zhaohan_dong

The reason that this movie is great is about the narration. It is said that a great director cannot make a great movie without a great story. This is the truth behind Phoenix.

The plot breaks our expectation for several times while keeps it flowing. First it establishes the background that Nelly Lenz returns from Concentration Camp by luck and has to "recreate her face". After Lene Winter tells Nelly Lenz that Nelly's husband Johnny Lenz betrayed her Nelly Lenz is expected to kill Johnny, or at least, to hate him. This expectation is also told from Lene Winter's mouth. In the audiences mind, it builds up the anger and a negative feature of Johnny. However, Nelly breaks it by returning and "practicing" with Johnny. The narration is restricted to the time after Nelly's release, so by her practicing, we follow her to unveil the things that really happens surrounding her arrest. Nelly's discovery is balanced with Lene Winter's collection of evidences and documents. So from Nelly's side, we starts to discover the good points about her husbands and other people. Then, here comes the climax.

I give the word appropriate to mise-en-scène, cinematography, and the music to say that its nothing special, but with great value. The whole picture of her husband brightens as the shots shift from night to day. Also the whole movie tends to give them a lot of shots, to emphasize on their relationship.

The music Speak Low is used in the start. I did not realize its meaning until in the end when Nelly begins to sing it. This particular organization makes the whole movie unified and the abrupt ending not so awkward.

The story was very moving. Partially because I love the double meaning of the phrase "The Wind", which made the story compact. The sometimes bad "wind" finally brought good results to the one who didn't give up. This kind of "wind" happened in Jiro's life for several times, from his childhood to his success. Also, "trying to live" was demonstrated later.

But the flaw comes. It mentioned the secret police, but never mentioned the result on Jiro later. From my view, they may want to get the story more reasonable by adding this plot, but to make the story compact, they didn't mention it too much. This is difficult to solve for most people, as there is a paradox between. I have no idea about how to solve that, but I also don't think this story is the best solution. I still believe a masterpiece could solve this smoothly, so this is my reason for an 8.

The story of those teenagers just at my age, has taught us a lesson. It's little difficult for me to understand that story fully, since I'm a teenager too, but not a patient of cancer, or at least not diagnosed. Their situation is really hard for me to be fitted in with.

But after reading a few reviews, I get a sense of a larger scale, that I don't need to be with cancer to catch the means behind the shots. That the death might be the best way of being remembered and loved. Gus passed away, as a great boyfriend and a great friend, a lovely son. He left us a handsome figure. His girlfriend, Hazel, remained in love with him, maybe "always". For Isaac, though he was not died, he lost his girlfriend Monica, with their "always" became a fake. If Isaac died, he could be remembered by Monica forever, be with love until his last day, like Gus.

Another thing is that it's so heart-breaking to expect that someday, your love will die. It's totally different from dying from accidents. You're taking everyday preciously, knowing everyday might be his/her last day. I can't stand that. But that's what they did in the film.

So, now, a little bit of filmmaking. There're a lot of music in the film, some of them are quite well, while others are lack of proper emotions. In the start, the music does a great job of building the atmosphere. But in the end, when Hazel opened the letter from Van Houton, the music gave me a kind of absurdity, not so contemplative as an end of a film.

For their trip to Amsterdam, to me, the plane took off as soon as the flight attendance got away with the Captain's announcement. That's too quickly that hardly no one can get prepared for take off.

And the letter from Van Houton again. He gave Hazel a letter after Gus' Funeral. It seems like the director and the writers tried to present us a strong twist, about the aloofness of Van Houton superficially, and the real means of him. But I didn't cry since I didn't care about his words. Those are trivial to the film, I thought. I haven't read the book yet, so I can't prejudge it's whose fault. But surly, it can be improved for a better film.

The story starts with a Taiwanese lady and her daughter, going back to Beijing, and a couple in Beijing in the 21st year of Republic of China. This part of the story seems ridiculous, using the montage.

But soon, as the development of the story, there's a relationship between the past, and present people. The couple's daughter is believed to be the great-grandmother of the lady.

