what a negative performance, considering that everything was shot in Japan), characters that seemed interesting at the beginning, remain underdeveloped, caricatural or they are simply abandoned - for example, the editorial colleagues, who do nothing else but to pretend to speak English fluently and casually. With their terrible accent (one of them pronounces at one point "asstray" instead of "ashtray") you would expect them to make mistakes or fumble for their words. No sir, although they pronounce words with the difficulty of a beginner, they do not make any mistakes and build 100% coherent sentences, without thinking for a second.
It's a shame for the actors, generally very good, that they were placed like puppets in a soulless string of images, like an empty shell of a dead animal.
The Playlist (2022)
Money for nothing
I hadn't read the synopsis carefully and when I realized after the first few seconds that it was a movie about a new rich in the Silicon Valley style, I almost stopped it, but then out of curiosity I forced myself to watch one episode and a bit of the second one.
So we are shown how the typical IT cringe sociopath becomes a millionaire because he is nerdy enough to know how to make money from programming in the early 2000s.
Then his "brilliant", "revolutionary" and "youthful" idea is to aggressively take over the record companies' profits. Instead of many record companies making money on the backs of artists, let only one company make money. The business model is profitable, because if you, as an intermediary, pay a tiny little more to the artists, you receive in return a profit from many more artists than a single record company. It's the same principle as Uber, Airbnb, Netflix, Amazon etc., the big profiteers from the globalization of business that the internet has produced. Global fished who swallowed all the other fishes in the ocean.
This film caused me physical disgust, I had in the past contact with the world of start-ups and felt the unbreathable atmosphere of hypocrisy, in which young people pretend to be creative for good causes, but in fact they are even more greedy than their parents and want to increase the income gap even more.
Layer Cake (2004)
glorification of criminals
I went after the high mark and wasted 2 hours of my life with this rubbish full of clichés and without any particular interest as a cinematographic production.
I was most disgusted by the fact that it is a(nother) glorification of criminal life, and then an explicit one and without nuances. The characters are all trash who kill, steal and lie, the kind of people we avoid as much as we can in real life and yet, here, like in too many films, they are given a face that is not only human, but even elegant, distinguished, honorable, examples worth following, what else!
Money, drugs and primal instincts don't make you a worthy person, but a worthless psycho. Nothing to appreciate here.
Så var det jul igjen (2023)
just a rasist story?
I have watched 22 minutes of it already and the story is still that the guy is Indian and everyone is surprised: I still hope thsi "Christmas" movie will be about a decent boring Christmas story, and not about how some people in Norway have a 100 years old mentality (which I can't even believe is representative for today's Norwegian society. I mean, you would expect that at least the girlfriend would be natural about having an Indian guy, but until now she seems rather uncomfortable about the whole situation and tries to hide her engagement ring to her mom. Who, btw, is incapable of calling the guy on his name, but calls him "Shazam" all the time, isn't that histerically funny??
For now it's a 1 out of 10, if anything changes, I'll change my rating too.
Arvingerne (2014)
4 for the actors
I saw the outcome miles away, I knew how it would end before starting to watch it, in fact.
A Danish telenovela...hey, why not, but at least spare us the artsy bs, don't try to induce the idea that it is about some high ideas and about educated people.
Just a bunch of mediocre souls, with some evil accents from time to time, who fight on an inheritance. They would destroy their brother's life to get what they want. How is that interesting? Oh right, in the end they get together (what was clear from the start would happen) and they learn to behave. For now. (I speculate a bit, I started skipping around mid-first season and then finished the 2 seasons in half an hout or so)
The moral of the story? Wealth saves lives and makes people better. How cute.
En helt vanlig familj (2023)
10 for the storytelling
I totally enjoyed this series, although the plot is not brilliant nor original, and the ending leaves you with some moral doubts.
But boy does this series flow! After watching so many movies in my life, I know how difficult and how rare it is to create a movie where everything flows naturally, so that the viewers are magically drawn into that universe.
