Renegade
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Movie Reviews of Renegade
Movie Review: A "Genre-busting" delight!
Summary: 5 Stars
I just finished watching this film on cable-tv, and as soon as I'm done writing this review, I'm going to purchase the DVD of this film from Amazon.
It's Saturday afternoon, and I was channel-hopping (all 500+ of them) when I chanced upon this movie. Oh, happy chance! The cable guide synopsis drew me in. It read, "...comic by Moebius." Having seen and enjoyed graphic novels made into film, such as "Sin City", I gave it a viewing. In all respects, from cinematography, production value, casting, and scripting, I was thoroughly entertained.
Never before have I seen a film, or story, that has so successfully combined two such disparate genres, being equally faithfully to both. Being of an age where I have witness the golden age of the Western, both classic ("Shane", "High Noon") and revisionistic (Clint Eastwood's "The Unforgiven"), and having also dabbled in "mind expansion" through chemistry in my reckless youth (Kids do not try this at home!), I have a personal appreciation for both subjects and can testify to the film's success in dealing with both.
Granted, "A Man Called Horse" with Rex Harrison, and a couple of other films dealt with white Westerners who participated in a Native Americian religion experience using sacred plant preparations, but in all those instances the characters had fully embraced, and had been absorbed by a particular nation and its' culture. In "Renegade", Mike Blueberry straddles the "two worlds" of the white West and the Native American, giving both its' due.
Beyond sheer entertainment, I think that this film bodes well for the future of film making with its' genre-busting quality. In regards to its' vision of Human society, I like the possibility of cultural-diversity and interaction that it hints at. If nothing else, it has caused this viewer to rethink the stereo-typical Western characterizations of the past, and made me to realize that the people of that time period probably had richer, deeper spiritual lives and keener psychic perception than previously imagined.
Oh yeah! The score is great too!
Movie Review: Ayahuasca directed, filmed, and acted in this incredibly realistic movie
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a profoundly powerful and magical film.
It had me from the first minute of the titles and it never let me go. But then... if you have never seen or heard 'the other world' that the powerful plant medicines can take you to ... I would not be surprised if you totally miss it like many reviewers who give this a low rating here do.
Please understand - it is NOT a 'western'. It just happens to be set in, and to comment on, the meeting of the whiteman's world with the native american world. In particular the whiteman's use of alcohol and tobacco to destroy himself, and the Indian's use of power plant medicines to heal.
If you have never tasted it you will probably not realise the profound depths of the power plant experience - and like the deputy sheriff you will judge the experience from your own conditioned perspective to be a weird drug - sort of like alcohol but worse. To really understand the film you have to realise that the plant world is much much more real than the drunken dream of the cowboys who still run this planet.
I would still find it surprising if you miss the flawlessly gorgeous cinematography, the exquisite timing, the rich detail and the incredibly realistic evocation of both the Native American and Old West worlds - but without grokking the 'experience' you will probably be so distracted by the strangeness that your mind will complain of not being entertained with the trivia you had promised it.
If you are open to the unusual level of consciousness from which this film is written, directed, acted, etc - then it can take you further on your own journey into understanding your life and death and all that lies inbetween. Now that's what I call a good movie !
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Movie Review: SUPERB PSYCHEDELLIA
Summary: 5 Stars
Renegade (aka Blueberry)SUPERB PSYCHEDELLIA- This film literally blew me away. It is the most accurate portrayal of a full blown high dose psychedellic experience that I have ever seen in a motion picture. Too bad Tim Leary isn't around on the physical plane to have caught this one. I am sure that he would have praised it to no end with his considerable mastery of the written word.
As a film, the cinematography is excellent and the editing places the visuals and story line into the realm of pure poetry. This is no ordinary western, but an epic mystical journey that harks back to the glory days of Carlos Casteneda's Don Juan novels. The film gives due reverence and respect to the American Southwestern Indians and their use of the peyote cactus as a healing tool for bringing wholeness to those who are wounded by their past and by the evil that is a part of life and that is responsible for those tramas.
It is interesting to note that Juliet Lewis appears in this film and that she also stared in NATURAL BORN KILLERS which also features and extremely well done and realistic mushroom trip involving snakes and the reptilian levels of consciousness that psychedellics activate deep in the brain.
I found that it took me many hours to fall asleep after watching this movie because I was so excited to discover that someone had suceeded in creating such a wonderful and faithfull vehicle for communicating the awsome mystery and healing properties of the psychedellic experience. I can only say that this one hit it's target and is truly a masterwork of cinematic and spiritual art!
Movie Review: The best movie I've seen so far!
Summary: 5 Stars
This movie is one of the most beautiful movies ever made. The beautiful story just flows ahead towards the real happy ending. No unnecessary explanations, but a real mind-bending journey following the life of Mike Blueberry, who has seen the highest heaven on earth and the worse hell, and somehow managed to conquer his demons and move on in his life.
The scenery is absolutely beautiful and when not beautiful it's very impressing and interesting. The movie starts in a most beautiful way, when the young Mike comes to town and gets the attention of a gorgeous young prostitute. Later Mike visits her bedroom for a night of heavenly lovemaking, and the next morning they're deeply in love with each other... just look how beautiful they look like!
After this most beautiful situation the worst possible thing happens, and the life of young Mike takes a serious turn, which takes him to live with native shamans, who know the secrets of spirit world. With the help of the plant kingdom and a certain cactus they do unbelievable travelling with their consciousness, through time and space. And now everybody can see how it looks like, thanx to these most beautiful computer-generated visuals, which look so realistic that I almost felt like crying in ecstacy while watching them for the first time in a small tv I was watching this film yesterday.
Just because of the visual bliss this movie delivers its worth buying.
In the second DVD there is a short movie about Mother Amma, and she reminds us that we just need to be open, receptive. That's a good reminding for those who were so furiously saying bad words about this masterpiece.
Movie Review: Truth is beyond the surface deep in one's psyche
Summary: 5 Stars
Inspired from the French comic strip Blueberry, this film is an attempt at going beyond what a comic book cannot provide but cinema special effects offer galore. We can thus descend into a visualization of all the phantasms and haunting guilt or frustrations that possess one's psyche. That dimension is extremely interesting and marvelously successful. The meaning itself is rather simple: the greed of some white looters looking for the gold of Indians against the magic of Navaho Indians to protect their land, their riches, their sacred mountains and their sacred world beyond the surface of things. Blueberry is in-between because he was raised by the Indians but he has become the Marshall of a small city through which the looters are going. Note the Indians can successfully defend their heritage only thanks to a white man who has made the effort of understanding them. I find this slightly biased even if truthful in a way. The second lesson is that the magic attributed to the Indians is nothing but a trancelike state induced by some beverage that makes the individual confront his own deepest fears and frights, desires and wishes. One has to ,confront these demons and vanquish them, conquer them, in order to come back rejuvenated, enhanced in one's life. Apart from that the film is slightly simple in content but it is saved by the digitalized special effects that become like graphic art.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines