Sicario

O

OldCorpse

Rockin the Boat
Saw it today. After all the hype, I was a little disappointed to be honest. I mean, it was OK - I certainly don't think my money was wasted. The topic is very interesting, and the story quite good too. But it was too "Hollywood" - the story beats were a bit cliche, sorta preachy and not interestingly so; I was hoping for more gritty, more interesting take: it's as if the filmmakers didn't trust the audience to reach their own conclusions, instead, we had to be edified and everything had to be pointed to with a big arrow. But the two biggest weaknesses - the acting by Emily Blunt - just really, really poor. She was miscast, or poorly directed. The other weakness - primitive, on the nose and dull camera placement choices. The lighting was OK, if a bit overcooked - was hoping for something grittier, more close to "real life" feeling... which is really my biggest complaint about the way this movie was made - it didn't feel "real" enough, too much seemed blocked and staged with the most plodding flat-footed Hollywood setups. Not a fan of this director, personally, based on this and on Prisoners.

Again, it wasn't a BAD movie, I just felt it was a wasted opportunity, it could have been so much better.
 
OldCorpse, I haven't seen the movie, but I find your words intriguing. Can you describe what you mean by "on the nose" camera placement and "overcooked" lighting? I can guess, but I would rather you confirm. Also give examples, if you have time, of movies whose camerawork and lighting you liked.
 
Liam Hall said:
You must be having a laugh, the camera work was absolutely stella. Oscar material.
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Absolutely not having a laugh. It was not stellar (to me) - it was plodding, uninspired and dull. The biggest part of it was of course due to the direction - what the director chose to show or focus on (or if not the director, whoever made those decisions in this case); the choice and timing in going to the reaction shots of the awful Emily Blunt performance - like bad 80's TV. Dreadful. Now, it's hard to discuss without having the DVD on hand, where one can discuss specific shots, but I would be more than happy to point to shot after shot after shot... because so often I found myself thrown out of the movie by these horrible choices where I kept thinking "eww, that's just awful". What is quite apparent however, is that people can have drastically different experiences of the same work - apparently the same thing can be stellar to one person and awful to another.
 
combatentropy said:
OldCorpse, I haven't seen the movie, but I find your words intriguing. Can you describe what you mean by "on the nose" camera placement and "overcooked" lighting? I can guess, but I would rather you confirm. Also give examples, if you have time, of movies whose camerawork and lighting you liked.
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Example from Sicario [may contain spoilers - ALERT!]: the conversation in the border detention center between the Benicio character who stands by the water cooler, and the fellow who walks up to him. Basically it was shot in a super conventional way: on actor A as he speaks, then to actor B for his reaction/speech, and back again and so on. It is of course the conventional way, but it is mostly LAZY. The reason why conversations are shot that way is quite sensible: you want to see the face of the person speaking and you want to see reactions. However, think about it: this is NOT what is the actual focus of attention for the audience in ALL conversations. In many conversations, the audience may be far more interested in only ONE of the speakers (f.ex. we know s/he is lying or trying to con), and therefore we would want to focus most of our time on this character, and after establishing shots to get our bearings and an occasional shot of other speaker, we could and SHOULD leave the camera on the actor of interest, even if the other actor is talking. It would therefore be a MISTAKE to pivot away from the interesting (to the audience) guy and keep giving equal time to the other guy just because that's how it's done conventionally. For a refreshing take on this, see Eric Rohmer's work - in (I think) Claire's Knee, there is a scene in the kitchen between the main character and a woman who comes in - but after she comes in, we see/hear the entire dialogue with the camera always only on the main guy... very refreshing, and completely justified in that we only really had any interest in what the guy had to say. Basically, the idea is that every single shot should be justified - does the audience REALLY need to go to the reaction shot? Instead, so much camera work is done on automatic pilot - wide, medium closeup etc., just because it's always been done that way, with no thought "but is it the BEST shot at this moment?".