That's when the horror part comes in. The horror, however, turned out to be something else. Just watch the film and get known to it. I believe the last minutes, after the climax contained most information of the film, pacing up.

I really appreciated the director and the writer's skill, since they seems to have a great ability of controlling the plot, and time, to make the audience closely follows their vision, or the vision they want to present. That's what I believe, the current Chinese Film Industry, is lack of, and should be aware of.

For the cinematography, the PD used a lot of tracking shot with zooming. I believed its cinematography is the best among the Chinese film's I watched recently.

All in all, I believe this film is wonderful, especially for modern Chinese Film Industry. Just hope more non-horror movies with the same way of delivering story should emerge in China, to let Chinese know what is called good film. Not just the chase, not just the fight, and not always the fame, to taste the genuine art of film.

Glad to watch the film on the first day of release (though not premiere). I went to watch it with my friends. In fact, I rarely watch Sci-Fi and action movies since most of these films generally shares the same chasing, fighting, and so on. My first glimpse of the poster was: Wow, this must be another one. But while watching, it really gave me a different perspective.

The director, and the screenwriter have a great control of the movie's rhythm. Throughout the film, Major William Cage (Cruise) keeps going in the time loop of the day. To make people understand his situation, the film concentrates on his loops in the start. The number and rhythm of the repeated shots of time loop are well controlled, first slow and many, then keeps pacing up and brief, making people understand the whole story and at the same time, leave out something to keep the audience interested. I was surprised of this when I was just about to get bored, the story kept going on with a dramatic twist. They're really skilled enough to do that impossible work!

But one thing I don't know for sure is that how can they simulate the effect of the metal suit. I don't think that currently we can build such a sophisticated machine.

If there's something to be criticized, that must be the depth of the story. What's more beyond the humanity shown in the film? I feel that I cannot answer this question. Yes, humanity is great. Yet the film's notion has almost no inspirational spirit to us. That's what I think, the whole industry should concentrate on, to get more bucks, but also enrich the audience's mind.

After all, this one is worth watching.

Frankly speaking, Le Week-End really doesn't worth 9 points out of 10. But at least 7, for the relative complex plot, proper music, and fantastic photography, especially the long take.

I often don't want to be a "spoiler", to talk about the plot of the film, since I'm not good at it. But Le Week-End's story is good. The whole film shows us sympathy to the poor husband, and also the wife. More importantly, their story inspired me to think more deeply, to discover how the ticks of clock change us. Old friends, growing up of children, development of old places,all sorts of that.

Watching the movie, another thing that pleased me was the music. There're few concentrations of the criticalness of using appropriate music. Each movement of the characters, emotion at certain time, all expressed well in the music. The most surprising part is that, this is an independent film, but the music part has left piles of grand films beside.

Last but not least, the photography. The main attraction for me to watch the film is the photography. First the poster, then, the trailer, demonstrated the art of photography. Every shot of the film is from amazing perspective, and also good focus. There're a lot of still shots, but even though the camera doesn't move, the emotion keeps flowing and growing. When comes over long takes, it's getting better. I cannot expect an independent film like this to have the perfect photography like Hugo, which I consider for the recent movies, have the best photography, but this film is far beyond the expectation.

Really like this film.

I've watched these two films recently. What I believe is that American Hustle is better than 12 Years A Slave in many aspects.

First, American Hustle's soundtrack is really amusing, making the whole atmosphere of the plot properly.

Second, I have to mention about some really serious things like cinematography and the arrangement of shots.

Both films contain some Cut Away shots. I love CA, sometimes to give people time to think about the subject, and to make the film more interesting. But 12 Years A Slave's CA shots really made me mad. I still cannot know why they made such things. While in American Hustle, those CA shots are very good.

For cinematography, American Hustle's is very motivated, is a kind of inspiration. You can watch the film getting the most information from the visual impact. While for 12 Years A Slave, not so good for only WS, MS, CU, WS, MS, CU, sort of that. Boring when you always get the same view in different part of the story.

Really think American Hustle is a good film. Not the best, but the better.