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La vie d'Adèle (2013)
I wish I could go back and unsee it
I want to write this review as the first step for me in processing the experience of viewing "Blue is the warmest color". I saw it yesterday, and today I feel mentally absolutely devastated. I'm a middle-aged guy with a wife and two kids, a tight muscular type, very short hair (I am getting bald, I'm afraid), and actually look a bit like a biker. So earlier today, down at the pub, where I sat alone in a corner, I had to stand up immediately and leave, when I realized that tears was running down my rugged face and dripping into my beer. What has happened is that seeing this movie has made me remember my own youth. I did remember the facts already, but I had forgotten the emotion. Now I'm engulfed in that emotion again - and it's terrible. Hopeless love is a terrible thing. "Love will tear us apart again" as Ian Curtis so accurately put it. I too crashed and burned in love - as most of us do across the ages - and now I realize that I'll never forget it. It makes it even harder since now, as a mature adult, I know that love is an illusion. It's a weird mental construction built by the brain as a reaction to a hormonal abnormality. I can understand that our species will benefit from us desiring one another in a sexual manner, but why, oh why do we need to fall in love like that? Love is insanity, and hopeless love like that depicted so spot on in this movie is pure natures torment.
And now a bit about the movie: Just as the special effects in "Gravity" transcends the concept of "special effects" and becomes actual reality, so the acting - by both the female leads - in this movie transcends acting and becomes actual reality. I experienced the movie as a sequence of scenes from actual life. I didn't perceive it as acting, but thought for 3 hours that I was an angel viewing actual events as they occurred. It was realism in a very different manner than I have ever seen before. The only thing that comes close is "Fucking Åmål" by Lukas Moodysson - another must see if you enjoyed this one.
But I didn't enjoy it. I severely regret seeing "Blue is the warmest color". I wish I could go back and unsee it.
I Love You Phillip Morris (2009)
Just didn't get it
This is a con-movie, romance, slapstick comedy, family drama, gay movie and some other genres as well. I really couldn't keep track, and quickly found it very hard to relate to any of the characters. Jim Carry was his usual self - which I find very funny - but his comedy seemed to me very misplaced in nearly every scene.
The only thing I could really learn here was some great ideas about how to escape from prison - the real life Steven Russel is really brilliant at that.
I'm from a country where porn was legalized in the 60's so I'm really not offended or provoked by the soft gay porn scenes, I just found them boring and off the point, whatever the point was? So to sum up I experienced this as a movie with a messy script I didn't understand, portraying some not very nice nor interesting people I wouldn't get along with if I met and who's story did not touch me in any way.
It is supposed to be based on real life, and if fact sometimes surpass fiction this is an example of such extraordinary weird facts that should never have been put into fiction.
I do not recommend this movie.
On the other hand it has got an 6.9 rating? How is that possible? It seems like people have watched another movie than me? Or maybe I have just completely misunderstood it! It's a big mystery to me how it can get such a high rating??
Zombieland (2009)
Once in a decade
To me this was a once in a decade movie experience, on par with e.g. "pulp fiction", though not similar in any way but for the surprisingly good quality.
Woody Harrelson was a treat as a Twinkie - he really shined. So did the other actors, the script, the special effects, the humor and the art work.
Fantastically uplifting to see that it is still possible to render a "zombie" story to the screen in such a way that it completely revives the genre.
I look so much forward to see more of Woody, Columbus, Wichita, Little Rock and whatever the writers and director can come up with next.
Story telling and character development at its best. I'll paint spray "3" on my car tomorrow when going to work (though I have not yet figured out the meaning, someone? help?)
Nuff said.
Watch if you can!
District 9 (2009)
Aliens meets Appleseed meets Hellraiser
This is one of the absolutely most amazing movies I have seen.
It combines elements from at least movies like Robocop, Aliens, Appleseed, Black Hawk Down, Saving Private Ryan and Hellraiser AND it adds it's own particular flavors. It is also heavily influenced by legendary games like Half-Life II.
The artwork, machinery, and weaponry, is mind blowing. It does at least two mind tricks to me (1) it starts out as a hand-held documentary and ends up as a very violent close-up war movie and it makes this spectacular transition in a way that I totally accepted (2) the main character (or hero if you can call him that) is a total idiot, a moron, and in the beginning I have absolutely no sympathy for him, at times I just wished he would die in a horrible way. But then at the end I found my self sitting at the edge of my seat rooting for him loudly, and with tears in my eyes really, really hoping that he would pull through.
I am shocked.
It's most certainly not a movie for everybody, my wife hated it and left the theater after 10 minutes, but if you enjoyed any of the movies listed above in this commentary, there is a good chance you will like this one.
Fantastic experience......
Tideland (2005)
Some scenes worth watching
This movie has particular scenes I have never seen before anywhere else (or imagined), especially a little girl mixing up a load of smack for her father, and some kissing scenes between a sweet little girl and a mental retard (a scene that really touched me in a most horrible way). These scenes by themselves justify watching the movie (if you are a film enthusiast, that is).
If you are a normal person enjoying a good movie once in a while I think it is very unlikely that you will enjoy this one in any manner whatsoever. My wife could take about 7 minutes before she had to leave, sick to the stomack and very disappointed (at me, and my judgement).
There is almost no story (none that I can discern anyway), it is very boring while at the same time very repulsive. All characters (apart from the little girl) are greatly overacting, and the end is just too easy.
The girl herself and the depiction of her imaginary world is very believable, but the 'real' world, the world of the adults, is not. There seems to be no real difference between the 'grazyness' in her imaginary world and the real world. Thus I don't believe in or can relate to any other character than hers.
I don't know if this is intended, but to me the real world and the characters in it just seem unbelievable, stupid, overacted and uninteresting.
I like the girl though and I think her performance is great.
And what's with the ending? Ordinary people accustomed and expecting a happy ending has for sure left the theatre 5 minutes in to the movie, so there is absolutely no point in attaching a phony happy ending to this movie.
If you liked any other movie by Gilliam, you will most likely not like this one.
Knowing (2009)
Two great movies!
Great artwork! The scenery has a consistent ominous and gloomy feel to it. Especially the house occupied by the main characters is rather scary and made me think of Freddy Kruegers boiler room, and the hotel in "Barton Fink". As the story unfolds and the end draws nearer everything around the characters reflect that, and the world starts changing resembling how the city changed in "Dark City".
I liked Nicolas Gage a lot in this movie, I think his sister was way too young to be his sister, but that's just a detail.
The only problem I see with this movie is that there are two stories here that are completely independent of each other, or rather, an attempt has been made to tie them together, but still there are two very good ideas for two individual movies: One movie is about the girl being able to predict the future, and the main character John discovering her ability and acting upon it, the other story is about how somebody tries to save the human genome from extinction. What could have made this movie perfect was if there were some correlation between these two stories, but there does not seem to be to me: John can do nothing to change events, and if he never had discovered the girls predictions his son would still have been saved! He finds that crucial prediction on the door (where to go to be saved) but he does not himself transport his son there and could just had left the story at that point - the end would still be the same.
You could actually have taken the entire "girl making predictions about the future and John finding out about it" away from the story, the ending would still (or could still have been) the same.
This I think is a flaw in the script.
Thus I have to subtract three stars from an otherwise perfect movie, which I enjoyed very much.