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10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)
OK movie, nothing original but simply put together
Had it been the first feature-length movie of a young director, shot in his basement, I would have been kinder. Absolutely nothing feels original or particularly unsettling. And it often feels like a DIY movie in more than one aspect: the heavy use of a repetitive musical background (a cliché for a producer at a loss for more impact) and the episodic nature of the scenes.
But it is produced by J. J. Abrams so this all loops back to all the downtrodden clichés of Lost and other derivative narratives so, well, that puts a lot of experience into dishing out clichés wrapped up with a consistent budget.
Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (2024)
Self-satisfied French filmakers and some talent lost in the background
The novel is way up in the list of the most adapted works - especially if you filter out all the Draculas and Frankensteins that are just distant spinoffs rather than deadpan or spoofy adaptations of the original canvas - so one has to be extra creative to find something newer to tell while compressing the storyline under the 3h mark.
Believe it or not the first creative idea that came up in their bright minds was to patch up a long prologue! Actually the first few minutes take place before the actual start of the novel and it even adds a new character (horrendously played) because, hey, adapting the 600-page most famous revenge story is piece of cake so why not pepper this with some additional challenge?
OK. So we're off to a very slow and underwhelming start and Edmond Dantès eventually ends up at Château d'If after 30min. And now we can have our narrative ellipses: 4 years later, 10 years later... So we are there yet only a little bit rushed along - including one character not even properly introduced - but don't worry, the same cheap sentimentalism from the prologue is back to soak things up. Otherwise the revenge part properly transcribes Alexandre Dumas's narration without anything much of a brilliant high point.
In the end our (near super) hero is not entirely lost to the dark side in order to give us a sentimentalist epilogue, which also effectively makes for a very weak moral conclusion. And underwhelming impression, again.
Phoey
Again, where was the talent in this? Same thing as with this "creative" team's previous Dumas mashup, in the corners, in the background. A little hidden in plain sight if you will because the set decoration and the costumes are certainly the work of excellent dedicated professionals. Make-up, hair-dressing ditto. But once and again not where it counts in the first place: script and direction. Which means the producing team were just self-satisfied with the idea of delivering whatever looked clean on the outside and pocket the easy win.
Now this adaptation only has its modern look for itself. Right from the start are recorded some of the worst (on-the-nose) dialogue I have been submitted to in a long time. Most characters speak with meek voices and utter weak lines that would make an adult film director cringe. Yes, indeed, only a couple of actors (and only one actress) do look good, the rest look and sound like soap opera sheep lost on the big soundstage.
Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018)
Boring dumb action interspersed with boring dumb talking
You know this feeling when someone is trying too hard to look interesting and funny? He may get some laughs from the kids but the grown-ups will just think he is a buffoon. MI:5 doesn't try to be funny but the totally unrealistic action scenes - think superheroes movies - are boring from the get go.
And Tom Cruise sure does not look like a powerful hero. Stunts give his character a lot to do (including capacity to wake up quickly after whatever powerful hit) but he looks like he just woke up all along. Maybe he has done something to his face to fight the wrinkles and he is just playing with wax mask or maybe he is just as bored as me.
Action scenes unanchored in reality may look fine for those enjoying roller-coasters without the actual goosebumps, but they totally fail to create suspense and tension. It is just a visual choreography so the viewer just cannot suspend his disbelief: it is a show, there is a scene and there are tricks all along.
And since the action scenes are so dumb with their sole objective to be bigger than bigger than life, the script has a lot to slowly expose to elicit the beginning of something of a plot. So when the stunts are off, the actors talk and talk, and the script tries to be clever so they talk longer. Abysmal.
The only positive thing in this mess is Vanessa Kirby who puts to sleep every other actor loitering here.
Sudden Impact (1983)
Ludicrous body count detracts from the main story
Early in the franchise the criticized dead-serious vigilante undertone smouldered into a happy shoot-em-up extravaganza. Audiences wanted Dirty Harry and his .44? They were given as much. It is sometimes funny but quickly repetitive, obviously formulaic, boringly derivative...
IMDb trivia states the body count at 18, most of which to the credit of our clenched-toothed hero. That's a long way to go and it just serves to pass time while the main storyline progresses very slowly. It shows badly that the script was reworked to become a Dirty Harry vehicle: the inspector's loud progression just collides with the darkness of the plot.
