"Avatar" ~ 3/10

Of course with such a budget, there _has_ to be something good.
But what ?

The story is way too simple, completely expected and manichaeic ; the imaginary world, fauna, and flora involved are beautifully created but never very far from existing exotisms (so not that much imaginative), and finally it almost sounds immoral : using so much money just to recreate an historically wrong metaphor about Americas' and America's births, and the many wrongdoings perpetrated at these different times - after all, in "Titanic" they did not take the right to make such historical changes, and the boat _did actually_ sink in the end... Or did it not ?

This movie might be very well done technically (above all when it comes to the subject of 3D, and especially the depth of field that comes up with), but ideologically it's a big crap : hippies and tree huggers only get by if helped by a Marine ! Maybe was it even a consumable insult ?

What's the point in quoting two of the most important pro-environmental filmmakers of our days (Godfrey Reggio and Hayao Miyazaki), just to show that war is the answer and solution to an environmental and geopolitical issue ?

...

2010.01.22 : After some long thinking over this awfully immoral movie, I decided to lower my vote from 6 to 3/10. The world does not deserves such Hollywood propaganda trying to make you believe they care about environmental issues. Hence, 3 points lost for immorality.

"Astro Boy" ~ 3/10

This movie might be the biggest insult to a major author (hence, Osamu Tezuka here) since "I am Robot" featuring Will Smith (it does still hurt when I write about that shit !).
Even with great voicing actors such as Nicholas Cage and Bill Nighy, the movie is just fun enough for some 4 year old stupid children who would not give a shit about what one of the most important mangaka did create.
Tezuka's manga influenced the entire production of comic books in his time, and since this very formatted media has not seen many changes, one may say Tezuka is still influencing the biggest part of the current comic books production, 20 years after his death.
The most horrifying fact, according to me, might be that such a bad movie is hiding Osamu Tezuka's own production as an animated-movie director ; he was one of the best directors ever in this field, even if his best works were not the old series adaptations of "Testsu-wan Atom" ("Astro Boy"), but short films he made at the end of his life, such as "Jumping".

"Arthur et la vengeance de Maltazard" ~ 2/10

How in the world was it possible that Mr Besson let a five year old child enter his office and type such a stupid story ? A story where an adult living in the country would want to kill *one* bee because his son is allergic... Where the very same silly adult, who then just got bitten by the bee, would want to throw a stone at an entire beehive... And it goes on and on for one and a half hours.
I would never let MY child enter such an outrageously sick movie.

"[Rec] 2" ~ 6/10

This sequel does not have the spontaneity the first opus had, spontaneity which gave the entire flick such a frightening style. Anyway the good point of this second movie was the way they found a good story to follow the - already very good - first one.

"A Christmas Carol" [fr="Le Drôle de Noël de Scrooge"] ~ 5/10

Dickens' story is beautifully represented in this movie. And Dickens' London is shown in a way we would never had hoped to see...
As for Zemeckis, he's now far from his best movies, but that might still be better for 3d cinema to be made by such a good filmmaker ?
Anyway, the best Christmas animation movie ever was (and probably will ever be) "The Snowman", and Zemeckis should stop trying to compete with such a huge masterpiece.

PS : it was good to have Jim Carrey and Cary Elwes together again in a movie !

"Zombieland" [fr="Bienvenue à Zombieland"] ~ 7/10

Contrarily to the strange poster of this flick, "Zombieland" came out to be a very good comedy. The best part is when a secret guest star enters the film...

"Le vilain" ~ 8/10

This new Dupontel flick is a bit less dark than "Bernie" and "Le créateur" but still very fun. Dupontel keeps on his idea of a 'social cartoon', with much talent, and wonderful actors, amongst whom Catherine Frot and Bouli Lanners, both in very original parts.
The best improvement of all, here, was Albert Dupontel himself : he's really become an extremely good actor in his own craziness, with an improved comical talent.

"La famille Wolberg" ~ 6/10

Nothing much original in this movie, except the fact that it's the first time François Damiens gets such a non-comical character. And also, the fact that it was out in theaters just 2 weeks after Jocelyn Quivrin's death.
Beautiful actors in a simple family story, and very good choices of music.

"La domination masculine" ~ 10/10

It is so rare to see feminism nowadays in a movie, and above all in a movie that you can see in theaters. The only way you could not learn, laugh, cry, while watching this masterpiece documentary, would be because you are anti-feminist (and therefore, one of the morons we had a glimpse at, in it). Or worse, you could be Éric Zemmour, who actually tried to stop "La domination masculine" from being shown to the world (how can someone be so proud of their penis when they actually don't have balls ?).

