GodivaVII

I feel like I just watched 2.5 hours of pretty cinematography with no substance. Great cast, great soundtrack and score, Florence Pugh was a 10 as always.

Shame about the plot, the pacing, the denouement, all of it. The director failed to make us care about the characters. There was no character development to speak of. In one of the final scenes that involved a dramatic car chase, my mind wandered and I thought that the music did not match the stakes in the scene. I just stopped caring.

I wanted to like this movie. I loved Booksmart and after that I thought that Wilde was a sure bet. Turns out she's still finding her sea legs as a director, and probably should have had a conversation or two with Charlie Brooker about how to make a punchy, stylized drama with dystopian themes. Proceed with caution.

I was quite excited to watch the film Chloe after I'd seen Atom Egoyan talk about the film in an interview. Since it hadn't yet been released in The Netherlands, I went back and watched the original French film it was based on, Nathalie.

I was disappointed about the way Chloe measured up. The French film did a great job of unfolding the story and the relationship between the two leading women with subtlety, and the plot progressed at a steady pace.

While Egoyan's version had more dramatic flair and certainly a more heightened climax, I think the film fails in its character development. In the French version, we really got a better understanding of Chloe (Natalie), which I think was essential to bringing the film to a sound conclusion.

As far as the acting performances, Gerard Depardieu easily outshone Liam Neeson by far as the wayward but loving husband. Julianne Moore's performance in this film seemed frenetic at best, almost as if she was over-acting. As for the son, in my opinion, his character was just plain annoying.

Overall, I found this film to be yet another popcorn drama about dysfunctional marriages with a slow plot, little character development and a cop-out ending.

I didn't enjoy this latest offering by Larry Clark. It was as if he took Todd Solondz' Happiness, removed all wit, all semblance of plot and character development, and threw in a few explicit sex scenes for some shock value.

After watching Bully and Kids, I have come to accept Clark's style of storytelling, however I felt that this movie went nowhere. He's usually good at juggling multiple story lines that end up converging in a natural sense, but I felt that in Ken Park he didn't have a enough time to delve into any single character's storyline deep enough for the audience to become engaged with the characters, which to me is a crucial element in any good drama.

When the 1h10 mark came around, I was more alarmed by the fact that there were only 20 more minutes in which to resolve the story than by the incest and murder taking place on screen.

This failure was akin to Lukas Moodysson's A Hole in My Heart. I hope Larry Clark's work will only get better after this.

I saw Perfume today and I must say I was pleasantly surprised. I'm not a big fan of magical realism whether in the written form or on the screen, however I found this movie to be at once very engaging. This was the sort of movie you did not particularly have to like to watch it--it kept your attention until the end regardless.

I found the cinematography to be very well done, and enjoyed a lot of the sets as well. I went into the theater not knowing what to expect, and despite the films few oddities (read: massive orgy), I didn't find myself wishing for a refund. If you want to take a chance, take a chance on Perfume, few with a light spirit and an open mind will be disappointed.