captain_dimpf Reviews

Where Is the Friend's House? (1987)

Where was Kiarostami's feature length script?

[5/10 · 4 April 2023]

Is it really clever to call a movie "Where is my friend's house" and then set up the problem in the first 5 minutes, so that everyone has a pretty good idea what to expect for the rest of the movie? Pair that with slick camerawork and direction and the tendency of the educated classes to portray villagers as likeable dorks and you have an utterly predictable and boring movie that not even the cutest kid's face can save from mediocrity.

I think the script would have been suitable for a short, 15 minutes tops, cause in order to pad it up to full length, dialogues here usually feel like a broken record. I guess this works all very well towards characterising the rural population as likeable dorks, but I think it's just lazy writing. Never mind the plot holes. For instance, if you would get expelled from school, if you lost your notebook just one more time, wouldn't you make sure, everything is accounted for when you leave school? But of course, our protagonist doesn't check, so that the movie can happen.

Promising Young Woman (2020)

been there, seen that, a dull script that is

[4/10 · 30 March 2023]

The plot is set up like your run of the mill revenge movie but what makes this stand out is that the main character is so unlikable that you don't really care one way or the other and as the real victim is only talked about and never shown it's hard to root for her either.

So Carey Mulligan is portraying a 30 year old med school drop out. The problem is, she looks like 40 in this movie although she was only 35 at the time of shooting. Because of that, everything felt contrived to me. She spends most of her free time in bars and nightclubs pretending to be drunk only to surprise the men who pick her up to take advantage of her with her sudden sober act. To me that is just a bit too far fetched. Why would you do that day in day out? Men don't really like comatose women. It could be that if you just wait long enough someone will come along and try something unethical but in general that kind of drunkenness is a huge turn off. So I don't know what the whole purpose of this activity is, except for self loathing.

There is this tendency in contemporary movies that strong, independent women have to be portrayed as rude and grumpy. I don't know why. It makes it rather unlikely that men would fall in love with her. So this intermingled love story here seems to be not very believable cause you don't really fall for someone who has no interests at all cause that would make her a dull character. I didn't buy it at all.

So the love interest is mainly there so that the movie can happen, cause that prompts her to meet with the culprits of the gang rape that went down ages ago. Nothing of that makes any sense, cause being obsessed as she is with what has happened to her friend, she could have sought out the people involved anytime. Their identities and whereabouts are no secret.

All male characters in this movie are so hopelessly stereotyped and one dimensional, that I can't take any of this serious cause it just doesn't seem real. I simply don't know anyone remotely like that.

As for the ending, I guess it's suppose to be a twist but by then I didn't care at all. I mean, here is Europe our judicial system is not based on revenge so if you want to make revenge seem enticing to us, that it comes along as a pay off, you definitely need a better build up.

Oh yeah, and the music was kinda cringy.

Do Revenge (2022)

Is todays youth really that dull?

[2/10 · 18 September 2022]

When I went to school I had an interest in cinema, literature, music and art. Sure, I had a crush on someone, but I don't really remember whom exactly. I still recall the movies though, that made a big impression on me back then. It was Dr. Strangelove by Kubrick and Cut-de-Sac by Polanski (amongst others).

Apparently today the only interest teenagers have, is what other people think of them.

Here everyone is jealous, petty, miserable, envious, self-centred, vain, unlikable all the time, but for some strange reason only the white male character turns out to be a bad one. Seriously, everyone is constantly talking about themselves, and since they are all boring to begin with, it makes for a really really tedious script.

There is no-one to root for and as all characters appear equally annoying, you don't care who takes revenge on whom, and frankly, from halfway on through this yawnfeast neither do the characters themselves.

Everything is shot in super clean tv commercial style, like people live in inside a tacky sales catalogue. The costumes, the cars, the flats, it's as no-one involved here with the set design or script has ever been out into the real world. To top it off all emotional turning points get smothered with the most corny mainstream pop song crap.

RRR (2022)

painfull in almost every way

[2/10 · 24 June 2022]

Truth be told. I didn't finish this movie. It's over three hours and so dull and predictable that I thought there was hardly any point in wasting any more of my precious time.

