Othello

A strangely static and visually refined film from first to last frame, which may tempt you to dismiss it as self-indulgent visual onanism, yet its chosen form is a perfectly adequate microcosm composed of static religious icons. Among other things, Servants is an important reminder of silent resistance, in contrast to the usual panicked reminiscences of pre-revolutionary times. Among other things, the chosen form also brilliantly reveals the emptiness of party gestures (the dead meeting) versus silent, humble resistance within its own mantinels. ___ Anyway, for this film we can read one of probably the most stupid reviews in this database (and there are plenty to choose from), which accuses the film of not being "sure what purpose this film actually SERVES today" (like what the fuck?). How worried about your own relevance do you have to be to start waving such a primitive banner? Can someone please let me know "what purpose this person actually serves today?"

I like movies that look like their storyboards, I like Cinéma du look, I like the sea and Jean Reno. By contrast, however, I find sports in general to be eminently moronic performances, and watching overgrown kids measure their depths then makes it impossible to accept this great, fatal, fateful plane rising above the rules of civilization.

Perhaps the greatest acknowledgement for this film in general is to admit that Eric Serra's music was perhaps fitting in some of its scenes at times. Nikita is arguably Besson's creative peak and his most sensitive film. Watch the seamless transitions between the mood of the characters and the mood of the film. When Nikita sits in an upscale restaurant for the first time in three years at her birthday party, all naughty, only to end up with a huge gun she has to use to shoot several people, all of which turns into a inimitable kitchen massacre, the film has the same soundtrack and focal length throughout. Nikita presents us with a strangely disjointed world where agents sweat in hotel blinds with recording devices, spy contacts pass information in front of display windows, and Victor the Cleaner could be sitting in any car ready to cover up an entire botched operation. Behind these acts is a country represented in such cases not by Bond agents in the light of national ideals but by a kidnapped social underclass with no choice in the matter. After all, the film suggests several times that almost all the agents in it have a past similar to Nikita’s. And in all of this is a girl who never had the opportunity to be, only to "become". Hopefully only good things await her on her future journeys. "We’ll miss her."

The first film where I regretted not counting the lengths of the cuts. Ritchie's name appears five times in the opening credits, only to be replaced by a completely anti-Ritchie static one-shot burglary scene. And right in the middle of it, we can tune in to the film's main asset, a thing for which I have no better description than "weight." The length of the scenes, the slow camera movement, the stylistic restraint, and the excellent typology of the actors in supporting roles (McCallany, Donovan) give a certain impression that everything in the film is heavier in terms of weight than it usually is. It's as if the guns really were 4 kilos, the armored vans were 4 tons, and the 110kg guys were really falling on hard ground. At the same time, the film gradually melts away into how naturalistic it will ultimately become, with a lot of things taking place off-screen at first and then repeated from other angles later on, when we actually get closer to the acts themselves, so the film really has something of a "dramaturgy of violence" where the headshot at the end can still derail us because the film hasn't numbed us beforehand. I think I'll go all in after the second screening, after I've turned over the moments of visible digital camera (the slow-motion shot of Statham falling looks awful) and the protagonist, whose actor can't seem to make any other face than that he's just swallowing the curb. But most of all, for God's sake, everyone go to the cinema and buy a ticket to see this. Because I promise you, if something like this shows up in theaters at least two or three times a year, I'll be more forgiving of all those tendentious hurrah-movies about how a scowling strong woman (TM) wipes the floor with dumb guys.

I remember squirming bitterly at Antal's Control, not because the film was in any way bad, but because the story was a lot like one I had been carrying in my head for a long time back then (only set in Prague's Congress Centre). And I didn't even know at the time that in 1985 Besson had made essentially the same thing, only with a protagonist who was a visual combination of me and Johnny Violent. Subway is a chaotic jumble of scenes and themes set in the underworld of the Paris subway with a real youthful edge that blocks anyone from trying to rationalize, classify, and generally just figure the film out. Besson wanted to be the protesting voice of youth, following in the footsteps of Godard and Truffaut, but instead he was simply a young calf spinning after skirts. This is what makes Subway such a pure, untamed, and unrestrained film with its own rare charm.

