El Bacho

In the early 00's, production companies had a short-lived craze for supernatural genre movies in France after "The Crimson Rivers" and "Brotherhood of the Wolf" turned out to be hits, so several movies were green-lit or saved from their "direct-to-video" fate. However, France, as opposed to the US, UK or Italy, has little tradition of fantasy B-movies and it turned out quickly that "Samouraïs", "Bloody Mallory" or the "Crimson Rivers" sequel were ill-advised attempts at recreating a kind of magic that had never existed in French cinema in the first place. As they flopped, producers have gone back to their usual fare: derivative farces or the umpteenth self-referential tribute to French New Wave by a former critic from "Les Cahiers du cinéma".

"Brocéliande" could only have been green-lit during this short window, as it serves no other discernible purpose. It's your by-the-book slasher movie mixed with vague mythological element and horror references and you'll find bimboesque female characters, a French University looking like a US campus and plot twists so lazy you don't even care because you had guessed it by yourself an hour before, even before the movie started.

These elements make all the fun of a 70's or a 80's B-movie and you expect them in a 70's or 80's movie. However, we're not in the 80's anymore and nobody warned director Doug Headline, as this tribute to the slasher movie genre is nothing more than a derivative slasher movie. Headline himself is no rookie and has been writing as a critic about this kind of pictures since the early 80's but as a first time director he shows a lack of skill and ambition that makes "Brocéliande" a bore.

When you put together clichés from a movie subcategory and hand them to a skilled and inventive director such as Wes Craven or Quentin Tarantino, you get a "Scream" or a "Death Proof", movies that are imitations from old guilty pleasures but also magnify these clichés and add a great deal to them. That's called "talent" and that's why you can't confuse these recent movies with their original inspirations shot decades ago.

"Brocéliande" takes the lazy path and only reproduces the worst elements from past movies (unfortunately for the male viewer, the gratuitous nudity is mostly missing). There are very strong similarities (presumably unintentional) between the plot of "Brocéliande" and the reviled "Halloween 3: Season Of The Witch", as both deal with supernatural Druidic evil rituals and some silly attempt at taking over the world on Halloween night. As even the plot of "Halloween 3" makes more sense than this one, it means that something seriously wrong went with "Brocéliande".

... when you see a boom mike in the trailer!

"The Beach Girls and the Monster" features a clear shot of Sue Casey speaking on the phone during the trailer. With a boom mike above her. And the perch.

The movie itself has a delightful scraping the barrel approach when it comes to exploitation. You can find the two main sub-genres from the 60's b-movies melting: the monster movie and the beach movie. Both aspects are indeed badly done. The monster is everything but frightening and one has to wonder why any of his victims hadn't the idea to kick him between the legs. And the beach part is so cliché ridden it looks like a "Lord Loves A Duck" sequence, except for the fact that "Lord Loves A Duck" was a parody (also featuring boom mikes on screen). There's for instance, for comic relief, a ventriloquist and his lion Kingsley who duets with the girls on a corny song. Actually, he could be the worst ventriloquist on Earth: he carries a false beard to hide his moving lips.

Then, you find all the features of cheap exploitation movies. Washed-out actors playing the parts of supposedly attractive characters. "Teenagers" that were last seen in high school 15 before the shooting. Big names on the credits, like Frank Sinatra. Even if you must add "Jr" as that's his son, Frank Jr, and he merely wrote the score (mostly lounge jazz and a few Beach Boys attempts). Actually, Mark (Walter Edmiston) looks a little like Sinatra as the sculptor that Sue Casey teases. (By the way, his sculptures are not exactly flattering even for a fading beauty like Ms Casey.)

Jon Hall, for his only directing credit, shot the thing cheaply and quickly. His house was a convenient place for inner shots and he tends to use zooming extensively to end a scene without making another shot. It's irritating even when it's Luchino Visconti who's directing and Jon Hall is apparently no Visconti.

And there's the story, or indeed the lack of story. You also know that a movie has got a problem when Robert Silliphant is credited for "additional dialogue". Silliphant took a writing hand in both "The Creeping Terror" and "The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?". In other words, he's responsible for two of the lamest screenplays of all times! "The Beach Girls and the Monster" is his third and final screen credit. So I have to wonder how much Silliphant improved the original screenplay.

On the plus side, the girls on the beach (actually the dancing troupe from the Whisky-A-Go- Go club) have tight bikinis and giggles as if they were Shakira's mother. Or grandmother. So, every movie has a redeeming quality.