And quite frankly Sondra Locke never was a good actress. She is mostly expressionless whereas her character demanded to give us a hint of something more than just sleepwalking. So in a way Deep Impact helped her look almost good by diluting her scenes.
The Dead Pool (1988)
Totally derivative
I had no recollection of The Dead Pool (which already says a lot) apart from the great idea of the RC car used by the killer. It is quite impressive the first time around then they just jump the shark with it: too bad, it deserved to get a more prominent place in the story.
Well, the story... Apparently they did not care the least about suspense and they just copy-pasted the 'Dirty Harry recipe' from the previous instalments, most of which already solidified a bagful of clichés even when they added a different touch to the original movie.
Clint Eastwood does not look too old for the part nearly two decades later, that's a good point, but the script weakens his character into an SF fixture who has some kind of celebrity clout to just overrule his bosses. Not really interesting to get nothing more than an angry civil servant. They also added more action scenes (probably to dodge the ageing trap) where he has to do some heavy lifting: totally useless, he just comes out like a dumb cop instead of the shrewd inspector who knows better than to waste his energy.
The Fall Guy (2024)
One big load wrapped in bacon
Yeah, and if you unloaded it yourself it would make you cry.
It was already pretty obvious it was going to be a stinker from the first 10 minutes. Rolling exposition, absolutely no time to establish some spark of chemistry and then it is all about the convoluted flimsy love story wrapped in a laughable crime side plot wrapped in the Disneyland shoot of an overblown dumbastic big budget.
Why did I keep watching? Somehow I could not believe how bad they can make them these days. It is like nobody cares because, hell, it's a big budget with two big names so let's just put cardboard characters plus whatever sentimental drivel that's on sale in Hollywood and pack some stunts around and those idiot movie-goers will be plenty pleased.
This is actually this nihilistic cynical 'message' that is heavily tacked, pretending to be like 27th degree humour. "Yay we are showing those bad people despising you and we are pretending to treat you just like that but it is for the big laugh at your expense, because you dumb audiences need to have a lot of self-deprecating humour to sit through this."
Magnum Force (1973)
A cohesive dark script but quite derivative in the end
I had not watched Magnum Force for decades and unfortunately I found that it does not work as well on second viewing (also I was a teenager the first time around and may have been more impressed by the violent outburst in those 70s vigilante movies).
This was definitely a brilliant choice to throw Dirty Harry against a Death Squad but it is not very well laid out. Clint Eastwood makes it hold together but without much effort to make a little better. A lot of derivative stuff is thrown in the middle to balance the dark vigilante undertone, Dirty Harry improvises taking down plane high-jackers (can this be funny in this dark movie?), lets women fall for him and looks generally quite tame aside from his Lieutenant mentions of his being reckless.
The pairing with his partner is very good, almost too smooth here if we compare him to the edgy solitary haughty Dirty Harry of other instalments. But the worse is that Magnum Force is not tight enough. It seems the directing tension between Ted Post and his star did not pan out, at over 2h it is too long especially since Dirty Harry is not working the main case soon enough and then he is somewhat behind the curve so any real suspense fizzles out instead of building up. The final showdown is quite dumb, it really looks like a cheap TV trick. Looks like they were over budget then and at the time audiences were content enough to be entertained.
Side note: gratuitous violence is very a low point in any movie. Here the scene with the pimp and the Drano is beyond despicable because the stupid creative idea did not went down without consequences.
The Enforcer (1976)
Body count: 19. And Dirty Harry wings it.
Right from the introductory sequence you've got a couple of vicious wanton murders. Ok so these terrorists are really bad people. They are also slow and clumsy for veterans (maybe they should have depicted them as junkies?), more of a bunch of hippies than a paramilitary organization.
So it doesn't start well: badly weak villains cannot a good film make. Then most of the movie is about Harry Callahan winging it. Liquor shop robbery? Check. Buffoon politicians in and out of the police force? Check. When he gets to the case at hand he doesn't seem too involved. A lead? Let's wait and see what comes out of it. Grounded? Ok, your case.
In addition it doesn't feel like the female partner bit is well integrated. It looks more like an idea they could imagine macho jokes about then they just let the poor rookie run for her life. Aside from the scene with the leader of the Uhuru cult (Albert Popwell, supporting Harry for the third time) I wouldn't say that anything stands out. Definitely a cheap entry after two solid first instalments, never building momentum but instead just adding a couple more wanton murders to round the bill.
