A better movie about war than the contemporary western dramas. Good acting, with the curious poor showing of Rebengiuc, from almost all in the cast. Acceptable directing, even some interesting camera shots at the beginning. The story is coherent, the characters have depth and personality. I like the fact that everybody speaks his own language, unlike in the western movies. The girl is also stunning, just to confirm that beauty was not invented in the 21st century.
Reviews
6 Reviews
The Mule
(2018)
Very Eastwood like
17 March 2019
Not a masterpiece, but a reasonably good movie, in the already known Eastwood style of old age and meaningfulness. It reminds me of Gran Torino. All his movies have messages, from the old generation to the younger one. And in short it would be that values like work, friendship, loyalty, courage and honesty are perennial. Not very complicated plot, nor great acting, nothing to come out in a negative way. The story is pretty simple, but believable and the ending is natural. Nothing fancy, nor exaggerated, no political correctness, just humanity and the pursuit for meaning, even at the end of a life.
the unexpected disident
8 March 2019
They succeeded in making a dissident out of a poet that was so central to communist propaganda, that she was present in all literature manuals. A proletcultist artist, intelligent and with plenty of affairs, that was made to look just a feminist that opposed real socialism and criticized Ceausescu. She was a icon of the time and an activist for the communist cause. She had a very privileged status, thats why she was allowed to criticize the rulers. The old lady that she became shows no remorse, nor regret, she has nothing interesting to say about the intellectual and social atmosphere of the time. She portrays herself as an idealist. She did not leave the country until 1985. Her American partner is a nobody, from intellectual perspective and her life in NY was a failure, still she did not come back, probably because she could have been subjected to a lot of critics, for her support and for being a beneficiary of the communist regime. What I learned is that old age is not as we should expect an age of wisdom, nor one of introspection and doubt over what mistakes and what pathways one should have taken, nothing but a decaying body with a superficial mindset.
The Favourite
(2018)
All eras are decadent
3 March 2019
Apart from Rachel who is playing OK and the queen who is acceptable, the rest are average at best. The costumes and the interiors were beautiful, as it is the case with all Hollywood movies, but they got lazy when thinking about dialogues (not at all in the spirit, nor form of the time), about the plot, about the depth of the characters, about the very little importance of men, in a time when women really did not matter and about the protocol at court. I would not call it a historic movie as the characters are thinking, speaking and behaving very modernly. This is at most a drama about power, manipulation, decadence and homosexuality, with people dressed in 18th century costumes . As with all films I saw in more than a decade, the 18th century is portrayed as a decadent time, so it can fit all eccentric exaggerations, the ideologically oriented director wants to: gays, aggressive language, immorality, imaginary dance styles, pornographic sexuality, duck races and so on. Out time is decadent and by comparison those days were not at all. Very disappointed as a historian, to never see a historic inspired movie that was actually interesting, since the Perfume (2006). Nobody researches the mentalities and behaviors of those times, cause if they were really brought to life, they would cause protests from the politically correctness oriented minds of today.
Family is Family
(2018)
Comedie a l'americaine
7 June 2018
A nice, funny movie, full of laughter, with a moralizing tone like in 80's American movies. It takes an accident for the designer to become aware of his fake and artificial life. Curiously they are all chits in real life also! So they speak it really well, even if it is a peasant-like, primitive dialect that scratches the ears. Pierre Richard was really good, Dany Boon as usual, nothing exceptional and the rest pretty poor, but fitting in this superficial comedy, about a rich man that has forgotten his roots. Maybe those roots are not so great, maybe he wanted to become someone else and despised his little provincial town, like a lot of us. Maybe he really felt ashamed of his family, like a lot of us feel too. The real problems are not deal with in mainstream movies. So in the end we get the educated girl speak the grotesque dialect of Nord and associate the Bolero with an Ajax commercial and not Carmen of Bizet. The ending with Richard memorable scene singing his love in "chti"(Je te quere!!- sic!) is quite nice, even if I personally hate those American-like public love declarations. The melody though would certainly be more successful, than the sorry bunch the French presented at Eurovision in the last 20 years.
Excentric but beautiful
3 June 2018
Complicated, expressionist, with a bizarre storyline, if there is one. About an immature man that is lost at forty as he was always, living a meaningless life and playing with the ones close to him like a spoiled child. As difficult as a man as he can be, everyone seems to love and like him, even if he is hurting them constantly. All women love this charismatic kind of person, that makes them dream and evade of their own made reality, from the railway worker, to the lonely colleague that was once his lover.
I was a bit surprised to see such a realistic portrait of a soviet town with pretty poor infrastructure and living conditions and it was before Gorbaciov. As in almost all russian movies of the time, one can see the alcohol excessive consumption, the enthusiastic nature of the russian soul and the good natured and helping russian citizen.
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