Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2006)
The film is a tribute
to the director's parents and is divided into two parts, with the characters
and dialogue in the second half essentially the same as the first, but the
settings and outcome of the stories different. The first part is set in a
hospital in rural Thailand, while the second half is set in a Bangkok medical
center.
The story of the life
of professional snowboarder Craig Kelly.
His rise, his self recluse life from the spotlights and his tragic death in
January 20th 2003.
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".
Bon Cop, Bad
Cop (Erik Canuel, 2006)
When the body of the executive of
hockey Benoit Brisset is found on the billboard of the border of Quebec and
Ontario, the jurisdiction of the crime is shared between the two police forces
and detectives David Bouchard from Montreal and Martin Ward from Toronto are
assigned to work together. With totally different styles, attitudes and
languages, the reckless David and the ethical Martin join force to disclose the
identity of the Tattoo Killer, a deranged serial-killer that is killing
managers of hockey.
This local box-office success, is a mix of comedy and
action. This is an attempt to accomplish a Quebecer version of Die Hard sans Bruce Willis and the
originality that the first film of the franchise set to raise the bar of action
films. This attempt at coupling a French Quebecer cop with an English speaker
policeman like a screwball comedy is another recipe we’ve been served hundreds
of time. The only way the film works is because the lead, Patrick Huard is a famous and widely loved comedian in the Province
of Québec.
The co-star, Colin
Feore, playing the straight man and the Ontarian, gives a much better
performance than the overrated Huard. The later never hide the fact that he
wanted to someday win nothing less than an Oscar. He also directed two films (Les trois petits cochons, Filière 13), his presence in Ken Scott’s Starbucks is more memorable
and demonstrates more subtlety and depth.
As for the story, this is a classic almost racist
attack of the differences between the Quebecers and the Ontarians. Sometimes
the material can be interesting but most of the time it is more on the old
jokes that’s been in the air since the 1960’s in Quebec.
In remember seeing Bon
Cop, Bad Cop in theaters and having almost not laugh or even chuckle at all
during the film. Being a fan of comedies and a good public, it was not a good
sign. This is a tired recipe that was made to please a specific public
considering that people would get the jokes and the many forced situations.
However, most of the general public liked the film which made it one of the
greatest successes of the Quebec film industry. Approach with caution.
The good old Asian monster flick genre has been on hold since the Japanese decided to stop making Godzilla features. Well, the whole King Kong concept has been exploited since the beginnings of the special effects in Cinema. Gigantism is a very Japanese and especially American complex. With the more recent remakes, the Jurassic Park franchise, Cloverfield, etc. The monster genre was a little tired lately.
The Host, a Korean monster film opens similarly to Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later, a scientific incident. In the British film it's the infected apes that spread the disease while in the Korean film it's the toxic substance thrown in the river that created this fish-like monster. Besides, the horror/action angle of the film, the story implies a funny 21st century family of a lazy lunatic dad in his thirties, his yuppie cum little criminal brother, his athlete sister, his smart daughter and his good will father. Each of these characters will learn and overpass his weakness to survive to the passage of the wild creature.
Tinted with moments of pure horror using the classic codes of the genre while injecting a great dose of humor and just a tint of sentimentality this crossover of genres is a very hip movie.
It's a crowd pleaser. The kind of film that can easily become a cult film among young film lovers. The mix of genres may irritate the purists of the horror genre and maybe some older cinephiles will feel that it's too "cool" or too young...
The colors of the film are superb and like many Asian films they are a little saturated but it balances itself with an extraordinary cinematography. We are in the presence of an eye candy looking picture; read here in the most positive way.
Despite some very interesting moments and many twists, I got bored by the whole thing. I think that the story lacked of tightness in its final thirty minutes. However, The Host is a very good movie.
Very underrated when it came out, this adaptation to the big screen of one of the most successful television series of the 1980's; Miami Vice disappointed many moviegoers that waited for a Lethal Weapon kinda crime/comedy movie. The comedic side is never exploited in this Michael Mann film. It may be one of the precursors of the return to the 80's of the end of the last decade. In fashion, style and culture this comeback to the years when my generation was born is something more close to commercial nostalgia than simple return to basics. The 80's were a decade where "more is more" paraphrasing Mies Van Der Rohe's "Less is More". Mann's Miami Vice is an underrated masterpiece like William Friedkin's underrated To Live and Die in L.A. and you know what? this last one was made in the 80's!!!
Miami Vice is the classic cop story where two partners are going undercover in the drug dealing underworld to find the bad guys who killed their partner. At this point there's nothing really new, but as long as the story goes the multi layered plot of these two cops/friends just got better and better. Mann wants us to pay attention to every detail of the film: the many eyes we can see on posters, graffitis, paintings and the recurring thunders in the sky at crucial moments of the movie everything is precisely put in place for a reason.
The styled and uncluttered cinematography lighted with crude and natural light gives a sense of reality to the images of the film and to the choices of unusual frames that gives a subtil artistic touch to the simplistic yet modern sets.
Brilliantly cast with a strong as always Jamie Foxx and the sometimes categorized as uneven Colin Farrel that gives one of his best nuanced performances in Miami Vice. Like the story, their characters are strong and multi layered in emotions. Their friendship is unshakable and even when literally sleeping with the devil they stand together.
Of being one of the commercial flops of the summer of 2006 Miami Vice stands strong and may be one of the center movies of Michael Mann's filmography with Heat, Collateral and The Insider. This is the kind of film I can watch again and again for its interesting story as for its filmic qualities.
Since Eraserhead I've always like Lynch's films even his Dune, that has been criticized a lot. I think in Dune there are many Lynch-like characters and I feel that even with the big budget and big studio system backing him he managed to do his own interpretation of the Sci-fi novel from Herbert. With Mulholland Dr. he brought one of the most avant-garde film to this day. David Lynch is more than a filmmaker; he is a visual artist who paints, produce music and makes his own special effects (read on Eraserhead). He is deeply inspired by films like Tod Browning's Freaks, Fellini's Roma, Stanley Kubrick's Lolita, and the experimental films of Maya Deren. I also suspects that he is very influenced by Ingmar Bergman's Persona. By influenced I must say that he doesn't try to copy or redo them he's reinterpreting them with his unique style and approach to visual.
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 2006:
1. The Departed (Martin Scorsese)
2. Marie Antoinette (Sofia Coppola)
3. Scoop (Woody Allen)
4. Little Miss Sunshine (Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris)