The Carey Treatment (1972)
Unbalanced investigation and movie
Dr Carey seemed like an interesting character to start with but ends up being too superficially written. He first looks more like a buoyant playboy then it quickly appears he is more interested in settling down at the same time as he jumps on the opportunity to investigate a case all by himself rather than just helping the police. Or maybe he is falling in love but doesn't want to show it. Either way it is sadly a badly written character.
I don't know if Blake Edwards later elaborated on the constant studio interference but this should have been deeply re-written before going into production. For all his action coolness James Coburn cannot be credible as a love interest... or he is really badly directed here as to appear detached when dating.
On top of that the investigation he leads is quite boring. Cardinal mistake: the viewer is one step ahead of him as the storyline meanders before he decides to confront the next person of interest. Very sloppily written again: the interrogation of the mother-in-law flutters while it had the goods to be a great scene; the interrogation of the coed is very cringe-worthy. And then all is reveals in a speedy confession at the end. As one reviewer mentioned: be prepared to rewind to get the details!
Botton-line: not very convincing thriller despite disparate assets (James Coburn who could have been better as an actual draft for House MD, Jennifer O'Neal, abortion depending on doctors' convictions, managing a medical institution for profit...).
Fortunately Michael Crichton learned from this and delivered a great thriller on the same grounds with Coma 6 years later.
Who Dares Wins (1982)
Elongated demo band for the SAS
Getting the support of the SAS is a nice asset, now if there is nothing else than a law enforcement storyline that's just a waste of ressources from a team very low on creativity.
Who Dares Wins is about the SAS as the title honestly announces so it is long and repetitive in the introductory part and not really sure where it stands in the middle. Well they had to come up with something to fill up a movie with more than training, more training and real action.
I looked at my watch at the 1h25 mark. The final act was only barely underway and there was still 40min to go... There's definitely no rhythm. I understand that director Ian Sharpe was doing good on TV and he actually shoots a bundle of episodes here. Absolutely no inner respiration.
And since it's a movie about law enforcement with the support of law enforcement it is boringly not subtle. The police are clean efficient nice people, the activists are bad self-righteous wannabe terrorists. In between Lewis Collins is thrown a brick of a role which he handles as it comes, and Judy Davis does a great job with the most (half) interesting part.
In the end, what most here in their reviews hail as one of the best pieces of action ever filmed looks pretty boring. First because we've seen the SAS train at least half a dozen times in the first half, and above all because it's badly filmed. Long shots, slow editing that just makes us passive witnesses. Sure enough there was no rhythm before so it is just drawing to a close.
For special forces nuts only. Very dispensable.
She Said (2022)
Journalists, victims, investigative journalism. What else?
Some will say it was important to bring this story to the widest audience possible, so here comes a fine adaptation of stellar investigative journalism. For me it is just fine because I would object that the movie doesn't stand out if you snip out all the specifics of the Harvey Weinstein case.
The acting is good, but maybe direction is overdoing it quite a few times (make yourself at home, toss this out as mansplaining). And anyway those clean gentle dedicated NY journalists are not very interesting characters, not ones that carry a movie till the end.
Yes, paradoxically this movie doesn't serve the larger purpose of denouncing and warning about sexual predators in the workplace, and narcissistic perverts at large. Actually a documentary would have been great, but impossible to achieve without having most of the victims mentioned in She Said giving another painful testimony about what they endured. So a re-enactment was the next best thing, absolutely, but if you are going to re-create why not leverage the powerful background of this specific case and build a real movie, a real thriller? Sticking to the facts, confirming sources is critical for journalism, but needs work to make an engaging cinematic storyline.
As it stands She Said only caters to a small audience, most of whom already know the main points about the Weinstein case. So it is preaching to the choir. To me it is only a vanity project, adapting a Pulitzer prize and feeling proud about the subject matter, without adding anything constructive to the debate.
Black Christmas (1974)
The original slasher, almost perfect, real frightening
It sounds cliché but Black Christmas was probably too ahead of its time, too creepy frightening for 1974. Before it there was Gothic horror then Giallo who allowed distanciation. Here we are at the next step, with a realistic and contemporary setting that would cater to a wider audience.
