Films 2007-2011

Mission impossible: The Ghost Protocol

Ethan Hawke (Tom Cruise) has to prevent the end of the world, again, without any help this time, therefore the Ghost Protocol. He visits Dubai and climbs the second highest building in the world, Mumbai and survives about a thousand falls from the most sophisticated parking building in the world. And in the end,prevails of course and kills Cobalt, the Swedish nuclear terrorist (Michael Nyqvist, the journalist in the first three Milleniums ) with the strange theory that a nuclear attack will bring peace. All cars are BMWs or Ferraris, and all laptops are Apple, as usual. And all stunts are performed personally from Tom Cruise.

And now, back to our own Mission impossible: 2012!!! Happy New Year to all! Call Tom Cruise for help if necessary...

Contagion

A lethal virus that kills in days spreads from Asia to America. Very real. A rich palette of actors: Matt Damon as the cheated but immune (!) husband, Marion Cotillard as the kidnapped doctor, Kate Winslet as the WHO specialist, Jude Law as the charlatan selling snake poison, Gwyneth Paltrow as the cheating woman, orchestrated by Steven Sodergergh. No real plot. Courage, ce ne sont que deux heures, ça ira mieux après.

Cowboys and aliens

Daniel Craig is a poor and lonesome cowboy that was married to a pretty woman who got killed in an excruciating manner when aliens full of green, sticky fluid invaded their home looking for gold that, for some mysterious reason, keeps them alive. He then gets amnesia and a strange lethal bracelet. He somehow unites his forces with Harrison Ford, a local thug in the beginning who gets better in the end, to exterminate the aliens who keep looking for gold. And this is of course what they do in the end, with their pistols and the bracelet. Shootings, aliens and a brief love story could be the resumé of the film. The love story being between (ex) James Bond and an alien!

ium: The girl with the dragon tattoo

In this release, Daniel Craig is Mikael Blomkvist, the “Millenium” journal journalist, and Rooney Mara is Lisbeth Salander, the Gothic hacker. The story is well known (search in this archive for the original, Swedish version). Corruption and torture and rape in Sweden. The film is good, and especially Rooney Mara. It is strange to see Daniel Craig in an inactive role though. I guess the James Bond series has left a strong impression on me. Whole parts of the books are passed by.

Finissez en beauté l'année avec cette tragicomédie. Jafaar est un pêcheur pauvre de Gaza. Il n'arrive plus a pêcher abondamment, et sa maison a été séquestrée par des soldats Israéliens. Un jour, il pêche un cochon, animal interdit par les Musulmans, qu'il essaie de vendre. Ceci le mène dans une série de mésaventures farfelues, tragicomiques... Et un tas de quiproquos suivent. Un message d'espoir à la fin.

Temps d'acheter quelques cadeaux maintenant. Bonnes fêtes, bonne nouvelle année cinématographique!

Certainement un meilleur film que le précédent pour clore cette année perturbée, surtout si on est en quête du prince charmant. L'histoire d'une caissière qui maintient un blog avec ses tribulations et celles de ses collègues. Présence très agréable de Déborah François. Film français filmé à Bruxelles: Théâtre Royal du Parc, Gare Centrale, et le supermarché Parody (!) ne peut être que le Carrefour de Krainem! Souriez, vous êtes filmés!

I hope I am not late to suggest the film I am sure you always wished playing at a theater near you for Christmas but never dared to ask: Melancholia. A film about the end of the world, from the filmmaker that is known to treat his depression bouts by filming: Lars von Trier. In 2007, in the midst of a depression, he announced that his next film would be Antichrist, and he kept his word, by producing in 2008 a highly unwatchable film about a couple that gets paranoid when they lose their child and shut themselves up in a hut in the forest to try and figure this out. Melancholia is not really different: Charlotte Gainsbourg, the psychotic mother in Antichrist, is the sister of Kirsten Dunst, who gets married in a castle around the date of the supposed collision of the planet Melancholia with Earth. In the beginning of the movie, filmed with the camera in Trier's usual perpetuum mobilae mode (can give nausea to certain individuals), Kirsten Dunst is smiling non-stop. But in the second half, she changes her mind, breaks the marriage, becomes death-pale and announces that she “sees things”, while her sister keeps crying and Googling it to reassure herself that all will be alright and Earth and Melancholia will not collide, and the rest of the people in the castle run off, commit suicide or become mad (although the mother of the bride, Charlotte Rampling, is clearly mad already at the beginning of the film) . In other words, unless you are a very weird person that feels happier by measuring your own frustrations against the ones on screen, you may need to take your Valium pills with you, just in case. I must admit though that the image is absolutely fantastic. Certain scenes are simply pieces of art. And Kirsten Dunst charming, even days before her death. Oh, by the way, this is the film that had LvT sent home, after his bizarre declarations at Cannes (click here for details).

(Please don't hesitate to ask, if you feel you need more good ideas for films to watch during Christmas: I am here to help... )

Uday Husein was Saddam's son, notorious for his sadism. He is the Devil, who has to have a double, as his father did. He chooses an ex schoolmate for this role, depriving him of his previous life, family. Latif Yahia, the double, has no choice and is “remade” (in East Germany) to resemble absolutely to Uday, who keeps on sleeping with any girl he likes, and killing unpunished. A true story: I remember reading about many of the incidents in the news, while he was still alive. Both persons are magnificently played by the same actor, Dominic Cooper. The kind of film you may wish to watch alone (many scenes of violence). Otherwise very good.

The amazing story of ex-Miss Wyoming who fell in love with a Mormon. And when he vanished, she hired body guards and a pilot and went around the globe to look for him and abduct him when she found him in England. Filmed in a documentary way, she (Joyce McKinney) plays her role, as many others who are interviewed. Although extremely interesting to watch, I had the impression that, with the exception of the pilot, no one is telling the truth. But still, a true story that proves that real life beats anything.

Un très bon film sur la relation entre Philippe (François Cluzet), un tétraplégique hyperriche, et Driss (Omar Sy), son aide à domicile qui vient de sortir de prison et arrive à lui rendre un peu de vie. Inspiré d'une vraie histoire, ça cartonne, vraiment. Une très bonne bande originale, et deux heures bien remplies.

A middle aged American (Steve Carell) is abandoned by his wife (Julianne Moore) and has to be introduced to a thing he has never done in his life: go after women. He meets his teacher (Ryan Gosling) at a poch bar and has to rediscover manhood by getting dressed properly and learning how to speak to women. And things go pretty well (he soon has nine new lovers, one of them the lunatic teacher of his son) as long as his mentor helps. But things but turn less good when the mentor falls in love and the (ex-) husband discovers he cannot get over his wife, Julianne Moore who looks as classy as when she was twenty years earlier. I liked this film. Colorful setting (California, San Diego?) and very good acting, Unless you are looking for the solution to almost everything, cinema and this film are for you. The rest can wait. Until you actually get home.

A fresh film, based on the 1981 film under the same title, but infinitely better: in the former version, Arthur was played by Dudley Moore,and Dudley Moore is one of the actors I cannot stand. Russell Brand (Get him to the Greek, Forgetting Sarah Marshall) on the contrary is an actor I find absolutely fabulous, and this role fits him like a glove. Helen Mirren in his nanny role (Hobson) is perfect as well, as usual. In the film, Arthur is the heir of the very rich Bach family and he has to marry a girl he does not love. And it gets worse when he falls in love with another girl, Naomi Quinn (Greta Gerwig) , giving illegal tourist tours in New York. Very predictable end, but still a great 2 hours.

“I'll meet you at the altar”, says Edward, “I'll be the one in white”, answers Bella. And this is probably the cleverest piece of dialogue in the film,in which Bella gets to the ripe age of 18 and marries Edward the vampire. Since the beginning of their time together, he seems very concerned that Bella will spend her life with a vampire, but she is quite cool with the thought: born to be a vampire in a way. Anyhow, in a last minute confession, Edward admits he HAS sucked blood in his previous life, when he was young, but what the hell, nobody's perfect. Another novelty in the film, Bella tries high heels and sexy underwear, but we do understand that this is not her thing, she is rather the Sloggi kind of person.

At the day of the marriage, everybody gets invited to the feast, on one aisle the vampires, recognisable by their pronounced death-pale complexion, and on the other side the normal human beings, her eternally worrisome father included. Jake the werewolf arrives late, as always in Bella's life, but she seems so happy to see him that one would think that this marriage is doomed (can this be why the lady on my side kept crying during the whole ceremony film-time?)...

And when the ceremony is over the new weds take their shining new Volvo, drive to an airport and take a private(!) plane and fly first to Rio de Janeiro, carnival time, and then sail by a private yacht driven by Edward (he speaks Brazilian almost without an accent!) to a private island inhabited by a couple of local magicians and that looks like a spa so chic most of us will never even come close to visiting. (the financial crisis has evidently not yet reached Vampireland). And on this island, shit happens and Bella gets pregnant after her first relation with Edward. This is totally unexpected, since humans cannot get pregnant from vampires, they have a sort of built-in contraception for life. So how did this all happen, after just one exchange of bodily fluids?

