Second viewing; first viewed on November 28, 1997.
English title: Shock Treatment.
A woman approaching her 40s checks into a clinic which offers an expensive treatment which claims to stop aging. There are some fishy occurrences at the clinic, and she starts poking around in search of any clues of wrongdoing.
Although the premise is somewhat smart, and its critique of capitalism is spot on, the film is flawed on account of an excessively conventional and excitement-free narrative. Also, what's with all the nudity?
Rating: 50 (down from 65)
Saturday, December 28, 2019
Wednesday, December 25, 2019
Futureworld (1976)
The theme park of Westworld is reformed, expanded and reopened. Several world leaders are invited to spend one day there, as well as some journalists, among whom is one that received a tip that something very fishy is or will be happening there.
This has some good ideas, but turns out to be not so good. Probably its biggest problem is that the development is too linear and predictable, with little tension or excitement. But the film suffers from another problem: its premise is no longer frightening to some, perhaps most, people. Well, imagine world leaders being replaced by robots at the service of a big corporation! How horrible, except isn't that what they are already? And that corporation is doing it to save the world from itself, it says. That's not frightening either. If they are not being sincere, we fall into the case that I just commented upon. If they are being sincere, well, that's nothing to fear, is it? If they had accomplished that in 1976, global warming would have been stopped by now, and that Swedish girl would not have had her childhood taken away from her. Wouldn't that have been nice?
Rating: 41
This has some good ideas, but turns out to be not so good. Probably its biggest problem is that the development is too linear and predictable, with little tension or excitement. But the film suffers from another problem: its premise is no longer frightening to some, perhaps most, people. Well, imagine world leaders being replaced by robots at the service of a big corporation! How horrible, except isn't that what they are already? And that corporation is doing it to save the world from itself, it says. That's not frightening either. If they are not being sincere, we fall into the case that I just commented upon. If they are being sincere, well, that's nothing to fear, is it? If they had accomplished that in 1976, global warming would have been stopped by now, and that Swedish girl would not have had her childhood taken away from her. Wouldn't that have been nice?
Rating: 41
Sunday, December 22, 2019
Sans toit ni loi (1985)
English title: Vagabond
English translation of the French title: Without Roof or Law
The dead body of a young drifting woman is found in a ditch. The film then flashes back a few months and then follows her up until her death. She wanders aimlessly through the countryside taking odd jobs and sleeping in empty houses or in a camping tent. She meets with assorted characters, occasionally settling somewhere, only to depart after a short period.
To be frank, as I started watching this film it didn't look very promising, and even began to annoy me a little. To begin with, the notion of a young female drifter without any goal in life is very implausible, and the reasons for that are not very hard to discern. But I decided to suspend my disbelief. Perhaps the purpose of the movie was precisely that: to imagine an unusual character living an unusual life. And it actually got better, or, more accurately said, it felt better when I took that more broad-minded stance toward it. It is a very simply, almost crudely staged movie. I decided to overlook that too. All in all, one might say that its originality consists in not making the main character a victim, at least not in a traditional sense. She does not come across as a particularly endearing person either. She is nothing special, but her unique condition makes her the object of the projection of the people she encounters; she is like an empty vessel into which everyone pours their frustrations. The film may be seen as a parable of sorts, a parable without a discernible moral. The ending, though simply a return to the beginning, is oddly disturbing; the strange sequence that precedes it maybe the source of that emotional effect.
Rating: 55
English translation of the French title: Without Roof or Law
The dead body of a young drifting woman is found in a ditch. The film then flashes back a few months and then follows her up until her death. She wanders aimlessly through the countryside taking odd jobs and sleeping in empty houses or in a camping tent. She meets with assorted characters, occasionally settling somewhere, only to depart after a short period.
To be frank, as I started watching this film it didn't look very promising, and even began to annoy me a little. To begin with, the notion of a young female drifter without any goal in life is very implausible, and the reasons for that are not very hard to discern. But I decided to suspend my disbelief. Perhaps the purpose of the movie was precisely that: to imagine an unusual character living an unusual life. And it actually got better, or, more accurately said, it felt better when I took that more broad-minded stance toward it. It is a very simply, almost crudely staged movie. I decided to overlook that too. All in all, one might say that its originality consists in not making the main character a victim, at least not in a traditional sense. She does not come across as a particularly endearing person either. She is nothing special, but her unique condition makes her the object of the projection of the people she encounters; she is like an empty vessel into which everyone pours their frustrations. The film may be seen as a parable of sorts, a parable without a discernible moral. The ending, though simply a return to the beginning, is oddly disturbing; the strange sequence that precedes it maybe the source of that emotional effect.