"The Road" [fr="La route"] ~ 8/10

A beautiful adaptation of McCarty's story about a father and his son being among the last "carrying the fire" of humanity, in a world that falls apart.
The actors and the music are great, and everything as perfect as it could be.

"Paranormal activity" ~ 3/10

Despite a good trailer showing the audience attending the public premiere of the film and freaking out, there is almost nothing but some stupid american standard couple (he's a wannabe homeworking trader, she's a student, they live in a huge house in San Diego...) with the weird idea of filming themselves while asleep, and hoping to catch a demon...
At least for once they picked up normal people from real life, and not a whole bunch of bikini bimbos to get slashed in the movie.
And there was one good quote from "Monty Python's the Holy Grail" (there are no bad quotes from this, anyway ! ^^).
That's all. :-(

"Le concert" ~ 8/10

The best scene of this movie is, obviously, the last one, the one with the concert announced by the title. The one in which Mélanie Laurent actually entered a trance state whilst filming (sic).
The rest is good comedy with great actors (Berléand, Abelanski...).

And Mélanie Laurent gets the most beautiful part, once again well deserved as she's now the best french actress of her generation. Allied with Tchaikovsky's divine music, the whole thing is really worth the watch (and the listening to, thanks to Sarah Nemtanu's violin).

"The limits of control" ~ 9/10

Ten days ago, I had a dream which led to the idea of a film a bit similar to what Jim Jarmusch did in his new dreamy movie.
As he said himself prior to the projection, it's something to watch as if we were under the influence of hallucination mushrooms, which, seconded by Christopher Doyle's mad cinematography, proves to be the best way to appreciate this wonderful flick.
This international cast of actors is all good, and Rabinowitz's editing sometimes astounding.
An excellent movie, according to the way I love dreams and cinema joined together.

"Cinéman" ~ 2/10

Several years ago, I had this idea of making a film about a superhero whose name would be "Cinéman". His superpowers would those of cinema : travellings, flashbacks, fades, and so on.

Yann Moix had the very same idea of a title, but without any ounce of subtlety behind.

His first movie "Podium", adapted from one of his (numerous lame) books, was a complete success and a good comedy. It had succeeded because the whole movie had been made almost exclusively for one great man : Benoît Poelvoorde. It was actually the main character of the film that fitted the belgian actor, who over the years had been playing many roles, on big and small screens, in Belgium and in France, of miserly lothable bastards full of themselves who treated everyone like shit. Moreover, this also fitted perfectly the subject of the french pop singer Claude François, as himself was famous for being a big jerk with a despicable sense of superiority.
In fact, when Moix asked the hugest belgian actor ever (still Poelvoorde here) to play in the movie he had written, Poelvoorde told him he wouldn't do it unless Moix first came through publishing it as a book - which Moix did, even if the book resulted in not being interesting at all.

Anyway, after this big success, Moix wanted to write another movie for Poelvoorde. He then started making "Cinéman", but Poelvoorde and him disagreed 'about something', and finally this second movie which had also been made for Poelvoorde, had to be played by Franck Dubosc (not a bad actor but way less capable than the other, and certainly not as good as a 'miserly bastard').

There was a problem with the sound of the movie, so let's not be intolerant here, and do forget about the fact that it is a bit unbearable to see actors speaking with unsynced lips... It gives the impression the movie is badly played, like an episode of some old telenovela such as "The Bold and the Beautiful".
If you consider the plot of the movie, there is, as it were, NO such thing here. Only an incoherent story, the writer did not care to give us *even an absurd* reason for what happens.
If you like Japan and its culture as I do, you probably won't like the fact that, as always, a Vietnamese girl plays the only so-called 'japanese' character, nor the fact that Dubosc does not speak at all with an accent from Ôsaka, nor the fact that he actually does not speak japanese at all in some scenes were there still are foolish subtitles, nor the fact that the word "manga" and "anime" got mixed together once again, nor the fact that a portray of Ozu is displayed on the wall of the japanese restaurant (while so many Japanese people do not give a shit about their masters of cinema). Actually, unless you are as racist as Moix proved to be here, you will not like what was going on there.
I most certainly am the best public for comedy ever, for any form of humor makes me laugh. Here, though, _absolutely nothing_ made me laugh at all.

Had not Lucy Gordon committed suicide just after the shooting of the film and before it was out, Yann Moix might have been able to recognize there was no talent at all in his work (sua culpa) and thus could have decided not to show it to anyone (yet, he has smartly decided not to publish the book he has written before turning it into a screenplay).
Still, not only did he unfortunately decided to show it, but also to dedicate it to poor Lucy Gordon. She was a great actress and certainly did not deserve such an insult...