I don't even know where to start. Probably with the culture shock. I tried to watch an Indian series once and couldn't do it because of the bad acting, but I realised now, it's probably not bad acting, it's just Indian acting and it is supposed to be that way. It reminds me a bit how acting in European films has been during the silent era. It's not very subtle and doesn't leave room for any ambiguity. Also the various stereotypes of heroes, villains and innocents are so old fashioned, it becomes unintentionally funny at times. I guess the Brits did some bad stuff, while they were over there, but this narrativ where every Brit is a sadistic and brutal moron whereas all Indians are brave and noble beings is laid on a bit thick. Turkish films are like that as well. To me it seems aimed an an audience who like their world to be very, very simple indeed.

Also, and I say that as an editor, I found it clumsily edited. The overuse of slo-mo aside, to me there is no flow in the cut. Static frames are cut way too quick and movement very rarely picks up from where it was left off in the take before, thus even the carefully choreographed actions scenes seem eerily wooden. And they drag on forever.

This is probably another specific Indian trait, seeng that 3 hour movies are totally common over there, but I found the pacing excruciatingly slow, because you always know what is going to happen next and you just sit there waiting for it to be over until you can't take it anymore.

So much stuff here seems to be done just for the sake of it, regardless if it propels the story forward or not. The imagery is far to clean and you never have the feeling you are in India at the beginning of the last century. Instead you feel like you are in an endless propaganda commercial of 2022. Not my cup of tea really.

Watch Out, We're Mad (1974)

watch out, we're morons

[2/10 · 2 June 2022]

I watched this movie when it came out in 1974. I was seven at the time and thought it was hilarious. Rewatching it now, I must admit that it hasn't aged very well, or may it's just me, that I've grown up.

The pacing is incredibly slow; that's because there is no story, really. For example, you have a beer and hot dog eating contest scene that drags on for 10 Minutes. Seriously, who wants to see two middle aged men eating hot dogs in a slightly unappetising manner for 10 minutes.

Then there are the slapstick fight scenes that Spencer/Hill are famous for. They drag on for ever and ever with the same moves, the same punches, the same kicks. There is no suspense, no excitement, no elegance, no humour. Bud Spencer made a career out of one facial expression and one sound effect. Well so did Harrison Ford I guess, but here everything is so utterly predictable, that it becomes the definition of boredom.

I feel slightly ashamed that I considered Hill/Spencer as cool, when I was a kid. They are rude to almost everyone, especially to the members of the service industry, like hair dressers, waiters and chauffeurs. Those people are stuck in low payed jobs trying to make a living and don't need to be bullied by the likes of Spencer and Hill. I know it's only a movie, but it's just the wrong message. You should be kind to people, especially the ones that serve you.

No one here is having any passion for anything, no warmth, no interests, no joy of living. Even Spencer and Hill never really seem to like each others company. Were the seventies really that depressing? Who wants to live like that. People tell me there is an ease and lightness to their don't-care-attitude, but I think they are ultimately depressing and dull characters.

Well, and every conflict get's solved by violence. The fanboys argue, that it's not real violence cause there is no blood and stuff, but downplaying violence makes it even worse and pointless at that. And yet these movies are held in high regard by so many people. I guess the Spence/Hill formula being so predictable and repetitive is very reassuring for the fanbase. I don't wanna be negative here, but is a little character development, a bit of imaginative camerawork and traces of a story really too much to ask for. Of course, those things weren't on peoples mind, when they queued for those flicks. I guess in the same way that Baywatch is about buxom girls in swimsuits jogging down the beach in slow motion, Spencer/Hill movies are about two guys being smug, the rest doesn't really matter. When I was seven I wanted to be as smug as them, but then I learned that there is so much more to life and now their appeal eludes me completely.

The Guilty (2021)

You don't root for whiny people

[3/10 · 6 February 2022]

I like Jake Gyllenhaal and think he is a decent actor, but this movie is a one-man show and relies completely on him and I dare say, he is way over his head in this one. If I would be pressed to describe the movie in one word, I would say 'Whiny'! Whiny is ok if it is matched with some normal tone or behaviour but here it seems everyone is whiny all the time so that really reduces the impact of whininess as such. They actually try to match the whininess with some aggression but it feels forced and out of place.

There is a plot twist after two thirds but it basically shifts the focus from one whiny character to another whiny character, both of which you don't see but only get to know through their whiny voices so what do you care. I didn't. As it is with such movies, you feel immense relief once the whining stops, though that only happens shortly before the credits roll in.

