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2/10
If You Enjoy The Tedium of Police Work
23 February 2021
My wife and I watched three episodes but we are now done. The look, the acting, the subject matter are top notch, unfortunately the writing and directing is as dull as the police work it covers. First of all, I don't feel any emotion to any of the characters. The lead, Jens, is a stoic, solid detective, but he's got no emotion and I'm not sure how he feels about anything. It's a problem when the hero has no emotions.

Further, the victim, is a cypher. By the end of the 3rd episode, not much is known about her, and other than her parents we don't get to know anything about her family or friends. Her parents are devastated by the loss of their daughter but they are peripheral characters, and can't be stand-ins for the characters who should be carrying the emotion in a story, be it a TV series, movie, book, or theater.

As a result, I am left feeling nothing. I don't care about the victim because I don't know her. I don't care about the hero, Jens, because I don't know him either. So no matter how great it looks and how well acted it is, if it doesn't make the viewer care, or feel connected to the characters, it's, well, boring.

As for the plotting: there are phone calls where not much transpires, long driving shots, long walking shots, lots of what is called "shoe leather", getting from point A to point B; there are discussions with characters relaying info that the audience already knows. There are scenes in which not much happens but characters ponder. This might be fine in small doses if I cared about the characters, but I didn't.

So far at the end of three hour long episodes, not much has transpired, just like real police work. It's boring, tedious, and not much happens. I get the feeling that this was originally meant to be a feature film but someone thought it would be better stretched out over many episodes. I look forward to the feature coming out so I can see how it ends.

Perhaps one could argue that this is just Danish or European story telling vs American or English story telling. But then I think about amazing Danish filmmakers like Thomas Vinterberg or Las Von Trier. The Investigation would have been a whole other thrilling thing to watch had either of them been at the helm.
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1/10
Death to the Dullards!
20 May 2008
Let's start with the premise that movies are entertainment, which by most accounts means amusing, diverting, enjoyable. By this standard Le Voyage du Ballon Rouge fails miserably. It lacks plot, tension, engaging characters, pacing and even pretty visuals to divert the viewer from the lack of story or anything else one would expect to find in a movie.

I have racked my brain to try to figure out if there was some other narrative, perhaps cloaked in metaphor, that was really at the heart of this movie, but there's nothing there. The puppet show in which Juliet Binoche's character works doesn't seem to be a commentary on anything in her or her son's life. Even the red balloon which might have played the same purpose as in the original Ballon Rouge (an imaginary friend, an escape from reality) provides no such purpose in this film. If the intention of director, Hsiao-hsien Hou, was to show mediocre lives unfolding in the dullness of real time, he has succeeded. But if he intended to entertain his viewers, he has failed on all fronts.

It's astounding that such a lifeless movie got written, funded, produced and distributed. I can't imagine this film will do any box office, and it deserves none, which is a fitting death to a dull film. Save your money and skip the DVD.
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Shine a Light (2008)
7/10
Stones Hit, Scorsese Misses
6 April 2008
I saw the Rolling Stones live last year for the first time and I was blown away. I've been a Stones fan for decades but have never had any interest in stadium rock concerts with their huge crowds and tiny stars on stage. The few stadium shows I've attended were always mediocre experiences. But the Stones' Bigger Bang tour changed my mind.

For one, the enormous video screens make every seat great. Beyond that, it was the Rolling Stones that won me over. Rocking songs, incredible performances, unbelievable energy, and every one in the crowd dancing and singing the whole show. And these guys are in their sixties! Watching 'Shine a Light' on IMAX at times made me feel like I was actually at a live Stones concert, but then I kept feeling that something key was missing. And it was.

Martin Scorsese covered the two explosive shows at the Beacon Theater in New York with 18 cameras but he somehow missed getting the band. As expected, lead singer and ringmaster, Mick Jagger, gets the most screen time, with guitarist, Keith Richards, coming in a not too distant second. And then there's Ron Wood, the second guitarist, and some might argue, the better soloist, He has juicy moments on screen, but is shockingly absent time and again when soloing, the camera instead lingering on a prancing Jagger or posing Richards.

And where is drummer Charlie Watts? Watching 'Shine a Light' one might think the Stones had backing tracks instead of a live drummer. Watts is the quiet one (who doesn't dye his hair) but he's the backbone of their sound, keeping time, holding it down while the boys jump around. I kept wanting to see shots of Watts, not only for the variety of imagery and the visual reinforcement that there really is a live drummer hitting the cowbell on 'Honky Tonk Women,' but also because he's an original Rolling Stone. Sadly, there are only a handful of very brief clips featuring Watts, and just as few wide shots of the whole band on stage. And Watts is not the only one nearly absent from the movie.

Although the original members are Jagger, Richards, Watts and Wood (Wood joined in 1974 so he's not actually an original Stone), they tour with a number of key support musicians, including bass player, Daryl Jones (who's worked with them since 1994), a keyboardist, a horn section and three back-up singers. However, except for some brief interplay between Jagger and the back-up singers, the other musicians are absent from the film. It's not so unusual to relegate non-member, support players to minor roles in concert movies, but to avoid them altogether is baffling and frustrating.

The support musicians may not be Rolling Stones but they are a part of the band. They are playing the music and adding to the sights and sounds on stage. But 'Shine a Light' mostly kept them in the dark. This isn't how a real concert is experienced. In concert the other players are seen and often featured in the spotlight as soloists. But time and again in 'Shine a Light', we hear a piano riff, a sax solo, a horn section blast, a bass run, but we never actually see who's playing. We neither get full nor medium shots, nor even close-ups of hands playing. We don't even get quick cuts of the support players, as one might see interspersed regularly throughout most filmed live concerts today. Instead, we see lingering shots of Jagger and Richards, sometimes so close you can see the brown behind Jagger's teeth, while a saxophone or some other player wails somewhere off-camera. The Stones sound is some much more than guitar, bass, drums and vocals. A concert is so much more than the starring players, but you don't get that from this film. It's as if the film makers had tin ears.

This is baffling because they had 18-camera shooting the action. So the film makers either didn't get the coverage, or they decided in the editing room not to include the other players. Bad decision. This gives the movie, the Stones concert experience, a frustrating myopic feel. I kept wanting to see what I was hearing, but couldn't. I kept wanting to get a visual of the focal point in the song and on stage, but it was not delivered. Even one of the few times Jaggar plays harmonica is off-camera. This left me feeling short-changed.

Ultimately, 'Shine a Light' is slightly claustrophobic, with all its medium and close shots. It rarely opens up to show the entire band on stage. The film suffers as a result, as wide shots would have provided much needed breathing room, offering a more open perspective, and also providing the myriad tight shots with context. We do see the interplay between Jagger and Richards, or between Richards and Wood, but we don't see the whole band working together as a unit. And ultimately that's what a live Stones show, or any live rock show is all about--a group of individuals performing together as a band. Even if Scorsese decided that the film was all about the four Stones, he could have easily divided the enormous screen into quads, now and again, so we could see the four Stones working their magic simultaneously in a multi-screen format. This is common place today and highly effective.

It's baffling that with all the resources at hand and experience behind him, Scorsese didn't quite deliver the goods. It's as if his infatuation with the visages of Jagger and Richards blinded him from showing us the Rolling Stones. 'Shine a Light' is enjoyable for sure, but suffers from a limited vision.
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