The Worst Film Ever

It is a performances centric movie

I'll tell you why so serious

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

'NOCTURAMA': Four Stars (Out of Five)A French-language dramatic thriller about a group of young multiracial radicals that commit a terrorist attack in Paris. It was written and directed by Bertrand Bonello, and it's one of the best reviewed movies of 2017. The film stars Finnegan Oldfield, Vincent Rottiers, Hamza Meziani, Manal Issa, Martin Guyot, Jamil McCraven and Rabah Nait Oufella. I found it to be long, and disturbing, but definitely interesting and well made too.The story is set in Paris, when a group of young multiracial adults decide they're fed up with the current government and need to do something about it. So they stage multiple bombings; on a government building, an office tower, and a statue of Joan of Arc. The group then hides out in a shopping mall, while they wait for tensions to die down outside. As they wait, the stress among them builds to extreme levels.The movie does a great job of making the young terrorists seem sympathetic, and relatable. Of course most of us would never do what they do in the film, but still the filmmakers paint a very understanding picture of their reasons and motives. You have to respect a film that can make the viewer respect those that are usually seen as the most deplorable among us, and that's what this movie does. It's a bit long, and definitely dark, but it's still more than worth a viewing.

The first hour or so of "Nocturama" is a dazzling and suspenseful set piece that details how a group of young terrorists carry out coordinated attacks on government and business buildings in Paris. Crisp and playful editing has the story doubling back in time and shows us how the paths of the various characters, which at first are seemingly independent of one another, intersect.Then the film enters its second half, where the terrorists hole up overnight in a shopping mall, where one of their number is a security guard, and the whole exercise falls apart. Meant to be a blistering indictment of consumer capitalism and and I suppose the hollow convictions at the center of political activism -- these kids are obsessed with the very consumer products made by the institutions they condemn -- the film instead suffers from a fatal lack of logic and realism. By the time military soldiers are prowling through the mall randomly shooting whoever they see, whether armed or not, and without the slightest interest in taking survivors for interrogation even though these are all people who are supposed to be involved in a terrorist plot, I had thrown up my hands and given up.I get it, I get it. I shouldn't get hung up on a desire for realism and should instead embrace the symbolic and representational aspects of a film like this. Which I have no trouble doing if the symbolism is handled well. If I'm not meant to take events depicted in a film at face value, then the director needs to be better at indicating that. The film doesn't follow any kind of logic, not even of the internal kind. These kids are mature enough to carry out a detailed and sophisticated terrorist plot, but then have no better plan afterwards than to hang out at the mall? They seem to think that if they can make it for 24 hours without being tracked down then they're in the clear? That doesn't make any sense. And no military group would behave the way the ones in this film do. And no news agency would be broadcasting on television that the hideout of the terrorists was known before the authorities had arrived to contain the situation. The film requires too much suspension of disbelief on the part of its audience, with the result that we can't then focus on what the film is trying to tell us.Visually and aurally the film is impressive. One just wishes the storytelling hadn't been so flabby and lazy.Grade: C+

We actually liked this.But the ending let the movie down big time. Why would the police shoot unarmed people during a terrorist incident? The police didn't know who these people were! They were likely employees, hostages, innocent bystanders. Why would they be murdered by police? Even if they were terrorists what advantage would there be in shooting an unarmed terrorist who was surrendering? This was the biggest flaw in the movie. It was a real turd in the punchbowl. But also... why did they decide to hide out in the shopping mall anyway? There didn't seem to be any good reason for doing that. Also how did the police figure out where they were? Did the director believe the film was improved by leaving out important parts of the narrative? Despite these and other glaring terrible appalling problems it was still above par. The cinematography was great.

Saw this at the Rotterdam film festival 2017 (website: iffr.com). In a word disappointing. The screenplay went very different from what I assumed beforehand given the synopsis on festival website. But what bothered me the most were the stupid repeats, often completely out of sync. It was not boring, however, and the diversity of the protagonists compensated a bit for the lack of real contents and missing insights in what made them tick. Anyway, the average festival visitor was not impressed. This movie ranked at a lowly 122nd place (out of 172).Much running time is devoted to assembling the group before they came into action, however without telling anything about their plans, why they did it this way, and how this group came together in the first place. The group is a peculiar mixture of colors, backgrounds, education and everything else that could have worked as binding element, which I would a priori assume as useful information given their intentions. The synopsis on the IFFR website warned beforehand for a "non-political hole" as the "abyss the characters gaze into". My own conspiracy theory is that the film makers wanted to avoid any link to religion or right/left-wing politics, in a desperate attempt to prevent viewers from being affronted or insulted.Apart from the void political stance, the reasoning about hiding in the warehouse overnight is puzzling too. We amply observe with our own eyes that it is a huge risk, given the size of the warehouse and the many temptations inside, let alone that some group members take enormous risks of being exposed or get detached from the group. Take for instance the one who desperately wanted a smoke after being warned several times by fellow group members for smoke detectors inside. So he had to leave the building, where he even invited an apparent hobo inside to relieve him of the cold weather.The news fragments we saw on TV's inside the building foreshadowed the outcome of this sabotage deed. It was stated with so many words that these terrorists were declared enemies of the state, and that there was no obligation for any negotiation. A happy ending seems thus far away.