What was the last film you saw and how would you rate it? Pt. 18

All The Money In The World - 8

The Darkest Hour - 6 to 7 because the movies slows down a little and drags. But Oldman's performance is so strong that he is getting that Oscar nomination. Also it is still pretty incredulous that members of the Conservative party in England were still trying appeasement with Hitler while the soldiers were trapped on the beach at Dunkirk! MORANS! Churchill had it right. You don't talk or bargain with Hitler!


Jumangji : Welcome To The Jungle - 7-8. Just an enjoyable fun ride.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) - 7/10. I would love to see C-3PO and R2-D2 being relevant again.

Season 3 of Broadchurch - 8/10; entire series - 8/10

When I started watching Broadchurch, I wasn't familiar with Olivia Colman. Over the past 5-ish years she's been getting more and more high-profile roles, and now she's everywhere.

Ladybird 9/10

Indochine - 7/10

Molly's Game (2017). I won't say it's the biggest disappointment I've experienced from what I've seen of the 2017 crop of Oscar contenders.  To be honest, I wasn't that excited with what I saw in the trailer (subject wise).  It definitely won't be in my worst movies of 2017 list either.

But it was ultimately a pointless hagiography of someone criminally stupid and naïve (or so the central subject of the biopic claims).  I'm giving two stars for Idris Elba and one star for Kevin Costner.  Rating it a frustrating 3/10.

The Vanishing (1993) - 6/10, good cast, average thriller.

Dangnabbit!  2017 is an embarrassment of riches!


Phantom Thread (2017), 10/10.  No idea that the movie was going to be so funny.  And definitely no idea that it was going to go in the direction it went (story wise).

Gary Oldman  and Daniel Day Lewis will have to duke it out for best lead actor.

Hanna (re-watch) - 9/10

Continuing my Golden Palm marathon

The Class (Entre les Murs): 9/10 a "school-case" (pun intended) of Cinema Verité

Elephant; 9/10

In fact, it's a 10 minus one point for the nausea it made me feel.

I don't think I'll ever watch it again, the Golden Palm winner of 2003 is probably one of the most sickening and disturbing cinematic viewings I've ever experiences. I don't think I ever felt that way since I saw "In Cold Blood", but "In Cold Blood" had me trembling and crying during the climactic massacre, in "Elephant", just the anticipation of what was going to happen made me feel uncomfortable, and when the shootout started, I just waited for the nightmare to end. I applaud the tactful approach of Gus Van Sant to have made the film so short, eighty minutes are enough...

... or are they?

Even these eighty minutes felt like three hours once I knew where this was leading to, my belly was hurting literally. Gus Van Sant follows  the lives of many high school students but without the usual fuss about it, once you get used to someone, the camera abandons its subject for another one. The point isn't even to put a spotlight, just to show as many people as possible, a bespectacled outcast, a photography buff, three anorexic girls who act like divas and debate about the time one of them spends with her boyfriends, a group taking part to a debate session, and the blonde kid with the yellow T-shirt and the drunk father.

At first, you're trying to find a reason why these boys and girls are being shown, surely they must have a significance to the story, surely one of them will do something, it can't be just gratuitous exposition... but there's something in the way Gus Van Sant handles the camera, it's like just 'happening' to be there, just random, as if it was floating in the air. Indeed, there's a sense of melancholic atmosphere, as if the day was meant to be just another boring autumn day with no fuss to make about it, and that no one ever expected it to be "special", just another autumn day in Portland, Ore, carried by Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata". While being conventionally 'normal', there is some disturbing foreshadowing when they all talk about plans for the next two hours, perhaps the only hints of subtle screenwriting.

And then we see the two killers-to-be, again no over-exposition apart from the fact that they've planned everything and now they are going to die. The film prepares us to what will be a bloodbath and in my heart, I was just hoping that Van Sant would stop the film before it ends, I didn't want the violence to happen, to know it would happen was enough, but I was like "OK, I got the point, they're all going to die, why do you need to show it", but as painful as it was to witness the killings, it was necessary, because the real test of the film is how violence would be portrayed. I think one of the triumphs of a movie is to make violence so ugly you don't want it to happen, but "Elephant" makes it even uglier when it happens.

