Catherine Denuve in a story of sexual self discovery and coming of age was always going to be a good watch and finally seeing a Luis Brunuel film doesn't hurt either.
I knew very little about the film before hand except that it was much lauded.
I watched Belle De Jour (1969) on Blu-ray via LoveFilm.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Sucker Punch (2011)...
Before i begin that polite hatchet job of Jonah Hex, i'll start with what good with it. It's short- it's 80mins (inc. 6mins of credits...). This blog's 'reason d'etre' will likely be- films are too long but 80mins is 'hell's bells, that's short' short. That's the size of a HBO pilot but with 4x the budget, which admittedly is pretty much on the screen with practical stunts and explosions. Neveldine/Taylor's script is not horrible, it's passable in so much as there are 'zingy' lines and the story's not so ambitious, it could become stodgy. Um, what else... people had work for a few months in 2009? Anyway, it's basically unmitigatingly crap. But we knew this. We'd heard. The question is why? Where does it fall down? Well everywhere really but mostly the acting. From the droney Mastodon score to the paint-by-numbers direction. Jimmy Hayward was a Pixar (no-less) animator who got lucky. Hollywood- please stop letting CGI people direct live-action films, it'll never work. I'll admit it's not as bad as when Mel Gibson let his hairdresser direct Paparazzi but that was an isolated incident. I guarantee that from now on. (Fun Fact - Jon Peters, Joel Schumacher and Danny De Vito also started as hairdressers.) I'm not going to address the role of Malkovich in this film. It's not that urgent or important to me, to do so. I could talk shit about his acting but i want to focus on Michael Fassbender. Let me just compose myself, Michael Fassbender. I'm not upset... I'm just very disappointed. So much potential gone to waste Mike... You were like 5 wins and undefeated in your short career. From Inglorious Basterds to Fishtank to Hunger. Hunger-what a sumptuous cinematic debut. And then this... Playing irish henchman #1. If that wasn't so abhorrent, you really 'mick' it up to eleven. You're a proud Irishman FFS. It was so bad, i thought you were going to ask Jonah Hex if he wanted his drive tarmac'ed. I expect it of him, he says thumbing at Malkovich. But not you Fassbender. Not you. Apparently other-modern-acting-great Michael Shannon was in this, but I don't remember seeing him sooo... congrats to him. That's the cinematic equivalent of having gym-note from your mother. Not going to lay into Megan Fox cos well, Megan Foxs are meant to be seen and not heard but Josh Brolin has the capacity to be great- very good in W. and No Country.., generally solid actor. Here- phoning it in... just faxing it in. I get overarching feeling all the actors knew this was a piece of shit, the producers set-out to make 5-showing-a-day-for- 2weeks programmer. That this was made for the short-term, not as art made to last the test of time. It's already failed last year. |
Mads Mikkelsen plays Det. Sgt. John Valhalla-(LOOLZ)- No, he's plays the laconic 'One-Eye', so called because presumably because someone superglued someone's 'ballskin' across his one eye.