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O have owned that movie since my high school graduation but never saw it till this year (I am a newly wed who is trying to find fun in the mundane so I started watching films I never saw before but own)
I must say the film was different then expected but quite good like I said it's very well french
Greengrass is such a great director and this film is so tense it's almost unbearable!
The assault on the boat by the Pirates is incredibly well filmed and very realistic.
His other non-Bourne films, Green Zone and United 93 are worth checking out.
One of the best action director's around. Shame he hates Bond!
After 'Prisoners' and 'Sicario', Denis Villeneuve has blown me away again, this time in the sci-fi genre. Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner and Forest Whitaker deliver powerhouse performance as the linguist, scientist and military colonel (respectively). Whitaker in particular was a force to be reckoned with, he hasn't been this good since 'Last King of Scotland'. Stunning cinematography, impressive soundtrack, and expertly written script makes this film a sure winner in my book. No action scene, but some very tense sequences (the 1st time they enter the alien ship was absolutely mind blowing, I was on the edge of my seat for 10 minutes. Goes right up there with 'Children of Men' as the sci-fi films that knocked my pants down on first viewing. Can't wait to see what Villeneuve has in store for 'Blade Runner 2049'.
I'm told he could make a good Bond director.
As some of you might know, I am a very big Jazz enthusiast and love everything about that musical genre. Sometime ago, I heard of a film entering production based on the life of a famous Jazz trumpeter, Chet Baker, who is my personal favourite musician, and only a few days ago I looked it up to see whatever happened to the movie that was being made, and found out it had a limited release worldwide and is digitally available for downloading. So, I didn't hesitate to purchase it.
Set in 1966, with a re-imagining events circulating around Baker's life at the time when he was recovering from his drug addiction, right after he was beaten by thugs, losing his teeth in the process that made him unable to play the instrument and was forced to struggle with doing something he loved. Ethan Hawke, brilliant of an actor, plays Chet Baker all too perfectly, almost nailing every detail regarding the image of the artist. The film is beautifully written, and wonderfully directed that actually makes you feel sympathy for the character and his struggles through life that might lead you to shed a tear. An original soundtrack is also composed in the vein of Jazz Music in blue, by David Braid, with the trumpet bits filled in by Kevin Turcotte.
As a fictional character herself, Carmen Ejogo in the role of Elaine, Baker's love interest whom he accompanies during the entirety of the film up until the end of it, gives out another great performance, an antithesis for a struggling Baker whom she keeps an eye on and takes care of.
Definitely an underrated film that didn't get enough spotlight and as such deserves to be recognized. For Chet Baker and Jazz fans alike, this film is recommended.
Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie also make appearance in the film as characters.
Awesome film a visual masterpiece
I love Del Torros work, I have this on DVD I should get it on Bluray. I had a film studies module when I studied English Literature, if I studied Spanish film it would be very high on the list.
Denis Villeneuve's star power is on the rise. After a few already interesting films which he made pretty much off the radar, he surprised us with PRISONERS in 2013 and would never lose my attention any more.
Welcome to a quiet Pennsylvanian town where on Thanksgiving two young girls are abducted. Our primary suspect, played by Paul Dano, is a mentally challenged young man whose refusal to spout anything but incomprehensible rubbish sets one of the fathers, Hugh Jackman, on an emotional rampage to discover his daughter's whereabouts. Dissatisfied with how the investigation is run, albeit by a very capable Jake Gyllenhaal whose vigour and skills as a detective are known and renowned, he decides to secretly imprison and torture the highly disturbed Dano for answers. Though reluctantly aided by the other girl's parents, Terence Howard and Viola Davis, Jackman keeps his monstrous ways hidden from his wife, played by Maria Bello. Will Gyllenhaal come true on his promises to find the girls in time? And how far onto the criminal spectrum are some of the parents prepared to wander in the name of personal justice?
PRISONERS opens with Jackman's parental advise for his older son: be prepared. He has a basement full of equipment and stock in case a terrible disaster were to play out. The irony is that he himself is unprepared for when his little daughter is kidnapped, no matter how much stuff he stores away. And yet, he will find some fairly twisted uses for a few of those things later on, which hints at his own unbalanced notion of what is good and what isn't. With our modern loathing of animal slaughter, some of us will actually kick the film off with a powerful disliking of Jackman, as he teaches his son how to kill a harmless, innocent deer. That deer is another creature's child too; how is the fate of that animal any less cruel than his own when his daughter is taken from him? But perhaps the first scene in the film serves as a metaphorical eye opener: innocence makes you a target, whether you are a peaceful deer in the woods or a playful girl in the streets, and your hunters will always find a way to justify their actions, no matter how irrational. Another interesting element in the film is that almost everyone who commits atrocities in this film has a relationship with God. One gets the sense that Villeneuve puts the mark of evil on every man and woman of faith.
