|
Post by kerouac2 on Feb 8, 2022 17:00:11 GMT
Yesterday evening, I went to an advance screening of the Belgian film Rien à Foutre which comes out next month. IMDb gives the English language title as being Zero Fucks Given, which I find very hard to believe since the real translation of the title would be more along the line of "Don't Give a Fuck." Anyway, it is about the horrible life of the flight attendants of a low cost airline, the training, the working conditions, the total disregard for humanity. And it is of course coupled with the horrible passengers, the drunks, the insults, the abuse. About the only perk that I noticed in the movie is that they seemed to have an unlimited supply of liquor miniatures for their personal use. And they needed them.
Adèle Exarchopoulos is the only known star in the movie. All of the others are former flight attendants, and if ever they are still working in the airline industry, they are sure to be fired as soon as the movie is released.
|
|
|
Post by cheerypeabrain on Feb 8, 2022 17:03:12 GMT
We watched Dune. Visually stunning, much better than the last movie of the same name...very very long. Much mumbling. I enjoyed it
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Feb 9, 2022 15:45:25 GMT
So, after sitting on the shelf for two years because of covid, Death on the Nile finally made it to be big screen. It is exactly what one would expect -- too much of everything but still watchable for us Agatha Christie fans. The opening sequence takes us to the Belgian trenches in the Great War and is completely in French. This is both good and bad. Good because it is probably one of the few authentic things in the movie, except that Kenneth Branagh's dialogue is too long and allows any native French speaker to hear everything that is wrong with his accent. But everybody else in the world should find it perfect. And why this prologue? Just to show us how Hercule Poirot gets his face blown off and needs to grow a big moustache.
Then we move on to the stunning CGI version of Egypt, where the pyramids are better than they have ever looked and are nearly on the banks of the Nile. Abu Simbel and all of the other things are just as spectacular. If only Egypt really looked like this!
Then of course everybody is on the boat and bad things happen. Poirot suspects everybody but finally finds the correct culprit(s). Definitely a popcorn movie for people who eat popcorn.
Maybe the last time we see Armie Hammer on a screen until he makes a comeback with Kevin Spacey.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Feb 11, 2022 18:09:45 GMT
Yesterday I saw a French political thriller which did not thrill me at all, even though it has received excellent reveiws. I am just not interested in the subject of cartels and the police who run after them. This is based on a true story in France wherein the French police allowed tonnes of drugs to be smuggled into France just so that they could capture the drug rings receiving them. Obviously, things went wrong. On top of that the main infiltrator died of cancer before the case finally came to trial.
Enquête d'un scandal d'état (English title "Undercover" which has already been used a million times).
Today's movie was the much more interesting Italian film La dea fortuna (English title: The Goddess of Fortune) by Turkish director Ferzan Ozpetek who has made a number of other good Italian movies. It is based on a true story of a gay couple in their forties who suddenly have to take care of the children of a close friend, Annamaria, who needs to spend a few days in the hospital for tests (Can you already guess what is going to happen?). The couple, Alessandro and Arturo, have been together for 15 years and have reached the stage where infidelity is posing a problem, even if they still love each other. Having to take care of the kids adds a lot of stress but also has its rewards. They are an odd couple -- Alessandro is a plumber while Arturo is an intellectual, currently a translator. When their couple begins to disintegrate, they decide that they can't handle the kids anymore and Annamaria very reluctantly allows them to take the kids to her mother (whom she hates) to Sicily. The grandmother is a rich countess and seems nice at first, but...
I need to find the real story and see how things really turned out in the end, because the movie was great, but the ending was quite ambiguous. The movie was supposedly quite successful in Italy in 2019 and then covid reared its ugly head to prevent distribution in the rest of the world.
|
|
|
Post by rikita on Feb 12, 2022 11:25:06 GMT
The final scene of the movie finally validates everything. since i am not going to watch the movie but that sentence got me a bit curious - can you say how that last scene validates everything/what happens in that last scene? (it's my problem in general, i like watching movie trailers, but at the same time, i usually want to know how it ends but on the other hand, don't have the time to watch most of the movies/my curiosity is not quite enough for that. really, i'd like to see the trailer and have someone tell me what happens in the end ... )
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Feb 12, 2022 12:58:08 GMT
The final scene shows that everything was fake. The girl's flat, the lift landing and everything else turn out to be the set of somebody else's movie.
|
|
|
Post by rikita on Feb 12, 2022 13:23:02 GMT
Thanks!