Anyhow, Bella gets paler by the minute as the foetus grows about 30 cm a day and has to be fed pure blood in a Starbucks paper cup, with a straw (no kidding), to survive, and this is when Jacob the body-builder-to-be werewolf decides that he has to form an alliance with Edward, because Bella is very important to him (he can kill Edward some other time) and needs to be protected from the rest of the werewolves that suddenly want to kill the newborn...Unfortunately, Bella dies while giving birth, but the baby survives, and it's a girl. They will name her Renesmee, a strange mixture of her grandparents' names that will give her loads of problems when she will have to travel abroad in the future.

PS: In the next film, Bella will have become a vampire. Thought you might like to know...

Hannah is having a twenty-year relation with Simon. She meets another man and is attracted to him. On the day she has sex with him, Simon gets one testicle removed, because he has testicle cancer. While in convalescence, he goes to swim at the pool, and one night gets a hand-job from another swimmer. The problem is, the guy masturbating Simon and having sex with his Hannah is the same. His name is Adam, and the inevitable happens. Not only they meet, but Hannah is pregnant with twins (one for each of her lovers?), and totally unable to calculate who is the father. And they live happily ever after, in Hamburg I guess. Very German, but also brilliant in way. Lots of gay scenes. Trio is not an ice cream or a pizza: leave the kids at home.

Wiith George Clooney as the future President and Ryan Gosling (Drive) as his integral staffer, a very clever film full of suspense. Ryan Gosling is perfect even -or especially- when he does not speak and George Clooney very convincing as candidate for President of the USA. Philip Seymour Hoffman is as usual also excellent in the role of the chief counsellor of the presidential campaign. It would be pointless to explain the plot here, but this film will keep you awake until the very last moment. I particularly liked the final scene, which leaves The End to your own imagination.

Mr Popper (not to be confused with Mr Proper, a kitchen product) gets 6 penguins as present from hie dead father, that he has to care for in his posh Central avenue apartment. Film based almost exclusively on the fact that Jim Carrey has almost 50 times more facial muscles than the average person, and probably no bones (he can walk as a penguin even better than penguins).

This is the first time Ben Stiller does not produce in me this, how can I describe it? frustrated feeling of someone who is never in control of situations. This time, he is (almost) in control, until his boss, the owner of a tower hosting extremely rich, vicious and senile persons that need to be cared for as babies, loses all the money belonging to the pension fund of his employees. Ben Stiller and some of them decide to steal back the money, helped by Eddie Murphy. Also starring a golden Ferrari, that needs to be stolen from the building using the lifts. A pleasant 2 hours, sans plus.

Some geniuses have this: you can't decide if they are extremely talented people or extremely talented lunatics. Take Dali, for example, and his melting watches.But anyhow, among other geniuses and among a plethora of sick film makers, the star of Almodovar shines bright. With the exception of an almost standard Happy end tiré par les cheveux, the rest of his films are always so bizarre that it almost hurts: every hero has had a doomed childhood, a crazy mother (fathers are somehow rare in his films) that was a man in reality, or wished to be one, a transsexual friend and a transgender cousin, intertwined in a manner that you need to follow without gaps, and even so you'll never be able to even remotely imagine how the film might end. Antonio Banderas, more handsome than ever, is a cosmetic surgeon living with his ex-ophthalmic mother, an ex-nutcase from Brasil, in the ultimate Spanish villa that he also uses as a dungeon, if need be. He has produced a new and extra resistant human skin, mutated partly from pig cells (!) that he uses for burnt victims, he says, or to keep malaria mosquitoes away, because it also “smells differently”. Then one day, his half-crazy daughter (couldn't be otherwise) gets raped at a party by a teenager that had had about a kilo of different pastillas. She then becomes totally-crazy and, in the purest family tradition, jumps out from her window and dies (RIP). Her father, the successful extra-resistant-skin producer, sequestrates the teenager (Vicente) and gradually transforms him into an extremely beautiful woman made out of the new pig skin, giving her the face of his ex wife that was burnt in a car accident: an incident that gave him the urge to develop this kind of skin in the first place. And when Vicente the teenager becomes Vera the beauty queen, he decides to have a relation with her, for the sake of good old times.

Indeed we do. This film has received the highest ratings from critics, but you need to stay until the end to realise why. Tilda Swinton, who looks in this film exactly as a former neighbour of mine (useless info of the day), is the unfortunate mother of the child that would drive you crazy, something in between the exorcist and a spoiled brat that responds absolutely to nothing, and especially to maternal love: a mentally retarded evil-looking little piece of s... that manipulates everybody as if it were written in his genes, as if he was born to be mean. And in the end this is exactly what he becomes...

Extremely shocking: you may desire badly to hit this boy. Shown to broad audiences, it could be used for as a birth-control means

Who could imagine that Spielberg would one day make a film about Tintin! And yet, he had bought the rights from Hergé back in 1983. The plot is irrelevant. If you are interested at seeing this film, you are already familiar with it, as well as the Tintin universe. What I can say is that that I found the filming quite loyal to the original story on paper. Sadly, someone in the theater was stinking horrendously and I spent most of the time with my hand soap near my nostrils, as the hall was full and there was no place to move. Thus cinephile beware. Always have some perfume at hand for such cases, or at least a clothes peg for your nose.

The help being the African-American maids in the USA in the sixties. A very nice film about the meaningfulness these women faced at the time when colored people had to use different toilets and buses. Looks very real. You cannot but like this film, as well as its music!

Aron (James Franco) is a mountain climber that has the nasty habit of not letting other people know where he spends his weekends: usually in canyons more claustrophobic than a coffin. Until one day he gets trapped in one of them by a boulder that falls and pins his right arm against the canyon wall. This is a true story about someone who in reality had to cut his arm loose to free himself. It is a story of extreme courage, of sang froid and of how a perfect condition can get you through almost anything. Consider this when you feel nauseated by the view of somebody performing auto-mutilation, bearing in mind it's just a film, and you are in a dark theater, not a canyon. But more than this, this film could have been not just hard to watch, but boring as well: it's all filmed in a canyon, with just one actor mainly. And yet, it is as original as it can get! You will not be bored for a second. Breath taking.

Taylor Lautner, who is well known for being a werewolf in the Twilight series (see below) is having a normal happy life being the fils unique of two parents that love each other as if they were twenty. He IS twenty and leading a sporty life, practicing on a daily basis with his father a fight in between kick boxing and street fighting, whatever will let us admire his muscles more. Then one day he finds on the internet his picture as a child, on a page meant to be for disappeared children. By trying to find out what really happened, his life is shattered, in both the literal and the real sense. Full of action and muscles and the usual bad guys, the CIA kind (the costume-and-dark-glasses guys who knock on your door shoving their badge in front of your nose). Has a rather poor rating otherwise.

PS: The new Twilight: Revelation is ready to play on a theater near you! And don't miss this one: they really do it this time! Yes! And she gets pregnant! And then it goes awry, of course, and the Werewolf comes back to protect his not so secret love, the pale Bella. Though Edward is even paler than she this time. Actually, there's so much make-up on him that he looks like a japanese geisha. But who cares? A dark room, nice music, pop corn, and werewolves fighting it with vampires: it doesn't get much better, does it?

There is this little girl living in a slum in Colombia, which as you may have noticed is not exactly an exotic destination in Neckermann or TUI brochures and was rather known as being as one of the most dangerous places on earth, before being surpassed by failed countries as Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and, coming soon, Greece. Anyhow, the girl's parents are killed by some very mean, ugly latinos who live in lush villas armed to their (golden) teeth: people who all look either like Ricky Martin, or like Quasimodo -tanned version. The girl somehow escapes by sliding in a sewer and surrenders to the American embassy, bringing useful info to their services given to her by her father, brought in as data in a flash memory card, which she swallows and then throws up on the desk of the American diplomat. In exchange, she gets an American passport and as soon as she gets to the USA, she can only dream of one job: become a killer. And given her adoptive family, this becomes a very easy task. Ten years later, she is a successful assassin and her aim in life is to kill all (ALL) the members of the clan that killed her parents. And doing this, she gets much, much worse than Uma Thurman in Kill Bill. I mean, with her looks, any normal woman would dream of becoming Naomi Campbell, but some people are really weird, aren't they?

An impressive, noisy film, full of inconsistencies, but OK to pass 2 hours. The image is sepia, which as in other similar films taking place in Latin America renders the plot more credible. Please excuse me now, I have to go out and buy some dill.

Un peu comme on dit, le nouveau Beaujolais est arrivé, cette histoire est la même que celle de « la guerre des boutons » tout court qui, bizarrement, passe en même temps que celle-ci, avec un meilleur casting. On est en pleine occupation allemande en France, et dans un village deux clans rivales de garçons se battent, en emportant comme trophée les boutons des vaincus. De très beaux paysages qui font penser à une histoire de Marcel Pagnol. Gérard Jugnot, Kad Merad et Laetitia Casta jouent bien, mais encore mieux jouent Lebrac et Violette, la fille juive qui se cache au village de Longeverne.

That's an original film as I have not seen one for quite some time. The driver is Driver (Ryan Gosling, and we never learn his real name), who speaks for about two minutes in the whole film but in spite or because of that is even more imposing, with his eyes wide open and the music of Angelo Bandalamenti in the background that definitely gives the film a nightmarish David Lynch ambiance (he did write Mulholland Drive after all!). The Driver is a stunt performer that works part time as a driver for the underworld: driving criminals to the scenes of crime and getting them back safe, as normal drivers drive celebrities, for example. At a certain moment, he falls in love with his neighbor, Irene (Carey Mulligan who « lives in Covent Garden » (in reality)). The driver accepts to participate in a heist that goes terribly wrong to help the husband of Irene. And horrible murders of the Lynch or Tarantino kind follow, suddenly breaking the peace of this quasi silent movie. Let this not be a spoiler though, it's worth going to the movies and see what happens in the end!

