Change Your Image
necrogl
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Lists
An error has ocurred. Please try againReviews
Poor Things (2023)
Philosophy meets delightful cinema
They say that a director repeats in each of his films the same film, consciously or not, versions of the same situation that he has in his mind.
Lanthimos has a large filmography to show off. His great asset remains the excellent colleagues in every department who managed to develop themselves alongside him and to highlight in the best way his universe. Here, we have the steampunk, achronical, black comedy "Poor Things."
I will attempt more of a philosophical critique on the film, which is technically and interpretatively excellent, with bold cinematic choices that take the medium a little further. The references to philosophy are numerous in the film (Diogenes, Nietzsche). As well as the social messages it has to pass.
In my own approach, I see the title: "Poor Things" as a paraphrase for "Human Beings." I found several similarities in the way the film unfolds with "The Favourite", in terms of editing, characters and script.
The film in its various chapters (it follows the structure of a book) deals with almost all issues: life, society, family (the director's favorite subject for deconstruction), religion. God left his creatures half-finished, half-crazy, to thresh and spread havoc and madness on a plain which he rightfully offered them. He's not sure about them but he's also curious to see how they will end up and so he lets them be. God's attitude is therefore irresponsible according to philosophy.
I certainly loved every role and had fun with the film, although perhaps it could have been slightly shorter, a feeling shared by several friends who watched it.
I don't know how Dafoe manages in every role (and after so many films) to always come out so modest and balanced. I loved his performance as Dr. God. Already the name calls us for philosophical approaches. Emma seemed to have done a great job portraying Bella in her various stages and I think she rightfully deserves an Oscar, as does Robbie Ryan, director of photography, for what he accomplished in such a demanding script. He managed to completely harmonize with Yorgo's style and to take on difficult and demanding camera movements. I was also surprised by Ruffalo, who dared to do something different from what we are used to, kudos to him. With this film he takes a more Burtonian and grotesque turn.
The comedy scenes are successful, they make you laugh effortlessly and relax, compensating for the awkward scenes of brutal violence. Of course, there was no lack of self-injury and self-irony, a key component of Yorgo's heroes.
Self-referentiality, as well as his love for his fans, leads him to give us scenes-references, either to his previous films, or to directors he loves. I found hidden references to: "The Favourite," "The Lobster," and "Dogtooth." There may be definitely others.
The film ends up with an absurd garden, Eden, and the creatures that live in it. Leaving the "human" this time in charge and you only have to guess what's going to happen next.
Lanthimos deserves the credits from every point of view. He has managed to win over Hollywood and find his audience with completely unconventional, if stylized, films but also to mature himself as a director and become better over the years, without, of course, completely leaving behind his old patterns and his obsessions.
Leda (2021)
Myth and reality blended in a visually stunning way
This film is a truly brave cinematic effort at an age where interesting films are hardly made anymore.
I'm a film director myself and I can say that this movie surprised me in a profound way, it is an unbelievable achievement that I envied. 76 minutes without a single spoken word is a really hard choice for a filmmaker, if he wants to make his script watchable and profitable, to say the least. Leda herself, as a theme, is a really hard one.
Still, the movie manages to convey so many messages and hidden meanings at its bay. This is independent arthouse at its best.
The silence choice spares an homage to the silence of Leda herself and of her own story, which holds for us only speculations about her real life. Apart from the fact that we know she was the Queen of Sparta and that Zeus wanted to mate with her so badly.
The movie attempts bravely to give an explanation on what happened to the enigmatic Leda after the birth of the two eggs and before (the eggs were including: Helen of Troy, Clytemnestra, Castor and Pollux.) The Swan here holds a character of its own. As brutal as Zeus at times, but also soft when it comes to seduction. Maybe this is one of the first attempts ever made by any artist, or historian, to give a road on the myth. That alone gets an extra point for me.
