"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.

"Låt den rätte komma in" [fr="Morse"] ~ 8/10

John Ajvide Lindqvist's screenplay adaptation of his own novel, through Tomas Alfredson's directing, became not only a wonderfully poetic movie, but also a great renewing of the wide fantastic/vampire genre(s). With not much special effects, the movie goes way beyond what Hollywood could only be dreaming of making with such a strange story.

The great finale might be one of the best I've ever seen in a horror movie. And probably the most inventive in the use of the camera.

"The Boat That Rocked" [fr="Good Morning England"] ~ 8/10

This wonderful film, although being fictitious, is a good way of summing up England's history of illegal radio stations on boats. The characters, all funny and charming in their own style, also represent every genre of music/drugs/political beliefs from back in the 1960's, and are played by huge actors (Hoffman and Nighy above all !). The music is obviously excellent (a whole radio-boat crew bringing to England's young ears the best of musical artists the sixties had to offer), and there is, of course, a *fuckload* (as Simple Simon would say) of memorable dialogs (my favorite might be the scene where someone first says the 'F word' on the radio waves...).
Richard Curtis' first non-romantic movie (after the simple yet cool "Love Actually") contains what this great man could produce of better, after working on such 'musts' as "Spitting Image" (some kind of english equivalent of "Les Guignols de l'Info"), or Rowan Atkinson's "Blackadder" series and "Mister Bean" movies.

"Dünyayi kurtaran adam" [fr="Turkish Star Wars / L'Homme qui sauva le monde"] ~ 1/10

This crap might well be the best example of what turkish cinema could produce of worst in the eighties, stealing Hollywood's successes and replacing the north-american propaganda by turkish themes and characters.
Cüneyt Arkin (unrelated to Alan Arkin, nor to Alain Delon) was the biggest star in Turkey, back in those times where kicking some red stuffed giant monster asses, making toilet-paper mummies, or shooting hand-drawn-directly-over-the-film-stock laser beams wasn't that much ridiculous.

Note that this awful 1982 movie, though being one of the worst thing one could possibly watch in a movie theatre (which I actually did, for the fourth time I've been watching this crap, and in France's best movie theatre, MK2 Bibliothèque, s'il vous plaît !), still has many funny things, funny exactly because they weren't intended to be funny, and are most often very mistakenly brought to screen (bad actors, wrong subjects, no story, ridiculous fights, ridiculous -falsely- muslim propaganda, use of "Moonraker", "The Black Hole" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark" 's main themes over "Star Wars" 's stock shots, incoherence between the foreground turkish actors and the background stock shots, or even hand-drawn AND hand-moved opening credits...).
But the worst of all isn't part of this film itself ! It's that it had a sequel 24 years later, which was really worse (a tasteless "navet" -literally, turnip- as we call it in french), because this time it was intended to be a funny parody of the first opus, and thus had completely missed the point of what shall be funny in a "cult bad movie" ("nanar", in french) - hence not being part of the latter category...

Although normal movie-goers wouldn't see such a bad movie very often, this one truly deserves to be watched at least once (it's funny enough not to kill yourself immediately, but I admit that watching only excerpt may suffice), as an introduction to the great world of "nanar" (as we in France call any ridiculously funny bad movie). Trust me (for those who might think they knew what cult bad movies are), even "Plan 9 from outer space" was better !
Anyway, I've seen "Turkish Star Wars" 4 times, and am still alive... But I've seen worse (like for instance : the sequel, and of course the legendary worst film of all times, "Manos, the Hands of Fate").

"Sœur Sourire" ~ 6/10

Not much to say about this good little film except it was interesting for someone like me who did not even know the very existence of such a popular Belgian artist as 'Sœur Sourire' (whose real name was Jeannine Deckers). Her fervent musical life, and then her discovery of another love than christianity were part of the ordinary life of an extraordinary person.

