Rate The Last Movie You Saw

[drinkanddestroy]

Chopper (2000) - 6/10
The first feature film by Andrew Dominik, who later on directed The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and Killing Them Softly. He also wrote The Killer Inside Me.
Well it feels like a cheap first feature but is still interesting and even gets pretty exciting at times. I never thought I'd say so some day, but Eric Bana is terrific.
The whole thing made me think about Bronson by Nicolas Winding Refn, because both were:

- low cost
- prison films
- inspired by the life of a real character
- done in a fancy way
- breaking most writing convention (for the sake of being noticed)
- used as a breakthrough by an emerging director

In both cases, it seems to have worked.

Bana is indeed terrific; and (aside from one previous movie where he was eighth billed) this is his first movie.

I'd definitely rate this higher than 6/10, but your 6/10 is equal to my 7.5/10 or 8/10, so I guess we're in agreement 

[Dust Devil]

Now that's a good French genre film. I hadn't seen one in years, if not decades.

Since that was made approx. 10 years ago, it is fair to assume you guys made at least another one in the meantime.

[stanton]

Actually there are lots of good French genre films. There was even a very good TV series called The Returned.

[noodles_leone]

Since that was made approx. 10 years ago, it is fair to assume you guys made at least another one in the meantime.

Not in France. Well you can always say that the Audiard films are genre films but they often start as a genre film and become something else. I may be forgetting at least one film but I don't think so.

That being said, I had not seen this one so I may have missed a couple other ones (but at least I knew about it).

Actually there are lots of good French genre films. There was even a very good TV series called The Returned.

I couldn't watch this one. I'm very happy about the success it encounters outside our borders, and I'm the first to praise its qualities, but it's still not well written at all, mainly poorly played and not directed at all. I like the concept though and season 2 can raise the bar. To me this show is "good for a French show", which doesn't mean much.

I'm not criticizing everyone in the French industry, there are many great people, but structural and cultural reasons explain why we've done so few good movies for 20 years while we're the 5th country in term of number of released feature films per year (about 200).

[dave jenkins]

. . .  but structural and cultural reasons explain why we've done so few good movies for 20 years while we're the 5th country in term of number if feature films released per year (about 200).

Somebody could probably make a humorous short film on this theme. Maybe it could take place at a pitch meeting where a creative team attempts to sell the idea behind a popular American TV show to French TV producers, and the French TV guys just tear the guts out of the project. Finally, after Death By a Thousand Compromises,  we see the final product . . . a new game show! LOL, I'm gonna lose a kidney just thinking about this!

[noodles_leone]

Somebody could probably make a humorous short film on this theme. Maybe it could take place at a pitch meeting where a creative team attempts to sell the idea behind a popular American TV show to French TV producers, and the French TV guys just tear the guts out of the project. Finally, after Death By a Thousand Compromises,  we see the final product . . . a new game show! LOL, I'm gonna lose a kidney just thinking about this!

 

I can tell you many people in the industry, from the bottom up, related to what we showed in this short

[stanton]

I couldn't watch this one. I'm very happy about the success it encounters outside our borders, and I'm the first to praise its qualities, but it's still not well written at all, mainly poorly played and not directed at all.

Have I already asked you what's wrong with the drinking water in France?

It seems that sometimes we have different ideas about writing, acting, directing, cause all these was pretty good in The Returned and why should I otherwise have spent a minute with it?
Being a mystery series the question how good it really is will be answered when it comes to an end. I hoped they would only concentrate on the returned people without asking for an explanation, but it already has developed towards a genre structure in which such answers are important. Still it looks promising, and is so far easily on the same level as the best US series.

Whatever, I already noticed that I'm interested in all your opinions about films which are originated outside of France, while for French films the prophet-in-his-own-country syndrome comes to full bloom ...

[noodles_leone]

Have I already asked you what's wrong with the drinking water in France?

Who drinks water anyway?

It seems that sometimes we have different ideas about writing, acting, directing, cause all these was pretty good in The Returned and why should I otherwise have spent a minute with it?
Being a mystery series the question how good it really is will be answered when it comes to an end. I hoped they would only concentrate on the returned people without asking for an explanation, but it already has developed towards a genre structure in which such answers are important. Still it looks promising, and is so far easily on the same level as the best US series.