I don't remember Halloween was so frightening and hell is it obvious how much John Carpenter was inspired by Bob Clark work here. Wes Craven took the time to find the right balance in the decade before Elm Street and eventually with his tongue in cheek he brought the slasher at its ultimate level of popularity. Todaybatvotjer end of the spectrum there is exploitation creep/gruesome ala Saw, Hostel... but frightening, realistically gut-wrenching no more.
Black Christmas could have been perfect, unfortunately the ending looks like they didn't think hard enough to make it sensational.
Mannen på taket (1976)
Great acting, poor pacing/directing
The job of a director is to somehow direct actors. If you take good actors and a script that is mostly about action, they won't need much direction. But before the shoot the director has to think his story through, think about the pacing and how the plot comes together. That is this hard work that differentiates the clueless director - just happy to toy with a moving camera and shooting angles - from the good one.
Mannen på taket starts unnecessarily slow. The introduction takes only 6min but nothing happens until the last couple of seconds. It builds up nothing, we get almost no information about what it is all about. Then we get the exposition that will take us in a full circle along with some four police officers (their private lives, their connection to the case) for the next 60min. Ok we get an idea of who the victim was (I would not go so far as to say it is a clear picture) and at the 66min mark they start exploring their sole lead, which happens to solve the case.
Except now they must stop the guy. And you are already guessing what will happen since you've been waiting so long for A Man on the Roof. So last act is about a very clumsy police operation. Who wrote this? It is based on a book so they had the time to envision how it could be suspenseful? 40min of hapless cops improvising the most harebrained schemes to get the perpetrator. And some reviewers here dare rank this as the pinnacle of action sequences? Yippee ki-yay.
Apart from the cast the only other high mark is that there is no epilogue, fortunately having nothing to tack there at the resolution of uninteresting random action. So little for a 110min long movie.
Hardcore (1979)
Does not get much farther from its premise
There certainly was a shock factor back in 1979, the shock of seeing the seedy underworld of sex workers and imagine teenagers getting lost in it.
Paul Schrader looks like he is not working hard when he just contrasts deep clean puritan America with Sodom and Gonorrhoea. Actually he realizes at the same time as his main character that he is going nowhere and for a moment it seems like we could ride on light humour about the vacuity of the porn industry and then the laborious search continues, till the end, not without strapping our heads real deep into darkness.
In the end there is nothing much you feel you've learnt, neither do the various characters. Nikki should have been the main character, directly challenging and unsettling the 'pilgrim' father. Unfortunately not much care has been taken into writing this part. A lost opportunity, especially given the fact that Marilyn Chambers auditioned for the role!
La maschera del demonio (1960)
Visually enthralling, should have been a masterpiece
Mario Bava succeeded in giving us a visual masterpiece. I cannot think of a better visual experience with horror movies from the oldish Universal heavy-fighters of the 30s to the Hammer sharp stories and till the whimsically gore Gialli that later took over. La Maschera del Demonio is a must-see just for its fantastic atmospheric visual experience.
So it should have been a masterpiece, but unfortunately Mario Bava was never as talented in the directing department as he was in the photography/art department. The plodding rhythm, the generic characterization, the over-exposition of every detail of the plot, causes a lack of mystery, of suspense. It does break the pure magic of the visuals from time to time and it's a sore pity.
In short, a movie you'd better discover when you're very young (maybe 12 is ok) so you can totally be impressed by the visuals while not knowing what is a flawed movie.
Dopesick (2021)
Very fine acting but heavy handed. Watch the documentary instead
I understand that pure documentaries do not cater to everyone's tastes. Hence the need for a dramatized angle. On these merits I acknowledge that Dopesick is nicely packaged, with very fine acting. Yet I was quickly bored by the regular ebb and flow of the narration along the story line: flashback to 1998, flashforward to 2004, flashback again... AND not every subplot was consistently interesting.
Dopesick focuses on the evil root of the opioid crisis: the Sackler's family inner struggles to make more money with Purdue Pharma. That is the main interest although this dramatization is quite contrived (you know, rich people, fat rich egos, cynicism and zero empathy beyond the bottom line). The Western District of Virginia's DA office investigation is very engaging on the other hand, with real people you want to root for. But it is frustrating to cut away from this storyline to stuff that looks much more like fodder rendering of another aspect of the case.
