jean-no

An excellent animated TV series about an occupied village's life during World War II, in Normandy, as told by children who witness and endure terrible events. Two of the main characters are Ernest and Colette, who came from Paris during holidays and had to stay in the countryside all the war long. They make a gang of friends called "les Robinsons", who meet in the forest and try to help the Resistance. The kids adventures are based on a collection of true stories. This show has all what lacks to the french children TV nowadays : great adventure, danger, sad stories,... The character design is done by comic books author Emile Bravo. Each episode is followed by a short animated story where a young director illustrates the actual testimony of someone who lived those times.

There is always "something" in a John Carpenter movie. In this one, the great "something" is a really great nonsense humor. Lots of sequences are, in my opinion, unforgettable. Like the moment when the invisible Chevy Chase manipulates a guy he knocked to use a taxi. I love the way the CIA guys do every mistake possible (acting as treaters and villains) or the way Nick Halloway tries hard to have a quiet and normal life - no invisible man had wished that before, I think. It is definitely not a great movie and even not the average John Carpenter movie, but it still is fun. The french-subbed dialogs are very funny, I don't know how accurate they are to the original dialogs.

Abdellatif Kechiche did very well with his previous movie "L'Esquive". But here we have even better. The story is simple : I'd say it is mostly about dignity, sacrifice and family love. The acting is brilliant. Habib Boufares is perfect, the young Hafsia Herzi is astounding, especially for the end of the movie. The actors are mostly non-professional people but the script is very well written and the characters are well defined, so this "amateurism" does great and helps the audience's immersion. The cinematography is very special (but never disturbing), with a lot of very close close-ups. The camera is "natural" as with Casavettes, but not "drunk", it is not a pain to watch and you don't get sea sick. The whole movie reminded me the Italian neo-realism and also a little of Renoir. Some people mention Pialat. It's a quite long movie but you don't feel it while watching, you just realize it after.

The image is astounding, the audience suddenly feels like discovering Virginia in the 17th century, or feels like what it has been for Pocahontas to see London. So that is great, and if I had to judge only the atmosphere and the cinematography, I would give the movie a 10/10. But a movie is also a story. Here, the story is a true story (I don't know - and don't care - how much it is accurate to the original story), and the script tells it to us in a quite "arty" way : while being told about the fort's discipline, John Smith thinks about Pocahontas (so we here about the fort and watch the girl running in the bushes). Lots of "off voice", with a quite tired tone, it is poetic, poetic and boring like hell. I had to end watching the DVD using the fast-forward button : I couldn't stand any more. Thus, I learned a lot, I mean that for the first time, what I watched seemed really true to me, not like if a time machine sended a camcorder back in 1600 but even better : it stills is cinema, with a beautiful image I told that already.

Everything is not bad in this fakumentary. The murder inquiry for instance. It shows how scientists followed trails and changed their mind when they got new elements. This kind of plot can make the kids think about how science works. Well it could, if for the rest it wasn't so stupid as quite all prehistoric movies are : BBC telling how marriage was millenaries ago (the young beautiful 2000's girl is exchanged with a goat) with a few soft-erotic images (the bride, topless, having some kind of a massage by other beautiful girls of the tribe) will stay one of the joys of my life. So what do we got ? Three different stories about a man who actually lived, built from the very rich elements we have (he has nice shoes, he had an arrow in the back, he used medicine tattoos, he knew how to make fire, etc.), but all these stories as well as the "mariage" scenes, are just clichés : violent ages, rough manners, etc. The movie talks about a period we know nothing about, and lets think we know quite a lot. I actually happen to find this fiction documentary quite lame.