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Feb 12, 2022 19:39:35 GMT
I knew that Moonfall would be a double ration of horseshit but most of the reviews have implied that it is so bad that it is good, and I wanted to see it anyway. It is definitely a check-your-brains-at-the-door film and was actually even more outlandish than I expected. For those unaware of the plot, the moon has suddenly changed its orbit and is going to crash into Earth within 3 weeks. Why? Only the chubby British nerd with irritable bowel syndrome has figured it out, but nobody is going to listen to him. At least not until he intercepts the disgraced astronaut at a school conference.
Okay, let's skip forward. (The movie lasts 2h10.) The moon is actually some sort of alien spaceship with a thin veneer of space rubble coating it. But we only find that out later, after the tsunamis, gravity waves (WTF?) and other catastrophes caused by the approach of the moon. To the movie's credit, this time we don't get the full panorama of Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal, the Empire State Buidling, etc. being destroyed, but it's probably just because director Roland Emmerich already did that in his previous ridiculous films and there was no need to do it again. Most of what we get is flooding, of Los Angeles, I guess, with certainly some recycled footage from Fukushima. The government has decided to evacuate a lot of people to Colorado although no public announcement seems to have been made. Just the people in the know are being sent there while civilisation collapses.
Our main characters need to run around a lot -- the nerd, the disgraced astronaut, the ex-wife and children, the other astronaut (Halle Berry), the son who has to be sprung from prison... But those damned gravity waves! They suddenly suck things into the sky -- cars, people, whatever. And yet other stuff just stays lying around. Go figure.
So let's go to the moon and stop it! But there are no spacecraft that can be used. Hey, wait, there is still a space shuttle in the aerospace museum. Let's haul it out and use that! The museum has been trashed, but the space shuttle is too big to bother with, other than the excellent "Fuck the Moon!" graffiti painted on the side. Obviously it just takes a snap of the fingers to get it to Vandenberg AFB and set up for launch with a crew of 3 -- disgraced astronaut, Halle Berry and chubby nerd. The launch escapes the mother of all tsunamis and 5 minutes later we have arrived at the moon.
They need to kill the giant space worm that lives in a hole in the moon (did I forget to tell you about that?). They fly into the moon through the hole and discover that it is indeed a giant spaceship. They destroy their own lunar lander.
This is not a problem, because Roland Emmerich will find a solution. And I will not reveal any more of this wonderful movie. I loved it.
I saw that the trailer was censored and the graffiti on the space shuttle just says "Screw the moon."
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Feb 13, 2022 13:13:12 GMT
It was time for a rom-com, so yes, I went to see Marry Me. I think that Moonfall might be more believable, but in any case the British nerd (John Bradley) saves the world in both movies. Not that anybody cares -- the targeted audience wants to believe Cinderella stories, even if Owen Wilson is Cinderella, and the two most different people in the world can obviously find true love after just a couple of hiccups.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Feb 14, 2022 14:25:31 GMT
Franz Rogowski is a fascinating actor and I see just about anything he does that is released in France -- In the Aisles, Victoria, Happy End, A Hidden Life.... And now we have Große Freiheit (Great Freedom), which deals with a totally horrifying subject. It is about paragraph 175 of the German criminal code which was in effect from 1874 until 1994. Its principal purpose was to criminalise homosexuality. Okay, fine, there are a lot of laws like that all over the world, but they are not necessarily applied or at least just rarely applied.
But in West Germany in 1945, the homosexuals who were released from the concentration camps were transferred directly to prison under the supervision of the American occupying army. Hans Hoffmann (Rugowski) is thrown in prison for this reason and of course all of the other inmates can't stand him, because on the cell doors, the "crime" is listed under the name. Everybody knows what "175" means. His cellmate starts by roughing him up ("If you ever touch me, I'll kill you.") but is forced to accept his presence. Then he softens up a tiny bit when he finds out that Hans was in a concentration camp. "Is it true, all of the stories that they're telling?"
Nothing changes after the American soldiers are gone, and we move on to... 12 years later. Hans has learned to survive even though he is regularly thrown naked into the windowless solitary confinement cell with not even a lightbulb. The rare other homosexuals have some rare opportunities to hook up under blankets and such, and the other inmates are not always adverse to providing some services in exchange for fellatio. The slot for pushing the dinner bowl through the cell door has other purposes... Sometimes there are conversations about places to which they could escape to have more freedom... East Germany or the USSR.