Cinematography takes off on a courageous black and white universe and the choices made by the director are creating an amazing experience and an alternative reality for the myth, which as a Greek I can say that it completely respects the myth.
Here, we also have an absolutely stunning performance by Adeline Thery that cannot be overlooked in the role of Leda. She was completely living it. And to think that the filming lasted for so many years! She is truly a method actress. She completely immersed into the character's life.
I believe that Samuel Tressler IV did a great job in communicating his vision, he has a lot of future ahead. Difficult missions make the great directors.
If you are a normal guy watching "normal" movies maybe this movie is not for you, but if you are a real cinephile who wants to escape from the "normal" crap this is your movie.
Watch it with the first opportunity that you'll get and you'll never regret it. Watch it in the biggest screen that you can find and the experience becomes even better.
What are we but figures made of a mysterious stone that one day someone will manage to decipher?
Home Fronts (2023)
A hopeful cry for peace
"Home Fronts" is a film made of testimonials of support to Ukraine and its current struggle with Russia. It is a story warmly told by the people of the local communities of Scotland.
People from different nationalities and backgrounds who are affected deeply by Russia's invasion in Ukraine.
They don't just stay in a discussion, they do something by setting a good example, actively caring for the people around them. I think that a good documentary should do that - push people into action and raise the awareness levels of a community.
One can feel the colors blue and yellow dominant in the film. I see it as an homage to the Ukrainian people.
I really liked the message of the movie. It leaves you with a hope that things will go better if we all unite and act together in situations like this.
L'illusionniste (2010)
A film about innocence that is doomed to be extinct
I consider "L' illusionniste" to be one of the best and noblest films ever made. Bring tissues in the screening because this is a film that can make you cry.
You get it right from the title, this is a film about magic. The real magic of friendship though and not the one of an "impressive" spectacle.
"L' illusionniste", like cinema itself, is a world that is captured just before it is lost. Our protagonist, Tati, is now long time lost. 2D animation is also close to extinction, if not already extinct, at the altar of the 3D. I congratulate Chomet for remaining faithful to this technique.
With respect to classic animation, Sylvain Chomet makes a huge contribution to the history of animated cinema.
It takes time, money and effort but you get to have a real, detailed experience of uniquely painted Paris, Scottish Highlands and Edinburgh, where the story mostly unfolds.
This film is a lost love letter by Tati to his daughter who is about to be a part of the adult world soon. Chomet takes the courage to reveal it to us in his own way. The film manages not to be overshadowed by the fact that it is a personal reference of the father to his daughter.
It is a letter, yes, but you will not find many words in it. There's not much to say, other than to feel, and it all lies in between the silent moments...
The two protagonists, the magician and the little girl who decide to follow him in his path, take us on a journey of adulthood and of belief for the unexpected. A journey of pure, naive joy for the little magic moments in life. The ones that we usually decide not to see and pass by quickly, in order to do more "important" things.
This is the best film with Jacques Tati that I have ever seen. His most dramatic role. Even without him having the opportunity to play in the film for real, the artists did a great job and a great portrayal of one of the greatest comedians and French actors of all time.
Samaria (2004)
Possibly one of the best Kim Ki-duk films
"Samaritan Girl" can be enjoyed by all art-house movie fans, it will not let you down.
One of the two protagonists, Yeo-jin, a student, deep inside is a priestess, in this allegorical title and at the same time a missionary with a difficult mission to complete.
Jae-Young, her friend, gives her body to men, with Yeo-jin's aid, invoking an emotional 'blocking zone', a dead zone without sensations and hallucinations. The little girl looks subservient, but covers up her natural muscular weaknesses with her supernatural abilities and mysterious smile.
The issue of prostitution from the film's point of view should be considered within a wider context:
Kim does not simply take it as an economic transaction, or a despicable exploitative relationship - here it holds a metaphorical meaning, as it is the key mechanism that leads to transcendence - it creates a framework for selfless giving.
