Reviews

There's a lot of promising material in this film, but the heart of the story is a little off-target. The director has a real flair for depicting a city and its atmosphere, in a few aesthetically pleasing but not superficial shots, as well as the emotional weight these cities hold for the characters. It's with the latter that the problem arises: they're well acted (with subtle facial expressions in their interactions) and potentially plausible, but some of the dialogues should never have gone beyond the rough draft stage. As a result, the discussions between characters are sometimes very clumsy, without really having a naturalistic aspect, where key words are repeated over and over again without really moving forward. This aspect clashes all the more with the rather fast pace of this fairly short film, awkwardly slowing down what was hitherto moving at high speed.

When we get away from this heavy-handedness, the characters take on much more meaning, as in the shorter exchanges via webcam, or when the two male leads meet for the first time and exchange introductions in each other's language. The final scene is equally beautiful, full of restrained tension.

The soundtrack is also well done. I can't wait to see her next film; despite the clumsiness of this first attempt, there's a lot to like here.

A rather aesthetically pleasing film depicting a happy but Nazi family, in its iconographic petty bourgeois dimension. Apart from that, sad to say, there's not much going on, and the lack of ambition is noticeable. The superimposition of the lush garden with the smoke clearly visible in the background and the sounds of gunfire and screams aren't enough to create a thick atmosphere on their own, however stark those words may be. I'd have liked to see more unexpected scenes, such as the striking black screen at the beginning, accompanied by a haunting soundscape, and the "black and white" sequences.

Also, while I understand the rather detached and monotonous overall feel of the film, it would have benefited from a more substantial plot and character psychology. While it's clear to me that this was intentional to maximize the friction between routine life and the unspeakable horror behind the walls that is never shown, it also produces an energy deficit that only leads to emotional dead-ends. Perhaps another context would have been better suited to expressing the underlying themes of this script, since the heaviness of the real-life tragedy seems to me to have forced the director to take very few risks in order to deal with the subject without being overly stirred up by various controversies.

Too timid and relying too much on pictorial shots. The main couple play very well, and the wife is definitely the real appeal of the film.

A patchwork of styles and ideas in a very antiquated avant-garde theater flavour. But that's not all.

It's very literally about a couple in the midst of a violent break-up. And a horror film with an indescribable monstrous entity, half-Antichrist half-Elder God in the Lovecraft vein. And a babbling sermon on freedom and madness. With randomly scattered symbolism. All set in a Kafkaesque Cold War context, where the only active inhabitants of the world are the police.

More than a constructed discourse, we are offered images-sensations of what a couple can generate in terms of self-duplication and de-realization, and also, conversely, of fusion into a single entity; or the infantile role in which we can indulge, each in turn. It also evokes the immense pressure that rests on women, and the constant manipulation and inquisition about their feelings, thoughts and movements while not presenting Anna's misdeeds as something positive.

Zulawski seems to be settling scores with regard to Heinrich and his self-professed perfection, his orientalism and vanity are clearly mocked.

All this is squeezed into a juice of pure madness and malaise in order to make a horror film, it's ingenious.

This potentially indigestible mix is skilfully presented to us, and the well-orchestrated swarming of ideas is filmed with a successful intent to make us feel uneasy. The actors, who must constantly be in unpredictable overdrive, are predictably unpredictable, but this also applies to the quality of the acting in general, which is equally inconstant. Adjani, in particular, regularly crosses the border into the laughable (though this may be intentional), whilst also offering the best bits of madcap bravura.

The plot often feels improvised, and the film lacks a real final act. The last 20 minutes are a bit of a drag, even though the film had been exciting up to that point. We're even asked how we'd like it to end, in a final evasive idea.

I don't know, it's up to you, movie, to figure it out.

It's pretty good.

Very dated narration and commentary that couldn't be more boomer. The voice is pretty unpleasant too.

The clichés uttered are sometimes appalling.

Reflections on the Japanese people are superficial and unresearched, delivered in a peremptory tone.

