| Author | Message | ||
     Tom_alaerts (Tom_alaerts) Username: Tom_alaerts Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.176.178.148 |
Hi all, I just saw a Japanese movie that will be juuuust right for the regulars here: Confessions. Keep an eye for it if it plays in an art house cinema. What's it about? I'll only describe the first few moments: a teacher announces in the class that it will be her last teaching day. She proceeds to tell about how she lost her daughter in what the police believed was an accident; but she found out that it was murder, and the two culprits are in the class. Unfortunately the law is such that they are too young to be properly punished... This is well scripted and also intensely dark film about revenge and redemption. Of special note is also the unique filming style, the images are slickly modern and sometimes almost hypnotic, yet rather cold as well which befits the topic. For example certain dramatic or violent scenes are shown in a stylish, almost upbeat way which is disturbing to watch. Furthermore the movie regularly changes viewpoint, keeping you interested. The movie is Japan's entry for the foreign movie but I bet that it'll never win it, it is far too unconventional for that. There are several reviews linked on imdb, check them out if you want to know more: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1590089/externalreviews Finally, the trailer gives an idea about the stylish and faux-upbeat filming style: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vnws8ZymxME | ||
| John Forth (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 82.24.1.217 |
I'll second this recommendation. A very interesting film which should really be watched cold - i.e. with as little foreknowledge of the plot or where it's going as possible. My only complaint is that it is occasionally a little too stylised, with certain scenes playing out like music videos to a Western rock/pop soundtrack. But the twists and turns of the stories more than compensate. I'll have mentioned this on the FrightFest thread a few months back, I'm sure. | ||
| Tom_alaerts (Tom_alaerts) Username: Tom_alaerts Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.78.35.175 |
I forgot one small criticism I have: the movie is 106 minutes long, and could have been trimmed here and there by some 10 minutes. Still, required viewing... | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.153.151.150 |
I watched a bit of Requiem for a Dream the other night and it felt like an MTV video. In fact, it felt like a 40 year old coke advert. Was this intentional? This precise sense of it? If it was I admire it, if it wasn't I actually think it was awful. Odd, that, how an intention could shift my perception (though it probably explains how Ben Elton attacked Natural Born Killers, showing how he hadn't understood it at all in the process). | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.166.117.210 |
Yes, Tony, it's deliberately stylised. If you look at Aronofsky's other films, he tends to tailor his technique to the material. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 220.138.161.24 |
Tom, thanks for the tip. I've noticed the book (in Chinese translation) many times in local bookshops and have been curious as to what it was about. The film was on at the cinema here last summer, but I missed it. It's due out on DVD next week, so I'll look out for it then. | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.131.60.216 |
We've just seen CONFESSIONS and I have to say it falls into the very small and select group of movies that I hate. I don't think I have ever seen anything quite so mean-spirited, with such self-obsessed characters who are motivated purely by their own lusts for attention and revenge and lacking any kind of moral compass whatsoever. I'll leave the rest to Huw, whose comments I've copied from another thread and who I think is spot on: Glad to see I'm not the only one with a functioning crap detector, Stevie. Confessions was shiny, cheap, shallow, soulless garbage. It fails on just about every level. The acting is totally unbelievable - it veers into hysteria early on and stays firmly planted there. It's not a fantasy, and yet there is absolutely nothing believable about the school system it attempts to portray. For me, there was not a single moment that felt genuine and not a single interaction between characters that contained a shred of emotional authenticity. The theme that it completely fails to comes to grips with (I'm not sure the director even bothered, to be honest) could have made for a powerful film in more skillful hands. It has no depth, no heart, nothing except flashy visuals (but even those I've seen done countless times before, and far more skillfully). It's definitely the most overrated film I've seen in a long time. It's a very rare film that manages to put me in the kind of bad mood this one has, and I suspect that's party due to what Huw says above about the theme, which could make for a marvellous piece of work, which this most certainly isn't. One of the rare cases where if I met the director I'd ask him what on earth he thought he was doing. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.29.252.215 |
If I met him I'd hit him a punch, John. I went to see it with a mate and we both come out seething afterward. Complete shite on every level. It was my Turkey of the Year by a country mile. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.59.115.60 |
Ah, so it wasn't just me then. I was loaned a screener of this some time last year and I gave up half way through, which is something I pretty much never do. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.18.148 |
Hubert Selby Jr's Requiem for a Dream is a brilliant, painful, desperate novel, a real modern classic. I thought the film got the nightmarish feel of the book well enough but lacked the insight and didn't even bother with the politics (of the police and the medical system). It's not a bad film but it displays a kind of negative hedonism: it goes for negative emotional intensity all the time, rather than balancing that with intelligence and vision in the way the book does. |