"Piano no Mori" [fr="Piano Forest"] ~ 3/10

This movie could have contained some good points about the learning and interpretation of music, but is just as formatted as any japanese TV anime, and even has strange defects, like wrong use of cellulos, wrong spelling of "Schubert"... Eww !
The only "quality" might be the fact that it shows classical music instead of superpowers in a "shônen anime"... !

"Hannah Montana: The Movie" ~ 1/10

This film stole from "Spiderman 2" the idea of a large group of people protecting a superhero's secret; but this time, it's a teenager's unrealistic, immorally selfish, and obscenely luxurious life which is kept in secrecy... Plus, the lack of script leads to completely unjustified situations (but I won't even lose my time to comment about that).

Anybody supporting this movie would pursue a life of almost criminal immaturity.

"Wendy and Lucy" ~ 7/10

This 'non-road movie' about a young woman trying to go to Alaska is simply beautiful. Stopped in a small town in Oregon because her car broke, then stopped again as she got busted for shoplifting, then stopped anew when her dog was caught by the pound, this movie is all about being stopped in every attempt to move on with one's life, and about the love between Wendy and her dog.

"Ne me libérez pas, je m'en charge" ~ 8/10

Whilst Michel Vaujour's numerous escapes from jail were always stunning, this documentary is all but spectacular. It only focuses on Vaujour's life (27 years of which were spent in prison), and how such escapes could happen, and why he did them.
Only the title remains funny, the film itself being quite a tough 'human being story'.

"Nous resterons sur Terre" ~ 6/10

This French documentary tried to be this decade's "Koyaanisqatsi" by stealing everything Godfrey Reggio invented in the eighties. Mixing 'à-la-qatsi-fast-motion' scenes with interviews of Gorbachev, Lovelock, Maathai, and Morin, did not bring the inventivity this movie lacks. Putting bad music instead of Glass didn't help at all, either.
Still, the subject is utmost important.
Maybe "Home" is this decade's "Koyaanisqatsi" ?

"Let's make money" ~ 9/10

Erwin Wagenhofer presents a terribly cynical view of the economic world in which we're living (and dying a lot, too). Author of "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" John Perkins' part might well be my favorite, for it explains every recent deprived-of-any-ideal wars which were lead by the USA (and the others who had not enough balls to say no).
It seems this movie won't let us any chance of salvation...

"Aruite mo aruite mo" [fr = "Still walking"] ~ 7/10

Koreeda gives his version of the "japanese nuclear family movie", mixed with his recurrent themes of life and death, and memories. Every part of it is simple and good.

"Le roi de l'évasion" ~ 9/10

Guiraudie's first attempt of making a comedy film is a complete success. Everything from the use of music to wonderful characters sharing great dialogs, the form is flawless.
The (not that much) complicated subjects of everybody's homosexuality and heterosexuality , and of midlife crisis, are perfectly handled by a beautiful direction. Even the use of the french south-western accent can be counted as an outstanding quality here. The actors, particularly Hafsia Herzi and Ludovic Berthillot are full of charm, excellent in their roles.
Guiraudie might be some new kind of Godard, and certainly a pioneer in today's french cinema.
This film is pure and intelligent fun.

"J'ai tué ma mère" ~ 8/10

Probably the most amazing thing about this film would be the fact that the writer and director is a twenty-year-old boy, with a beautiful sense of direction, editing, and cinematography.
The use of slow motion in some scenes, in particular, was a very poetic idea (maybe borrowed to Wong Kar Wai, as it features a similar style of music ?). The black and white scenes, in the bathroom, where Dolan is facing his camera, are great, too.
The actors are beautiful and excellent in their respective roles, Xavier Dolan gave them very beautiful (yet natural) dialogs.
As a debut film, very few young directors would have done better (Dolan is 5 years younger than Orson Welles when he made "Citizen Kane" ^^).

"Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince" [fr="Harry Potter et le Prince de sang mêlé"] ~ 6/10

Since the third Harry Potter movie, "Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban", which according to me was the best of all, the books' plots were thickening too much for the movies to let anybody who hadn't read Rowling's stories understand any of what was going on. The misteries were unveiled too fastly and the action unrolled with no emotion at all. This sixth opus is no exception to all that, but remains probably the best post-Harry Potter 3 movie in the saga (for the books, I must say my favorite is, with the 6th and 7th opuses, the very one which became the worst movie : the fourth).

The main reason of this amelioration in the movie adaptation would probably be that the book itself was a bit shorter ?
Moreover, the beautiful opening scene with the London City Hall and the Millenium Bridge adds a lot of quality to the film (although in the final book we know that the action isn't set after the construction of those recent buildings, but I won't go nerdy about this... ^^). Plus, of course, the special effects and the cinematography, which are absolutely perfect (the smoke effect is particularly terrific !).

Another thing to praise would be the way this entire educational world (Hogwarts teachers of magic) is described while struggling and interacting with dark forces, just as actual Europe's (muggle) educational world is now struggling with political (very dark !) forces.
But I guess it's Rowling's talent here and not precisely the filmmakers' ability.

But despite those qualities - and Alan Rickman (who is, to me, the best actor in the saga, with Ralph Fiennes who wasn't really there for this opus), the movie somehow missed the point, with the (almost) final scene, where one of the most important events of the whole saga happens (don't worry I won't spoil).
While these 3 last movies lacked feelings and were too fast where they ought to be slower and full of emotions, on the contrary, this very scene required speed and coldness, darkness, hardly no emotion at all - just like in the book, where it was truly stunning. Here in the movie it came out to be way too slow and not dark enough (and this is because of the need to explain the existence of the scene itself, as the background had not been enough developped).
It should have been some kind of huge final dark scene like the one with Harry Two-Faces (not Potter) in "The Dark Knight".

Too bad they gave the whole set of final Harry Potter movies to David Yates (and he's probably not the only one to blame here).

"Sans rancune !" ~ 7/10

A good plot and a well chosen cast of young actors. The way the misteries about Matagne's father are progressively unveiled was also interesting.
The opening credits cloudy scene was funny, too.

"Bronson" ~ 6/10

This movie owes very big time to Stanley Kubrick. But, apart from this huge influence (notably for the direction of actors and for the choice and use of music), and Tom Hardy's great (à la De Niro) impersonation of "England's most dangerous criminal", the movie does not really bring originality.
An other problem would be the subject itself : showing the life of someone who does never know what he wants (or does not want anything at all ?) did not lead very far. Or maybe, by pretending to be the director's acceptance of someone else's failing, this movie does not represent much more than the making of a show of violent battles for 2 hours.
Still, one could dream about what Kubrick would have done with such a theme... Maybe he actually did : "A Clockwork Orange".

"Tricheuse" ~ 2/10

This movie is the very proof that a bad use of camera, lighting, music, dialogs, and editing can ruin a simple script played by good actors. Although the story was not that bad (let's say good enough for what should have been a comedy telefilm), even if one could hardly find a truely moral character there, sadly the whole form of the film is as pathetically awful as the worst crap french television can produce.
Yet, I still love Soualem and De Fougerolles, and I pity the very idea of them in this shit.

"Bambou" ~ 5/10

Bourdon's style is still good, and the other actors (Consigny and Arditi !) obviously show some skills. Yet it isn't much more than a good regular french comedy, maybe a bit (necessarily) childish of course.
But the use of music (amongst what, Syd Barrett's "Golden hair") is sometimes, obsessively, great.
Of the three Inconnus (Didier Bourdon, Bernard Campan, and Pascal Legitimus' comic group that gained a huge success from the eighties to the nineties in France) it looks like Bernard Campan now has the best career in cinema, even if Bourdon seems to be "higher" (ailleurs ?) in this big french cinema family.