nauvilla Reviews

Cube (1997)

not so solid

[6/10 · 3 November 2005]

I cannot deny that this is one of the most original movies I have ever seen. The setting is unique and it spreads on many levels, from the psychology of a trapped person to the structure of our society.

Yet I find several flaws in it. I find hard to believe that: - a person can kill another person while there is no certainty that this murder will make that person survive - an engineer that worked for months on the outer shell has no clue about the cube itself. While working on the constraints the shell has to endure, he would have learned about the moving cells, their weight, their frequencies, etc. He would have learned the outside temperature, the humidity, etc. - someone can find a permutation among the gazillions of possible permutations in a cube composed of 14 thousand cells just by reading a handful of numbers; I believe it would only reduce the possible permutations to billions instead of billions of billions of billions, and would be impossible to compute for a human brain. - a person knowing that a room can be deadly will jump into that room so fast. Wouldn't you be going very slowly ?

I agree with the underlying ideas of the movie; but I wish it had been a more powerful scenario with more coherent behaviours.

A Man and a Woman (1966)

a masterpiece

[10/10 · 10 February 2005]

It is so refreshing to watch a movie like this one. Those comparing it with Hollywood standards such as the density of the plot, the stunts or 'the sex scene' would be wise to take another look. Such standards cannot be applied here. Lelouch plays with colors, objects, and our natural capacity for associative memory to tell us what is neither written nor spoken. The main actors, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Anouk Aimée master the art of expressing the message. Dialogs are far from poor, but the meaning sometimes has to be found in their tone, their breaks, their pace or, again, the characters' play. What would be cinema for if these were useless ?

Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)

a perfectly chiseled work of art

[10/10 · 9 December 2003]

Kill Bill is not just about samurais. We have seen them in many movies before, and if it were just about that the experience would be rather dull. Kill Bill is the world of Quentin Tarantino. There, comic-strip heroes move around in a psychedelic music from Latin America/Japan/Mexico/Europe/US. The atmosphere is surreal.

But above all, the striking point of this movie is that every scene is perfectly shot. Tarantino is savvy with the camera, angles, close-ups, colors and backgrounds are all in place.Minute after minute, he sculpts before us this 21st century poem.