Rating: 55
Wednesday, December 18, 2019
Flic ou voyou (1979)
English title: Cop or Hood.
An eccentric internal affairs agent investigates the murder of a corrupt cop, and gets involved in the feud between two mobsters.
Endlessly tedious criminal thriller with a comic undertone. The only thing that made it bearable was the good work of some of the supporting actors (notably Balmer).
Rating: 28
An eccentric internal affairs agent investigates the murder of a corrupt cop, and gets involved in the feud between two mobsters.
Endlessly tedious criminal thriller with a comic undertone. The only thing that made it bearable was the good work of some of the supporting actors (notably Balmer).
Rating: 28
Sunday, December 15, 2019
Kasaba (1997)
English title: The Small Town.
While this is generally considered to be based on an original screenplay, excerpts ('alintilar' is the word that appears in the final credits) from Anton Chekhov were used in the film's dialogue; from what I deduced from some websites, they are from The Cherry Orchard (written in 1903), but I could not verify that.
A family consisting of three generations of men and women live in a small town. An old man who recollects his time in the war; his wife; his son who went abroad to study but returned without having really made something of his life; his wife; his orphaned nephew who can't hold a job and dreams of going abroad; a boy and a girl, children of the younger couple. The film consists of several sequences in town and in the neighboring woods: a classroom where the girl studies; a cemetery where she and her brother go to pick plums; a funfair; and the film's pièce-de-résistance: a picnic in the woods where they talk about nothing and everything.
Occasionally interesting, not badly filmed, a little disjointed overall.
Rating: 43
While this is generally considered to be based on an original screenplay, excerpts ('alintilar' is the word that appears in the final credits) from Anton Chekhov were used in the film's dialogue; from what I deduced from some websites, they are from The Cherry Orchard (written in 1903), but I could not verify that.
A family consisting of three generations of men and women live in a small town. An old man who recollects his time in the war; his wife; his son who went abroad to study but returned without having really made something of his life; his wife; his orphaned nephew who can't hold a job and dreams of going abroad; a boy and a girl, children of the younger couple. The film consists of several sequences in town and in the neighboring woods: a classroom where the girl studies; a cemetery where she and her brother go to pick plums; a funfair; and the film's pièce-de-résistance: a picnic in the woods where they talk about nothing and everything.
Occasionally interesting, not badly filmed, a little disjointed overall.
Rating: 43
Joyeuses Pâques (1984)
English title: Happy Easter
A married man cheats on his wife on every occasion he can. Things go awry when he takes a young woman to his house when his wife is away on a trip. Said trip is aborted and she comes back to catch her husband and his guest in the house. He tells her she is his daughter from a previous marriage.
This is based on a farce written for the stage; although that is not stated in the credits, it is discernible at a few heavily dialogued stretches. Equally discernible are the frantic attempts at disguising it with car wrecks and chases which have little to do with the main plot. The whole thing eventually becomes mildly amusing for the very absurdity of it all.
Rating: 37
A married man cheats on his wife on every occasion he can. Things go awry when he takes a young woman to his house when his wife is away on a trip. Said trip is aborted and she comes back to catch her husband and his guest in the house. He tells her she is his daughter from a previous marriage.
This is based on a farce written for the stage; although that is not stated in the credits, it is discernible at a few heavily dialogued stretches. Equally discernible are the frantic attempts at disguising it with car wrecks and chases which have little to do with the main plot. The whole thing eventually becomes mildly amusing for the very absurdity of it all.
Rating: 37
Thursday, December 12, 2019
A Trezentos Quilômetros por Hora (1971)
Lalo is a humble mechanic who works in a garage whose owner is a famous auto racer. Lalo has a crush on his boss's girl. He and another mechanic surreptitiously borrow cars belonging to the garage's clients to practice racing -- he as pilot and his colleague as his coach.
Inane sports drama where every frame is ridiculous -- excepting perhaps some racing sequences which are competently made considering the poor standards of Brazilian cinema. The love drama is particularly atrocious, and the protagonist's love object is probably the most revolting female character in all of cinema's history.
Rating: 20
Inane sports drama where every frame is ridiculous -- excepting perhaps some racing sequences which are competently made considering the poor standards of Brazilian cinema. The love drama is particularly atrocious, and the protagonist's love object is probably the most revolting female character in all of cinema's history.
