Change Your Image
nelsonerikd
Reviews
The Counselor (2013)
worth a look
". . . there is nothing crueler than a coward, and the slaughter to come is probably beyond our imagining."
How true. But what I really found beyond imagining is that the character played by Javier Bardem (Reiner) would let this woman run free on his property without about a thousand bugs and cameras, and a team of guys operating them round the clock to keep her honest.
However, the film does not seem concerned with such details, and passes this one by with some off the cuff remark that "Reiner thinks he is invulnerable". The film is not so much a plausible unfolding of events as it is a vehicle for its characters to act as oracles in the midst of impending catastrophe.
Many of these sequences are quite good, for instance, the conversation between Jefe (Reuben Blades) and the councilor (Michael Fassbender) and that between Malkina (Cameron Diaz) and her banker in the closing scene.
This is a good film, which seems to have the skeleton of a great film but was never fleshed out. Probably there is good reason for this, although I don't know if all of it had to do with deadlines, funding, and organization.
Takeshis' (2005)
dreams dreaming dreams
Imagine if Jim Jarmush and Federico Fellini decided to re-interpret David Lynch's 'Inland Empire' and you might have a description of Takeshis.
This is not to say that one film borrows from another (even though they were made around the same time) but there are some resemblances. For example, here a 'mix table' driven dance party takes the place of Empire's black rabbit comedy show, and seems to form some kind of a center connecting all of the time lines / dream sequences together.
It's not for everyone, and like Empire it does take a lot out of you, but it's wholly original and definitely one of his best.