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clementtuffreau
Reviews
Crash (2004)
truly awful
let me tell you how much i hate this movie : this is new age. people are a caricature. script is over intelligent, always more than the characters (which is the worst thing that can happen to a movie). it's super moral. I hate when it's moral. lesson about racism and true life and justice and violence, blablabla. the light is like a video clip : has Céline Dion made it or what ? top 100 in IMDb ? what does that mean ? i'm no racist, i'm not concerned by this redemption slow motion new age music 'i"m happy with my conscience" type of thing. Headaches at the end. Hope you will just hate it as much as me. So, please, don't see it. It looks like 21 grams, it looks like short cuts, it looks like a lot of deconstructed films with a labyrinth for a script, it looks like it's avant-garde or sincere but it is just plastic L.A. and you don't want to watch it. You don't want. Really. Short Cuts is far more better : and there is no moral in short cuts. Thank you, Robert Altman.
Cronos (1992)
a simply beautiful movie
Cronos is the first Guillermo Del Toro movie, and it is a great achievement. There's not much to say : it is a beautiful movie, a classical, beautiful and simple movie. There's some fantastic in it, but that's not all : the greatness of this movie is based on the characters : Ron Perlman and the man at the morgue are specially brilliant. It is dark, full of suspense, tensed, and extremely funny in the same time. With low budget and simple frames, Del Toro has managed to picture the true essence of cinema : a good story, good characters, and lots of blood, humor and cruelty. What else could we add ? Just watch this. This movie has been badly underrated. It is intelligent and honest. Far superior to lots of over intellectual or too much precious horror movies with over beautiful aesthetics. CRONOS is simply brilliant. Long life to Guillermo Del Toro !
Zeroka no onna: Akai wappa (1974)
one of the biggest accomplishment in Japanese exploitation cinema
When you discover Japanese exploitation cinema, it can give you headaches, cause there's so much of it, and people who love it tend to consider every piece of crap as a masterpiece, so its' really confusing. Its' hard to go into it. Nobody wrote a complete history of Japanese exploitation masterpieces, most of them are simple lists of hundreds of movies. Surely Female Scorpion 1, Stray Cat Rock 3, Criminal Woman and every Seijun Suzuki movies are at the center core of it, but i'm no specialist. And Red Hancuffs was perhaps the one that really convinced me even more than the others. Cause of its pure graphics (red upon green upon black upon red), and cause of its pure violence, which is less gratuitous than in other, ore included in the narration, more believable, and less grotesque than in Norifumi Suzuki's movies. Editing is as experimental as in other Japanese movies of the time : sometimes the sound disappears, sometimes it comes back, you got zooms and jump cuts and rotating cameras, but in the same time, you got also a true story that, despite its chaotic aspect, is quite good and nihilistic. Part of the anti-American thing is a little bit boring, but the movie is so graphic, so full of energy, so original, so beautiful and the music so brilliant that we have to consider this as a masterpiece. And Miki Sugimoto, who's playing a very blasé and cold femme fatale, is playing here what might be her best role.
Sorcerer (1977)
Tangerine Dream at their best meet William Friedkin at his best
Sorcerer is a masterpiece. You may not like it, but it is. Worse : it is an unknown masterpiece. Based on H.G. Clouzot's Salaire de la peur, it reaches far beyond the original movie to start a totally experimental scenario that brings new forms for the future of cinema. Before Short Cuts or Magnolia, Friedkin explodes the rules of narration by making a two part movie : first is a following of four short movies that concern heavy political zones of the seventies : south America, new york Mafia, Israel and France's financial frauds. Second part is a one hour movie. The four short stories conducts to the one hour movie. The whole form in the same time a visual trip close to Apocalypse Now but made two years before and in the same time a kind of a experimental resume of seventies global politics : the center subject of the movie (the petrol) used as a bombastic form (the petrol creates wars, burns, explodes) to illustrate the globalization of politics. Dictators, mercenaries, petrol, money, religion, third world, capitalism, international bank, wars, explosions, adventure, vengeance, Sorcerer is all about that, with a part documentary part cinema scope / hallucination visual style. It borrows from the documentary style of French Connection (and of Friedkin's early political documentaries) and of the very baroque and mystical aesthetics of The Exorcist. Lots of people consider SORCERER as Friedkin's masterpiece. I don't know if it is true. Compared to French Connection and to The Exorcist, it is surely the third part of a "break the rules" masterpieces trilogy that led Friedkin at the center of history of Cinema. Often forgotten because of its contemporaries such as Scorcese and Coppola, Friekdin is surely as important as them, for he has created three revolutions : in the film noir, in the horror films, and in the "i don't know what it is i've never seen anything like it before" movies that you can find also in Tarkovski's Stalker or Otomo's Akira. Forget Clouzot (who's a great director), SORCERER is a pure William Friekdin movie. You'll never forget it. And Roy Scheider (one of the best actors of all time) is amazing as always.