There are no clear explanations on why he is never released, but we see the moon landing on television. The years keep piling up unbearably. Sometimes there is a suicide. You can see the passage of time with the evolution of the prison tattoos or covers of Der Spiegel. But that's still not the end of it.
This was a very very tough movie.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Feb 16, 2022 15:06:41 GMT
I know, I know, Uncharted is a piece of crap adapted from a Playstation game, but I still like Tom Holland, even more so when he is not being Spider-Man, so I went to see it. No attempt for anything in the plot to be realistic, but I did appreciate one thing that a lot of critics did not appreciate -- there are fewer frenzied action moments except at the end. Apparently people are hooked on action so much these days that if people are not beating the shit out of each other or blowing things up during 85% of the movie, it is boring.
And yes, there are two scenes after the closing credits to indicate that another movie is on the way.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Feb 17, 2022 16:52:10 GMT
La Vraie Famille (The Family) is one of those movies about what happens to a loving foster family when the child for whom they have cared since he was a baby is taken away from them. Heartbreak, obviously. Anna and Driss have two other sons, and Jules, the foster child is the third son that they all love. The biological father, Eddy, had a major breakdown when his wife died when Jules was still a baby and had to accept giving him to foster care. Five years later, he feels ready to be a dad again, after seeing his son for only one day a month most of the time.
Anna has followed all the rules to the letter. Her family is not at all religious, but she has taken Jules to mass every Sunday and ensures that he says his prayers every night before going to bed. This was part of the contract.
When it becomes clear that Jules is going to leave forever, the situation becomes unbearable.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Feb 19, 2022 16:16:21 GMT
Today I went to see the silly comedy Maison de Retraite (Nursing Home) which has become unexpectedly topical in France since a huge care home scandal has broken out here. The biggest private operator of nursing homes has been accused of mistreatment and neglect, and of course it's not just this company that is guilty of cutting cost, leaving residents in their shit and spending very little on their food.
So, ha ha, here we have a movie, once again made 2 years ago, about a place that has carefully selected residents with no children or other family and basically locked them in (for "security reasons"). They have all signed a contract (which none of them have read) making the place the sole heir of everything they own. Are you laughing yet? The fly in the ointment is the fact that they take in subsidized delinquents (every euro counts) sentenced to community service instead of prison. So of course our hero is one of these delinquents. He has to put up with shitty sheets, residents who spit their food in his face while he is feeding them and other unpleasantries such as having to hold the penis of an old man (Gérard Depardieu) who says he can't pee by himself.
Obviously, since this is a feel-good movie, he and the residents slowly warm up to each other, and they protect him when he is beaten up by the thugs to whom he owes money. Obviously, everything works out in the end.
I'm really wondering if the current nursing home scandal will hurt this movie or on the contrary make more people interested in seeing it.
|
|
|
Post by lagatta on Feb 19, 2022 21:01:56 GMT
We have the same kind of scandals here (with the added Covid factor) guess it's universal.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Feb 21, 2022 19:01:08 GMT
I don't know if the political leaning of Vincent Lindon has changed in the last decade, but he was not known as a leftist in the past. But now he regularly makes extremely political movies designed to make one's blood boil at various injustices. Today I went to see Un Autre Monde (Another World) which deals with a subject ignored by most world cinemas.
The executive manager of a factory is being pressured to terminate about 10% of the staff, even though they are making a profit and went through another reduction of staff a few years earlier. But the (American <-- this is not important) owner is only interested in rewarding the shareholders. So the whole movie is about this, fighting top management, having to lie to the employees, Zoom meetings where he is humiliated by the American CEO ("Pardon my language, but I don't give a fuck."). On top of that, he is going through a difficult divorce (his wife doesn't hate him but just can't put up with his absence anymore) and his almost-adult son is being institutionalised for mental issues. Can things get any worse?
Probably not.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Feb 23, 2022 17:33:51 GMT
So, I saw Maigret starring Gérard Depardieu. It got good reviews and was well acted, but I was bored.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Feb 24, 2022 15:03:57 GMT
There are enough movies about migrants and refugees in France for it to have become a genre, probably starting with the amazing Welcome in 2009.
Ils sont vivants (English title: A Change of Heart) is the true story of a right wing nursing home employee who falls in love with an Iranian migrant. She has just been widowed and for once this seems like good thing because her husband was a brutal alcoholic policeman who beat her. We never see him since he is dead, but his colleagues are at the funeral and at the wake spouting their Le Pen bullshit, and she is totally in agreement. After all, this takes place in Calais again, ground zero for desperate migrants in France.
