Change Your Image
Twisk
Reviews
Kaamelott (2004)
King Arthur, Monty Python and Michel Audiard all rolled into one
In the beginning, I thought, "Oh no, not yet another mockery of the search for the Holy Grail!" I watched, though, and by the end of the first mini-episode, I was totally taken in. The dialogs are brilliant, witty, absurd, and screamingly funny. I honestly don't find any faults with this little jewel. I didn't know we, french, could be as good and daring as Monty Python... We can. It's a relief. Thanks to Alexandre Astier, who dared come out with a preposterous idea (King Arthur is the only intelligent guy in a environment of dorks, dimwits and blockheads: namely, the knights of the Round Table), the tradition of Audiard carries on. The best french TV series I've seen in a very long time.
The Chronicles of Riddick (2004)
Appalling movie!
There are magnificent visuals, true, apart from the ridiculous "necromonger" hats - some guy even wears what appears to be a black grid of sorts covering the top of his head.
The plot seems to have been written by a twelve years old, but the worst of it remains the names. "Necromongers", for instance, a mixture of Greek and English only a retard could think of. And a planet is called "Crematoria". It is supposed to be a very hot planet, they even give its surface temperature, why give it a stupid name which insists on its heat?
The dialogs couldn't be any flatter, and I marvel at the capacity of the actors to utter such nonsense without laughing - well, maybe they did...
Nice visual effects are not enough to make a good film. And an action film doesn't have to be dumb (see Aliens , for instance, or Demolition Man).
Deceiver (1997)
A bit slow, a bit unrealistic at times...
Tim Roth does quite a good job at playing this epileptic rich man who's interrogated by the police (without any assistance from his lawyer?) even though he can be caught red-handed overacting in places. He's not the only one, though - same can be said about Michael Rooker. As for Chris Penn, he underacts. Almost as if the actors had not known quite what to do with their characters, or had lacked proper guidance from the directors.
Some situations are very unrealistic - can't tell you which for fear of spoilers,but no doubt you'll spot them. Unfortunately, these were sufficient (in my case), to impair that "suspension of disbelief" which is so necessary to the viewer. And if you can't believe the story, you'll notice the film is slow - and repetitive. And oh, so, so predictable...
Johnny Mnemonic (1995)
Good Sci-fi with an nice "end-of-the-world" feel to it...
People with hi-tech body implants, cyberpunks galore and some awful sickness induced by a technology gone wild, all situated in a world where computers, drugs, rust and dirt are the only winners. The whole of William Gibson's world is there, perfectly pictured in this superb movie.
You'll get no nice future prospects for western civilization here. Gibson describes an apocalyptical world which is realistic enough to be scary. Since 1995, computing may have progressed faster than Gibson thought. The point the film makes (about us?) remains valid, though. And the aesthetics are just fine.