The Terminator (1984)
a cold war masterpiece
As used to say a friend of mine watching Terminator : cold war masterpiece. You couldn't say it a better way. James Cameron's best movie might be the most dry movie you'll ever see. It is not a movie, in fact, it is a tunnel. Once you enter it, you cannot go out until the end. The talent of great directors is to operate a kind of fusion between a great universal story (here : primal fear, pure fear, and violence) and powerful images. The talent of genius is to invent a character that will be used out of the context of the art form : it has been the case for Lewis Carrol's Alice, Jerry Siegel's Superman, it is the case for TERMINATOR. Cameron, alongside with Schwarzenneger, has invented a legend : the pure, the perfect killing machine. It never stops. The Terminator is the definition of cinema : once the film has started, it wont stop until THE END. Once the Terminator arrives, it won't stop either. After that very simple (but so powerful) basic rule, Cameron has just put everything he had in his hands to make it quick, straight and super clear. The editing is direct. Pictures are clear. Music is brilliant, reminding of Carpenter's Assault, meeting with an industrial rock band. Each element of the script is given in a short dialog between bullets storm. So why a cold war masterpiece ? Well, with this dark light, poor areas, lost streets, suburbs houses looking all alike, with Schwarzenneger and his very far far away English accent, you've never seen a movie making the USA look that close to the Soviet Union.
Taxi Driver (1976)
The CITIZEN KANE of the new generation
TAXI DRIVER is probably the best movie ever made. Why ? Hell, I don't know. In the seventies, CITIZEN KANE was the absolute reference. If you check today, young directors all refer to TAXI DRIVER. It is the favorite movie of Lucky Mc Kee, Guillermo Del Toro, Quentin Tarantino. Everything is perfect in TAXI DRIVER : frames, lights, acting, music, and it has probably the best script ever written. No moral. No lesson. Just pure life, dry and harsh, with a series of cult scenes, from ultra-violence (the end) to pornography (the scene at the cinema), romance, folk music, social problems, populist politicians, racist things, solitude, hippies, family, etc. The all world is contained into Taxi Driver. I watch it once a month, and it reduces me to tears every time I see it. Every single scene is perfect. The all legend about the "talking to me ?" scene is quite easy to understand. The thing is, each time people mention it, they forget to tell it is not a macho scene, it is a very very sad scene, where De Niro, alone in flat, alone in his life says : "who the hell are you talking to ? I'm the only here". God. It touches you right to the heart. When De Niro, almost mute, can just say "damn" every time cause life has become impossible for him. Everything becomes an aggression to him : whites, blacks, politics, dirt, rain, drugs, prostitution, the world. Not only a movie about solitude : a movie about the world that contains multiple solitudes. The end refers directly to the supreme violence of Peckinpah's movies : blood is almost black, editing is quick and harsh, blam, blam, and you re see the entire story, so simple at the beginning, and you realize the entire script has been guiding you into hell, though you couldn't see it. No effects. Post Vietnam war. Dry. Super real. Travis Bickle, De Niro's character, is the entire humanity. His end might be yours. Damn.
Mission: Impossible III (2006)
great action movie
well, i'm not a fan of MI neither of Tom Cruise and I must admit i was pretty scared about seeing a TV guy making an action movie. Well, some details are quite naive and some twists in the script are kind of annoying, but the rhythm of the movie + action are really brilliant. All the fashion effects (slow motion, blurs, handy cam), often boring, are well made, and action is very over the top and inventive and believable in the same time. Well, I love blockbusters, and this one is pretty decent. Hope you will keep in mind the bridge + Vatican sequences, which are truly enjoyable. Some people will say bad things about the all "anti-terrorist" thing, which remind a little bit of the James Bond times. But even the terrorist aspect is intelligent enough to be accepted as a simple background matter. The movie has to be considered as a remake of TRUE LIES, in better. I'm a huge James Cameron fan but True Lies is so stupid i couldn't watch it. The bridge sequence in MI III refers to the one in true, lies, except you don't have here any stupid jokes or racist visions of Arab people. The movie goes fast, J.J. has been intelligent enough to use Lalo Shiffrin original score as the very core of the movie. That makes a brilliant soundtrack, even if stolen, for a pretty good action packed movie. Hope you'll enjoy that.