jackush Reviews

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)

a dream with chocolate taste

[10/10 · 17 September 2005]

Wonderful!Wonderful!What a surprise!!I didn't know neither the original film nor Dahl's book,I have to confess.Also,well,ugh,I am 34 y.o.but I really enjoyed the movie.Its didactic message is so clear and nice presented and the overall quotations makes the movie a feast for adults.I find strange that no one remarked,as I did,some quotations the director makes in the movie:Wonka is a Michael Jackson-like person,but also has elements from "The Clockwork orange".We can feel Kubrick also in other moments,with some real quotes-the TV program is in fact "2001" by Kubrick as the music is.Apart Kubrick,some Orson Wells and Alfred Hitchkok are present.It might be a creepy mix but the result is wonderful equilibrated, aesthetically awesome,glorious played.The Dickens-Beckett atmosphere that you find in Charlie's house is not,paradoxically,gripping,haunting and depressing-it has something nice,happy,full of light. This is really a nice family movie,and makes you forget the kitschy,nightmare movies for children that invaded the cinemas in last five years. Not to be missed.10/10

Last Days (2005)

Breathtaking

[9/10 · 10 September 2005]

Gus van Sant belongs to a rare and noble race of artists: the free ones. Their liberty seems so complete and overwhelming that they seem breathe another air then ours. The so called "death trilogy"-"Gery" ,"Elephant" "Last Days" deals with such abstract and metaphysical issues that only a genial and free artist can find the right way to express them. These films speak more about dying, about the painstakingly strive to survive, about the belief and trust in the deliverance of death.In a concise way these movies are about killing (Gerry),murdering(Elephant) and self-killing (Last Days)."Gery" is a very concentrated two voices monologue on the ontological quest of being. Only killing your "other"' the weak, the hesitating part of your self you can cope and find the way out. The director uses for the first time in "Elephant" a kind of "key" for making easier to find the meaning of his movie. Here are the tragical Colombine school events.It's not about this but it shows that we live in a society that enables people taking other's life as fun."Last Days" uses the same method, by taking the icon figure of Kurt Cobain as an example in a movie that deals with loneliness, despair, futility of living. The main character is not able to find solace in anything that surrounds him: family, friends, music, and nature. This is a very slow paced movie, in which death seems to be just around the corner. It was said that "nothing happens" in van Sant's movies. But what "happen" really mean? People moving around, talking nonsense, preparing spaghetti is not a form of "happening"? Van Sant has a mystical view of life, in which the slightest act is nothing but an initiation ritual, and dying is the very achievement of this ritual. "Last Days" is a bleak, sparse, difficult, demanding, haunting masterpiece. It's about a man who seems condemned to live, but he chooses to escape. He says nothing and nothing is said in the movie: silence and a non sense hum depicts better than anything the world in which he seems not to belong. His music too is full of anger, suffering, despair, thirst of death. It was said the van Sant had no reason to put a gay scene in "Last Days". I don't know. It might be that Scott and Lucas are really a gay couple, perhaps is this pulsing of life in a death haunted world. I can say that after seeing the movie twice I could really understand its issues. Highly recommended movie for open eyed, open minded and open hearted audiences.

Povinnost (1998– )

a road movie to your inner world

[9/10 · 21 May 2005]

At a first glance,the cinematic language of Sokurov might seem miles away,or more precisely the exact opposite of that required in a documentary.But,Sokurov is reinventing,is reconstructing the documentary movie language making him highly metaphoric,amazingly poetic,and hypnotic. I learned that it's hard to find a good translation for "Povinnost"-it's forced labor,something made not as a result of free will.Confession,the translation,it might be fit but doesn't really touch the very deep essence of the movie. This is a "road movie" in the largest meaning one might find:it's a journey,an inner journey beyond time and space into men's soul.It's about solitude,constraint,force,life and its meaning.Sokurov's language has its usual richness,its very slow pace,its metaphorical meanings;its a meta-cinema,an alternative cinema,not in an experimental way but more in a kind of melting together cinema,music,literature,painting,philosophy. Sokurov is extremely mystic;this appears not in its relation with G-D but more in the hope that might come after a long waiting. This movie reminds that cinema is first of all art and not box-office;this banal statement receives here a concrete expression,this movie being a kind of cinematic book more then a movie.I warmly recommend the movie,for enlightened audience.

