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asmailrabbit
Reviews
L'homme de sa vie (2006)
It was alright.
I really wanted to like this movie. The opening shots were beautiful, and there were some very well thought out and artistic angles and scenes throughout the movie, like many European films, but overall it failed for me. I first started noticing it when they began showing the beautiful gossamer fabric blowing in the doorway over and over and over again. Soon it became droning and devoid of the magical and suggestive quality it had in its first appearance. That didn't bother me too terribly much, but then it started happening with the two main characters, Hugo and Frederic. I realize that all the scenes with them sitting in the chairs in the dirt outside the house were probably each reminiscences on a single event, but it was still torturous. There were so many of those scenes, and they were boring. The dialogue seemed pretentious on Hugo's part, though in Frederic's fumbling, bumbling way he managed to remain somewhat charming. Still, I found myself praying that they wouldn't cut back to the boring chair scene. I vowed to fast forward after the fourth time, but I didn't. Couldn't they mix it up a little? Break up that conversation, talk and walk, talk and swim, SOMETHING else. I don't know what was so great about Hugo, anyway. He was a vulgar, rude, lecherous, run-of-the-mill playboy and he was a terrible dad. **/***** stars.
Dutchman (1966)
Endlessly interesting.
Amiri Baraka is a poet. When you critique this movie, or even intend to appreciate this movie, you have to keep that in mind. You're watching poetry turned into a play turned into a movie. I must admit I was a little concerned about how a conversation between two people on a subway train was going to entertain me for an hour, but it did.
I hear a lot of people talking about how Shirley Jackson overacted, but it was clearly done on purpose and done so with gusto. Lula isn't an obnoxious girl in a skimpy dress and sandals, she is a blazing beacon for the destruction of a culture. I vastly appreciated and quite frankly was in awe at how masterfully inhuman she was in this film. Something as terrible as Lula isn't supposed to be played as understated or restrained or demure. She is a murderer, and she represents centuries of hatred..every unhinged, upstaging part of her. Al Freeman Jr. was equally as impressive in his own rite, and his part DID call for restraint, until the end that is. The language used in the film is beautiful in all of its basement dinginess. Don't expect to understand every word or sentence. A lot of it is supposed to evoke a mood rather than make sense literally. If you want to see a minimal but bone-crushingly powerful and inspiring meditation on the terpitude of our culture, of EVERYONE'S culture, then check out this movie. You'll be thinking about it for a while.