Of course, I was pleased by :
- seeing Marisa Berenson play Lady Lyndon again for three seconds,
- the many other references to the history of cinema,
- all the good pieces of music used,
- the way Moix used vivid colors again (he had already done it in his previous movie, but probably does not know it tends to be a bit godardesque - this would have killed him...),
- hearing a song by Anne Sylvestre (maybe for the first time in my life at the cinema, or so do I think)
- hearing the most important quote ever for any fan of the "nanar" genre in France (Chuck Norris, in "Braddock: Missing in Action III" : "I don't step on toes, I step on necks.", which became in french : "Je mets les pieds où j'veux, et c'est souvent dans la gueule !").

But knowing a lot of good references does not mean one has taste. And Yann Moix has no taste at all. He just namedrops Rossellini, Kubrick, Murnau and Keaton because he has learnt a lot of things a grey parrot might be able to repeat, but pretending to like those essential artists and hating at the same time no less essential artists such as Georges Brassens, Abdel Kechiche, or Paul Thomas Anderson, proves he is only a reactionary uncultured moron. Moix does not give any good reason for hating intellectual things, or at least no reason other than the fact that truly intellectual people _do like these things_ ; hence he just keeps on telling his hate for any form of intellect (which might be called "jealousy" ?). But when it comes to the subject of loving popular stupidities such as Louis De Funès or Claude François, Moix suddenly becomes inexhaustible...

Finally, this movie should have been the one Thierry Ardisson had the idea of in the seventies (as he too had a similar idea with a similar title).
Finally, "Last Action Hero" was already so very complete in this "genre" (the genre where someone goes into the 'wonderland' of cinema), that you'd better watch it even for the 20th times than ever having the idea of watching "Cinéman" once.

PS : I would like some psychanalist to explain me why the 'homes' in Yann Moix's movies always have 'problems' (as it seems 'drawing homes' has always been a great way to analyze children). In "Podium" there was a test-house and a locker room, and here in "Cinéman" it is an abandoned building receiving asbestos removal...

"G-Force" [fr="Mission-G"] ~ 4/10

Not a very interesting movie (except maybe for Bill Nighy and the voicing actors), although there are a few spectacular action scenes. The end tends to get a bit fast, as is the way they beat the bad guy.

"Jennifer's Body" ~ 2/10

This movie is so bad that when I saw it in Paris today, someone left the theatre 15 seconds before the end and activated the fire alarm of the building (sic ! and sick too !).
Apart from a (sometimes) good cinematography, the whole thing is messy. Those who made it probably thought this mess could represent the average teenager stupid mind which cannot fit their changing body ? They thought wrong, anyway...
The most horrible fact is that pretending to be "cool", "funny", or "emancipating", this movie is actually full of the awful and extremely regular american puritanism.
Diablo Cody has been better inspired...

"Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" [fr="Tempête de boulettes géantes"] ~ 6/10

This animated feature film is actually _way better_ than what I thought when first looking at the poster and the french title (the english one is a bit funnier, and more subtle too, and I didn't know the wonderful little children book, back then). The direction is absolutely wonderfully done, following and fitting perfectly the rhythm of comedy, something Chris Miller had already proved to be able of when directing "Shrek 3".
It is so great to find actors such as Bruce Campbell, James Caan and Anna Faris in the voices of the characters !

"The Descent : Part two" ~ 2/10

There are two ways of considering that movie.

Firstly, it would be to think it as a comedy. Not that bad, then, there are a few (almost unintendedly) funny moments.
Secondly, considering it as a thriller/horror flick would then make anyone lose 1 hour and 34 minutes in an useless stupidity.

The United States' capitalism and imperialism have brought the entire world to a consumer's society that produces waste-of-space-waste-of-time movies just so that they can sell pop-corn, Coca-Cola©, and feed easily-frightened young women with fears to help you morons get laid - since the young ladies will jump in your arms at any apparition of a monster, or sometimes perhaps even a hand landing fastly on a spall...
A very large part of thriller and horror films (since people like Shyamalan think they are able to write or direct such movies) include absolutely *everything* the very master of the genre (Hitchcock) said one shall not do in order to frighten people : that is to say none of those wannabe directors could make a movie without some suddenly-ripping-your-ears-off music, nor without moving the camera or the actors in every directions so as to prevent you from seeing that the make up of the monster was bad...
Where is the time when the simple melody of an ice-cream truck or of a wristwatch alarm used to put us spectators into terror ?