The little mining town in the Appalachians provides a nice backdrop to get a view of what was going on in American people's everyday life. Very fine acting indeed but it gets so cliché. They wanted to cram too many things in this, not least of all melodrama PLUS über preachy Diversity Inclusion Equalizing (in a mining community, remember...), so it shows and really detracts you getting hooked to the criminal case.
Already at the beginning of episode 2 I was looking for the Alex Gibney documentary (HBO), The Crime of the Century, which goes beyond Purdue Pharma in its second part, and leaves you with a better understanding of the real issues. And in the end the documentary is even darker while staying with the naked facts all along.
Oppenheimer (2023)
Thunderous biopic, grandiloquent to a fault
I confess biopics are definitely not my genre. I'd definitely rather watch a movie that is focused on a specific set of actions than one which aims at being an all-encompassing retelling/homage/capsule of someone's life.
Sure enough there was already plenty to tell about the Manhattan project alone, or Oppenheimer loss of his security clearance later on. Christopher Nolan basically aims to focus on the latter and build an array of flashbacks to give us context. Extensive context, overflowing context. I really enjoyed these parts with Robert Downey Jr. They were focused, intense, self-explanatory. That is the only part where I felt that the main character was interesting, indirectly interesting, through the eyes and actions of others and it was excellent, period.
But the rest just dilutes this. J. R. Oppenheimer before 1933 is not interesting, spending time with this biopic fodder is just about summoning an IMAX experience of what might be the mind of a brilliant scientist. Nolan enjoys toying with this like he is on a mission to save movie theatres. The sensorial experience does not really feel unique, it just dresses up parts of the movie that are less interesting, using and abusing of sound effects, hammering home the point that Oppenheimer is some kind of autistic genius well past the viewer's compassion.
To me, somewhere in the middle of this 3h sensorial rollercoaster is a great movie. The Imitation Game was not excellent, but it was focused, it was not preposterously forcing an exhaustive audiovisual exposé onto us. So I may well watch again the Imitation Game at some point but I would never want to sit through Oppenheimer ever again. From the word of mouth I believed this Christopher Nolan opus would reconcile me with the director, alas he still has this effect on me of not wanting to watch any of his movies again. There are brilliant movies with a complex structure, a complex storyline, and there is Christopher Nolan showing off complexity as a raw material without ever being able to transcend it.
Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
Nowhere, anywhere and whatever the fuss
I am not rating this movie since I could only sit through 30min of it. It starts nowhere and wishes to go anywhere just for the sake of trying absurdist meta verse complications.
Ok so if you are much of a gamer your brain might be rewired to explore all this kind of BS stratified world and thus embrace what the title says. Otherwise, if you are desperately rational in your thinking (and think you should cultivate it for fear of becoming a dumbed down version of yourself, gradually entrusting machines and AI with managing the complexity of life) then the only thing you can see is a big mess originating from some student pet project.
In this rational realm people enjoy just being carried away by some brilliantly creative story. But a story is not just whatever mess you can summon to metastasize into anything mixing action and meta-BS. Otherwise the meta pretence is just a self-delusional way to present one's laziness to package paraphrases, for example here in the dystopian-Matrix SF sub-genre.
Les trois mousquetaires: D'Artagnan (2023)
Production values without producing value
Sure this movie gathers a lot of talent across all departments... except where it matters in the first place: screenwriting and directing.
This Alexandre Dumas adaptation just aims to pack a lot of all-out action that looks more like a costumed digest of last decades' super hero fights. Instead of building up the mousquetaire characters and team spirit we have 4 loose swords competing for screen time and waiting for their cue to mouth one-liners.
The other creative choices are defensible and a chunk of passable acting can certainly be traced down to bad direction. I am convinced nobody in the industry will overvalue the achievement of daddies boys (producer and director) so wildly missing the mark, but it is always puzzling to see a part of the audience just gobbling up fine images as a fine movie.
Reacher (2022)
Reacher is massive at least but kinda slim anyway
Sure Alan Ritchson looks like the impressive, intense, low-key drifter from the books. But the scripts here only partially grasp his overwhelming intellectual sharpness. It is easier in the book to describe at length what goes on in his mind, and it was the actual challenge.
"Reacher said nothing" needs a lot of script power-lifting to translate to the screen better than what we have seen umpteen times with lone action men bordering on super-heroes.
