cinephage Reviews

Money Heist (2017–2021)

Ridiculous

[1/10 · 6 April 2020]

Ridiculous, unbelievable, boring ! Who cares of what happens to those thugs ? After 10 minutes, I was hoping they would all be killed. Stupid nonsense and waste of time. No interest at all. I really wonder why so many people find that contemptible story about contemptible characters....

Parasite (2019)

Mostly boring

[4/10 · 14 February 2020]

The first half hour is promising. Then it turns into a catastrophe. No one can believe, even with simpletons as employers, that anyone could have hired the father and the mother who've been unemployed for so long, obviously because they're good to nothing. They're irresponsible heartless. The movie is overlong and mostly boring, the characters are unlikable. And it all ends in a screwball comedy which becomes a ridiculous gore horror movie. The screenplay is contemptible and I wonder what parts of the movie were so well directed that the director can claim having been influenced by Martin Scorsese. If I were Scorsese I'd resent it as an insult.

John Wick (2014)

Worst film ever made

[1/10 · 11 October 2019]

Ridiculous! No real script, no story, no characters. A collection of clichés. The actors can't play (and that includes Keanu Reeves). I can't believe spectators, even young ones, could like this boring and unbelievable collection of fights.

The Fallen Sparrow (1943)

Pretty boring

[4/10 · 22 December 2015]

They do nothing but talk, talk, talk. No action at all except for five seconds when Garfield shoots though supposedly drugged the arch villain (no suspense in discovering who it was, you see at first sight that he is really really bad, only Garfield doesn't know). It's a pretty dull and boring propaganda movie and to tell the truth, though I know it will be considered sacrilegious by most, Garfield's expressionist acting doesn't help. It's so outdated that the torments that seize all of a sudden the poor victim of fascism ( Garfield was jailed in fascist Spain but tortured by Nazis who wanted nobody knows what from him), making his face change and show inner terror are almost funny. Wasn't next-door nice guy Garfield really overrated as an actor ?

Le divorce (2003)

Very Pleasant movie

[8/10 · 2 November 2014]

A very pleasant and enjoyable movie with a great American cast. Paris is well photographed, France as it is and not as it shows itself in those boring, subsidized navel-gazing French movies. I said great American cast because the French actors, especially the young ones (Thiery Lhermitte is better than he usually is, but it's difficult to see what the character played by Kate Hudson found sexy in him), are awful both as actors and film stars. Especially scruffy, shallow Romain Duris but one wonders how a down to earth, sexy girl like Naomi Watts could be madly in love with such an effeminate, foolish character as pitiful Melvil Poupaud. Shows the sad state of French cinema.

Blue Is the Warmest Colour (2013)

Pretentious voyeurism

[1/10 · 1 January 2014]

This movie is just a voyeuristic movie (as were Mr. Kechiche's previous movies). Vulgar, rude, overlong and boring. When I've said this, I've said it all but as I must elaborate, I will though I will only repeat in a long way what I had written in a concise way: avoid wasting your time, avoid all of Mr. Kechiche's movies (and the coming ones too, he started with a bad one -'L'esquive" which also voyeuristic in a different way and a description of an invented reality which he pretended was true- and he manages to make worse each time). This is simply gender propaganda and Mr. Kechiche's films something he can't feel, except for the sexual excitement he gets filming actresses not pretending but going all the way (as they said after making the movie). This is really porn actually. And nothing else.

The Sniper (1952)

Boring preaching

[5/10 · 5 December 2009]

In spite of the location shooting, this crime movie (certainly not a film noir) is nothing but typical, boring Stanley Kramer fare with some police procedures, a tendency of the times. It's nothing but a much too long lecture about the necessity of preventing crime by having more psychiatrists than cops and more insane asylum than prisons. It has badly aged and is quite uninteresting actually. THe characters are unbelievable, the cops as well as the preaching psychiatrist. I guess you might call it a liberal movie (though it was the Mc Carthy era) but if you're not a liberal, not a chance to be convinced by the message in the film. The idea is "criminals are human beings too and too often, society refuses to listen to them and our indifference to those suffering souls is the main cause of crime". Add to it that the crowd is cruel and insensitive (that old lady who says "I hope they'll kill him" among others) and the film was made from the point of view of the killer and its quite misogynistic : all women are horrible (he is thus to be forgiven if he kills them) especially Miller's boss. It was a strange idea to revive it on DVD as part of the Columbia Film Noir series (Movies were mostly non-noir except the very modern "Murder by contract" directed by Irving Lerner.

Silk (2007)

As bad as the book

[1/10 · 23 February 2008]

The novel could not be more faithful to the novel than it is. It's overlong, boring (as was the very short book) : junk orientalism could define it best. No interest whatsoever. I wonder why someone would think of making a full length movie of something was would not have been worth a half hour t.v. show (even in that format it would have seemed too long). It's a pity, Keira Knightley is a good actress, I wonder what she is doing in this doomed enterprise of a movie that has all the shortcomings of this sort of movie, including void aestheticism. The director wants the spectators to leave the cinema thinking "The pictures were really beautiful" hoping they'll forget how empty and boring the whole movie is.

Caché (2005)

Caché : dull and boring.

[1/10 · 31 January 2008]

"Caché" is dull, boring, full of clichés, made for a masochistic middle class, intellectual public who identifies himself it the character and his "guilt" which is totally absurd. Why would a balanced, psychologically sane grown-up man feel guilty for something he did when he was a child ? In fact what Mr Haneke likes to do is shock is public 5did he try to do anything else with his "La Pianiste" ?. It takes ages to come to the climax"shock" scene (which almost made me laugh actually ). As for the suspense, it is totally absent. Can anyone really care about what happen to those dull, uninteresting people ? And his Algerian friendly enemy ? When the film ends, my only thought was : is that all ? Much ado about nothing. And Juliette Binoche has never been that ugly before...

The Constant Gardener (2005)

a case of bad casting

[5/10 · 11 January 2006]

This is a film so full of good intentions that one regrets to have to say bad things about it. It is at best a mediocre adaptation of a good novel. The novel is politically aware, balanced, suspenseful. A good political thriller in which Le Carré renews his inspiration. The main flaw of the film is, of course, a serious error of casting : Rachel Weisz is not at all the character of the book, a small-time activist with no charisma, a typical NGO militant. The role called for a real star or at least a star in becoming, which miss Weisz certainly is not. She shows her pregnancy in the slums of Naraibo (should I say the favellas)and is filmed in a pseudo-documentary style which I find totally unconvincing. The black French doctor (sorry, I forgot his name) is even less convincing than she is, as far as personality is concerned. We wanted a Denzel Washington of some sort for a film which is, though it tries to pretend the contrary, totally hollywoodian in its manicheism (the novel was much more subtle). Ralph Fiennes is tolerable in the main part and Danny Huston not bad all (but the twist in the end, the redemption of his character, lest his friend died for nothing, is totally unbelievable.)

The only thing worth saving, really, is the aerial views of lake Turkana. And the flights of the flamingos. But maybe I'm biased there, it reminds me of a wonderful trip some 20 years ago in this forsaken land... jeep not plane though...