Tag: French

EuroTrash is a word I have never used on my website before, but I am starting to think it is time.

There is a genre of films that seem to want to give action/thriller/dramas, they set them in Europe, and take them all over to various major cities and countries. This lets them show off Europe and get very different visual patterns, regardless of whether or not they are useful to the plot. One could argue something like Spectre was a bit of WorldTrash.

But one man does EuroTrash better (worse?) than anyone else, and that man is Luc Besson. Besson is basically the Gorgon Reviews antithesis. Everything he has touched since The Fifth Element is shit or whatever one step above shit is.

I, like a lot of other people, watched the entire Transporter trilogy. I wondered how and why each sequel was made, as the quality decreased despite never starting out high. One or two cool action scenes does not an interesting film make. But at least we got some Jason Statham.

Now we have The Transporter Refueled. A reboot, with no Statham, but the same boring EuroTrashy Transporter vibe. Fuck this, Besson.

Oh he wears a suit, that is what makes this one stand out.

Frank (Ed Skrein), aka Transporter, is a dude who delivers packages discreetly for high profile contacts. He doesn’t ask questions, he doesn’t ask for names, and he doesn’t change things in the middle of a run. His dad (Ray Stevenson) used to do the same job, I think. Honestly I don’t remember too much about it, except that he is finally about to retire from whatever.

Frank gets a job offer from Anna (Loan Chabanol), who of course he doesn’t know anything about. But later that day he is to pick up her and two sort of large packages and then transport them. He didn’t expect that the packages would be two other women (Tatiana Pajkovic, Gabriella Wright) who are dressed up just like her.

Turns out he just became part of an elaborate plot by a few prostitutes to kill Arkady Karasov (Radivoje Bukvic), a human trafficker, who abused Anna. But they are going to extreme measures, and they even kidnapped Frank’s dad to force him to comply. What the hell ladies.

Also starring Wenxia Yu as an additional accomplice, and Lenn Kudrjawizki, Yuri Kolokolnikov, and Noémie Lenoir.

They are all dressed up as classy Leeloo.

Fucking EuroTrash. At least in this film he technically doesn’t go all over the place. But because he is a driver, we get some car chases through classic European cities, with their silly looking license plates.

The Transporter Refueled was a bore, which means it is basically like the other previous three Transporter films. There were two remotely interesting fight scenes. The plot was convoluted. The acting was piss. The characters were far too many and far too unimportant.

This film is 100% a waste of anyone’s time. Even the five of you who may have been hoping for a new Transporter film, Statham or not, will probably be disappointed. The action itself is mostly generic and this is the type of filth that should be going straight to DVD and not wasting a screen in those poor movie theaters.

Follow up, damn you Luc Besson. The next terrible thing he is bringing out is Lucy 2, so you know it will also be shit.

The release of Seventh Son was overshadowed because it came out the same day as Jupiter Ascending, which is interesting. The later is a sci-fi/fantasy epic that was faced with delays and the release was moved back. The former? A fantasy epic that was faced with even more delays and production issues.

Production on this movie began in early 2012. The visual effects of the film was being done with Rhythm and Hues Studio, famous for getting best Visual Effects in the Oscars for Life Of Pi, while also filing for bankruptcy. Not a good time for that studio, tons of layoffs despite their impressive work.

So in 2013, Seventh Son was still in production and the company got a loan to help finish the movie. It was pushed back to October 2013 release. Then it was pushed back to January 2014 thanks to Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. breaking apart.

However, once Universal got the distribution rights end of 2013, they said nah, let’s wait til February 6, 2015. They didn’t give any fucks about the movie and figured they’d have no competition. Which again, is amusing that Jupiter Ascending came in and fucked up any chance of them actually making money.

Well, costume wise it looks like a nerds wet dream!

Seventh Son is a story about a witch and a witch hunter. Clearly star crossed lovers. The witch, Mother Malkin (Julianne Moore), is being all evil, and Master Gregory (Jeff Bridges), the Spook, wants to stop her. During a routine snatch and grab, they almost succeed too! But no, she escapes, and she kills his apprentice (Kit Harington).