Let's face it : the new horror flicks, often remade from good oldschool - "goldschool" ? - horror classics, are just a new xenophobia found by Hollywood's pioneers in what I would call "terrorist capitalism" (american capitalism taking advantage of spreading fear to the world in order to make consumers spend their money). Instead of threatening us (thus twisting our minds with fear) with something fully understandable that most certainly _will_ happen the next hour (as action movies -even recent- have been able to borrow from Hitchcock and others), they just try to terrorize xenophobe pop-corn eaters every 30 seconds with something unknown and impossible to grasp, because it might come from "hell", but we did not see it long enough to let us learn what it really was, something that always comes with unbearably loud noises, shouts, and music. This stupid way of directing being the same every 30 seconds, for the whole feature movie length, someone not too dumb may come to the state where they are not frightened any more after 1 minute of film, and just get more and more bored - if it was not laughable for the characters stupid actions...

Personally, I am not afraid of anything of this kind. My rational mind _knows_ horror movie monsters are puppets, knows horror movies hemoglobin is red paint or tomato sauce. But that (maybe twisted ?) rational mind of mine might get pavlovianly triggered into dread by the mere hearing of a nursery rhyme or of a nurse whistling, or also by the view of a soon to go off bomb under the table while people around are casually discussing baseball, just because I already _knew_ what the threaten is...

Finally, the only part of this movie that was a bit hitchcockian (hence, good) was the scene where a dumb character finally finds a good reason to put handcuffs from his hand to someone else's, while they both are chased by dreadful spelunking monsters in a deep cave. We already know it's lethally stupid, and yet they keep on keeping the handcuffs on...

"Panda kopanda : amefuri circus no maki" [fr="Panda Petit Panda"] ~ 6/10

As the previous "Panda kopanda" short movie, this one is a bit bad, but already shows a lot of inspirations, amongst which Little Nemo and "Goldilocks And the Three Bears". And as its predecessor, one can already note how full of inspiration this movie was for Miyazaki's Totoro.

"Panda kopanda" [fr="Panda Petit Panda"] ~ 5/10

Distributed in France as one feature film with its sequel ("Panda kopanda : amefuri sâkasu no maki"), this movie is one of the early contributions between Takahata and Miyazaki, a long time ago when Studio Ghibli did not even exist.
It is a bit strange to see how *bad* these early works were, full of illogisms and improbable things, in a world were adult reason with children without an ounce of maturity.
Miyazaki's stories have never been realistic at all but his more recent movies have so many other qualities that the screenplays cannot be blamed.

Anyway, "Panda kopanda" is still very interesting as you can see how Totoro got one of his main (self-)inspiration 15 years before it was actually made.
And the music is like a drug for young children.

"Fame" ~ 3/10

Rhyming with "shame" and spelling like "hunger" in italian, this useless movie is just a 1 hour and 47 minutes long commercial for the New York City Performing Arts School, almost as ridiculous as a Crédit Agricole commercial from the eighties...
It is just full of travellings Jean-Luc Godard might call "immoral", and somehow always less interesting than any episode of the Actors Studio.

"Rose et noir" ~ 6/10

The very last plan is what might be called cinema. The rest is only regular anachronical comedy with very few very funny moments, and a few extremely silly jokes. Finally it proves to be a little more intelligent than the regular american comedy, but not that interesting. Only worth watching when you want a light comedy but not something completely "brainless".

"The Box" ~ 9/10

This movie Richard Kelly has been working on for years is finally done, adapted from a short story ("Button, Button") written by the science-fiction master Richard Matheson - to whom Kelly bought the rights in person, with his own money, a long time ago.
So the film starts on a cruel dilemma (very few dilemma are not...), and soon we discover there was something bigger underneath the very dilemma.
The way the period is described takes us back in time as if the movie itself had actually been _made_ in some creepy part of the american seventies. The subject of Cold War is never approached, yet this movie talks a lot about "fear" and "fears" (something Richard Kelly likes to do) as it was all over America then. This time it is not about teenager fears like in his two previous movies, but something more adult, and more intimate.
Frank Langella is a huge actor and proves it here once again ; Cameron Diaz is not that bad either...
As always with Matheson, this story here is more psychological rather than purely "science-fictive", but that's exactly what Richard Kelly needed as a "draft", to make another great movie full of implications and references.
The music was also great for the fears it conveyed, but not in the same way the "Donnie Darko" soundtrack did. Maybe that's what I miss the most.

