(2002)
Dir - Philippe Grandrieux
Overall: WOOF
Philippe Grandrieux' second theatrical film A New Life, (La Vie nouvelle), is pretentious nonsense of the most aggravating variety. It sounds daft enough on paper to tell some semblance of a story with hardly any dialog and non-written characters, all through a series of drawn-out scenes with rape, sex, and some, (presumably), gangsters hugging each other supplying the only "action". Art films are often defined as such by not following conventional cinematic practices let alone conventional narrative rules, so Grandrieux' choices here could be seen as provocative attempts at making something viscerally ugly and challenging. In execution though, such dour ingredients create a maddening waste of a hundred and two minutes as the film is not only virtually impossible to follow, but no one on screen says enough, (if anything at all), or does anything interesting, (if anything at all), for any audience member to be even remotely invested in what happens to them. On top of that, the hand-held cinematography is unwatchabley appalling, with large portions being shot in total or near blackness as the camera gets up close and intimate with images that are as nebulous as the non-existent plot. It is a stylistically unattractive, emotionally void mess, unless you enjoy about an hour and a half's worth of nothing happening that is occasionally punctuated by blurry women dancing, women getting their hair cut off while crying, and women getting beaten up while also crying.
(2004)
Dir - Timur Bekmambetov
Overall: MEH
One of the first mammoth blockbusters made in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Timur Bekmambetov's big-budget, music video-edited, gore-ridden, CGI-fest Night Watch, (Nochnoy Dozor), is his loud, messy, and still inventive adaptation of Sergei Lukyanenko's novel of the same name. The mythology present in such a supernatural landscape is overwhelmingly complex at times and Bekmambetov's high-octane, cranked-up style is often comically over-done, but any movie cramming this much into is is bound to have something stick. Good and bad vampires with their own centuries-established and self-maintained police force, shapeshifting, medieval battles, prophesies, curses, vortexes, plus spine swords, it is an "everything but the kitchen sink" mishmash to be sure. Only occasional moments transpire that slow the proceedings down in an attempt to try and catch up to the bombastic presentation, but it is best to just sit back and give into the bulldozing tone which is high enough on schlock to consistently amuse those looking for such things. For others though, the lack of any subtlety whatsoever might be too ridiculous to bare.
(2008)
Dir - Jérôme Cohen-Olivar
Overall: MEH
The sophomore effort Kandisha from Moroccan/French filmmaker Jérôme Cohen-Olivar has sincere performances, incessantly bleak atmospherics, and a prominent feminist agenda that is unfortunately melded with a rambling plot that fails to evoke its otherworldly folklore elements. Set in contemporary times, the story centers around Amira Casar's traumatized protagonist; a hot shot lawyer whose daughter was accidentally killed sometime shortly before she gets handed a case of a woman whose abusive husband was murdered by the vengeance-seeking spirit of the title. More of a gut-wrenching drama about the loss of a child than a conventional horror movie, the supernatural components still serve a purpose of bridging the old world with the new, where hundreds of years of non-existent rights for women are now being usurped, not just by the ghost lady who is going around beheading any man who continues to abide by such violently oppressive tactics, but also by the prestigious, well-respected career that Casar's character is still upholding. Though it meanders into unnecessary avenues, it also has an admirable agenda, plus Cohen-Olivar refuses to let any humor into the proceedings, even with David Carradine's intentionally rambling cameo as a mental inmate, which otherwise may have provided some chuckles.
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