
martimusross
Joined Aug 2006
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Queer
Based on a short story by William Burroughs this movie explored the dissolute life of middled aged William Lee, who spent his time frequenting the gay bars in downtown Mexico City. It really was a simple romantic movie that looked at an infatuation with innocence and a journey to recovery from drug addiction.
The story, such as it was was tissue thin, very little happened by way of action, and we had inserted numerous dream sequences and fantasy elements that reflected in an emotional turmoil.
Overall I can't recommend this movie. It was at best of 5 out of 10. I enjoyed it whilst I was watching it but it really had very little substance. Despite some very strong acting from the central leads much of the dialogue was banal and tedious.
Based on a short story by William Burroughs this movie explored the dissolute life of middled aged William Lee, who spent his time frequenting the gay bars in downtown Mexico City. It really was a simple romantic movie that looked at an infatuation with innocence and a journey to recovery from drug addiction.
The story, such as it was was tissue thin, very little happened by way of action, and we had inserted numerous dream sequences and fantasy elements that reflected in an emotional turmoil.
Overall I can't recommend this movie. It was at best of 5 out of 10. I enjoyed it whilst I was watching it but it really had very little substance. Despite some very strong acting from the central leads much of the dialogue was banal and tedious.
The Brutalist
This film wallowed in its own self-indulgence, spanning an incredible jaw-dropping, 3 hours and 34 minutes (a quadruple espresso was required to stay awake). Firstly, why was it so glacially slow, and why was this film so incredibly long, it really was quite inexplicable. The director suggests this was necessary to bring out the pace of building construction in real time and arrive at a detailed character portrayal.
To my mind it failed on both these two opening objectives, the building was quick Just concrete moulding) but halted for years following an industrial accident and the central characters personalities were set in stone from the beginning and never evolved or moved forward, the whole movie denied any direction of travel!
What was needed was some serious editing and perhaps someone that knew how to do it, there were whole scenes added to the movie that added little to the story. They were just inserted piece-meal into the movie and could've been excised without affecting any narrative flow, such as it existed.
The overall cinematic feel of the movie was grey, oppressive and really quite uninventive, there were some attempts to introduce some "tricks", viewing things at an angle, viewing things from above, static shots zooming in, zooming out, it was really quite tiresome, this was less cinematic direction and more intentional artifice!
Moving onto the plot, we had a fictional cobbled together representation of several Jewish architects that survived the Second World War. The central lead of Laslo Tode, as a construct it just didn't work, he was universally miserable, serious throughout, and morally bankrupt. He sought help and then through his arrogance and vanity rejected that help at the same time.
The movie injected some passing themes, that were not really explored or resolved, we had inserts over religion, race, gender, wealth and circumstance, but you could see most of the time this couple brought their own misery upon themselves following their emigration to America.
In terms of the believability of the relationship between Laslo and Erezebet, this was just terribly realised, they seem to have no reason to stay together. They seem to have no natural liking for each other, and the idea that they would remain together to bring up a miserable and petulant daughter that refuse to speak is absurd in the extreme.
The sexual elements of the movie were just so totally preposterous that I laughed out loud. I think secretly I was meant to!
Felicity Jones had no less than three different accents as the movie progressed, we were lucky that niece didn't talk at all or we would've had even worse accents then we already had. Adrian Brody played Adrian Brody, earnest, but lacking any real humanity. We just did not like him, and had little sympathy for him. (As an aside he is looking more and more like Vladimir Horovitz the concert pianist, if they do a biopic of him, this is the man for the role.
The overall Brutalist theme, to suggest the 30s were the golden age of design and architecture is naive and simplistic. In the 1960s architects were influenced by brutalism like structures built at the Barbican Centre in central London, no one is pretending this is anything more than an unmitigated claustrophobic concrete disaster, however we are all familiar with the Guggenheim Museum in New York with its beautiful construction, to suggest that everything these people did was good is ridiculous. There are one or two good ideas, have you tried sitting on one of those uncomfortable brutalist chairs, if you had it is followed by three weeks at the chiropractor lol!
This preoccupation with the Holocaust in films over the last couple of years, either as a direct issue or oblique issue affecting the characters or plot, does not mean this movie is worthy of Oscar, this is just reflecting a current trend in cinematography and no indication of excellence.
Overall, I thought the whole movie was an overhyped miserable jumbled mess and that's being kind. It was mind numbing in its banality and tediousness and a total disappointment for those that anticipated something more after all this critical aclaim. The script was pedestrian and the music grated. The cinema was near empty and those that were present kept fidgeting in their seats hoping this torture would come to an end. At best, this is a firm 3 out of 10 and all of that for Guy Pierce's convincing acting performance. I also like the guy that played Attila, Alessandro Nivolo, he was excellent.
This film wallowed in its own self-indulgence, spanning an incredible jaw-dropping, 3 hours and 34 minutes (a quadruple espresso was required to stay awake). Firstly, why was it so glacially slow, and why was this film so incredibly long, it really was quite inexplicable. The director suggests this was necessary to bring out the pace of building construction in real time and arrive at a detailed character portrayal.
To my mind it failed on both these two opening objectives, the building was quick Just concrete moulding) but halted for years following an industrial accident and the central characters personalities were set in stone from the beginning and never evolved or moved forward, the whole movie denied any direction of travel!
What was needed was some serious editing and perhaps someone that knew how to do it, there were whole scenes added to the movie that added little to the story. They were just inserted piece-meal into the movie and could've been excised without affecting any narrative flow, such as it existed.