"The Cove" [fr="La Baie de la honte"] ~ 10/10

This movie is not a regular documentary involved in protection of the environment or the endangered species. It is indeed an action documentary (not exactly à la Hara Kazuo but I wanted to use the expression here), with a whole "commando" of (american) men and women trying to show and spread to the world the hideous and hidden truth about a small (japanese) community of animal murderers (that is murderers OF animals), covered by a whole bunch of officials and politicians. Yes, it might sound strange to some of us : this is NOT fiction and yet the good guys are american ! (just kidding...)
Well, in fact, the good guys might be anyone watching this movie and showing the slightest political reaction - something Japanese people are not always very good at, but let's hope they will, this time, actually do something, anything (please...).
And above all, it shows how - only ? - passion can really change things in a world where politics are solely a matter of dispassionate businessmen.

Maybe, if I had to be _nerder_ there, two things lacked in this film - but it does not prevent it from being a masterpiece documentary !
Firstly perhaps, an explanation about the fact that iruka ("dolphin" in japanese) can be written with several chinese ideograms : 海豚 (which means "sea pork"...), or 鯆 (an ideogram that, as the one for "whale", kujira 鯨, is compound with the radical of the fish on the left : 魚, thus classifying those intelligent mammals as mere fishes...).
Secondly, I was wondering how this so-called "tradition" (fishing dolphins by slaughtering them) might be a good thing for yakuza. The japanese mafia is mentioned only once in the movie. Still, aren't those fishermen involved in any criminal organisation bigger than just their little town of Taiji PLUS the japanese government's interests in struggling against the rest of the world ? Tradition and nationalism being a huge part of the yakuza spirit, I just wondered if the film crew did not develop the idea furthermore 1) because this very idea was foolish, or 2) because it would be foolhardy to pursue an enquiry involving the yakuza ?

I would like to add here that, even without recalling the numbers exactly, it seems that the biggest part (like, two thirds or so) of the fish stocks bought everyday for the restaurants in the Consumption Empire of Japan, are just not consumed at all, then dumped daily, consequently WASTED daily, and therefore destroying the planet twice or thrice faster than "normal" fishing...

Finally I would just add, as a good "green" nerd, that this movie is no exception to the rule stipulating that any documentary made after "Koyaanisqatsi" (that is to say since 1982) has to feature a fast-motion scene.

PS : I am actually glad to see that Luc Besson, one of the WORST popular director in french cinema, who according to me wrote only two good movies in his whole career ("Leon" and "Taken"), now seeks to buy himself a consciousness by distributing very good documentaries such as "Home" or "The Cove" with his production company Europa Corp.

"Mary and Max" [fr="Mary et Max."] ~ 10/10

Since 3d animation almost became the only way of making feature films, it is so rare to see a "good old" handmade animated movie. Tim Burton and Henry Selick's "The Nightmare Before Christmas" probably was the biggest success in this category, closely followed by Aardman Animation's productions ("Wallace & Gromit"). Now it seems that a "new" director came to this wonderful world of animated clay and stop motion : Adam Elliot's "Mary and Max" is a masterpiece.
Indeed, it features a whole world of dark (and brown) characters with dark (and brown) ideas ; the hours spent to give those life are not the fruit of a computer's work, but mostly _human_ work.
Moreover, a movie opening with Penguin Cafe Orchestra's "Perpetuum Mobile", following its rythm, and featuring variations of the same piece all along the story, cannot be less than a very good one, and obviously _is_ a truly beautiful piece of art. And finally, the fact that the character played by (the so great) Philip Seymour Hoffman has "aspies" ought to be considered an outstanding boldness.

"(500) Days of Summer" [fr="(500) jours ensemble"] ~ 9/10

Over recent years, pop-culture references in romantic comedy dramas have been developing so much that they have become a good way for young artists to compile what they love among things made by other popular artists... People such as Zach Braff or Jason Reitman (and now Marc Webb) write and/or direct movies, but they also use a lot of great songs for their soundtracks, soundtracks which often look like compilations one would make for their lover, to share their taste and happiness.
This movie is no exception to the rule, and proves it from the very beginning, featuring one of the best songs written in the past ten years : Regina Spektor's "Us". The rest of the movie follows this huge example of "pop mood", probably influenced by director Marc Webb's skills in music videos.
The only thing one would perhaps blame in this movie is the falsely-happy-but-in-fact-only-hopeful-ending. Apart from that, it is indeed a beautiful/pretty/intelligent/feelful "not love" story.

PS : it seems that in France, Carla Bruni's reputation did not stand the singer's marriage with our loathsome-loathful president Nicolas Sarkozy ; while I was watching the movie in one of Paris' largest theatres, on one of the biggest screens there, the audience suddenly reacted a bit coldly to the scene that featured the song "Quelqu'un m'a dit"... One like me may add an evil laugh here. Mwahahahaha ! So there.

