Reviews

Ok the film could have been a feel good movie, not a particularly good one but a decent Sunday evening movie, the kind of thing you watch when you're tired or hungover. But that film doesn't know wether it is a musical, a comedy or a drama or all those thing in one strong piece of original film. It's starts as a comedy then ends up being a lousy drama. BUT the worse thing is that the characters aren't plausible. Antonio is Lorenzo's friend, knows form the start his friend is gay, he has a crush himself on their girl friend and that from that one kiss and petting he turns into being a self hating gay who cares about what other people think. I mean their friendship was about not giving a damn what other people think. I could excuse this, why not, Antonio could be shocked after all and be pissed off, beat his friend up ... regret or stop seeing him ... but he goes as far as shooting him dead and that's was is wrong. Killing off a gay character to get people to be moved and shed a few tear in 2016, is wrong, low and cheap. Another typical BURY YOUR GAY film, like we don't have enough of those. That film isn't meant to be either realistic, doesn't talk about a real event, so why killing off a strong gay character who despite being bullied remains strong and positive? ... and worse for worse by his best friend? The people who committed this film had the perfect opportunity to give a positive message, that is what they actually did through 3/4 of the film, but then they sacrificed this for some cheap thrills and get people some easy tears ... that's not only LOW but dangerous ... enough with killing off gay characters ... other than that the film is entertaining but uneven, a bit awkward at times, the acting is so so and the dialogues are sometimes off ... the cinematography is similar to a cheap tv movie ... a massive disappointment.

There's several things to say about that film : the portraying of Jeffrey Dahmer is not accurate, it's very two dimensional, it doesn't mention his childhood nor the way he used to get rid off his victims

It's also morally wrong to do a horror movie out of real life events, it's completely wrong to relate this events from the victims point of view and their family, in this film they are no longer human beings but characters for movies, just imagine being the parents of that kid and watching that or even simply knowing some idiot made a film out of that to make money out of it ... what's wrong is that it's exploiting those people's death for entertainment ... why not a gritty portrait of Dahmer ... being subtle about the whole affair ... you can convey horror and reality without showing this much. A biopic (and gods knows I hate biopics) would have been more suitable, I think even a full on slasher loosely based on Dahmer would have been better than this trash film to be honest ... Dahmer doesn't know where to stands ... is it horror? is it a biopic ? is it a thriller or a portrait ? well it's a bit of both but really sadly and badly digested. It's mostly inaccurate too historically.

Some of the acting is terrible : the two girls at the beginning helping that Asian kid, it's very forced and laughable, the cops are even worse actually. the lighting in the daytime scenes is terrible. the music sometimes it truly atrocious, some other time it fits well the horror genre ... the framing and the photography is most of the time worthy of a really mediocre TV movie, except for the night scenes where there's a lot of effort, probably too much actually. Jeremy Renner is okay in it but lacks depth in its portrayal of Dahmer, I guess he's doing his best since the script is really poor and the characters under developed . The dialogues are not helping : nor the mise-en-scene : the scene between is grandma and his dad is a prime example, it's unsubtle, underlined in red and printed in bold like if we were too stupid to understand, and still it's not working at all, it's dragging for ages to a really poor "climax" in the end. it's just painful to watch. Some of the choice in the editing are really odd, the mix towards the end between his first murder and last murder is random and ineffective. Some of the action makes no sense : the guy coming back after Dahmer trying to kill him, that didn't even happen in the end, and the hugging before being gutted, like really? that was an easy and lazy ploy and yet It all falls flat again.

Hardly the masterpiece described in those earlier comments, watch Portrait of Serial Killer or My Friend Dahmer instead of wasting your time watching this very poor waste of film.

Many people mistaken this film for one other vapid trashy early nineties film, but Killing Zoe is actually way more clever than Natural Born Killer and True Romance for example, way deeper because it has several layer of understanding. It's a film about a bank robbery, right, with a classic film noir tangent : a girl and a gun, a saint that is also a whore, a bad guy and an honest gangster ( like a real professional), it's also a film about Aids and the aids epidemic (metaphoric film about how aids kills your body, the bank being a human body, the safe being the heart, Anglade being the virus ( he rapes, shares drugs), his men being other diseases, complication of aids, and the hostages and clients are living cells and the cops anti bodies ), Nosferatu being the ultimate reference of the film, raising from his coffin (like Stoltz Anglade and Delpy throughout the film, but in reverse, they actually fall like Nosferatu raises) is a vampire who suck blood. the walls of the bank are crimson red like blood. It's also a film about evil and destruction, a profoundly nihilistic film with references and constant imitations of Nosferatu throughout the film, here again . A very complex film , the kind who's the story does not really matter : the film itself is an experience, it makes you feel something, it's visceral , you either love it or hate it, or both but it can't leave you indifferent

