Ten

Ten (Abbas Kiarostami, 2002)

Ten sequences examine the emotional lives of women at significant junctures.

Filmed with digital cameras attached to the dashboard and shot entirely in the car driven by Mania Akbari, Ten paints a picture of a woman that wanted to be more than a submitted housewife in a world of that sadly repressive men are still accepted. The first sequence with her son Amin (Amin Maher) presents her as a divorced woman that has been remarried with a man she loves and that her son doesn’t. Amin seems already trained to be carrying the stereotypes his father told him.

Irréversible

Irréversible (Gaspar Noé, 2002)

Events over the course of one traumatic night in Paris unfold in reverse-chronological order as the beautiful Alex is brutally raped and beaten by a stranger in the underpass.

After all this time, I've finally got to sit to watch Gaspar Noé's most widely known film: Irréversible. Staring two of the best French actors of their generation, and a couple in real life, Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel give striking performances as the onscreen couple that gets their life completely change over one shitty night. Let's say it like this. As the film is legendary known to be edited in reverse, the scenes are in the unchronological order, their are not that many things to spoil for the reader who never watch this unforgettable film.

Let's get this out, this is disturbing, violent, and two particular scenes that probably anyone who has ever heard of this knows; the famous brutal murder scene with the fire extinguisher and the crude rape scene where Bellucci might have given her life changing performance and probably the worst scene to act for a woman. It looks so true that at some point, we believe it is happening in front of our eyes. There are two things I have to say about this. First, yes it is very difficult to watch, but rape happens every day and it is part of life. If people are not disgusted by it well the rate won't drop. Let's just hope that anyone who watches that will think about twice before committing such an ugly crime. Second, since art and media are the reflection of life, well it should not be censored or passed over. Cinema is there to illustrate the best and the worst of humans. And Irréversible is one of the most human films I've ever seen.

The evolution of the story is so well executed and I believe that Noé's approach to the whole idea is not only a gimmick of telling the story backwards. It could have been a gimmick, nothing is more true than that. But Noé wants us to ask ourself, is the story weaker because I already know the ending? No. It even makes more sense when the emotional angle is observed, knowing what's going to happen in their lives we kind of have even more empathy for those characters. The movie gets all our attention and we easily get to identify with them.

Finally, it is a mandatory film and probably one of the most important film of the 21st Century. However, I don't think I'll ever watch it again. Just like a great piece of art I wonder how long I will think about it. Mandatory, difficult, but more noticeable it is essential.

Spider

Spider (David Cronenberg, 2002)

Spider is the story of Dennis Cleg (Ralph Fiennes), a man who is given a room in a halfway house catering to mentally disturbed persons. Cleg has just been released from a mental institution and in his new abode starts piecing together or recreating in his memory an apparently fateful childhood event.

Blissfully Yours

Blissfully Yours (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2002)

The story of a love affair that begins during a picnic on the Thai-Burmese border.

STOKED : The Rise and Fall of Gator

STOKED : The Rise and Fall of Gator (Helen Stickler, 2002)

Following Dogtown and Z-Boys, this other documentary about the subculture of skateboarding reveals one of its darkest sides. The rise of Mark « Gator » Rogowsky as one of the most well paid Vert skater of his time; the 1980’s. And then, its fall into depression, huge egomaniacal, and inviction for rape and murder at the first degree.

Québec-Montréal

Note: this a new series of reviews I'm installing on Le Mot du Cinephiliaque. Since I was born and raised in the Province of Québec I've decided to present and review some of the films that populate my culture and that represents the Cinema of here. The feature will be called after our license plate motto: "Je me souviens" for "I remember".

