From Friday to Thursday : what we think about films
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What is this blog? Well, it is our blog. We are French students who loooove going to the cinema. Therefore we decided to create a blog to share our thoughts about films we've seen. You'll discover our favourites, as well as the ones we hated... Welcome!
How influenced are you by film criticisms and awards?
The results of our opinion poll
We gave a series of ten questions to people of various ages (from 20 to 50), to try and evaluate the
extent to which people are influenced by awards and criticisms.
The results show that most people do not read film criticisms and that those who do read them do not take
them into account in their final decision about seeing a film or not.
Everybody asks for the opinion of their friends or relatives who have already seen the film.
Only a minority of people watches the actual ceremonies of film festivals or films competitions, but most
of them inquire about the results afterwards.
All the people to whom the opinion poll was submitted consider that an award is not a token of quality.
This opinion poll shows the general tendency of paying little heed to the film festivals or competitions
which are less mediatized, even if they are considered as major events within the cinema industry (Goya,
Berlinale, Mostra of Venice…).
If you have seen 'The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel', you will love this film. I you have not, you will love this film. It has basically the same starting point - elderly people in a retirement house- but dealt in a completely different way.
This one happens in a retirement house for singers and musicians. These musicians and singers have to present a show at the end of the film in order to keep the house open. But a new character arrives and some won't be as happy as others. This new character played by Maggie Smith is a great and capricious singer who was once married with one of the main male characters and do not want to sing with him again. And all along the film we are wondering she will or if she will not sing.
Wonderful movie directed by the great Dustin Hoffman. A tremendous actor who succeeded in doing one of the most beautiful and poetic film of the beginning of this year.
The actors are all great and make us laugh. Maggie Smith put a smile on our face every time she starts to speak. Billy Connelly is just marvelously funny. Tom Courtenet is charming. And Michael Gambon is as despicable as ever.
You will laugh. You will cry. You will be moved. You will listen to good music. In one word: Go!
Key words : Ablixa, psychiatry, perversity,
deception, denunciation, money.
The plot is as
follows: a young woman (Rooney Mara) whose husband (Channing Tatum) is just out
of prison becomes depressed and sees her world falling apart after a brand-new
antidepressant prescribed by her psychiatrist (Jude Law) has unexpected and
dreadful side effects. Is that really it, though? One thing is certain: the
psychiatrist has to face the consequences of his patient’s actions and try and
clear his name.
I found the
intrigue clever and nicely packaged and the actors excellent. I had never seen
Rooney Mara in a film before, but she is perfect in this role and steals the
show to lead actor Jude Law, who is nevertheless as good as usual. Channing
Tatum’s presence on the film poster is superfluous in my opinion, because his
character is clearly just a prop that allows for the story to develop.
Catherine Zeta-Jones delivers a good performance as Rooney Mara’s previous
shrink.
In Side Effects, almost everybody cheats
and bends the rules to match their own best interests. Morality is secondary,
at best. Money is what matters. It is a clear denunciation of the
pharmacological world. It also sheds light on the current state of America,
addicted to antidepressants and anxiolytics, and where everybody seems to have
some pills in their pocket and to be unbeatable at antidepressant names. The
United States appear as an over-stressful world: many people seek medication to
be able to keep going and luckily (really?) find compliant doctors ready to
provide them with drugs.
If you like
twisted thrillers filled with suspense, I would strongly advice you go and see Side Effects. Even if you do not
especially like twisted thrillers filled with suspense, go and see it anyway,
you won’t regret it. It is captivating and brilliantly interpreted.
The plot is fairly
easy to sum up: the crew and passengers of an airplane supposed to go to Mexico
are facing potential death because of a technical problem. The stewards spare
no effort to try and alleviate the tension, one of the passengers is
clairvoyant and desperately wants to lose her virginity, another one is
persuaded that her enemies are scheming against her (she indeed claims to be in
the possession of very compromising videos involving her and the six hundred
most influential men of the country), a newly-wed couple are going on their
honeymoon… The passengers of the second class have been drugged and are all
asleep in blissful oblivion.
Although I had a
really good time throughout the film and laughed quite a lot at some point,
i.e. during the epic dance of the stewards (no, I am not giving the game away,
as this scene appears in the trailer), I’mso excited will definitely not make a lasting impression on my memory. The
actors are good but the scenario is empty. I am usually very appreciative of
Almodovar’s films (especially of Los
abrazos rotos, Mujeres al borde de un
ataque de nervios, La mala educacion,
Tacones lejanos and Todo sobre mi madre) and I think that this
film is much below his usual standards. It could, therefore, be deemed disappointing
as an Almodovar film and yet, I enjoyed myself and had a good laugh.
The film is
funny and light (very light indeed!), but does not it claim to be something
else? Is not there more to it than meets the eye, no hidden message behind the
salacious jokes? I think that I’m so
excited could also be seen as a political allegory of the current crisis in
Spain, through the mention of a financial scandal, the corruption, the
unprofessionalism, egocentrism and superficiality of all the characters who are
supposed to held responsibilities (the crew of the airplane, the crew of the
airport (hi Penelope Cruz and Antonio Banderas!), the businessman), etc.