Honestly, I wasn't expecting such a marvelous ease of telling a story with images from a Swedish series, it beats most of the great Danish series I watched in the past. But you cannot avoid noticing that it is a Scandinavian film, that there is something true and just about the way these people do things. I mean, the director, the screenwriter, the actors...the characters...
Kalifat (2020)
Good but fails in one essential point
Another excellent Scandinavian series, which keeps you glued to the screen and in tension throughout most of the episodes. There are some scenes that raise an eyebrow, especially Fatima's criminal insistence that Pervin return to save another girl. I understand that Europeans (especially Scandinavians) don't want to play the American happy-end game, and it's ok to frustrate the expectations of the viewers from time to time. Here, however, I think that the scene is so absurd, that the frustration comes out of the cinematic magic and pours on the screenwriter. In fact, not only Fatima's request is irrational, but also the fact that Pervin accepts is absurd. She should have refused and asked the driver to take her out of that hell even if she was alone. But in addition, she also has a small child in her arms, which turns her decision into an attempt on her own child's life. Last but not least, the girl could have been saved later, as Fatima decides to come to Syria anyway...
But the biggest fail of the film is that it destroys in an absolutely gratuitous way the essential element of any good film: the identification with the main character. After excellently leading us in the footsteps of Fatima for 8 episodes, after making us identify with a heroine who fights with the Islamic State and with the infiltrated Swedish institutions and with her own bosses and colleagues, after she sacrifices everything and destroys her life to save citizens of an imminent terrorist attack, after making us hold our breath and hope for its success, which hangs by a tiny thread, the screenwriter decides to throw the character into ridicule in a second. In fact, all her struggle was futile, her bosses and colleagues controlled the situation very well and they were going to eliminate the terrorists, her boss was not an Islamist, her colleagues were not stupid officials who did not smell something unclean like her. No, in fact they were all working behind her back, even though they had a common cause, but they couldn't tell her, because in the past she had leaked some scheme to the press... Basically, colleagues and bosses preferred to put her life in danger and let her struggle like crazy for 8 episodes for fear of... what? Because she could tell the press about their strategy to catch the terrorists only at the last moment? Is it to be believed that Fatima would have done such a thing? Or that if she hadn't obeyed, she wouldn't have been at least kicked out, if not actually locked up (this time very justifiably)?
It is not the first time that this has happened to me with a Scandinavian film, that the screenwriter decides to destroy the entire chemistry of the viewer with the action and with the characters of the film, I don't know who and why taught them that this would be something positive in cinema.
Concussion (2015)
A pity for the story
God what a bad movie.
It has some veteran actors who play excellent, but the characters are underdeveloped; the atmosphere is created relatively decently; the story is very interesting but well known from the beginning, so I expected a script that would create suspense in these conditions.
Well, the only thing the film adds to the story is a borderline ridiculous manichaeism. Nothing new for an American film to limit itself to two moral categories, but in Concussion it's downright unbearable. The film is dripping with good characters who do nothing all day but be good. It's like they're getting ready to be canonized. Especially Will Smith is unbearable with that air of a monk from Mount Athos, I could imagine him at every sentence sanctifying his interlocutors with two fingers like the Pope.
I didn't really understand the role in the film of the girl who becomes his partner. She enters his intimacy just like that and in 2 scenes becomes the love of his life, sent by God for the sinless man-neurosurgeon, with no other activity in life than supporting everything he says or does.
There are a couple of scenes in which he imposes his point of view by raising his voice to his interlocutors, and in the scene when he is called to an audience in a room full of specialists he berates them like a country pastor the catechumens.
Will Smith's only contribution as an actor in this film is the Nigerian accent, which is believable as far as it goes.
Mammalia (2023)
This movie is a game changer
I watched it at the Berlinale and was blown away by its cinematographic force. The story is not so important, although it contributes to the movie's power. I must admit that in general I'm more into the cinematography of movies than the morale of their story. It's enough for me if the story is coherent and minimally interesting. I watched movies with great ideas and powerful stoires, that were badly executed and had no value whatsoever as cinematic works of art.
