Je Ne Suis Pas La Pour Etre Aime (2005)

RATING:	80%
FORMAT:	DVD

(www.philonfilm.net)

[Not Here to be Loved]

Subtly-comic portrayal of the emotional rapport - needed to tango well - of two people at a crossroads in their lives.

The ability of the central characters to tango beautifully visually-communicates the intensity of their knowledge and understanding of one another - as well as their ability to relate to each other in all other ways, too.

Their ages are spring and autumn and yet the actors have a winning chemistry that carries the day; helping dramatic credibility greatly – especially Anne CONSIGNY.

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Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

American Hustle

Rating: 80%



(www.fanpop.com)

Also Known As:

Unknown

Year:

2013

Country:

Predominant Genre:

Crime

Director:

Outstanding Performances:

Premiss:

A petty con-man and his seductive partner are blackmailed into working for a maverick policeman who pushes them into bed with the mafia.

Themes:

Alienation | Coming-of-age | Compassion | Corporate Power | Courage | Destiny | Emotional repression | Empathy | Ethnicity | Family | Friendship | Guilt | Identity | Individualism | Justice | Loneliness | Love | Loyalty | Materialism | Narcissism | Personal | Personal change | Political | Role modeling | Sadomasochism | Schizophrenia | Solipsism | White culture | White supremacy

Similar to:

Unknown

Review Format:

DVD

Blind Leading the Blind

Summary: Half-smart White people outsmarting themselves by pretending to be what they are not.

Comedy crime caper which, for a change, is not exclusively from the point-of-view of the criminals; emphasizing the moral grayness of people who believe survival requires game-playing and dishonesty. Here we have the self-reflexive sense of actors portraying real people who are always acting - to avoid the emptiness inside by convincing others of the fullness.

Also a clever disquisition on the political nature of White marriages (allegedly all about love) and their implication that they are better than the arranged marriages of other cultures. Married compatibility, here, is focused on shared neurosis rather than shared values, so that no matter the dreams of the central characters of ending-up as far from where they started as possible, they can only take their inner child out of the street but not the street out of the inner child.

(https://cinemathon.wordpress.com)

The political game-playing gets so involved and complicated in the process of working-out what others’ dreams are so that the con-men can pretend to satisfy those dreams, that the police become enmeshed in the criminal and political corruption they are sworn to detect.

The conflation of the Personal with the Political - so common among Whites - is what makes the criminal and police plots unravel. Control over others is far more important as a means of feeling successful than making lots of money; such that it becomes necessary to prevent others from being successful as the only means of being successful oneself. The inability to thus separate Business from Pleasure is the ultimate undoing of White culture.

As usual with Whites, two Caucasian actresses are cast in roles either too difficult for them to play convincingly - or that they are simply unsuitable for - simply because they are more White than talented or versatile; ie, they are Affirmative-Action babies. This distracts from the themes of the film; reducing its entertainment-value by making the audience struggle to evade their own political-correctness in wanting these performers to be doing good work when they manifestly are not.

If directing is mostly casting, this film suffers from a director who may have been forced to use certain performers to get the movie funded, with actresses who either should not be actresses or who need acting lessons to hone any pre-existing their ability to represent others (compare with Bullets over Broadway). In this movie, this weakness is simply too noticeable to ignore (as one frequently does in other films) because there is more than one weak link present in the performance chain.

Bradley COOPER is a superb character actor who also happens to be a movie star and is ably-supported by Jeremy RENNER and Robert DE NIRO. The comparative weakness of the other performances lessens the necessary affect of being surrounded by people who are not what they seem; compounded by some of the characters being underwritten and, so, unconvincing. The attempt to recreate the 1970s is over-the-top and perfectly-supports the humorous, self-parodic Martin Scorsese-style direction.

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Copyright © 2015 Frank TALKER.
Permission granted to reproduce & distribute this posting in any way, shape or form - provided you mention this Blog.
All other rights reserved.

Green Zone (2010)

RATING:	60%
FORMAT:	DVD

(www.musikadj.net)

WMD?

Unusually, the CIA here are the good guys - or at least the less bad guys - and we are presented with the deliberate lie of WMDs in Iraq as a conflict within the US administration as to the most plausible excuse for an ideological war.

The desire to prevent an ethnic conflict conflicts with the desire to simply administer a country as a colony. This, in its turn, produces conflict within the US side as to whether the political challenges outlined here are soluble via the torture and murder of political opponents - creating more terrorism and insurgency - or by diplomacy and paying people to do as one wishes. And without a sizable civilian infrastructure to replace that which is destroyed, only the latter has any chance of success.

The problem with this undoubtedly-exciting movie is that it simplifies geopolitical reality for the sake of entertainment. It represents a reality not far enough removed from the Green Zone mentality it criticizes - that never ventures far from that Zone - and so, itself, does not understand the Middle East in any real depth - nor, indeed, the White culture that wishes to exploit it. Nevertheless it does fully grasp the essential point: You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

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Copyright © 2011 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Limey (1999)

RATING:	80%
TECHNICAL QUALITY:	Cinema

(http://rarefilm.net)

Tell him I’m coming!

Clever revenge film that is about more than just revenge and, in a very real sense, not about revenge at all!

Terence STAMP is excellent, as are the all other relics from the 1960s featured here: Peter FONDA, Barry NEWMAN and Joe DALLESANDRO. STAMP manages to convey a likeable emptiness to his character of a hard man still sensitive to his young daughter's chiding him for his criminal ways. Additionally, the film is oddly-comical in both its treatment of violence and the culture clash between a cockney tough and LA villains.

The movie's style is strangely elliptical as it flits back and forth in time - with differing results each time. Yet, this strangeness works in favor of the theme of human memory not being entirely reliable - along with a certain propensity toward wishful thinking.

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Copyright © 2011 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.