A French Italian musical mystery directed by François Ozon, starring Danielle Darrieux, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Virginie Ledoyen, Ludivine Sagnier and Firmine Richard.
A group of women are meeting for Christmas, but find that the man of the house is dead. The grandmother, mother, aunts and daughters are trying to find who killed the husband, but they are all lying for different reasons.
Strange genre combination with lots of reading. The plot was a typical murder mystery, but all of the characters were women from the same family. There was a range of affluenza represented in these characters. All of them were quite famous and featured in many films. They all looked good too. Video was excellent, probably because of post-production color work. I'm referring to high contrast and saturation here. Audio was all in French and the subtitles were on time. The 'subtitles were 'screwy and 'scribbled by 'someone 'stupid who pluralized with apo'strophe's. I have a feeling that in a few year's, the S will grow an apo'strophe in every in'stance. I rate this adequate because the plot held my attention and the video looked amazing. However, it just did not do it for me. I know it's good, but did not suit my personal taste. You should seriously consider watching it.
A Danish German Netherlands Italian American British French Swedish Finnish Icelandic Argentinian Norwegian Taiwanese Belgian Musical drama directed by Lars von Trier, starring Bjork, Catherine Deneuve, David Morse and Peter Stormare.
A Czech woman has moved to America so that her son can have an operation on his eyes. She is going blind and her son soon will if his eyes are not fixed. A neighbor finds her savings for the operation and steals it. She tries to take it back, but he is accidentally shot in the struggle. She kills him and takes the money as he begs her to do so and the case goes to court.
The whole Golden Heart Trilogy is not equal. This seemed restrained, repressed, whitewashed and censored compared to the other 2 films, lots like Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Rainbow Thief (1990). Most of this was in Dogma 95 style, but the musical numbers had non-diegetic music and tripods for the camera. Bjork is extremely attractive, but her vocal delivery and phrasing seem repetitive, like she wrote 1 song in 1993 and has been repeating it ever since with different lyrics. I like to think that the ending was caused by this, but I won't spoil that too much. Bjork says that Lars shared my view of her appearance and attempted to act on it in a #metoo manner. I didn't like the plot of this as much as the other Golden Heart films and the characters were not as good either. I'm rating it o.k. and in this case, that counts as an insult. You may want to skip this if you're watching Lars von Trier films. His other stuff has all been so much better.
A French Italian drama directed by Luis Bunuel, starring Catherine Deneuve and Jean Sorel.
A married woman goes to work at a brothel in order to realize her sexual fantasies. She gets involved with a gangster client who follows her home to start trouble if she doesn't comply with his wishes.
For a film about prostitution, I would have expected more nudity like Jesus Franco would have done. The plot was extremely simple and predictable. The characters developed along similarly predictable paths. I found it appropriate that this was in French because France has a reputation as "the city of love" ...even if you have to pay for it. As with the Chinese films, I think that there was something lost in communication as far as the dialogue goes when it got subtitled. The acting seemed pretty decent though. I really believed the young gangster's acting as #1 bad boy. Locations made sense and costumes were plain, but the prostitutes wore the correct lingerie and the gangsters wore the right suits. The camera-work that stood out to me most was the main character's feet going up stairs to the brothel. The dreams looked amazing too and I actually got what they meant. Audio was mixed right, nothing too loud or too quiet. This won 4/5 awards that it was nominated for in the late '60s. IMDb has a 7.8/10 rating listed and Rotten Tomatoes lists 96% Tomatometer with 85% Audience Score for an average of 86.33%. I think that's a little too high. Sure, it looked good, but it takes more than a pretty face to win me over. If I can figure out what the dreams mean, it's too simple. It's also missing some nudity. I rate it o.k. Maybe you should watch it and see if you agree with consensus that it's amazing or with me that Jesus Franco would have done it better.
A British thriller directed by Roman Polanski, starring Catherine Deneuve.
A young woman is afraid of everything, including cracks in the wall. She tries to date a man, but just can't make it work.
This was terrible and boring. I've been working from a list of the "scariest films ever made" and it never ceases to disappoint me. The plot was threadbare and vacant. The characters were not developed at all. The video was alright, if filming this girl being afraid of nothing counts as anything. The most memorable scene was hands coming out of the wall to feel the main character's boobs. The audio was in english and there were no odd noises. Overall, not worth watching. I rate this bad. DO NOT WATCH!!!
