A REVIEW FOR MY #1 FAVORITE FEATURE FILM OF MY ENTIRE EXISTENCE, AND MAYBE FOREVER WITH A 99.95% PROBABILITY.
Don't read it as a review, but as a magazine article. This is the longest thing I have ever written about one single film, but it is also the only review that made me cry out of sentiment while constructing it.
Before starting to construct a modest, fully developed essay about Béla Tarr's Sátántangó, let's make a nostalgic resume about some…
***One of the best 150 films I have ever seen.***
As any brilliant avant-garde film, Peter Greenaway's absolute masterpiece is an attack to the senses. This attack, however, has the sensual danger of awakening the most primitive instincts of the human being. It has always been interesting to notice Greenaway's past focus on architectonic stillness and provocative imagery with symbolic representations. This film is no exception. Conglomerating bizarre elements and a literally unbeatable sense of humor that abounds in cleverness…
This is one of the highest peaks available in the history of film that spectacularly showcases the wondrous fusion of excellent writing and improvisation letting dictate the future and actually directing it. Ramis' first directorial hole in one (maybe in two) brings along the coordination skills of a National Lampoon's Animal House (1978), arguably his best creation as a writer. This comes as a close second before he went more commercial with Vacations (1983) and Ghostbusters (1984).
The trivia pieces…
The opening is a miracle and it's one of the funnest examples of tracing back celluloid influences from Eisenstein to De Palma and now... the intolerable Segal?? Well, the director's least worst film is enjoyable thanks to the writing of Zucker and co. The 90s presence is pretty much permeated throughout, losing the essence of the original "Police Squad!" stories, but Nielsen is comedic bliss and the cinematic parodies at the Academy Awards are good stuff.
Besides, it gave birth to the now appreciated massive facepalm meme.
54/100
Before you ask, this is not my first Refn movie. In that way, I can know that:
- He still likes to dress his crooks with light grey pants and have some of them bald, like if they were still living in Denmark.
- He still uses an awesome techno soundtrack (with some pop touches that I can forgive) to open his films and to close them. The underground nudist dive bars / seedy joints cannot be omitted, of course.…