In the 60's, director Jean-Pierre Mocky shot several wonderful movies before his inspiration decreased in the 80's and 90's, leading him to cheaper and cheaper productions (in spite of a recent surge). In "La Cité de l'indicible peur", he's at the top of his game, with this very subversive production. French comedian Bourvil is a police inspector who trails a counterfeiter and spends several days in a small rural town, where you'll find one policeman, one butcher, one doctor, one chemist, and so on. And, supposedly, one bald, hard-drinking, cold-sensitive, cassoulet hating, murdering counterfeiter.

Needless to say, this investigation turns out to be a McGuffin or a red herring to a string of strange events in the town of Barges (also French for "loonies"). A killing beast roams at night, mannequins of the local saint lower hatchets and half printed banknotes go with the wind. Bourvil is perfectly cast as a good-willing and clueless investigator and the supporting characters are at least as interesting as his. What makes the movie works is that Mocky always manages to draw a thin line between iron-fisted anarchy and empathy towards his characters. At the beginning of the movie, Bourvil is put in charge of the investigation by a chief who turns out to be his own uncle, an apparently authoritative figure. At the end of the scene, when he's alone, you notice that the uncle is actually a diminutive man who climbs on a stool to look more impressive. This is the kind of slight touches that fill the entire movie.

One close relative to "La Cité de l'indicible peur" would be the "Twin Peaks" TV show. Actually, the movie forecasts the mood of "Twin Peaks" with a much lighter tone.

Dupontel's "Le Créateur" is a refreshing attempt at original directions in humor that put the director somewhat at odds with the French sensibility at comedy. However, this second movie is quite a disappointment for anybody who has seen "Barton Fink", Polanski's "The Tenant" or Roger Corman's "A Bucket of Blood".

The subject is certainly an assumed take on "Barton Fink" but the general mood is something of a mix between "Barton Fink" and "The Tenant". Polanski's movie from is almost ripped off, especially concerning the relationship between Darius and the other tenants in his building and the very dry and dark sense of humor.

Then the main attraction starts with the body count and I noticed the movie used the same exact progression as "A Bucket of Blood": an early accidental killing of a cat that leads to a killing spree.

Dupontel's movie swings back between these three references. Unfortunately, he isn't able to match any of them or combine them with some sort of grace. The most successful moments in his movies are actually short sequences coming out of left-field (generally involving religion) where Dupontel's taste for invention truly shines. Dupontel as a viewer clearly has good taste concerning movies. He still has some way to do to find real inspiration compared to excessive deference as a screenwriter and director. When he's able to do that, he could become a very interesting creator.

Contains Spoiler Our hero, Stephane, is a boxer who was cheated of a victory. He becomes a bodyguard on hire and works one time for a French congressman during the convention of neo-gaullist party RPR. The scenes were shot at the actual convention, so we have not very subtle cameos of current leaders from the party, including a speech by then RPR leader Jacques Chirac.

A guy with bad teeth at the boxing hall is jealous of Stephane and his buddy Pierre-Marie. The night of the election, he provokes a fight in front of huge posters of the French congressman. Stephane hurts him in the eye while buddy Pierre-Marie is killed by another guy (whom we never hear again of!). The guy with bad teeth then tries a few hours later to kill Stephane but another fight occurs in a subway tunnel and the bad guy is accidentally killed by a train.

Stephane then flees as he fears to be a suspect of a murder. His only helping hand is a very hair-brushed and clever journalist from a free TV channel (she despises left-wing leaders). She gives him a bed and records a tape of his confession that she broadcasts on her television news even if it's the day following French general elections. Of course, the police makes the connection between Stephane and the journalist and follows her to ask him a few questions about the previous night. When Stephane sees the police, he climbs on the roof, runs in slow motion and jumps from the building. Close-up on the face of the journalist's annoying child wearing an Indian hat who, for some reason, also climbed on the roof. Fade out. Beginning of end credits. Then a song starts, a duet between the singing child (who's neither a good child actor neither a good singer) and a talking Stephane.

This is an awfully bad movie who turns out to be one major source for laughters. Nothing works as planned. The storyline is full of voids and dead-ends. The plot is more or less that a guy is afraid to turn himself to the police and commits suicide. The movie is partisan (co- written by a critic working for French right-wing daily "Le Figaro" whose boss wanted then to buy a private TV channel) and was apparently approved by leaders of the RPR. But you cannot figure any connection between the long infomercial for the party and anything else. Key characters appear and disappear randomly. Stephane steals a gun from a cop but only to put it behind a sofa and take it back just before is final race!The only explanation I can invent for the boring presence of the child is that director Sergio Gobbi knew well his parents, who were maybe financial backers of the movie. The actors are directed without any clear intention. The fights are as clumsy as they can get, while several actors are former boxers... To show the soft side of Stephane, the director shows him petting his Yorkshire dog. It's hard to figure somebody would put so many mistakes and plot holes in so little time.