Booksmart (2019)

Scriptdumb rather

[3/10 · 8 July 2020]

The acting, the camerawork, the directing, the editing, it's all average, it's not particularly bad, so normally I would give it a five out of ten. Well the script is bit of a downer, but it would still be a four. What makes this movie so unbearable to watch, is it's pointlessness, it's redundancy and ultimately the bad name it gives female driven comedy. See it's sets out to be a female version of your typically Highschool Nerd flick like Superbad, and it is desperate to prove that nerdy girls can be as funny as nerdy boys, when in fact it proves exactly the opposite and that is devastating for the gender equality movement. But I finally get the South Park jokes where Cartman claims that girls can't be funny and when the try nonetheless, the say vagina a lot. But we all know that girls can be funny. Emma Stone, is the first that springs to mind, but the moment a movie relies on one of the protagonists to be fat, in order to be funny, you know they're in deep trouble. Casting a fat girl just doesn't make her a female Jonah Hill. It's not that simple.

I felt boredom throughout this cringeworthy movie, and writing about it a day later is surprisingly hard cause I forgot about it almost as soon as the end credits rolled in. Mental self-defence, I guess. But this much I remember: In it's total predictability, it strings together one stereotype and cliché to the the next, be it characters or key scenes, all of which you have seen a million times before and far better at that. The acting is permanently way over the top, leaning towards a slapstick humour that is generally associated with cheap teen flicks from the seventies. At first I had hoped it was done ironically, but that turned out to be wishful thinking. So yeah, pointless at best but ultimately really a severe setback, when you as a feminist like me, try to advocate for more female directors and script writers.

Ocean's Eight (2018)

Stealing is wrong

[3/10 · 4 March 2020]

That's just it. You should not steal. Unless you need to cause you are hungry and there are no jobs, or you mother is sick and there is no healthcare. Yet all the folks here seem to be pretty rich to begin with. It starts with the Sandra character being released from Prison and she starts stealing straight away. I guess this is supposed to be funny, cause she is on parole. And as the film is making a point that she is stealing from a posh store, I guess that should make it ok. But I don't know anything about the policy of said store, it being fictional and all, but in real life quite often the salesgirl on duty has to recompense for everything that get's stolen while she is handling the checkout, so stealing is still wrong. I would forgive all of that if it would make for an entertaining movie, but sadly enough, this is not the case. I guess this is suppose to be a comedy, but is not funny at all. Everything is so predictable and there is literally nothing that we haven't seen before one way or the other. There is a kinda twist at the end, but by then the viewer has stopped caring a long long time ago. After all, what does it matter to us if the criminals go home with two, or 16 million apiece.

Dunkirk (2017)

Heroes and errrr, more heroes

[5/10 · 29 December 2017]

I for once think that Nolan is painfully overrated. True, he did two top notch movies, but everything that came after 'Following' and 'Memento' I found rather average. In fact, I had the distinct feeling that he lost it along the way, so when the rave reviews for Dunkirk came in, I decided to give it another go and see if I had to reevaluate. First of all, Dunkirk looks amazing, great cinematography, but so do heaps of other films that come out today. Everything else left me slightly deflated. Especially the corny music. Seriously I thought you would need a slightly more original approach, if you wanted to belt out another WWII Movie in 2017. For some strange reason I was expecting something I hadn't seen a so many times before. I was hoping for the unbearable pain of waiting on the beach. Instead you get you run of the mill war stories complete with the heroic spitfire pilot, the patriotic old guy, the noble admiral, the good hearted rookie. You get the dive bomber attack, you get the running out of fuel problem, you get the 'oh-my-god-I-m-sinking-and-this-hatch-is-stuck' cliffhanger, you get the sinking ships, emergency landings, getting saved in the nick of time. I don't know, as my understanding, the evacuation of Dunkirk was spectacular and unique. Unfortunately, this film isn't.

Paterson (2016)

dull, or was that the point?

[5/10 · 11 November 2017]

Has Jarmusch lost it or were his films always this irrelevant and pointless? Everything in this film is so average and lackluster, it seems deliberate. The acting, the camera-work, the editing, the dialogue are so mediocre, one wonders if this is supposed to be a statement on the meaningless of life. And then there are so many things that one might have considered funny or endearing 20 years ago (Laura's obsession with black and white design, a dog that looks funny, a lopsided letterbox, a whining colleague, etc) but today they just seem utterly trite and obsolete. I know, films don't have to be realistic but all through the 2 excruciatingly dull hours, you can't help but wonder how this nondescript bus driver who writes crappy poems managed to get a model type girlfriend. I wouldn't really care, if there was anything in there that would pique my interest, or if their romance was portrayed in an interesting way, if there was any twist to it, but the opposite seems to be the case. It seems to be constructed as a celebration of dullness. If you don't have anything to say, just stop making films Jim.

