"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.