guytowere Reviews

Heart of Stone (I) (2023)

Such a disappointment

[3/10 · 12 August 2023]

It's really sad that so many people involved in the production of this movie had to be associated with it. I hardly ever rate any movie of a rate of 3 out of 10, but this movie is one of bad quality, unpleasant score, ridiculous plot, lack of any suspense, and in general very boring, I made an effort to stay with it till the end, but it was a hopeless exercise. If Godot wasn't featured in this movie, I would have quit earlier, but I still enjoy her as an actor. The plot is the worst part of it, lifeless, meaningless, drawing no sympathy or empathy from the audience, except impatience to have it over with.

Annette (2021)

Boring to the extreme

[1/10 · 17 August 2021]

I like art movies, and I see at least 2 movies a day. I never left a movie theater, before a movie ends. After an hour and a ½ , i did, for the first time in my life. The songs were so repetitive, with the same sentences repeated 10 times, in almost each song. The movie was long. The comedy elements were not funny at all, I was sitting and watching, saying to myself, how is this possible, to be so bad, so boring, so long, so detached from any emotion, so ui-involved? Yes, some scenes had visual color and beauty and some imagination built into the decor, but is this enough to keep me on my seat? There was fakeness in the stories, i was just so disappointed. I wasn't the only one leaving the theater too. Other women were, before me. I did not ask for a refund, I tried to be generous to all the people who put that movie together. But they owe me some popcorn..

Cuties (2020)

A movie of interest

[7/10 · 12 September 2020]

Revelations abound in Cuties, screen played and directed by Ms. Doucoure: Senegalese culture; Moslem women praying together (an unfamiliar scene to most Christians); laic French schools rocked by volatile, cruel, energetic, unpredictable, creative teenagers; younger minds hugely influenced by social networks, and all this mixed with explosive hip-hop or soothing Vivaldi score and sensualized dancing. I agree that, at times, cameras focused insistently too long on anatomic (clothed) body parts of the teenager dancers. Calling for a Netflix boycott, though, is as wacky as the 1999 NYC Mayor Giuliani (yes, that same Trump lawyer) threat to defund the Brooklyn Museum of Art, when it exhibited a painting from the London Royal Academy of Arts, representing the Virgin Mary. I wrote then against curtailing art, and I do so now. America is still the land of free expression, I hope. Anyway, to refreshingly return to France and Senegal, the story shows how old culture, represented by an implacable old aunt, can oppress the younger generation, both sweet and conflicted mother and joie-de-vivre daughter Amy, into believing that men can do whatever they want and that women (especially immigrant and dependent) must abide by their will. In this instance, it is Amy's father bringing home a second wife, which the first wife must accept, actually with "joy". Amy is distraught at her mother's tears, which sobs she overhears while hiding under a bed. Amy starts acting irrationally, mostly by expressing herself through wild dancing, stealing, and disrespecting the gathering as women pray Allah. It comes to a moment when her family thinks she was possessed by evil. In a short but intensely emotional scene, a spiritual man is called in to evaluate the devil in Amy. Amalgamating his Moslem and Senegalese ancestral beliefs, he reaches a stunning conclusion. Towards the movie's end, the climax generated by all violent competing cultures, music, dance, youth irrationality, converges into a maternal scene that would grab your heart. Ms. Doucoure won the Directing Award at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020. At this writing, it has an 88% Rotten Tomatoes rating.

You Go to My Head (2017)

Sun, sand and mystery

[7/10 · 24 February 2020]

I am not going to reveal the movie's plot, since it is described in detail in other reviews. Most reviews emphasize that the story is about Delphine's amnesia. For me, all I wanted to know, and root for, was whether the relationship between two strangers could evolve into love, and if so, whether love would remain, once the amnesia disappears. Watching this movie, I was held in suspense, in a slow, emotional evolution where predictability was impossible. The build up in their relationship was like a sculpture in progress, delicate, timid, tender and yet unstoppable. Anything could go wrong at any moment, and damage the art creation. The love scenes offer a particularly stunning departure from other productions, in their physical blurred, mirage-like, sun and sand saturation.

When all this is mixed with amazing score, Moroccan desert music, Berber talks, mosques' calls to prayer, howling from sand storms, it is impossible not to feel enchanted and captivated. The director's obsession with Delphine's beauty and destiny becomes ours, and we end up leaving the theatre with an inspiring appreciation of love, art and desert.

Ms. Purple (2019)

What a splendid movie!

[9/10 · 16 September 2019]

Yes, sad, but so realistic and natural. Tiffany Chu is incredible to watch, every minute of it. It breaks one's heart to see what she goes through. One of my best movies this year. I also enjoyed the music.

First Reformed (2017)

A somber masterpiece

[9/10 · 28 May 2018]

One not to miss. The priest personifies the world's intense conflicts between the unstoppable forces of destruction (our planet, our relationships, the consequences of the Iraq war, the brutality of corporate polluters, slavery, churches more attuned to materialism than spirituality) and the receding forces of gentleness, compassion, prayers. This isn't a religious movie, though profoundly spiritual. It reminded me of Dostoyevsky, Camus and the anguish of existing in a universe so corrupted that even the thought of bringing a child seems like a sin to his father. Both Ethan Hawke and Amanda Seyfried are amazing to watch. And my admiration to Paul Schrader..