norman-42-843758's reviews

You kind of know what to expect when one of this years DVD releases is on the three for €10 shelf. After reading the back cover, I said to myself "This is Funny Games, I wonder how similar it is". It is the same story but so far as the film goes the answer to my own question is "Not even close". Out of all the reviews so far, only three or four have mentioned Funny Games. I have just given a nod to Submik for his comment about Michael Haneke. Haneke makes thoughtful films designed to make you consider people that exist on the fringes of society. In Funny Games two young men doorstep a family that has just arrived at their holiday home and charm their way into the house, then, little by little events turn nasty. The build up is slow and the atmosphere is taught.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the same story being reworked but you do expect some new dimension to be added in the intervening period. I should expect Michael Haneke to be extremely disappointed to have his film mentioned together with this substandard effort.

To give one example, many reviewers have mentioned the fork scene. John Wayne would have said "It is just a flesh wound", Robert de Nero would have said "Just get it out, there are no vital organs down there" but just when you are expecting Keanu Reaves to man up we find out that he gets tied up instead. Oh dear.

How near could such a story line be to actual events, is it all cheap thrill fantasy? In 1973 two psychotic prisoners (think of the red necks from Deliverance) escaped from a maximum security unit in Maryland, USA. picked up the teenage brother of the gang leader and then went on a killing spree. They killed six members of one family including a pregnant woman who was forced to watch her family being methodically exterminated in front of her, before being gang raped and finally shot in the back. A retelling of these events appeared in the 1997 Graeme Campbell film Murder One. This is the only time I have seen reviews on IMDb from people who have never seen the film. They say they were close enough to the real events for it to leave them mentally scarred and they have no desire to see the retelling on film. So yes, these sort of events actually happen and are a legitimate scenario for a "Based on real events" film. What we don't expect is for the story line to deteriorate along the way.

For all those reviewers who gave as their title "The worst film ever" or something similar, believe me it is not. If you want to see what 'worse' is involving two girls and a series of men check out Vera Chytilova's film Daisies you will not be disappointed.

This film didn't really work for me. After reading the, mostly, wonderful accolades above I was expecting better things from this movie but finished up being disappointed. It wasn't the inactivity either. I like Bella Tarr films so I am used to long takes with not very much happening. Another reviewer of a Tarr film recently noted that you could write a masters thesis on what is not going on, in between the bits of dialog. Okay, this is kind of cutesy but I know what he meant. There is a tension or at least a relationship between the characters and sometimes a "drama of the moment" in the "what will happen next", sense. With the Spyros character there was the feeling that during his moments of stoic inactivity (of which there was a lot), there was nothing going on inside. It was just a complete blank-out, no drama; no tension from silent inner feelings directed towards another, just nothing. The same scene could have been shot to equal effect without him being there. I was waiting for someone to come up to him and shout "Hello in there", in Greek of course or to give him a much needed kick in the seat of his pants. Whilst I am on the subject of pants, I would have reckoned that someone with a grown up son and two grown up daughters would have at least known that you have to open them in order to have sex. Any spotty teenager on his maiden voyage would not have acted in such an inept way. All the incidents except one in this film happened to Spyro not because of him. That one was when he drove his wagon through the front of a restaurant in order to get the girl and that came over as more of a student prank than an act of desperation.

But, hey, I hear you say, this is a film that deals with the problems of loneliness and isolation and I should be more sympathetic to his situation. I understand this point of view however it is difficult to empathize with someone who has turned his back on a wife that obviously still had feelings for him; a family he could draw round him but who are now indifferent to him and friends throughout the country who he leaves at the first opportunity. Even the girl, who was selfish, never really did anything bad towards him. Spyro had no warmth within him and never did anything to gain respect. In the end even his beloved bees turned against him.

In my opinion the high ranking Artificial Eye distributor has scored an own goal with this one but the enthusiasm of others will probably vindicate them.

I will add my voice to Writers_reign and Jason Forestein so that they will not lone voices in the wind.

I was expecting better things from this movie since Eclipse has doubled it with The Party and the Guests. This is a thoughtful allegorical critique of how Socialism / Communism has worked in practice instead of how it was supposed to have worked in theory. I now realise the only reason for doing this is because both films are part of the so called Czech New Wave and were short enough to fit onto a single DVD. Where as Party and Guests had a structure and message behind it, Dasies has minimal content and very little to recommend it.

I think it is time to burst a few conception bubbles contained in some of the comments here.

Firstly, this is not a feminist movie, it is an anti-men film. There is a very big difference. Shame on the men who didn't realise this.

Nor is it Anarchy as some people have claimed. Anarchy is a number of people working together to achieve a common objective without the need for an umbrella stricture of administrators to tell them what to do. They know what is required and get on with doing it by themselves. What people usually mean when they use the word Anarchy is chaos. Again there is a very big difference.

So far as the cinematography goes, changing colour filters many times mid scene and changing costumes halfway through a kiss is not artistic but the director trying hard to be arty and not pulling it off.

