"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.