ms-52486

This film/documentary puts the focus on a group of people that would usually be described as losers, crazies or weirdos.

The concept is based on an essay of Michel Houellebecq, in which he seems to encourage this said group of people - by declaring human suffering as the source of all poetic expression.

Iggy Pop takes a very prominent spot, maybe a bit too prominent. I would have liked to hear more from Houellebecq himself.

The other protagonists - Anne Claire Bourdin, Jérôme Tessier and Robert Combas - are all struggling with their mental issues to a greater or lesser degree - while trying to express themselves artistically.

I claim that some films need to be watched while slowly getting drunk - like Jarmusch's Dead Man, or Rivette's 4 hour version of La Belle Noiseuse.

This film is not afraid of art, which makes it stand out over most other films that have a similar subject. The filmmaker immerses himself into the process much like Frenhofer does. He is not scared to show the actual creating of a sketch, or the finding of a pose for the model.

Rivette also captures the very particular lifestyle of Southern France, something that I feel is a bit endangered in today's economy dominated European Union.

Some films can make you feel interested in the main characters within minutes. Rogue One to me is just another of those overly long movies that fails to create any form of empathy with anyone, even at more than 120 minutes. If a filmmaker doesn't care about the characters he is creating, then how could I as a viewer.

The beginning was promising, with Mads Mikkelsen and Ben Mendelsohn having an interesting showdown in a wide poetic landscape. But the longer the film went on, the more I felt that there must be a book titled "How to make a Star Wars film", and some studio executives got their hands on it. That said, the film is very well produced and superficially looks like a Star Wars epic in every way. But the bland acting (Diego Luna especially) and the constructed story line put me in a rather dull mood. Ben Mendelsohn's Krennic was one of the few interesting appearances. There were some good attempts in showing the moral ambiguity of the rebellion, which had some potential to suck me into the story. Unfortunately the fight scenes in the holy city made the Storm Troopers look pretty silly, almost comedic, and took away any sense of menace.

I do think there is an interesting dramatic story at the heart of it, but somehow after decades of film making, Disney seems to have forgotten how to build a gripping tension. When certain decisive moments in the film occurred, like the arrival of the rebel fleet, I just didn't care.

For me, this is a product leeching off the sentimental memories people have towards the original films, me included. I wouldn't recommend this film to anyone above the age of 11, and I surely won't watch it again.

Finally, I found Leia's CGI face pretty horrible, but the film had already lost me at that point, so I wasn't as shocked as I should have been.