Change Your Image
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Reviews
The Missouri Breaks (1976)
from the Marijuana Period of film-making
You know how things seem So Cool when you're stoned, and then you find them later and shake your head? I think that's what happened to this movie, or, rather, to the people who made this movie: a giant giddy collective lapse of judgment. Many many fine elements, exceptional, sometimes brilliant, but, ungrounded, and wildly self-indulgent. So, doesn't quite work, though you certainly come away (and it's been 20 years since I've seen it) with some indelible images.
Not the only film of the Seventies with this problem, by any means - one that comes to mind is Le Voyou (The Crook) with Trintignant by C Lelouch from 1970 -- it's easy to imagine them watching the rushes through a cloud of smoke and saying "Wow...." Another case of Homer on the nod.
Regarde les hommes tomber (1994)
brilliant acting, but, a nasty tale
Disturbing story of the, I would say descent (though others might differ) of a middle-aged zhlub into an S-and-M-inflected homoerotic demimonde. Actors: Yanne is suitably opaque as his character Simon spirals further and further out of his accustomed orbit; the viewer is compelled to judge his interior changes by his actions -- which, after all, is what movies are all about, eh? Trintignant, perhaps the most intelligent actor of his generation, builds a complex and convincing character, and Kassovitz, perhaps the most intelligent actor of HIS generation, matches his thoroughness and his subtlety as Johnny, who really motivates the whole film -- it must have been a challenging and rewarding piece of work for all of them.
So, totally believable. That said....Simon moves from, eh, the normal pleasures and frustrations of a banal middle age, into a kind of depravity, not a pretty picture imho. Audiard is assiduously non-judgmental, and Simon seems satisfied at the end, so, disturbing....
Hugo (2011)
pretty
(Saw it in 2-D at home, so, please rate my judgment accordingly.) Reminds me of The Train, 1964 John Frankenheimer/Burt Lancaster, another Hollywood film made by people who love French movies but have zero clue how to make one, or perhaps, just don't have the requisite DNA....The Train at least an honorable, if sometimes risible tombeau; Hugo filled with old-fashioned Anglo stereotypes of Frenchiness - so, disrespectful as well as shabby and false, and therefore utterly boring.
Visually, it worships the Lionsgate logo -- you know, that clockwork CGI thing that comes before your DVD -- but slathers on even more sepia. Every surface in the film, even things that must have been real, looks artificial, computer-generated -- the absolute triumph of cinema mendacity: falsehood 24 times a second.
The emotional content is just as artificial. Blinded perhaps by the impossible collision of cinema verite and CGI, the affective fails even as manipulation -- it's no more involving than a shampoo commercial.
A sad sad affair -- go get Les Quatre Cents Coups.