Reviews

This is summer time. Many people are on holidays while many other keep working despite of the hot weather. In both cases, many of us need a moment to go and offer our brains a moment of rest with some typical summer flick, i.e. a movie we hope to be not too complicated but quite entertaining. Good action, hilarious jokes or sweet stories usually make it. Alas, some movie writers, probably hurried to go for their own holidays, decide to write a dull script with haste and let the producers design nice advertisements (posters, trailers...) so that summer moviegoers get fooled and pay their tickets. Superman Returns is a typical example of those "works".

Let's summarize very shortly. After looking for remains of his home planet, Superman returns to Earth. He obviously finds back his former love Lois while an evil character prepares...his dramatically evil plans. So far so good: we expect a mix of a (not too complicated) love story and a (not too complicated) action/superhero story. The movie is 2 1/2 hour long, so there is pretty much room for both aspects: you say "this is going to be a great summer flick". Well, not! I am probably unfair, but I had the feeling that the action only lasted about 1/2 hour, and the problem that I am not too keen on love stories, or at least on that much simplified (simplistic?) ones. So, I had to bear what seemed to be 2 hours of Superman/Clark Kent and Lois Lane turning around in a very stupid, dull and unconvincing way. Actually, all the "sentimental" part of Superman Returns could have been shrunk to what was left to the action part, that's to say, half an hour. The movie would have been then much more equilibrated and entertaining, and my friends and I would not have felt totally conned.

Now, I have to admit that the movie had one good point: Kevin Spacey was the perfect fit for the arrogant and maniac Lex Luthor character. The 3 points I give to the movie go to him. The other main actors, as dull and smooth as Barbie and Kent dolls, only deserve to fall in the Hollywood oblivion.

Sonatine and Hana-bi were the second and third Kitano movies I had the pleasure to see (the first one was Brother), in a small movie theater. In my opinion, Brother is fine. Sonatine, a masterwork. And Hana-bi, a cornerstone of the seventh art. With Hana-bi, Kitano pushes the envelope of his art and refines his famous trademarks we know mostly from Sonatine. The mime acting of Kitano himself and of Kayoko Kishimoto are accurate. The photography is gorgeous, with many shots looking like powerful portraits, sometimes reinforced by well-selected camera movements. The way the past and the thoughts of the characters are revealed feel sometimes so natural, it is just like if the spectator were on the terrain, not in front of a screen; quite often, the order of the scenes is structured as Nishi's thought, involving even more the spectator in the movie. Hisaishi's music is glamorous and only appears when setting music makes sense (unlike too many films). And obviously, as always in Kitano movies but especially here in Hana-bi, the violence bursts are perfectly inserted, realistic (there's no plot twist to "save the hero") and consistent with the plot. Overall, Hana-bi is a fine melt of cinema and poetry: it is minimalistic, personal, direct and amazingly beautiful.

The montage of this movie is so perfect it should be serve as a reference for any cinema student. I can't imagine how long it took to the directors to write the script, select the scenes, rewrite the script, reselect the scenes again and again...The dubbing work is just amazing too. I showed the movie to some Spanish friends, and even though they do not speak a French word, they were nearly as much dumbstruck as I was! Obviously, it's no surprise acting is nearly perfect given the prestigious cast (the best ever?).

Oh, and don't forget to watch the movie several times. They are a lot of funny and subtle tricks in there.

I was lucky to discover Kitano's famous style in the release of Sonatine and Hana-bi in a small movie theater in Paris. Well, I must say both movies convinced me Kitano is one of the greatest current movie directors.

Sonatine is outstanding in various aspects. Its minimalism, either by the dialog scarcity, the remarkable ellipses, or the protagonist's blank face, convert the movie into a nearly pure cinematographic work, rather than a theater work adapted for the screen. The photography and camera motions can feel somewhat disturbing at the beginning, but this is only because they are unusual. Actually, they serve very well the movie, and the beach scenes are gorgeous. The music is another great score of the movie, it is original and perfectly fits the movie atmosphere when it is cast.

Now, about the plot: I wish there were more movies with such a sense of humanity. The violence-calls-violence topic is not new, but here it is treated a very appealing way. Kitano managed to develop each character enough to make all of them interesting -- and the actors serve this purpose pretty well. The plot shows how human we are all, whatever we do or have done and even when we lately discover the whole value of life. This is an exemplary statement, far far away from high box-office movie standards.

The redemption topic was then told again in Hana-bi, which managed to be an even greater movie. This is possibly the only reason I don't rate Sonatine a 10/10.