genjiattack Reviews

1917 (2019)

A beautiful video game cinematic, but not much more.

[6/10 · 28 March 2024]

There are films that sometimes have no luck when I look at the critical notes (and elsewhere) sometimes they did not find their audience, sometimes they did not know how to come out at the right time. And then there are those other films that are considered good films, see very good films, when he doesn't deserve it that much, the spectacle that overwhelmed the audience and the plastic of the fiction surpasses the emotional reality coupled with a disproportionate promotion.

1917 disappointed me and left me with a bitter taste, because if the exercise of the sequence plan is, it must be recognized, magnificently successful, it nevertheless leaves the same sensation as Gravity once reached its end: To want to make a sequence plan a film at the perfect rhythm, The result is a large eight with a taste for attraction that seems to have escaped from a video game or theme park. 1917 not being the only one in these years 2010-2020 to make cinema, a leisure at the discount with easy shortcuts to more too stir its spectators.

1917 is a film of technician and in this sense it sends the very heavy, the visual performance is hallucinating, the photography as well as the staging offers a grandiose plastic with real moments crushing by the number of appearing on the screen in this pyrotechnic show millimeter. But this is all it offers, this wanting yet authentic in what it will make us live and tell us (from where the text implanted here is there to hang it to reality), it however already slashes the historical reality for the sake of the show (as in video games in fact) but it is especially in horror that it is most visible, become a joke or a step of luck, diluted in a few contemplative shots to bring a touch of poetry supported by music that ensures the rhythm. The film however acts as a mirror of the main characters on the spectators, the nativity takes precedence over the cruelty of reality and the good feelings sweep away any traumatic reality.

The emotion is therefore never really there, the depth of the characters either, because this war does not exist and these actors who play soldiers either. It's not nice war, it's not a video game cinematic, people are not nice and good feelings like ideals quickly fall apart. Camaraderie is much stronger when it all exists as betrayals, enemies are not all traitors and for all this, the history of cinema is filled with excellent films much more honest on the subject. Spielberg himself great craftsman of entertainment, had not forgotten to talk about the essentials, Nolan neither. The factory war not heroes, it manufactures horror, dead and nothing else... And as such 1917 could almost seem like a propaganda film.

After for Sam Mendes it is little to be wanted, hence these two characters, came on discord to do a part of Call of Duty and who make it a canvas or take full eyes on their TV 4K. It's cinema will tell me, yes, but it's cinema and cinema and there clearly, the only thing I saw is a beautiful video game cinematic, empty of real meaning and therefore without flavor, but not much more, at least not what I call "cinema".

Hard to Be a God (2013)

The perfect synthesis of modern Russia.

[9/10 · 18 March 2024]

Sticky, hermetic, incomprehensible, paradoxical but also particularly clairvoyant, Hard to be a god is a film that reveals in its second viewing what is, it must be admitted, particularly difficult in view of the experience he puts his spectator through.

And yet this film is a mirror of Russia so radical and powerful, that it would be a shame not to take the time to see what it describes and tells us. Everything says there from the first shots, the only introductory voice-over giving all the keys of understanding before submerging us in the terrible molasses that Russia is currently living.

"It is not the earth. It is another planet, identical, 800 years late..." "... And the local grey castle reminded the beginning of the Renaissance..." But the Renaissance is not produced here. Just a reaction to something that almost didn't happen..." "It started by destroying the university, the way of thinking. And a hunt for thinkers, sages, bookworms and talented craftsmen. Some fled to the nearby Irukan. It was better there."

I could go on, but it is the poor Russia that we are talking about, dragged through the mud, the fiend, leading by a man erected as a god who plays the flute with the sound of jazz that opens and closes the film, surrounded by men at his service treated like animals. Untouchable, in-tuable, who leads his world on a quest that leads nowhere, neither for him nor for his people.

The characters look at the camera regularly, as if to question the spectator in front of this grotesque and terrible spectacle, the spectacle of a people dragged in the mud, a mess like no other in this universe. Russia is preparing to suffer under Putin, a film that is increasingly topical today, which resembles a cry for help in the face of a sudden arcaism that destroys everything starting with its own children.

A beautifully disguised and yet so brave speech in such a country, which makes "hard to be a god" a work as powerful as terrible.

She Is Conann (2023)

She's a man as cruel as the others

[8/10 · 18 March 2024]

There are films that carry a kind of eternal magic and Conann is one of them. A multiverse of the transcendental mind, an experience at all levels, philosophical, psychological, sensory, narrative, corporeal and once again, Conann is one of them.

And yet it is so hermetic for those who will not dare to be sensitive to such a work, the mind must be able to cross its own gendered limits. Cinema trance-genre and non-binary, like the wild boys, the cinema of Bertrand Mandico is unique, fascinating, missed sometimes, I think of after blue for example who for me misses a part of his subject with a game and scenario too wobbly that lacks finishing.

Conann is his opposite for me, he knows perfectly where he is going, to the point where he assumes himself in the sublimation of his style and his messages. Here we probe the soul of the warrior woman, the barbarian Connan, who constantly transcends herself in each of her lives, every time she murders herself. Because of its small character theatre of which Rainer is the keystone (the animal part, the dog) this barbaric cruelty shows us that horror is at the center of life, as beauty, indeed, the sublime cannot exist otherwise.

We navigate here in the subconscious of a woman, who surrenders to her transcendence. She'll be as ruthless as any man, gender doesn't change anything when you accept yourself. A film to live urgently if you are not afraid to travel in a new genre, explored notably by Panos Cosmatos on another scale more meta-societal than gendered, yet both belong to this new fascinating phase of modern cinema.

From afar, it will really not please everyone, I almost enjoy imagining almost the head of the average spectator in front of such a show. But it is a fascinating foot for who will take his measure and dare to dive into the film without restraint, without fear and without preconceived opinion while trying to understand what he says about this part of ourselves.

You liked wild boys, Connan will delight you.

Second Tour (2023)

A very good Dupontel, can be the best since 10 years.

[8/10 · 18 March 2024]

Dupontel is always a sensitive, intelligent, funny, crazy and sometimes angry cinema. I was no fan more than that of goodbye the idiots, even if I had spent a pleasant moment, Goodbye up there too, these last two films made me spend a nice moment but not enough striking. In fact I really like Albert, he is one of the few who dares to be sensitive and do the staging, so even if I find his old films a little on the side I never really wanted to hit him, because after all, every time it's well done and it's not so bad.

This time, with Second Round, I think he is waiting for a real form of maturity and it works much better for me. So if the film remains very close to his usual style, he dares here to face a subject much more difficult than usual, it is more serious and straightforward. Albert exposes himself a little more to the image of his character on a very important social subject.

Indeed if the character is double like its title it is not a coincidence, Albert no longer seems to want to run away by finally launching a real little missile on the company with this film that does badly good and reminds, that we must never give up. I wait for the next one with a certain impatience, because it is not very far, to make films that dare to put a head blow as in his youth but with this time, much more maturity in these subjects.