I'm surprised at the repetitive need to "get" the film in the reviews here, as if everything that needed to be shown wasn't. I think, for example, the fish and debris falling from the sky may be the result of some ongoing monstrous conflict somewhere over the horizon that is throwing acres of land and oceans into the stratosphere with tremendous force, which then rains down on the survivors in the devastated cities. See the sounds of explosions occasionally in the background. The same conflict that possesses such weapons may well possess a weapon capable of rendering people unable to speak. I've played all of Command & Conquer and I like Warhammer 40k, so I have a very open imagination in that regard. Moreover, it doesn't really matter, because just as the film doesn't shower us with establishing shots of the extent of civilization's decimation, yet we only see characters wandering through a labyrinth of crumbling corridors, rooms, and dungeons, we learn nothing about the nature of the conflict behind the story. And, like the characters here, we don't need to, because we know that we can't change anything else about it, only adapt to it, try to maintain some standard of living while remaining human. _____ The cinematography, set design, costumes, and "debut value" here are absolutely fantastic, and Eric Serra's music is... well, yet again, Eric Serra's music. And somehow I'm generally unable to respect his elevator music.

[251 minute extended] Leaving aside the scale of the work and the incredible set and camera work, there remains a bit of a taste on the palate that Leone has sold out his previous revisionist approach to film genres here for a purely academic perspective, which is most evident in his work with the characters, which isn't very well developed due to the fact that they aren't given as much space as the sets. With de Niro's endless silent and melancholic glances at the recollection of his mafia youth, after a while I just saw... well, de Niro staring. And apart from that the story, namely building a giant sophisticated mafia saga on a restrained, yet actually stupid gangster, seems good to me. The heretic in me can almost imagine a good 140-minute cut of that film, except there would be cutting not of scenes but within scenes.

Revolution means confusion. And it raises the question of whether it's appropriate to fault the incoherence of a film about a conflict as incoherent as the Mexican Revolution. Leone tries to use all the directorial attributes he has acquired to benefit an ambitious historical fresco, and then crams in some stylization as well (the character of James Coburn, the lanky demon with the droopy wrists and explosive-laden cape!) with a drastic and moving account of a conflict escalating into genocide. At certain points I felt like I was on Schindler's List here. The huge scene with the execution pits will freeze even the most hardened, if only because it is purely illustrative and foreshadowing. Giant panoramas of arid Mexican landscapes are then interspersed with extreme close-ups of the greasy postures of the uppity bourgeoisie. The fluctuating pacing is a problem; the film feels as if each episode is completely disconnected from the others, and the intimate sequences are quite theoretically and a bit driven unnecessarily into blood. However, the more grandiose and less genre-muddled sequences (especially in the first half of the film) are still breathtaking spectacle. Maybe because of the fact of how many films do you know that deal with the Mexican Revolution?

An absolute pinnacle of filmmaking. And probably one of the works that had the biggest influence on me early on in my film development. I remember back then being hypnotized by the overlong images, the minimalist dialogue, the stylistic mannerisms on the small TV at my parents' cottage. I for the most part didn't know much about what any scene was about until now, and it didn't matter at all. Even a few minutes after watching it, the film feels a bit like a dream. Leone wasn't just rewriting western canons, he was writing general formal laws of the genre that are still in use to this day. And not just in film, but in comics and video games as well. The work with character attributes (Eastwood's casual attitude compared to Wallach's neurotic approach, Tuco's signature custom gun), the purely superficial building of iconic shots (the gunslingers slowly disappearing into the dust after the explosion), the naturalistic cynicism ("Sorry Shorty. "), or, for example, the seemingly pointless battle sequence, which in its perfectionist handling of extras and set pieces faithfully recalls wartime illustrations of the American Civil War. Superficial Mannerist cinematography at its finest. Coppola's attention to detail, Tarkovsky's patience, a pulp story. Plus some purely music video passages, of which this is the leader, quite understandably.

Everything that was good about the first installment is here twice over. The stuffiness on screen is almost unbreathable, the villain here has definitely crossed the point of no return. The film mops the floor with the standards of previous westerns, drowning in anachronisms, drug taking, we’re witnesses to suicide and rape. The two protagonists are all the more fascinating for it, maintaining their rules, credos, and self-respect in such a world. Paradoxically, there is something of the essence of freedom in such a dirty and disillusioned film, as if suggesting that only a completely broken world can offer the ultimate possibility of self-realization; see further post-apocalyptic works, zombie films, etc.