Québec-Montréal (Ricardo Trogi, 2002)Being a part of what I call some kind of a "Québec Nouvelle Vague", Ricardo Trogi is a X generation director that directed three films that had a major success so far within the public and the critics: Québec-Montréal, Horloge biologique, and 1981. The first film by Ricardo Trogi is one of my favorite film from Québec, it depicts the story of different groups of people traveling from Québec City (my hometown by the way) to Montréal for different reasons. With a cast of young and unknown actors at the time with now respected names like: Patrice Robitaille (Horloge Biologique), Isabelle Blais (Borderline), Jean-Philippe Pearson, François Létourneau, Julie LeBreton, Stéphane Breton, Pierre-François Legendre, Tony Conte,. Benoit Gouin, and many others Québec-Montréal earned its respect of a low-budget, road-movie that works and that makes you believe in those characters.

The different stories are told simultaneously during the journey from Québec to Montréal. First, the young couple of Julie (Julie LeBreton) and Pierre-François (Pierre-François Legendre) that quarrels all the time about everything. You sure have a couple of friends like that in your entourage I'm pretty confident about that. Then you have the three guys or dudes that are going to take the plane in Montréal to head to the south for a all included resort. In that car you have Rob (Patrice Robitaille), J-P (Jean-Philippe Pearson), and Rivard (Stéphane Breton) discussing about a girl Rivard used to got out with and that J-P always secretly loves. In an other car you have Cossette (François Létourneau) who goes to Montréal for affairs with his collegue Katherine (Isabelle Blais) who he is madly in love with but is to shy to make a move. Finally, there's the hilarious Michel "Mike" Gauvin (Benoit Gouin) who goes to Montréal for his business. What is interesting here is the fact that not every story comes referenced in the other and the only thing that relate all these people is the trip they embark on.

The interprets of the many roles of this film are just right and since they are in the X generation category they portray their characters with reality. You d'ont have a fifty-something guy who plays a young man. Even the direct, Trogi himself is from this generation of young talent widely influenced by the works of Quentin Tarantino, the Coens, and their contemporaries. The subtle "mise en scène" let's to the viewer the time to connect and relate to the many characters. Just the journey of traveling between those two cities is a part of our cultural landscape but the location don't really influence it here, it could be any road: it's the human interactions that are exposed and exploited. The regional canvas identifies it for us Québécois.

In sum, this is one of the most interesting films from Québec not only to discover the talented cast but also because it represents a youth and a generation in the making of the film and also the portraying of the characters. A must see.

Rating:

Gangs of New York

Gangs of New York (Martin Scorsese, 2002)
Gangs of New York is the Martin Scorsese picture that Harvey Weinstein wanted to produce to win many Oscars and be the ultimate David O. Selznick. Weinstein wanted to produce the movie of a true Hollywood director and have full control over "his" director. The Miramax tycoon always thought he knew movies better than anyone else and he knew what the public wanted to see. Buying foreign films at low cost and cutting them to please American audiences was his bread and butter in the 1980's. In the 1990's, he decided that he would buy Independant American features and control the lenght and the content. He began producing with Tarantino's Pulp Fiction and slowly earned fame and recognition within his peers. However, ther a re few filmmakers that haven't been well acquainted with Weinstein because he is a man of control and a manipulative fellow. He'll always present himself like your best friend, buying your movie and making you a favor to distribute and promote it the way you wanted it to be.

28 Days Later (2002)

Quelques réflexions sur 28 Days Later de Danny Boyle

Il est très ironique de constater que c’est «l’insouciance » des jeunes activistes qui voulurent libérer des chimpanzés d’un laboratoire ou l’on expérimentait un virus mortel qui fut la cause de la contagion traitée dans 28dl. Il faut savoir qu’il existe un groupe d’environnementalistes qui souhaitent voir la race humaine disparaître pour laisser place à la faune et la flore. Ils prônent l’extinction de l’espèce qui menace le plus la planète Terre. Opinion discutable mais qui pourrait représenter la cause pourquoi ces jeunes étaient naïfs face à l’action politique qu’ils croyaient réaliser.

