films seen
5
average score
2.10*
nationality
status
Alive and kicking

Movies


Trouble Every Day

2001 / 101m - France
Horror
3.5*/5.0*
Trouble Every Day poster

Beau travail

1999 / 92m - France
Drama, War
2.5*/5.0*
Beau travail poster

High Life

2018 / 110m - France
Sci-fi, Mystery
2.0*/5.0*
High Life poster

High Life delivers the kind of DIY sci-fi you'd expect from a bona fide arthouse film. Contrived acting, slow pacing and a level of vagueness that allows for various interpretations make this a rather predictable arthouse affair that merely abuses its genre influences. There is definitely potential here, but Denis' execution simply isn't good enough.



I'm a big fan of anthologies, and this project sounded very promising on paper. Seventy renowned directors give their vision on the future of cinema. With just one minute per short, there isn't much time to make a point, but it's disheartening to see how few of them even managed to stick to the topic.

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The saddest part was that many of the short didn't even deal with the future, but openly referred to or praised the medium's past. There's also a lot of doom and gloom, with some very basic visions of people not caring enough about arthouse cinema, or playing movies on their phones. Your typical old-man-yelling-at-cloud stuff.

There is only a small selection of directors who seem to have understood the brief, and they struggle to make the most of their limited runtime. What remains is a complete mess, with most shorts looking like they were made on people's afternoon off, and hardly anything that stands out. A disappointment.