For that matter, denying the audience what they want to see is often a good artistic choice - in a dialogue, you may want to not show the face of greatest interest precisely because you get the audience on pins and needles imagining the reaction, or dreading what they can't see. Sicario is the exact opposite of a deft touch - it's one continuous montage of the dull and the anticipated and the thoroughly expected - example (Sicario): right after that conversation, we see Benicio take off the water tank - we already know what's going to happen... "waterboarding"... at that point, my immediate and fervent hope was that the director not CONSPICUOUSLY focus our attention on the water bottle - but, of course, with this director, it is a vain hope, and sure enough, the camera actually DROPS a bit, so that we get a full look at that water bottle as it's carried past us... UGH! It's like the director's filthy dirty finger poking us in the ribs - SEE!! WATER BOTTLE!! He doesn't trust the audience to draw their own conclusions... it's not as if the water bottle was inconspicuous as it was, there was no danger of missing it, that poke with the filthy finger was ENTIRELY UNNECESSARY and highly irritating and insulting... YES, YES, A-HOLE, WE SEE THE WATER BOTTLE!!!! As a matter of fact, the opposite was preferable - we should have IGNORED the water bottle visually - we already got the idea when the bottle was taken off the cooler stand - and we see him heft it - at that point, I'd have brought the camera closer, so that we see Benicio walk, but we cut the frame so we don't see the actual bottle... his distorted walk (due to weight) and his face becomes more of a focus and more disturbing in the absence of the visual of the weight - a disembodied distorted walk... more foreboding and more focusing on his face and emotion. But this director always goes for the dullest choice. For a more interesting take on the disembodied movement creepiness, see Lynch's Eraserhead - the scene where we see Henry's fiance squat down at the foot of the bed and then jerk her body up a few inches - repeatedly... only to finally reveal that she was tugging on a suitcase that she pulled from under the bed - now, that's an extreme example, but shows you what can be accomplished by focusing on other aspects of a key action - in the case of Sicario, the water bottle was going to be a key prop, but that's exactly why a camera yanking our eyes TO the water bottle is the wrong move, a far more powerful and SUBTLE effect is to show the water bottle first and then only OFF SCREEN so the effect is far more foreboding.

Example (Sicario): we see a series of photos of bodies and bloody crime scenes on a laptop screen, with sound effects as we click onto the next one - reveal, it's Emily Blunt, looking at narco murder scenes in Mexico, she finally snaps the lid shut. UGH! How dull. How dirty-finger-pointing. How hit-over-the-head-with. Why not start with Emily Blunt laptop lid in front of her we only see her face - maybe only part of her face, as she clearly disturbed is clicking on something - CLICK - beat - CLIC - beat - CLICK - beat, while the light changes play on her face... we let the camera drift or pull back - or push past her, to reveal her unslept bed (it's the middle of the night), the ashtray, all the signs of a room of a person in great distress - and only then do we turn to see the last gruesome image on the computer and her snapping away. The way it was done: we are immediately hit over the head with the crime scene images - we see that EMILY IS DISTURBED GUYS!!! SEE GUYS - EMILY DISTURBED!!! The way I proposed - we don't see what she sees, so our suspense and tension is rising... meanwhile we are taken away from that to show the state of her mind through her room, not the screen, and only then, once our tension is at peak do we show a gruesome image. It's like Hitchcock describing why he prefers suspense over shock - two people talking at a table, and a bomb goes off - shock for a few seconds; but show the bomb under the table during the conversation and you got suspense and tension all the time, and it even colors the conversation. Instead, in Sicario, we're immediately hit over the head with the images and Emily is just playing along - dull, expected, uninspired, CLUMSY.

Example (Sicario): mindnumbingly boring sequences in the honky tonk. The way Emily is shown dancing with the cop - dullsville. I actually shifted in my seat, waiting for this painfully boring clumsy scene to be over with. BORING. I mean, the SOLE and ONLY reason for that scene was to show that Emily and the cop are getting it on. So dull. No subtexts, no other function to the scenes, no finesse. Cack-handed clumsy sequences - we have the pair dance, right in the middle of the frame, people dancing around, we are fixed with a reptilian gaze upon the very perfunctory signalling - hey, kiss, hey, close bodies, hey, passion springs, hey lust ignited, hey... all shown in the most unimaginative way a beginning film student would be embarrassed by. Yuck.

And so on. Clumsy, by the numbers, dull. Even the tired pointless reaction shots lack all imagination in framing - often just a flat footed medium close up on Emily and her very poor acting - I'd appreciate some relief with a bit of an angle, or some part of her face obscured with something, or some blessed relief somewhere from this dull thing.