So instead we get Tom Ward (Ben Barnes), who is the seventh son of a seventh son. That means something. It means a lot of fucking and babies. When the Spook showed up, he knew already he was leaving thanks to dreams, so he kissed his mom, Mam (Olivia Williams) good bye and went on his merry way.

Things get a bit more hairy when Tom also sees a girl about to be mobbed for being a witch. He had visions of her and him, so he saves her too. Her name is Alice (Alicia Vikander). That is nice.

What is not nice when she goes back home to her witch mom (Antje Traue) who is involved with Mother Malkin. Ah interesting.

Then some witch magic stuff happens and people get hurt, lies get said, and of course, even more magic stuff. Also with a John DeSantis and a Djimon Hounsou!

On the other hand, this image looks so uncool, Outkast wouldn’t even touch it.

First of all, I apologize for that last caption joke, it is terrible.

Second of all, I feel really really bad for Rhythm and Hues studio. They did amazing work with Life Of Pi, then they got shit on, then they had to make this piece of crap. I want to assume that the reason this movie is not visually pleasing to look at is because the studio had to lay off all of their workers and work on a very small budget. I hope so. Because the CGI and effects were anything but quality.

You know what it reminded me of? Dungeons and Dragons, the movie. That is a really mean comparison, technically. That movie was terribad. But they are both pricey fantasy films that wanted to reach for something greater, but instead fell down into Mediocre Valley, looking ugly to boot.

But good looks aren’t the only important thing to a film. Acting and plot! So dang important! This one has two people who have won Best Actor and Best Actress at the Oscars! Hot damn! They can’t save this story though. They don’t even attempt to save it.

Jeff Bridges is basically transforming into Nick Nolte. The last few movies with Bridges have been hard to understand. This movie was the worst, with the movie almost demanding you watch it in subtitles to understand a damn thing he says. Moore plays a caricature and a non-interesting villain, and so she too is completely forgettable.

The plot itself would be easier to follow if there was anything remotely exciting about this movie. A yawn fest, beginning to end. It is a shame Sci-Fi is getting such a revitalization in the film industry and fantasy films seem left to die in its wake. We had a good thing going on with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but the disappointing Hobbit films and absolutely nothing else going on seems to mean it has to wait for the eventual Harry Potter reboot to be good again.

Welcome to a very special review here at Gorgon Reviews! So I apologize for how weird this one goes, just consider it non-canon.

This review is not the normal review for the day. Because it is Sunday, reviews don’t normally come out today. So of course it is a bonus review!

This is a special review because this one I am posting at some point after the time my wife has delivered out baby. Let me be vague here, because I might do it right away, the next day, hours after the fact, when we get home, who knows!

That’s why I am going to talk about Babies!

I first saw that this documentary existed when I worked in the ancient store of Blockbuster. It was one of our new releases and I used to watch every new release despite its perceived quality (that’s when I had 14~ reviews in a week). The only genres I avoided were extreme horror and documentaries, because I didn’t review either at the time. But now I do both and now I can talk about Babies.

This documentary goes into the lives of four freshly born babies from around the world. If only there was a nice graphic to showcase the babies themselves…

Shit that white baby is sad.

These four babies are in very uniquely different parts of the world at various levels of “comfort”. Ponijao is born in Africa with his mom, slightly older sibling and like, a neighbor or two. No medical comforts, just a hut and the hot hot sun. On the other side, Hattie is born in San Francisco, came from a rich enough couple in a hospital. Mari is also a traditional born baby, for the most part, hospital and all, while Bayar is a step above Ponijao in terms of civilization, but not with all the modern comforts.

These babies are going to grow up and have drastically different lives. We only get snippets from the first year of their life (I think), but we can see them learning to roll over, learning to crawl, and learning to talk a little bit. We will hear them laugh while playing and cry for no reason at all. And this whole documentary provides no story, no narration, no structure. Just babies with their families. Hell, it doesn’t even provide subtitles.

In theory, this is an amazing idea. What better way to showcase how we are all human and equal than by comparing how we raise our babies, creatures not yet molded by society, knowing no hate. It is a good idea and potentially very thought provoking.

My main issue is the only thoughts that were provoked for me were how boring it all felt. The idea for Babies sounds good on paper, but while watching, I frequently checked over and over again at how much longer I had until it was all over. I don’t want to say I have a small attention span, but I can only watch babies (that aren’t my own) falling down and existing for so long before I want to walk away and play video games.