"Inglourious Basterds" ~ 7/10

It seems that Quentin Tarantino is trying to alternate between *good-good* and *blockbuster-good* movies. A few years ago, as "Jackie Brown" was his best movie (a good-good one), he made "Kill Bill", which was only blockbuster-good - according to me, "but I am not the only one", as would say some bearded man with little round glasses.
Then came "Death Proof", which is - still - according to me, his best movie, for it was his most intimate, and his most audacious.
And now, the director had to follow this "alternation" rule by making this blockbuster (or blockbasterd ?). It still is a good movie, but probably the worst he directed. It lacks diversity in the music choice, nonetheless a thing we got used to, each time we discovered one of Tarantino's movies. This time, except for Moroder and Bowie's song from "Cat people", heard in a purely beautiful scene featuring Mélanie Laurent in a gorgeous red dress, the rest of the soundtrack is mostly an accumulation of Ennio Morricone, Charles Bernstein and Jacques Loussier's scores - beautiful pieces, but finally way too much of the same genre, and not always fitting the World War II period film, either because of the redundancy, or because of the tastelessness it brought to some scenes.

Apart from that, there are some very very good points.
Firstly, the dialogs. The language of the film is changing so often that it should be an dreadful nightmare for the mainstream American audience (and therefore a great pleasure for us European moviegoers !), and Tarantino teases us by making his characters speak english every now and then, without regards to their widely spread origins.
Secondly, Mélanie Laurent gives in this film her best performance ever, and proves to be currently the best young french actress (and also one of the most beautiful, according to me ^^).
And finally, Christoph Waltz himself is a reason good enough to watch this movie, bringing life to the real bastard of the (hi)story.

"Rien de personnel" ~ 8/10

This movie is brilliant social-cynsim ! Thanks to a progressively explicit montage, what starts as the simple story of workers crushed by a shameless company, ends up being a great interlinked flick AND a funny social critic.
Daroussin, Podalydès, Greggory, Doutey, Lanners, Breitman - every single actor fits perfectly for his character.

"The Hangover" [fr="Very bad trip"] ~ 8/10

It's been a while since an american comedy had not been that much popular. Maybe since the golden age of the Farrelly brothers (it was back in the nineties, with "Dumb and Dumber" and "There's something about Mary"). Unlike the Farrelly brothers, though, Todd Phillips' previous movies were not that good, only regular-popcorn-teen-comedies.
Here precisely, we can see how the Farrelly brothers influenced the whole american comedy genre over the past fifteen years, in particular with the apparition of explicit sexual jokes (the Farrelly brothers are famous for making a lot of those, not only in their movies, but also in their everyday life, as Cameron Diaz reported about the strange way they 'tested' her humor when she got cast - see "There's something about Mary" bonuses for more details...). Now it is not rare anymore to show penises in american comedies, noteably in several Judd Apatow productions, and here in "The Hangover".
The best point of this movie might finally be the end credits, which feature what they pretended not to show.

"District 9" ~ 9/10

Neumann as well as Cronenberg's "The Fly", the "Half-Life" videogames, Verhoeven's "Starship Troopers" and "RoboCop", some Sam Raimi style, some japanese "mecha anime", and even "The Dark Knight" (for the music)... This movie is a wonderful mix of so many good references, mostly taken from the world of science-fiction.
The plot is a bit original for an "alien" flick, and the humor not inappropriate.

"No pasaràn" ~ 6/10

Good actors, funny realistic characters, good direction. Plus, a wonderful message about the taste of real (non fully industrialized) life.

"My sister's keeper" [fr="Ma vie pour la tienne"] ~ 9/10

The actors are all so very good, the music so great, it makes you forget how obvious the plot of this movie was. An excellent movie about a subject as difficult as child cancer.
Moreover, like several movies in the recent months, this one gets onto the subject of stem cells. May the obscurantist conservatives stop guiding the ignorants...

"Humpday" ~ 9/10

This movie explores sexuality like very few do. It is pure truth. I cannot say more as the movie SHOWS what it means without words, and it is absolutely worth the watch in any way.

"Jusqu'à toi" ~ 6/10

An original romantic comedy featuring the odd mix of a pretty story and a very good sense of dramatic (and almost psychological) dialogs, giving funny impressions, as comic theatre would do. Mélanie Laurent is still not perfectly good at acting but has many charming expressions.

