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Phoenix (2014)
You can't pile unbelievable plot points and get away with it
This movie is one of the biggest disappointment compared to the reviews I read before watching it.
It was supposed to be a "thriller" movie. There is no thriller in here. I tried so hard to defend the plot with my girlfriend while watching it. The plastic surgery is kinda perfect even if it's 1945. I tried to explain (to her and myself) the husband not recognising her by an actual different face after the surgery. However, it does not seem to be the case, as she is picked very rapidly to be her doppelganger. Does she look like herself before or not?
Why the hell the (friend? Sister?) keep the divorce a secret? Why the hell does she committ suicide? Simply... why the hell? And after everything... singing gives her away? But not the voice when they spoke all the time?
Maestro (2023)
So much effort in acting they forgot to write a story
I was expecting this movie, even if I know almost nothing about Leonard Bernstein (or maybe exactly for it?). This kind of adult biopic has the chance the story of a real human being, with all his struggle, and in case of artists to give us a glimpse of what made them great, what motivated them, what fueled them.
As you watch this movie, it is difficult to understand why the main character does this in life. The movie is not focused on that, you could say. It is focused on his bisexuality and more and more broken marriage. However, 99% of this seems copy pasted from any average movie that tells the story of a bigger-than-life character that struggles with his gift and burns everything he/she touches, with people around just longing for his/her attention. We don't even get to see her discovering it, the two making this deal. The children are there a bit as an extra.
Both Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan play their respective part very well. Carey Mulligan in particular gives it all. However, the depth is missing, apart at the very end for her sickness. That's a pity.
Stromboli (Terra di Dio) (1950)
Warch it for the documentary parts, not for the plot
Rossellini and Bergman affair out of here from the start. A movie needs to be judged for its own merit.
What I feel difficult to believe is how a borderline-manipulative character as this Lithuanian woman, who seems to have already married for interest, and does that again with the internment camp guard to get out of it, does not put more effort in running away once she realizes that the final destination is an island where she has nothing to do 24h/7d and will lead a very poor life. The husband is a poor fisher who hit on a good-looking woman, they have nothing in common, but he is clearly not looking for a philosophical connection. Not only she does not put more effort in running, but she gets pregnant (when these two characters are shown to be intimate?), he gets abusive, and finally the child becomes her main life reason.
I do not agree that Bergman was miscast, but also I do not agree with this being her best performance (she spends most of the movie crying on herself, I mean...).
I feel that the movie is good only for the documentary parts, like the fishing or the actual Stromboli eruption. This, and showing the poor community true life, is truly interesting. Everything related to the two main characters is rapidly boring and repetitive.
Ordet (1955)
Not every classic is as good as they say
I think I would have approached this movie very differently if I did not watch by mistake the 1943 swedish version before. I think I would have both thought the making of the movie and the story were problematic.
Instead, the swedish version showed me that you can actually tell this story and its messagge ("miracles do not happen anymore because we do not dare to believe in them and ask them") without falling asleep. You can then think the message is bad, but at last it is delivered properly.
I read that Roger Ebert defined the camera work of this movie "godlike". I have the feeling we watched two different movies: the camera work is most transparent you could get, and Dreyer showed in Jeanne d'Arc Passion that he knew waaaaay better.
Johannes got stripped of his "backstory" and the role is played like Jesus had brain damage: so he has no reason to be like this (for you the viewer and for his family), and the only reasonable thing to do is believing he got crazy. Faith does not mean believing everything is told you, you are not lacking it if the first person on the street tells you he is Jesus come back to the living. Ah, why making him the only person with dark hair and mustaches? To make him look like Jesus? Come on.
Go watch the Molander swedish version with Sjostrom, you will get a better paced movie, characters who feel alive, and an overall better movie. Sorry Carl, I really liked Jeanne d'Arc Passion, but this is a no.
Ordet (1943)
Way better than Dreyer's version
I have to say, this movie was out of the radar completely for me and I wished to see the 1955 version by Dreyer.
I started watching a movie on Netflix, misled by the exact same title, and when I understood it was not the """good""" one I continued anyway because Sjostrom and Johannes actor performances were really good, the rhytm by mixing lighter moments with gravitas, camera work and lightning were all catching my attention.
I do not understand how this movie is unknown and Dreyer's version is considered one the highest points of cinema. Personally, I think that keeping the "origin story" of Johannes, not having an actor who looks like Jesus just to push it more, and the fact that all the characters feel like human beings instead of very cold robots makes this movie waaaaay more interesting. Roger Ebert speaks about the camera work of Dreyer version as godlike, when it's actually the most theatrical you could ever see, while in this a true directive effort is made.
100% advised.