Alright guys, I gotta make this quick, 'cause I am busy as fuck! And I only have myself to blame! Story of my life.
So as many of you already know, Vancouver Film Fest is happening until October 10th,
and I've been seeing a fuck ton of movies. So just like last year,
rather than making a separate Quickie video for every ingle one of them, as tempting as that might be,
I've decided that it's probably a better viewing experience for you guys if I tackle at least a few movies in each video.
So here's the movies that I've seen so far. First off is "Les Combattants", with the English translation being "Fighters".
And that might be a revised title, because for some reason at the Film Festival, it was called "Love at First Fight".
Don't ask me, I didn't do it. To me, this movie was pretty much the definition of ehhhh.
Like, it was alright, it was decent, but it wasn't really without its issues.
Now, this is the director's first feature length film and it's a pretty good one at that.
Every once in a while, there was a pretty nicely set up shot and it was more or less well-directed,
but I didn't feel as though it was very well-written. The characters seemed a little clichéd and underdeveloped,
I found myself not giving a shit about their goals and not caring when they got hurt.
Near the beginning, it seemed like that actors were just waiting for the other person to say their lines,
but the acting did get better throughout the film. The soundtrack was alright on its own,
but not only is it pretty repetitive and simplistic, but I don't think it matched the tone of the film very well.
Almost every time a song played, the feeling from the song was very different than the feeling of what we were being shown.
There were a few times where I felt a little cheated by the action taking place offscreen.
Like, when she bites off the bottle cap and later the guy climbs over a fence,
except it seems like he just walked offscreen and shook the fence.
Like, I get it, maybe you didn't have the budget to build a fence that could support his weight, but it did look sloppy nonetheless.
The movie hat its moments and it wasn't horrible, but I didn't really get all that much out of the experience.
Despite putting a lot of focus on the negatives, it was overall a positive movie.
Underwhelmingly positive, but positive nonetheless and I'm giving this one a six out of ten.
Next, I saw "Maps to the Stars" by David Cronenberg.
Now, a lot of people like to pretend as though David Cronenberg is some kind of genius,
and although he has made some great movies in the past, he's... I don't think he's all that great.
Calm down, I didn't say he's a terrible director. He's a director that's capable of making both great and terrible movies.
Now, this one wasn't absolutely terrible overall, but there were some pretty terrible moments within it.
Most of the actors didn't really pull off their performances very well.
It was difficult to imagine them as their characters and instead, I just saw actors delivering lines.
Now, that being said, Julianne Moore's performance was pretty good.
She won best actress at Cannes Film Festival and although I might disagree with that because of another movie in this review,
it was nice to see her mannerisms and overall disposition to be quite different from a typical Julianne Moore role.
Mia Wasikowska's performance was also pretty good,
but with pretty lame performances from the teenage actor and John Cusack, those were pretty much cancelled out.
Robert Pattinson was completely neutral and he did not do a great job or a terrible one.
I felt myself annoyed by the repetitive and clichéd "Oh no, I see a ghost" scenes.
If you're going go tackle something so overdone, then it would have been so cool if you try to add something new to the table.
But nope, it's just the same old predictable shit.
Speaking of predictable, the outcome of the scene with the gun was pretty fucking predictable.
Still speaking of predictable, the outcome of the scene in the bathroom was also pretty fucking predictable.
Something that I noticed about this movie and that I also noticed about "Cosmopolis",
is that the background sounds are way to fucking quiet.
Like, you're standing right new to a road and cars are driving by, but it sounds like they're fifty feet away.
For a while, I told myself that it was probably just a stylistic choice for the atmosphere of the film,
but then the horrible cliché shows up of:
"Hey, even though we're in a supposedly loud bar, we can actually hear ourselves talking at this volume.
Let's have conversations with each other just like this, even though if we were in a supposedly loud bar,
and it wasn't just music added later in your computer, we would have to be raising our voices a little, don't you think?"
Even that last movie had a club scene and at least they managed to do that right.
The shot composition is pretty good and there was one pretty good scene,
but there was one absolutely terrible computer-generated fire effect in what seems like it should have been an important scene,
and I'd be absolutely shocked to find a single person who says that that didn't take them out of the movie completely.
Cronenberg, you had some good shit going on in the 80's , you know what the 80's were really good for? Practical fucking effects!
You know how you would have filmed this scene in the 80's? With real fire and stunt people!
Well, the soundtrack had that cheesy clichéd 80's synth,
so it seems as though you kept the worst part of the 80's and got rid of the best part of the 80's.
There's no reason not to do it, CG is expensive and plus,
any random fucking stupid kid on the Internet will set themselves on fire for attention anyway, you could do it for free!
This movie is not the worst thing in the world, but there were no good parts of it that didn't get outweighed by the negatives.
And I'm giving this one a five out of ten.
Next, I saw "Mommy" by Xavier Dolan, or as I like to call him: "Xavier Dolan" (meme).