Greek avenger and hit woman Elektra Nachios is one of the best characters of the late eighties comic books. She is silent, sharp and lonely. She is a murderer and a victim. That's how she is in Bill Sienkiewicz and Frank Miller's Elektra. That's how she is in David Mazzuchielli and Frank Miller's Daredevil. But that's not how she is here : over-sensitive, crying for this or that, doubting, talking, talking, talking... She survives the story only because she gets helped... Surprises ? Fun ? Images ? Clever plot ? Hmmm... You'll find nothing of that in this B-Grade blockbuster, nothing but a quite boring Jennifer Gardner (strong shoulders, yeah, so what ?), irrational characters and situations : the willing suspension of disbelief never worked for me here. The Daredevil movie was really not the best of all the Marvel franchises (but fairly done), Elektra was made by people who don't care much : I guess the director didn't take time to read the book, I guess that Jennifer Gardner plays in the movie because of an old contract she wished she could break... Well, really, a waste of time.

In the usual big-budget American action movie of those days, there would be, besides the action, a love story and a bad boy redemption. No such crap here, this movie is much close to "Escape from New York" (I'd say it is even a little kind of a remake) than to an usual action blockbuster. There is not a lot of moral but some kind of a political message about the french suburbs. Anyhow the action is great, the acting is surprisingly good (even if I'm sure that the young Dany Verissimo - the girl - is not very well used). So ? Worth watching. Violent, like kids schoolyard games, not horrific (no torture, no blood), not "adult" (even if Dany Verissimo happens to be a famous adult movie actress), but not too unbelievable either : while you watch, you're in, you believe in all, the action and the plot.

I love "debut films" telling how somebody has passion, works and succeeds : stuff like Billy Elliot, Fame (great and underrated), Flashdance, Beat Streat (also great and underrated)... Some are light, some quite dark (Saturday Night Fever for instance). Most of them talk about music and dance (but Rocky is of the same kind no ?) How much of those movies exist ? hundreds maybe. One country (at least) seems totally unable to produce that kind of movies, and it is mine : France. I can tell titles : "Paroles et musique", "bouge!" and maybe the lamest of all, "Alive" (there is also "le defi", but to be honest I didn't watch it). All those movies talk about a show-business that never existed (that way) in this country : talent, work and struggle for art are not very french I guess. "Alive" is the story of a musical show (but there aren't much of that in France) director who lost his talent when his wife left him. He want to be back, even if his producer refuses to help him and even tries to stop him. The show is lame, the music is lame, maybe the only good point is that one or two singers are good (but not well exploited : the (now famous) talented Christophe Willem appears just a little as a guy called Henri who won't fit...). The editing is unprofessional, with a constant musical background (stop that radio), the romantic plot is ridiculous, all is too fast, and goes without any kind of tension, the audience stays out of that bad soda commercial. Maybe the worst movie I've watched on DVD this year.

If you look for a french "debut movie" that is worth watching, well there is one actually. It's "French Cancan", by Jean Renoir (1955). Cruel and fair.

There are many reasons to love William Klein's documentary. The way his camera finds what things are, the way people quietly tell who they really are, the wonderful image, the premonitions too. But "The French" is special to my heart for another reason : I was ten or eleven when the picture was made, and I remember very well all the great tennis heroes of those times : Borg, Connors, McEnroe, Nastase, Navratilova or Chris Evert... They are the cast of this movie about Roland-Garros French Open. What can I say more ? The reason why I like this movie is quite nonobjective, but I'm sure it is a masterpiece even if you have never heard of all those tennis-men and women.

I know "Suske en Wiske" as "Bob et Bobette". My father used to love that comic series, that's how I knew it ("Bob et Bobette" are quite unknown in France). It is not an usual comic book : it is fun, it is full of ideas, it comes with its own rules, it is a whole universes in itself (Like Tezuka Osamu's mangas for instance). Therefore, filming that in live action can seem a foolish project, it requires a lot of things : a very special casting, much money for the special effects, a great cinematography and a good director. Well... The casting is quite okay. Sidonie is played by a man, why not (the voice could have been more feminine). Lambique, well, I'm not sure of the actor. Jerome is okay. Bob and Bobette are okay too, but Bobette seems older than Bob and she has too much breast. The image is poor, we don't understand all the actions, it is not very good. The directing and the editing are a little bit outdated, it is not far from the Benny Hill Show... Therefore, I'll get back to the books, this movie maybe shouldn't have been done. Maybe the very little kids can find some fun here.