And yes, Ritchson is good again but he looks too much like a clean waxed body-builder. There is no much grit apparent in his stature. Surprising that Lee Child somewhat let it slip and did not request to make the "Real Reacher" more of the brawler he is at heart.
Season 1 was good although here, 10y after I read Killing Floor, I was not overly impressed by the scenes that got me hooked to Reacher from the very first book.
Season 2 puts back Reacher with the Special Investigators so he sadly looks smaller in the cast. More of a social outcast, a meek beast rather than the inspiring leader; narrow-minded passive rather than extremely thoughtful. Also I had formed luminous images from the action in California (Bad Luck and Trouble) yet they decided NY/NJ was good enough for their production values.
Bottom line: the series does not stand out, it feels content with the opportunity to cash in on a franchise. It's a pass for me now.
An American Werewolf in London (1981)
Worth watching for the werewolf only
Sometimes the work of one of the creative department is so excellent that it overshadows the rest of the work. Which I find is a good thing here because the rest of the creative work, beyond make-up/animatronics SFX, is not very good.
Let's not put the blame on the cast: they are all very good. So fine actors from a nice casting with nice direction. Unfortunately the script errs on the tongue-in-cheek side, a common fault after the demand for slasher movies developed in the seventies and the common misconception that so-called horror movies are meant to entertain teens who are fast to laugh for fear they would get sucked too deep into the movie.
So teens' forced laughs are not an indication that horror should be mixed with comedy! Polanski tried this back in 1967 (because he thought he was too smart to take horror seriously) in the Fearless Vampire Killers and his spoof just felt too long and protracted. All the nice horrendous settings just fell flat, exactly like it does here.
When the horror starts building up a fascinating atmosphere John Landis's script waters it down by merging it into a story arc about the undead (seriously? We should empathize with the past victims rather than be scared about who's next?) and a little romance to round it off.
From a marketing point of view this is a killer-thriller deal. A technical tour de force as a publicity workhorse plus a blend of everything studio executives might want to comply with customer surveys (comedy, romance, exotic punk London...) and you get the perfect date movie of 1981. He dares her to come watch it and she gets more than just haemoglobin and jump scares in return.
Makes me want to check back on the Howling which I remembered more as a horror movie (but I was a teen then). Anyway the assistant make-up/SFX designer there went on to do stellar work in a movie that is on the horror level: The Thing (1982).
Blue Velvet (1986)
Not as good as the sum of its creative ideas
I had been wanting to watch Blue Velvet for a long time but I had stopped watching Lynch's movies after Lost Highway which, for me, is his masterpiece. And with this kind of inspired-tormented artist it is a fine line between masterfully fascinatingly bizarre and just eerily self-conscious almost grotesque.
I would not want to watch Eraserhead or The Elephant Man a second time although I reckon the experience was worth it. You may be curious about roller-coasters and then not feeling the need to be taken for a high ride another time. Still I would watch Lost Highway again because I remember it as very cohesive within Lynch's bizarre explorations.
Blue Velvet feels very close to Twin Peaks, and for me suffers from the same major flaw: a kind of tongue-in-cheek approach to characterization. Everybody is written as kind of a pun on a cliché. But for me satire and bizarre do not blend well at all. So the satire part is interesting and then you switch to the bizarre that is interesting, captivating in its own right, then you switch back again... So it does not add up.
Blue Velvet just reinforced my take on Lynch: I do not care about the mess in his brain until he gets his act together and composes an entrancing piece of art.
Le ruffian (1983)
Luminous landscapes and a lousy storyline
Most of José Giovanni's movies are about "Honour among losers". At best they are beautiful or colourful losers but most of the time they are just losers. Before Giovanni "realized" he could cut the middleman to bring his stories to the big screen he first wrote Le Trou (a jail movie, so the characters are only temporary losers) which happened to be helmed by Jacques Becker (his swan song). Then he did two scripts for Robert Enrico (Les Grandes Gueules et Les Aventuriers) who IMO mostly benefited from a solid cast including both times Lino Ventura and his career as a "solid" film-maker was definitely launched (also for the mediocre Enrico who owed to Giovanni's "straightforward sentimental actioneers" his successful transition to feature length). Both movies do not warrant a second viewing but they are somewhat pleasant and original the first time around.