As to "overcooked" lighting - again, lack of thought and consideration. Take any number of examples, here is one from Sicario: the lighting toward the end of the film when Benicio is in Emily's place getting her to sign a report - all lit in a classic film noir way, when Benicio is sitting his face partly in shadows, while Emily is lit more, as the damsel in danger. Now, take a careful look at that lighting on Benicio - what's wrong with this picture? It's very nicely done... FOR FILM NOIR. But this is not film noir! It's confusion about style. Take a look at the classic film noir films, whether American, like Out Of The Past, or European like The Third Man - they are stylized, intentionally exaggerated effects, strong contrasts, strong shadows etc. It's not realism. It's beautiful, and it fits the films perfectly. But - repeat: IT IS NOT MEANT TO BE REALISM. Now to Sicario: what is the style supposed to be? It's mixed up like a dog's breakfast, because the director is a hack, but insofar as one can tell, what he was going for was a kind of gritty dark realism - but realism nonetheless... that's how you got all those high observation point and satellite/overfly/drone level images, and the night vision sequences in the tunnel, and the general look of grittiness. IT IS NOT STYLIZED to look beautiful, like an image from a film noir that you can carve into a framed iron relief. So what is this film noir style lighting doing here on Benicio? Yes, we understand that he's a dark character, and that it's night, and low light, but he's CLEARLY lit artistically - he's art, quite inappropriate in a film meant to show gritty realism - that clashes, it's way overcooked - you can show shadows and a dirty image, but it has to look appropriate to its overall style in the film. As is, there are too many scenes where you can see the DP go to town in a very conspicuous way. Now, it's Deakins, so the light is very nicely done, but it's the wrong dish in this feast. That's what I meant by overcooked - you want more a docu feel, not "art" feel here, and for docu, it's overcooked.
 
But tell us what you really think ;)

Ah, I get it. For the camera angles, I agree. First of all, nothing is more braindead than cutting on dialogue. Walter Murch makes his first cut with all of the sound off, even dialogue scenes. Also, after watching The Sixth Sense for about the seventh time I realized that often the best camera angles are what I like to call oblique --- not neat, straight coverage, but a few close-up or shrouded shots, which often are more emotionally involving, paradoxically, because the audience is filling in half the shot with their imaginations. Yes, what you said :)

And by overcooked lighting I guess you mean, too polished. Have you seen another Benicio film, Traffic? It seems right up your alley.

Thanks for the explanations.
 
OldCorpse said:
Clumsy, by the numbers, dull. Even the tired pointless reaction shots lack all imagination in framing - often just a flat footed medium close up on Emily and her very poor acting - I'd appreciate some relief with a bit of an angle, or some part of her face obscured with something, or some blessed relief somewhere from this dull thing.

As to "overcooked" lighting - again, lack of thought and consideration. Take any number of examples, here is one from Sicario: the lighting toward the end of the film when Benicio is in Emily's place getting her to sign a report - all lit in a classic film noir way, when Benicio is sitting his face partly in shadows, while Emily is lit more, as the damsel in danger. Now, take a careful look at that lighting on Benicio - what's wrong with this picture? It's very nicely done... FOR FILM NOIR. But this is not film noir! It's confusion about style. Take a look at the classic film noir films, whether American, like Out Of The Past, or European like The Third Man - they are stylized, intentionally exaggerated effects, strong contrasts, strong shadows etc. It's not realism. It's beautiful, and it fits the films perfectly. But - repeat: IT IS NOT MEANT TO BE REALISM. Now to Sicario: what is the style supposed to be? It's mixed up like a dog's breakfast, because the director is a hack, but insofar as one can tell, what he was going for was a kind of gritty dark realism - but realism nonetheless... that's how you got all those high observation point and satellite/overfly/drone level images, and the night vision sequences in the tunnel, and the general look of grittiness. IT IS NOT STYLIZED to look beautiful, like an image from a film noir that you can carve into a framed iron relief. So what is this film noir style lighting doing here on Benicio? Yes, we understand that he's a dark character, and that it's night, and low light, but he's CLEARLY lit artistically - he's art, quite inappropriate in a film meant to show gritty realism - that clashes, it's way overcooked - you can show shadows and a dirty image, but it has to look appropriate to its overall style in the film. As is, there are too many scenes where you can see the DP go to town in a very conspicuous way. Now, it's Deakins, so the light is very nicely done, but it's the wrong dish in this feast. That's what I meant by overcooked - you want more a docu feel, not "art" feel here, and for docu, it's overcooked.
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I can agree with you re Emily Blunt, and some of the editing being a little clumsy. I can agree with you that some of the script was more than a little clichéd, and can definitely agree with you about the honky tonk scene, but I disagree with you re the cinematography, that and the soundtrack were the two things that elevated the film for me. It might not have been the realism you wanted, but these were the choices that the team made. Certainly, it wasn't a Holywood look as you wrote earlier. Each to their own! Would love to see some of your work if you think Deakin's camera placement is both primitive and dull.