The face of the prostitute in Kim's body work, both in this film and in the others, stands in stark contrast to all the other central figures:
She is a person at the lowest level of the social pyramid, she expresses the absolute baseness of human existence but also something beyond that. Both girls represent great reserves of endurance and tolerance, humility, forbearance, absence of hatred, or anger, and a profound understanding of the Other.
The status quo of a prostitute has a non-realistic, metaphysical dimension, it constitutes an example, a model of life:
The exercise of this profession as a self-punishment of existence, as a constant sacrifice for the Other and a practical humiliation system that helps her to fulfill a mission in life.
I consider Kim Ki-duk a realistic, pragmatic director of the old-new Korean wave, with neo-feminist approaches through showing the deepest and sharpest angles of human suffering.
Seom (2000)
The Isle is a tough, symbolistic, violent film
This is the first film that made Kim Ki-duk internationally famous.
The story revolves around Hee Jin, who is mute by weakness or choice, (and I love the fact that the director never reveals why) and makes a living from the fishermen of a lagoon by selling them food by day and her body by night.
Her clients despise her, but she hides strong emotions that explode at the most unexpected moments. They give her an opportunity to express herself and draw a line.
The arrival of an ex-psycho cop, Hyun Si, slowly brings Hee Jin out of her shell, as she takes a special liking to him. She tries to heal his wounded soul with sex. Their attraction quickly turns into obsession. Their lives are unlocked. Their love takes on an idiosyncratic ritual and they openly flirt with death.
Kim Ki-duk loves painting and in The Isle he uses many pictorial parallelisms with classical paintings to fascinate us.
There are internal traumas, remorse and continuous attempts for self-punishment. Is a wild soul capable of loving deeply without hurting and being hurt in return?
Hee Jin is a strong woman. She is not deaf or dumb. She does not hesitate to express her feelings strongly and in an extreme way, opposing the injustice that she experiences from the fishermen.
The heroine-woman in Kim's world will go through all the stages before the final redemption. She will sink to the bottom of the sea, find herself trapped in her own cage and like a fish, she will be savagely chopped up before being thrown back into the sea to continue swimming..
Chun gwong ja sit (1997)
Happy together is not a usual gay movie
1997 and the Chinese Cinema industry is not a usual place to start making a movie about two gay people, although the movie was not necessarily intended to become as it ended up being.
Tony Leung found out, only later during the filming, that he was going to perform a gay person. This gave an authenticity in his performance. Kar-Wai always uses these techniques (giving day by day a one page script) to achieve the best out of his actors/actresses.
Wong seems to have an obsession with love and how it is shaped in the urban environments of the 1960's-1990's. This movie is a road-trip to love and one that is made with love.
The characters played by Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Lesly Cheung experience intense emotions - not just about their relationship - but about the whole situation of their lives that they find themselves into. Knowing that Lesly Cheung was gay and committed suicide a bit later in his life adds an extra emotional tense.
For Kar-Wai, contact is very important. The characters, as beings, always seek it. There are high hopes for a trip that will never take place, dinners that were canceled, promises that were very difficult to be kept in the first place.. Kar-Wai's characters seem as naive and at the same time as cunning, just like his own cinematic universe.
Many times the characters meet in a hotel, to resolve key moments of crisis in their relationship. They are quite far from each other, there is a strong distance and they almost fear each other and are on the defensive.
Musically, the goal is to once again capture the era and the place, but also the aesthetics, so that the era is clearly visible and greatly enhanced by the musical choices. Tango seems to be one of Kar-Wai's favorite rhythms, as he once stated, and here comes the choice of Argentina as the main setting for the film.
Technically, Kar-Wai emphasizes in the photographic style. Christopher Doyle's shots are not photographically indifferent, but he uses many different forms to achieve a particular feel. The image itself is often evocative, the slow or fast motion conveying the dominant mood of the scene.