Jurassic World (2015)

No Surprises

[6/10 · 23 February 2017]

Look, I enjoyed this film, OK. Dramawise everything was in place and the two kids were so unlikable, that you actually enjoyed when they were getting the scare of their lives. Of course, the plot is a tad too predictable in that it just recycles the story line of old Jurrasic flicks, i.e., greed trumps common sense and safety last. There is just one thing that doesn't make sense at all. If the marketing team of Jurassic World is in desperate need for a new Park sensation, why oh why design a Dinosaur that looks and behaves pretty much like the T Rex. I get it, they need that for the final Boss Fight, but there it becomes so blatantly obvious that the new monster is exactly like the old monster, so much as I had trouble to figure out which one was which.

True Legends of the West (2001)

one for awful

[1/10 · 30 August 2016]

You know that something with the voting system of IMDb is seriously wrong, when a film like this has a higher score than 'Ida' by Pawel Pawlikowski. This here is not even funny, let alone watchable. I mean personal preferences aside, and no need to be hoity toity about things but come on, there has to be some trace of quality to have a score higher than 5,0 on a scale of ten. But this film is just terrible.

It's not even bad enough to be good. And I don't really know what the point of getting the score of an awful film up to 7.8 is anyway, if no-one is going to enjoy it. It just makes you hate everyone involved in it. If someone in all honesty enjoyed this film, please step forward and I rest my case.

The Intouchables (2011)

too corny for my taste

[4/10 · 27 March 2016]

Isn't this movie rather racist, seeing that the black guy is portrayed as violent, horny, unsophisticated, rude and criminal. And the guy that this character is based upon wasn't even black to begin with.

But of course, being black, he can dance like there is no tomorrow. But what the heck, stereotyped aside, I found this whole venture far too predictable and aiming at easy laughs. Like when he sold the black guy's painting for 11000 Euro or making fun of the Opera. Sure the majority of people have no interest in modern art or opera, but if you want to make fun of those, does it always have to be that straightforward?

Also, when Driss starts working at the posh place, he needs only a couple of days to become friends with everyone, a few misunderstandings, but from then on the two oh-so-different people get along so fine, that you might wonder where the drama is. Oh right, it's a comedy. So the black guy threatens the daughter's ex-boyfriend into bringing croissants to the mansion each day. Because obviously, threatening other people is another thing that black people are really good at. So this teenager apparently feels threatened enough to bring croissants to these overly rich people very day. Says the housekeeper one morning: Can you bring some more tomorrow because we're having a brunch? Like, if you dig that kind of humour, you might really enjoy this movie, but if you hated 'Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis' as much as I did, you're in for a big disappointment.

Daredevil (2015–2018)

pointless

[2/10 · 27 March 2016]

8.8 out of 10? Are you smegging kidding me? This is one of the worst TV series I've ever watched. What makes it so bad and unbearable, you might ask? Pointless fistfights alternate with pointless dialog. And they drag on for hours and hours. Seriously, I thought the obsession with fistfights went out with the first Star trek series and I was convinced with the latest ventures of Batman, Iron Man, Jessica Jones, to name just a few, the super hero Genre had been redefined to some degree. You know, put some humour and self irony into it. Something you won't find in Dare Devil, no matter how hard you look. Also, from very early on I wondered, why is he blind, like he doesn't seem to have any restrictions from his blindness, so there is no point for him to be blind in the first place. Sure, his hearing has been enhanced so they go for the compulsory heartbeat in every smegging episode, but otherwise fail to explain how exactly Daredevil compensates for his lost eyesight.

Archer (2009–2023)

laugh out loud, in real life for a change

[9/10 · 27 March 2016]

This is one of the funniest TV Shows I've ever seen. It's almost as subversive as South Park. True, season one is not that funny, but it picks up after that and then just get's better and better. Once you are familiar with all the characters it's just outright hilarious all the way through. The pacing, the in-jokes, the unpredictable plot is just very well done. I don't think you even need to be familiar with the James Bond franchise to appreciate the humour.

Everyone has their favourite character apparently, or at least one that comes up with the best one-liners. I was very happy for Dr. Krieger to get more air time in the later instalments, but after the end of season 6 Cheryl Tunt is my absolute favourite. Everything she says is just so spot on. Give it a try and at least make it till the end of the second season to determine if it's your kind of humour.