 
I like Traffic. I know you know this, but just to make extra clear, I don't object to 'polished' lighting on principle - I love a lot of film noir - it's more about "does it fit here" - for Sicario, the lighting simply looked too carefully staged... not a good fit for a film that is trying to convey a more "this is real life" almost documentary feel - because you immediately spot it as wrong - in the same way as if you are supposed to be watching a gritty adventure film, and the heroine supposedly just woke up after a full day of roughing it, and her hair is perfect, her nails perfect and all her clothes without a wrinkle. There is a place for that, just as there is a place for highly staged lighting - and it can be utterly beautiful, but not in this film.

Anyhow, I don't want to make it sound like I hated the movie - that's the result of focusing only on the bad parts. Overall, it was a decent movie. I mean, the story was good - not a masterpiece, but really quite decent. And what is most important in a film - story and acting, and story was good, so that by itself was a win. Some of the acting was very good - Benicio for one, was excellent. Brolin was just doing his thing, nothing to write home about, so too for everybody else, except the disastrously miscast Emily Blunt, who was really not up to the role first of all (didn't buy her in that role for one millisecond), and has a high school understanding of acting it seems. Mostly it was down to poor choices by the director - it could have been so much more, a wasted opportunity. But hey, it made a ton of money, so I guess all is forgiven and nobody gives a rip about minor issues like poor direction... that's not what counts at the end of the day. I'm sure most people enjoyed the movie, and so did I on some level, though I constantly had to suppress the feeling "oh, no, you didn't!" wrt. shot choices, ways of showing stuff and just general stuff most people don't care about anyhow. Still - I didn't feel like I wasted my time or money seeing it. Which is quite a compliment, actually.
 
combatentropy said:
Did you shoot Sicario? Chill! If you take my statement in context you will see that I mean I agree with his critique of that style of camerawork in general.
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To my eye, it wasn't 'that style of camerawork', that was my point. No need to tell me to chill. I'm horozontal:-)
 
Liam Hall said:
[...]I disagree with you re the cinematography, that and the soundtrack were the two things that elevated the film for me. It might not have been the realism you wanted, but these were the choices that the team made. Certainly, it wasn't a Holywood look as you wrote earlier. Each to their own! Would love to see some of your work if you think Deakin's camera placement is both primitive and dull.[...]
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First of all, are you sure it was Deakins who blocked the scenes? Who controlled the camera placement? A DP certainly CAN and often does do that, but this is traditionally the purview of the director. I don't know who was responsible for camera placement in Sicario. The lighting was certainly Deakin, but even here one needs to be careful. To what degree did the director discuss the lighting with the DP? Was he totally hands off? I'm sure he didn't suggest the exact light placements, but what was the discussion? Maybe the director and the DP had different ideas about the look of the film? I don't know. That's why I'm not criticizing Deakins for the lighting (or camera placement) - he is an outstanding DP in general, and we have no idea what went on behind the scenes. I'm just commenting on the outcome: overcooked lighting; dull and primitive camera placement. Why that happened I don't know - but I tend to lay that at the feet of the director, ultimately, including the poor acting... simply because that's where the buck stops - as a director, you are ultimately responsible for the overall effect of the movie, and any faults within it, you don't get to slough off onto your crew or collaborators... if the DP did wrong/inappropriate lighting, or the actor a bad job, why didn't you as a director instruct him/her better, or why didn't you get a different DP/actor/X? Sometimes, it is politics - the studio forces you to use an actor, or whatnot, but ultimately, all the audience experiences is the effect, good, bad or ugly. That's why I criticized the director of Sicario, and not the DP, though I had critical things to say about the lighting and camera placement.

