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“To be honest, I wasn't really sure what to expect from this flick but since it was on the '1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die' list, I was quite eager to check it out. Well, it turned out to be a really solid film noir, that's for sure. In fact, the opening scene in the subway was just amazing ” read more
Notes: It was the first movie I saw directed by Robert Bresson and, as I expected, his work turned out to be quite challenging. Indeed, I’m not surprised that Andrei Tarkovsky was a huge fan of Bresson’s work and, to be honest, just like with Tarkovsky’s work, I did struggle to feel a connection with this movie. Indeed, even though the main character keeps telling us his feelings and thoughts mostly when writing in his diary, I was never really sure what I should think regarding the events displayed in this movie. I mean, you could argue that they tried to display the contradictions between what this community was expecting from their new priest and what he was expected to do according to his religious dogma. However, this theory completely clashed with the fact that the main character was heavily ill through most of the duration and, as result, the whole thing was rather murky, at least, to me. Still, Bresson had such a raw and realistic directing style, it made the whole thing rather ostentatious but also quite spellbinding to behold. It is also interesting to note that Bresson used to make takes after takes so that the actors would basically forget that they were acting but, to be honest, even if the performances were intriguing, I didn’t think that they were super realistic. Still, Claude Laydu, in his first acting part, was actually really good.
“I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but it seemed to have a decent reputation and since it was available on Netflix, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, even though I did like this flick, to be honest, at least half of it didn’t make much sense though. I mean, the whole” read more
Movies the giraffe watched in 2017: November (29 movies items)
Notes: I haven't seen this one yet...
chosen by Wilma
Notes: Even though I didn't really like 'Ida', I was quite eager to give this director a 2nd chance, especially since this movie had been widely heralded and was even considered as one of the best movies released in 2018. Well, unfortunately, pretty much like with 'Ida', I really struggled to connect with this movie. I mean, once again, Pawel Pawlikowski delivered some fine directing with a gorgeous black-and-white cinematography and the music was really neat as well but this story just didn't really work for me. First of all, even though I completely understood why Wiktor would fall in love with Zula, after all, she was a beautiful and fascinating woman, I didn't really get why Zula was so infatuated with him. I mean, seriously, what was so amazing about this guy? Then, another problem I had was that I was never able to figure out the motivations of these two characters. I mean, except from the fact they were clearly mad in love, from the beginning until the very end, I still didn't much have a clue about what was going in their head so I had a rather hard time to really care about what they were going through. Maybe I'm not just smart enough but it was all too subtile and subjective for me, I guess. On the other hand, I did like the way Pawlikowski tried to argue that not all the people living in Poland during the Cold War felt miserable and that the West was not always a so-called 'beacon' of hope and freedom for all of them.
(Dec. 2018)
Notes: I had to admit it, I'm not really familiar with John Wayne's work and, in my opinion, he basically always portrayed typical tough guys so I was rather surprised to see him being cast in a such a romantic feature. And the best thing is that it actually worked. Basically, it is a rather simple and very old-fashioned romantic feature. Still, the fact that it was so old-fashioned made it, at the same time, very cute and charming but also sometimes rather annoying to watch. Still, I thought it was quite enjoyable to watch and the whole thing had an extra personal dimension (indeed, my own father moved from the Netherlands to live in France and I myself moved from France to live in the Netherlands). Eventually, it remains a harmless romantic flick and I thought it was pretty good, even if it was nothing really mind-blowing.
“Even though this movie was rather poorly received like most of Netflix original films, I still wanted to check it out. Of course, the first issue with this movie was that Jon Favreau had released another version of this tale just a couple of years ago and the fact that this movie turned out to be a ” read more
Notes: Eventually, it actually turned out to be definitely one of the saddest movies I have ever seen. First, they gave us this opening with this famous melancholic guitar tune which kept coming back throughout the whole thing. Then, in the very first scene, there was this 5 year old girl holding her dead dog while both her parents were being shot by a plane. I mean, it was just 5 minutes into the movie and I was already a total wreck... Then, they kept bringing again and again some heartbreaking scenes and, as expected, the end was also completely devastating. Around the same time period, I saw 'The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas' as well and everybody seemed to think that it was a major tearjerker but even though it was indeed pretty heavy, compared to this feature, it was actually a piece of cake. A part from that, the acting by the kids was just really impressive and I also enjoyed the writing. Indeed, all the characters were three dimensional and felt really genuine in the sense that they were sometimes nice and sometimes pretty nasty, even this two children.
Notes: I haven't seen this one yet...
“Even though this movie didn't make much waves when it was released, since it was directed by Sofia Coppola, I still wanted to check it out. On top of that, even though I didn't recall much about Don Siegel's version which I saw years ago, I still could remember that it was a rather spellbinding tale” read more
“To be honest, I wasn't really sure what to expect from this movie but since it was directed by John Frankenheimer, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, not so long ago, I actually saw 'The Warriors' which was also dealing with some New York gangs but while 'The Warriors' might be a cult-cla” read more
