La Grande Muraille

China playing Hollywood, but the stupid Hollywood. The production values are like from Asylum, the only difference is that you can see the huge budget. Thanks to the People's Republic of China for an enriching experience, I watched it on a Huawei monitor, thinking about the Silk Road and mentally summarizing the text of the letter to Ovčáček, in which I packed the Blu-ray for Miloš to enjoy as well. (20/05/2017)

A Chinese billionaire gave money, Hollywood its biggest star, the Middle Kingdom of the once great director and a wonder of the world. The result? An asexual, culturally indifferent and dirty pig, which builds the greatest hope in the first twenty minutes. But in the end, the more artistically pampered Warcraft drowns in a soup full of undercooked characters, narrative clumsiness and funny ideology, which is desperately trying to convince completely different types of audiences. A proper critic does not use the word boredom. But here, the helplessness castration is physically palpable. I’m sorry, but it’s BORING. (05/01/2017)

A Chinese legend dressed up for the masses. A visually polished fairytale in the care of Zhang Yimou often takes your breath away. The massive scale on which the Wall works is augmented by essential mysticism. The wall itself seems much more massive than in real life, much higher, the landscape more desolate (Mordor style), Peking is shiny new and the Forbidden City is… like out of a fairytale. Yimou does not fear the spectrum of colors reflected into the interior from the glass tower, the cliffs by the desert are outlandishly orange, armor densely colored like a wax crayon. The result reminds of a classic video game and no wonder, story-wise most of them come from fairytales. Damon handles the hero’s transformation from criminal swine and murderer well, although a little cumbersome (his pretty boy mug is responsible for that). Pedro Pascal comes across more convincingly. The monsters are fine even though in design terms they could easily have come out of Star Wars. I guess I’m pleased to see that Czech special effects guys who worked on them. The tempo of the movie is super, is really pumped, fast-moving and mainly the action is great. However, the Chinese values of unity and self-sacrifice for the common good are first and foremost (warning, not to be confused with Communist values), so if you have a problem with that, you’d better not watch this. (11/01/2017)

It looks like Vikings crossed with Prince of Persia and perhaps even John Carter or The Three Musketeers by Paul W.S. Anderson. The story is extremely dumb, many things are digital, and every second shot is in slow motion, the actors are almost useless... And yet this is a rather entertaining film with a few effective scenes, reminding me, in its odd way, of the magic B-movies that Ray Harryhausen did special effects for. I certainly wouldn't want to be that strict. (06/06/2017)

Yet again, mighty China showed that it has no shortage of human material, so there was a massive number of extras as usual, but the whole film was made just for effect. You get overwhelmed by epic music and an overabundance of color, but the story is weak. Matt Damon is as convincing in his role as Bill Clinton was when he claimed that Monica had dripped some yogurt on her dress. And if that wasn’t bad enough, evil is represented by aliens in the form of some sort of overgrown chameleons. Lame. (18/06/2017)

N’attendez pas plus de ce film que quelques beaux effets visuels, quelques scènes de combat imaginatives, et un « Oberyn Martell » amusant : Pedro Pascal. À l’heure où la technologie visuelle et le graphisme des films sont de plus en plus avancés, cela me dérange lorsque les effets font trop « image de synthèse » bon marché : on arrive tout de même à faire mieux que ça, aujourd’hui. Et puis ces dialogues, mon Dieu ! Qu’est-ce que Matt Damon et Willem Dafoe font donc là-dedans ? J’ai bien ri devant ce film, et ce n’est vraiment pas un compliment... (10/01/2017)