As for the period when the film was made. After Stalinism, albeit at a distance, had been lifted, the director did not know what to do with her new found freedom and went around like the angry cavalier who rode off furiously in all directions. Or even more like the proverbial dog with two dicks. A flurry of activity finished up producing something that was sterile. "People don't like freedom, they don't know what to do with it." Those interested enough should see my Satantango review for an explanation of this quote.

It seems to me the destructive element of the main characters derived from boredom associated with the minimal real content or purpose in their lives and there is nothing for viewers of the film to respect in this.

All in all, this was a very disappointing effort. I can count this amongst the ten most irrelevant films I have seen and it scores only one point from me.

Drancy Avenir is a tale of the fate of European Jews during the second World War. The director found that all except one of Hitler's concentration camps had either been demolished or was a war museum with its character essentially changed. That remaining camp was the in the Drancy district outside Paris and was still in use as a low cost housing project. The cinematography was beautifully done with the harsh reality of the war time, set against the essentially unchanged housing project as it now stands. This was juxtaposition's with dream like voice over memories of earlier times whilst floating down a small river just after daybreak. The cruelty of the camps was told; starvation rations; roll calls at three in the morning outside in the freezing cold after which the inmates were hosed down in cold water before being sent back to sleep on bare concrete floors. Man's inhumanity to man was adequately expressed. There was a fairly long sequence explaining the criteria by which individuals were selected for the death camps and the necessary impartiality of the administrators. All of this was well done and as a document it deserves its place in history.

I however found the film dissatisfying on two levels. The first had nothing to do with the film makers and regarded the cruelty of the National Socialist regime that existed at the time. If they had decided on this course of action as a mater of policy then the result could have been achieved more effectively by giving the subjects a quick acting anesthetic under the pretext of diarrhea control or some such excuse followed by some other form of lethal injection, without all the lingering deprivation. The other more serious point regards this film makers playing the Jews as victims card. Sure they were but the why was never even mentioned let alone thought about. Early in the film a college lecturer bemoans to his class that it was always so and certain Jews were expelled from Asian lands in the 7th, 8th and 9th centuries without a response from his pupils. This was stated as a given without telling why the people of those lands were so dissatisfied with them that they only solution they could come up with was to put them outside their borders. Nor was it mentioned why Hitler was so, fairly or unfairly, frustrated that he wanted the problem they caused finally eradicated.

As a document which no one else has tackled, this film deserves its place in history. It was very well done from a one sided point of view.

I have broken my own rule here of reading a few other reviews before writing my own. I try to make my own mind up before being influenced by others thoughts but in this case I was just too damn curious. Sure , I agree with the person who said about Lethal Weapon being a fun film and death being a vehicle of entertainment. It is sad it has gone this way but in that respect I have to hold my hands up and admit to liking Midsomer Murders where the object is to try to guess the culprit from the dwindling cast. I say this so as not to be two faced about my thoughts towards this film.

As others have commented, this film can be viewed on two levels, either at face value or looking for a deeper meaning. At a face value level it can be compared directly with the 1997 Graeme Campbell film Murder One. This is a rather pedestrian retelling of true events which happened in Maryland in 1973. Here three psychotic low life no brainers escaped from a high security prison, picked up the teenage brother of the gang leader and then went on a killing spree. They killed six members of one family including a pregnant woman who was forced to watch her family being methodically exterminated before being gang raped and finally shot in the back. This is the only time I have seen reviews on IMDb from people who have never seen the film. They say they were close enough to the real events for it to leave them mentally scarred and they have no desire to see the retelling on film.

If we view Funny Games as a cautionary tale of senseless violence in films then that is not altogether a bad thing. Perhaps I am reading too much into it but I saw It as more than that; moreover as an indictment of falling standards generally. I am old enough to remember black and white television from the end of the 50's and the public bewilderment when Lady Isabel Barnett came on the panel game What's My Line with a plunging neckline that revealed two inches of décolletée. That was the talk of the queue in the butchers shop for a week afterwards, I can tell you. My mother was convinced it was a trick of the studio lights. "A real Lady of the land would not publicly expose herself on television in that shameless way" she said. But it was no trick of the lights and the viewing public were treated to a look at the top two inches of Lady Barnett's tits. How naff it all seems now. Very few commercially successful films nowadays get away without having their required smutty bits.

Technology didn't help,either. The Korean War was something on the other side of the world and not something to get in the way of everyday life unless there was someone close to you over there. By the time Vietnam came around people could see battles in real time taking place with their TV dinners on their lap. It was a case of "Honey, pass the chips and dip" as soldiers were blown into a thousand pieces before your eyes. The population were numbed down and dumbed down.

Plagiarism or not, Michael Haneke cannot have been unaware of Murder Ones existence before making Funny Games. If it is prophecy then events depicted seem to have been somewhat preceded. In this age of reason it is however well that someone is awake and saying "This is the path we are treading. Take stock of the situation or fall deeper into the abyss". Do we stop with this mental insensitivity or is it to be more Christians to the lions; cheering at public hangings and snuff movies for all? This leads on to the thorny question of censorship. At a time when we are pushing back the boundaries of science and technology should we not, on a social level, break free of prim Victorianism? But to what end when self regulating standards of decency seems not to be working any more.