Dukhovnye golosa. Iz dnevnikov voyny. Povestvovanie v pyati chastyakh (1995– )

waiting

[8/10 · 12 May 2005]

Aleksandr Sokurov is,beyond any doubt, one of the most important living directors,and perhaps the only Russian one who might claim himself as a "new Tarkovski". ,Sokurov's cinema has a very abstract language,and might find the right echo to rather sparse audiences,as some of Tarkovski's movies are.His cinema is highly demanding,first of all by its excruciating slow pace,austere chromatic, metaphorical language.This movie,at some 5 hours plus it's not an easy nut to take,but those who venture inside this ocean will find a hypnotic pleasure in it.Foreget all the yada yada about war in American movies;you won't find here any commentary about this war,neither any rhetorical or ideological involvement.Is a long movie about being soldier,a kind of ontology of waiting,of the in between.Organised in 5 uneven long episodes,this film,in a mixture of poetry,journalistic curiosity,and personal statement makes us live,feel,be in that awful place that the movie depicts.The first episode,40 minutes long,is a still image of a frozen Siberian village;an off voice speaks about classical music,and art meanings.This might sound amazingly boring,but you have to see how moving and breathtaking beautiful Aleksandr Sokurov makes it. Using video media,this film might seem as a witness.It is,actually,a first person witness,because the movie is meant to be a sort of metaphorical diary;this person might be everyone of us,and in a way this happens and slowly become involved in that reality. Highly recommended,once again,for very special audiences.

Of Freaks and Men (1998)

Freud goes East

[9/10 · 31 January 2005]

This movie is my first encounter with Balabanov's cinema,and I was really shocked,not so by the movie in itself,but by its rhetoric which is the most opposite one might imagine or expect from a Russian movie. I am deeply in doubt that this movie speaks about the pre-revolutionary pornographic film industry;it's a bleak,tragic,morbid,kinky gaze on the Russian bourgeoisie society in the beginning of the 20th century.Petersburg here has a lot from Schnitzler's or Freud's Vienna-it's a decomposed,moral corrupted and bored society.The way Balabanov films Petersburg is a reflection of this feelings;it remembered me "Death in Venice" by Visconti-the unforgettable travel on Neva,and generally the outdoor scenes seem in the way that another Russian master,Sokurov filmed,in "Father and Son" the city. It's clear that this atmosphere is the same one that Freud encountered in Vienna,the same pathological sexual explorations,which mirror a convulsion and basically corrupted personality.Everything is,in a way,out of joint in the characters, Johann and Vladimir that are a very bekettian couple-remember Colin and Vladimir from "waiting for Godot",or Clov an Hamm from Endgame-they lack logic,and even psychology;Putilov,and his Bakunin-friendly look is a clumsy and impotent man,to say nothing about women,very Russian in their next to pleasure victim role.

This is an uneasy,difficult,but also rewarding movie.If you want to see pornographic stuff,BDSM,or spanking,this is not your movie,sorry.

Elisa, My Life (1977)

A concealed jewel

[10/10 · 24 January 2005]

The fact that this is the very first commentary here shows that we don't deal with one of the most famous movies of the great Spanish master, and this fact is really stunning. Even if not set in the dance medium, especially flamenco and tango, with which Saura is generally linked, this movie is highly personal. Saura is one of the very few directors who succeed to be very national in its cinematographic language."Elisa" is no exception: the outdoor images, looking like De Greco and Goya paintings, the stunning performance of the actors remembering sometimes flamenco intensity, give to this movie a glorious cinematographic presence. The issue which stands in the center of this movie is a universally and uneasy one: the relation between father and daughter. Saura knows to avoid a tabloid depiction of this relation, although it doesn't avoid the border-line oedipal tensions. Throughout settled mostly in a chamber-music like duet, it doesn't have the claustrophobic Bergman character. The movie is a love duet, with its aggressive and passionate outcome. Awesome experience. .

Okraina (1998)

Try it,why not?

[7/10 · 22 December 2004]

It's a very hard movie,and I didn't really find any funny moments-it might be a very peculiar kind of humor which I really don't get.What can I say about Okraina?A very strange movie,somewhere a mix between Tarkovski(the overall mud),Tarantino(the fun of having someone's blood on its clothes),Kurosawa(the gang of men looking for justice),to say nothing about Dziga Vertov,Eisenstein in the expressionistic language.Despite this strange mixture,the movie remains a highly original,and illuminating in understanding why Bakunin,Stalin,the Ukrainian murderers in the Holocaust could exist.It is a movie who needs open-minded,and patient audience.What stunned me-it might be ironic,I hope,it's the collectivist happy end.So,if you love Tarantino,find Tarkovski breathtaking and have nihilistic thoughts,you will like.Others,try it,it might be alright.