Actually, it's a laugh fest from beginning to end without any redeeming quality.

Awful and pretentious movie masquerading as a rip-off of The Decline of the American Empire. As in almost all the works of the director, novelist Alexandre Jardin (who cameos as the actor in the corny X-rated CD-ROM), women can change their stupid and selfish companion into a loving and sensitive partner. But they can't polish this turd. Unfunny one- liners woodenly delivered, curious (mis)cast, lazy direction and two cents romanticism characterize this one. Apparently, Jardin attempted to deliver strong truths hidden under rather crude humor. But, as the humor misfires, there's only tame crudeness in the dialogs and a drip state of the union between men and women.

In France, we had the luck to get "Gigli" a few months after America. Lopez and Affleck have never got the kind of media exposure they seem to have in the US. Actually, they receive a lot of exposure but not to the point they're making headlines every day.

So "Gigli" got a limited release, which will qualify it to a DVD release. There were a few posters in the streets of Paris, almost the only place where it was screened. After a week, bye bye "Gigli". I went to see this movie because of my own guilty pleasure in very bad movies, a hilarious feature in "The Onion" (about sneak previews reactions) and the idea of hearing J-Lo saying "penis".

I admit that "Gigli" is indeed bad. It might not be the worst movie of this year (for instance, it has some kind of coherence, a plot and actors trying to act, compared to "The Matrix Reloaded") but it's bad. There are a few good things in it. There are some scenes of true comedy, especially when Affleck looks at himself in the mirror, admiring his own muscles. It's clear that this scene, the meeting with Gigli's mother or some lines are truly funny and work more or less. Some of the bad press this movie received was due to his main couple media overkill. Some people were bored to death with the two leading actors. But Jennifer Lopez had even more ill-matched roles. She was a psychiatrist dressed as Virgin Mary, she was a maid cleaning up the bathrooms, she was an abused spouse. And these movies were hits anyway. Affleck, as a lead actor, has never got much charisma or good charm. He was the star of a few movies (Daredevil, Pearl Harbor, The Sum of all Fears) because there's no other actor in his generation that would fit the good guy character. But he's still bland. "Gigli" was one movie too much for either of them... So for the two of them...

But the main thing is that the movie is flawed from the beginning. It could not have been a good movie but with a few changes it would have certainly been a bearable movie.

1) The cast. The use of "glamorous" actors is utter stupidity. If there was any play with their public image, it could have been better but it's hard to picture two celebrities as mediocre people, no-names without any redeeming quality. Why is good-looking Gigli a truant rather than a model or an actor? And the dream of the kidnapped brother is to go to "Baywatch". Well, dude, you've got JENNIFER LOPEZ in front of you and you only think of Pamela Anderson? No wonder they put you in an hospital.

2) The acting. Jennifer Lopez, with her high-toned voice isn't convincing for a second. She just chews her lines and has from time to time a tongue-in-cheek smile to show the audience she's the smarter one. Ben Affleck is marginally better. He could be almost convincing as a dumb loser. But the biggest disappointment lies with the cameos of both Walken and Pacino. I've never seen them overacting so much. They make Robert DeNiro in "We're No Angels" or "The Untouchables" look like a model of understatement. I guess they must have received some good money because they show all their acting tricks during their scene. Pacino is particularly hammy and Christopher Walken doesn't bring anything to the movie.

3) The story line. Poor, poor, poor. Brest desperately tries to be original and he ends up with a gross and meaningless study of men-women relationships. In many movies you can have some plot holes. The audience will be indulgent or the holes will bring an eerie climate. In "Gigli", you can't help noticing these plot holes. Why is Gigli's boss stupid enough to ask Gigli to take care of this dangerous mission? What happens to the lesbian lover? It has simply no coherence.

4) The tone. Twenty minutes could have been cut and nobody would complain.

I guess the director tried to make a loose and free-minded satirical comedy about relationships between men and women. His script could have given at best a mediocre independent movie. It could only get worse when it was turned into a blockbuster. Instead of subtlety, you only perceive vulgarity. It was a no-win situation.

The only really sad thing about "Gigli" is not that it makes you waste two hours. It is that studios will be even more reluctant to give the green light to anything a little original.