It is ugly because it's cold and random and arbitrary, the antithesis of cinema where everything is governed by a narrative, where even violence should have a point. In Van Sant's film, there's absolutely no style whatsoever, some deaths are shown on-screen, some off-screen, some are suggested, even the killers are focused like in a paintball game, as if the point was to make the bloodiest mess, but without a sense of enjoyment, they do it because someway, they feel they had to do it or wanted to do it. But again, Van Sant doesn't try to make a statement about violence, just to show how it happens, how it can come at any point, any moment. We all believe we have a destiny, one can dream to be a photographer or a star or just to get the hell out of school, but these beliefs don't amount to much in a world where being at the wrong place at the wrong moment equals death.

The film was inspired by the Columbine shooting of 1999 but I think the film is relevant regardless of any context. Today, people can walk on the street and be randomly stabbed to death or ran over by a truck, one of the defining traits of violence is its banality, mundanity, the fact that it can pop up at any moment. Still, there's something extremely disturbing in the way the film portrays these shootings, it tries to give them an ideological value from the killers' POV but I don't think it's a matter of ideology, once you start to believe that there's a belief behind or a religion or an ideology, you lose the real scope. It's like watching "Schindler's List" and ending with the relief that these things wouldn't happen because Nazism belonged to the past.

The point is that, for as long as there will be men, there will be men killing and enjoying killing other men, and they will be as civilized as that Nazi playing the piano during a ghetto massacre or the young killer playing Beethoven in "Elephant". Sure we have to find the reasons and yes, everything must be done to anticipate these things and avoid them but Van Sant tries to be as neutral as possible, he knows even NRA supporters would weep at the end of "Elephant", so he won't rationalize these shootings as if one was the consequence of this or the cause of that, he won't show these kids enjoying a violent movie before, he will just show you how easy it is to get a weapon and go commit a massacre. Everyone is up to his own interpretation. That's why the film is important.

"Elephant" doesn't try to be a social commentary and it works as a challenge to people who think they've been desensitized with movies. Honestly,  I didn't know what to think about these movies that make violence look cool or too stylized to be taken seriously, I don't think violence happens because it happens in movies but I've read that after watching "American Sniper" many Americans felt the urge to go shoot some Arabs on the street, I don't think a film like "Elephant" would provoke the same reaction, for me it worked like the 'Ludovico treatment' in "A Clockwork Orange", I was disgusted by guns, violence and any act of killing. Every once in a while, we need a movie to show what real violence is: ugly and definite. It's like a booster shot, although with 'downer' effects.

And the film is a masterstroke of casting and directing, by taking unknown actors, Van Sant emphasizes the realness of the story but he does more, by focusing on various slices of life, the film challenges our own cinematic habits, inherited from hundreds and hundreds of cinematic viewings, we're so used to see ugly ducklings become pretty or outcasts committing suicide, kids becoming heroes, or villains getting their comeuppance that "Elephant" will provide a necessary yet bitter slice of reality. Don't expect any of these conventions, I won't spoil the film's most brilliant moment, let's just say it involves a guy named Benny.

The minute Benny emphasizes what is so intelligent and remarkable about "Elephant", and also so disturbing, again, a painful experience, but necessary like a medicine.

Kept Woman - 7/10 - fun little Lifetime movie.
Magnificent Obsession - 7/10 - liked All That Heaven Allows more.

sex, lies and videotapes - another winner! I can't believe I waited for so long, and I can't believe Laura San Giacomo didn't get an Oscar nomination for her performance, seriously!

Okja (2017), 9/10.

Ladybird 6/10

The Elephant Man - 8/10

Pocahontas (1995) - 6/10. I was 8 when I see this as a kid, now I saw it again in order to vote it and see it with new eyes. The Oscaw Winning song is definitively the best about it.

Cirlce http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3118452/
7/10 for the movie as all
but for the meaningful of story i will give 9/10

My Beautiful Laundrette - 7/10 - the ending was weak.
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"Dan could sexualize a chair." - Hanif Kureishi, author of My Beautiful Laundrette

Eagle Eye (re-watch) - 7/10 - back when Shia LaBeouf mostly played likable, goofy guys.
Red Dawn - 3/10 - God awful.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017) - 8/10 Despite the criticism I liked it for the stunning (and often very original) visual effects and surrealistic atmosphere of the movie that draws you into a 137 min long fairy-tale.

Lumière!, 8/10

A collection of early films by the Lumière Brothers with commentary by Thierry Frémaux. Works best if you understand the French commentary without subtitles.