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Deneb al Giedi
Reviews
Mlyn i krzyz (2011)
A visual spectacle that you will forget and a recommendation
The Mill and the Cross certainly is a visual spectacle. With its very elaborate scenery and the painstaking efforts that went into the recreation of the painting, it's a technical masterpiece.
Sadly, that's all that can be said in favor of the film.
The storyline, if there really is any, jumps around from scene to scene in a seemingly random manner. None of the characters really interact and the acting is more like posing for a painting than acting. That might have been the goal, but it doesn't work here. In a sense, it's really not a movie but it rather has the style of a dramatized documentary.
But it isn't a documentary either. At no time was any care given to real historical realism. In the film a reference is made to the city of Antwerp, but the city you can visit today (and please do, I'll give you a tour) looks more historically representative of the era than the film. I read and heard that enormous care was given to elements like the choice of the right kind of materials for the clothing. That may be true. But it brings nothing to the film as an experience, nor is it informative in any way. I read reviews where the reality with which the way of life in 16th century Flanders was depicted is greatly applauded. They are misguided. None of the building style, interiors, music or daily customs depicted are found anywhere in 16th century Flanders. They look like 13th century Poland. Because a lot of it was shot there. The landscape may resemble that of the painting, but clashes with reality. You might argue that it was the film maker's intent to closely resemble this highly symbolic painting. And I would agree. But he does this with great superficiality. It would have been much more interesting to show and contrast 16th century reality with the symbolism in the painting. But the director seems unable or unwilling to make the distinction. And thus we are left with a succession of 'tableaux' that visually resemble what's on the painting, with no reference to reality, then or now.
You might argue that the director put in a lot of symbolism, some of his own. But the way the director tries to cram every pixel (the film was recorded digitally) with symbolism seems random too: a bit like a poet who believes his job is done when his sentences rhyme in a pleasing way, never mind the content. Sometimes he even attempts to be critical or sarcastic. Watching the scenes near the end where people are dancing and singing is downright painful. But there is no message in this. No-one cares? Life goes on? Life is hard and then you die? One person might call it an ode to the resilience of the ordinary people, but it might also be a protest against the callousness of the masses. The film takes no position.
The director seems to know exactly what certain markets expect in terms of 'historical Europe' but seems to have no interest in the history and culture itself.
If you are interested in a better film where symbolism, tempo, acting and story have a meaning, then I refer you to a real masterpiece about art, oppression and persecution: Andrei Rublev by the Russian master Andrei Tarkovski.
Home (2009)
The first towns grew up less then 600 years ago
The images are awesome. And, yes, you should do something about climate change.
What bothers me is the proposition that earth would be in 'perfect balance', if only humans learned to behave.
No it isn't. And it never was.
I was prepared to let this slide. The people who wrote this clearly haven't gotten over their eighties new age hangover yet. No problem. We all have our hangovers.
But what really gets my genetically unaltered goat, is the sentence at about 23 minutes into the documentary.
"The first towns grew up less then 600 years ago".
WTF?
Firstly, if this is a bad mistake by an inebriated Glenn Close, I am ready to forgive her. But I am not ready to forgive the editor for missing this, especially so soon into the film. Come on! Seriously! I live in a city that is more then twice as old. And it's not even biblical! Imagine how hard the Iraqi's are laughing right now. (some of their cities go way back before the bible, and still we bombed the crap out of them, so far goeth the lesson in civilization)
But then I got thinking. What if the script said 6 thousand years ago. There is no archaeologist in the entire world who would support that date. Cities are thousands of years older than that. Let alone towns.
60.000 years? That would be a bit of a stretch. So where does the number come from, people? Can anyone clarify?
It gets a 11 on imagery, a -7 on accuracy and credibility (rather essential in a documentary, I would think). On the whole, that makes a five. (Don't ask me about maths)
Changeling (2008)
Changeling: superficial, superfluous, navel staring
It's a story about a woman who loses her son to a kidnapping and probably (because that part is left out) child molesting murderer.
In the process we learn that the police is very corrupt and they even lock her up in an asylum when she refuses to accept a boy as her son, which the police provide in an attempt to make the press believe that the case is solved.
But one of them, the one good cop, gets a clue which leads him directly to the mass grave of twenty murdered boys and eventually to the killer. More or less at that pace.
The corrupt are punished all the way up to the mayor, procedures for committing women to insane asylums are ordered to be tightened (but were they?) and the murderer is hanged with a cowardly yelp when the trap door opens beneath him. But not even a dribble of reality escapes from his pants, over his shoes and onto the floor.
And this detail encapsulates the style and mood of the entire movie. It pretends to be factual while lacking all detail. Not one character develops, even though the story spans several years. There is not one real action, or gesture that even hints at any kind of a human relationship between any of the characters. Not even between mother and son. Any sympathy between characters is suggested by the mere fact that they communicate. Nothing more.
In other words: it is as flat as a pancake on which Dirty Harry himself danced a jig or two.
Right at the end we are told that her son heroically helped another victim escape and may even have escaped himself. The mother replies that this means there is still hope her son is alive.
Then follow the titles in which we learn that she never gave up the search, the guilty were punished and that part of LA got a new name, as if that were significant to anything else but local folklore.
In short: the script presumably reads like a local history article in a high school newspaper and the acting is two dimensional. It's as if a local kid tells a story he heard some months ago but forgot all the relevant details. But he remembers it happened 'right here'.
It leaves me with the feeling that so much more of a story could have been told if someone just had done their homework. And at the same time I was grateful that someone hadn't.
The Bucket List (2007)
not for me
Nicholson and Freeman hit it off in an odd couple formula comedy/drama/feel good adventure about cancer and death. Or is that about rich and poor. Or about 'good' black and 'enlightened' white American dream.
Nothing profound about health care, illness, the 'human plight' or anything else for that matter. Also, annoyingly, the standard phrase from Freeman about the made up 95% percent believing in some god and the other 5% not knowing. And of course this discussion ends there. Nicholson loosing on points.
A bucket full of cliché's. So it gets really boring, really fast.
Don't need to see all of it, to conclude it's a couple of aging former top actors, cashing in without a script to speak of.
You'll be hearing about how they had lots of laughs and how reality mimics life mimicking movies. And how they 'played off each other' and such platitudes. But don't get fooled.
That's not what a good movie is about.
So, no. It's not a good movie. No recommendations here. Go watch a decent one.
Le Cinquième Élément (1997)
i can be very short about this one
nice effects, wrapped in a tom & jerry scenario with a happy ending and godawfull music. Oh, and none of the 'scientific' stuff makes any sense whatsoever. So, it's all about retro-design, not a shred of content in sight. This movie leaves me at -5000°C, if that were possible...