This is typically the kind of film I despise, I call them Sundance film, they are the Canada Dry of art film, it looks like an art film, it smells like an art film but it's just another rubbish ROM com that wants really badly to be hip. It borrows a bit of the Wes Anderson aesthetics to be quirky (wow his jumper matches the sofa) but all the characters are clichés and lame, it wants desperately to be the document of a generation ( listen to the shins, it will save your life ermmmmmmm, it's not Bob Dylan or Public Enemy). A bit of cutesy folk there for emotion, some Coldplay (wow very marginal). It's contrived, cheesy and wants to be controversial (drugs! Great, the corporate lawyer that lives next to my flat takes drugs, and he's anything but cool, interesting or deep). And worst of all, that scene where Zack Braff (it's not a character really is it, it's him wanting the world to be miserable, the ultimate victim) wants to makes us cry using the brother that died when he was a kid, he feels guilty because he didn't save him, so right he's all messed up and all. Well it didn't happened to you, write it for a character, but not for lachrymal power. I felt truly disgusted by this scene, mostly because you can tell there's no ethics behind, no meaning, and Zack Braff not being a good drama actor makes it awkward. And casting Nathalie Portman so you can kiss the hot chick is very pathetic.

Except for the theme, you can't really recognize it's a Ken Loach film. It's over sentimental, well completely cheesy, horribly Manichean, it has some the most terrible and stiff acting i've seen in years.

The scene where Jimmy's old love try the dress he has given her and where they dance together is awkward and disgustingly lit, the least subtle thing in a film that walks with big heavy wooden clogs.

The end is a pastiche of Dead Poet Society's ending, some young smiling idiots are chanting for him while cycling behind the police van that is taking our failed hero back to America where he is deported, thank god for us.

For a director that has done so much for English cinema, Riff Raff, Lady Bug Lady Bug, Poor Cow ... that made the most political and original films with economy of dialogs, bright and clever scripts, to be reduced to do a ultra conventional period drama, that sometimes over explain things to us like we're complete morons and sometimes is so historically or even narratively so vague to the point where it becomes laughable more than understandable is not only a shame but a waste of talent. It's meant to be all deep and political but in the end it's just a tower of clichés and a competition of bad acting belching a compilation of debilitating dialogs.

He said he wanted to stop cinema after doing this atrocious crime against cinema, he should have stop before doing Carla's Song and save us from suffering in front of those boring films that resembles the most soporific history classes of our teenage hood, save THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY, is only decent film in the last 20 years of his career.

To see a Director sabotaging his legacy is not only appalling but depressing.

If you're familiar with the eccentric eastern European philosopher, called Slavoj Zizek who has committed 'Lacanian' interpretation of famous films of all times, things get exciting...much more exciting than just quick fists and high kicks. If you look at the film through the prism of sexuality it is a MASTERPIECE!

The film is about Oedipus complex!

Both brothers (Billy and Julian) are sexually frustrated. Billy is a pedophile and it's probably caused by sexual relations with their mom (strong and imperious matron). Julian is an impotent (or is castrated) and his problem comes from the fact that he's lived in the shadow of his brother and his sexual games with their mom. He knows he can't have his mother that's why he kills his father (with bare hands) just to 'take his place' and he feels relief when Billy gets killed...the competition between brothers is over! The only time when Julian gets so close to his mother so he can penetrate her is when he cuts her guts with a sword...The only way he can penetrate her is by putting his hands inside her womb so he can physically be inside his mom and finally poses her! The question is: Who's the guy with a sword? He's an artist/aesthete (he sings and kills his victims in a very sophisticated way) who observes everything and takes his sexual pleasure by watching...he suffers from castration anxiety which refers to the fear of being degraded or dominated...that's why he cuts off parts of bodies of his enemies...His sword is just lengthening of his phallus :) Besides he might symbolize a father and ultimately God almighty, The sword man he's an angel of justice, he's like God (hence a father figure) as God is portrayed in the ancient testament, angry and vengeful, he's almighty and his sword is like his penis and his power, the cops with him are his apostles, the karaoke bits are like a strange Kind of Mass where he sings stuff like "you'll never get out of here"

Steve McQueen's first film was a masterpiece and since then it's seriously going downhill: Shame was pretentious and moralist and it didn't make me feel for the main character an film felt it was misogynistic in the way the main character's sister was being punished for him and for trying to be happy and alive.

