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Reviews
Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014)
Nonsensical and offensive for who likes cinema
I wouldn't waste time highlighting what i didn't like of this movie, instead, it would be faster to tell you what i did like: nothing.
Another VFX enthusiastic "director", a rich cast of actors humiliating themselves playing in this sort of joke of a movie; and i'm not even started yet. "You re being too hard, its a kid's movie..." oh yeah? Using words like son of a B***h , N****r ecc. Totally out of context and freely? With at least a couple of five minutes sequences of a "secret agent" killing people as he was some unleashed maniac ? (but he was doing it for his country so ok) ... but that is not the point i want to make, im not some parents association advocate.. the movie is just ugly, "ugly for the sake of being ugly". The screenplay is a derailing train, totally out of control and full of holes filled with some good old nonsensical "funny" violence. And important moral values are presented such as (british/american) patriotism, fear of terrorism, you know...the good stuff. When i saw that this movie rating is 7 i just couldnt believe my eyes. I was expecting like ok not everyone'll have the tough opinion i have of this movie but...seven?? Seven means a GOOD movie. Lots of movies that have a 5/10 rating outclass this mess, this excuse for a movie. Bad taste, of who wrote it, directed it, worked for it...bad taste, like the one the movie leaves you with once it ends.
P.s. :I'm just surprised that marvel didn't produce the film, cause the quantity of nonsense and visual effects was enough to be one of their movies. I put one star not because is the real rating i would put (4.5 max) but to balance out the yet too high rating it has.
Prima della rivoluzione (1964)
This compared to Godard? Not even close
In my cinema studies i learned how this movie is considered a masterpiece of italian modern cinema and watching it (more than one time) just didnt help understand why. This movie is also compared to Godard and the Nouvelle Vague style, same Nouvelle Vague that welcomed the movie when it premiered, while italian critique of the time didnt appreciate it as well. Bertolucci was 23 when he did this movie so it is understandable that the work isn't totally flawless, but, how it happened many time in film history (especially italian) some movies are overrated just because an important critique applauded it or, like in this case, cause of the future work of the director. Let's talk frankly: if the young Bertolucci after this movie would have left the movie director career no one, i mean NO ONE would even know about the existence of this film. Let's talk about the film.
I am not going to analyze every aspect nor the story in its entireness cause it would take too much time. First of all the comparison with Godard; more than a familiarity it is an imitation to me, and sometimes i found that pretty lazy. The famous "glasses scene" for example: it reminds of Godard sure, but it feels like it's just thrown out there with not much thinking behind it. The dimension of joke, of the godardian irony, isn't the style, doesn'fit in this movie (that is more like ideologic/political and romantic); some compared FabriZio and Michel (from "a bout de souffle") while in my opinion they have nothing in common; Fabrizio has an high opinion of himself, he goes around lecturing his friends about communism like it is the only thing that really matters, he is always serious, when not with that sad/empty/unhappy look on his face. Fabrizio is in "great pain" cause truthfully he knows that marrying Clelia would be the easiest and more comfortable thing to do meanwhile he's in an affair with her aunt (and that's creepy cause Stendhal, the author of the novel that inspired the movie, wrote that 120 years earlier, i understand the "not caring of social/moral values" but times are changed my friend, in sixties people already know about the risk (for the child) of sexual relations with blood relatives...). Fabrizio is just boring and rethorical , nothing make you empathize with him. On the other hand Michel Poiccard from Godard's "A bout de souffle" is an interesting character, he fully lives his life, takes his chances, and even though he is a thief, a killer, a no good he still has an appeal on the viewer (that paradoxically is repeatedly made fun of and insulted by him);
While Fabrizio is a Stereotype of the politically engaged youngster that (in the end) don't even practice what he preaches, Michel is a guy that know what he wants and he spend time acting for that, instead of lecturing people and make up political/romantic nonsense. About the style similarities: i think that Godard style is coherent with HIS OWN movies, his own scripts that game he engages with the viewer, the irony, the joke; this same style taken and used out of context on one hand hardly fit, on the other hand i think it even deminishes the style itself, making it look (like in "before the revolution") just an editing error. The locations: One is in Paris, great city full of lights, movement, one is in Parma, a miedieval, close minded, country side little city...and that says a lot.
