Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967) -- A somewhat romanticized account of the career of the notoriously violent bank robbing couple and their gang. I was amazed at the fact that despite being a 1960s movie, it's very violent, and in fact, this movie was one of the first ones to really push that envelope under the guise of it all being real, because it happened in real life. Up until around this date, when people got shot in movies they rarely bled and they sort of collapsed, not really agonizing, as it happens very often here. The movie accounts the somewhat true story of these bank robbers who terrorized part of Texas and Oklahoma in the 1930s. All main actors got Oscar nominations, and Faye Dunaway and Gene Hackman proved to be the finds of the decade, while Warren Beatty became the first real star to be an instrumental part in the actual production of the film. Also, it's the first feature role of Gene Wilder. Easily one of the best American movies of the '60s, which nowadays doesn't hold that much in the action department. 7.5/10
The Osterman Weekend (Sam Peckinpah, 1983) -- The host of an investigative news show is convinced by the CIA that the friends he has invited to a weekend in the country are engaged in a conspiracy that threatens national security in this adaptation of the Robert Ludlum novel. This movie proves that you may have a great director (like Peckinpah), your story may be based on a great writer/book, and you may even have a score of great actors, at the time (Rutger Hauer, Craig T. Nelson, John Hurt, Dennis Hopper, Chris Sarandon) and the music may be by a great musician (Lalo Schiffrin), and that all that doesn't guarantee a good movie. Indeed, the storyline and continuity are horrendous, the action scenes weren't really thought out (oh hey, I'm shooting at you point blank but you don't get shot). There's a bunch of assassins running around with silenced weapons that are louder than a cannon. I wanted to like this movie, as I saw it when I was a kid and liked some parts of it, it's an impossible movie to even tolerate.
Be it the convoluted plot (which really is a stretch to begin with), or the garbage editing (not Peckinpah's fault, I know) it didn't work for me. Hauer and Hurt turn in good performances, but don't bother picking this one up it'll just frustrate you. 4/10
Martyrs (Pascal Laugier, 2008) -- A young woman's quest for revenge against the people who kidnapped and tormented her as a child leads her and a friend, who is also a victim of child abuse, on a terrifying journey into a living hell of depravity. Horror with substance, being a movie that starts out as revenge, then turns to redemption and finally into something so much deeper, which unfortunately, doesn't get told. Although it's a good movie, I found it incredibly disturbing and to be honest, I was expecting the end of it to come much earlier than it actually did. In fact, there's many conclusions in it that make it worthy of ending, yet the story gets prolonged more and more.
I found Martyrs to be a well made but dishonest movie that tried to cloak its fetishizing of misogynist violence in some pseudo-metaphysical claptrap about transcendence through martyrdom. The first two thirds are a decent study of revenge and post-traumatic stress. But once the focus shifts away from the main character, the last third of the film is given over to the demented rationalization of the secret torture organization. 6.5/10
Intouchables (Olivier Nakache, Eric Toledano, 2011) -- After he becomes a quadriplegic from a paragliding accident, an aristocrat hires a young man from the projects to be his caretaker. I'm a bit impressed this movie sits at #60 in IMDb's Top 250; it is indeed heartwarming and a very good movie, but it's good because it's French. Hear me out: it's the typical opposites-attract movie where the rich aristocrat is taken care by the black minority, so in that sense it's something we've all seen so many times, and up to a point I was reminded of the TV series
The Nanny. Still, this movie is a drama about the heartwarming and friendship these two people create. Yet, the attractive point of it is that with the obvious differences between both characters, they manage to make it work because they make fun of each other, and here's the part where I say it works because it's French: They don't have to deal with political correctness or not offending anyone. If the movie is taken the wrong way, it could well be a disaster, but since both characters take it in the chin and laugh it up, it works great. It's the type of movie I came out of the theater thinking it's one of the best movies I've seen in a while, yet after thinking a bit about it, it's actually great because people don't take offense at the strong sarcastic jokes. It has since become a funny, recommendable movie, but it's also a nothing special and strangely predictable movie. I'm expecting an American remake of this movie which will probably not get such a high rating, yet will be nominated for something in the Oscars, as opposed to this one. 7/10