Not sure if you know about that but it's based on a (low budget) feature film. I watched it, it leads to a real ending. The show is better than the film so don't bother now, wait for the end of the show.

Whatever, I already noticed that I'm interested in all your opinions about films which are originated outside of France, while for French films the prophet-in-his-own-country syndrome comes to full bloom ...

 

I guess it's hard for me to watch French movies with foreigners eyes. I mean when the World discovered Jean Dujardin in The Artist, we had already seen him play the same way for 15 years so nobody in France could understand what was the fuzz (most people like him a lot, but no one would give him an academy award for that film... He's been much better in other stuff).
On your side, many things you may like as original, exotic in a French movie is usually something we (French) either don't notice anymore or find cliché as hell.

[stanton]

Yes, that's often so with the culture of one's own country.

Germans also often say they don't like German films, and all German films are bad etc. The grass is always greener in the neighbour's garden, but who eats grass?

[drinkanddestroy]

The Get-Away (1941) 5.5/10 (a bad rating in my book)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033577/

TCM was showing some Donna Reed movies a few days ago. They shouldn't have shown this one because this is a classic case of a movie where a babe was put in here to look and act cute and totally ruins the movie – not the actress, but the writing.

Robert Sterling plays a two-bit crook prisoner who hatches a plan to escape along with his cellmate, played by Dan Dailey. The pair successfully escape and go on the run. So  far (the first 20 minutes or so?) so good. Then it turns out that Sterling was really a cop all along. Dailey was part of a major gang that had been pulling big robberies across the Midwest – none of the other members had ever been caught – and the feds were desperate for a lead, so they put one of their own, Sterling, in Dailey's cell so the two could become friendly and escape together, whereupon Dailey would meet up with his old gang and bring Sterling along with him and then the feds can take down the gang. Okay, so watching this movie, ya think this has potential.
As it turns out, Dailey has a sister (Donna Reed) who loves him but he hasn't spoken to her in several years. She is a sweet nice girl, she meets up with him and ya know, begs him to be a good boy and turn himself in and serve his sentence and then go on the straight and narrow; and of course, she and Sterling fall in love. So, Sterling is in love with the sister of the man that he is tasked with bringing down.
As soon as Reed enters the picture, the picture falls apart. This could have been a good cop-and-criminal-on-the-run movie, but that stuff keeps getting interrupted by the cutesy girl playing nice with Sterling while begging her brother to be a good boy so they could go home and play house together. If they had not had the Reed character at all, this could have been a decent picture (story sounds somewhat like the premise of White Heat, eh?) Or at least, the scenes with Reed shouldn't have her playing all sweet and cute like some lighthearted family movie. The dynamic shifts from tough-crook to cutesy-girl just destroys this movie. Also, the crook on the run has a bullet wound, so enter the crooks' doctor, who plays a prominent role in the movie – SHOCKINGLY, he once was a good doctor but then booze destroyed him and now all he does is drink and get the occasional -remove-the-bullet-from-a-crook-surgery job. Like we've never seen that stock character before. The character of the doctor is insufferable.

This movie could have been decent, but it pretty much turns into  a piece of crap.

[dave jenkins]

Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring (1986) 1080p - 6/10. Pretty pictures; pretty stooopid story, too. One could mention the performances, but since all the characters are idiots the final analysis would amount to little more than the affirmation that each of the characters is idiotically portrayed. Nice to see the young Emmanuelle Béart, though, before she'd stuffed her lips with collagen.

[noodles_leone]

You're saying the characters are idiots. I think they're pretty realistic.

[dave jenkins]

You're saying the characters are idiots. I think they're pretty realistic.

Yeah, you probably think the characters in Zola's novels are realistic also. No, as in Zola, Pagnol's characters are puppets.

The countryside as it's filmed in the movie looks very realistic, though.

[noodles_leone]

The countryside as it's filmed in the movie looks very realistic, though.

The place where the story takes place really looks like what you see in the movies. At least, it did at the time. It's less wild now.

I could never get pass the few first pages of every Zola novel I read. His "J'accuse" article was cool though.

[drinkanddestroy]

His "J'accuse" article was cool though.

yes, I read an English translation with explanatory footnotes http://faculty.georgetown.edu/guieuj/others/IAccuse/Jaccuse.htm