As somebody already told it here, the DVD's bonus is terrible : slow and uninteresting, it mostly shows that a German/belgian production of that kind can not be really professional as other comics-based movies of the past decade, from the US (Spiderman, Xmen, Hulk, yes, but also older movies like Popeye or Annie) and even from France (Asterix).

What did I hope actually ? I'm not sure. Maybe just a funny priest action supernatural flick... Well so is that movie, but I didn't like it a lot. Gabriel Byrne (son of Al Pacino and Mel Gibson ? He looks like both of them anyways) is okay, and Patricia Arquette (Human Nature) is great. But the plot is not very good (Vatican is hiding secrets that would maybe make Lutherans right ? Not kidding ?), and worst, the movie making is quite bad, with a lot of stupid images (slow motion fading...) and a lot of bad habits from the worst music videos promos. The result is not disturbing, not enjoyable, not funny, not not-funny, not scary,... It's quite nothing. Worth watching if you live on a desert island with a DVD player and only the choice between watching "stigmata" and reading the boooring and lame "Da Vinci code".

(Saint) Bernadette Soubirous of Lourdes story is absolutely fascinating : how this poor little girl (her father was in jail) from a lost city in the Pyrenees managed to build the first french place of tourism after Paris ?! Well the movie doesn't say a lot, and the script is obviously written by people who didn't want to stick to the facts and nothing less... A three levels story (Bernadette's Story, a Science man's and, one hundred and fifty years later, his grand-grand-grand son) tries to make us believe that after all, "science doesn't explain everything" and that people who don't believe in miracles have the more irrational faith (they can't accept what they see). The facts are shown as "close to the real story" but it is not true at all. The intervention of JM Charcot is for instance a total anachronism, and not even close to what Charcot wrote in his essay about Lourdes. The acting is OK, the main role has the good face but plays Bernadette in the more candid way possible. Well the photographs of these times and the testimonies from her pals in convent shows she was not only that, she was also a strong temper, with authority, who liked to lead the others for instance. Well, here's what I'd say : the times are not well rendered and they are anachronic (about the science men beliefs for instance), the family's misery is not shown, the "miracles" shown are not the ones that happened (or were considered to) - for instance the first miracle of Lourdes happened to a friend of Bernadette who's arm was out (déboité in french... don't know in English) who putted it in the water and then had her bones put together again... In the movie it is a blind guy who recovers sight even if the medicine see his eye as dead ! The movie is in two parts. The first is bad, the second is bad too, but also terribly boring. Well I won't say it's worth seeing.

I didn't expect anything as I never read the book of Calaferte, nor I've seen any movie done by the same director. I even didn't know any actor except (surprise) the singer and former model Amina. I must say too that I am not against boring movies, I love Pasolini, Tarkovski or Kubrick, because their boring movies give me something anyways : great stories, things to think about for a whole life, great characters. I must say too that I'm not against movies talking about sex, whether they do it in an artistic, politic or even pornographic way... Well well well... Here, we have a self-contented movie about women and sex. The author (of the book ?) doesn't know much about women I'm afraid (but I'm sure he has a she-cat), and the director can film anything but sex (good point is that the actors won't be embarrassed but what they did on screen, as it is never even a little "hot"). But that terrrrrible movie, really terrible, is well photographed. The night scenes of Paris peripheric boulevard are nice, all the outside scenes are nice actually. That's one good point. For the rest, well, well, well, Mr director, pick a good book next time.

Pascal Thomas never failed, his movies are always pieces of life with bigger than life characters. If you liked "pleure pas la bouche pleine", "le chaud lapin", "celles qu'on n'a pas eues" or "les femmes les maris les amants", well you'll like "La dilettante" too. I never really noticed Catherine Frot (who plays the lead character Pierrette). For me she was one of a hundred faces that we can cross in french cinema. I was sure she was a good actress but nothing more than that. In "La Dilettante" she explodes, her character is complex, with a mix of impudor and decency, quietness and madness... I'm not sure that a lot of people could play that and bring to life a such character. But Catherine Frot is not alone here. Famous or unknown faces perform extraordinary scenes, like JF Balmer as the president of a Trial court who is afraid to get bored... Pascal Thomas makes fun of the comedy of our lives. Once again. His characters are bought to life by their extraordinary well written lines and by the actors perfect work. Once again. I'll definitely give it a 10/10 even if there is a very very light lack of rhythm sometimes.