"36 vues du Pic Saint-Loup" ~ 7/10

If this movie had to be summed up by a phrase, it would be the ambiguous sentence Jane Birkin says to Sergio Castellito : "I broke down" ("J'étais en panne.")... One might wonder whether she was talking about her car, or about herself.
As always with Rivette, a perfect direction of wonderful actors (such as Birkin, Castellito, Julie-Marie Parmentier, Jacques Bonnaffé...).

"Les derniers jours du monde" ~ 7/10

There's not much in this movie. The plot may or may not be that much original. Anyway, its point of view is french, that is to say (or is that ?) intimist. And therefore rather exceptional for a science fiction flick.
The actors (Mathieu Amalric, Catherine Frot, Karin Viard, Sergi López...) are great - and sometimes naked, which might be added as a good point, since being naked is probably one huge difficulty when performing in front of the camera.

This film gave me the feeling that there might be a way of making "french" science fiction, a thing that might not have been done since the greatest masterpiece of this very restricted genre : "La jetée". Too bad it is so rare...

"Le coach" ~ 6/10

Richard Berry is, as always, a very good performer of himself (even if he does not eat a yoghurt in this feature film ^^). Jean-Paul Rouve is, as always, a very good performer of Jean-Paul Rouve.
The film is pretty funny but did lack coherence a little bit at the end. Nevertheless it cannot match Francis Veber's masterpieces of _duo_ comedy like "La chèvre" or "Le dîner de cons", which obviously were an inspiration here.

"Madre e Ossa" [fr="L'amour caché"] ~ 7/10

This film gives the impression it was made in the eighties, for its style and for the story it tells. It has the same qualities as many good 80's french movies, plus a good visual aesthetic (they did not always have that back then).
The actresses are excellent, and the language is beautiful. Plus, the music takes a very special part in the psychic mood of the film.

Had it actually been done in the eighties, it would now be considered a masterpiece, maybe.

"Bandslam" [fr="College Rock Stars"] ~ 4/10

Cinema always is a lie, in a way or another. However, a movie with good intentions about music cannot just make us believe that pop crap with no soul, nor rythm, nor even a good bass, might actually be called rock music (yeah, I know, that is most producers' and radio broadcasters' job to lie about this !), and make people rock or roll on it.
Like every Hollywood teenage movie, this one is featuring a dichotomy between who is popular and who is not in the high school, who has already a girlfriend and who has not, who is beautiful (thus void), and who is unable to socialize because they are way too smart and 'artistic' for the regular highschool teenager. The plot is unorignal and the story lame and obvious, like you could see it come without even watching the trailer of this shit.
Yet it is a shame, for there actually are a few very good things too ! Some good gags, some good dialogs, some good emotions...

But what about David Bowie watching the lame song performed by the young characters at the end and claiming he likes it ? There perhaps ought to be a limit to Hollywood foolishness, sometimes.

PS : how in the world did they come up with such a lousy 'french' title ("College Rock Stars", that is to say not even in french) ? It is likely that they made a confusion between "high school", "college", and "collège" (french for "secondary school")... Lousy translation for a lousy movie !

"G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra" [fr="G.I. Joe - Le réveil du Cobra"] ~ 1/10

After the "Transformers", it is now Hasbro's other best-selling toy, G.I. Joe, which is brought to the big screen. It seems that, here again, they actually gave some little plastic soldier toys to a bunch of 10 year-old children (I'm being kind here, 10 is perhaps the sum of their brain ages) who then "wrote" a screenplay involving actual man size soldiers (but with no more brain than the toy ones).
America is still showing a complex of inferiority towards France, trying to castrate the latter's big penis (or so the US see it) called "Tour Eiffel". Since their last war against the Iraqi people, it looks like, if French people in Hollywood movies aren't the bad guys, they will have to face the destruction of their capital city anyway. And I do not give a shit about the fictitious destruction of Paris here, but in a movie showing the killing of many soldiers, it does not seem right to show the profanation of the Soldat Inconnu (Unknown Soldier)'s tomb under the Arc de Triomphe...
I will not comment the totally improbable geography of Paris this picture tries to display (again, I am not as paranoid as the American who wrote this crap...), as it happens in so many movies, even french. But I cannot bear the regular Japanese character (played by Chinese and Korean actors, of course) who learned martial arts with a (Hong Kong cinema) kung fu master dressed with garments he borrowed both from a Shaolin warrior monk and from a Shintô monk, all that in a contemporary Tôkyô where an american beggar kid steals in martial arts temples to live (which is absolutely impossible in every way). There has to be a Japanese bad guy here, maybe because Hasbro wanted to punish them Japanese for having drawn such a bad "G.I. Joe" animated series in 1985 ?