Le Ruffian is mostly a rehash of the Aventuriers baseline. Two adventurous losers trying to lose big time but in style... and most importantly staying best buddies, laughing it all away. No wonder I remembered little from my first viewing as a kid. And I would be even harsher than other reviewers who enjoyed the first act: it is badly scripted and badly shot from the very first frame. There was potential, sure, but then again shooting in the wilderness with a more than competent cast does not count as a bonus point on a mediocre work. It means you are overselling your ability to shoot something that does not look ridiculous in the middle of grandiose scenery with actors who were better utilized elsewhere.
Cría cuervos (1976)
Excellent, well-directed cast if weak technically
I was definitely not swept away by Cria Cuervos. I had this movie on my viewing list for something like 30 years, I heard about it before taking up Spanish, so I did expect the gloomy introspective atmosphere but I would argue there is nothing special more to it.
I won't elaborate on the socio-political subtext. Others have dug into it at length. My point of view is that it is nicely interwoven with the intimate story here. You do not need to know much about Spain's history from the Civil War to feel how much it puts a lid on this particular story, as it put a lid on Spanish society as a whole.
Whereas the cast is excellent, perfectly directed, I found that the movie lacked in terms of technical skills. Probably something due to the weakness of the Spanish movie industry at the time. Camera angles, framing are mostly very boring. My opinion is that you need to be very dedicated to suggest a maximum of inner tension with the camera if you are shooting mostly oppressively static scenes. Some cinematographers are excellent with lighting, but less so with framing, especially if left unchallenged, which I think is the issue here.
In short I think people over evaluate Cria Cuervos because it is a great movie IF you take into account that it was made under certain restrictions.
More crucially I was amazed that people would summarize the movie by stating that the aunt is very tough on the kids, or just plain cold-hearted. Not quite. Ana is tough, for a reason: she is a little girl who has been deprived of her innocence by witnessing the profound unhappiness of her mother's marriage. Her sisters are less profoundly affected: Irene is older and Maite is too young. But the aunt is only coping with her life now burdened by this sudden responsibility (which Carlos Saura makes clear in a late scene). She tries her best and she is certainly not to blame whereas the maid, while indulging the kids with more affection, is so psychologically challenged as to prove unable to refrain from elaborating on the late parents' issues.
Il gatto a nove code (1971)
Naked Argento
There is undoubtedly not enough gore and murders are barely sadistic, not really gruesome. Obviously this is softcore giallo... I mean for Argento's fans who revel in staring at this kind of cheap thrill. I was sort of agreeably surprised that Argento avoided this ludicrous haemoglobin galore, the ridiculously, redundantly sick scenes with gross close-ups and splattering blood.
So here we get this uncontrovertible evidence that without these childish bursts of morbid creativity an Argento giallo is a very dull movie. And I am glad that his most devoted fans concur with this fact! Here, all we have is the bare Argento treatment: a naked serial killer giallo procedural. And it shows! The script is basically an Agatha Christie whodunnit, stretched over 90 to 120min. And interspersed with a half dozen murders (or attempted murders) to try and make it somewhat lively. But there is simply no rhythm because the script is all about accumulation of events, almost never about causal narrative construction (which is precisely the trap of whodunnits and exploitation movies where you mechanically unwind the required number of scenes without further consideration for your audience).
With better art direction, a more consistent cinematography, a great score, Argento gets away with it (for his undemanding cheap-thrills-wired crowd), the atmosphere is properly summoned. Actually, I would say that L'Uccello dalle Piume di Cristallo was promising. What was unsettling in it could still then pass for raw originality. If you watch it again you will see that this is already the same lacklustre director obviously fumbling his way around a great creative team.
'Il Gatto a Nove Code' does not even have a consistent art direction, cinematography is rather erratic... as is the score, a lazy jazzy Schifrin-inspired non-descript music. Maybe Morricone was accepting too many jobs and he sort of burned out then? But maybe he really was not inspired by his collaboration with Argento, which got confirmed as it got worse the following year with 'Quattre Mosche di Velluto Grigio', causing them to part ways. And Morricone never failed to be inspired by Sergio Leone as a director or a producer. This is pretty easy to understand: Leone was a moviemaking genius while Argento never graduated from the exclusive Giallo kindergarten his producer-father set him in.