Marcel Carné is a legendary film maker : we owe him some of the greatest movies of all times... "quai des brumes", "hotel du nord", "le jour se lêve", "les visiteurs du soir", "les enfants du paradis". It is well known that his movies done after world war II don't have the magic touch of the previous ones. If it is true, it shouldn't make us forget the later movies of Marcel Carné. "Terrain vague" has been done in 1960. The times were the ones of the birth of a strange animal called "the teenager" : post-war youth didn't want to stay "adults without rights", they wanted fun, and most of all, they didn't want to be like their parents. In France, Netherlands, Japan or the USA (and many countries), it happened eight years later : the youth conquered some power and didn't live like their parents did. In the movie, a gang of Paris suburbs is bored on Sunday and tries to make money by robbing. The life of great buildings is well described, there is a few very good characters (the others are not bad but not very well developed), the main actress (a former miss France) looks like France Gall (very famous singer some years later). The soundtrack is not "rock'n'roll", it's a quite classical symphonic music and this is interesting, the movie therefore is not the typical lost teenagers story. The image is a wonderful black and white (from Claude Renoir, nephew of Jean Renoir), there is a lot of great scenes. Dialogues are not as good as what Carné used to do with Jacques Prévert, but it is astonishingly modern sometimes. So : not Carné's best, but not a shame at all, a lot could be happy for their all life if they could make that kind of movie...

I didn't know any movie with Sandrine Bonnaire... I don't know why but knowing she stared in a movie always repulsed me. Stupid me. I didn't know Jacques Gamblin either except for "les enfants du marais", a movie I didn't appreciate so much (not bad, but a little boring except for Eric Cantonna's cameo). In "Mademoiselle", Sandrine Bonnaire plays a serious married working girl who meets an actor... They have a brief affair. That's all the plot, but it is really well told, that's all. I think it can be called a very good movie (let's give it a 9/10). Not the kind of movie that will change your life, but the kind you recall sometimes because of a funny sequence (there is quite a lot of that in this movie).

Guillaume Canet is a talented (I think... I actually didn't see a lot of movies where he stared) youg actor who decided to write and direct his own movie : "mon idole" (my idol). The result is a quite good little movie where the audience is never exactly sure of what will come next. Watching this I thought of movies such as Claude Chabrol's (like his "inspecteur lavardin" serie) but also some from Jean-Pierre Mocky. The main character is under pressure and so are we, there is definitly something here. Only lacks the moments when Broustal (the boss) could be seducing, could justify to be... an idol. The cast is great.

A group of french tourists are surrended by some kind of a balkanic war... They have to live this together. The two heroes are a 13 years old couple. Gérard Jugnot cheated on Victoria Abril (can you imagine that ?), the war experience will help to strengthen their love (pfff...). The hotel manager (Jean-Pierre Cassel) is gay and tries to hide his love affair with a bad singer. Valérie Lemercier, a secretary, tries to hide her whole life failure. etc., etc. : all these people will have to deal with fear and tensions... Some will suddenly become very brave, some not... That part is badly written, but the plot idea is quite good : balkanic wars happened a few miles from the western europe, in the place where people uses to go to holidays... There was something good to do with that. The movie is not absolutely bad. Most actors are good, there is a few poetic or clever scenes and the conclusion (don't understand nothing to this war, only thing to do is to escape) is terrible but interesting.

French humor cinema doesn't dare stupidity. Usually. Eric and Ramzy did a stupid movie, "la tour montparnasse infernale" and it worked quite well. La Beuze is of that kind : the two heroes are stupid, they do stupid things and they meet stupide people. And that's okay for me, it doesn't pretend to be much more ! There is even a very very light kind of emotion, yeap, something happens, I don't know what. Maybe it comes from the score, lots of 70's-80's music... Maybe it is because it's a blaxplotation movie ? Some Scenes will stay forever in my mind, like one where the two heroes yell "99 luftballon". I liked very much the last minutes too. I forgot to tell the plot : James Brown's hidden son, named Alfonse Brown, gets out of le Havre prison, he wants to stop smoking because he plans to become a singer. Like his daddy.