There are the iconic Wong Kar Wai's scenes in a taxi, in slow motion:
Going home with your significant other is a bit like going back to safety. Although without solving the problems... it looks like a moment of respite. These scenes are like visual poems and he doesn't just use the image to present a narrative, but the image becomes part of the narrative itself.
One asks for tenderness from the other human being at this moment; taking a call in the other one's basic sentiments. And the other one, perhaps without ever wanting to take this extra step, does not refuse it in the end. Either because he is just bored to say no, or just because he wants to take something back from the other person. And the roles exchange once again. They seem to have no way out of this circle of pain.
The loved one finally departs, leaving back a promise. "Let's go to visit the Iguazu Falls!" There is the precious, sweet hope that he may return to fulfill this blind promise that he once left behind.
The hero was looking for this vague promise to self-confirm his idea of love from the beginning of the film. Their relationship will only start anew in an indeterminate point and as distant one as the Iguazu Falls.
2046 (2004)
Wong Kar Wai achieved something great here
"2046" is Wong Kar Wai at his best.
After many years of efforts and experimentation this timeless masterpiece was finally completed back in 2004.
What we have here is a spine-tingling movie-poem which can be followed regardless of whether you have seen its predecessor "In the mood for love" or not. Which I suggest you to do anyway. Another important suggestion: Watch this movie at night and not in the day. It gives you a completely different feeling.
Christmas are coming in 2046. People are feeling lonelier than ever in this time of the year. They use phones to get close to their loved ones who are very far away. It seems like a blessing of the technological civilization to be able to know so easily what the loved one is doing and if they need anything.
There is a parallelism between 1960 and 2046. Regardless of the epoch's medium a phone call is truly important. A simple phone call is so necessary that it's offered as a New Year's gift to someone, to talk on the phone with their loved one. Phone calls seem to break the flow of time, just as they break distance. They somehow also break the narrative, they suddenly give it another direction. It is a device that, by shortening the distance, generally changes the whole reality around the characters.
The clocks signals that time is passing, a practical side of life which no one can avoid. In fact, the viewer observes as a technological device overshadows the lives of the characters. These devices are the ones that force them to follow their daily routine, they are the ones that show, in the most obvious way, that nothing is eternal and infinite, that we have a bunch of limited resources, be it emotions, or money, or distance.
The characters have no time and no emotions, or tears, left to spend. Time seems to be the most pivotal element that binds all the heroes to the urban life described by Kar Wai Wong. Clocks are the ultimate regulator of the entire flow of the situation experienced by the heroes. No one can escape the necessities they point out. They are the ones that will make the hero overcome love because he has to do something. They are the ones that will remind him/her/it where he/she/it is in relation to others. All urban life is based on the timing imposed by clocks.
All of the performances in the film leave you speechless. Kar Wai's heroes seem to be lost in a long-forgotten world of the future, where they live with the memories of a past. Their thinking revolves around a loved one who stopped having feelings for them and left. Their daily life seems to be scarred by this melancholy of being left behind alone. They seem to have no way out, they are stuck in the past and it is clear that they feel crippled. There is, of course, always hope that the loved one will come back at some point...
In the end nobody wins. There lies an emotional irony inside the title. Nobody will manage to move on and reach 2046, a day of an abstract future, or just the courage to hit a door with that number mark. The hero then chooses to be forgotten and to forget forever.
The great asset of the film is the amazing music choices by Shigeru Umebayashi. They create a thick fog of desire that plunges the characters into their longed-for oblivion. The chromatic choices in the picture dress up the scenes beyond the spectrum that the human eye can perceive.
Kar Wai Wong's narrative is not the classic narrative. Stories get tangled up, or stop for now and continue later. We change main characters many times, and we even go back and forth in time.
Wong Kar Wai proves here that he is an authentic auteur who dares to go beyond any narrative style in order to create his own. He gives us an open door and a gift to be a character in his own film. If you ever manage to become a character in 2046, you will want to go back to its universe again and again and to live the entire experience all over.
