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Reviews
Tôkyô monogatari (1953)
Godzilla was created in response to this movie
Okay, maybe not. But surely the accusations of an being uneventful, plodding movie are right, and that's a bit unfair. Japan at the time had a weird genre of realistic slow moving dramas so by design the movie is paced like this. To give the benefit of doubt to Ozu, he mastered this type movie. In other hand it seems that he was stuck in his old ways of filmmaking or restricted himself to the format. It's hard to judge this movie out of its historical context. It's a successful movie on its time and place. But having watched Late Spring (1949) an equally placid but more rewarding movie, Tokyo Story fails in comparison trying to juggle too many characters for even less storytelling. Even Setsuko Hara is barely on screen despite being Ozu's muse and main draw for audiences. Not recommended.
Shall We Dance? (2004)
Feel-bad remake of a feel-good movie
I avoided this movie for 20 years. I was familiar with the 1996 original, that aged gracefully and is still a bliss to watch. This spineless remake shows that the problematic adaptation of the original movie setting to Western culture can't be solved by just throwing Hollywood money into it. The movie is so broken compared to the original that you can only resort to lament how memorable key scenes from the original were mishandled. The spastic direction, clumsy dialogue, dubious acting and poor casting was not part of the original. Susan Sarandon is the only one left with some dignity and real energy on this but the independent wife type is a key plot element misplaced here. The original movie is themed around insecurity but here everyone is acting cool for the camera. Maybe she should be the one dancing. Richard Gere is too charming in both real life and this movie. In the original the salaryman is well put together but is unsure about his looks himself. Lisa Ann Walter is just annoying and rude while the original character is blunt but loveable. Stanley Tucci clearly did not see the original movie and lost a golden opportunity for slapstick comedy. Jennifer Lopez is totally miscast here not because of her acting as her counterpart in the original was also not an actress. In the original the lady in the window is a sophisticated, delicate, cold and high status world professional competitive dancer. She is something unattainable for most men. Lopez is a sexualized version of this idea so the stakes are lower here. I tortured myself out of curiosity and I regret the time wasted. Long live Shall We Dansu!
Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie (1972)
Surrealistic Seinfeld
A movie about nothing. That's the pitch. If you are familiar with the television sitcom series you will find some common elements but that's about it. Obviously the movie is not an empty vessel for gags but for Luis Bunuel usual jabs at his favorite targets in society: the bourgeoisie and the Church. Bunuel trademarked surrealistic gimmicks are here and cranked up to maximum. Several times the rug is pulled under the viewers, but unfortunately at their expense by the masterful troll director. If you are willing to play along Bunuel's inside jokes this movie is quite fun and entertaining otherwise it's a clumsy experiment in narrative from a tired director.
Verbotene Filme (2014)
Documentary with zero original research
The premise here is that there are a couple of dangerous German WW2 of movies securely locked in vaults and modern day (for 2014) reactions to them and the justification for their censorship. That's the "documentary". A lot of present day discussion with academic people and students but no historical analysis in either political sense or biographic details. Those movies just "exist". Perhaps the more entertaining part is the collective hysteria regarding the movies shown and praise for how powerful and entertaining they are despite they coming from a distant past. Well, fast-forward to present day big entertainment and corporate news washes out the population with ideological and state-sponsored propaganda.
Shin Gojira (2016)
Cut. Line. Cut. Line. Cut. Line
That's the pace of editing and acting for a huge chunk of this movie. The bureaucrats are just shouting nonsense just as they appear on camera, constantly. There is no reaction, acting or rhythm to the scenes and it is totally designed like this by its troll director. An strong but awkward statement about a cold and machine-like government response but bad movie making. The actual action parts are stylish and well executed so be prepared for both extremes of excitement. The rate of this movie in this score system is five stars out of ten. That's my review at the time of this writing. Godzilla forever.
Bobby Deerfield (1977)
Infuriating, clumsy movie
Part of Hollywood was in love with European cinema, so they did their best to bring the style overseas: by making a shallow copy. This time the went to the lengths of filming on location, that's a bonus. The film looks gorgeous but it's the only good thing going because the movie is deadlocked on two awkward characters that do not reveal much of themselves.
Pacino is a write-off on this movie. Trying to be both the 1970's anti-hero archetype and the European man wandering from scene to scene, he is a very unsympathetic, uninteresting and boring protagonist.
Marthe Keller's character, Lillian, is a character that tries to be interesting but ends up being just annoying. My guess is that she originally was supposed to be some blunt teenage girl (the type of pairing that European directors love), but here passes just an immature confusing woman. Not good but is still better than Maria Schneider on The Passenger (1975), another dubious crossover of European and Hollywood cinema.
The direction is clumsy, lacking in subtlety so it's obvious when the director is forcing some setting or situation. Almost borderline parody of arthouse movies of the time.
The Real Charlie Chaplin (2021)
Unwatchable
One of those documentaries which the style and attempt of sophistication is so overbearing that detracts from the subject and becomes very annoying. It comes as bad as Joy Division (2007).
The narration is atrocious. The sparse short sentences are alike Tik Tok automated voices. The 2020s marked de death of attention span and this is leaking to general entertainment after the reality TV era.
The writing is also not great in any means. I think the most meandering of those pretentious Youtube essayists could come up with more concise information.
The art direction while trying to mimic the silent-film era, tries to blend too much with real artifacts causing confusion.
Watch the old documentary "Unknown Chaplin" (1983) instead.
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes (2022)
Too close to reality
I became very puzzled by this documentary. Having just watched the 2019 series, it's ridiculous the similarities in structure and storytelling. Obviously it's the same event being covered but specific choices make either the drama or the documentary to look like a lesser effort given which one you watch first. They are too similar.
The impressive real colored footage covered in Lost Tapes would shape the series visuals anyway. But the case of the firefighter and the pregnant wife is too much of a coincidence for a dramatic element to be present on both. My wild guess is that this documentary was ready long before 2022 and the fillmakers just built upon it and it kinda spoils the brilliance of both productions.
This documentary should have been reedited to take a different approach from the series.
Kaze tachinu (2013)
I wanted to see a masterpiece
What I got was a rehash of old Ghibli ideas mushed together. It's formulaic Ghibli as performed by the master himself. It shows that even veteran animators can lose their sense of timing.
This movie pales compared to Porco Rosso (1992), largely the same movie but better paced more clever and fun. Porco is so much interesting character than real-life Jiro that Miyazaki out of thin air created a non-biographical romantic pairing to have anything at stake.
But Miyazaki script is so unimaginative that the non-existent Jiro's wife has a life threatening sickness just like the mother in Totoro (1989). In both movies this is the tension point for a largely uneventful movie.
Finally Jiro is chasing his creator's dream while dreaming weird stuff just like Whisper of The Heart (1995). Another already tried idea.
The movie is pretty as any other Ghibli movie. The character design is akin to early 90s Ghibli instead of the ugly designs of the late-90s (Chihiro is so ugly). But God this movie is boring.
The traditional jerky animation is there. Ghibli uses TV animation pacing in all their movies for whatever creative reason. It's not detrimental but after the groundbreaking Akira (1989) this particular studio is stuck in old ways. Even the jarring 3D shots mismatched in frames per second from Princess Mononoke (1997) are here. At least the machines are still hand-draw.
This movie is a sure misfire because Miyazaki did not take any risks beyond its controversial setting. Jiro's sin is not being a hero or a villain but terribly boring.