"Un prophète" ~ 10/10

2009's best film of the year, THE masterpiece which deserved Cannes' Palme d'Or. Had Isabelle Huppert been impartial as President of the Jury at the Film Festival (she weighted in favor of her friend Haneke so that he could win with an uninteresting movie...), and hadn't a french movie already (unworthily) won the Palm in 2008, "Un prophète" would have got what it truly deserved, and not "just" the Grand Prix.
Abdel Raouf Dafri's story is excellent, the description of life in prison very accurate and realistic. Tahar Rahim, Niels Arestrup, Reda Kateb, and the whole rest of the cast of actors, everyone is perfect here.
I did like (Jacques) Audiard a lot, now I consider him as one of the finest directors in french cinema. His use of slow motions, and of partly blinded frames is both aesthetically and metaphorically justified (absolutely exceptional !). Only a genius could make the most intense and beautiful film with only images of a brutal and ugly world, such as life in and out of jail. Except for very few seconds of images showing an airplane's wing above the clouds, and, later, waves on a sandbeach, there are hardly any shots of something _not dull or ugly_ in 155 minutes. And yet I fell in love with every single second of this entire movie.

I've seen it 4 times in theatres, and invited myself 4 people to watch it with me. I now urge you to see it if you haven't yet !

"Une semaine sur deux (et la moitié des vacances scolaires)" ~ 5/10

A pretty little film with a simple regular story of love and divorce. Although being played by good actors (children and adults), there's a big accumulation of clichés and déjà vus (conflicts between parents and children, use of trendy musics - among which Cat Power's "The Greatest", diary narration in voice-over...).
French cinema could do better. Ought to do better.

"The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3" [fr="L'attaque du métro 123"] ~ 4/10

There was a time, back in the eighties, where action movies, although featuring worse special effects than today, were sometimes realistic enough to somehow deserve our appreciation. Even though it was a bit too spectacular to be realistic, for one cop on holiday (and without shoes !) to take down himself all of the bad guys in a skyscraper, a masterpiece like "Die Hard" had everything to please its audience (good actors, good story, good humor, and a very efficient direction).
Why, then, does a gifted director like Tony Scott (brother of the great Ridley) always use such bad screenplays for his movies ? I am still astonished to think that "Domino" was directed by him, and written by Richard Kelly ("Donnie Darko" writer and director).
Now, "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3" is not completely bad but the story just doesn't fit any reality, and there are those unbearable moving camera shots which only prove the lack of inspiration of the director in some scenes... Too bad this one was not directed by one Andrzej Bartkowiak !

"The Women" ~ 3/10

This kind of movie, not unlike most of women magazines, is there to make money by reassuring those poor women who cannot afford someone with a penis (for instance, a man), and who will believe that having a bunch of female friends full of advices is better than a man in your bed. Apart for those who find homosexuality worth giving up men, and thus might have a real interest in seeking female friends instead of male ones, how can such movies pretend to give any solution or consolation ?
Moreover, this movie for women, written by women, and featuring only actresses (and one male baby actor) is as stupid as movies for men, with only men, and made by men (there might be more of this latter kind, but that is certainly not a reason for creating crap...).

But the biggest scandal of the whole thing might be that it is featuring rich New York people, played by rich Hollywood people (who want their money back with interests, plus your brains in bonus), and destined to be shown to poor credule New Jersey people who certainly cannot afford such a wealthy living (nor such expensive face lifts) but will dribble all their saliva with envy.
Anyway the good point was that, unlike "male movies", they did spend at least half of their time talking about the other sex... Wait, now the problem would be to determine for which of the "male" or "female" genre of movies this actually was a good point... ? I'm not in favor of (nor against) any of the two kinds here, my advice, to those poor women (or men ?) who seek consolation after they were dumped, would be that they watch any good movie, made either by a man o a woman, that would not talk about one or both sexes, but simply about love (it seems not to exist for magazines, sorry).

Finally, Clare Boothe Luce's play has been adapted so many times, why bother watching this version, when Cukor and Fassbinder both already directed other versions ? "Because it was directed by a woman" is not a reason good enough !

"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.