Without even transitional frames to group this into at least stages of development, or statistics about babies, I am left to derive my own point for the documentary to exist. However, at only 80 minutes, you are going to get roughly 20 minutes per baby and still not know about the different cultures. Some babies play with rocks, some babies play with fancy equipment. The end. I am sure I will figure all that out in the next year anyways.

Foreign movies are so hard for me to finally get to watch, but there are sooo many of them that I have to see for the Oscars. Booo. And it isn’t even just things nominated for Best Foreign Film! We have things that are foreign nominated for best Animated Film (which I will review in the next week), and we have Two Days, One Night, of which had Marion Cotillard nominated for Best Actress.

Best Actress! My weakest category! And this was literally the last one I had to watch to get all of the acting categories down. So of course I made this a priority outside of all the foreign movies.

So I grabbed my tissue, and prepared for the worst. After all, foreign movie nominated for Oscar and straight drama? I assume someone is going to make me cry.

Even the ice cream looks depressing.

Sandra (Marion Cotillard) has an issue. She might be losing her job. She works at a plant that only has 17 employees. They make solar panels for whoever wants solar panels. Sweet gig I guess. But Sandra has been having some emotional and psychological issues lately. She had a nervous breakdown and took time away from her job, spending time at home with her kids and husband.

But the company employees have found out they totally don’t need her at the job. Everyone overall works roughly 3 hours more a week, but they still get the job done, and it isn’t a big deal that she isn’t there. They can do it with 16. So the higher ups put it to a vote for the remaining workers. They either vote to keep Sandra as a member of their company, or they vote to receive their yearly bonus. Yep, they put her against about 1,000 euros. That’s pretty hardcore.

So it comes to no surprise when the vote goes 14-2 against her. However, they say that the company man being at the vote and it not being secretive influenced it heavily. They convince them that Monday there has to be a re-vote, a secret ballot, without outside influences in the room. So Sandra has the weekend to find her co-workers, appeal to their better nature, and hope they will keep her around too.

Also with Fabrizio Rongione, Catherine Salee, Olivier Gourmet, and Shaun Weiss. And obviously more, but some people have smaller roles or only one scene.

Trying to save your job while being silently judged. That is probably worse than sad ice cream.

Great acting alert, great acting alert!

Fuck. Cotillard did so good. I haven’t seen her in most things, like a lot of people, but I was super impressed. She lost a lot of work and constantly felt like she was on the verge of another break down. She was also incredibly realistic. And a good person. Which made her easily relatable. Her heart break and her sadness was our heartbreak and our sadness. The film itself is such a simple concept yet entirely captivating. It helps that they present you with such a simple goal too. She just needs to convince 7 coworkers to vote for her on Monday. Simple as that.

She doesn’t want to be an inconvenience, she doesn’t want to guilt trip people too much. After all, other people have their own problems and families to look over and had plans for that money. They don’t deserve to lose their bonus, yet she also doesn’t deserve to lose her job. It is real, it is relevant, and it is has a lot of gripping human drama. Man. Those French/Belgian people really knew how to connect to me on levels I didn’t even expect before.

Fuck, I guess I should watch The Immigrant now?

Lesbians!

Oh boy, did I start this one on the wrong note. I am supposed to be doing serious movie reviews and all. But all I can think about is lesbians, you know, what the movie Blue Is The Warmest Color is about. I guess.

Originally called Adele: Chapters 1 & 2, it was obviously put together to make one longer 3 hour movie, and is really just a coming of age story.

Heh. Heh. Coming of age. I get it.

Adele (Adèle Exarchopoulos) is your average French high schooler.

But after finally going on a date with a good looking boy, and giving herself up, she didn’t feel excited, she didn’t feel love, she felt absolutely nothing.

Maybe, boys aren’t her thing? That is when her life begins to change, where she sees the blue haired woman in the distance who captures her fancy. Adele would never consider herself a lesbian, but there is something about this blue haired woman that she can’t get enough of. Well, eventually Adele wanders away from her friends and goes into a lesbian bar, to check it out. She claims it was an accident, but when the blue haired girl actually talks to her and shows interest, she can’t resist.