This must be the first time I comment upon a DVD, meaning a film not (very) recent. I just finished looking it, and I must say I am a little perplexed.

I only know know two Japanese writers, Murakami and Ishiguro (Remains of the day, more recently his Short stories, for example). I have read and like both. But this film was bizarre even for Japanese standards. First of all, I can't recall a science fiction that takes place in the past: somewhere in the sixties, when the average lifespan is 100 years (!), there is a college in England with boys and girls that have been created to become donors when they get older (Charlotte Rampling is the Director of the college, fits her like a glove). During their foreseeable childhood, Kathy (Carrey Mulligan) falls in love with Tommy (Andrew Garfield), but Ruth (Keira Knightley) steals him from her, because she makes better sex, I think. Kathy only manages to get together with Tommy when Ruth dies, after multiple donations of organs (!). A faint hope is born when they try to obtain a deferral, to live together for some years before the donations that will kill them both eventually (he has had already two by the time they meet). Deferral is obtained only if they prove that they are really in love, a thing Tommy tries to prove by showing his paintings (!!). I can't tell more, but on the other hand, is this not enough for this late hour of the night? Anyhow, multiple themes arise. Bioethics, love, among others. The third issue arising being, why can't Japanese authors write something... mainstream? Jane loves Tarzan, or Tarzan loves Jane but had to kill her and so on, or Jane and Tarzan rob a bank, with another 9 people (Tarzan's eleven) ?

Somewhere where the sun never shines (Ireland), a «confrontational» cop (Brendan Gleeson, In Bruges) has to search a crime with the aid of a black FBI agent (Don Cheadle, Hotel Rwanda). The usual recipe, two different cops, one from America, the other one from Europe (not France this time though, as in The French connection ), that in the end will come closer. But it doesn't work, at least for me it didn't. I guess because there's not enough humor to match a Guy Ritchie film, and not enough action or folly either to match Tarantino. Snap je wat ik bedoel?

That's a much better one! And not just because Anne Hathaway is one of my beloved artists: classy and gracious. She is Emma, eternally in love with Dexter (Jim Sturgess), after they spend just one night together at graduation day, or rather, night. She becomes a teacher, he a TV show host. She has a mediocre life, he has a lot of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll. Until he gets old, his girlfriends leave him and his marriages break. Can it be that he is made to be with Em? Simple, I admit, but well played. Made me want to be him. But you'll have to watch the film until the end to understand why...

Il s'annonce assez triste cinématographiquement cet été... Hollywood n'a plus rien à dire, les remakes mis à part. Tiens, j'aimerais bien voir un classique américain, noir et blanc, dernière séance, dans un cinéma d'été, avec l'odeur du chèvre feuille de mon enfance.

Blitz is the nickname of a serial cop killer that kills all cops that have arrested him. Until the turn of detective sergeant Tom Brant (Jason Statham, as in the Guy Ritchie films) comes. Despite many gaps in the plot, Jason Statham as the paleolithic, brutal cop holds an audience in suspense and makes the film acceptable. But it is not a parody, as the films of Ritchie. It is full of explicit violence. Although this is something you may as well have to get used to, especially if you happen to be coming out of de Brouckère late at night after the film...

Crowne "with an -e. " Tom Hanks is Larry, a big-box company employee who gets fired because he has not been to college, and then decides to recycle himself by taking a college crash course, where he mingles with younger outcasts that like to go out on vespas (!) and develops a crush (with a -u this time) for his teacher , Julia Roberts, who hates her job as much as the Bad teacher (Cameron Diaz, see below), and also hates her husband, a writer who spends his days looking at "barely porn" pictures on the internet. And this is it, more or less. A very mediocre film, probably the worst I have seen from Tom Hanks, although you cannot but like this guy.

Il parait qu'il s'agit d'un couple qui essaie de survivre dans un misère tiers-mondiste très américain. Il faut le croire sur parole; je n'ai pas pu rester jusque là! D'autres sont restés. Faut quand même encore voir si ils n 'étaient pas endormis ...

Aussi vulgaire que le premier, mais sans faire rire. Les quatre amis voyagent à Bangkok, où bien sûr on voit un remake de leurs aventures pas possibles. Sinon, bof.. J'ai quand même bien aimé cet hôtel.... Dans le remake 3 je parie que Galifanakis va se marier. J'aime bien Zach, mais franchement, il ne peut jouer qu'un rôle: Adoenfant qui rend les autres fous.

I would not go as far as to say Bad film, but it is definitely 30% more vulgar than necessary. Cameron Diaz behaves like a blond Amy Winehouse, smoking (medicinal!) pot and concentrating exclusively to finding a rich husband, to take care of her (Eminem (!) plays the victim). The dialogues are smart and funny though, which explains the two stars, despite a very silly end.

Strange, but the lawyer is called like that not because Abraham Lincoln was his hero, or because Lincoln is the name of the university where he studied, but because he works at the back seat of a Lincoln Continental, one of those black, long prime ministers' cars the good old times when fuel was less expensive than Coke. Matthew McConaughey is the lawyer, cool and handsome, a lawyer for high profiled creeps. Until one of them comes too close to him and menaces him and his family life, that as any person's working on the back seat of a car is a mess: he has a child with a lady prosecutor, and we are led to understand that this is why they split: she got busy putting weirdos in jail, while he got busy putting them back on the streets. Ryan Philippe plays the guy with the dangerous attitude of killing prostitutes after their rendez vous with other weird, tattooed guys with strange accents and huge watches, while other, less known actors play the stereotypical Mexican illegal killer running around in California, invariably with a thin moustache and periodical jail time. A good film though.

Le gamin est Cyril, et il n'a qu'une chose en tête: retrouver son père. Mais à la place, et après plusieurs fugues de l'asyle pour jeunes où il est enfermé, il trouve Samantha la coiffeuse (Cécile de France, mais qui vient de Belgique en réalité) qui l'héberge. Film stressant et angoissant qui a reçu e Grand Prix au Festival de Cannes.

C'est un vrai Woody Allen, mais selon moi un de ces meilleurs des dernières années. Un jeune couple vient passer quelque temps à Paris avec les parents de la fille, avant leur mariage. Le futur mari est Owen Wilson (Gil) et la future mariée est Rachel Mac Adams (Inez), agaçante et matérialiste. Un soir, Gil sort marcher seul le soir et est emmené par un ancêtre Peugeot qui l'amène visiter tous les écrivains et artistes (Hemingway, Bunuel, Gauguin, Rodin, Scott Fitzgerald, to name but a few) qu'il aurait aimé rencontrer. Il rencontre aussi Marion Cotillard (Adriana, la maitresse des artistes en général), dont il tombe amoureux pendant qu'il se désenchante de plus en plus de sa fiancée, laquelle se trouve sous le charme (et les draps) d'un ami commun très pédant qui se trouve à Paris aussi. Et, au même prix, on voit parmi tous ces artistes au film Carla Bruni, en tant que guide au musée de Rodin. Chouette, non? Ah oui, j'ai oublié Cathy Bates, en tant que Gertrude Stein (j'avoue que cette femme me fait peur, probablement à cause du film Misery, qui me hante toujours...)

La morale du film: On aimerait tous vivre dans une autre époque dans le passé, laquelle on pense était plus belle. Parce qu'on est cons et que l'on est amoureux de notre jeunesse (cette interprétation est toute à moi).

A film about the work of Pina Bausch (click here for more about her ) that founded a fine dance school in Wuppertal (Tanztheater Wuppertal), the town you see often during the movie. Dancers of the school speak intermittently about her, a thing she seldom did herself, being rather the taciturn kind of person. But what an imagination!

This being said, this is a film you will either adore or straightforwardly hate. It's all about modern dance, meaning there are no constant patterns, all kinds of music and movement on the scene, and the scene itself is of primary importance. And this is where she excelled, among other things: a theatre-, circus-like presentation of dance.

I particularly liked the final dance, performed at many occasions during the film, where all dancers move in a snake movement, one behind the other, doing all those funny movements that mean nothing but still caress a very well hidden cord in our soul. Or should I say, my soul...

I know I shouldn't be here now, writing after hours about that film and not sleeping some profound REM sleep and relaxing, since tomorrow's another day, work and clocking in and out and again and all the same bullshit, but anyhow: I guess Haevnen (the -a- and the -e- should be stuck together, but my danish keyboard just broke) means Heaven, in danish, and the film happens in Denmark, voted as one of the best places to live on earth (please allow me the benefit of doubt), as well as somewhere in Africa, a place death-ridden and dusty as Somalia, or Sudan. Elias's parents are separated, the father (he "messed up", as he says in the film, meaning he exchanged body fluids with a person of the other sex, and his wife knew) is a Médecin sans frontières and the mother a blond nurse that spends her time not being able to forgive the father. Elias is shy and Swedish and (therefore) buggered in his school, until Christian arrives. Christian has just lost his mother of cancer and is full of anger, which he demonstrates practically by beating Elias's pesters and making bombs. And it all turns bad of course. An excellent film, and you should believe me, since I wouldn't be writing that at precisely 00.40 otherwise, now would I? It also has an excellent soundtrack, and very nice images. And who knows, it might one day make you want to visit Denmark, or Sudan, if you're a rather weird person. So this is it. Very good, go for it. This advice is free, just in case some insomniac had no idea how to kill une nuit blanche. Nite nite! (And if you're good, tomorrow, or rather later on today, I'll tell you about Pina, Pina Bausch, ze film quoi...)