The author wrote for TV before but it is her first long-feature movie. Well it has a lot of what first movies have : good ideas, not so well used.

Maybe the writer/director did not "live" enough to have an indeep feeling of those terrible matter, love and sex, male and female, human or puppet.

Some parts are realy funny, some others lacks of something.

Some situations can't work but no fictional gift is made to make us believe to them so... I'd say : watchable, could have been much better (or much worst too). I'd love to see a such subject writen by a 50 old woman for instance. The acting is not bad but the parts are not always well written.

I have never been in any war but I'm sure this movie cannot show what war is. A photo-reporter doesn't see all the horror of the war in the same time. Army men don't shoot at the sky when they are working (that is what they do when they're bored). Nobody commits rapes in the streets where soldiers are fighting. Elie Chouraqui wanted to show all what is really war, but I've seen nothing but a musical promo much alike Johnny Halliday's "oh marie". You don't know who Johnny Halliday is ? Well good for you, I wish I had the same luck but I don't. Elie Chouraqui's intention is maybe ok (even if he maybe ignores that the Croatians were not angels) but the result is not worth watching. Try better : three kings, apocalypse now, the bridge over kwai river or even Pierre Shoendorfer's stuff.

Well, I expected a nice little movie, something like "princess bride". Ladyhawke is not of that kind at all. First bad point, the soundtracks is the worst thing I've ever heard, it is a typical 80's TV-Theme suitable for a news show. Awful. The image is not interesting at all too. The sets are poor, the clothing is not sure to choose between historical clothing and something more like heroic fantasy... Michelle Pfeiffer has the same haircut as in "maried to the mob" - something very eighties style then. At the end of the movie Rutger Hauer says to her - and it is funny : "you changed your haircut". Everything seems like if there was no money at all to make the movie and if each boss (set director, wardrobe director...) did his own thing apart. The storyline could be a good idea but the script is bad, long, unbelievable. What then ? A good thing : the cast is good. Rutger Hauer, Michelle Pfeiffee, Matthew Broderick and John Wood (who stared besides Broderick in wargames) are all very good even if they sometimes seem to start laughing. The whole thing is not worth watching except if you're a fan of one of the actors. I gave it a mercyful 2/10

I really didn't know what to expect from this one. Actually I expected a movie like "la chèvre", "les compères" or "l'emmerdeur" : two guys unfortunately sticked one to the other for some reason... Allowing great and funny actors show. But there ?... The actors are good (but Poelvoerde is not at his best here for me), the stunts and special effects are not far from the best action films. The story is not bad. The directing is fair. But something doesn't work at all. I'm not sure of what. Too much violence ? some too-stupid-to-be-true behaviors ? Maybe. So I didn't enjoyed it completely and I won't give it more than a 5 on 10.

I didn't pay a lot for that movie, and that is better : it is a standard fantastic/horror movie full of silly things, where all what is going to happen is clear from the very first seconds... The acting doesn't save the special effects that doesn't save the set that doesn't save the script that doesn't save the directing... Nothing saves nothing. The french baseline is "the redemption"... Well there is no redemption, this is a bad picture that contains no fun, no real fear, no great idea. Avoid it !

Two policemen discover men dead after a gunfight. There is money too. Lots of. And drug. What would you do, keep it, leave it ? The dead ones don't need money and they were drug dealers so would it be stealing ? Of course the two men steal the money, and hide it, and they swear they'll forget all about it for a while. Of course, there are some evidences, of course there is a federal agent who thinks that there is money missing... The situation will get worse and worse until the end. If you've seen "a simple plan", from Sam Raimi, you'll notice both movies have quite the same plot. Funny : both movies came out in 1998, it was in the air... But one of these two movies is very good, and it is not "route 9". Sorry for the work, for the actors - not bad actually - sorry every body, this movie is not a masterpiece. At all.