Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) is a sweeping and monumental science fiction dystopian drama that is at times mesmerising and profound. The special effects are some of the best ever put to film, using a mixture of matte painting techniques, modelling and keen set design this early motion picture has aged surprisingly well considering that it is almost 100 years old.
Lang’s direction is clever and the camera work is at times quite modern in its approach, evoking emotional reactions. Lang relies heavily on the quickness of the film to be in time with the constant orchestral score to help elevate important moments as there is no dialogue spoken to convey emotional beats.
Metropolis is a black and white picture and this stark contrast of light and shadow helps to convey the melodramatic story being told. A story which uses biblical ideas and tales as one of its core narrative devices, this movie itself can be interpreted as a religious film in some ways - a tale of wayward sons and imperious fathers, sinners and patricians and so on.
The acting is at times ham-fisted and at times superb, which might be expected as motion picture acting was relatively new at the time, with most ‘early’ film actors having extensive backgrounds in stage productions and theatre where acting sometimes needs to be dialled up a notch so as to convey the emotion of a scene to the whole audience instead of just the front row.
Lang’s emotional core is of course the score, composed by Gottfried Huppertz, which is dramatic and majestic but over the course of the 2 and a half hour long movie we can see how Huppertz uses the same musical techniques to represent different emotions and eventually the score begins to become dull through familiarity.
Enjoyable but also hard to recommend as the source material, being very old, has not survived intact and as such large portions of the film are greatly decayed and some of the film is entirely missing, being replaced with story cards, so that the ‘full’ Metropolis doesn’t really exist in a way that audiences can enjoy.
Stunt doubles are highly skilled and trained professionals who are often at risk through their work, but part of their job is staying away from fame. “Anonymity has always been the contract that we’ve agreed to, and it’s partly for the audience’s benefit,” says David Leitch, director of "The Fall Guy," who was Brad Pitt's stunt double for a decade. The Hollywood Reporter talked to him and Ben Jenkin, Logan Holladay and Chris O’Hara, three of the stunt performers from "The Fall Guy" about how they created the movie's action sequences, and the fight to get industry recognition for their profession. Tell us in the comments what you think the greatest stunt in movie history is.
Jack Nicholson holds the screen well enough in Sean Penn's debut as a writer director.
It's a piece of depression porn that contains all the self indulgent beats and hokey dialogue you might expect from a first timer (so much introspection!).
Somebody - I’ve never really got on with Miranda July’s films but this short for the Miu Miu Women’s Series is fun and enjoyable. Maybe I’ll give her features a go again. Any recommendations?
House of Tolerance - I started this months ago and got sidetracked but watched it again when it popped up on MUBI. Adele Haenel stars in this look at the lives of women in a French brothel from their point of view. It looks great, yes, but is full of searing rage and despair. In the US it was called House of Pleasure, when, mostly for the women in the film, their indentured lives are full of anything but pleasure.
Almost Entirely a Slight Disaster - A dry, droll Turkish film about your young people in the country, all of whom we see crying alone, as they face hardships. It’s funny, though; think Roy Andersson or Ali Kaurismäki.
Challengers - The trailer made me think I’d hate this film but I read lots of reviews praising it, and went in open-minded and hopeful. First off, Zendaya is good. But the characters are inanely one-dimensional, it jumps around all over the place, Trent Reznor’s techno drowns out the dialogue, and the ‘shock’ ending is telegraphed miles out. And worst of all it’s just boring. The first hour would have been a spinning-newspaper headline in a 1930s film. And it’s got tennis in it. Ha, to make the tennis interesting Guadagnino uses every cliché, making it look like the camera’s in the ball, sticking a GoPro on the racquet, and those scenes end up being laughable. TL:DR I didn’t like it.
Notre dernier article de Blog (Comment l'#extremedroite s'attaque au #cinéma : https://lesmutins.org/comment-l-extreme-droite-s-attaque) n'a pas plu à tout le monde, ce qui est tout à fait normal bien sur, c'est le débat, sauf les insultes qui ont fusées (ça on censure sans complexe, insulter et menacer, ce n'est pas la liberté d'expression). On remarque de nombreux messages reproduits exactement dans les termes de messages déjà vus précédemment, avec les mêmes éléments de langage, des affirmations sans démonstration...
Joli film, belle brochette d'acteurs, c'est plus bien filmé, j'ai passé un bon moment. Alex Lutz pas mal dans son rôle, mais bon Léa Drucker ❤️ ❤️ , vraiment je l'adore et découverte, Louise Chevillotte ❤️ , mais que j'ai déjà croisé dans L'Evènement. Film pas exceptionnel, mais vraiment, je vous le conseille quand même.
3 enfants partent en quête d'un oeuf tacheté. La seule sorte, pensent-ils, a pouvoir entrer dans la recette d'une tarte aux myrtilles.
Leur mère enrhumée leur promis le droit de jouer 2h à la console s'ils allaient chercher une part à la boulangerie qui malheureusement n'en propose pas ce jour-là. Ils vont se retrouver confronté à une secte pratiquant le braconnage et vont vivre plein d'aventures...
Went to see "That We May Face The Rising Sun" earlier at Quad cinema Derby, and really enjoyed it. Some fine performances to savour, with gorgeous cinematography and lyrical piano score. #cinema#film