This can be very confusing, but in this film, Robert Pattinson from the Twilight is not a vampire but Jacob. Not Jacob the Twilight werewolf, his rival, but Jacob Jankowski the veterinary student who has to abandon his studies when both his parents die in a car crash, offering us a rather gloomy introduction to the film. And since this is taking place during the American Depression, he takes the next train going anywhere, as the song has it, and it so happens that this is a Circus train, belonging to a madman that goes by the name August and is played by Christoph Waltz, always excellent in the role of psychotic, launisch personalities (won an Oscar playing the mad Nazi in Inglourious basterds by Quentin Tarantino, psychotic films-maker).

Anyhow, the thing is, on that same train is also riding Reese Witherspoon (and not: With-her-spoon) as August's femme soumise. The rest is history, and a rather amusing one, albeit sad by times, with lots of human and animal suffering, unrespectful of the Universal Chart on Human Rights and the Commission directives on animal well being.

I was not going to miss that one! Based on the book of Haruki Murakami, it gives as good as can be the story of Toru, the Japanese young student that seems to always fall upon strange, suicidary people. So much that in the end he has no energy left to love the girl that loves him and does not intend to kill herself in the next days or shut herself in a sanitarium in the middle of nowhere, among other girls that do not do much more than listen to the wind, pluck to eat and breathe. The Japanese nature, real lots of it in the film, is stunningly beautiful. Sweet and springlike and harsh and icy, the image of the film may deserve an Oscar. As for Toru (Kenichi Matsuyama, as if we knew him before), he plays very well his role. His mourning scene on the rocks by the rough sea is as touching as it gets.

Although there are small differences compared to the book, this film is based on a story of Murakami with a plot that most commons can follow, despite a rather original filming.

L'histoire d'un veuf, Alessandro, qui vit avec sa fille de 15 ans, Irina, mais aussi le souvenir de sa femme, morte en accident de voiture... Et ainsi la vie coule à Strasbourg, pendant que lui enseigne la musique Baroque, sa fille tombe amoureuse et son frère fait sa révolution enfermé à la maison, qu'il ne quittera avant que Berlusconi quitte son poste! Anouk Aimé dans le rôle d'une patiente terminale, à laquelle Alessandro lit des romans...

Un film très doux, de la vie et de la mort, et en même temps drôle. A voir.Incroyablement belle musique baroque italienne, je cherche le soundtrack...

A very enjoyable film about two friends that go on a culinary excursion, in order to write a critic for the UK Observer, with Rob Brydon as Rob (seen in the excellent Lock stock and two smoking guns of Guy Ritchie) and Steve Coogan as Steve. Coogan is the food critic, joined by Brydon at the last minute, when Coogan's relation is put on “pause”. Coogan is a womanizer, Brydon is happily married. And the film is of course not about food, but about their lives, as Coogan goes on sleeping with more or less every woman he meets while at the same time missing his girlfriend, and Brydon geniously mimics all the English speaking actors you may know: Woody Allen, Al Pacino, and the best of all, Michael Caine.

Une histoire basée sur un livre de Marcel Pagnol qui se passe comme d'habitude au sud de la France, dans des paysages rêvés, pleins de verdure et de soleil. Où vit Daniel Auteuil, puisatier de métier, avec ses cinq filles, dont Patricia (Astrid Berges-Frisbey), la plus belle et qui tombe amoureuse d'un pilote riche, le fils de M. Masel (Jean-Pierre Darroussin,qui est marié à Sabine Azéma, méconnaissable).

Ceci se passe au début du dernier siècle, càd au dernier millénaire, durant la guerre de 1914-1918. Quand même les pauvres savaient parler, respectaient des valeurs et savaient se comporter, et avant qu'ils deviennent le triste quart monde d'aujourd'hui, qui mange du fast food, grossit, insulte et ne veut qu'une chose, être riche. J'ai adoré Marcel Pagnol à l'école, et ce qui est bien, c'est qu'avec lui on sait que la fin ne peut être que Happy. Daniel Auteuil comme le puisatier et père de Patricia est émouvant. C'est la deuxième fois qu'il joue un film de Pagnol (le premier : Manon des sources avec feu Yves Montand).

Colin Firth is prince Albert, about to be the king of England. And I could say, he is the king of the cinema as well right now. A fantastic performance, as he very well knows how to play men with feelings in trouble, especially the kind that are too fragile to speak openly about them. Geoffrey Rush is very good as the King's speech therapist (he played Trotsky at the film Frida!). Go for it!

La version italienne du « Bienvenus chez les Ch'tis »(Danny Boon y fait même une très courte apparition). Alberto est un employé de la Poste Italiane, qui aimerait se faire transférer à Milan. Mais quand sa bluffe ne marche pas, il se voit transférer en Sicile, qu'il considère comme un exil. Très vite il devient pourtant accro et la préfère à sa ville du Nord, en essayant tout de même de cacher la vérité de sa femme hystérique. Un film comme il faut, plus rafraichissant que Pepsodent. Seul problème, il est presque sorti des salles...

It would seem Natalie Portman, the Harvard graduate turn actress, really is the actor of the year: she won the Academy Award for Best Actress, the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama, the Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress, and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role for the film, as well as in many other guilds and festivals for the Best Actress award.

The film is as obscure as it gets. Nina (Natalie Portman) is a well known ballet dancer who would do anything to perform as the principal dancer of the Swan Lake, directed by Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel). He thinks she can perform as the White Swan, but not the Black Swan, because she is rigid. Actually, Nina is paranoid, a thing that appears gradually at the film. She is haunted by Lily, a less rigid dancer who is also a bi, fantasizing about Nina. Nina finally gets the role, but at a lethal cost.

Vincent Cassel is disturbing, as usual, to watch, as for Natalie Portman, she is pretty even when Black.

George Clooney is “Il Americano “, hiding in an Italian village after his last assignment -he is a free-lance assassin (!)- fails somewhere in Sweden and he has to kill, among bad Swedes with white hair, his girlfriend as well, without hesitating for a second. In Italy he meets Clara (Violante Placido) who works in a brothel as they don't exist in Italy in such villages, because Italians never pay for”that” (ha!). And, as you could expect from somebody with the poor looks of George, he falls in love with Clara. Yes, ladies and gentlemen: Those things happen. And from there on, the scenario is very predictable: Georgie will fall ever more in love the girl, Clara as well with Georgie, but he will not be able to get away from his job and in the end, seconds before the sheer happiness of moving with Clara to a place where nobody will recognize them (I would suggest Venezuela, Yemen, Mongolia and other not recommendable places) he dies on the horn of his car, and it keeps on honking, and we get the sky scene and then the THE END scene. The typical movie sequence of those that have chosen evil jobs that will follow them until the very bitter end.

This being said, I liked this rather slow (in the beginning) film. George Clooney looks as damn good as ever, although in some of his morning gymnastics scenes I strongly suspect a double was used. And if this movie wins an Oscar, it will have to be for the pictures. Absolutely stunning. You will want to go and live in Abruzzo, Italy as well. But ladies, Georgie was lately married and lives in Como (sort of), as for the girl, gentlemen, it's going to be easy: all you'll need is his looks...In the end, you may have to content yourselves with espressos. Nespressos, of course, what else?

Matt Damon (George Lonegan) is a psychic that has decided to change career. He becomes a blue-collar worker in a sugar factory, but it seems that all the people he encounters want to speak with the dead, and he sometimes has to give in and help them communicate. And each and every time, he gets more depressed. Cécile de France is a TV anchor that has a Near Death Experience during the tsunami in the Pacific and decides to learn more about how life (way of speaking of course) is after death, and George Mac Laren (his first film, and he is very good) is Marcus AND his twin brother Jason. When Jason dies, Marcus also wants to communicate with Jason.

A very moving film however that turns around these three persons and the way they are touched by death. But I seem to like Matt Damon regardless of the film. Quite a transformation compared to Texas ranger LaBoeuf! (see below, True Grit).

“Rooster” is a Marshal that prefers drinking to killing outlaws, although not always in this order. Mattie, a stubborn young girl (Hailee Steinfeld) wants to track her fathers murderer Chaney and has the brilliant idea of hiring the Marshal in question (Jeff Bridges as”Rooster” Cogburn). The same murderer seems to be wanted by the Texas Ranger LaBoeuf (!)as well, played by Matt Damon. And they all depart for a magnificent journey in the desert, not quite the place to be for a 14 year old girl.

Jeff Bridges is known for his southern accent (“Crazy heart”), but in this film it would seem that his lips are stuck with glue, therefore subtitles necessary. Actually, he speaks quite the opposite sort of language than Mattie Ross, the girl that hires him and uses the language of an attorney at a young age.

Benoit Poelvoorde est un agent douanier qui déteste les Français. Son collègue de l'autre côté de la frontière (Danny Boon) est amoureux de sa sœur, et ceci ne fait que compliquer les choses. Un petit rappel de comment étaient les choses avant l'union douanière, qui semble donnée et oubliée de nos jours.