Roger Deakins' cold but beautiful cinematography and Jóhann Jóhannsson's eerie score serve to enhance our feelings of desperation, fear and anger. Hints of David Fincher aside, Villeneuve brings a personal style to the game, characterised by long pauses, an engaging naturalism and a continuous sense of ambiguity. Until the very last moments in the film one wonders if anyone at all could be qualified as absolutely good or absolutely evil. In fact, Villeneuve's film plays out in a world where good versus evil is besides the point. The world is troubled and imperfect; the point is not to lose your sanity, even in the face of your worst nightmares come true.
The acting in this film is flawless. We had already seen our beloved, invulnerable Wolverine as a conflicted man in Nolan's THE PRESTIGE, but here, as a raging father, Jackman opens every register in his range as an actor and demonstrates once more that he isn't 'just' a muscled comic book character. Then again, even as the Wolverine, Jackman shines. Gyllenhaal is the one who startles me most, however, and in a very good way. Whether in Fincher's ZODIAC or Gilroy's NIGHTCRAWLER or here, he combines a calm demeanour with a fierce go-getter attitude that never fails to impress. Furthermore, he brings a sort of nervous tick to his performance in PRISONERS that other filmmakers would probably avoid as it may be considered uncomfortable to look at. Yet here again, Villeneuve's naturalistic tendencies shine as he wants his characters to feel real and of this world.
PRISONERS is a captivating drama that doesn't let go. Despite its rather long feature length, it never grows boring or predictable. Even if the story doesn't hold your interest all the way to the end, the performances and film grammar will. Huge recommend.
Two years after PRISONERS, Denis Villeneuve delivered what I may consider his best film to date: SICARIO. (Note: I have yet to see ARRIVAL, which I'm planning to do soon.)
The war on drugs is hotter than ever as the cartels have resorted to practices much more sickening than ever before. As FBI agent Emily Blunt leads the SWAT raid on a suspected cartel hideout, she discovers a multitude of horrors which encourage her to get even more intimately involved with the higher echelons of the proverbial "good side". So when CIA officer Josh Brolin offers her a chance to do exactly that, she agrees. However, seeing how Brolin and his partner Benicio del Toro cross multiple lines and descent into their own type of cruelty during a mission in Juárez, she begins to question how much good the good side truly represents. Winning this war seems a feasible objective, but the cost is tremendous and for a woman of principle perhaps too high. Meanwhile, del Toro appears to have some personal dogs in this fight.
The first ten minutes of SICARIO grab you by the throat. While Jóhann Jóhannsson's ominous score sends icy chills down your spine, the real sense of nausea that accompanies the raid announces that this film isn't going to be about heroes and villains, but about the most disturbing headlines on CNN. We are aware of the fact that these things happen in real life but SICARIO rubs our noses in the dirt and kicks us in the face to make sure we get the point. By giving the drug cartels a face later on, their menacing aura of abstract danger is rendered somewhat lesser, but never ineffective. Blunt, our lead protagonist, is often reminded that she looks bad and smells worse, and her slow but certain breakdown is practically quantified by the amount of cigarettes she smokes. In summary, one can almost feel the filth, blood and guilt dripping from our own bodies like liquid distress, and Villeneuve keeps pouring tons of that over our heads. Sicario will never sooth the savageness it is built on.
Roger Deakins's photography is all about subjectivity. The way the film is shot, it's almost as if the third person perspective is syphoned down to a first person perspective. We ourselves end up amidst brutal gun fights, political traps, personal conflicts and more. We are reminded time and again that the people we follow around during the movie are not the polished, pitch-perfect, glamorous movie stars of typical Hollywood output. Instead, they look as bad as you and I when they don't shower, shave, brush their teeth and barely sleep at night. As with PRISONERS, Villeneuve cares about naturalism and that lends the film a power that cannot be overstated.
It doesn't matter if Blunt has done science fiction with Tom Cruise or if del Toro has been seen in some weird outfits in GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY or if Brolin was once Jonah Hex; SICARIO reshapes them into real and in some cases despicable people whose film star allure fades away under layers of sand, sweat, distress and guilt. I will give Villeneuve major props for how he picks and directs his actors. They transcend the typical pathos and theatrics and become flesh and blood, mortal, like you and I.
SICARIO occasionally intercuts its main narrative with quiet scenes that show us the ill-fated family life of a Juárez police man whose son continues to labour hard for his father's attention, recognition and love. While their screen time together is limited, in some sense it is their relationship that carries the ultimate stakes of the film. All those hateful, cruel, nasty men were once innocent children themselves. Some of them try to raise a family of their own, shielded from the relentless evils they either fight or contribute to. But far too often, the children end up victimised, as they are either slaughtered as failed bargaining chips, killed as collateral damage, or themselves trapped in the fight as either cartel members or CIA operatives. Like he did in PRISONERS, Villeneuve puts the loss of innocence above all other themes in the film. Another surprise is the return of the faith paradox, albeit in a much less pronounced way, as even the most contemptible of men can wake up underneath a large crucifix.