Well, Mammalia is an instant cult movie. It creates a magic cinematic world, which is not necessarily founded on the story, but on its image and sound, as well as the fantastic play of the actors. I was fascinated by this film in the same way I was fascinated by movies like Rosemary's Baby or Mullholand Drive. How consistent is the story in Rosemary's Baby? Who remembers it in detail? I guess not many, but who cares? Everybody remembers the devil underneath.
It's the same for Mammalia: the story is just a pretext for the people who made it, only to create a cinematic being. A powerful and fascinating one, who stays around you for a while.
There are many memorable scenes, the whole movie is made of memorable scenes. But the one that haunts me is the scene in the office, where the mix of surreal working space and almost sexual power relation of a young woman who indifferently bosses the main character (an older guy) sticks to your skin a difficult to define angst.
Also worthy to mention: the amazing actors and the powerful esthetics. At least for the Romanian cinema it's highly refreshing to watch something else besides the "new wave" irritating mannerisms.
Frikjent (2015)
Boring rich telenovela
It started kind of interesting, but already after a couple of episodes you start to notice the repetitive formulas to extend the story. In fact, it's a very standard and very basic crime movie, that could perfectly fit a 90min TV feature film. Really no need to pull the 3 strings of the script to make 10 episodes out of it.
The twists and turns are often ridiculous, like in a cheap telenovela. The ending, in particular, looks like it was written in a high school script contest. In order to remain surprising and maintain your interest, the story almost makes every character the number 1 suspect. And the explanations why suddenly the nr 1 suspect is not anymore the nr 1 suspect, but instead someone else is, are sometimes plainly lamebrained.
The most ridiculous thing was to repeatedly show the Norwegian town to Malaysian businessmen as a provincial place, forgotten by the world, without opportunities, with residents at risk of unemployment or simply chronically poor :-D And the other way around: rich Malaesian patronizing and being condescendent towards the Norwegian and the poor conditions in their hotels ...
Forbrydelsen (2007)
Bruh what??
I had a hard time choosing the score, and I still don't know what the right one would be.
One the one side, I was really glued to the screen for the greatest part of the series, and in the end that's the main reason to watch a movie, right? The atmosphere is great, the plot intriguing, the actors in general very good (except for the Pernille, the girl's mom, who, because of her suffering, has an unbearable constant blank stare, that annoys after a couple of episodes, and towards the end it was just ridiculous).
But then the last episode was so abrupt and so stupid, I simply feel I was tricked into losing 20h of my life. So not sure what the bottom line is, was it worth or was it not...
Various people pointed out the flaws, I'll try that too: why the hell did Holck kill Olav and try to kidnap Lund?? Just because he was having an affaire with Nanna and didn't want that info to affect his political career? Really?? :-)))
Why, what and who the hell was the police trying to cover? The last episode suggests the police's shady behaviour was all plotted by Morten, who thought Troeld killed the girl, so he tried to save Troels and his own political career, by pulling strings and making police bosses put spokes in Lund's wheels. Bruh what?? :-D
How did Vagn kill Leon??? So all the police is there next to the boat, we are made to believe that maybe the police tries to stop Lund from catching Leon, but in fact they didn't, Leon had nothing to do with the politicians, so then Vagn killed him. Really?? How?? Was he from MI6??
Or in fact the police killed him to blame everything on him and cover Troels?? :-D Or maybe he really comitted suicide for no reason, as he had done nothing to be afraid of. In fact, why did he escape Lund and Mayer when they met at Vagn's appartment?? Why was he covering Vagn?? He knew Vagn killed Nanna and he did nothing? Because he was afraid of Vagn, or what?
The biggest disappointment is the fact that the crimes are in fact in no way related to any politicians. This is the key idea that the series builds, only to shout at you in the last episode: eeeh, fooled you!! :-D.
Another idea is that we deal with a serial killer. But in fact no, Vagn just killed 2 girls, at a 15 years interval, because he was jealous. But while with Mette he had an affair, we have nowhere in the series any hint of a flirt or smth between him and Nanna, so why jealous at Nanna??
