Movie Review Birdman

First of all I have to say that before watching this movie I have never, in my life, liked a movie by Iñárritu. I have hated each and every one of the ones I have seen, every moment, every plot, every character and location, every frame of celluloid I hate them, and so with this in mind I decided to watch Birdman.

The script is a good idea worked in an interesting way, the characters are fleshed out enough to be interesting and deep, you could say that you follow the life of a Hollywood actor how wants to earn his way in the theatre that by some reason that is important for actors in the real world. But is much more, because you learn about the stories of the rest of the cast by small talk and actions, like in good stories. You have many stories without leaving things behind or forgetting about them, like in movies with many story lines like “Cloud Atlas” or in Boyhood where they just don’t care about the story. In this movie you follow everybody and everything which can be a little demanding because of the way it was made.

How was it made you may ask? Why do I say it might be a problem? Well as you might know by most of my reviews I like to pay attention to what is happening all the time, that’s how I manage to dissect every piece of the film, I don’t need to watch it lots of times or to pause every line of dialog to see if something works or not, just pay attention. And that is a problem in this movie, because most of the movie is on the style of a sequence shot, I mean no cuts, or at least no visible cuts so everything feels like a very long scene, and that keeps my mind working, it’s dense, other people have the need to look at their phones or to lose interest after one event or with one character, and there is when their brains rest, but I just need to hear and watch everything so there is no point where I blink or stop holding my breath (in a way of speaking obviously I blink and breathe) and that was a decision of the director. I think that was a way to show how the theatre is alive and how people is always doing something, or was the idea to show the stress our main character is under, also we have some good beats to light the mood.

The music just helps to make it feel even more unending because you can just hear improvised jazz drums all the time, which gives you the idea of it is ending, but it never ends. So a couple of directorial decisions that could have made the movie more enjoyable. But despite all that is a movie that I would recommend to most people because we have great actors working with good material and interesting way of storytelling (not the best but interesting)

And yes my only complains fall over the director that, who was he? Oh yes! Iñárritu, right. Don’t get me wrong the guy makes movies the way he wants and about things he thinks are cool or great or interesting, but so is Uwe Boll, and nobody is saying he is a genius.

So I think I can say that this is the first movie from Iñárritu that I actually like and recommend. What is happening in the world?

Boyhood Movie review

Well looks like this year is going to be the year of the “none movies” why do I say that? Well if you have to ask you might haven’t see this one and the last one, and I say it because is true. Now I know that this movie won golden gloves because it took 12 years in the making but that is giving awards for busy work, when you actually see the movie there is no script, there is no plot, and all characters are as flat and empty as my plate after dinner.

I said there is no script and even so was nominated for awards in that, which I think is wrong, because there is never a follow up of what happened to any scene, and most of the scenes are just filler, someone could tell me “is about the life of a boy” or “in life there are no action sequences” well there might be no shootings in life (unless you live in Mexico) but there are a ton of things that a boy do and for them are interesting, but apparently all this boy does is sitting around and do nothing, and that is a problem with your main character, to having it but not using it.

We follow the life of this kid from being a spoiled little brat to be a spoiled bratty teenager, which is not the best thing to watch, and you just hope that someone slap this kid back to reality, and one scene is the closest thing can happen when the step dad steps up and answer what everybody is thinking after the kid says “you are not my father” but we never know about this character again, so never mind what could have been a scene to show personal and emotional growth is now part of the nothingness.

All the events are made with a template; everything is like taken from a TV Movie. Every moment is so dull in that aspect, and because we need to see 12 years of a kid we can’t linger with consequences and repercussions of his actions, we will never know what happened but we can imagine that nothing happened because it is never mentioned again. We have the step dad having a drink, and then he is a violent alcoholic. Also then the kid likes photography and oh surprise! He is the best, most talented kid ever, even though he takes the same pictures every artsy photographer wannabe, sad part is that those are the pictures of the actual actor, so yes he is a pretentious pseudo photographer and reinforce my statement where I say the movie has no script because they do whatever they want every scene.

The actors try to work with what they have and the kids are just bad in what they are doing, I mean the kids had 12 years to get better but they didn’t so yes is 12 years of bad acting, also he casted his own daughter what I would not care but the kid looks too Mexican, and being daughter of two very white people I could bet that the father isn’t that guy, or there was some mix up in the hospital.