The American Dreamer (1971)

who gives a flying' donkeys?

[2/10 · 15 February 2016]

Calling this a documentary gives the whole genre a bad name. So overwhelming was the success of Easy Rider that they thought it was enough for a feature film to send out a camera team to follow Denis Hopper around for a few days and record his incoherent and rather boring ramblings. No script, no idea, no plan, nothing to say at all. I kinda liked him up until now but here her comes across a vain and self centered nitwit. It makes you really happy that those hippie days are over.

One of the many low points in this home movie is, when beard stroking and chain smoking Hopper muses on the fact that he rather gives good head then f*** a beautiful woman and you sense that he is quite pleased with himself for being such a modern man. Sadly enough he destroys the overall effect when he asked his female sidekick if she considers this weird, and instead of letting her reply cuts her short and rambles on about himself being a Lesbian. So much for his respect towards women. I wish I could quote some of Hopper's platitudes to prove how boring and silly they are but as they are all so unmemorable, I can't recall any. Did I mention the horrible soundtrack? Kinda drawing by numbers Hippie Folk Music that makes you wanna smash the acoustic guitar over the singers head after the first few lines. Did I mention the nudity? Well if you have any desire to witness you hippie parents pretending to have fun with a threesome snog feast in the bathtub, you gonna have a field day here. Anyone else, stay clear.

Shine a Light (2008)

The opposite of Rock'n'Roll

[2/10 · 19 July 2014]

Old and rich people play in front of old and rich people filmed by someone old and rich. Oh yeah, and they casted a couple of hundred young girls to dance dreamily in the front row. How can a band that once was so good become so awful?! OK, apparently nowadays Keith can't play to save his life and Mick's singing (and stage behavior) has become a a parody of his former self. Charlie's drumming is still good though. But they have background singers, a brass section and various keyboards trying to make up for what the Glimmer Twins can no longer deliver. As for the footage. Well Scorsese has 15 cameras whizzing to and fro and it's well shot and edited, but it just makes you wanna go back to Gimme Shelter (the Maysles Brothers film from 1970). Back then they had only two or three 16mm cameras to cover the shows but what the heck, the outcome was so much more Rock'n'Roll and back then the Stones were relevant. Here, everyone tries so hard to have fun, everyone pretends that this is the real thing when frankly everyone can see that it is rather pathetic and utterly pointless.

Empire of the Sun (1987)

Ignorance is Bliss

[4/10 · 30 June 2014]

Steven Spielberg is a funny guy. He wants us to believe that the dropping of the first nuclear bombs that resulted in the death of 250 000 people, mostly civilians, was like 'God taking a photograph'. Hey, Mass Murder of Women and Children is great, if it means that this poor little American kid finally gets something to eat. How arrogant can you get, really? This film illustrates nicely why American movies are every so often of little interest to anyone outside of America, especially if they deal with international themes. Never ever occurs it to anyone involved that there is probably a view apart from that of the western world, and so the whole complexity of the Chinese/Japanese war is reduced to how much fun our jolly British fellow has in the Prisoners Camp. Oh yeah, and the boy is pretty annoying, though I bet he's supposed to represent the curious and adventurous spirit of the white upper class. John Malkovich is the only redeeming quality as far as I can tell.

Scandal (2012–2018)

Forgive me please

[1/10 · 15 March 2014]

I'm not quite sure why this series annoyed me as much as it did. Well, I think the music is really horrible, the separating cut scenes are irritating, the main character is such a stereotype, the rest of the cast is equally unimaginative, the dialog is lackluster, the acting is wooden, the plot is trying too hard and the set design is just so contrived. You know, that doesn't make for top notch TV entertainment in my book but at the same time it really doesn't explain why I found this so painful to watch. I guess it's because there is so much high quality stuff out there and you can immediately see what series the creators of Scandal draw inspiration from. Which series they try to rip off. As there is no original idea here and everything is so predictable that you inevitably wait for this to be done with, I will give this a very with berth from now on. But don't let that put you off.

