Change Your Image
yulia-pomarina
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Lists
An error has ocurred. Please try againReviews
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016)
Either P&P or zombies
May contain spoilers.
The film inevitably since the very beginning divides itself and fall apart into two unequal parts, one is about zombies, another is about Pride and prejudice. The part about zombies is better, it is original and easy. The part about P&P is pretty bad. The actors are not great in it. It is hard to say, what impacted on me to make such an impression. Maybe, just the topic (P&P) is so popular so you have seen many very good actor works so in such a comparison the actors of the present version lose. Maybe this is just not their cup of tea and they have just lack of talent. Maybe, the matter is in the very idea, either P&P or zombies and you must be an Oscar nominee to be able to keep such a self- dividing, self-breaking plot more or less integrate. The result is pretty unstable. The part about P&P is bad and worse. I marked 4 for zombies. They are the only convincing actors in the whole film. I praise computer graphic for it and good work of make-up artists. One else actress is OK with the topic rather. It is Lena Headey. And she is here also with a giant bodyguard. So she changed her hair colour from white to black, but she came from Game of thrones and it is noticeable. But the plot is lame here as well, when Mrs.Bennet tries to compliment Lady Cathrine (Lena Headey) I doubt that the answers from such a person would be so vegetarian. Lena Headey is a gem and must have better lines than that, so it is wasting of her participation here. You expect something really witty from the plot, but alas. If Jane Austen would write this part about zombies she would do it much better.
So the film is not worthy of seeing at all.
Le libertin (2000)
Smile in Age of Enlightenment
I saw "Le Libertin" 3 times. Or even 4. It is very good. It is much better on French with subtitles It is one of those 2 or 3 movies which I wanted to re-watch immediately after final titles. How to explain? If you see only nudity and scabrous jokes here I am afraid that this film is not about it at all. You may try but you can not persuade me. What I see here - is a great philosopher and great struggle for enlightenment. And what I admire in French style is to do serious things with easy smile and turning all into a fest. And they do it very powerful and in very fascinating manner. Vincent Perez and Fanny Ardant are splendid and subtle. They show a relation between two adult persons. Look how really adult people do it (not kidult).
Great part of the movie is devoted to question of religion. Soundtrack to the movie is worthy of listening. Main song performed by Boy George adds richness to atmosphere.
You feel courage behind the fest - you can see behind the form its content. You see a great self-control behind this smile. They do not try to make a good face playing bad, they do not play fool, no. On the contrary they make their fest so courageously, they are able to play games when the matter is quite serious, so you see Frenchmen are great nation. As if they know a great secret of life... To smile like in an old song...
Smile Smile, though your heart is aching Smile, even though it's breaking When there are clouds in the sky you'll get by If you smile through your fear and sorrow Smile and maybe tomorrow You'll see the sun come shining through for you
Light up your face with gladness Hide every trace of sadness Although a tear may be ever so near That's the time you must keep on trying Smile what's the use of crying You'll find that life is still worthwhile If you'll just Smile
This is a film which Fenchmen made after all what happened with them after the Age of Enlightenment, having in mind all what they did not find necessarily to say straightly. I see that this film has a strongest content covered with jokes. Only Frenchmen are able to say something complex using such easy manner without harm to the content.
I love this movie from the very beginning to the very end.
Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
Merciless Truth
This is a story about an average individual. Llewyn is a musician. He is talented, but not too much. He is upset with his companion's (co-singer's) death and absolutely crushed. During the film's time he makes all mistakes a person in such a condition is able to do. So we can see, he is rather far from - not even "ideal" - he is far from even what can be so called "a good fellow". Every chance he could get spectator's sympathy, he loses it (he passes by a curve leading to a city where his child might live whom he never has seen before, he leaves a homeless cat on a road, he insults an amateur- singer who shares the same stage with him and his friends, and so on, and so on, and so on). We see a person full of good intentions but he is very weak and broken to be able to follow them. It is a film about a loser. Llewyn is not like Shakespearean heroes with their deep heroic passions and misfortunes, no, he is just very light, very common, very shallow, and he splashes not in an ocean, he splashes in a bog, and the bog absorbs him. This is a movie about when something wrong can happen it happens. What I dislike in this picture - there is not happy-end at all. Even not a hope. I would prefer protagonist to be reborn after his wrongs, stay and think, organize himself, opened a new truth in his life. But no. He just continues his decline within the movie.
And I felt a vexation about all this situation. I believe that it is what the movie is about mostly. The moral is: When you are in bad condition, you can not act right, all you do is wrong. You can not change anything until turning you into a good condition. So when you are in depression do not try do something until you stop it. Honestly it looks like an educational movie how to discover that your friend is in depression and why it is bad. It is very bad indeed. The worst is that it is a movie about everyone who was at least once in a bad mood and bit his friends', wife's or child's head off. So the film is mercilessly true. Masterpiece but too hard to watch again.
Concerning the acting, directing and music - the movie is perfect. Especially music. It is as good as country music can be, slightly sad and wise, and perfectly performed. So when I am in a mood to mourn over our world (when the world seems unfairly wrong) and nothing can relieve my mind I listen to the 'Inside Llewyn Devis' soundtrack.
The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
Strength of Contrasts
The movie gives that feeling... you watch it and feel something like pain of looking at dirty truth although you would probably prefer to look at something more pleasant even if it were a sweetest lie. But you do not have such an opportunity. You just see the absurd and you understand that it is a film, it is an absurd, all is like pictured on canvas with pencil and paints. They use a pink filter for shooting (I can recall only one else use of pink filter, in 'La môme'), they show stupid gags and heroes are funny - to intensify contrast between beautiful pictures, nice heroes and ugly situation. And you want to cry of all you see. It is painful... Maybe, it is an effect after all our XX century history, who knows. If you could rewrite it you would do it. But all choice you have, like a personage of Jude Law has, is to live with it.
Prospero's Books (1991)
Strange and Very Good
On the first sight this is one of numerous attempts to make a Shakespeare movie. Yes, it looks rather like a spectacle than a film. First impression is that it is a very-very strange movie. Actors are deliberately artificial. Make up is intentionally thick. Gestures are exaggerated. People are silent. You hear music and reader's voice. I thought watching it - what's it exactly? A try to say a new word on a topic which is equal to four hundred years?.. Try to say a new word of it, just try, okay.
Time passed. Several years.
By the time a new adaptation of 'Tempest' appeared, with Helen Mirren as Prospero. And what's the matter? I found that I can not watch another 'Tempest' shot by any other director. All of them look like wrong, WEAK and stupid. All of them look like fakes. (I love Helen Mirren, I adore her works and her appearance in every film is welcomed by me. But not in 'Tempest' - and it is not her fault.)
Wow, I thought, what a surprise! The movie by Peter Greenaway - for me - is the Best 'Tempest' I have ever seen - and I'm afraid - I will ever see. It is so right as it can be. The text is a pure contradictory fantasy of the poet and Mr. Greenaway makes it into reality, breathes a life into it showing it with all means which do not offer ready images for us and, on the contrary, he turns a spectator's imagination on and involves us into a game with images. Do you know such another director or another film which makes it with a spectator? It is closer to a real Globe staging. It is a miracle. And it is a fantastic masterpiece.
Do I recommend it to everyone? I don't. It is very-very specific. It is not for everyone. Just like something collectible, something valuable, rare and fragile. Something you would prefer not to show for everyone not to break an atmosphere around it. And it takes several years to understand what it really IS. Just like in life ... when you live and do something whatever, and then several years later you suddenly catch your thought that it was a happiest time in your life. So this film is something of that kind (for me). You may understand what it IS not immediately after watching.