Je trouve Benoit Poelvoorde agaçant des fois, même si très comique. Le racisme sur lequel se base tout le plot est aussi agaçant. Mais le public a applaudi à la fin du film. Parce que ce n'est que sur écran. La situation actuelle entre Flamands et Wallons ne donne pas lieu à d'applaudissements, et pourtant la racine est la même. La peur de ses voisins.

If you are a Facebook fan, iy may be interesting to know how this whole business was set up in Harvard, of all places. The dialogues are so rich you may need subtitles, or an interpreter, especially when Marc speaks. You will be able to admire the Palo Alto Facebook headquarters as well. As for the rest, it may be as far from your daily life as Palo Alto itself . The film will moreover leave you with many questions unanswered, as for example who sold whom, and for how much money.

I am ashamed to say I fell asleep. I was very tired, this end-of-the-year-beginning-of-the-new-year lethal kind of tiredness, and I had only glimpses of Angeline Jolie and Johnny Depp that I somehow managed to put together on the way home. Shame on me. Not for the film, but for driving half asleep...

Anyhow. The film resembles more a James Bond movie. It happens in Venice so that, in case you don't like the plot, you'll definitely like the scenery: Palazzi, wooden vintage speed-boats, luxury and glamour, fantastic window views, the full Monty... Johnny Depp is supposed to be the Tourist. Actually, he is just a tourist, but not The Tourist, as you will understand in the last 5 minutes, if you are awake by that time. And Angeline Jolie is a British agent, working to uncover a man named Alexander Pearce, with whom she was and is in love but who has stolen some millions from the British Government. I will not tell you more, because it would be long and complicated, but also because it is getting late and I don't want to fall asleep on the screen. Again.

As you can very well imagine, the film has a Happy End, as any man leaving on a speed boat in Venice with Angeline on his side would freely confirm.

Audrey Tautou est Emilie, coiffeuse squelettique et cynique dont les yeux paraissent plus grands que jamais. Sa mère Maddy (Nathalie Baye), récemment quittée par son mari, se laisse aller de plus en plus jusqu'à ce qu' un jour Emilie la coiffeuse reçoit une belle lettre d'amour anonyme, écrite par son ouvrier timide Jean (Sami Bouajila) qui s'occupe à rénover son salon de coiffure. Emilie fait un forward de cette lettre d'amour à sa mère, pour la laisser rêver un peu, et le burlèsque commence.

La scène la plus parano du film et qui risque de l'être pour le reste de l'année 2011: Emilie entre dans son salon un beau matin pendant que Jean se fait engueuler par deux Chinoises, lesquelles il regarde bouche ouverte. Et quand elles ont fini, il commence à les engueuler à son tour, dans un chinois impeccable. Il s'avère alors qu'il était interprète à l'Unesco, laquelle il a quitté parce que, lors d'une déprime, il a frappé l'ambassadeur italien! Il s'avère aussi qu'il est très content avec son travail dans le salon de coiffure, sans responsabilités.

John Brennan (Russell Crowe) is a professor whose diabetic wife Lara (Elisabeth Banks) is imprisoned although innocent. He then dedicates all his life and energy in organising an escape that seems impossible, and in real life definitely would be. After a brief encounter with a criminal that has written a book about escaping prisons (!!) (Liam Neeson), Russell Crowe manages to obtain false but active social security numbers (?), false passports and false driving licenses. As for the money, nothing as simple as robbing a methamphetamine lab, killing guys that you would never frequent. I will not tell you how this whole enterprise ends, but this film managed to keep me tense for from the first minute till the last.

The new film of Sofia Coppola we have all been waiting for. Considering the actual crisis and despite the fact that she is one of my favorite producers (Lost in translation, Marie Antoinette), it almost amounts to hubristo produce a film like this one nowadays.

Johnny Marco is a successful star bored to death. He lives in hotels and is flirted by supermodel girls at every corner. He drinks and has sex constantly, at least when he does not fall asleep during the act. Then one day, his 11 year old daughter visits him and spends time with him, and Johnny (Stephan Dorff, never seen this guy before) reconsiders his life, to come to the conclusion that he is less than nothing. What a pity! I who always thought that money and glamour and sex could save one's soul...

The film is slow beyond slowness, and the only nice thing about that is that the scenes where sexy models dance in front of Marco to lull him to sleep last long as well. As for the rest, there are hardly any dialogues, the film has no beginning, no end and, I am sorry to say, no central part either. But it definitely has one social advantage (and I hope you appreciate at least the depths I am going into to think positive): it shows to you that no matter how handsome, young, rich and sexy you are, you can always end up a human wreck.

I cannot count the Christmas films I saw this Christmas on TV, while indulging on rich Christmas cookies.

My favourite was Fred Claus, with Vince Vaughn at the role of Fred, the brother of Santa Claus. I particularly liked the soundtrack (the Silent night Sinead O'Connor version at MUSIC this week is a sample).

Αν ο ψεύτης ήταν επάγγελμα, σίγουρα θα πληττόταν από ανεργία πολύ χειρότερη από αυτή που μαστίζει σήμερα την Ελλάδα. Τέλος πάντων…
Ο Θοδωρής Πάρλας είναι ο κλασσικός Ελληνάρας: ικανότατος, συμπαθητικός και ψεύτης. Έτσι γρήγορα καταφέρνει να πιαστεί σε μια καλή δουλειά παρά τω υπουργώ Υγείας Φερέκη. Όπου τα κάνει στο τέλος κουλουβάχατα, διότι ο επαγγελματίας ψεύτης δεν αποτελεί βέβαια εγγύηση επιτυχίας και τρεις και η κακιά του μέρα. Βέβαια, στο τέλος όλα "λύνονται" εν είδει καθάρσεως, που κι αυτό αποτελεί γνήσιο (αρχαίο) ελληνικό προϊόν. Και ζήσαν αυτοί καλά και μεις καλύτερα. Με μας τι γίνεται….

Το φίλμ είναι όπως και ο Ψευτοθόδωρος: συμπαθητικό και ψεύτικο. Διότι την σήμερον ημέρα κανείς δεν ελπίζει σε κάθαρση, ούτε σε από μηχανής Θεό.
Πρόκειται για ένα ρημέικ του Ψαθά. Παρότι έχει πεθάνει, φαίνεται πως η ψευτιά αποτελεί εσαεί πραγματικότητα για την Ελλάδα.
Συγχύsτηκα πάλι…
Το λίνκ για το Imdb

In this one Robert de Niro and his wife visit Ben Stiller and their daughter and their stepson and things turn out as expected: Bad.

Now, that's another story, one you could never imagine by the title of the film.

Kassie (Jennifer Anniston) is childless. She has split with Wally, her ex boyfriend (Jason Bateman) but still hangs out with him as friends. Wally is still in love with her but is too cool and civilized to at least try and get her back and too weak to walk away.

Then one day desperate Kassie gives a “Get Pregnant” party. We all know NY is a weird place to live, but in case you are not aware what this is, in our case it is a party given at precisely the right moment of a woman's menstrual cycle where a sperm donor is invited to have sex with her, while her friends have fun next door and celebrate the event (by the way, the wife of the donor is also invited: cool!). And this is such a merry happening that Kassie invites Wally-the-ex as well. Amazing how advanced people are in NY!

Wally-the-ex (probably the only normal person in the film, because humanly weak) gets of course drunk and by accident spills the sperm of the donor and has to replace it secretly with his own. And as you can imagine, Kassie then gets pregnant, ignoring who the real father is. But things get more complicated when she starts dating the donor.

This film may be the frightening (to me) omen of how relations between the two sexes are going to end up soon, if this is not happening already. Still, if you can survive the first 15 minutes of the film, all actors are playing real well. Anniston has definitely had an aesthetic correction of her lips but is always charming. Patrick Wilson (Little children, Hard Candy) is excellent as well as the donor. As for me, I learned a new expression: “to hijack a woman's pregnancy”, meaning to switch your own sperm with her donor's sperm. Didactic...

Πολύ όμορφη ταινία για την ξενοφοβία, ένα θέμα που δεν έχουμε δει συχνά στον ελληνικό κινηματογράφο. Εξαιρετικός ο Καφετζόπουλος. Η ελληνική πραγματικότητα στο έπακρο, όπως και η ελληνική έπαρση: είμαστε οι καλύτεροι, όλοι θέλουν να είναι σαν εμάς, είμαστε στο επίκεντρο, είμαστε ο ομφαλός του κόσμου.
Ο Σταύρος, ψιλικατζής στην περιοχή της Ακαδημίας Πλάτωνος, διάγει μια μίζερη ζωή με την ηλικιωμένη μητέρα του. Η γυναίκα του τον έχει παρατήσει, είναι μεσήλικας και ξενόφοβος, ιδιαίτερα με τους Αλβανούς, και η μεγαλύτερή του απόλαυση είναι να παίζει ποδόσφαιρο με τους επίσης μεσήλικες φίλους του στο δρόμο. Μέχρι που ανακαλύπτει ότι είναι και ο ίδιος Αλβανός, με αδελφό γείτονα επίσης Αλβανό, τον οποίο μάλιστα συχνά έχει επιτιμήσει.
Διδακτικό.