Every scene looks disjointed from the rest. If you have edited something in your life, or at least watched someone doing it on a movie, you know that you cut not only scenes that doesn’t work but also bits from scenes that extend too much or they didn’t work, well take all this extra bits of film and put them together, but just the extra bits, and that is how Boyhood feels.

There is never a crucial point in the life of the kid on camera, they just tell you, “Oh! He likes to do this now” and that’s it. Also if something needed more budget it will not happen, will not even get mentioned.

For the lack of plot this movie is a challenge to attention, so if you have ADD you won’t be able to get even through the intro, there is nothing happening and lots of jumps in time where there should not be, fell s like “we didn’t shot that scene, meh we will just jump ahead” sometimes you hope to a memory, or that something had an impact on the life of this kid, but no, nothing affects this human.

I know that it took 12 years in the making, well that was an experiment and is a failed experiment, this movie is pointless and better example of a wallpaper movie, because you can, not pay attention and even so you’ll understand the movie, because it doesn’t have a plot to follow.

And I think this movie shouldn’t get any awards because they are just awarding that “It took 12 years” well when you are constipated while on the toilet it takes you more time than usual and is difficult but nobody will award you at the end just because it took longer, actually is something that nobody want to see.

So if you like not paying attention and being able to check your phone during the movies this movie is great for you.

Movie Review: The Foxcatcher

 

The Foxcatcher

(AKA: )

What can you say about a movie as empty as my bank account? Well I think a lot, and you guess right, all bad :P

I didn’t knew squat about this movie to be honest when my brother mention it I call it something like “dog killer” or “dogcatcher” that thinking about it dog catcher could have been the story of a dog who learns to be baseball catcher and works its way up until it plays with the Yankees but I’m going on a complete different track. What I wanted to say was that I started to watch this movie almost without preconceptions of it, why almost? Well my brother put me the trailer so I had a notion of what was going to happen, and so we watched.

This movie follows the trend of making a long movie when they had the script of a short film, you can cut the first 20 minutes of the film and you get the same movie, also lots of scenes can be cut to half their length and the viewer will only notice that they are not falling sleep during the movie, because at least is going to end soon.

There are 3 important lead characters in the story, yes you guessed right the three guys in the poster, but from the 3 you can’t get enough for a story? I mean we don’t see the struggle to rise from Tatum and Ruffalo, we don’t follow Steve Carrell to sink into his character and learn his virtues and flaws, well what I say is that we don’t see what makes tick any of this characters, they are there in the middle of their lives, and they share time so nobody feels like a protagonist, there are no actual problems, and most of the movie are just pointless scenes where you see wrestling practices or just the characters looking at the horizon.

The performance of everyone is horrible; Steve Carrel just acts like he has a cold and can’t breathe by his nose, and walks like he really needs to go to the toilet, Channing Tatum is always pushing his jaw forward and with his head down, I don’t know if that guy has ever seen a wrestler or any guy how fights in sports they are always standing up straight, and also walks like he just pissed his pants, Mark Ruffalo is the only one with some kind of human acting but that line of shaved forehead takes you out of his performances, I mean there are tons of people that are actually bald or balding that can do that movie.

As I said there is no story and by that reason you can’t care for what is going to happen to anyone, Mark Rufalo and Channing Tatum are won Olympic gold before the movie Steve Carrell was millionaire so you don’t care. To the people that say that there are stories there, well yes there is tons of material, but is material they didn’t used! I mean they used the life of a real guy, so there are things to work with and are easier because you don’t have to invent his psyche just trim the life story to leave only the good interesting parts.

They could make it about just one of the characters and explore there, I mean Channing Tatum looks like he has some sort of mental problem, or how he managed to get the Olympic gold medal Mark Ruffalo his struggles as a family man and how he managed to get a gold medal, Steve Carrell and his family relations, or why he wanted the wrestling team, or why he wanted to be a wrestler, The ranch “Foxcatcher” its story from the beginning to its end or at least the present time. But listen well none of this is even hinted on the movie, all of this isn’t there.

This movie has all the points of an indie which are: pretentious, pseudo artistic film, bad camera, long silent shots, characters with characteristic traits and no story.

Even the real guy hated this movie, and is a movie about his life so you can do the math.

So if you have to decide between watch this movie or Guardians of the Galaxy again, go watch the most moving scene of the year that is between a racoon and a tree.