"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.