Also why rape and torture and hunt her through the woods?? Isn't that a bit excessive? :-D Plus, we are given no details about his reasons, ok he was jealous, but what made him a psychopathic torturer and killer? The fact that his parents were doctors and he failed to become an intellectual himself?
At this point, I must point out to the grotesque idea that the film makes the characters say explicitly: the suspect must have some intellectual background in his life, otherwise he couldn't be a killer. A simple truck driver cannot be so intelligent to plan the murders, it must be some fallen genius who dropped out of (say, medicine) school. And that's why Vagn was not a suspect at first, he was thought to be just a furniture delivery driver, so too stupid for the plan. But then they discover he did 2 years of medicine school, so oh ok, then he fits the suspect IQ... I mean, they just say that, in a series where they keep mentioning equal opportunities, and where they twice show Arab suspects who in the end were innocent...
UPDATE: ok, I watched the 2nd and 3rd seasons. The second is more coherent, but the story lousier. The 3rd is for me the best one, they seem to have learned by doing :-)
Triangle of Sadness (2022)
Almost great
After discovering that it was the same director who did The Square, I was a tiny bit turned off, cause I liked The Square, but found its metaphors a bit schematic and far-fetched.
Triangle of Sadness unfolds in 3 parts, and the first 2 were pure joy. Östlund clearly improved and made a much better movie in its first 2 parts than The Square. It's hilarious and witty, and dares to touch sensitive subjects in a way that makes you uncomfortable. You can feel it's a scandinavic movie. Some of the scenes were so crazy and spectacular, the whole cinema was laughing histerically.
Most of all, these first 2 parts are blessed with harmony in all aspects: cinematography, acting, directing, dialogues.
A pitty that the 3rd part spoils it a bit. Östlund returns to obvious and not so funny metaphors, that fail to take you on a ride. The actors are still great, some scenes are still very funny, but the metaphors are again facile and irritatingly moralising. It's not so much the message - one can agree or disagree with it (I disagree) -, as it's the failure to encapsulate it in a credible cinematic experience. It's like 2 juxtaposed movies, with the second spoiling the greatness of the first.
But for those 2 first memorable parts you have to absolutely watch it.
All in all, great job, Österlund!
Les Papillons Noirs (2022)
This movie is a killer
One of the best pieces of cinema I've seen in a long while. It made me want to start writing fiction, to be creative, I imagined myself writing concrete scenes, while I was watching the series.
It has mood(s), it has atmosphere, it creates worlds, it flows in harmony, the actors are pure joy to watch (oh Niels, vous êtes merveilleux!), the soundtrack is great...Above all, it makes you think, while blowing your mind, but it also keeps the liberty to stay free, as a work of art.
Oh, and it also checks the standard feat of a great story: it makes you identify with it. It's a killer movie, the most complex entertainment one could get.
A Hologram for the King (2016)
Unexpectedly good
I had a hard time choosing a movie on Netflix from the ones I haven't seen yet, I was expecting a mediocre movie, but at least well made. Well, A Hologram is excellently made, it has a superb image, a harmonious pace, coherence in the script and in the acting, a relatively interesting story, a lot of humor (I laughed out loud at several scenes) and some surprising choices by the filmmakers, but which make the story very human.
Of course, the film can be criticized in many ways, but the main role of the cinema is here perfectly fulfilled: the film transports you into a story, makes you feel and think, surprises you and puts you in the shoes of the characters. For those looking in cinema for documentary accuracy or political ideas to resonate with, the film understandably fails to deliver.
I also read some critical comments on the love story between the two main characters, as unrealistic, inappropriate or embarrassing, etc. Well, I found it wonderful: the film has a courage rare in cinema to show not only spiritual, but also physical love between two people past their youth. Hanks' partner is fascinating, an intelligent and mysterious woman, with intelligent lines that open perspectives, instead of closing sentences. And the aquatic scene is absolutely memorable, I had to wait for Tom Hanks to get old, in order to see him in an erotic scene memorable for the humanity and chemistry of the characters.
I was not among Tykwer's fans before this movie, but now I'll pay more attention to him. A German who can make dreamy movies that make you laugh hard and are honestly human? There aren't many out there.