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Reviews
...And Justice for All (1979)
Wonderful
One of my favourite movies of all times. The script is just fabulous in the way it exposes the judicial system. The drama, the tension, the characters, the premises, the humoristic situations, the moral dilemma, the dialogue and the sudden delicious ending are perfect. The performances are great, Jack Warden is fantastic and I find it always interesting to see Lee Strasberg perform. And then there is the wonderful Al Pacino, at his best, a superb performance beaten at the Oscar's race by the obvious De Niro for "The Deer Hunter". I guess that makes 1979 a vintage year... I can watch this now with the same pleasure I did the first time I saw it.!
Mulheres, bah! (2008)
Beautiful short!
So far the best short of Joao Costa Menezes! Tender, sweet, lovely. I loved Serial Killer as well, but this short made me feel better and we need this nowadays. A beautiful story about growing up, sharing and overcoming jealousy. The tale of the brother and the sister is wonderful. Watching them growing up together was very moving and I loved the way it all ended. The adults play a very secondary role in the story and I found that to be perfect. They were secondary but present, not absent. All the kids are great but the one who played little Deco is amazing. The music is fantastic and the narrator's voice is wonderful.
Akasha (2001)
an experimental mixture between video art and film
This is a rather difficult film to comment.. To start with, I had problems in understanding it.. there was so much information, so many mixture of formats, so many things unexplained.. and also the fact that it was bi-lingual (another interesting experiment that didn't quite work for me..) didn't help. There were some interesting concepts there: I liked the "shadow people versus ghost people" part (and the explanation of reality versus unreality through numbers) but then it was all left like that, without further explanation. I would like to see these concepts developed in a future film though. What exactly happened there? I'm not sure, but my guess is that nothing really happened. The beginning and the end were shot in a completely different way than the rest of the film. I suppose it had to do with the reality versus unreality. The beginning was beautifully shot on film and then for about 15-20 minutes it was shot on video as an amateur movie. It was strange, even though I think it worked on making the audience believe everything was really happening and not staged (was it?...) Then, as it seemed it would go on like that until the end (handheld video camera and lots of talking), slowly it developed into a horror/thriller film, even though always strange. Towards the end there were some intense moments and then it ended as it started, beautifully and calmly, in an anti-climax (and non-commercial) ending (after the growing tension). Overall, an interesting experimental piece that mixed film with video art but maybe a bit too ambitious.
Pourquoi se marier le jour de la fin du monde? (2000)
A disturbing film about love
This was one of the most disturbing and intense films I've ever seen. I confess I didn't know belgium cinema so well, so I got really surprised with this one. It's a very surreal film about a magical love found at the brink of death by a woman that was trying a desperate escape from an... obsessed love. The photography is amazing. A film to watch over and over again!
Ôdishon (1999)
not just another Japanese horror movie...
This film was presented as one of the most strong horror movies from Japan and the fact that it was rated R for its strong content lead the audience to believe it would be facing the typical horror film. The truth was that the film portrait a beautiful relationship between a father and his son. The father was a widow and a friend convinced him, in order to get a new girl-friend, to open an audition to actresses for a film they weren't planning to do. That's how he met his new girl-friend, a beautiful young actress. Then the story concentrates in this love... And.. what about the so promised horror?? While the audience was leaving the theatre, the story kept following this relationship between the father, the son, and the more and more strange woman... Little did they know that the best was yet to come... in the last 10 minutes of the film... as a reward for those who stayed and proved they love cinema and therefore deserved the award... It may not be commercial (as people tend to have less and less patience to wait), but that amazing ending is unforgettable.