P. S. I don't appreciate a bit the view of women that this movie would like to give: just objects, things that are there to please/make feel important men, the one that has the right to choose his doll, while they are there waiting (stepping further and further away from Godard)
In the end it is not a bad movie, i gave 4 stars as a personal judgement and i understand who likes it but in the complex i didn't appreciate it much. Sorry for my english.
L'avventura (1960)
Between boredom and rage
As I said in the title, my feelings for this movie are right in between of those two. Boredom, for a lot of meaningless and unbearable scenes and dialogues, especially in the second half of the picture; rage, for the one i felt towards those characters. Speaking of which , there's no character you should like or love: Anna, the bored girl, the personification of emptiness, dull pessimism, literally a figure consistent as the air; Sandro, the envious man with lot of regrets that is incapable of loving something and that would jump into bed with everything that breathes; Claudia, the "bimbo" (a dear friend of Anna..), that sacrifices herself to escort Sandro in the desperate research of Anna, with so much commitment and desperation that they nearly go to bed together after a few hours, that two days after she has known Sandro "wants all that HE wants". The climax of the hate i felt for them is maybe in the last scene, where a jealous Claudia finds the "love of his life" kissing and cuddling with a prostitute (an expensive one) in the hall of the hotel they are staying in, she runs out in the balcony, and she cries, desperate (as if she thought that a man that didn't spare a tear for his ex, that could be dead or worse, had loyalty towards her, his new doll...) Sandro runs to her, not before paying the prostitute, and after that....he cries too, the poor little boy... and as if that wasn't enough, she forgives him.
I can say of myself many things, but for sure I don't get bored easily. And the funny thing is that the director, Antonioni, was surely inspired from an Alberto Moravia's book called, precisely, "la Noia" (Boredom). And his intention was to show this boredom mixed with regrets and incapacity to communicate of this rich people. He wanted the picture to look realistic, and i'm okay with it, but i can accept reality, for how much tedious and bitter it is, cause it is reality and in most of cases you can't run from it but you have to front it... but dear Michelangelo (rest in peace) this is a movie and if it isn't asking too much i would like to love/like at least one character, to help me get through the movie. If you make me hate all the characters of the movie, how do you expect i would like it?
They made me study this movie at the "film history" course at the university and it is a remarkable piece of italian cinema according to lot of critiques. For what is worth i appreciate the Photography, the editing, the location and i can even appreciate that it was filmed by a small troupe with lots of budget problems, but i really don't appreciate the script, the acting (in most of the cases) and the message that supposedly and passively the movie would like to refer. That's my view of it, most critiques would chop my head off but i don't care.
25th Hour (2002)
And Then what?
I Started watching the movie with fairly good expectations, but going forward i changed my mind. I have to give credit to the acting in general, and the cinematography is pretty good too, but the movie as a whole leads to nothing. I'm not taking it out on the movie, but my review couldn't be better than this. There are some monologues and some characters that are noteworthy but at a certain point, around the hour of movie, i started asking myself if something was going to happen. It basically doesn't have a story. If it had been a painting It would've been a portrait, sadly not a good one. I didn't appreciate the exploitation of the 9/11 accidents as an excuse for the sad mood of the entire film. Basically it's a drug dealer that get caught and the narration of its last day as a free man, alternating with a view of his friends. A pair of scenes gave me the impression of a "Taxi Driver wannabe", but as much as you can appreciate them, they are mostly without rhyme or reason. The main character, as much as i like Ed Norton, isn't very likable and you can't really empathize with him. Two other things that i really couldn't stand were the music.. (i just didn't understand it, this dramatic tone all along the movie) and the bizzarre choice of editing in some cuts (the repetitions in a lot of scenes like when they hug, doesn't make no sense to me). Ultimately, my review isn't just throwing s**t on the movie, i repeat that i liked more than some things in it, but, especially in the ending, it truly disappointed me, and sincerely i don't understand reviews like "Masterpiece of human emotions"... you are not being honest buddy.