Stylistically and narratively, SICARIO is yet another triumph for Denis Villeneuve. This is the antithesis to 24 and CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER. Even Michael Mann would have put different dramatic spins on this story - most likely not to the film's detriment, but it would have been a different film nonetheless. Villeneuve manages to pull us into a documentary style thriller without the cheap visual trickery of found footage films or the pretentious in-your-face beats of a Paul Greengrass actioner. And while those projects may be bona-fide hits in their own genre, SICARIO allows us to breathe and doesn't rely on video game tactics to convey the seriousness of the situation. One more thing; SICARIO isn't meant to make you happy or restore your confidence in the political "good guys". More than anything else, it challenges you to question your own moral position in an extremely complicated conflict. In other words, what would you do if you were desperate, frightened, ambitious, power hungry, ...?
I think SICARIO cannot be overrated as a war-on-drugs film that accomplishes everything it set out to do, and more. It's a powerful, disturbing tale of several people who each have various interests to protect in a fight that seems to escalate even more with every passing day. Here's yet another Villeneuve film that comes with a huge recommend.
Best film of that year. Absolutely gripping from beginning to end.
The 'traffic jam' scene is a lesson in how to build suspense on film.
Del Toro's vengeful character makes both Dario and Dalton's Bond in LTK seem utterly tame in comparison. Terrifying to watch.
Finishing off my round of three very special films, I decided to watch Gareth Edwards' 2010 directorial debut MONSTERS. Edwards has meanwhile been busy directing GODZILLA and ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY, two entirely different projects considering the fact that he had roughly 400 times as large a budget to play with for those two movies than when he independently put together MONSTERS.
The world has been partially infected by large, Cthulhu like aliens, an unexpected by-product of one of NASA's former space missions. But you know what, forget that. It doesn't even matter all that much. Because MONSTERS isn't about giant tentacled aliens, it's about two people trying to find their way home, literally and emotionally.
Scoot McNairy is hired by Whitney Able's rich father to safely escort his daughter back into non-infected US territory, all the way from Mexico. Bad luck necessitates the two of them to spend more time together than originally planned. They learn about each other's far-from-perfect personal lives and how meaningless "home" really is for the both of them considering their romantic situation, which has either failed or is about to fail. In that sense, they bond through the power of broken or insecure hearts and the extravagance of the situation only serves as a catalyst to form their relationship.
But what about the aliens? Perhaps the biggest surprise of this film is that they barely matter at all. This story could have played out against virtually any kind of turmoil, be it WWII, a zombie apocalypse, a natural disaster or a virus outbreak. Edwards selected aliens, perhaps to represent an abstract form of global disturbance or to substitute for any evil of our choosing. But whether they make any difference to the story at all, doesn't divert our attention from the visuals which, to put it at its mildest, are impressive given the shoestring budget of only $500,000!
Seriously, how can you deliver a film this beautiful and with truly amazing visual effects on a budget which is almost ludicrously small? To be frank, the aliens are mostly kept in the dark, seldom seen in full and barely moving except for their tentacles, but then how about boats in trees, large buildings demolished and so forth? I can only imagine that Edwards has friends in high places and was able to shoot at some locations that had just gone through real disaster. Either that, or this man knows something we don't. The fact remains that I cannot but marvel at the technical achievements, even though they're not quite as impressive as what Jackson, Bay, Cameron and others have done in their major CGI exploits. But they were sitting on piles of gold whereas Edwards came into this thing with his wallet half empty.
With the titular creatures having only a peripheral part to play, our focal story is a fairly simple one. Two people meet, talk, bond. Like in Linklater's BEFORE SUNRISE, we witness the birth of something that might become a good friendship, a short relationship or a lasting love. The truth is, we'll probably never know. It's not important either. MONSTERS is about holding back, about not giving in to clichés and predictability, about demonstrating the power of creativity and the many great accomplishments it can invite. It's an alien film and yet it isn't. It's a romantic film and yet it isn't. The best way to describe it, in my humble opinion, is as a collection of short but powerful moments in the lives of two people amidst chaos and disaster. These two people, by the way, are pretty decent actors. McNairy was in this year's BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE and Able is probably best known for flashing us in ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE. They work, and in this film, that's all that matters.
MONSTERS is yet again a film I can recommend. Its modesty comes from necessity but its achievements are spectacular given its limited resources. If I'm allowed to close this post with a bit of a contradiction, I'd say this is a "great little film".