Angelina Jolie is not who you think she is. She is a Russian spy and a CIA double agent and looks like one of those iceberg beauties in Smirnoff advertisements (see pic above). When her identity is unveiled by her CIA colleagues, she has to flee, killing everything that moves while doing that. But when her husband is assasinated by Russian agents, she changes her mind and becomes pro-American, really this time. Not quite convincing, isn’t it? . Uma Thurman was much more convincing as a member of the Tarantino assassination group (Kill Bill). Angelina Jolie can't even run fast in a way that looks as if she has done that before. As for the rest of the team, Russian ruthless agents with scars and heavy accents, we've seen that before as well.

Robert Downey Jr is an architect with a life, money and a very pregnant wife. When he meets accidentally Zach Galifianakis and has to share a car to cross the USA to get back to his loving wife, things get really out of the way and the result is a hilarious trip through nice scenery and very weird people and situations. As it always happens in this very clichéed film, the co-travellers become very good friends in the end, the one without a life adding a touch of spice and humanity to the other's life, seemingly full but always with some more place left for a nice friendship. Clever dialogues though. Robert Downey Jr is one of my favourite actors (I've never seen him play bad). Zach Galifianakis in the role of the problematic (mildly put) companion he is very good as well.

Peut importe si vous aimez le manga,il est difficile de ne pas aimer ce film inspiré d'une histoire japonaise de manga et plein de tendresse.Un homme («la cinquantaine») se trompe de train et arrive au village dans lequel il a grandi. En visitant la tombe de sa mère, il se retrouve dans son corps d'adolescent d' il y a quarante ans. Ainsi il revit ses années de puberté, avec tout ce qu'il y avait de bien (son premier amour) mais aussi du mal : la disparition de son père, qu'il essaiera de comprendre et d'empêcher, en sachant tout le mal qu'il a provoqué à sa famille. En même temps, Thomas, le héros principal revit sa puberté en faisant ce que nous dans «la cinquantaine» aurions souvent aussi voulu faire quand on était jeunes: être plus gentils et compréhensifs avec nos parents. Dire à notre mère qu'elle était belle. Demander notre père s'il avait été heureux. Aimer nos frères autrement.

Quel dommage que l'on ne peut pas vivre aussi dans un manga pour un peu de temps. Traiter nos proches comme on aimerait que nos enfants nous traitent.

Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren and John Malkovich are ex CIA agents that know one too many secrets. They are RED (Retired and Extremely Dangerous), ex spies living a more or less stressless but not extremely happy life, until one day they find out they have the become the target. They will then reunite their forces to try and find out what is happening, giving a show of what a RED ex-spy can do. John Malkovich is hilarious, as the paranoid ex-agent that sees Big Brother everywhere. Even worse, he is always right! A very enjoyable film.

Quand une grosse compagnie d'amis part en vacances ensemble, on sait que c'est comme quand plusieurs personnes se lavent dans la même baignoire: inévitablement l'eau devient bientôt sale. Et c'est ainsi que ça se passe dans ce film, qui a quelque chose d'américain en soi, un peu comme St Elmo's bar. Et à la fin, au lieu de bonnes vacances en Normandie on se trouve avec une encyclopédie des relations humaines,toutes matières couvertes: riches, pauvres, amoureux, pas amoureux, straight, gay, vivants et, hélas, morts aussi. Un très bon film plein de très bons acteurs (Cluzet, Cotillard entre autres) et qui fait plaisir de regarder. Et ce n'est pas souvent que je m'exprime ainsi pour un film français... Allez-y pour pleurer, et pour rire. Une bande originale plus américaine que ça on meurt. Je suppose que le titre signifie, « préparez vous à pleurer »: j'ai vu une femme pleurer en sanglots à la fin du film. Paradoxalement, ça ne peut être qu'un bon signe...

Whatever, but choose another film! Comme déjà écrit ailleurs, navet total, au point que l'on n' aurait plus envie de lire le livre, qui pourtant a meilleure critique.

Julia Roberts, femme ayant dépassé la quarantaine, quitte tous ses hommes pour ensuite se demander pourquoi elle les a quittés. De surcroît -c'est navrant- ils restent tous amoureux d'elle! Et quand son chagrin devient franchement insupportable, elle quitte tout pour se retrouver à Rome, au Vietnam et enfin à Bali, où elle tombe sous la voiture et le charme de Banderas, überstud plein de testostérone, qui la sauve d'un malheur encore plus malheureux. Et c'est incroyable comment avec un thème aussi banal on peut avoir un tel succès -je parle du film,durant lequel on se lasse pas de voir Julia Roberts en very-close-up, ou est-ce juste de la pub pour son chirurgien esthétique?

Un album de belles cartes postales sans plus, et qui dure un peu trop (2h15mn à peu près). Je vous aurai prévenu...

Kristin Scott Thomas est Julia, journaliste enceinte, qui doit emménager avec sa famille à un appartement du Marais. Apprenant que cet appartement fût habité par des Juifs, elle cherche de retrouver les traces des premiers locataires de ce même appartement qui en 1942 furent déportés à Auschwitz pour subir l'issue fatale habituelle. Bizarrement, les noms de leurs deux enfants n'y figurent pourtant pas dans les listes des personnes exécutées, et Julia tentera de retrouver Sarah, la petite fille qui après avoir échappé du camp de transition français, fût hébergée par la famille Dufaure. Ceci faisant, sa propre vie est bouleversée par les détails qui seront graduellement dévoilés concernant la malheureuse vie de Sarah.

Un film très émouvant.J'ai beaucoup aimé, malgré la nuit blanche qui l'a suivi...

The film is not new, but it's this thing I have with Twilight: I somehow must comment on it!

In this film, Bella comes once again to the difficult point where she must choose between a vampire (Edward Cullen) and a werewolf (Jacob Black). And you may think this is just happening in films, but in reality it can happen to anyone: choosing between somebody that has a very strong, usually T-shirt-less torso (Jacob) and somebody that has actually proposed marriage (Edward) is not easy. And Bella Swan (please notice her family name) is once again so lost and nerving you may want to throw something on her on the screen. She loves Edward, who is actually dead, but she cannot get rid of Jacob either, who maintains he does not “buy” her repeated but unconvincing -given her way of staring at him with her eyes half-closed, a bit like Christophe Lambert- confirmation that she's in love with a dead person (a paradox in itself: a person is usually alive). This may also be due to the fact that Bella, once a normal girl called Isabella, needs both of them to protect her from being sucked by the Newborns. And, as you very well know, the Newborns are a fresh vampire army that, as explained in the film, are extremely aggressive because vampires simply cannot resist to suck blood for the first seven months of their life (later on they cool down and become pale, as Edward has). How can such elementary knowledge escape you, faithful readers of Multikulti? Now, the Newborns were created by the vicious Victoria, when Edward killed her boyfriend by smashing his head like a porcelain vase thrown against a wall. And in the ferocious battle that ensues, between vampires, werewolves and newborns, plus a stupidly staring real human and soon-vampire-to-be (guess who), Victoria has her head smashed as well like chinese porcelain: what a pity.

In the battle, Jacob gets wounded though. And this is vaguely where the film ends, with Bella and Edward on a flower field (again), more or less discussing what they will buy for their new home from IKEA.

BUT: there remains a crucial question unanswered: Will Bella remain human after marriage, or be kissed to death, as she wishes? In other words, as Shakespeare correctly put it centuries before: to be or not to be? And I guess this will be the theme in Twilight 4:The kiss of death (the title is mine).

One last detail I must share with you: in this film Bella confesses she is a virgin. If you will excuse me now, I have to feed my cat.

Tamara used to be the ugly duckling of her village. After becoming a successful journalist and having had plastic surgery to correct her nose, she returns to her very British village to sell her mother's house. As in all very British villages, you have very old people and Mini Coopers running around, as well as extremely bored youths, but mainly, there is a lot going on underground. Passions, secrets, frustrations. And it's as if everyone falls in love with the wrong person. Sleeps with the wrong woman. Or women. But it is a comedy, from Stephen Frears and a very amusing film indeed. The actors unknown to me, except Tamara, played by Gemma Arterton.

"Your mind is the scene of the crime" seems to be the tagline of this film, that I did not manage to like or "incept" for that matter. And "Deception" might be a better title, one reason for that being that, when you choose to go to the movies, you are supposed to at least vaguely understand what the title is all about*. Or else, it's like going to a chic French restaurant and pretending you can understand the menu. Or see a Picasso painting (from his cubist years) and nod that yes, of course you grasp why the cow has two eyes under her left ear.
In other words, I would tell you what the film is all about, if only I knew.
But OK, since you insist, here's what I think I incepted…
Leonardo di Caprio has a very weird job: influencing decisions by entering the dream world of those who take them. Example: you want to sleep with a girl that would not even spit on you. You sedate her and make her dream that she just had fantastic sex with you, and two healthy twins as well. Next thing you know, she is begging you to sleep with her. As simple as that! But in the film, it's more complicated than that. There are different levels of dreaming, and you never know when someone's dreaming of a dream, or dreaming of having a dream where he dreamt of something else. And in the end, only Christopher Nolan (the director) knows who is dreaming what. Moreover, Leonardo di Caprio has a wife (Marion Cotillard) that despite being dead and despite loving him, or rather just for that, wants to kill him so that they live happily ever after again a normal life. Seems like a paradox, yet the whole film is based on one: that you will really believe such nonsense is possible.
But there is reason to be optimistic. Inception II will come with 3D glasses AND an instruction manual
Thank you for your patience.

