A charming and fun procedural. Excellent characters and relationships, but the case stands out as the central element, with few rabbit trails of unrelated sexual intrigue.
A world of people with no grounding in reality becomes a fertile ground for digital exploitation.
10 for the message.
I don't think this is a great film or even an enjoyable one (with the exception of a few violent-but-funny moments), but the moral of the story that Caroline presents in the final scene is perfect, so I'm giving it a 7.
Terrific send-up of Hollywood manic nonsense; everybody trying to out-snow everyone else, and pretend that the other person is making sense, because you must not be an insider if you call BS on the idiot spouting nonsense!
I feel like the premise could have been given to a different writer, and a superb film could have been the result. Needed: more mystery, more thriller, less insanity. It seemed the production team was trying for comedy when they needed to aim for crime thriller. Nevertheless, if it weren't for the atrocious amount of bad language, this would be a film I would recommend despite the zaniness; I felt the message came through loud (and clear?…yyyeah, probably).
The film is exciting, thrilling, well-paced, and almost a terrific watch.
Rosamund Pike does a terrific job as a psychotic black widow, but how should I evaluate Ben Affleck? Maybe he did a superb job, but how does one know? His character is so confusing and unlike anyone I've ever known in real life, that I can't tell if he is doing a bad job, or if he's perfectly portraying Nick Dunne. He's just as slippery a character as she is. She should be inconsistent because that's what psychopaths do, but Nick Dunne is not mentally ill, so his inconsistency made me question Affleck's performance.
When the two got into voiceovers and conversations about playing false characters to each other, I was confused. Of course she was false to everyone in her life; poor thing had no identity from childhood due to her (literally) fictional upbringing; as for him, as everyone must do, he put on a good face to begin courting her, but certainly by the time you settle into a marriage (and hopefully a lot sooner!), you are yourself. No one can keep up a fake identity 100% of the time, yet that's what they both claimed they were doing for 5 years? And the 20 million dollar question: why does she want to keep him at the end?
The last 10 minutes paints the bitterest, most hateful view of marriage in all of literature.
I expected a silly spy comedy with a few ouch moments. Instead, I enjoyed an entertaining spy film with reasonable visual effects (not top-drawer but good enough for a non-serious film) and excellent plot twists. Yes, the alternating characters in Elly's mind are sometimes confusing, but not enough to lose track of who is who. The smoke grenade gunfight was well choreographed and visually delightful.
Expect an art film and you won't be disappointed. "Rechazados" is an excellent commentary on humanity's tendency to separate Us from Them using arbitrary distinctions. Beautifully shot. The sequences where the children seem to dance organically as a group are magical.
Argh! So hard to watch, but it does pull you in. Closer to Stallone than Sorjonen (Bordertown), it gives Rolf Lassgård the full stage on which to shine, and he does that extremely well.
Entertaining and solid production. And finally a bank robber film where I enjoyed cheering for law enforcement, although I felt a little sorry for Doug toward the end. I give it a 6.5.
Excellent story, writing, pace, editing. The theme of parental love is wonderfully illustrated. And it's always good to see a protagonist who isn't a pushover.
Reality Check. The French Government is part of the business of kidnapping and selling tourists to the wealthy. The upside: it benefits a few government officials. The downside: it tanks the tourist industry, which is a large part of the Parisian economy, and which supplies the virgins. Without tourists, they'll have to start selling their own citizens, at which point the French—not known for quietly accepting things they don't like—will probably begin to be upset.
An excellent brain challenge keeping everybody straight; wonderfully tight editing (almost too tight, but the viewer just needs to think faster); a real feather in Scorsese's cap. Super good!
[spoiler]I kept waiting for a real surprise near the end, when Dr Madden was unveiled as some higher-up mole, else why would she be working both Billy and Colin? As it was, that love triangle served no purpose other than to generate a breath-holding moment in the glass box when Billy mentioned her to Colin. I feared Colin would realize Billy was his competition and kill him, pre-empting the real conflict between them. Fortunately, that realization didn't happen.[spoiler]
Excellent job! Although I was at first confused about who was who, and the characters' connections (made a bit more difficult by the failure of Léa to call her mother "Maman"), the writer soon explained the relationships (and even included a meta-remark about Léa's weird habit of calling her mom "Isabelle"). Excellent acting all around. I particularly enjoyed how they handled the flashbacks with increased grain and appropriate color correction palette.
Terrific message; not the usual plot, but tremendously enhanced by the historical backstory.
Wow, they keep covering more and more aspects of the war, usually only seen in specialized films. Great job!
Sasha Bukow and Volker Thiesler!!!
Shaking my head. I have no idea what is going on in Varg's love life. Yes, he's super handsome and is used to women throwing themselves at him. But he acted so irrationally for Wenche whom he clearly doesn't actually love. He likes the sex, but he loves Anna, so why does he abandon her for a washed-up divorcée? And what was with that last comment about waiting for the old broad to get out of prison? Yes, he has waited 38 years for a wife (so we were right in calling a lie his claim earlier in the episode that he'd been married), but his affair-of-the-week hardly means he's going to marry her!
Excellent production values, very good acting, DP & director and writing (style) are just fine. I can't figure out the layout of episodes, however. Two episodes in 2017, then two in 2020, but episodes 1-3 are one story arc, and episode 4 is a standalone story. First two episodes are quite poor, with inept policing and a series of nightmarish assaults on one investigator which are ridiculously excessive in the fashion of Tarantino. Then episodes 3-4 are quite good, with intensity and some violence.
I would divide it into two seasons by year of broadcast.
"Season 1" rates 4.
"Season 2" rates 8.
If you didn't need to watch episodes 1 & 2 to understand episodes 3 & 4, I would strongly recommend just watching the latter pair.
Don't let yourself be confused: Dominique, his lawyer, has been replaced with an actress bearing a striking resemblance to the embittered widow from the cemetery in the first episode! When she first appears in Borchert's cell, it will seem a continuation of his nightmare, but that scene is real, not a dream. Raspberries to the director for this terrible gaffe. Director Rola should have introduced her to us somehow in another fashion—making her first appearance directly after a dream segment is the height of confusion!
Superb synthesis of the various elements of the Sixties, making connections no longer well-known. (HUAC triggered the first protests at Berkeley!) The interviewees, with the benefit of perspective, are able to acknowledge where they were on the right track and where they weren't. And the greatest lesson is stated: if you want to change things, you need a vision for what you want in their place.
2024-01-01T00:00:00Z2024-12-31T23:59:59Z