My work - honestly not relevant. I might be the world's worst director, DP, what have you - the very worst... but so what? It's not like only poets can critique a poem, or only actors can judge acting, or only musicians can judge music, or only directors can judge films - we are also the audience, and anybody can be a critic. The validity of your criticism is dependent on the cogency and truth of your arguments, not your "authority" derived from whatever source. Tell me *why*, not *who* you are. I laid forth my arguments, my observations - if there is a problem with them, it won't be fixed with my being the best director in the world, and if there is merit in them, then it is not taken away by my being the world's worst director... a guy off the street is still right that 2+2=4 even if the greatest mathematician tells us it's 5. I make my argument and let it stand or fall on its own merits - it's the best I can do.
 
I wouldn't say the opening scene was dull or the scene where the convoy of APVs crossed the border for the first time or the 'slow car chase' when they came back were dull. I'd say those scenes were technically and artistically challenging, and like much of the film, they pulled them off with aplomb.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, of cousre, and everyone is entitled to be a critic. I have no issue there. But, this is a filmmaking forum and your level of experience is entirely relevant to debate here, particularly when you are making comments about individuals, working relationships and professional behaviour.

When it comes to 'opinion' it's always helpful to consider the source, but when it comes to professional comment it is essential.
 
Obviously, some scenes were better than others, and actually good, though I'm not sure I'd praise them too fulsomely or call them stellar oscar material; when I think of such praise, I think of the very best cinema has to offer or ground-breaking. But while the scenes you mentioned were among the very best in Sicario, I'm not sure they'd rank as among the top such scenes in cinema. F.ex. re: the opening scene, I remember thinking - "yeah, this is OK, but we've seen this before"... and speaking of technical and artistic, any number of films from any genre, say take Aliens - the descent from the mothership onto the planet for the start of the mission, or more comparable, the troop exploration and evacuation into the transporter after the first time they go into power station and the alien creatures come alive and pursue them right back into the transporter now taken over by Ripley... wow! I actually just rewatched that scene - couldn't stop watching :) Not even a contest. Again, the scene in Sicario was okay, but I'd be sparing with the hosannahs - not exactly breaking new ground, or somehow exceptional... just okay. As to the usefulness of the credentials, let's agree to disagree - none of my arguments or observations depend upon that, they can be addressed quite on their own merits such as they may be.
 
Well maybe. I wasn't so much thinking of the lighting in the scenes you mentioned, as the overall effect per your criteria of "technical and artistic challenge" - as such, I'd say that f.ex. the opening scene in Sicario is not even a fraction of the "technical and artistic" challenge that were the Aliens sequences I mentioned. As to Oscars - they can only award them for the films of that year... alas, not all years are equal, and some years are rich in amazing filmic achievements and some are pretty sparse on the ground, yet both get the same set number of Oscars - how Sicario does will depend at least in part on that... which is also true to some degree about box office, if the film comes out at a time that happens to have not much alternatives, it can do better than the quality would have warranted. You also mentioned the music and sound effects, which btw. are brilliant in Aliens and rightly won an Oscar. I didn't want to come across as overly negative toward Sicario (which I keep saying - was an OK film, I was happy to see it!) - and so I didn't address the music in Sicario, but I found it barely OK... I mean it wasn't actively bad, which is quite an achievement in itself, given how generally poor music in film has been, but I again would not put the Sicario soundtrack on any kind of pedestal... it was adequate - barely. Oh boy - I'm gonna stop posting to this thread, because it's sounding as if I didn't like Sicario, which isn't true - I LIKED SICARIO... just given the hype, I was a bit underwhelmed - maybe my expectations were raised too high going in.

Btw., if I can make a recommendation about an absolutely amazing documentary about the same topic - just stunning - see Cartel Land - the exploration of the complex issues is just amazing, and the access the filmmakers managed to wangle out of all the sides is nothing short of stunning. Highly, highly recommended. This may have been another factor in my watching Sicario - because some of the techniques employed by the filmmakers in Sicario were exactly the same as in Cartel Land - the night sequences, the mutilated bodies, the night vision footage, the raids and shootouts, the interrogations, as were the themes of twisted loyalties and shifting devious alliances, the mind-boggling corruption. But it was real life... in comparison, Sicario came off even more Hollywood. You want film to be an enhancement or exaggeration of real life - or as frequently put "life with all the boring parts taken out" - you want it to transcend... instead, Sicario fell woefully short, which is a real sin in a film that has the ambition of saying something about a real issue or topic in life (as opposed to sci-fi, fantasy etc.). I cannot recommend Cartel Land highly enough.
 
