Thursday, January 28, 2016

''THE REVENANT" review


It’s hard to evaluate a film where I liked a lot of aspects but still it did not convince me in its entirety.
It’s not the first time a thing like that happens with Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu.
Trying to perform an ''objective'' analysis I can say:

1) The photography is simply amazing.
2) The direction is always a high level one when it comes to Iñárritu. Here he does not propose a (fake) global sequence-shot like in Birdman but he alternates masterful long-takes with intense close-ups, confirming his great talent
3) The editing is remarkable
4) The acting (which hardly ever interests me) is excellent, especially the antagonist (Tom Hardy) works fine, so when you have a good antagonist and a protagonist as DiCaprio (at his best) the job can’t help being good
5) The plot proposes many issues, all meaningful (father-son relationship, racism, violated rights of Native Americans, the struggle for survival, Nature, solidarity between ethnic groups in conflict, revenge), perhaps too many to be condensed into a two and a half hour film.

I think what works the least is that Iñárritu’s directing style does not go hand in hand with the narration: they are not symbiotic and you can perceive the dystonia.
To give an example in order to understand you can think of Audioslave: an extraordinary guitarist (Tom Morello) and a terrific singer (Chris Cornell) have never really worked out as a group, never reaching the level of RATM or Soundgarden anyway.
It is therefore a missed masterpiece, but it works just fine at a movie theatre

Thursday, January 14, 2016

''The Hateful Eight'' review

Briefly:

Actors = excellent (it’s always easier to deliver when you are directed by a master)
Photography = fantastic
Editing = very good
Direction = possibly Tarantino’s top (shot wise)
Narration = not his best ever. Why?

To be honest for a few minutes (during the second half of the Third Chapter) I was afraid Tarantino failed this film (in spite of a great beginning); he’s an extraordinary screenwriter capable of giving his characters remarkable complexity, but it occurred to me he was going a bit too far on this occasion (a bit redundant dialogues to make the protagonists’ nature fully emerge), and I even yawned a couple of times when the first hour was about to strike (my heavy dinner helped in that)!

Luckily the second part has a completely different pace which helps the whole picture get a different perspective.

There are a couple of narrative Voice Overs which I found pleonastic, however, this is a Great Movie.         

I still have to watch it 2/3 more times to be 100% sure about that.

His only film comparable with this one is ‘’Inglorious Basterds’’ but ''The Hateful Eight'' picks a different genre (Horror, besides Western).

There are explicit references to ''Once Upon a Time in the West'' (i.e. Cheyenne), but the western picture which inspired him the most is Sergio Corbucci’s ''The Great Silence'' (1968).

Western can be magic (whether it’s Hawks, Ford, Leone, Peckinpah, Tarantino or Eastwood), no doubt about that.


I hope one day…