Emma (Léa Seydoux) opens up Adele to a world she had never really imagined before, opening her up mentally and sexually. Adele will soon realize that even though she is happy, the rest of the world might not be 100% okay with her relationship, and “simple tasks” like telling her parents about it.

Blue Is The Warmest Color clocks in at 3 hours, roughly two 90 minute segments, basically the initial meet of the two, and then a few years into their relationship.

I am positive no drugs were taken during this film.

So, right off the bat, I can say this movie felt far too long. It goes over a lot of the detail in her life, her day to day activities, so we get a full picture of what its like to be Adele. Unfortunately, most of that isn’t why I watched the movie. I wanted to see the relationship start, unfold, and maybe even reach a conclusion. I don’t need to see her miserable at a job teaching kids for like, 20 or more minutes of the movie (maybe an exaggeration? It felt like the majority of the second half).

The acting was real and great sure. So was the story.

It is just all the extra fluff and shit that got to me. They could have easily cut an hour or so from this movie, and it would have made it an amazing experience for me personally. So I can say this is a good movie for sure, but not an amazing movie that everyone told me it would be. Shit’s long, yo.

Very Wrong.

How Wrong?

This much Wrong.

Wrong is a film brought to us by Quentin Dupieux, who is famous for the movie Rubber. Rubber is famous for being completely absurd, and a strange movie, but I ended up liking it. Knowing that, you should know that he is going for a very similar style to Rubber. So if you hated Rubber, just don’t even try this one.

Same thing happens to me when I listen to Michael Bolton at work.

Poor old Dolph Springer (Jack Plotnick). Sure, he has a bitchin’ mustache. But he woke up to a very not good day. His dog ran away! Or was kidnapped. Either way, his dog is no longer there, and the world he lives in appears to be quite bizarre. Like his neighbor, Mike (Regan Burns), who goes on daily morning jogs, now refusing to admit to it. He hates running, why would he ever do that?

That isn’t the only thing. Police officers are unnecessarily rude, which might be a normal real world thing. His work office has a downpour going on in the inside, but that is apparently normal too. He might not even work there.

But his dog is missing. That is what is important. Not his conversations with a lady working a new pizza place (Alexis Dziena), or his gardener (Eric Judor). It turns out that the dog may have been taken by a group who randomly steal peoples pets, to make them truly love them. Strange. Yes. But Master Chang (William Fichtner) insists that it makes peoples lives better in the end. Unfortunately, mid kidnapping, the driver got into an accident, and died, and the dog escaped. So the stolen dog is lost.

They hire a private detective (Steve Little, aka Stevie Janowski) to get on the case, and Dolph just has to keep on living.

The hardest thing to believe in this movie is that he would write a novel, on a type writer, by water.

At this point, I am not sure if absurdity is really a film genre, or if I like it. Anyone could come up with an “absurd” movie, and call it art, even if it makes no sense, with weak plot or acting, and just bizarre antics. I am not saying that is a good description of Wrong, but close. I would say Napoleon Dynamite was an absurd movie, and one I dislike for its lack of real plot.

I definitely think I got less out of this movie than with Rubber. Rubber draws you in with the strange sounded plot, and I believe, delivers an even stranger movie. The plot description for Wrong just sounds pointless, and probably the only thing drawing people to this movie is knowing he made Rubber. It definitely has its extreme moments of weirdness, but not enough for me to love the movie. There were some great scenes. I loved the scenes with the Private Investigator. The gardener had an interesting arc, but the ending of it felt a bit weak to me too.

For all I know, the entire movie was just made to troll people. It might be a test to see what people can draw from it, calling it a highly intelligent movie, so that Mr. Dupieux can come out in two years and go “hah, just kidding.” That would be fun.

Foreign movie! This time, by the French. There was a lot of potential Oscar buzz around The Intouchables, at least for Best Foreign Film this last year, and it was France’s official selection to the competition. But it didn’t crack the top 5 and got jack shit. That’s not a good sign, but maybe it got 6th place? Are their trophies for sixth place?

Eternal Friendship. That is your sixth place trophy.

Philippe (Francois Cluzet) is a rich motherfucker. Why? Don’t worry about that. But he is loaded and now super into artwork. Unfortunately for him, he is also paralyzed from the neck down. He might have some finger use, not sure, but outside of talking and waggling his eyebrows, he is stuck, yo!