Why did they also had to steal a Darth Vader gestapo costume for the sickest bad guy in the movie, the mad doctor who becomes Cobra ? Of course it is always a mad doctor in those kind of movies, because he is American and hence did not have the chance to be taught philosophy in high school ; furthermore, he almost talks like a Nazi - his pronunciation of "Kill all the Joes" is so close to "Kill all the Jews"...
The film ends up with a false American President replaced by a badass moron. It seems, contrarily to the story told in this movie, that the moron actually was already whistling in the White House before the 9/11 attacks.

"Silk" [fr="Soie"] ~ 6/10

Per una volta la critica la faccio in italiano. Dopotutto, questo film in inglese è l'adattazione di un romanzo breve italiano ("Seta", un'opera assolutamente sublime di Alessandro Baricco), la cui storia si svolge in Francia e in Giappone. Mentre il libro era un bel piccolo capolavoro, diventando un film ha perduto un po l'emozione della scoperta di un paese lontano e misterioso, forse per colpa della musica di Ryûichi Sakamoto che ci allontana troppo dai sentimenti veri dei personaggi.
Ma la storia rimane bellissima. E sopratutto, non è internazionale, ma proprio universale : l'amante che uno ha, l'amante che uno fantasma, l'amante che uno cerca, e finalmente l'amante che uno trova. La storia di Baricco, per quanto è sviluppata nel libro o nel film, è forse una specie di domanda : chi sta capace di riunire tutte queste amanti in una sola donna, e come lo fa ?
La risposta che ottiene il protagonista Hervé Joncour (incarnato da Michael Pitt) non è quella che aspettava ; è meglia.
Un punto positivo del film, paragonato al libro, anche se non è molto, è di avere cambiato il nome del personaggio interpretato da Yakusho Kôji : Hara Kei (perché fu anche il soprannome di un Primo Ministro giapponese).

> For once, I will write the critic in italian. After all, this english speaking movie is the adaptation of an italian short story ("Seta", a sublime work by Alessandro Baricco), the story of which is set in France and Japan. The book was a pretty little masterpiece, but it somehow lost the emotion of the discovery of a mysterious and far country, maybe because of Ryûichi Sakamoto's music which keeps us away from the characters' feelings.
But the story remains beautiful. And above all, it is not international, but quite universal : the lover one has, the lover one fantasizes, the lover one seeks, and finally the lover one finds. Baricco's story, as developed in the book as in the film, might be a sort of question : who is capable of unifying all those lovers in one single woman, and how ?
The answer that Hervé Joncour (impersonated by Michael Pitt) obtains is not what he expected ; it is better.
A good point about the movie, in comparison with the book, even if it is not much, is that they changed the name of the character impersonated by Yakusho Kôji : Hara Kei (as it also was the nickname of a japanese Prime Minister).

"Eden Log" ~ 5/10

Not much to say about this pretty little french movie. The style is good, the aesthetic somehow minimalistic (and then full of fractals...), the story simple yet not uninteresting (Pierre Bordage surely has a lot of talent as a science-fiction writer).
Clovis Cornillac, though, is not as good here as he was in other movies.

"Up" [fr="Là-haut"] ~ 7/10

Until their 2 last movies, Pixar's productions had always got better and better. According to me, "Ratatouille" and "WALL-E" had both reached the highest level that the studio could offer. But now for the first time, their new film is a little under what I would have expected from Pixar.
Not that the movie is bad, it actually is still better than the large majority of today's 3d animation movies, and the characters are not as manichean as those shown in so many american movies ; yet, the story was a little less interesting (even if we do not have many stories featuring an old retired man) and such gags are seen a bit too frequently in recent children movies.
Anyway, the beginning scene where the Fredricksen couple's whole life is shown is really beautiful, and I liked the fact that this movie shows a dirigeable balloon, too...

"Élève libre" ~ 10/10

This movie has, aesthetically speaking, nothing absolutely exceptional.
But the way the subject was treated and unfolded truly deserves all my praises.

And I will not tell more about this film, as I encourage you to watch it without checking anything about it before (but I assure you it can be viewed by anyone, at least from their teens).

"Los abrazos rotos" [fr="Étreintes brisées"] ~ 9/10

Almodóvar claims his love of cinema in this wonderful movie. Of course, it's not the best of what Pedro Almodóvar can do, as an important director with his own style, but it is still a beautiful declaration of love to the very art he's been nourishing so well for years now. The story is very good, but it seems that the director's first idea of another longer edition might have let some little flaws happen in this yet very good movie.