Reviews by keiju

This is a good example of a sad attempt to a dramedy combo.

As a comedy it´s as boring and stiff as the Nora character and she is dead since the first five minutes and just lies around waiting for someone to burry her forever. There´s no character with any charisma or anything funny to say or do. The actors all seem to think this is a drama and act like that. Also they speak in a really weird manner as if they were all reading the script to a mic, as if all the movie was just dubbed. (I´m spanish and I´ve watched enough mexican movies to know how they speak when they act like real people).

As a drama it all makes more sense but has no soul. The script and even the premise is a comedy one. The movie forces it and manages to work from time to time but it´s a lost war.

The camera work feels like television from time to time but it´s good enough overall with some good shots here and there, nothing spectacular. The acting it´s not as bad as misguided. The secondary characters give the best and worst moments of the film: Angelina Peláez has a simple but effective character and does a good easy job, Enrique Arreola gives some useless good feeling too and Ari Brickman ain´t so bad.

Fernando Luján interpretes the main character and has the same problemas as the movie. I can see that he could have delivered a funnier acting or at least some well deserved laughs but he doesn´t. I dont want to blame him, though, because I feel it was more a directing/wrinting failure than his but, the thing is that he owns lots of boring, bland and silly screentime.

It was supposed to be a black/dark comedy with some dramatic, intense and emotional moments but in the end it´s just a weak melo-drama to sleep through.

It´s a shame.

There are not so many bogart-bacall films (4) and this one is just lame. There are some good moments but overall it does´nt work in any ways other than an oportunity to watch two noir stars working a noir movie.

The Worst: The plot. You start thinking it´s mysterious and then you discover it´s just plain stupid. Every character is stapled to each other without any grace. All the thrilling situations are boring or just laughable.

The Just Bad: The acting. Bogart looks as if he was just passing by through the movie. Perhaps he knew his character was nonsensical but he could have made a little effort. The secondary characters were all as lame and stupid and most of them were played by not so good, uninspired, too constricted or just plain bad actors (Moorehead excluded).

The Wrong: The first third of the movie was shot in a POV style. It didn´t work but I guess it´s ok to fail trying something new in 1947. The thing it´s they should have noticed it didn´t work and then change it so it only last ten minutes or so but they didn´t care and I´m sure Bogart didn´t want to make any extra work for this movie.

The Good: Bacall looks gorgeous as always and it´s the only one who tries to make this movie watchable. Her character is as stupid as any of the rest (perhaps the most stupid, mind you!) but she tries anyway to make it interesting. When she is in the screen you may believe that the movie is worth something, she isn´t most of the time though.

It´s a great, great, movie indeed for an "indie" production (bit of legend about the money and days spent but it was low-cost anyways). Best Bitchy Noir Lady Ever!

Wes Anderson´s still got it.

I´ts not gonna become my personal favourite from his excelent (and über-personal) filmography but he hasn´t lost his touch for sureal-lovable-depressing comedies.

All the usual suspects (meaning cast) are back too but the new additions to the ensemble don´t get in the way of Anderson´s magic. Edward Norton has a strong heavy part in the movie as a tenderer and more likable Jason Schwartzman (he also has a part, short but memorable). Tilda Swinton has two swift but effective moments while Bruce Willis gets far more screentime, spotlight and plot than he should but fights the good fight against his own mannerisms and fame. The kids do more than an alright work here, also.

Frances McDorman and Bill Murray get the worse part of the deal with soft characters and little relevance, they function as deuteragonists and you will probably forget about them most of the time. It´s a shame because I love both´s work and I think Murray could have added a lot more to the movie (and not only because of his history in Anderson´s movies but also). Both their characters are just sketches and have no development whatsoever. Again, a shame. But, well, ok. It´s only my fault for expecting another thing.

This movie remembered me a lot to Rushmore. It´s set in a wilder setting, obviously, but it has some of the same elements: Kids trying to live like adults and adults failing at life like kids, structured simplified enviroments where odd people thrive and a weird love history. They are not the same movie, of course. Moonrise Kingdom has a strong element of wonder and magic (like 'Live Aquatic' had) and it also works as a very explicit fable. As in 'The Darjeeling Limited' we have here people running away from their lives but this time they are kids and they know what are they looking for and why. The girl´s house looks like it will become an important setting for the movie in the beginning (like cpt. Zissou´s ship) but it didn´t... well another thing where my expectations failed me.

