Crisp Criticism - "The Magnificent Seven", "The Red Turtle", "The Sea of Trees"

by

Julien Faddoul

The Magnificent Seven

Seven gunmen in the old west gradually come together to help a poor village against savage thieves.

Big-budget remake of the 1960 John Sturges film, which itself is a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, which completely lacks the integrity of either. It makes no attempt to deal with the moral obligations that can plague a community (which Sturges explores thoroughly and Kurosawa practically invented). The cast here is a mixed bag of fun and irritating and the action scenes all exhibit the incompetence of the modern era of cinematic incomprehensiveness.

d – Antoine Fuqua

w – Nic Pizzolatto, Richard Wenk   (Based on the Screenplay by Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto, Hideo Oguni)

ph – Mauro Fiore

pd – Derek R. Hill

m – Simon Franglen, James Horner

ed – John Refoua

cos – Sharen Davis

p – Roger Birnbaum, Todd Black

Cast: Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D'Onofrio, Matt Bomer, Lee Byung-hun, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Martin Sensmeier, Peter Sarsgaard, Haley Bennett

The Red Turtle **

Dialogue-less film follows the major life stages of a castaway on a deserted tropical island populated by turtles, crabs and birds.

Exquisitely animated allegory with an acute sense of mood. It relies too heavily on ambiguous supernaturalism to be totally successful.

d – Michael Dudok de Wit

w – Michael Dudok de Wit, Pascale Ferran

m – Laurent Perez Del Mar

ed – Céline Kélépikis

p – Pascal Caucheteux, Vincent Maraval, Grégoire Sorlat, Toshio Suzuki

Cast: N/A

The Sea of Trees

A suicidal American befriends a Japanese man lost in a forest near Mt. Fuji as they search for a way out.

Hilariously awful psychological drama with an amateurish pace, hammy acting and some of the most ridiculous plot twists in recent memory. It is certainly the worst thing its director has ever been associated with.

d – Gus Van Sant

w – Chris Sparling

ph – Kasper Tuxen

pd – Alex DiGerlando

m – Mason Bates

ed – Pietro Scalia

cos – Danny Glicker

p – Brian Dobbins, F. Gary Gray, Kevin Halloran, Ken Kao, Gil Netter, Chris Sparling

Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Ken Watanabe, Naomi Watts, Katie Aselton, Jordan Gavaris, James Saito