Anyway, it at least had the merit to have style (even if it was over substance : I didn't learn anything I didn't know about sex addict) because 12 Years a Slave lacks this : style, it could have been directed by any Hollywood director.

There is a bit of Steve McQueen left in it (the hanging scene is a good example), but not much. First the music is atrocious and feels like it's been whacked in two minutes on garage band, not original, boring and useless except for one scene where the soundtrack gets menacing and slowly covers the Diegetic music that the main character plays.

The rhythm of the film is flawed, it's smoothed and fast at the beginning when the main guy is being kidnapped, then it's completely all over the place and you have the feeling that's it's been 4 years a slave and not 12.

It's also so Manichaean it's painful to watch : bad vs good. The hero is good, the guys that kidnap him are good but suddenly they're bad, the guys that ship him to the south are bad, and it carries on till then end, thank god there's a few good actors to bring some subtlety (Paul Dano is magnificent in his pure evilness and you detect some madness in him ), Michael Fassbender is a brutal drunk you kind of feel sorry for even if he is a pure monster. But then you Paul Giamati as bad bad ( in every way he's an awful actor with zero charisma and whose ugliness than no charm can even save), then it's poor black men and evil or cowardly white people : best example Cumberbatch who looks lost in the film, his wife bad woman, but the worse is the good white men : The hero's friend who is gentle and kind but is nothing else than kindness, his character clearly doesn't exist, and then there's Brad Pitt : being the producer of the film he gives himself the part of the good spirited and modern white man who is going to save the hero and lecture the bad Fasbender that there will be payback day for the bad things southerner are doing to slaves. And he looks like a Pre hippie kind of rebel mixed with his Chanel advert homeless look. At that point I felt like getting a pair of scissors and slashing the screen.

On top of that the film is ultra predictable, the hero is reunited to his family and he has a grandson and everybody cries (well what about all the poor other slaves? very subtle happy ending Mr McQueen) we are all supposed to cry. it's not the only emotional blackmail in the film the scene or the hero's lover is whipped, and he is forced to whip her, the scene is just pornographic violence, pointless in the film except forcing the spectator to cry. It's not about the whipping that is wrong it's the way the scene is depicted that is morally wrong, like the rape scene under a beautiful red moon, why should a horrible scene like that aesthetic and almost poetic, after Shame I really wonder what kind of problem Steve McQueen has with women. A lot more efficient is the hanging scene which is a long scene where the hero is hanging from a tree tip toe and trying not to be strangle by a rope while in the background business goes as usual: people doing their daily chores. It works because it shows how atrocity can happen anywhere anytime with a lovely weather in everyday life, that horror can take place in the ordinary, it's so understated and not stylized that it is refreshing, it's a long still shot and paradoxically it's one of the most interesting of the whole film.

The film is just a real story being told with no real message behind it : OK it's awful that freed black men were adducted in the north to be enslaved in the south but what is Steve McQueen is trying to say? That slavery is bad? well we figured that out and Spielberg made a better job with The Colour Purple , even Django Unchained is more convincing in depicting the atrocity of slavery, and even if it's caricature the characters in it are more authentic and subtle than in Manichaean 12 years a slave. OK so maybe it's about depicting the evil of earthlings? Well Manderlay and the The legend of n**** Charley's were more effective, because it at least knew what it wanted to be, and those were more believable while being pure fiction because their character had depth. The other massive flaw in the film is it's long and boring, some scenes are pointless, they don't help the story telling they have no message or do not give you any emotion. The dialogs are so contrived and theatrical that it's affects the whole film, you have the feeling that some scenes would be marvelous in a theater but not in cinema. Actually the film works best when Steve McQueen resolves to use visual to express himself than when he uses dialogs

You do get the feeling of anger there was in Hunger from times to times, mainly at the beginning but then it is dis-activated by all those boring illustrative and over explained scenes. I'm sorry but I don't want to get bored during a film that treat something as serious as slavery.

How are we suppose to care about those characters, they're pretentious, selfish, loud, self centered, uninteresting, hollow and scornful, the kind of people who I would never speak in real life, the kind of friends who spend their time being horrible to each other

2 hours and a half of a film that tries to make you feel sorry for those drama queens,

When their friend died at the end I couldn't care less, I rejoiced cos he seemed the worse of them all ( basically he was a junky and a Sexist bully )

After tell no one, this is a massive let down.