Yeoman´s cinematography is beautiful. It has the cozy and sweet magic of an old familiar movie in Super-8 film while having all the scope and detail of a modern work. He and Anderson always work together and it shows.

It also has some weak pieces in the overall machinery. The First part of the movie is wonderful, the second it´s just a repetition of the first but it goes farther and further (yeah! both! suck it grammar nazi) but it works really nice. Then comes the third part and it does´nt feel right anymore. The surreal elements don´t work as they should, the focus changes to Willis' character when he should have been way in the background (plot, character and acting-wise) and everything clicks to a happy ending way too easily. It just feels forced.

You will probably forget the ending soon but you will never forget the two child protagonists running from all and everyone. You wont forget the woods or the beach.

This movie is all about form and not so much about substance. That´s not such a bad thing, mind you. Movies are not only shot to tell stories and develop characters, this is shot only to create emotions and offer eye candy. And it succeeds.

The main character is only a hero, a cold, distant, cool and nice kind of antihero to describe him better. He is not a real person, he doesnt come from anywhere, he just exists waiting for the story to come to him and plays it off till the end as if he didn´t care. The 'girl' is more human but not really believable, it´s just an excuse for the camera to shoot good scenes (she is lovable enough to interest you though). The bad guys, the supporting cast, every other character involved in this film are just bodies to recieve the carefully studied lighting while wearing the correct colors for the shot.

I repeat: this is not such a bad thing. They choose two things to work on and they work hard on them. The first one, the eye candy, is really well executed. The photography of Newton Thomas Sigel is bright in colors and deep in shadows. It´s not the kind of cinematography to use if you want it to feel real but that´s not the intention here in any possible way so it works better than fine.

The other element they try to explote is emotions. The movie doesnt tell us an original story, it doesn't even try. The film could have told the same in half an hour if that would have been the intention and it wouldn´t have felt rushed. No, they try to give the intensity of a thriller and the profundity of a tragedy while making us feel repulsed by gritty violence.

It´s a lie, a well executed one. The film only presents the situations and lets the spectators to transfer their own emotions into the movie filling all the gaps themselves. The tense/romantic music and the long takes are the frame for your own feelings to make the movie personal. I think that´s the reason it has had such a good reception in general. That and the eye candy.

All in all I dont think it´s a bad movie. It has some memorable moments, it´s original (and only that is much appreciated) and it´s really well executed. I guess I just don´t love pretty violence so much to give it more than a 7/10.

A mix of action and thriller with all the weight in the first of the two. The pace is balanced nicely, the violence is dirty and gives a lot of satisfaction and the acting is average, what´s way better than expected.

It feels more like a revenge movie than a rescue one. I´ll try to explain this better: the protagonist´s only motivation is to get his daughter back and that´s great. You can feel that he doesn´t want to retaliate and he doesn´t want to shut down the bad guy´s organization, he just wants her baby back. So the main character has an strong motivation and it´s not revenge. Everything else in the movie is revenge-wise.

He goes from point a to b to c getting the needed info to do it in the simpliest way while killing bad guys until there´s no one left. Sometimes it seems like he doesnt even care about getting info from them (there are some plot holes right there but who cares?) like he did know that nothing and nobody can stop him to get to her. There are a lot of revenge moments along the way and they are all give you satisfaction and in the end he gets his sixteen year old girl back home and they wrap it up.

The look and overall feeling of the movie is very noir-oriented in a hardboiled way with lots and lots of action packed behind the shadows of paris mixed with too much hollywood sugar. Lots of hand to hand combat and good shooting scenes that doesnt feel over the top (for an action movie) except near the ending where the bullets start dodging him perhaps a bit too much. There are also some old fashioned car scenes (the chase in the construction site was brought to us from the very 90s).