Misfits (2009–2013)

Juvenile Delinquents deserve much better

[3/10 · 31 October 2013]

I sat through the first season and tried to figure out what made this series so damn annoying. Sure the the outset is pretty silly, but I think it's supped to be, the acting is a bit clumsy at times but that's not it. Maybe the way they constantly pump out not so trendy pop music over half of the scenes in a desperate attempt to give them more emotional depth. The pointless twist in the senseless plot? No, what's really cringeworthy irritating from the first episode on are the stereotyped characters that are so over the top that from the third episode on I hoped they would kind of all die soon. There is this Ian Curtis lookalike shyster, always on the brink of stuttering, of course he is looking for romance online and has the manic stare. Then there is the black sportsman turned druggie, the Scottish bitch, the Latino tart and most annoying of all the cheeky loudmouth. I assume the dialog is supposed to be funny but comes across as awfully contrived half of the time. I reckon it's what happens when white forty something scriptwriters have a spirited guess at what the next generation talks like. Did I mention the special effects? Wow, like the black lad that can turn back time. Every time he does you get a close up of his eye while they rewind the tape in his iris. Pretty impressive, ey? The shyster turning invisible? They never tire of the Horror Body technique that was first used in Jacob's Ladder some 20 years earlier. Oh yeah, and they got carried away with the soft focus filter in the post production. You can see they tried very hard to make it sharp, fresh and entertaining and obviously some people dig it, but hey, I'm told there are also a great many who enjoy 'friends'.

Before the Revolution (1964)

it's a grower

[16 October 2011]

It's strange to think that Bertolucci was only 23 when he did this film, but then it makes perfect sense cause the story loosely centers around a young man approaching adulthood. It's even stranger to realize that only 8 years later he directed 'The Last Tango in Paris' where his protagonist already experiences his midlife crises. Back in 1964 Bertolucci's main interest was not story telling but rather to find a new visual language to portray his generation. Heavily influenced by the Nouvelle Vague, Godard in particular, that he even mentions at some length here, Bertolucci is eager to break with as many (cinematographic) conventions as possible, but the imagery he develops in the process is so beautiful that this is a delight to watch from beginning to end. Also it serves as a reminder that there was actually a time when there seemed to be an alternative to capitalism, though the revolution is only talked about. The whole thing works like a kaleidoscope or mosaic of the time. At first I had trouble to follow the plot because scenes don't necessarily respond to each other in a cause and effect kinda way but once I realized that an ongoing story is not what this is about I was able to relax and enjoy the scenery even more. And though our heroes suffer from first signs of disillusion, back then everything seemed possible, whether it was changing our society or changing the aesthetics of cinema. What interesting times.

Black Swan (2010)

Do believe the Hype (I can't believe I just said that)

[9/10 · 16 October 2011]

I'm always wary when a director I really care about hits it big time cause we've been let down before but Aronofsky actually pulls it off. Nothing here that you haven't seen before one way or the other: A struggling ballet dancer on the verge of her breakthrough; an unhealthy mother-daughter dependency, an alter ego in the shape of a beautiful competitor, an aging star that goes berserk, yet everything about this film comes together beautifully: the script, the acting, the pace, but what I cared about most was the subtle camera-work. For instance, in the grand finale, the opening night of Swan Lake when it's all of nothing for our enduring heroine, the temptation would be to employ a great many camera movements with dolly and cranes and whatnot inter-cut with an awestruck audience when Nina dances her way to towards the climax but Aronofsky resists the temptation and instead relies on a refreshing down to earth approach with hand-held cameras that make you really feel as if you were part of the action. Likewise he avoids all the inevitable clichés with breathtaking finesse. At the core of this lies Nina's madness and the only film I can think of that matches the creepy feel of Black Swan would be Polanski's Rosemary's Baby. How she catches her mirror reflection scratching at her back or the scene where her toes have grown together are just the tip of the iceberg. Natalie Portman does a really great job of portraying this desperately eager dancer. Her intense acting allows Aronofsky to plunge right into the action instead of taking his time to build up the character, thus the film clocks in at a little over 100 minutes, which I find really admirable cause I reckon everyone else had dragged it out at least for 2 hours. Why can't there be more mainstream movies like this.

