edtorelli

The James Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson clearly don't know what to do with the character after Cassino Royale. Yeah, they re-invented the franchise in C.R., but they didn't have a plan for the 007 after that. Quantum of Solace is boring – and this obtuse Bond played by this bodyguard, Daniel Craig, is just an uninspired imitation of Jason Bourne. And he looks too old for the job, by the way. Once the producers decided to ignore the character's past and formula and reboot the series, they have the obligation of launch more Cassino Royales in the future – not dumb movies like Quantum of Solace (a substandard production that is neither a classical Bond film nor another Cassino Royale). We want more than that.

SOME SPOILERS

Today there is a "movement" of filmmakers with incredible skills on filming and editing, but with nothing to say. Perhaps Gaspar Noé is one of those filmmakers. His ability to visually tells a story is clear – but would be better if he was less pretentious and more conscious of his limitations. His claim that "we are savages, more than civilized beings" sounds like the statement of a naive and angry teenager, what he probably is in his essence (and perhaps he doesn't know that). In "Irreversible", he shows us the fate of three people that, in a tragic night, "looses everything". The woman, Alex, is raped in a subterranean passage – and her boyfriend and a couple's close friend hunt down the rapist and find themselves in trouble with all freaks available in Paris, reunited in a hellish gay night club on the city. The story is told backwards, because, you see, this is an art movie – at least is what they say. Is this film disturbing and incredibly well made? Oh, yeah – it is. Is the rape scene so disgusting and hard to see that you'll be sick in it's first five minutes (it plays during 10 minutes)? For sure. In resume, is this film worth seeing? Absolutely – from a technical point of view. But there is no sociological or humanistic message in this well-disguised horror movie, that is even ironic on it's irresponsible approach of sensitive themes. It's a myth that all men have a secret pleasure watching rape scenes – only the crazy ones have it. But I would watch it with no complains if I could learn anything really valid about human condition, or discover why this kind of thing happens. Or even if the film could help me to deal with this terrible situation, if a person that I love would hurt as Alex was in the movie. I didn't learn nothing. I just watched a woman suffering – and sometimes I had the impression that the movie was mocking her and the whole situation. For example: the name of the rapist is "La Tenia" (english translation: "the worm") and he conveniently rapes Alex from behind, doing comments about her tight "ring" (her anus), or how anal sex is "goooood" and so on. Later, when Alex' boyfriend finds the rapist, we see "the worm" in a nightclub called "The Rectum" (did you notice the subtle irony?). It looks more a film about Noe's fixation on anus than a movie about rape, and more important: about the consequences of rape. Noe concludes his "important" film with a message: "Time Destroys Everything" – in the sense that the rape and the events of that night destroyed the happiness of Alex and the happiness of her friends, completely. You see, there's no hope – there's no tomorrow. Noe tells us that there's no point on falling in love, have children, make a family and dreams about better days,because your girlfriend can be raped, beaten and humiliated for a jerk, and no one can survive that. Is that, really? I never had a chance to check it out. You see, after torture me with the rape scene and make me watch a graphic murder occurred in the "Rectum", Noe just gave up the story – he doesn't have anything more to say. Did Alex survive to the attack? We'll never know. Did the child that she was carrying died, as a consequence of the rape? Who cares? After all, the "point" was the rape, the murder, the blood, the head in peaces... In real life women are raped and mistreated since the beginning of time – and a lot of them survived, had their children and were able to find happiness again, in spite of the trauma and the horrific memories. But Gaspar Noé doesn't know that. He only wants to express his pessimistic (and simple minded) point of view of life – that's is much more complex than this well-made (and pointless) exploitation art movie.

This movie is a spoof of "Planet of the Apes" (1968) and follows the storyline of the original step by step - in spite of being a crazy parody of the original film. A group of men lands in a balloon on an area (it's not a planet, it's more like a hill) where talking apes rule and humans are slaves. The apes try to transform the guys in monkeys; a simian princess falls in love with one of them; and so one. This film is one of the several movies made for the popular Brazilian group "Os Trapalhões" - Didi (Renato Aragão), Dedé, Mussum and Zacharias - in the seventies, all of then inspired in American blockbusters. It's a very fun entertainment, but the humor is very "local" to be understood in other countries. Oh, yeah, the ape "makeup" is terrible, but that's part of the fun. The movie don't take itself seriously