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 Genova 

What grade would you give this film?
A 0%  0%  [ 0 ]
B 0%  0%  [ 0 ]
C 0%  0%  [ 0 ]
D 0%  0%  [ 0 ]
F 100%  100%  [ 1 ]
Total votes : 1

 Genova 
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Joined: Wed Nov 29, 2006 8:01 pm
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Post Genova
Genova

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Genova is a film directed by Michael Winterbottom and starring Colin Firth, Catherine Keener, and Hope Davis. It was filmed in the titular city of Genoa (Genova in Italian) during the summer of 2007. It was written by Wonderland screenwriter Laurence Coriat. It premiered at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival.

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Wed Aug 19, 2009 2:22 am
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Joined: Sat Jan 08, 2005 12:27 am
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Post Re: Genova
It would probably be fair of me to give this movie a D. A D+ pehaps, but fuck it, F feels more accurate on how i feel about this film.

NOTHING GOOD COMES FROM WATCHING THIS MOVIE.

Not since Breaking & Entering has there been such a uselessly dull piece of pretentious shit committed to celluloid.

It's a shame a film with such promise on its concept was such a boring, drab mess in execution. I think there are three types of movies. Ones that serve as visual candy, Ones that tell a story, and ones that are based around 'characters'.

The first group usually has a semblance of a narrative somewhere but the odds are it wont stay with you longer than the wow factor and the lack of story and intimate relation with audience leads to failure.

The second group is usually the best, because i believe films should be about great storytelling and not the aesthetics or details of film.

The final type of film says "fuck great visuals, fuck great story, lets make this raw, lets make these people real-fleshed out characters" and i guess that kind of pretentious film-making bullshit manifests itself into a cast and crew believing that somehow, making you buy an actors performance will be enough to make a film entertaining.

I guess if your actor is Meryl Streep and her character is a velociraptor tamer then yes, but otherwise i can think of ONE movie that has pulled character-driven off well. Before Sunset.

Genova is based on a concept that if done with, oh say an actual narrative as opposed to a series of events tied together with dinner scenes, could have actually turned out pretty nifty. I dont need every movie to be filmed 'beautifully' to appreciate a great story, but what is there to grasp at here?

Colin Firth's character is dull, not developed, atypical of the professor who has nothing really to offer apart from a dedication to his children. Yes you believe him, but believing a character doesn't cut it.

Then in the rest of the cast we have Catherine Keener who seems to flux between exceptionally irritating as an actress and exceptionally endearing. Here she is in between and her character is squandered, she really doesn't HAVE a character, she is just there like floatsam, hovering around the central characters with no real purpose other than to remind us that Colin Firth is widowed.

Finally we have the two kids. Fuck. Ask yourself if you'd love to spend your evening watching a little girl crying and a teenage girl being a selfish bitch and making all the silly mistakes a teenage girl could make?

YES these characters are believable, but who wants to be confronted with the reality of a dull, self-absorbed teenage girl and a delusional guilt-ridden daughter who spends the majority of the film wailing? Not much about either of their actions revealed anything about their characters or their relationships, there was no real development, no real motion, it was stagnant and unaffecting and drab and poorly written and i guess the only saving grace is that the actors did well selling their characters.

It's just too bad they signed on to play dull people in a dull film about nothing (and everything!!! fuck this pretentious subtext bullshit)

It seems so commonplace in pretentious art films to just not bother placing an ending in the movie now, but at least Sideways bothered to allude to something more. Genova isn't even that kind, it literally just ends. There is no satisfaction from its conclusion, you just feel you've spent a couple of hours looking through a window at people. Not particularly interesting people. Just people who've had a shitty card not having the balls to confront life.

I'll pass.

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Thu Aug 20, 2009 10:54 pm
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