Toutefois, le cinéaste Danny Boyle ne fait qu’effleurer ce propos pour laisser plus de place à l’épidémie et à l’état apocalyptique qu’il représente en Angleterre. Les images frissonnantes d’un Londres abandonné par l’humanité marquent la mémoire du spectateur.  Son discours se situe beaucoup plus au niveau de l’effet qu’une épidémie causée par une erreur humaine plutôt qu’au niveau d’une intention d’une nation vengeresse ou d’une erreur militaire telle celle démontrée dans le Dr. Strangelove (1963) de Stanley Kubrick ou l’ironie prône ainsi que les inquiétudes de son auteur face à un éventuel conflit atomique au cours de la Guerre froide. L’influence de la vision de Kubrick est ressentie tout au long de la filmographie de Danny Boyle. Tout spécialement, pour 28dl c’est le ton ironique de la cause de l’apocalypse qu’il emprunte au Dr. Strangelove de Kubrick.

28dl, fut catégorisé comme étant un film de zombie nouveau genre. Cependant, le film de zombie « classique » a auparavant été surtout utilisé comme véhicule de dénonciation sociale. Si l’on observe, par exemple, le Night of the Living Dead (1968) de George A. Romero on peut y découvrir une dénonciation du racisme omniprésent en sol américain. Dans le cas de son Dawn of the Dead, Romero se permet une allégorie de la société de consommation de masse avec ces hordes de zombies qui pullulent vers le centre commercial ou se sont réfugiés les derniers survivants de l’apocalypse. Il démontre aussi comment une petite communauté qui malgré ses différends internes doit s’unir pour survivre et recréer un semblant d’humanité (thème Fordien exploité en huis clos).
Dans le cas du film de Boyle, le message se fait sur un niveau plus important que sur la simple critique sociale. C’est une forme de cri du cœur, très peu subtil, de la préoccupation de son auteur face à l’éventualité d’une erreur qui pourrait causer des dommages irréparables à l’humanité. Il se veut aussi une certaine dénonciation de la science qui, avide de gains, se rallie plus souvent aux belligérants malveillants qui recherchent toujours à dépasser les limites de l’armement au dépit des valeurs plus nobles que la science s’était octroyée, c’est-à-dire : le bien de l’humanité. Il en découle aussi de la banalisation et du manque marqué de précautions vis-à-vis de ces menaces mortelles.

Le monde post-apocalyptique de Boyle est inquiétant certes, mais il réfère aussi à la reconstruction de l’humanité ainsi que de sa survie. La communauté de Mark, Selena et Jim doit s’unir pour survire aux infectés. Ceux-ci, ayant des comportements agressifs de rage intense. Leur ultime défi est d’échapper à la colère qui risque de miner leur fragile harmonie. La représentation des zombies de Boyle est très intéressante : ils représentent des enragés ou plutôt des Hommes qui n’auraient pas évolué depuis leur passage du singe à homme : une référence aux singes qui sont libérés et qui répandront le virus. Ce virus représente la perte de l’humanité, des institutions et de l’évolution de l’Homme. Les infectés perdent tout sang froid et leur instinct destructeur écrase leur civilité. La réflexion que pose Boyle dans la seconde partie de 28dl est : est-il pire de détruire l’humanité d’un seul coup ou bien que la terre soit peuplée d’humains sans civilisation. De plus, il est primordial de se souvenir que la rage, la haine et la destruction sont des inventions de l’homme on peut faire ici un parallèle avec la création humaine du virus.

Du point de vue de la forme, 28dl fut un chantier d’expérimentations pour Boyle qui a tourné avec le numérique. Tout en donnant un fini grossier avec un grain important à l’écran ce type de support donne un aspect documentaire au film. Ce fini un peu brouillon ajoute une teinte de vérité et précarité aux scènes de survie, comme si on avait tourné en vitesse de vraies scènes un peu comme l’esprit du Cannibal Holocaust de Ruggero Deodato. Certaines scènes de l’isolation de Jim sont complètement muettes et laissent tout l’espace au dépaysement du spectateur qui ressent les mêmes émotions que le protagoniste à l’écran, on assiste à une maximisation de la catharsis dans un monde de fiction qui s’apparente à une réalité probante. Les rues de Londres, l’une des plus grandes villes européennes, désertes et surtout sans un bruit démontrent l’horreur pure sans artifice de la fin du monde tel qu’on le connaît.