But leaving work one night, there is a Sudanese migrant in the nursing home parking lot. He asks if she can take him to the "jungle" because he is lost. She refuses of course but after hitting him with her car when backing up, she feels guilty and takes him there anyway. She discovers that he has stolen the jacket in the back seat of the car and is infuriated. She gets it back, but he only has a T-shirt, and it is cold.
The next day she packs all of her dead husband's clothes in garbage bags and drives back to the jungle to donate them. And that's when she begins to discover that these are real people. She tells her friends (her husband's friends) what she did and they are all horrified. "Couldn't you have donated them to French people?" She becomes more involved in the humanitarian groups at the jungle and even ends up lodging a young woman journalist (mistake!) at their request.
She also sees shocking things like a group of Iranian men who have sewn their lips shut in protest. What to do?
Well, she does the right thing, even when her car is covered with shit. And she falls in love with one of the Iranians.
In the real world, she helped him and another guy get to England. She borrowed money from one of her fascist friends to pay for a small boat, and by some miracle they arrived in British waters before their boat sank. She was arrested and convicted of providing illegal aid to migrants, but her sentence was suspended. Since then, she has been making regular trips to England to see the man she loves until the day they can be together. (I'm sure that covid was never in their plans.)
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Feb 25, 2022 15:29:45 GMT
Compagnons (The Companions) is gripping although flawed. The Compagnons du Devoir are a realy fascinating association dating back to the Middle Ages (English language wikipedia article --> HERE), which I nevertheless find a bit creepy due to too many weird traditions (standing in a circle to sing, etc.). That's just me: everything I see about other structured goody goody groups like the Boy Scouts or the AA creep me out, too. Anyway, the Compagnons give a fabulous chance to young people who have often totally failed their classic schooling to learn a craft, generally a tough artistic one like stone carving or high class carpentry. The training goes on for years. Anyway, this movie is about a tough girl who is given a second chance. She is a graffiti artist (but only secretly) and finds that she is interested in the stained glass workshop. The actress, Najaa, is outstanding. My complaint is because the contrived plot shows that she is in deep shit with the drug dealers of her neighbourhood after (accidentally!) destroying at least a kilo of hash. So part of her motivation with the compagnons is to be able to hide out in a safe place, because they have already beaten the shit out of her more than once, besides threatening her little sister. And the movie devotes too much time to this plot point and not enough to the workshops, which is what is really interesting. (The recent movie Eiffel made the same mistake by throwing a ridiculous love story in when everybody went to see the architecture instead. God, movie producers should all be shot!) I am pretty sure that one of the other stars, Pio Marmai, really took his role to heart because even though he is one of the top French actors now, his real love is motorcycle repair, and he has a motorcycle repair shop in Aubervilliers, not too far from where I live. It interests him more than acting. But in this movie, he is the stained glass guy.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Feb 26, 2022 12:42:36 GMT
Razzhimaya kulaki (Unclenching the Fists) is a stark Russian movie that once again takes you to places you didn't know existed. It is set in a miserable part of the Caucasus. Ada works in a little roadside shop and is subjected to the constznt flirtatious attention of Tamik. She spurns him but you can tell she likes him. Ada lives with her semi-invalid father and two brothers who pay so much attention to her that it seems almost incestuous without quite being so. Ada's slightly younger brother always wants to sleep in her bed and calls her Mom. The father and the brothers often talk about getting Ada "repaired" but it is not clear what problem needs fixing. The father even makes her keep her hair relatively short so that she will not appeal to men, and he has also hidden her identity papers to make sure she doesn't get any ideas about leaving.
Daily life in North Ossetia is not really thrilling, but people hang out with their friends, drink, dance and do the usual stuff. They all have Muslim names but there is no visible practice of religion or adherence to any rules. Ada has to wear an adult diaper because she can't control her bladder. Why? Finally, when she and Tamik get together, he shows her his various scars. So she shows hers -- the abdomen and regions below are horribily mutilated. It turns out that she was a victim of the Beslan school terrorist attack which killed 333 people (including 186 children). Incidentally, this event lead to a change of the Russian laws that gave much more power to President Putin.
This does not seem to bother Tamik who is so in love (or so horny) that Ada seems perfect to him. He tries to deflower her in perhaps the clumsiest sex scene ever put on film. "I'm not very good at this. I wanted to wait until I was married." She pees on the floor and he wipes it up with his tshirt.