The documentary must constantly fight against itself and rarely manages to stop talking about anything other than the narrator's uninteresting opinions.

The narrator persists in invoking Western artists and authors to compensate for his lack of insight, obsessively comparing them to Japan without ever really touching on Japanese artists and intellectuals.

A very 19th-century pseudo-scientific attitude.

Paternalistic through and through.

The hatred of cities and their inhabitants is profoundly stupid and childish.

Ditto for the new/old opposition and the aesthetic comments of very dubious quality.

It really does sound like the dim-witted white guy looking for magical natives and talking about them more as creatures than as humans.

Fortunately, in the quieter parts of the film, there are a few more relevant glimmers of the inland sea.

Quite beautiful and well-designed, both visually and sonically (even if the musical themes themselves are a little omnipresent and heavy-handed).

No boredom, contrary to what I've heard, although the pace is slightly uneven.

The details of the story's background have been skimmed off brilliantly, I think, even if the trimming sometimes goes a little too far for my taste.

The big strengths of this film are the settings and the universe we're introduced to overall, while the rest isn't always as compelling.

The group battles are rather clumsy and ridiculous to watch, for example, especially when compared to the surrounding FX. The actors are all competent, with no great performances, but none of them suck either.

The first part of the film is far more interesting than the second, which, although reasonably pleasant to follow, becomes a relatively trite Hollywood movie.

The quality of this film is somewhat truncated by its nature as a first half of a duology.

It's a pretty good setup for an interesting story, and my viewing of the sequel will affect my feelings about this first feature in retrospect.

Extremely pleasant to watch, even with its long running time.

As always (in my experience), Tarantino brings us mythical, mythologized scenes, cathartic violence and extraordinary actors who deliver excellent dialogue at all times.

Unlike some of his contemporaries, the influences that spill out of the screen are not stifling, but form a coherent, playful whole.

Notwithstanding the humorous tone that hangs over the film as a whole, neither the westerns nor the topics are ever mocked here.

Despite all this, and a succession of memorable scenes, the film suffers from a slight lack of cohesion, and can feel more like a compilation of scenes for the cinephile than a complete narrative.

Perhaps the choice should have been made to focus either on the two heroes' bounty-hunting careers or on Candyland and its owner. Especially as certain scenes drag on a little after they've said their piece.

Django also perhaps lacks scenes that would solidify his heroism and make his final victory more dazzling, since for much of the film, it's Dr. Schultz who steals the show quite clearly.

A very good vintage on the whole.

An amalgam documentary that generally keeps things mildly interesting.

Episodes are at their best when the people you meet during the adventures match the randomness of the latter, which is rarely the case.

In seasons 2 and 3, the scrappy charm disappears somewhat, giving way to something more scripted but also more generic.

This is largely due to the fact that the weight of the narrative rests more on the personality of John Wilson, who is fairly cliché in this artsy New Yorker style.

At times, the mixed nature of the story also works to the detriment of the whole, with interesting but banal subjects tossed aside too lightly in favor of amusing but not very profound twists.

A bit like the phenomenal and varied amount of material filmed in New York, which forms a good part of what we see in the series: fun but surprisingly superficial.

On the whole, entertaining and with potential, if the creator were to push things in a more in-depth direction and less into a sort of personal museum of cool finds.

A rather predictable and simplistic film, with infinitesimal sci-fi elements, which nonetheless boasts beautiful photography and convincing acting direction.

Although the film's focus is mainly on the male protagonist, the female characters are too hollow and the main character is written with a little too much complacency.

There's untapped poetic potential here, and the feature is sorely lacking in outlandishness.

The premise isn't really taken seriously and ends lacklusterly, leaving the rather lovely final scene somewhat disconnected from the rest.

The story seems to have been written by someone with a very superficial insight into love.

The soundtrack is very mundane. The vision we are given of video games over the course of the plot was already dated by the time this film was released.

All in all, it's a bad sci-fi proposition, a lukewarm romance, but a reasonably pleasant time to be spending thanks to the production and the actors quite simply.