Because of that, he needs attendants 24/7, but not your normal attendant. They just treat him like a piece of shit, don’t let him do anything fun, and well, acknowledge his disabilities. But along comes Driss (Omar Sy), who doesn’t try to get the job. He just needs to get rejected to get his wellfare on, living with his family, no succeeding.

Unfortunately for him, Philippe likes his spunk and that he is different. Whether that is because has no training, talks mostly about music, or just entirely skin color, unsure of. But Philippe gives him a shot.

Of course, as expected, both men influence the others lives in positive ways, where they both learn to love, live, and take chances. Make mistakes. Get messy. That’s right, they go full Ms. Frizzle.

But more R, less G.

Alright, so describing the movie outloud (err, as I typed it I guess), I realized this movie sounded cliche as fuck. But it isn’t. Because its french! And uhh…french!

Shit. Regardless of potential clicheness, I still enjoyed it a lot. Not top of the world, but still quite a lot. They had great chemistry together, based on a true story, and Audrey Fleurot was pretty hot.

I laughed, and teared up a bit, and the film offers a nice message without getting weirdly preachy. Basically, it is YOLO in a nutshell, even if you can’t move your legs.

If you have no idea who Mesrine is, then you should probably read the review of part one, of this two part movie series. That way you knowledge can increase by about 3% on the subject!

Knowledge, it makes you happy.

After the events of the first film, Mesrine (Vincent Cassel) found himself alone, on the run, and mad. How does Mesrine: Public Enemy #1 begin? Shit, with Mesrine dying. Spoilers? Not really. Hopefully you would guess a nationwide gangster ended his career in prison or in death. Why they started with his body, not sure.

Last time we got to see kidnapping, killing, some extortion and breaking away from the police twice.

Well this movie is really no different. Some more escapes, some more kidnapping. He has different lovers in this film (Ludivine Sagnier). Some notable police workers (Oliver Gourmet and Christophe Vandevelde). And of course new accomplices and criminals (Gerard Lanvin, Mathieu Amalric, and Samuel Le Bihan).

Why be vague? I explained that last time. Because its all about the experience, damn it.

There must be some kind of way out of here, said the gangster to the thief. In prison.

But is it ust as good? To me, it didn’t feel as good. It is a bit longer, but I think a lot could have been cut out. Overall, it just felt like more of the same.

Maybe my problem is considering it two movies (you know, because it was released that way…) and not as one super really long movie. But in that case, overall it might have been better to just make it like a long three hour movie instead of a little bit over four hours overall. I guess it is because it became more of a biography and really did want to talk about all of his exploits. Not just the cool shit. I respect that, but I didn’t care about most of it.

I will say his death was kind of bad ass, as were his escapes. I also loved that everytime he got caught he was generally happy. Posing for the press, making great courtroom stands and what not. Then you know, escaping. Well done Mesrine.

Gangsters have had a place pretty much in all first world countries. Because if they weren’t first world countries, they’d probably just be called Warlords or something similar. Apparently France is not an exception.

Of course, like every good gangster, he needs to have rockin’ facial hair.

Mesrine: Killer Instinct is the biographical film of France’s most famous gangster, Jacques Mesrine (Vincent Cassel). However it only goes over his beginnings, his rise to power, and escape from prison.

There is more to the story than that. There is even worse crimes, and public enemy number 1 status, which is told in the second half (appropriately named), Mesrine: Public Enemy #1. Hmm, I wonder what will be reviewed tomorrow.

We get at least two loves of his life, in Sofia (Elena Anaya) and Jeanne (Cecile De France). The former his first love who didn’t want him involved in crime after his first prison stint, and the latter, a nice partner in crime who wouldn’t let him break her out of prison to save his own life.

We have some bank robberies, kidnapping, you know, the normal gangster stuff. Maybe some extortion. Lots of money. Lots of danger. He was more than a French criminal too, going to both Quebec and the US at least in his crime pursuits. One of his “bosses” is Guido (Gerard Depardieu), aka the only name I’ve heard before actor wise. He also gets an accomplice Jean-Paul Mercier (Roy Dupuis) who helps him out, and helps him break out of prison.