The best moments are when the main character gets dirty and ruthless. Liam Neeson does a fairly good job joining the worried good-hearted father with the shooting maniac angel of death but it´s not an easy job. The first of the two elements is almost always the heaviest because he is incapable of looking really badass... he does badass stuff and kills tens of thughs but you keep seeing him as a nice guy first and foremost. That was intended, mind you, but drags the movie to lower standards. The worst elements are the softer family-issues ones, in a stereotypical movie like this at least the action is well executed but the human relations elements are shallow, lame and boring. The main character has near to no emotion credibility whatsoever so it works better when he is just killing people.

The photography is nice if conventional with good shadows work while the director gets more from the bad guys cast than usual. That´s great because the 80% of the movie the protagonist is alone against and horde of them. They add something to the movie, just enough to justify their existence before getting killed.

In the end it´s fun to watch, gives you a sense of closure and says goodbye. Neeson´s character has to get his daughter back before 96 hours pass... you will forget this movie in less than 24.

This is a really good canadian (francophone) film that uses the good´ol teachers sub-sub-genre for a better cause. The film explores a number of different things:

First and foremost: coping with death, loss and grief. This it´s done in two ways, as an individual and as a community. The way children and adults cope with an incomprehensible suicide (the blamings, rationalizations, sadness, etc) are as interesting as the way a single husband and father keeps the weight of a hate crime that stole him everything and the survival guilt for being alive.

Also this is a great character study of a good mannered old school (pun intended) teacher who cant adapt to the modern regularized and burocratic western styles of teaching. He is old fashioned and he is not perfect but he cares and that´s the most important thing.

The secondary characters are not really developed and their circumstances are just sketched but they all feel real and tridimensional. The protagonist makes a really good job with a mild mannered character showing great restraint where it was needed. The only dark point in the movie are the not too believable female child protagonist and her relationship with her teacher but it works well enough not to get in the way of an otherwise good movie.

Another thing that the movie brings to the table and leaves there for your own consideration is the way the relations between teachers and children work in western society (canadian society at least). The movie obiously pushes forward more leeway and closer relations between teacher and child but the argument feels too forced to be convincing. At least it makes you think about it.

This is the kind of movie I wish I could have watched in a movie theater. The tension is always high with a constant sense of menace that makes you feel incomfortable and sometimes a bit nauseous. This would have been great to watch in a closed dark room where you cant just tune off the movie to relief your own feelings. I had to watch this in my house computer so I got the same experience but lighter.

The movie is brutal. Not only for the violence but the kind of life the characters are living. There´s only one character who feels human in the entire movie, the protagonist "Laura Guerrero", and even she is half of the movie in shock acting like a zombie. This is intended and a good way of expressing the way of life of some people who are about to die in any second meanwhile they are killing for a living.

The other great thing about this movie is that half of the time you really dont know what the hell is happening, why is it happening or where is everything going to. A great part of this incomprehensible lethal unknown is intended but I have the feeling that not everything and that´s a shame. I dont know if it´s because I have serious difficulties to understand the mexican accent (I´m spanish myself, my fault!) or if it´s a script or a edition problem but at least a third of everything that I didn´t understand I´m not sure if I was really ment not to.

Anyway this is a violent chaotic ride into the darkest and uglier crime war ever known. As of today the death toll in the Mexican Drug War since 2006 is very close to 55.000 corpses.

This movie doesnt make you cry for the death. It makes you cry for the living mexican people who are enduring this nightmare. And of course, you cry for humanity.

This movie has a weird ryhthm problem. It works hard and puts a great effort in keeping the movie lively but at the same time takes way too much time to get to the mayhem-loose ending that everyone is waiting for. Something is always happening but the time comes when you just dont even bother anymore and that´s a shame.

When hell breaks loose at last it´s not as satisfying, funny or hardcore as it should (you´ll laugh though). The first half is way better but when you understand this it has passed away. The ending action homages and the funny beginning should have melted into a way better movie.

Anyways no one could expect too much from this flick so I must say it´s way better than what you may think. Better with beers, good stoned company and pizza.



PS: Why doesnt Bill Bailey gets more screen time? I love that guy!

Great movie with good strong monodimensional old school (old indeed, 1943) characters and a better premise.
Some years later (14 I think) Fonda will protagonize 12 Angry Men and explore the reasonable doubt in a jury. Here there aren´t twelve jurors, there are like forty asking for blood.

This isn´t better but is cruder and nastier and I loved it.