Le Bal (1983)

Nothing said,everything told

[10/10 · 19 December 2004]

If someone would ask my top 10 movies,this one will be,without any doubt there.I wonder why is so difficult to get a DVD copy. Basically,this movie is about some 50 years of 20th century European history.Basically,because the movie is far more then this:is a declaration of love for cinema,is also a theatrum mundi,a world theater, in which human passions,the good and the bad ones,are its main characters. The big bet is that all this is told without saying a word.Rooted somehow in the music-hall,classical ballet and still movie,this masterpiece unfolds its beauty in dance,mimic,a peculiar semiotic intended more to suggest than to affirm. 2 hours of music and dance,without the slightest second of bore.It's delicate,funny,cerebral,interesting,diverting,remains in your mind and soul for ever.A must.

Modigliani (2004)

Forget this movie

[1/10 · 6 December 2004]

Very bad movie.To avoid.Boring,not interesting.A Jewish painter named Modigliani and in love with the Christian Jeanne tries to make his way despite a bad guy named Picasso.That's all.Andy Garcia is awful,seems that has no clue about what is happening around him.Elsa Zylberstein is OK but no more.When you decide to make a movie about an artist,you have first of all to understand his world of ideas,that magic place from where bursts that sublime and enigmatic thing called creation.Nothing of this in this movie.The soundtrack is a nightmare-songs of the 30's (Piaf and Maria Tanase) played in Paris of 1919,to say nothing about a new age religious rap....Stupid dialogues,pathetic and kitschy.A scenography which could make shame to a B series bad movies.

Latter Days (2003)

Simply,a love story

[8/10 · 18 October 2004]

OK, it's a nice amount of tear-jerker stuff in here, a lot of kitschy moments, and some clumsy dialogues…But, all throughout it's a nice, moving movie, who doesn't want to be more then it is: a love story. Yes, it's a love story, and in our days it matters less and less if this story happens between people of different sexes or the same one. I have to confess, I can't see this movie in a totally objective way, being gay. It is not a gay movie masterpiece but in it's modesty it is something very important: it is a way of saying that gay people can really have sentiments one to another, the same as for straight couples .Between the self outing and the social outing, it's a long ontological quest about self awareness, which might clash, as here, with an extremely harsh and incompatible social and familial background. If the statements are true and the two main actors are straight, it is extremely touching: they succeed to show not only physical attraction but really feelings and heart attraction. Albeit this not a big movie, it's a must, not only for the GLBT community but for all open-minded people.

Anatomy of Hell (2004)

How to become straight in 76 minutes

[29 August 2004]

So,what is this film about?I don't quite know.First,for me, a gay man,some lines are really true and I thought that Madame Breillat tries to make the straights understand why we are not attracted by women.But then,I see this gay guy having nothing from our sexual orientation apart from explaining why is better to have male feces and not women menstruation blood.So,a gay guy having arousal next to a woman?sorry? Do you remember the gorgeous scene from "The City of Women" by Fellini when a group of hysterical and brain virgin females shouted against men's penis?Well,madame Breiilat seems to be a woman like this. If u really want to see the movie,don't eat 6 hours before seeing it. About the "actors"...Well,she is pretty well,not the kind that might make a gay straight. And he..he is there,is enough,isn't it?

The Triplets of Belleville (2003)

When Disney meets Tati

[12 July 2004]

A must.78 minutes of Paradise.For a movie nut,like me,it's a quiz about cinema.You have 3 Cruellas inside,mostly naughty and crazy and a lot of Jacques Tati.If this was not enough it's also a delicious irony about his own french identity-the big red nose of the wine drinkers,or the compulsive-like frog-eating-and about the American junk food-everyone in Belleville is so fat. A little bit about Tati.Champion is Francois from "Jour de Fete",you can see a poster of "Les vacances de monsieur Hulot" on the wall and also,the dumb or hum like speech is hundred percent tatiesque.Chomet seems to speak in an easy going fluid way this kind of language,and that's why this film is a glorious moment of cinema.If I have to choose one minute from this movie,I would choose the trip on the see with Mozart's Kyrie as a soundtrack.

Funny Games (1997)

Anatomy

[28 June 2004]

Like his newest "Wolfzeit",Michael Hanecke plays with almost unbearable cruelty with us,the public.I feel punished from the very first shot.This is not a critical statement but one full of admiration...Imagine a very direct cinema-something like Bresson or Dogma-to describe the terror.Even today,in the breaking news on line terrorist attacks,seeing "Funny Games" makes you need fresh air.All the movie is a game-from the very beginning when this very burgeoise family plays the classical musical trivia till the very end-so each element which might be artificial is a part of the very game.It's not about the rewinding scene,but think about the artificial followings before that, or even the way they kill the last family member....Like in "Wolfzeit" is a very acid critic about the western postindustrial society In Lars von Trier's "idiotener"we searched for our little idiot inside us..Michael Hanecke strives us to search the little cruel monster inside us.Bravo!