Thursday, January 8, 2015

TWO FILMS - BIRDMAN, FORCE MAJEURE


BIRDMAN

Good bordering on great film, very deep. Always liked Michael Keaton but felt he was squandered in the move roles he did. Here, he not only makes a successful comeback but turns in one of the better performances I've seen in recent years - Unpredictable and multi-layered.  This movie was sort of a play within a play – I wasn’t sure by the end what was real and what was hallucination.  At times, the large distinguished cast playing mostly lunatic characters threatens to steal the show (especially Edward Norton) but they never do.  Also fabulous dialogue.



FORCE MAJEURE

This film has an intriguing premise – Man does something very cowardly in front of his loved ones. Will they be able to continue to see him the same way? What happens next? This Swedish film unfortunately does not live up to its premise and ends up being wildly uneven filled with important well put together scenes like the dinner party where the wife finally breaks down or the ending or the eerie presence of the housekeeping guy watching everything going on silently but for every one of these scenes is another long dragged out scene of silence or something else that has no meaning. Could have lost 20 minutes and been a better tighter movie. The scene where the husband breaks down and cries is overwrought and ruins the mood.




Also as SELMA is as much a discussion of history as as a review of this very bad film I've written about it on my general topics blog.... http://www.rgdinmalaysia.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-problem-with-selma.html

No comments:

Post a Comment