The film ends, with Mesrine out of jail, now on the run with no real plans for his future. He has now killed some more innocent people, and the latest love of his life has left him. Shit, that guy is about to snap. It played out like a “You think you’re bad? You haven’t seen nothing yet!” type moment, and then went straight to credits.

You know the jizz in your face motion? It works a lot better with a gun and lots of money.

Think that review was disjointed and random? Well that was on purpose. Since this is a true story with a bit of artistic license, arguably the events in the movie and the next are some form of public knowledge (somewhere). You know he is a gangster, and thus will do gangster things. I just really wanted to show some characters and explain the situation. Because there is a second half to be reviewed later, spoilers don’t really feel like an option in terms of how it ends, so instead the spoilers will be most of the actual details and plot. Hooray!

I thought Vincent Cassel did a kick ass job as a gangster, and I am excited to see where the character goes in the second half of his life.

Some parts were a bit confusing, I am sure the filmmakers didn’t feel the need to explain everything to the French audience, but since I knew nothing I had to figure it out on my own. But it wasn’t that much of a nuisance.

Yes. Rubber. The movie about a killer a tire. But is it about something way more than that?

I think so, and maybe this review will surprise you?

Don’t worry. The bird is about to explode, but it is a fake bird.

The beginning will scare away most people. A car is driving down a dirt road, hitting chairs. A cop (Stephen Spinella) gets out of the trunk, and has a nice monologue about “no reason“. Link is to that quote if you want to read it. He is addressing the audience in all of this, making it clear this movie is weird, and also a tribute to “no reason”.

Or is it?!

Camera backs away, and hey look, a group of people he was talking about. Yes, just a group of people, standing in the desert. They are also told they are about to watch a movie, and then stand around with their binoculars, looking for the movie. Eventually a tire gets out of the ground, and rolls around on its own. He crushes some cans along the way, but one can he doesn’t. He just sits in front of it. And bam. It explodes.

A tire becoming both able to move and discovering psychic powers? Amazing! He rolls around a bunch more, and kills a rabbit, and a bird, and eventually finds himself on the road and discovering humans.

This film should sound completely nonsensical, because it is. The audience watching the movie is often shown talking about the events, and play an active role in the movie. The tire seems to fall in love with a girl, Roxane Mesquida, and checks into the hotel. At this point it has been two days and the audience is all starving and bored. Jack Plotnick, the “Accountant” finally gives them food, but it is poisoned.

The cop, now thinking the entire audience is dead tries to end the movie and tells all the other characters to go home. But there is one member left, a guy in a wheel chair, Wings Hauser. So reluctantly, the movie continues, despite the cop just wanting to go home. While also trying to kill off the lone watcher left, so that the movie will also end that way.

They even try to trick the tire with a decoy woman. Full of dynamite.

Are you confused yet? Of course you are. What the hell is this absurd/nonsensical sounding movie?

When I watched it, I felt like it was two stories in one. The obvious story about the tired with psychic powers, killing people. But I felt the story with the audience to be that much more important. Although you can assume the movie has no reason to it, given the (obviously sarcastic) monologue, and thus just a bunch of random events, or you can assume it means something greater.

I didn’t feel I was reaching too hard when I figure that the audience represents the damn audience. Most of them making comments that audience members probably are also thinking at home. By killing them off by 1, that is presumably just everyone giving up on the movie but one guy. If everyone gave up, the movie would be over because no need for an ending if no one watched it. (Tree in woods?) But because there is of course people like wheelchair guy, and me, it goes on, and the ending gets more bizarre and nonsensical.

I could go on. But I feel like the movie is a direct attack on the crap Hollywood has been producing, and getting rid of more creative ideas. The credits scenes are a clear indication of that. Kind of like a warning to Hollywood, that if they keep releasing all the same crap, B movies might take over?

There is so much more you can take away from this movie, but that might make me sound like a crazy person. Because it could also just be a “no reason” movie, and taking Scythian from it is not their intent. I can say that most people who watch this probably wont like it, or stop early.

I sound super snobbish just saying shit like that. I enjoyed it, and liked how different it was. Made me think, in very weird terms, which I loved as well. But hey, give it a chance? You probably won’t like it. But might!