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rtiplady
Reviews
36 quai des orfèvres (2004)
Two great actors give this film a gravitas it doesn't deserve.
First the good news, the first hour of this film is an enjoyable, if derivative, cops and robbers show while Depardieu and Auteuil do as much as they can to keep things afloat throughout. The second hour, sadly, is just a melodramatic soup which you will enjoy in direct relation to how readily you swallow the soap opera-style plot contrivances, which are rammed in without regard for logic, or the intelligence of the audience, in order to get Auteuil's character jailed and his wife slain. For example, can a senior policeman ( The "good" cop, highly regarded by his superiors and the hero of the moment for having just jailed a violent gang that had been terrorising Paris for two years) really be convicted solely on the uncorroborated eye-witness evidence of junkie hooker? That's what we are led to believe here, even though we see the crime in question and know there is absolutely no way she could have seen the cop's face when she was cowering on the floor of the car until they had driven off (Strange, however, that an apparent manslaughter, committed by the much less regarded "bad" cop later on, is rigorously covered up by these very same superiors, in order to give him the job that they had specifically wished to deny him in preference to the "good" cop!). Now let's observe the behaviour of the killer. He has compromised the "good" cop in order to provide an alibi for the murders, but the "good" cop is caught and blows his cover. He is on the run and desperate, so what does he do? - he rings up the cop's wife in order to give her a large sum of money, apparently as "compensation" for her husband being jailed - well he would, wouldn't he?! The wife, naturally, jumps at the chance, not only to put herself in mortal peril but to diminish her prospects of survival even more by allowing the ham-fisted "bad" cop, still harbouring a grudge for being dumped by her in the past, to set her up for the meeting - all in all, not the wisest of moves. Perhaps it's best not to think too much to enjoy this film but, even so, the second half drags badly and may have you falling asleep long before the end - just as well then that the director thoughtfully adds a flashback to explain the final "twist" that you could only have been unconscious not to have worked out well beforehand.
Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life (1995)
Pretentious and laboured.
Every now and again a film like Institute Benjamenta comes along which seems to have the sole purpose of testing the endurance of its audience to the limit. I saw it at the home of art-house cinema in the UK, the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, and was intrigued to notice that even here, where it could reasonably expect a sympathetic viewing, over half of the (small) audience decamped to the bar well before it ground to a close. I stuck it out to the end only because my companion seemed riveted, but it turned out she was hanging on grimly thinking I was similarly entranced! Mark Rylance (a wonderful actor) goes through the film with the expression of a mildly startled rabbit on his face, as if he couldn't quite believe what he had got himself into - neither could I.
The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Unsettling, but not in a good way.
It's a unique experience for me to see a movie that's universally acclaimed and not get something out of it. Night Of The Hunter is that movie. The first thing that struck me was, apart from Mitchum, how bad the acting was. It was hard not to believe that some of the cast had not been plucked from the street outside the studio, prodded onto the set with long poles and forced to read their lines off idiot boards. Secondly, any suspense evaporates early on when the kids escape from Mitchum, after being cornered in a cellar, by a contrivance so lame it doesn't just suspend belief, it kills it stone dead. The film has one or two memorable images but the mood is consistently broken by bad acting, excruciating dialogue, backdrops that ripple gently in the draught from the studio fans and poor continuity. Mitchum's performance is good but it's drowned in a sea of tedious, one-dimensional, ham-fisted twaddle - what a waste. I can see my opinion is a minority view, all I can suggest is that people who find this film worthwhile should check out Peter Weir's Picnic At Hanging Rock, a subtle exercise in atmosphere and menace that actually works.