Ada's father has a stroke and can't talk anymore. He finally gives her identity papers. At the end of the movie, Ada and Tamik are riding on his motorcycle to their future, on an endless road that seems to go nowhere. She purposely drops a cloth bag on the road that she had taken with her everywhere, which we only recently found out was her diaper supply. And then they are gone.
I thought this was a great movie. It was Russia's proposal for the Oscars but it did not make the final cut.
|
|
|
Post by whatagain on Feb 26, 2022 19:03:36 GMT
K saw death on the Nile. It was as Kerouac saud. Plus : - the 2 black actresses are fabulous - the character of Bouc is a mistery for me. Pale guy, why allowed tobfollow Poirot etc. Hastings was so much better a character. - Poirot explains his lost love, quite touching... - we never used gas, we respect Geneva conventions - the actress playing the ex is fantastic. - the music is jazz or blues, it tested my nerves
- i loved the landscapes - wtf Poirot getting angry and even running. Out of character.
All i all, quite enjoyable but not as good by far than the version with Peter Ustinov !
Ps : would Poirot, as a frenchspeaking, really call gis friend 'Bouc' (goat) ?
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Mar 2, 2022 14:53:57 GMT
I endured the 2h56 of The Batman this morning. What an ordeal! No acting was required by Robert Pattinspn. He just looked depressed or angry.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Mar 3, 2022 20:05:24 GMT
People who have seen a film directed by Alain Guiraudie generally do not forget them. He is simultanously extreme and gentle, which makes it hard for some people to gauge their reaction. Probably his most famous movie internationally was Stranger by the Lake which was about a murder investigation at a gay cruising site. The erect penises and sperm may hae been offputting to certain spectators.
This movie is called Viens je t'emmène (English title: Nobody's Hero) and is about a nerdy guy in love with a prostitute. He asks her right from the start "can we do it free because I'm against prostitution?" But the movie is also about a young homeless Arab guy who might be a terrorist but maybe not. He ends up staying in the protagonist's apartment, not because he is welcome but because the protagonist is weak. The other residents in the building interact. The prostitute's jealous and abusive husband is another disturbing factor. Some of them think that the homeless guy should be thrown out while others want to help him. Alain Guiraudie is a great director for confusing us. He also likes to show naked people whose bodies are not necessarily appealing. While the slightly chubby main character Jean-Charles Clichet is not very well known, the actress who plays the prostitute Noémie Lvovsky is a pretty big 'mature' star so her huge floppy breasts and her generous pubic hair cn be considered a disturbing surprise.
I enjoy the movies by Guiraudie because you never know where he is headed.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Mar 4, 2022 16:50:18 GMT
Belfast is a nice movie but perhaps a bit too nice. Having seen a number of movies about the "troubles," I thought this seemed like a candy coated version. However, since we are seeing it through a child's eyes, it is probably intentional.
Current world events do make the movie seem quite topical -- people who have lived together for years who are suddenly pitted against each other, and most of them don't have a clue why and just want to get the hell away.
I am always amused at what a mystery Catholicism is for some people, especially as I experienced it myself as a child. A lot of Protestants are perplexed and jealous at the idea of a religion where you can do horrible things, go to confession, and all is forgiven. It is even worse for the people who sit though fire & brimstone sermons every Sunday while the Catholics are having fun.
|
|
|
Post by mich64 on Mar 4, 2022 21:17:00 GMT
Belfast is a nice movie but perhaps a bit too nice. Having seen a number of movies about the "troubles," I have been looking forward to seeing this movie! It being too nice will be okay for me but I understand that contradicts with the topic of "the troubles". I am currently reading Trinity, a novel by Leon Uris. It is taking me a long time, it is quite a challenging book for me. Having visited Northern Ireland and Ireland twice (and planning a third visit) I enjoy reading or watching TV programs or movies from there.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Mar 5, 2022 16:07:17 GMT
Robuste is a very interesting movie about a wrestler who is also a security agent. One of her closest friends has to go to Africa to bury his father, and since he will be away for a month, she takes over his gig as an assistant/carer/babysitter for a capricious and erratic major movie star who looks suspiciously like Gérard Depardieu. They get along fine, but he is definitely erratic.