The overall cinematic feel of the movie was grey, oppressive and really quite uninventive, there were some attempts to introduce some "tricks", viewing things at an angle, viewing things from above, static shots zooming in, zooming out, it was really quite tiresome, this was less cinematic direction and more intentional artifice!
Moving onto the plot, we had a fictional cobbled together representation of several Jewish architects that survived the Second World War. The central lead of Laslo Tode, as a construct it just didn't work, he was universally miserable, serious throughout, and morally bankrupt. He sought help and then through his arrogance and vanity rejected that help at the same time.
The movie injected some passing themes, that were not really explored or resolved, we had inserts over religion, race, gender, wealth and circumstance, but you could see most of the time this couple brought their own misery upon themselves following their emigration to America.
In terms of the believability of the relationship between Laslo and Erezebet, this was just terribly realised, they seem to have no reason to stay together. They seem to have no natural liking for each other, and the idea that they would remain together to bring up a miserable and petulant daughter that refuse to speak is absurd in the extreme.
The sexual elements of the movie were just so totally preposterous that I laughed out loud. I think secretly I was meant to!
Felicity Jones had no less than three different accents as the movie progressed, we were lucky that niece didn't talk at all or we would've had even worse accents then we already had. Adrian Brody played Adrian Brody, earnest, but lacking any real humanity. We just did not like him, and had little sympathy for him. (As an aside he is looking more and more like Vladimir Horovitz the concert pianist, if they do a biopic of him, this is the man for the role.
The overall Brutalist theme, to suggest the 30s were the golden age of design and architecture is naive and simplistic. In the 1960s architects were influenced by brutalism like structures built at the Barbican Centre in central London, no one is pretending this is anything more than an unmitigated claustrophobic concrete disaster, however we are all familiar with the Guggenheim Museum in New York with its beautiful construction, to suggest that everything these people did was good is ridiculous. There are one or two good ideas, have you tried sitting on one of those uncomfortable brutalist chairs, if you had it is followed by three weeks at the chiropractor lol!
This preoccupation with the Holocaust in films over the last couple of years, either as a direct issue or oblique issue affecting the characters or plot, does not mean this movie is worthy of Oscar, this is just reflecting a current trend in cinematography and no indication of excellence.
Overall, I thought the whole movie was an overhyped miserable jumbled mess and that's being kind. It was mind numbing in its banality and tediousness and a total disappointment for those that anticipated something more after all this critical aclaim. The script was pedestrian and the music grated. The cinema was near empty and those that were present kept fidgeting in their seats hoping this torture would come to an end. At best, this is a firm 3 out of 10 and all of that for Guy Pierce's convincing acting performance. I also like the guy that played Attila, Alessandro Nivolo, he was excellent.
It Ends With Us!
If a psychologist's convention sat down and decided to contrive a film script around the subject of coercive control this would have been the result. As a believable story it was an unmitigated disaster populated with stereotypes and contrivances beyond the wit of man.
We were meant to swallow the premise that Lily Bloom, played by Blake Lively, was so damaged by her controlling and violent father's presence in her mother's marriage, that she went looking for, and was blinded by, a similar relationship entering into her own life. The is a rocky foundation for any narrative, firstly she was in her 40's, what about the numerous previous relationships that she had to compare any relationship to.
Lily presented as an opinionated, independent, self-sufficient woman in control of her own destiny, this was at odds with the suggested premise, that she was weak, gullible and easily manipulated.
Secondly, the dialogue of the script was so dumbed down to that of a teenage relationship with lots of storming in and storming out and slamming doors, it was pitiful. It really was contradictory to the ages of the actors we had before us, this grated terribly as they were clearly in their 40's.
Lastly, to suggest that either of these two were attractive characters, yet they all pretended they were God's gift to the universe, and the movie sold them as such, when they were not, he was swarthy and sweaty and she was mostly mutton dressed as lamb, no Venus and Adonis here, even with cataracts...lol!
The acting was pedestrian, the premise preposterous, the script banal and the end of the movie unsatisfactory trite. At best this is a firm 3 out of 10 skip this tripe.
If a psychologist's convention sat down and decided to contrive a film script around the subject of coercive control this would have been the result. As a believable story it was an unmitigated disaster populated with stereotypes and contrivances beyond the wit of man.
We were meant to swallow the premise that Lily Bloom, played by Blake Lively, was so damaged by her controlling and violent father's presence in her mother's marriage, that she went looking for, and was blinded by, a similar relationship entering into her own life. The is a rocky foundation for any narrative, firstly she was in her 40's, what about the numerous previous relationships that she had to compare any relationship to.
Lily presented as an opinionated, independent, self-sufficient woman in control of her own destiny, this was at odds with the suggested premise, that she was weak, gullible and easily manipulated.
Secondly, the dialogue of the script was so dumbed down to that of a teenage relationship with lots of storming in and storming out and slamming doors, it was pitiful. It really was contradictory to the ages of the actors we had before us, this grated terribly as they were clearly in their 40's.
Lastly, to suggest that either of these two were attractive characters, yet they all pretended they were God's gift to the universe, and the movie sold them as such, when they were not, he was swarthy and sweaty and she was mostly mutton dressed as lamb, no Venus and Adonis here, even with cataracts...lol!
The acting was pedestrian, the premise preposterous, the script banal and the end of the movie unsatisfactory trite. At best this is a firm 3 out of 10 skip this tripe.