HOLY MOTORS (2012)
This great madness completely devalues the question. Movies. “What is this film about?”. In addition. It is one of the best odes to film as an illusion. Imagination. Dreams. And pretending to be someone else, in every new role, without which there is no film. Each new transformation of the main character leads us into a new genre, making it invisible.
Probably the most original (meta) film of the decade, and Denis Lavant is a French national treasure. Plus, this film features an unexpectedly touching cameo by a world pop star. Besides the last Tarantino, this movie reminded me the most of why I love movies. And yes – not for everyone. Especially not for those who expect the director to draw and explain everything and provide them with entertainment. And such people will give up half of this list.
THE WOLF OF WALL STREET (2013)
The most entertaining, the most lucid, the most humorous (probably the funniest), and the furious 3-hour movie I have ever seen. In this case, the legendary Scorsese, such artistic charge and audacity have not been felt since the Casino. In depicting the roots of capitalism, as we have it in full force and it swallows us all, Marty concentrates on human arrogance and all its extremes.
As much as he condemns it. Movies. So much he enjoys it (yet the story is told from the main character’s point of view), but constantly he feels a sense of imminent catastrophe over the heads of the main characters, who play God as soon as they open their eyes. As well as the feeling of eternal unfulfillment and deep unhappiness that the characters think they will feed with excesses and money. That’s why they are funny to us and to regret the shift during the film. Sometimes in the same scene.
WILD TALES (2014)
People are surprised that at a film screening, the audience reacts a little more violently than the applause and that the shout was not at the Festive premiere of this modern classic three years ago. I have never seen a more refreshing atmosphere of a football match at the screening of a film: the audience breathed so much as one person that after each story of this, perhaps the most qualitatively consistent omnibus ever, we all stood up, in the big hall of movie theater, with a balcony, and applauded sincerely, from the heart, chanted and roared in exaltation, a collective trance! I realized that the story is exceptionally touchy, and the topic is complex.
Pathos crouches around every corner, as well as that I would not be the first to realize the potential for comic alleviation of the situation (bastardizing the lack of self-control). And then, when that moment happened through such a trivial and so human thing, I told myself that director DamiánSzifron, a screenwriter, can’t go wrong, that he is God in this playground of temperamental black comedy. And that I am now witnessing that historical moment of the director/film who can change the world for the better at least a little bit. Even today.
I think the same about this masterpiece that dissects the savages in all of us and examines the limits of human patience. Like some socially sanctified Tarantino in action. And much more than that. If you liked this article, you are a movie fan, and you can always follow news in movie industry if you subscribe to some of the Paper magazines.