To cut a long
story short, if you fancy a light comedy and do not want to overwork your
brain, go for it!
I should be
straight with you: I loved the film so much I went to see it thrice.
That being said,
here is the story or I should rather say, here are the six stories:
- - 1849: South Pacific Ocean. JimSturgess is taking the passage from a British colony to the mother country and
is slowly poisoned by his alleged friend, a doctor interpreted by a very ugly
Tom Hanks.
Key words:
slavery and betrayal.
- - 1936: Cambridge and Edinburgh. JamesD’Arcy’s lover Ben Whishaw is a young and talented composer who lives and works
with an old tyrannical composer interpreted by Jim Broadbent.
Key words: love
letters, homosexuality and genius.
- - 1973: San Francisco. A
reporter, Halle Berry, meets a now old James D’Arcy and has to investigate and
solve a mystery involving oil and nuclear power.
Key words:
plots, suspense, turtleneck sweaters.
- - 2012: London and Scotland. JimBroadbent, an elderly editor, finds himself trapped in a retiring house and
plans his escape.
Key words:
humour, escape and old age.
- - 2144: Neo Seoul is filled with
clones. With the help of Jim Sturgess, one of them Sonmi-451 (Doona Bae), might
change the world.
Key words: uniformity,
love and rebellion.
- - 2300s: A post-apocalyptic island.
Humanity is back to a primitive state. Tom Hanks and his tribe live in fear of
cannibals and worship a goddess called Sonmi (rings a bell?), but the arrival
of a more evolved human being (Halle Berry) might change everything.
Key words:
apocalypse, cannibalism and faith.
The message of
the film is that everything is linked. It is the circle of life, literally.
Souls reincarnate, good or bad deeds echo in eternity (“What we do in life,
echoes in eternity!” Maximus, Gladiator). If the recurrence of the same actors
in different roles and the interwoven stories themselves did not make you
understand that, the presence of the comet birthmark on a different, important
person in each story should do the trick. The comet-bearer is always someone
whose actions had significance and influenced the future.
Some people
called it messy and snobbishly, excessively complicated, but as you might have
guessed from the number of times I saw the film, I really, really loved it. It
is visually, esthetically superb. It is captivating, beautiful and moving. The
Wachowskis (directors of the Matrix
trilogy) and Tykwer (director of Perfume:
the story of a murderer) assembled one of the most impressive cast you
could imagine and comprising many of the finest living actors who do not have
anything to prove anymore: the brilliantly versatile Tom Hanks, the
ever-graceful and mesmerizing Ben Whishaw, the stunningly beautiful Halle
Berry, a despicable Hugh Grant, the great Susan Sarandon and Hugo Weaving, the
irreplaceable Jim Broadbent, the touching Jim Sturgess and James D’Arcy, and
the talented and previously unknown to me Doona Bae.
Another argument
in favour of Cloud Atlas (if you need another one) is most certainly the music,
the consistency of which gives an unmistakable personality to the film as it is
made of several variations of the same musical theme. It is wonderful and I
really liked the fact that the music composed by the character of Ben Whishaw
in the film, the Cloud Atlas Sextet, should be the musical score of the film
itself.
I think I got a
bit carried away here, so I will simply conclude by telling you to go and see
it. The story is epic, the cinematography excellent, the acting extraordinary.
You can have fun trying to spot all the actors in their various disguises, and
you will most certainly leave the room in a dreamy state, with your eyes filled
with stars.
Lo:
Gosh, I felt so stupid...
I shall be less enthusiastic than my colleague here, the reason being that I was not as mesmerised as her by this nonetheless aesthetically perfect film.
Why is that? Well first, the choice to use the same cast over and over in the several mini-films - though it is a good idea - is not that good! (What is she talking about??). Grrr, let me do the talking! Once you understand that it is the same actors but disguised in several and very different characters, you are caught in an evil game which consists in spoting all the actors in the story. Oh, it is Tom Hanks! Argh, what an ugly Hugh Grant! etc, etc... and from my point of view it is bad, very bad! Indeed, by doing that you spend most of the film doing something else than following the film and in the end: woops, I don't know what this is all about! Not the best reaction the directors are expecting (or maybe it is!).
Secondly, the way this film was edited. I am fed up with all these pretentious film directors who under the pretext to be fashionable are all doing the same kind of films. (What is she talking about??) Grr, what did I say? Well, the fashion is to make very complicated films and to edit them in a very complicated way in order to have a very cooooool film. It could be interesting if it has not been done hundreds of times. Here, the several stories are all interwoven - with sometimes I agree beautiful transitions, very beautiful - but which add a difficulty to the reading of a story which is NOT difficult at all. I may not be the brightest but I only understood the real message of the film after speaking to my completely crazy colleague and for me that is definitely a negative point.
Yet, I enjoy watching this - somewhat long - film and I definitely recommend it to everybody.Who said I was paradoxical? (Grrr)
