Holy Motors probably ranks as one of the most surreal films of the year. I am definitely a fan. Denis Lavant is great as the lead character, even though his character himself plays a small handful of characters through out the movie, Lavant still seems to nail every scene he's in. Leos Carax has written a great script with a strange world with strange events, but it seems to stay within the rules of the universe in which it is set, which is not always the case of films such as this. Several times throughout the film I could have said that nothing could surprise me any more, yet it still continued to do so. But without ever seeming silly in any way, because Carax direction made me believe that all that is happening is perfectly normal within this universe.
This post probably seems a bit incoherent, but it's just really hard to write anything about a film as strange as this. But if you are not afraid of subtitles, and likes films with universes so amazingly strange that you can't help but be immersed into them, then you should watch Holy Motors.
Dirty bombs go off in Los Angeles and people that are exposed are being quarantined, others that haven't been affected are being told to seal up their homes the best they can.
An unemployed man sees his wife off to work and then hears the news report on the radio. He makes several attempts to contact her then tries to head downtown himself. When that fails he resides to the fact that emergency personal are the only ones that can help her and starts to seal his home up.
Once the house is completely sealed, she shows up. She has clearly come into contact with the toxic fallout and he must decide if he should let her in, or what type of help she should receive.
Type of movie that asks, what would you do?
Type of movie that asks, how would the public and authorities handle a situation like this?
So this movie is a direct sequel to the Tobe Hooper original, okay? Which was filmed in 1974. Whilst they don't ever specifically say, hey, this is in 1974 in either film...it's pretty easy to see the first movie took place at some point in the 70's. Alrighty, so the movie picks up right where the first one ended. Sally Hardesty escape and goes informs the authorities. The Sawyer family home, which is now full of Sawyers, is raided by the local cops. Drayton Sawyer agrees to give up Jeb (aka Leatherface), who is still in his dinner jacket and transvestite skin mask. But local hillbilly lynch mob types crash the party and torch the house. Inside the house, a female Sawyer is carrying her infant (see where I'm going with this). This woman is later found by one of the lynchers who kills her and takes the baby, giving it to his infertile wife. Flash-forward a number of undetermined years, this infant is now a young woman. The movie doesn't really tell you what decade we're until the last act when one of the local Deputies pulls out his iPhone and starts Facetiming the crime scene. That's how obvious the plotholes are.
I won't go into the rest. It was just a really badly executed movie. The only bright spot was the guy who played Jeb. The rest of it was forgettable noise. Time to stop making Chainsaw remakes/sequels/reboots.
I've always felt that great pure mindless entertainment was lacking in movies (I've generally never gotten much of a real lasting andrenaline rush watching a Cameron, Bay, or Spielberg movie-- so when I hear that argument used to defend Avatar or Transformers or a superhero movie or something, I'm never on board or feel it's true)-- however, I feel that Tarantino is one of the few directors who consistently does a great job of it and has generally been able to escalate pure entertainment into something worthwhile and memorable.
Surprisingly, this one didn't work for me at all, though, and I thought it was his weakest effort yet (besides Death Proof, which I don't count)-- It's not that I found it distasteful or anything (I don't think the way people react to the racial side remotely matters, personally), I just thought it was boring, messy, and I got very little out of it. Everything I normally like about Tarantino felt MIA-- the characters weren't that fun, the dialog wasn't too snappy, the editing wasn't tight, the story just kind of went in a predictable (or at least unintriguing) straight line, it didn't look aesthetically cool or stylish, there were all these weird choices that I didn't feel worked at all (like the hip-hop/KKK scenes), surprising, I didn't feel any of the performances stood out this time (if DiCaprio gets a sniff at an Oscar for that, it's going to annoy me), and while normally I'm all for gratuitous violence when it makes the movie more fun, it felt kind of pointlessly and unrewardingly gruesome, even by his standards. I'm honestly a little baffled that so many people had a blast with this.
I didn't think this was similar to Inglourious Basterds at all, either, which I didn't think had problems with any of the above.
You haven't seen The Master yet, Shareefruck? If you haven't, and have any chance to see it, I'd love to hear your take on it. At this point, it remains my number one film of the year.
You haven't seen The Master yet, Shareefruck? If you haven't, and have any chance to see it, I'd love to hear your take on it. At this point, it remains my number one film of the year.
Sounds good. I haven't seen it yet, and really, I didn't start trying to catch up at all or see anything I wanted to from 2012 until around New Years, so I have no idea what's out there other than the ones that keep coming up.
Last edited by Shareefruck: 01-05-2013 at 02:58 PM.
I'm going to disagree about the mediocrity label most are giving Django Unchained, if only for the fact that I left the movie feeling that I experienced better character development than I experienced while watching Inglorious Basterds. Mind you, I haven't yet seen Pulp Fiction or Jackie Brown (I intend to watch Pulp Fiction on LaserDisc, but still haven't gotten around to setting my LaserDisc player up). But it isn't mediocre, and although Reservoir Dogs is clearly better, I'm not going to say that there is a major decline here. I put it above Inglorious Basterds, and put it a little above both Kill Bills.
Hunger games was good, moonrise kingdom was very good, lawless was okay, Prometheus was a letdown although still enjoyable, at least in the big movie theatre on a huge screen, end of watch gave me a headache but was also okay, nothing more nothing less.
Saw Django Unchained for a second time this afternoon, 9/10. It's actually one of my favourite movies in recent memory and I didn't enjoy Inglorious Basterds at all, so I'm not just a Tarantino "fanboy". Anyways I love it (DU).
Zero Dark Thirty - 8.4/10, anxiously awaiting to see it in theatres with a nice crowd.
Black Snake Moan: 5/10
Friend wanted to watch this again, I'd never seen it, though I remember the ads for it. With the blues soundtrack as hyped as it was, I was underwhelmed. Not enough of the old, dirty, gritty recordings featured in the movie itself - too many newer renditions and covers (some in-film by Samuel Jackson himself, who does a good job at it). I don't know, overall, this movie felt pretty inconsequential - it has a ludicrous premise and still doesn't do a whole lot with it. Christina Ricci's performance is amped up to high volume and not always better for it, but Jackson is good. Overall, not much here I found worth the time.
One of the biggest things I didn't like about Django was actually that it didn't have more reserved moments, personally. Seemed annoyingly trigger happy in this one to me.
