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Rented the DVD of this clinker today. Luc Besson ("Fifth Element", "La Femme Nikita") directs this story of Joan of Arc (I'd call it "The Last Temptation of Joan of Arc") with his usual visual dazzle (the DVD looks great), but the wide-angle camera work becomes an obtrusive annoyance. His wife, Milla Jovovich, is miserably lacking in the skills necessary to portray Joan, and Besson's tongue-in-cheek humor, used to decent effect in "Fifth Element", is seriously misplaced here. Even worse is the pretentious documentary on the making of the film, narrated by Jovovich in full makeup/black evening dress/fashion model mode. Msr. Besson, I plead with you, please stop making films featuring your wives or girlfriends!
The Battle scenes of the French vs. the English are decent, but "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" ruined this genre for me ("Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries!").
Let me put it this way, I had a better time watching "Night of the Lepus" (the giant killer rabbit movie) on TNT this morning than I did watching "The Messenger".
...means being able to surround yourself with bright people. Also means making even mediocre people shine. Besson is not capable of either. You can blame his fiasco on many things, but it is simply him who is responsible for it all.Try finding a bad actor in any of of Bergman's work, DeSica's, Fellini's, Kubrick's. Besson was capable of producing one popular HT demo film, and that is perhaps the limit of his abilities. I agree on some humor part, but it wears off soon enough... Overall the movie belongs into the same pile as another husband/wife lame production - The Spanish Prisoner.
I do wonder, however, what would have happened had my wife suddenly decided to design a preamp...
Guess what, with your modest contribution he is now $2 more eager to make another one...
BTW, did they have to make a special body revealing armor for her?
Hah! Thats got to be the best one line characterizations of the 5th Element I've ever seen. What an utterly bizarre film - 30 years of US pop culture squeezed through a European filter and distilled into an over the top assault on the senses.Truly a strange moviegoing experience...
joe
My SO and I walked into the theatre to see The 5th Element feeling very hopeful. We'd just managed a terrific parking spot practically outside the theatre door on a busy Saturday afternoon. Things seemed to be going our way. Then we watched this stinker... The great parking space couldn't make up for the loss of time and money.
...wouldnt make up for this one! I just remember the feeling of having a movie relentlessly inflicted on me during that one - it literally took no prisoners and I so longed for it to end...joe
"one popular HT demo film" ?
C'mon. Don’t you think it’s too harsh.
After all he made Professional, La femme Nikita and Subway.
He’s not Bergman, but who else is ?
And as if great ones never make a bad films.
Like last Kubrik’s or couple of last Forman’s movies. I’d rather watch 5th Element.
Natalie is just too precious.You are right about the Professional - I forgot. I was not crazy about Nikita, though.
You are right again - he is not Bergman. That is not such great sin, of course.
And as far as the last Kubrick - please don't rub it in.
"One popular HT demo film" should actually read "One unfortunately way too popular HT demo". It was not enough for me to stop watching it. One day bunch of Japanese showed up with, you guessed it, the Fifth... They didn't just watch few scenes, they played them each many times in the row - to gage the system changes.
The torture was unbelievable, I left the room, excusing myself. One can only watch that dreaded segment #26 about 25 times before collapsing.
Why did they have to select one of my favorite operas?
I guess Besson is France's answer to Spielberg, since his films have the biggest budgets, but I don't think Steven can waste actors like John Malkovich, Faye Dunaway, and Dustin Hoffman as badly as Besson does in "The Messenger" (Jean Reno escaped by not being in this mess). It reminds me of Coppola casting his daughter, Sophia, as the lead in "Godfather III".I did enjoy "La Femme Nikita", though. Was confused and mystified by "The Big Blue", but the girlfriend liked it (she just wanted to look at Jean Marc Barr). It started to be a problem, 'cause she and her girlfriends would keep renting it, then laughed when I showed up. Well, at least I've still got a full head of hair (check out the balding Barr in "Breaking The Waves").
I agree with you on that one, Victor. The acting in The Spanish Prisoner was some of the worst I've seen on film. The female lead (whose name I've forgotten/surpressed) couldn't deliver a line well to save her life!
Too bad she didn't. She "acted" in another film. I do not recall the title, but it was some sort of trash about Jewish terrorists, or something rather... I only saw a small part of it on TV.What other married couples left good mark in cinema? Certainly Fellini/Masina, Vadim/Deneuve, heck even Malle/Bergen comes close...
Bergman/Liv Ullmann? Well, it is close, they had a child, but never married.
Any others? My mind is too busy now. But please, not that latest Italian jerk...
Agreed,The Messenger was major disappontment. "Joan of Arc" with Ingrid Bergman was a much better movie. And why the stupid "high tech" weapons that didn't really exist like the wind-up flail, big stone balls through tunnels and that ridiculous arrow "machine gun"? Real weapons of the period were deadly enough, thank you. And cannon and handgonnes were really used at Orleans, they could'a showed that.
Thanks for the warning although I've seen enough reviews ripping The Messenger to convince me to pass that one by already. One that I wish I'd passed up is Lovers on the Bridge, an acclaimed exercise in gutter pretentiousness that I almost switched off but just barely managed to sit through. Another rental mistake for me recently was Bats. Just awful.
Man I have to agree with you about "Bats" I rented it on DVD cause I thought the sound would be good. Just a horrendous film. I only got half way through it and shut it off, another waste of $3.50
I don't think I even made it halfway through it, and I rarely stop watching a film once I've started no matter how bad. Horrendous, yep that's the word for it.
We live and learn I guess. LOL
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