now there’s a genre for you. i began this as a response to the michaels in the “garden state” discussion but decided it needed a place all to itself.
while being right generally about luc besson you’re all wrong about “the fifth element”. that film kicks ass– even though there is a lot deeply, politically wrong with it. but the rest of the luc besson catalog is all crap. however, i am a connoisseur of the scenery-chewing performance and besson has enabled some of the greatest of this kind in screen history. oldman’s performance in “the professional” may never be topped–though daniel day lewis does make a strong case in “gangs of new york”, but i digress. aesthetic problems with his movies aside, besson’s penchant for putting the female body in pain is somewhat disturbing. i think he may have issues.
i know very little about french popular cinema–since most of what makes it to the u.s is the high-art stuff–but i am intrigued by the besson phenomenon. is there anything remotely french about his later movies? or are they proof of relentless, de-cultured hollywood genres taking over all of western cinema? or is he channelling hong kong and hollywood equally and therefore making something that isn’t quite hollywood? i do have to say that i much prefer besson’s brand of empty action and style to that of michael bay and company–at least his recent films don’t go on forever and don’t pretend to have any sort of emotional or moral payoff (unlike “the big blue”–if you didn’t enjoy “the professional” i’d recommend you not watch “the big blue” again. some people say the french are crazy–the fact that this film was a blockbuster in france is highly incriminating evidence).
nonetheless the best over-the-top french action movie of recent years is not by besson: “the brotherhood of the wolf”. anyone seen it?
Well–
I admit I enjoyed the trashy “Fifth Element.” There was no hint of emotional heft attached to its cartoonishness, as opposed to “The Professional” or “The Big Blue,” which did.
I’ll grant you that Besson’s slaphappy cartoonishness at least has a veneer of pleasure and style. Michael Bay can’t even imitate well. That said, I haven’t seen the Joan of Arc film, although I occasionally try to envision the powerful juju of destroying so many careers with one fell swoop.
I did see “Brotherhood”–god, I wanted to like the film. But it, like most of Besson’s films, is sunk by a pretension to significance which works like cement shoes to keep the potentially-high-flying shenanigans of martial arts werewolf action on the ground, if not actually drowning.
French action films are awful. Is there a good one? I have no idea why; compare to the Hong Kong filmmakers whose work similarly ties neat cartoonish violence to melodramatic “significance”… yet who work wonders in this unwieldy grafting of genres. Johnny To, I’ll say again, is a wizard — Fulltime Killer, PTU, and a few others…
mike, i liked “brotherhood of the wolf”. i don’t know what significance you saw it pretending to, and which annoyed you, but i found the colonial subtext quite interesting.
a side note: why do you start out wanting so desperately to like movies you watch? is this all part of the new sensitive “cries like a fucking baby” reynolds persona?
We agree to disagree on Wolf. I would put up a clear critique of the film if I remembered more than walking on disappointed. Maybe “significance” is the wrong word–portentousness? Somberness? A movie like that ought to breathe helium; instead, Wolf seemed to move in an atmosphere of thick soupy cheese.
Its star Mark Dacascos has some charm; he was in a crappy and blessedly light on its feet z-movie called “Drive” (I think) with Kadeem Hardison–that was a lot more diverting and engaging than Wolf.
I so desperately like movies the same way I always wanted to so desperately like people, and wanted them to like one another. As in our comedy class, when I became distraught after you wrote that vicious anonymous memo. I was always sensitive. I’m crying now because you so don’t understand me.
I watched Brotherhood in a drunken haze one night with John (bruns) and Paul (Hansom–not appearing on this blog). We were ready for a ripping horror film–something like the cheesy Hammer films most of which hold up to drunken scrutiny, even when they are very bad (I highly recommend Twins of Evil–you can determine what the “twins” refers to). Brotherhood was plain godawful–extremely tedious, badly edited, full of pointless and pretentios little asides (why did we keep going back to various languid scenes inside the whorehouse), the purportedly central element of “the wolf” absent for long periods of time during which we were subjected to “character development” or the confusing plot machinations which everyone stopped caring about after 15 minutes. sometimes it was snowing, sometimes not. the whole thing seemed like an inept mess, and I’m puzzled by its European success (but given the inability of the French or most Europeans to make a decent horror/action film lately, maybe the appeal was in the novelty of an ambitious one being tried at all. Not quite as bad is the film Crimson Rivers, though it is also a big mess). overall it was a painful viewing experience–though I did learn from it that apparently any “sexy” european actor must have an extremely large nose for some reason–apparantly this indicates simmering depths and character, who knew? I posted a message to this effect at IMDB after seeing the film and sparked the kind of ludicrous humorless outrage so easily created there (I got lambasted for calling “Lawrence of Arabia” a “movie” rather than a “film”). I suppose the French need another Franju, Clouzot or Melville–though, of course, who knows what never makes it across the ocean. but horror, action, science fiction and the like seems to be the property of the americans and asians for now.
you people are ripping to shreds my fragile little world. first, “the fifth element”, now “brotherhood of the wolf”. i’m going to have to watch them again. these are both, by the way, films i watched on gigantic theater screens–this may have something to do with the appeal of the action scenes, which i suspect look very crappy on a regular television set.
mark dacascos is now the chairman on the crap american retread of iron chef.
oh man, I can’t imagine those French noses on the big screen!! not to mention the cheap dry ice effects and the creature (which makes me go “ooh, isn’t that scary?” like Count Floyd)
I thought William Shatner was the chairman and they had cancelled Iron Chef. oh well, nothing’s so good it can’t be copied and re-copied and finally destroyed.
I was psyched for Brotherhood of the Wolf but it was tediously portentious film with a half-way decent DP. Only the French can make an action film without a jot of action (or suspence for that matter). Then again, Red Lights, is out this week on DVD. Now there’s a film!
is anyone planning to see “unleashed”, the new luc besson production with jet li as a dog? it has received implausibly good reviews and the previews suggest that bob hoskins chews way more than his fair share of scenery in it. i may invest some matinee money in this.