It should be pointed out that Deborah Lukumuena already won a César for best supporting actress a few years ago, and her career is just beginning.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Mar 7, 2022 15:52:21 GMT
Ali & Ava is a goodhearted movie about people trying to overcome their loneliness and other complications. Ali is a very helpful landlord but his real passion is hardcore electro music and he would like to be a DJ again. He is secretly separated from his wife but they continue to live in the same house so as not to shame the family. Ali meets Ava taking nieces and nephews to school where she is a classroom assistant. She is a (young) grandmother. Her husband, who used to beat the shit out of her, died about a year ago. Her adult son lives with her part of the time and idolized his father, while being overprotective of his mother. Ava loves country and folk music, which Ali despises, so we now have all the necessary elements for a movie. It was filmed in Bradford, where people do not talk the same as in London.
|
|
|
Post by patricklondon on Mar 8, 2022 10:48:38 GMT
On a whim I went to the cinema for the first time since long before Covid, to see The Duke, a comedy drama about a real-life event years ago, when the National Gallery's latest acquisition (at record expense) - a Goya portrait of the Duke of Wellington - disappeared overnight barely days after it went on show. The story centres on an autodidact (played by Jim Broadbent), ever hopefully submitting probably terrible screenplays to the BBC, who sticks to his principles to the point that he never lasts long in a job, much to the exasperation of his ultra-respectable, and in her own way just as firmly principled, wife (Helen Mirren). In the course of one of his campaigns, he's caught up in the case of the missing Goya, and his performance under cross-examination in court is a comic tour de force. Some good supporting performances too. My blog | My photos | My video clips | My Librivox recordings"too literate to be spam"
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Mar 11, 2022 19:03:27 GMT
Petite Nature (English title: Softie) is a remarkably disturbing movie, not because the situation is rare but because nobody ever dares to talk about it. The director's previous movie about his mother (Party Girl) was equally disturbing, so clearly he has had a troubled life, since he admitted that this new movie is partially autobiographical.
Johnny is from a trashy family in Forbach, on the German border. The mother is trashy, the big brother is trashy, the little sister is adorable. A new teacher arrives for the school year... and 10 year old Johnny falls in love with him. It's true that the teacher is great, but he doesn't know what is hitting him when Johnny makes a move. Yikes. It's all that he and his girlfriend can do to keep Johnny under control. And then there is the trashy mother who is wondering if the teacher is a paedo.
The kid is absolutely amazing.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Mar 14, 2022 18:30:03 GMT
Goliath is an excellent environmental thriller, in the same category as Erin Brockovich, Silkwood or Dark Waters. It is about a minor lawyer defending a cancer victim of pesticides (She and her wife were farmers.) He loses the case but doesn't give up particularly after the dead woman's wife self-immolates in front of the chemical company skyscraper in La Défense. It should be mentioned that pesticides are a hot button issue in France because it is the European country that uses the most pesticides (probably because it is the biggest agricultural producer in the west). Environmental groups become involved, and the fight gets nasty. The other side has a completely brilliant lawyer, played so brilliantly by Pierre Niney that you want to spit in his face).
The truth finally comes out and is published in all of the newspapers, but it is unclear at the end if the lawyer has really won. How many incredible scandals have been revealed over the yers, but nothing really happens.....?
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Mar 16, 2022 12:37:49 GMT
I went to see Notre Dame Brûle (Notre-Dame on Fire in English). Visually, it is extremely impressive since the director searched through more than 5000 amateur videos for some of the images, and he used very few special effects for the rest. The cathedrals of Amiens, Beauvais and Sens were used for certain scenes, particularly for firefighters scrambling through incredibly tight winding stone staircases, as well as for a service in progress when the fire broke out. For the scenes of beams and stones crashing down to the floor, a full-sized set was built and filmed by eleven cameras, since it was important to get things right the first time. If they screwed up the scene, it would take three weeks to set up again, including 3 days just for the fire to go out.
On the down side, Jean-Jacques Annaud clearly made too many American movies, because he put in the stupid little details that so many American movies need -- the little girl who runs back inside right when she shouldn't, for example. Also, there were some scenes where the Eiffel Tower appeared much too close to Notre Dame. As anybody who has ever been to Paris knows, it is completely at the other end of the city.
I will try to remain neutral about the excessive religious mumbo jumbo, since I'm sure it is a very important element for believers, and it was interesting to learn that Louis IX put France into debt for 25 years when he bought the crown of thorns in 1239. Damned kings! So a main sequence of the movie is devoted to saving it with the cathedral burning down around them and hey, where is it hidden and where are the keys? (The one on display is a fake.) To top if off, I will never believe that people standing along the Seine sang 'Amazing Grace' because the French don't even know this song. Oh well.
It is still worth seeing.
|
|