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I think some of the reasons you disliked the film, are some of the reasons i liked the film.

- firstly, the music was a character in this film. With how understated the filming was, the music was able to fill the space. The music made the film stick with me. It lingered like a horror film.

- secondly, the filming style approach was something that i liked. I get a bit bored when every shot is the best shot and every scene is the best scene. This one left a lot of space for some more subtle and difficult to define experiences breathe. Some of the polish was forgivable, though, i agree it could have gone more real, but sometimes i don't want to look at real, these shots were soothing to look at. As for the dryness, i think that was important to the story. Over hyped or gritty could have taken this too far into action territory, where emphasis would potentially be misplace. Horses for courses, i liked the blend here, and it allowed for a different story to be told.

- Benicio was cool to watch. He almost dominated the film too much though. Stole the film, if you will. I am more happy to have experienced his performance than not though. It was a transformative character he played. Though it made me want to watch a film about him. But he was so cool!

- Emily Blunt and supporting characters: seemed like she could have been good, but something didn't click. Josh Brolin was a bit of both. A bit too cool and a bit not clicking. And the guy who tries to kill Blunt's character was very bad. Infact the from the bar on, that whole scene was one of the worst parts of the film. We all knew what was going to happen, but we had to sit there anyway. It was also a departure from the slow steady of the film into more "make it dramatic" forced and contrived. Anyway, back to Emily Blunt, i just don't see her as an officer in the USA. A bit too pretty, a bit too skinny, a bit too emotional, a bit too naive (for age and occupation), a bit too "ello, i'm a foreigner". The good though: She did give us a character that contrasted all of the experiences in the film. It was a hard world, and there needed to be a character that would show us the human reaction. That she did well, but maybe too well. And again, she may have helped with the tickets sales. She is a movie star at this point.

- Style : this director seems to work in moods and ideas well. His story and dialogue seem to get in his own way. Idk. My impression. I like the combination of gloss and subtly. Not sure that i see it much at this level. Meet Joe Black maybe. That was a slow dry flim, that because of the music and gloss, it was a pleasant watch. A very cool character in Anthony Hopkins, a mis cast and bad Brad Pitt, and some supporting actors that did their thing. One awesome scene (coffee shop and then the thing), and some on the nose dialogue later in the film to preach some moral. Classical not in your face editing and filming. Ok, did i just bring up Meet Joe Black?


Overall, i thought the film was not perfect, but none really are. I liked it, and felt it was something different from some big names. I like the fact that it was more subdued and haunting, and not a wild ride or mind blowing experience. I'd give it 4of 5 stars amongst films i saw in 2015.
 
James0b57 said:
I think some of the reasons you disliked the film, are some of the reasons i liked the film.

- firstly, the music was a character in this film. With how understated the filming was, the music was able to fill the space. The music made the film stick with me. It lingered like a horror film.

- secondly, the filming style approach was something that i liked. I get a bit bored when every shot is the best shot and every scene is the best scene. This one left a lot of space for some more subtle and difficult to define experiences breathe. Some of the polish was forgivable, though, i agree it could have gone more real, but sometimes i don't want to look at real, these shots were soothing to look at. As for the dryness, i think that was important to the story. Over hyped or gritty could have taken this too far into action territory, where emphasis would potentially be misplace. Horses for courses, i liked the blend here, and it allowed for a different story to be told.

- Benicio was cool to watch. He almost dominated the film too much though. Stole the film, if you will. I am more happy to have experienced his performance than not though. It was a transformative character he played. Though it made me want to watch a film about him. But he was so cool!