Bom yeoreum gaeul gyeoul geurigo bom (2003)
This is a magical movie that you can watch again and again
Although partly inspired and strongly influenced by its predecessor "Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East? (1989)", "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring" manages to create its own universe. A universe bonded around the beautiful scenery of Jusanji pond and the artificial monastery in the lake.
The visually stunning stage and the decision to move around all four different epochs gives the movie a prosperous feeling of the eternity. The power of the element of the water adds a purifying quality to it.
I love the fact that the director was personally involved in all the stages of the production (acting involved). He manages to give us an amazing scene with him climbing his own Golgotha, as another Sisyphus, with a stone nailed to his side. A scene that we can later see him enjoying as a déjà vu in the personal documentary "Arirang".
As in life so in the movies for Mr. Kim Ki-Duk and the people who followed him. Always an outsider. What else could he have been?
Romance is involved, pain is involved... but a final karmic solution always find its way in Kim Ki-Duk's film universe.
Pos to alfavito egine ble (2017)
A very sensitive film
As the title reveals itself, this is a purely symbolic film about the difficulty of human relationships. The scars that an inevitable separation leaves - directly pass on to the next person, creating a circle of pain but also of healing.
With great aesthetic references to René Magritte and to French painters who intensively use the colours red and blue, the camera follows the pair of the protagonists closely. There are some beautiful editing techniques. The director has sensitively developed the subject and plays along with some nice visual effects.
Apart from the fact that the film is mostly dark, I feel that the end of it ties up everything in a satisfactory way, leaving you with a hopeful meaning.
Da xiang xidi erzuo (2018)
A great film
This is a great film by all means. Unique cinematography, unique directing style and a very simple and touching story that reveals the real face of modern China.
Depression, suicide syndromes, people with emptiness in their eyes.
No future, no present and an unimportant past.
The awkwardness of the camera matches perfectly with the awkwardness of the protagonists.
From the moment that I start watching I was sure that the end will not let me down. It happens with many movies of this particular atmosphere.
But it didn't. Hu Bo has a lot to say.
The duration is exactly as much as it should be.
I was waiting for many years from Asian cinema to see a film like this.
It makes itself distinct really easily from all the other movies that look so similar these days. I strongly suggest it to all cine-holics.
I dare to say that this film will stay untouchable by the years to pass, people who see it will always remember it.
Moebiuseu (2013)
Kim Ki-Duk can do better
To begin with, I put this grade with a needle in my heart. I'm a massive fan of Kim's work and I've seen everything from his masterpieces.
I'll try to be fair. I accept the fact that he's been always experimenting and I do love that he tries more and more to change the point of view in his movies.
In particular, Moebius takes an innovative - unusual way to tell the story. The movie doesn't contain any dialog; the actors are caricatures that fit perfectly in the scenery. The script is daring but it loses it somewhere. It lacks something. There is a really annoying (after some time in the movie) obsession with masturbation, there are lots of pointless violence, and the metaphors lack of the usually great Ki-Duk's connections.
The Oedipus-myth complex is clear from the start, but I can't see what new "Moebiuseu" is adding to the story.
After the movie ended, I was left cold and alone. I really didn't understand if it held any of the Kim Ki-Duk usual movies' values.
I thought that it might had been best if I had never seen "Moebiuseu", because this is the first time that this creator falls in my eyes.
Dark Shadows (2012)
Why?
Such a wonderful cast. Nice picture and scenery... and a really bad,bad,bad and nonsensical script. Shame. I think the actors were really unable to produce something better. Lots of nonsensitive humor. Tim, please, stop making movies like this one. So much money for nothing.. i prefer your old-good-innovative, short-budget projects. And I believe most of your fans are becoming tired after Sweeney Todd (which was your last decent movie). Leave the remakes. Also, the music was nonexistent in the whole movie. Lacks emotion. To sum up, Mr. Seth Grahame-Smith, i hope your next attempt will be a better one. You are young and you have future.