Posts: 3

1. Wall-E review

   04.Aug.08, 06:24 EDT
   
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   Oh Boy, what a movie week. If Dark Knight is so far the best movie I saw in 2008, Pixar's Wall-E is probably not far behind.
   
   I was kind of disappointed by Cars two years ago, and by Ratatouille last year. In their defense motors and food are certainly less appealing to me than topics like super heroes or science-fiction.
   
   

   

   
   
   Science-fiction: that's precisely what Wall-E is about, in a very pure way. Like many of the best SF stories, Wall-E takes place in a more or less near future but is obviously talking about our present society by firstly pointing its deliberate ecological suicide (sounds a bit likeShyalmalan's The Happening) . The movie starts with amazing and beautiful shots on what one could think are skyscrapers, but are in fact massive but ordered piles of garbage. In the first part of the movie, years of human history are summed up, but without a word being spoken. The Pixar crew subtly uses advertising posters and the city's signposting to explain to us how the human race fled Earth in spaceships after being overwhelmed by garbage. These first silent minutes are a jewel.
   
   Later Wall-E encounters the remains of a space-drifting humanity. Once again the film cleverly mirrors our society: people are enslaved by machines, computers and automation to a point that makes them almost inhuman.
   
   Of course the visual experience of Wall-E matches its clever content. Animation, character design and textures are as always exceptionally beautiful, which one can't be surprised by knowing these guys.
   
   More than its hilarious gags, its amusing references to 2001: a space odyssey or its cute robotic love story, I'll remember Wall-E for its SF relevancy, that should hopefully give birth to a new generation of 4 year-old SF Geeks.
   

2. The Dark Knight is coming

   10.Jul.08, 07:11 EDT
   
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   Some people already say it's the best superhero movie ever...
   
   
   
   

3. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Review

   24.Jun.08, 09:50 EDT
   
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   Sometimes you’re not sure if the movie was bad, or if the problem comes from you.
   As always with new Spielberg movies, I was full of expectations. Indy 4 was going to be an thrilling adventure that would use modern 3-D techniques to give us a classic adrenaline shot, but from an interesting angle.

   
   

   The best idea is to set the movie in a 50s cold war/witch hunt atmosphere, with the nuclear threat in the background. The introduction has the best scene of the whole movie taking place in the Nevada Desert, when Indy visits a very peculiar little town. As always with the Spielberg machine, the costumes and sets are excellent work and Janusz Kaminski offers nice cinematography. But that’s the least we expect from them.

   
   

   Giving Indy a son was not bad idea, but it was written and executed poorly: their relationship is close to inexistant, especially if compared to the one between Indiana Jones and his father in the third episode. One would like to believe that Karen Allen has a bad memory thought only by mistake that the character played by Shia Labeuf could be Indy’s son. This guy is simply empty and dull.The movie looks like a minimum service, as if everybody wanted to do as little as possible. The scenes seems to come one after another as if the movie was an addition of action clips, with no backbone.

   
   

   Every single cliché and foreseeable reference is there: a shot on the lost ark, a snake, the hat, the whip…The only thing that is completely missing is the magic of the previous films. Indy’s old and tired and nothing in this movie was worth to come back for him.

   
   

   To be fair, I must admit it might come from me too: I’m not 8 anymore, and I will never see Indiana Jones with 8-year-old. Sniff.