Is it worth a 25th Hour?

25th Hour (Spike Lee, 2002)


This film split critics on two sides, some loved it others hated it. I didn't knew what to think about it for a while aftger seing it. At first , I thought I would have liked it, but to me the message of the film was too dumb and too simple to me. I'm not a big fan of Spike Lee's films either. I hated Do The Right Thing, found Malcolm X ok, and liked The Inside Man.

Monty Brogan is going to jail for possession of Cannabis. This is his last day as a free man. He wants to see his friends, his father, his girlfriend whom he suspects she might have given the cue to the cops... This film is a post september-11 reflection of the American society. All its fears and all its hate is condensed in that film. Everything evolves around the way the life of Americans changed on that day.

At some points the film wants to be more than what it is. With the many pompous references: A Clockwork Orange is omni-present here and not in a good way, and all the skills Lee doesn't handle to make this film a tight story that could have been better in master's hands.

A sequence that annoyed me the most in 25th Hour was the dream at the end of the film. I don't like to spoil so I won't write what is it about but I think the film was too long for what it has to present and tell.

A review by Michaël Parent

Les meilleurs films de la dernière décennie - 2002

Pour vous faire languir encore plus avant le dévoilement de mon Top 100 des meilleurs films de la décennie qui se terminera en ce 31 décembre 2009 je vais vous présenter le Top 10 de chacune de ses années!

Voici mon Top 10 personnel des 10 meilleurs films de l'année 2002:


1. Adaptation (Spike Jonze)
Un film unique et impossible à catégoriser! Quelle équipe que celle de Kauffman/Jonze!

A one of a kind film! Kauffman/Jonze are a wonderful team!

2. Far From Heaven (Todd Haynes)
Un hommage aux films des années 50 à la Douglas Sirk. Un très beau film réalisé de main de maître et joué par des acteurs de grand talent!

A tribute to Douglas Sirk' 50's films. A beautiful film well directed with tremendous actors.

3. L'Arche Russe (Alexander Sokurov)
Un plan séquence qui nous plonge directement dans la Russie tsariste du Musée de l'Hermitage.

One tracking shot that brings us deeply into tsarist Russia at the Hermitage Musuem.

4. The Pianist (Roman Polanski)
Gagnant de plusieurs Oscars Le Pianiste n'a besoin d'aucune présentation.

Winner of many Oscars The Pianist doesn't need any presentation.

5. The Two Towers (Peter Jackson)
Le second volet, selon moi le meilleur, de la trilogie de Tolkien adaptée par Peter Jackson.

The second part of this trilogy, IMO the best film of the trilogy by Jackson adapted from Tolkien's.

6. Amen (Costa-Grava)
Mathieu Kassovitz, Costa-Grava.

7. About Schmidt (Alexander Payne)
Un "road movie" extraordinaire qui donna à Jack Nicholson son meilleur rôle depuis plusieurs années.

A wondeful road movie that gave to Jack Nicholson his best role since many years.

8. Punch-Drunk Love (Paul Thomas Anderson)
P.T. Anderson qui avec ce film nous démontre qu'il est capable de réinventer la comédie romantique avec presque rien comme scénario et presque rien comme acteurs.

P.T. Anderson revitalized the romantic comedy with nothing as a script and nearly nothing as actors!

9. Gangs of New York (Martin Scorsese)
Scorsese avec une fresque violente nous expose les débuts de sa ville natale et les débuts de l'Amérique.

This violent epic from Marty Scorsese shows the beginnings of his hometown and his country.

10. Catch Me if You Can (Steven Spielberg)
Une chasse à l'homme amusante et bien orchestrée de la part de Steven Spielberg avec Leo Dicaprio et Tom Hanks. De plus, quelques scènes furent tournées dans ma ville; Québec.

A chase well orchestrated from Spilberg with Dicaprio and Hanks. Some scenes were filmed in my hometown; Quebec City.