A French Austrian Brazilian British crime drama directed by Fernando Meirelles, starring Jude Law, Moritz Bleibtreu, Jamel Debbouze, Rachel Weisz, Ben Foster, Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Anthony Hopkins.
People are involved in sexual situations. One woman is a hooker, a man orders her, but misses the connection, a sex offender gets out of jail and is tempted by a beautiful woman at the airport...
Boring and desultory. The plot or plots did not hold my attention at all, maybe because of the audio, which I will get to. There were far too many characters. Some of them seemed to be connected in some way. The video was all great. There was a variety of shot duration and camera placement. It really looked great, natural and not forced. The audio was horrible. Most of the dialogue was whispered. When that happens, I take it as a sign that the filmmakers thought dialogue was unimportant and don't care if the viewer hears what people are saying. If the dialogue was important, we should be able to hear it, right? Given that I only heard a few words and phrases over the course of almost 2 hours, I rate this bad. It looked great, but sounded terrible. Don't watch it.
An Austrian horror directed by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala.
A pair of twins are being treated badly after their mother has surgery on her face. They think that this is not their mother and torture her back, even worse than she treats them.
This was alright. The plot developed slowly, but the twins' torture methods were extreme and entertaining. The characters seemed a little shallow to me because there was a lack of back-story to get the audience to know them. The video was amazingly done. The camera-work and editing transitions were so good that it was like watching this as it happened. The audio was in German with good subtitles. There was a little lack of background music, but I think that worked relatively well. Overall, it's good for the torture scenes. I rate it adequate. You might want to check it out.
A British Austrian Netherlands documentary directed by Sophie Fiennes, starring Slavoj Zizek.
Slavoj Zizek explains his views on how psychology relates to film with examples from famous movies.
This is part of my research into movies about movies. I realized that I had seen so many films and was getting to the end of my university education that I needed to learn about film from a perspective outside the classroom and the screen itself. Slavoj may not be the best teacher in this field, but I think that his wild style and "outside the box" ideas make him a good teacher for me. I grasped his ideas on Freudian psychology immediately. I could see how the Marx brothers and the levels of the house in Psycho relate directly to the Id, the Ego and the Super-Ego. I also think that I understood his discussion of a "gaze" being returned by inanimate objects. His flower comment questions a long-standing universal opinion by pointing out the blatantly obvious. He went into discussions on fantasy vs. reality and borders between spaces. I had to watch this twice because of his frenetic pace and the depth of material that he covers. I wish my professors would discuss ideas and theories at this level. Overall, this is something that folks will understand or not. Those that get it will find a wealth of knowledge and probing questions. Those that don't get it will call it crazy and stupid trash, projecting their own stupidity upon the thing that pointed out their lack of intelligence. I rate this awesome and am about to begin watching the sequel on ideology.
A Swiss Austrian American romance directed by Richard Linklater, starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy.
A young man meets a young woman on a train across Europe. They become interested in each other and at the man's stop, he asks the woman to wander through the city with him all night before he leaves on a plane and she leaves on the train. She agrees and they fall in love.
Pretty well made. For such a simple plot, it held my attention quite well. This is one of those films where two people talking can be interesting. The two main characters reminded me of Wesley and Buttercup from The Princess Bride (1987), but more modern. The video was planned and executed flawlessly. It all seemed to be one long conversation as the pair walk through scene after scene. The audio featured audible dialogue and a soundtrack that I didn't even notice was there. The music was so appropriate that it just blended into the plot and video seamlessly. Now that I'm through singing it's technical praises, there are only two points on which I disagree. Romance is not my favorite genre and the woman was begging for sex beginning around 1:14 without receiving any positive feedback until around 1:20. It started with a "let's see if the glass slipper fits" remark atop a stone stairway and was not resolved until 2 or 3 scenes later in the park. As a side-note, this couple was featured in Waking Life (2001) in bed, having a conversation about dreams. Overall, a technical masterpiece that was fun to watch, but not my favorite genre. I'm rating it good for these exact reasons.
An Austrian Italian horror directed by Paolo Heusch.
A new teacher is hired at a school for girls with discipline problems. At the same time, wolves are observed around the campus, girls get killed and the new teacher is suspected as the murderer.
Pretty crappy. For Italy in the '60s, this was standard though. They lacked the ability to communicate the simple plot clearly and had too many characters, most of which looked very similar. The audio and video weren't as bad as some films from this time and place that I've seen before, but they weren't good. I rate it bad. Don't watch.
An Austrian horror by Michael Haneke. The American remake stars Naomi Watts and Tim Roth.A pair of clean-cut young men wearing white gloves show up at a family's lake house. They begin annoying the wife, but soon break the husband's knee with a golf club. They then start to play games that remove the freedom of the family members while endangering the lives of other members of the family.The plot and characters were good, I liked the style, but the pacing was TERRIBLE! There was so much wasted time that could have been spent on events. The style was good because one of the psychopaths would turn to the camera and address the viewer from time to time. He could even... I won't spoil that for you. It's one of the best parts. Some of the music in this film (the wild stuff) is by John Zorn, a saxophonist with a penchant for the extreme. Highly recommended. I'm rating this adequate, but it would have gotten awesome with better time usage. I know I'm being a major hard-ass. This film was great and should get a glowing review, but there was a problem and I'm pointing it out. The remake was literally the same in every way. It was a shot-for-shot remake and literally nothing changed. Why make it then? It gets a shit rating for being totally pointless.