Gerhard Richter Painting (2011)

Leave him alone

[15 October 2011]

Gerhard Richter is an old man who doesn't like to be interviewed, who doesn't like to be filmed and who doesn't like to talk about his paintings. He's also a very famous German artist and though he obviously couldn't care less about this film, some clever marketing executive said, hell, we do it anyway, cause he is so damn famous, once this film is out, the middle class intellectuals will flock into the cinema in order to feel sophisticated in the virtual presence of a true artist. Sadly enough, judging by the crowd it attracted when I went so see it, it worked pretty well. My main gripe with this film is that Corinna Belz, who I take to be some TV journalist, has no concept for this full length documentary. Apparently she was under the illusion that it's enough to just stumble into the studio of such a genius, turn on the camera and then the magic will unfold. Well, sadly enough, it doesn't. In fact nothing happens and Corinna's inane off camera questions (How long did it take you?) don't help either. But then she is not bold enough to concentrate on the one thing that does in fact happen, namely, Gerhard Richter in the process of painting; no, spoiled by television aesthetics the edit never lingers too long on the act itself but feels compelled to jet to New York and London for a more cosmopolitan flair. But whenever I was on the brink of nodding off I was jolted back to attention by archive footage from the sixties where an eloquent and rather angry Richter is talking about his approach towards art. That would have been the proper time to make a documentary like this. Back then when he was still able to express himself coherently, when he was on the peak of his artistic powers, when he wasn't the weary and rather tired superstar he is now. Another venerable approach would have been to actually tell us something about his art, his significance in todays art world, but no one here has the guts to do so. He created so many great paintings, but this film doesn't do him any justice. He apparently wants to be left alone in his studio so that he can concentrate on his art. Whatever happened to decorum in the film industry. Just because he is old, doesn't mean his wishes should be ignored, especially when the resulting film is as nondescript as this.

Waste Land (2010)

good cause, bad art

[5/10 · 15 October 2011]

Is a good cause an excuse to produce bad art? Not in my book. And there is even less reason to make a film about it. It's an entertaining watch, I'll give them that. Beautiful shots of a Brazilian dump teeming with pickers and scavenging birds are best viewed from the comforts of you local independent cinema. The music swells to a heartwarming crescendo when the goodhearted artist takes that poor Brazilian waste picker to London on his first journey into the first world. And the artist, being a true philanthropist, doesn't stop at showing handpicked members of the Brasilan underclass, what his flashy world is like, no he makes sure from the start that the final profits of his pictures will go straight to those poor bastards. While the lucky sod breaks down and weeps as the picture is auctioned for 28000 pounds, Vik Muniz even takes the time to give him a short introduction into modern art.

What makes this so unbearable to watch is the artist's complete lack of irony and, well shall I say humbleness, and the filmmaker can't be too keen on that either. Fairly early in the proceedings Vik and his wife sit in front of the computer screen that depicts Brasilians largest landfill and the artist announces proudly that this is where he is going to live for the next two years, while he, his wife and the audience knows pretty well that he's not going to do anything of that sort. But now we know what Lucy Walker is trying to tell us and we feel cheated. Namely that here we have a man who deeply cares about his fellow citizens, but if he really was the altruistic person that this film tries to makes us believe, he would have been more concerned about the plight of the people and less with portraying himself as this selfless do-gooder. This culminates in the scene when, towards the end - all the money came in already- the artist asks the black underdog if, at the very beginning when this crazy artist showed up on the dump, and told him about his vision of making art out of garbage, if he (the underdog) had realistically believed it would amount to anything, let alone a major show at the National Museum in Rio, the underdog is humbled into sheer awe, when in fact he should have answered: Well, as you had a full camera team with you, to document every step you did, I had an inkling that the whole thing would have an happy ending:' And maybe he even said something like that but it sure as hell got cut out for the final edit, cause although the director wants us to believe otherwise, the whole thing seems staged.

Broken Embraces (2009)

What a let down

[1/10 · 15 October 2011]

Well under normal circumstances I would never go to the cinema to watch a film that is called 'Broken Embraces' but I thought maybe it didn't translate that well from Spanish. I should have been warned. I couldn't help but feel that people flock in to watch such uninspired middle class boredom on the sole ground that Almodóvar did some decent film some time ago. In fact in my view he is the Spanish Woody Allen. Someone who is long past his sell by date but has no trouble getting his films financed because the producers know how inert the target audience of this mainstream art-house crap is. Everything about this film is sloppy and lacklustre. The script, the acting, the camera, the set design. Of course, in a desperate attempt to fill the resulting emptiness with meaning, the director falls back on referring to the history of film. Is there no law against it? Surely Rossellini deserves better than being abused for this kind of fun. Ever since Fellini's 8 1/2 we know that directors have run out of ideas when they start to make films about making films but while Fellini cleverly made a film about someone who had run out ideas, Almodovar tried to pretend, that he has still something to tell. And failed miserably.