Rating: 20
Monday, December 09, 2019
M/Other (1999)
This is about a couple who faces a crisis triggered by the presence of the husband's 8-year-old son from a previous marriage in their house after the boy's mother suffers an accident and has to stay in the hospital for a period.
Drama about trivial matters of conjugal life. The filmmaker presumably deems it more important to affect naturalism than to tell an interesting story. What I find odd is that most of the people who went nuts about this film were neither married nor had kids. How can they tell anything in it rings true? Anyway, it's definitely on the boring side.
Rating: 33
Drama about trivial matters of conjugal life. The filmmaker presumably deems it more important to affect naturalism than to tell an interesting story. What I find odd is that most of the people who went nuts about this film were neither married nor had kids. How can they tell anything in it rings true? Anyway, it's definitely on the boring side.
Rating: 33
Friday, December 06, 2019
Ôdishon (1999)
English title: Audition
A widower decides to remarry. A friend of his who is a film producer suggests that they use an audition for a new movie as a way for him to select his new wife. The widower's choice falls upon one of the candidates, a young woman with a sad story about her past. She turns out to be something quite different from what he expects.
This film made quite a splash among horror fans around the time it was released. Although I can understand the reason of its popularity among that kind of cinephile, I was myself underwhelmed by it. I guess it could not be denied that it is extremely gruesome in parts, and I strongly advise easily impressionable people against watching it; even somewhat callous viewers should beware, as it has scenes of a physically repulsive and/or unsettling nature. But in the end of the day, what killed the film for me was the basic psychological inconsistency of the female character; also, some plot points had less than crystalline clarity. The female protagonist comes across simultaneously as a sadist and as an aggrieved woman. This was the first confusing point: although having that dual character is perhaps not an a priori impossibility for a real person, it was not a wise dramatic decision to make her so, because it makes it harder for the viewer to understand her. The event or events that trigger her fury are insignificant, and the film seems to mine that fact for a sort of dark humor. But if her anger is against all men, those insignificant events would not trigger anything, because she would just pick the first man who fell into her trap. It is also she who disappears without a trace at a certain point of their relationship; he, on the contrary, looks for her; thus, she had no plausible reason to feel mistreated or abandoned by him. These inconsistencies may suggest to some that she is just plain crazy, but the fact is that madness is not random; it must have some kind of inner logic. From all that it becomes clear that the only concern of the filmmaker is to produce a nightmare with as much shock value as he can achieve. Instead of just dismissing an incoherent mess of a film, viewers saw in it what they wished; thus, it was variously called "feminist" and "misogynistic", for example.
Rating: 30
A widower decides to remarry. A friend of his who is a film producer suggests that they use an audition for a new movie as a way for him to select his new wife. The widower's choice falls upon one of the candidates, a young woman with a sad story about her past. She turns out to be something quite different from what he expects.
This film made quite a splash among horror fans around the time it was released. Although I can understand the reason of its popularity among that kind of cinephile, I was myself underwhelmed by it. I guess it could not be denied that it is extremely gruesome in parts, and I strongly advise easily impressionable people against watching it; even somewhat callous viewers should beware, as it has scenes of a physically repulsive and/or unsettling nature. But in the end of the day, what killed the film for me was the basic psychological inconsistency of the female character; also, some plot points had less than crystalline clarity. The female protagonist comes across simultaneously as a sadist and as an aggrieved woman. This was the first confusing point: although having that dual character is perhaps not an a priori impossibility for a real person, it was not a wise dramatic decision to make her so, because it makes it harder for the viewer to understand her. The event or events that trigger her fury are insignificant, and the film seems to mine that fact for a sort of dark humor. But if her anger is against all men, those insignificant events would not trigger anything, because she would just pick the first man who fell into her trap. It is also she who disappears without a trace at a certain point of their relationship; he, on the contrary, looks for her; thus, she had no plausible reason to feel mistreated or abandoned by him. These inconsistencies may suggest to some that she is just plain crazy, but the fact is that madness is not random; it must have some kind of inner logic. From all that it becomes clear that the only concern of the filmmaker is to produce a nightmare with as much shock value as he can achieve. Instead of just dismissing an incoherent mess of a film, viewers saw in it what they wished; thus, it was variously called "feminist" and "misogynistic", for example.