*in dictionary.com, Inception means: a. beginning; start; commencement, or b. (British)a. the act of graduating or earning a university degree, usually a master's or doctor's degree, esp. at Cambridge University. or b. the graduation ceremony; commencement.
Go figure.

Now that's an easier to grasp film. And the main reason for that is, Sylvester Stallone, the monosyllabic actor, not only plays in it but is the Director as well! So here's the story:
The Expendables, a gang of ageing mercenaries (Mickey Rourke one of them), are assigned to go to an island-country named Vilena (no relation whatsoever to Vileda, the Belgian brand of cleaning products) in the Gulf of Mexico and restore order by killing everything that moves, including the mean dictator Garza that has taken power and cultivates opium for a living. In the process of burning down the whole island, Sylvester meets Sandra, about 40 years younger than himself and a campesino revolutionary, and guess what: they somehow get a liking to each other! Mind you, Sylvester Stallone has had at least some plastic surgeries since Rocky I, and is nowadays so thin one can count his veins: how can any female resist?
But the Save-Vilena enterprise somehow turns nasty, the Expendables have to leave, and Sylvester (Barney in the film) has to go back, at least for Sandra, who in a dramatic turn of events turns out to be the daughter of Garza. Isn't life strange sometimes? But in the end all goes well, and the film ends with a knife throwing game among the Expendables. Now, you didn't expect that, did you?
But trust me: if life confronts you for your next movie-outing with the difficult choice, Inception v. The expendables, choose the second one. You'll learn at least some Spanish words.

PS: This film has not yet hit the Belgian screens. With some luck, it never will.

And finally, a real film, which could be my best thriller up to now, for the year 2010. Benjamín Espósito, a retired justice, tries to write a novel about the case of a woman called Liliana Coloto. A brutally raped and murdered married young woman, whose case was solved under his jurisdiction, twenty five years earlier, by figuring out that the killer was a man looking intensely at the woman in many family pictures. Being retired and away for many years, he decides to come back to Buenos Aires and ask the opinion of Irene Menéndez-Hastings, his former chief, on his novel about that case. Having been in love all his life to this woman belonging to the upper class of Buenos Aires, the film takes a personal turn. He asks himself, how would his life be, had he better understood the secret in her eyes. Remains the annoying fact that the condemned killer of Liliana Coloto is at large, working for the police, although his whereabouts are not known. When he decides to find more about that, the film comes to an end that you cannot even come close at guessing. Excellent.

“Forget the original, get a good copy. Everything’s a copy anyway, and Joconda a copy of Mona Lisa”, goes this film. And here’s my own example: We all know how complicated human relations are in real life. Sometimes so much that we sometimes choose not to relive a copy of their perplexity and prefer to stay alone. Still, when we go to the cinema and see exactly that, a worn out relation between Juliette Binoche, disenchanted but not resigned, and William Shimmell, the symbol of British phlegm but not the man for her, we applaud and are content to have relived the copy of our own battered relations during our free time!
In other words, the film is so well done, so anti-Abbas Kiarostami (people talk a lot, although when William takes the stair, he is filmed all the way up, all three flights of stairs!) , that it becomes tiring in the end. I felt relieved to get out in the fresh air after the film. Another reason for this were of course the 50 degrees C in the theatre.

C'est Jacques Tati en dessin animé. Réalisé par Sylvain Chomet, qui a fait les Triplettes de Belleville, encore un excellent dessin animé, parmi mes meilleurs. L' amour entre un magicien et une jeune fille un peu naïve qui rêve d'être riche. Excellent dessin, des jolies couleurs, malgré une tristesse qui déborde (le film se passe en Ecosse, et il pleut non-stop). Tati ressemble fort à lui-même. Un très bon dessin animé pour adultes.

Encore une fois, Shrek l’ogre vert-chou est excellent. Un film plein de fantaisie et de bonne musique. Shrek, piégé par Tracassin qui l’amène dans le passé, essaie de retourner dans le présent, auprès de son ogresse aux cheveux roux, laquelle entretemps s’est transformée en amazone. Le mulet toujours excellent, tandis que le chat botté a pris quelques kilos… J’ai bien aimé le film ,ainsi que les lunettes 3D, que j’ai d’ailleurs l’intention de porter cet été comme lunettes de soleil.

Le film le plus glauque de l' année. Une sorte de road-movie à la française, avec que du mauvais: des gens trèeees bizarres, des situations atroces, des endroits malsains et macabres et un acteur principal qui a pris tant de kilos qu'il justifie le titre du film, lequel pourtant se réfère à sa vieille moto, qu'il dépoussière pour aller chercher des papiers manquants pour avoir sa pension. Gérard Depardieu est le conducteur de la moto et Yolande Moreau sa femme, aussi désabusée que lui. Pendant ce périple nocif de recherche de papiers, Isabelle Adjani suit Gérard Depardieu en tant que vampire, avec le crâne cassé et ensanglanté, à cause d'un accident de moto il y a 40 ans avec la même mammuth, auquel elle a succombé. Atroce et effrayant. Filmé un peu à la Lars von Trier, la caméra qui bouge et le gros grain qui fait mine de filmage "progressif", on devient à la fin malades nous-mêmes, tellement les acteurs sont convaincants (de où d'ailleurs ses trois étoiles dans les critiques des journaux).
Faire des erreurs est humain. Ne pas opter pour le Mondial ce soir là en était une…

Giovanna Mezzogiorno is Ida Dalser, the mistress of Benito Mussolini, played by Filippo Timi and legally married to a woman that likes to play with and talk to chicken.
Needless to say, when one is the mistress of a paranoiac dictator one is treated accordingly. As Benito Mussolini gets more lunatic and famous by the day, pushing his country in war and destruction, Ida is neglected and turns equally paranoid, after the dictator sees that she is locked in a psychiatric asylum, separated from her child, called also Benito Mussolini. And father Mussolini sees of course that the child follows his steps, a thing he pursues in his usual way: he locks Benito Junior in another asylum where he turns even more paranoid than Benito Senior. The conclusion being: never, ever have an extramarital affair with a paranoid dictator, especially if you are planning of becoming pregnant anytime soon after.
In the original scenes, Benito (means "blessed" in Italian) resembles frighteningly with Adolf Hitler, his friend (sort of) and ally. Until the latter changed opinion and started massacring Italian soldiers because they sang too much for his likes, and he had more weapons and folly (see Captain Corelli's mandolin for details).
This being said, acting is very good. By the way, Filippo Tomi plays both father and (adult) son. It’s in the family…

We are indisputably far, far away from the origins of the title of the film: Sex in urban NY. Sex is the last thing you'll want to have after the film, and I never liked cities either. NY city is not there either, since the four beauties travel this time to Dubai. One (Kim Cattrall) falls in love (sort of) with a Danish (!) architect (they make love on the beach and get arrested), the other one (Sarah Jessica Parker) kisses her ex after they meet in the souq and immediately calls her man to ask for forgiveness and understanding, while the other two worry and cry intermittently for various vague emotional reasons. As for us, we pay 10€ to learn more on the subject. Although hardly in mid 2010, my award of the silliest film goes with confidence to this one. And I expect even worse. People, intellectuals, have had a fatwa on them after only a fraction of what is said or done in this film in an Arab country, in a plainly vulgar way.

With Ewan McGregor as the Ghost. The writer that undertakes to make legible the autobiography of Pierce Brosnan, who plays Adam Lang, the ex Prime Minister of England living on an island in the area of Massachusetts. A very thrilling thriller indeed. Every moment that passes it gets more intriguing. This film is said to bear many resemblances to the life of Tony Blair, the ex British Premier who for years acted as the American agent on European soil. Although parts of the allegation are false, the story bears more than a hint of truth. Oh, I almost forgot: Kim Catrall from Sex and the city plays as well, and quite well indeed!

Millenium 3 (Luftslottet som sprängdes, more precisely : Le palais des courants qui explosea)

I have been trying to understand, when exactly did the palace explode? Was I asleep, again? The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, the English title, is not that clear either. But anyhow: Lisbeth Salander (NOT Salamander) comes back alive Terminator-wise, after being massacred by her father (a Russian half-burnt ex-spy she as a young girl tried to burn alive) and half brother, a German who, if he weren’t a 6ft ex-wrestler, could have been a blond version of Frankenstein. Moreover, this guy has an obvious advantage over all his enemies: due to a very strange sickness, he can’t feel pain. Some girls don’t have it easy, that’s for sure. As a consequence, Naomi Rapace as Lisbeth tries to do what any decent girl would do in her place: kill those who put her in this mess in inventive ways: among the characters of the film, a vicious paedophile psychiatrist (Doctor Teleborian, another name that gives the creeps), a corrupt judge, her half brother (and half monster, for the other half), and many other bizarre-looking people, except Mikael Blomkvist, the editor of the magazine Millenium, who, after three books of the late Stieg Larsson, we know has a crash on her. OK, she’s young, he’s fiftyish, but still. He is a normal looking guy, whereas she looks as if she just came out of a gothic dungeon. Love is blind, indeed.
The bonus of the film: the extremely original way Lisbeth finally gets rid of her half brother. Try and guess how! Hint: She uses an electric tool not meant to be used on humans, assuming Ronald Niedermann (!), her half brother, is one.
Stieg Larsson, the author of the books, died after climbing a fly of stairs because the lift was broken that day. His partner (they never married) is on court against his father and brother, who claim they own all the money. But SHE has some hundreds of pages of another unfinished Millenium. She seems to be in good condition, and you never know. Many people would rush to see even half a Millenium!
Ce n’est qu’ un au revoir, it would seem.