- Emily Blunt and supporting characters: seemed like she could have been good, but something didn't click. Josh Brolin was a bit of both. A bit too cool and a bit not clicking. And the guy who tries to kill Blunt's character was very bad. Infact the from the bar on, that whole scene was one of the worst parts of the film. We all knew what was going to happen, but we had to sit there anyway. It was also a departure from the slow steady of the film into more "make it dramatic" forced and contrived. Anyway, back to Emily Blunt, i just don't see her as an officer in the USA. A bit too pretty, a bit too skinny, a bit too emotional, a bit too naive (for age and occupation), a bit too "ello, i'm a foreigner". The good though: She did give us a character that contrasted all of the experiences in the film. It was a hard world, and there needed to be a character that would show us the human reaction. That she did well, but maybe too well. And again, she may have helped with the tickets sales. She is a movie star at this point.

- Style : this director seems to work in moods and ideas well. His story and dialogue seem to get in his own way. Idk. My impression. I like the combination of gloss and subtly. Not sure that i see it much at this level. Meet Joe Black maybe. That was a slow dry flim, that because of the music and gloss, it was a pleasant watch. A very cool character in Anthony Hopkins, a mis cast and bad Brad Pitt, and some supporting actors that did their thing. One awesome scene (coffee shop and then the thing), and some on the nose dialogue later in the film to preach some moral. Classical not in your face editing and filming. Ok, did i just bring up Meet Joe Black?


Overall, i thought the film was not perfect, but none really are. I liked it, and felt it was something different from some big names. I like the fact that it was more subdued and haunting, and not a wild ride or mind blowing experience. I'd give it 4of 5 stars amongst films i saw in 2015.
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Thanks for this - very thought provoking. I still disagree about the music - but that's an interesting perspective. The other points about letting the film "breathe" and not having everything "perfect" are very intriguing. I think I understand what you mean, though maybe it's worth trying to delve in a bit more. There is the kind of film that one may call "slick" in that there are no rough edges, and that maybe gives the "too polished" feel, but then you say "overly hyped or gritty", so there's maybe more of a feeling of something being too calculated - I can definitely see that, though I'd say at that point, you are really looking to set the bar much, much higher... my problem was that the shots/sequences I critiqued simply threw me out of the movie by being actively bad; this is different from something feeling unpremeditated or not overthought - when I can see the mind of the director working and I hate where s/he's going, that actively offends, as in the example of the camera dropping to focus on the water bottle - I anticipated that move and was hating and hoping the director wouldn't sink to that level, and then he goes and does it... that's not giving space to breathe by not being overly calculated - that's a bad calculation in trying to gin up interest and point the audience, and that's offensive... it's not the same thing as something not being perfectly framed, or perfectly timed, or not-calculated - it's sort of the opposite on the level of it actually being calculated because he wants us to see the water bottle, just that the calculus is offensive and obvious, which is always a sin in art... the opposite of subtle. But yes, I can fully see the kind of film you are criticizing - the way calculated, slick, every frame perfect film... especially when the DP goes crazy and every set up is like a perfect postcard, where style overwhelms content, and there is no room to breathe and no room for anything spontaneous and subtle. However, these are not the only choices - on the one extreme the overworked film, and on the other extreme the slop-fest... so you say: blend. But I don't think blend is the answer, rather it's ART at the highest level, which is why I said it sets the bar very high: the film that achieves that free and spontaneous, breathing and subtle effect, but through artistry and not through actual mistakes-we-don't-give-a-rip-we're-so-free. The answer to overly calculated is not amateurish blunders, but effects achieved through artistry. Part of that is achieved through pacing, and story, but technique is of course in service of that - a scene may call for a lingering camera, or off center framing or whatnot. Very interesting thoughts, James, and now I want to see Meet Joe Black :)
 
OldCorpse, I know what you mean about striking the balance between sloppiness and overcalculation. Maybe because James0b57 mentioned Meet Joe Black, I began to think about director Martin Brest (Beverly Hills Cop, Midnight Run, Scent of a Woman, Meet Joe Black). Martin Brest seemed to me to strike a balance between control and letting the actor improvise (compare Beverly Hills Cop to Ace Ventura, a movie where a different director admitted that he gave the main actor complete reign).

Later I heard both Yaphet Kotto and Anthony Hopkins remark about how they thought Martin Brest did way too many takes. I was surprised that a director who struck me as getting very natural performances was actually doing takes until it hurt. Anyway, I like Meet Joe Black and also recommend Midnight Run.
 
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