Rating: 30
Le guignolo (1980)
Upon getting out of jail, a confidence man embarks on a luxury cruise pretending to be an oriental potentate. He gets involved with a confidence woman who wants to play a trick upon a rich man. A second adventure concerns a briefcase handed to him by a passenger in a plane; unbeknownst to our hero, it contains a microfilm with the description of a new kind of fuel.
Comedy with some mild action, some nudity, a hero who is intended to look amoral and charming, and an excessive amount of plotlines and subplots. Mostly unengaging and unfunny.
Rating: 32
Comedy with some mild action, some nudity, a hero who is intended to look amoral and charming, and an excessive amount of plotlines and subplots. Mostly unengaging and unfunny.
Rating: 32
Tuesday, December 03, 2019
La moutarde me monte au nez (1974)
English titles: I'm Losing My Temper; Lucky Pierre.
A math teacher gets involved in a series of troubles which bring him to the house of a movie star. He spends the night with her and becomes famous overnight, which only adds to his troubles.
Modern slapstick with a solid first half and a so-so second one.
Rating: 51
A math teacher gets involved in a series of troubles which bring him to the house of a movie star. He spends the night with her and becomes famous overnight, which only adds to his troubles.
Modern slapstick with a solid first half and a so-so second one.
Rating: 51
Monday, December 02, 2019
Pouic-Pouic (1963)
English title: Squeak-squeak.
"Léonard Monestier has made his fortune trading on the stock exchange. His eccentric wife Cynthia almost bankrupts him by selling some of his shares to buy an oil concession in South America. Convinced that the concession is a fake, Monestier decides to sell it on to a friend of the family, the naive millionaire Antoine Brévin. Antoine wants to marry his daughter, Patricia. However, Patricia has a different opinion on the matter. She manages to persuade the car delivery guy, Simon Guilbaud, to pretend to be her husband. Unaware of this development, Monestier invites Antoine to his house in order to get him to agree to buy the oil concession. After the invitation to Antoine, the butler Charles informs Monestier of the rushed marriage of Patricia. To prove that the concession is genuine, Monestier hires his son-in-law Simon to pretend to be his son, Paul, who is currently in South America. At this point, the real Paul turns up, with a Latin showgirl, Palma. Monestier has to resort to..." -- Written by Lara Cain (IMDB)
Entertaining farce. Admittedly, it loses a little steam in the second half, but not enough as to make it unwatchable.
Rating: 51
"Léonard Monestier has made his fortune trading on the stock exchange. His eccentric wife Cynthia almost bankrupts him by selling some of his shares to buy an oil concession in South America. Convinced that the concession is a fake, Monestier decides to sell it on to a friend of the family, the naive millionaire Antoine Brévin. Antoine wants to marry his daughter, Patricia. However, Patricia has a different opinion on the matter. She manages to persuade the car delivery guy, Simon Guilbaud, to pretend to be her husband. Unaware of this development, Monestier invites Antoine to his house in order to get him to agree to buy the oil concession. After the invitation to Antoine, the butler Charles informs Monestier of the rushed marriage of Patricia. To prove that the concession is genuine, Monestier hires his son-in-law Simon to pretend to be his son, Paul, who is currently in South America. At this point, the real Paul turns up, with a Latin showgirl, Palma. Monestier has to resort to..." -- Written by Lara Cain (IMDB)
Entertaining farce. Admittedly, it loses a little steam in the second half, but not enough as to make it unwatchable.
Rating: 51
Sunday, December 01, 2019
Julius Caesar (1970)
Based on the play by William Shakespeare, "believed to have been written in 1599" (Wikipedia), the main source for which "is Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's Lives" (Wikipedia).
Rome, 44 BC. Julius Caesar returns victorious from battle, and may become Emperor. A group of Senators wants to prevent that, and plot to kill him.
This is the second filmed version of this play that I watch. I liked the previous one, of 1953, slightly better, but cannot state the reason why. This one felt a little lethargic, for some reason that I cannot fathom either. It is an easy watch, though, as the plot and dialogue are interesting, and there is no technical flaw in the filming that I could spot.
Rating: 46
Rome, 44 BC. Julius Caesar returns victorious from battle, and may become Emperor. A group of Senators wants to prevent that, and plot to kill him.
This is the second filmed version of this play that I watch. I liked the previous one, of 1953, slightly better, but cannot state the reason why. This one felt a little lethargic, for some reason that I cannot fathom either. It is an easy watch, though, as the plot and dialogue are interesting, and there is no technical flaw in the filming that I could spot.
Rating: 46
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