Not very familiar with the actors, I enjoyed some of the conversations although the imitations do start to get annoying halfway the movie. You can see they are great actors but you do feel the script pouring through lots of the time... It has to look like 2 friends getting together having funny conversations but it just doesn't work. Plus I got very annoyed with the maffia/Al Pacino/Marlon Brando imitations, it was just too easy. Overall it felt more like Michael Winterbottom has started his midlife crisis and uses the actors, the script and Italy to get to the (michaelwinter)bottom of it. A pointless one night stand, 2 older English guys "trying" to be funny, beautiful scenery, it just breathed midlife crisis everywhere. I just found it too easy, he could have made something better honestly, maybe put in a weird end with someone dying or something a bit more shocking.. now its just a small river of sometimes funny conversations between two 40something English guys who still want to shag all young, beautiful girls, and who do feel more male when they succeed in this, while they get drunk on gin and tonics... It looks like Michael Winterbottom went to Italy himself, red some Lord Byron and Don Juan, felt himself a bit like Woody Allen and combined this with his upcoming midlife crisis and this was what came out.....The scenery is beautiful though and you will crave for a fab pasta just because of the food shots.
Reviews
3 Reviews
The Past
(2013)
Too long to stay engaged. Great acting still.
19 April 2014
Although the actors do a great job, especially the small boy, I had several issues in this movie. First the story; at the beginning it seems to be about the ex-husband who deserted his family to return back to his home country with all the emotional drama's when he comes back to sign the divorce papers. Then after a while it changes and the story seems to be about a daughter who has done something terrible, then it changes again and it focuses all op on the suicide and the reasons for this suicide with all the emotional drama's around. In the end I lost my attention and every change I felt less engaged with the story and with the actors, and in the end I was just fed up. Because this is the second issue, the movie is too long. The director should have cut half an hour from it. Cleary lost his way halfway editing and didn't know what should enter or not, please focus next time better. A good cut makes a movie. The actors were there; great quality was available but now he got drowned in the endless story and the changes in the story. The scenes alone are good and make sense but it's too many loose ends and too many stories beginning but not ending at all. This created a feeling of in satisfaction for me (with sometimes is fine) but in this movie it just provoked irritation and I lost my interest in the movie, and in the actors, which is a shame because they do a great job. All of them really. Third, the mistakes; A woman comes home and takes her shoes off and in the next scene she wears flip-flops?. ..A boy in the bath tub wearing swimming pants?. And there were a few more. I also wondered, why the pregnant woman is smoking all the time while she is pregnant? OK,she under a great level of stress and there are several dramas going on but smoking while pregnant? It just seemed stupid in my eyes. There are different ways to express high stress levels and I found it just stupid and I just made me feel less engaged with the story and actress as well.
Caché
(2005)
Good made movie but deceiving end
2 March 2006
I think after the film hits Haneke had, he received a well deserved budget for his next movie. The story of the movie is good and intelligent. And the actors are acting superb and the shots are nice. But I was still quite disappointed after wards. Haneke has a good story to tell and builds up the suspense but later in the end it goes out like a candle. He just didn't know how to end the story!And then he just did do nothing. I founded rather cheap and silly. I was already disappointed with his other movie:Code Inconnu where he does a little bit the same. He gives some hints of things going on in society but at the end he does not work out one thing. But if you feel like a french movie and don't mind unfinished stories you still could go and see it.
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