Now, If any remember my Vancouver Film Fest video from last year, I quite enjoyed his previous film "Tom at the Farm".
I can't wait to watch it again and the only reason I haven't, is because it's not yet out on BLUUU-RAAAY.
Unfortunately, Indie titles tend not to have as much demand or leverage, so they often get delayed releases.
So if you're lucky enough to have the opportunity to see this movie in theaters, please see it and see it right away.
Somehow, it only had one screening at Vancouver Film Fest,
but they have had encore screenings of certain films at the end of previous festivals, so keep your eyes out.
One of the things I really liked about "Tom at the Farm" is that the aspect ratio changed during certain scenes.
When things started to get more intense, the black bars would slowly enter from the top and bottom of the screen,
creating a much more emersive experience.
After you've seen them show up in a few of those specific scenes already, eventually you're able to get that intense feeling,
just by seeing them enter the screen without anything intense happening yet in that specific scene.
So as an audience member, you experience Pavlovian conditioning, just by simple aspect ratio changes.
Neat huh? Now, the reason I'm mentioning this to you, is because "Mommy" mas quite the unique aspect ratio for a film.
So much so that I'm sure that some of you will not watch it because of it.
But I sincerely implore you, if you trust my opinion and enjoy other films that I've loved,
you have to give this movie a chance, because it is one of the best films I've seen all year.
Now, as you can tell, it looks like the aspect ratio is somewhere between Iphone portrait mode and four by three.
Just to feed my curiosity, I measured the amount of pixels from the trailer footage and found that it's actually a perfect square.
If this were a choice that was made Lars von Trier style, where there's absolutely no purpose to it whatsoever,
and it's just to be different, then I might have hated it. But without spoiling anything, let me just say that
at a certain point in the film, it will become pretty obvious what it means about the characters and why it was done.
Now, just to be clear, for me personally, this movie is not any better or worse because of the unique aspect ratio.
When I say it's an amazing movie, it's an amazing movie regardless of the aspect ratio.
If you haven't already guessed, this is the film that makes me disagree with the best actress award from Cannes.
Not only were both of the main female performances leagues better than Julianne Moore's performance,
but all three of the main characters were the best performances I've seen all year.
If you can't already tell, I was pretty fucking blown away by this movie.
Every single performance was phenomenal, even down to characters that were only seen for a couple seconds.
There's a scene in a karaoke bar and the camera goes past a random drunk girl that we never see again, and I'm like:
"Holy shit, she looks convincingly drunk, what the fuck!"
The camera work is not only fantastic but very fitting, given the unique aspect ratio.
There was extremely careful consideration as to what shows up in the frame.
Dolan completely reinvented the rules of shot composition to be specific towards his own film and it worked very well.
I don't even gotta tell you how clever this microwave shot was!
The music was surprisingly fitting, given the fact that nearly the entire soundtrack was comprised of popular hit songs.
Not only did certain scenes pace themselves perfectly to start and end in unison with the song,
but some of the lyricism also ties into the scenes being shown.
Not only do these three characters have one of the most unique relationships I've seen onscreen,
but the characters themselves are also extremely unique and entertaining.
And I was massively impressed by how incredibly believable they were, despite how ridiculous they were at the same time.
There was so much thought, care and effort put into all of these characters, and they were executed flawlessly.
Now, although I love this movie to bits, it does not get a flawless rating from me, because I do have a couple issues with it.
There's a scene where an unimportant character's appearance is made fun of,
using the insult itself as a punchline to end the scene and go into the next.
But unfortunately, since the scene ends on the shot of the character making the insult and not the character being insulted,
if you didn't completely visually absorb the appearance that was being made fun of,
then you're not really able to enjoy the joke as much.
Cutting back to the character being insulted, even if only briefly would have helped the joke out a lot in my opinion.
Sure, I'll have it in my head the next time I watch it, but the joke also won't be fresh.
The only other issue I have with this movie is the expository title sequence at the beginning.
There's a few paragraphs of background information to help us understand the universe in which the story is being told,
but after watching the movie, I feel as though that same information
could have been conveyed through dialogue with little to no negative impact.
You could have a character hear the information on the radio, you could have a character talking to another character about it.
Sure, some movies might fuck that up and make it really cheesy,
but based on how amazingly well the rest of this movie was written,
I see no reason to believe why it wouldn't be possible.
Anyway, I though this movie was absolutely fantastic and if I find another way to watch it in theaters again, I will.
Out of everything I've seen in 2014, I currently can't decide if this is my favorite or "The Grand Budapest Hotel".
Both very different movies, but both absolutely fantastic.
Dolan is not only one of the most risk-taking filmmakers in the industry, but he is one of the most risk-taking professionals.
I hope this film becomes more publicly available soon, and I also hope that you all enjoy it,
because if you wind up not watching it because of its weird aspect ratio,
you are essentially missing out on a masterpiece. And I'm giving this one a nine of out ten.
[Subtitles by Abel Boeschoten]