Khan is an Indian boy suffering from Asperger's syndrome. A pathology that makes patients frustratingly clever, despite a somewhat strange social behaviour (they hate the colour yellow, for example). Khan needs for some reason to go to America and say to the President of the USA that he is not a terrorist. Needless to say that even pronouncing the word gets him into a lot of trouble as soon as he gets there. This does not only happen to actors. Shakrukh Khan, the actor impersonating Khan was questioned during two hours lately as he arrived to the USA for the promotion of the film!
In between Bollywood and Forrest Gump, this film is about terrorism, the problems between the hindu and the muslim community in India (and abroad), racial hatred in the USA, the 9/11 attack, the Katrina hurricane, plus a love story and some deaths.
This is also the reason it lasts definitely 45mn too long (146mn in all). But despite plainly bad acting (according to western criteria) of Kajol as Mandrina, Khan's wife, Shakrukh Khan is lovable as Khan, Rizwan Khan, pronounced with the epiglottis. The result is a watchable film, with a bit too much loud music.

Jeff Bridges is an ageing country singer with old fashioned aviator’s Ray Bans in deep, very deep America. As every self-respecting country singer in deep, very deep America he sleeps on his cigarette butts and vomits in garbage bins, then sleeps with anything that moves after the show if they don’t mind doing it on cigarette butts. Then one day, he meets this girl and realises, in a very moving scene, his motel room is ugly. But how good can a relation between a Santa Fe chic journalist with a kid and a low life, ageing, hard-smoking, wharfing country singer turn out to be? If you want a clue, I suggest Bukowski. Only, he did not play guitar.
In spite of another mediocre critic of mine, this film is very good. In Belgium it was dropped after one only week, because it didn’t sell enough pop corn before the show. But you know. Some people think Kiarostami is a town in Japan. Thus, see for yourself.
PS: Why the hell does pop corn at the cinema bar cost as much as a meal in the pizzeria around the corner?

Jean Claude Trichet (President of the ECB) declared yesterday that Europe is having its worst financial crisis after the Second, if not the First World War.Greece is enduring its worst financial and moral crisis since Otto, its first (German) king -pure coincidence of course. And today, I heard in the news that weather-wise, this May is the worst in the century in Belgium.
Bad, very bad records all of them.
But in between horrific news, I think I found some good ones: this film! Probably the best in 2010, if not since madness on screen became en vogue. Matthew Vaughn (Harry Brown, Stardust, Snatch, Lock Stock etc) surpasses Tarantino, the Dali of cinema, in this action movie. Needless to say, it is very, very violent, and if you don’t like violence, Italian lunatics with a Sicilian accent and western music, there is always Nanny Mac Phee 2 playing right now.
The film goes about the story of an antihero, or a hero, I don’t know really, but it is so much fun that who cares, as long as it softens the impression of the above records. Mark Strong (the bad guy in Sherlock Holmes) as Franc d’Amico is a mafia drug dealer that is having a hard time understanding who kills his guys. Nicholas Cage is excellent as usual as the lunatic father trying to kill all the mafia people. Excellent soundtrack. Please don’t fall in love with Mindy, the dream girl, she is something like 11 yo, OK?

Ben Foster is Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery in this film. He has just come back decorated but demolished from Iraq, having had a wonderful time until an IED exploded almost on him. As he reports back to mother country, his superior, Captain Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson), who has spent time “sunbathing” (according to Will) in Kuwait in the past, informs him about his new job in the US army: he is about to become a Messenger: The person who announces to the families that their children, husbands, wives and mothers, have died in combat, and how sorry the state secretary of the US is about that. A bit like George Clooney announcing to people that they are fired in “Up in the air”, only infinitely more tragic. Quite a shocking film. For all the horrors committed, one cannot but remain surprised from the easiness with which such films (i.e. Green Zone, see below) surface in America. In many countries they would hang the director, burn the film and shut down the cinemas that dared speak such truths.

Matt Damon is fighting the war in Iraq in this film. During the beginning of the invasion, he quickly realises there are no WMDs (weapons of mass destruction) in Iraq. Trying to go public, he meets moustachioed Iraqis, CIA employees, a blond Wall Street journalist and clean-cut but mean government officials, each one pursuing a different goal. And in the end he prevails, a habit to which we are used by now. Good action film, looks very true. Noam Chomsky could have written the scenario...

Avez-vous été en Moldavie? Non? On se demande pourquoi… En tout cas, Tatiana, l' héroïne principale de ce film, y vient et ne veut pas retourner non plus. Femme fatale et en même temps désespérée (la combinaison qui tue), elle estime que pour le bien de sa fille elle peut tout se permettre, même s'il s' agit de charmer un docteur retraité, militaire des droits des immigrés mais en même temps actuellement octogénaire et un ietske gaga (Michel Aumont) et lui voler toute sa propriété, rendant ses enfants (Fabrice Lucchini, l' acteur aux yeux ronds, et Karin Viard, qui dans tous ses films se retrouve elle-même à un âge plus ou moins tardif) de plus en plus inquiets de l'état mental de leur père, ainsi que de leur fortune progressivement évaporée. Un sujet très actuel, qui peut donner aux hommes l'envie de visiter la Moldavie, et ses Tatianas. Certes moins cher que de les rencontrer ici…

I am suggesting exceptionally a film that has not hit the screens (I think) in Belgium yet (it has in Greece). Katie Jervis (born in 1991) as Mia lives in a miserable British suburb, in a sad condominium, with her pathetic Barbie-mother and her poor little sister. Her passion is street dancing, which she does in a very sexy but not explicit way. One day she falls in love with one of her mother’s boyfriends, and the fun begins. This actress (had a child at eighteen) was discovered as she was having an argument with her boyfriend on a train platform. She has such a talent and dynamism and I hope we’ll see her again. A tough film, no happy ending, but I couldn’t get my eyes off her, which is of course normal, because this is what films are for. Excellent!

In 1954, Leonardo di Caprio is Marshal Teddy Daniels, trying to investigate the disappearance of an insane person from an insane island, where everybody is extremely freaky or dead. A very strange thriller that gave me the creeps and nightmares. As time passes, you realise that apart from insane people, the film has an insanely weird scenario that left me totally unconvinced, despite a plethora of good actors (Marc Ruffalo, Max von Sydow, Ben Kingsley, among others). Yet, people and critics liked this film. Needless to say, they are wrong…

Another mediocre film, where even the British charm of Hugh Grant can’t save face. Anyhow: in the film he is married to Sarah Jessica Parker. Or rather was, until he slept with another woman and they divorced. As it often happens, not only she does not want to reunite (he somehow does) but wants to see him suffer intense pain, which sums up more or less the film. I can’t make this a spoiler, because frankly, I couldn’t finish the film.

When Robert de Niro sees the family Christmas reunion that he attempts after the death of his wife fail, he undertakes a long trip through the USA to try and visit his 4 children. It does not work out as planned though. Taking adults by surprise is often not such a good idea... And watching him calling in the night from a telephone booth his own house, miles away, to hear his wife’s voice still on the answering machine is something that he can play very well and that will therefore break your heart. A nice but sad film. Still, in real life I doubt I could reconcile as much trouble and sorrow as he does in the end over a Christmas turkey…

Carey Mulligan is amazingly good as Jenny in this film, her first actually (!), playing a secondary school girl that adopts a taste for poch life, to which she is introduced by David (Peter Sarsgaard), who is not who we think he is. It all happens in England in 1961. Everything is so British you'd think the Beatles are going to cross Abbey Road any moment during the film. Alfred Molina, the father of Jenny, also falls in the trap, under the spell of the charismatic, rich and well-connected David, for whom Jenny gives up almost all her principles and future plans. The rest can wait until you go see the film, which is just as good, since this is a very young, fresh film, with very clever dialogues. The soundtrack is very interesting..

I find it hard to believe that one can sometimes get so much pleasure for so little money by going to the movies. Because this is what happens when you go to see the Single man: as soon as Colin Firth appears and acts you understand you are about to have a very pleasant ,albeit sad two hours. Colin Firth is a homosexual university professor in LA, somewhere in the sixties we guess. Stylish and full of grandeur, handsome and the image of correctness (yes, he is British, in life as in the film), he is the model of the educated gay. The prologue to the film is simply heart breaking. The words he speaks to describe how he pains since his life partner (Matthew Goode) died in a car accident are so dignifying and deprived of kitsch they must be the best way to summarize the loss of someone we love: the pure sadness of somebody that simply cannot stand anymore being left back and alone. “Waking up hurts”, as he so simply says it all, in just three words.

But there is of course Julianne Moore, an ex lover and friend who still loves him and needs him, and is just so beautiful she should also have had an Oscar nomination (as Colin Firth for this film) for being herself.
The single man nevertheless decides to kill himself (not really a spoiler, since this becomes obvious quite early in the film). But on his last day among the living life comes up with so many nice things and spoils his plans, makes him think twice about joining his ex lover...An excellent film in my opinion, at moments it made me think of Visconti's Death in Venice.

In this film signed by Guy Ritchie, Sherlock is trying to save the world, à la-James-Bond. He is so clever he could tell your life story just by examining your dandruff. He throws himself to the river Thames from high places, fist-fights and kicks in the most accurate ways. He also has a beautiful mistress that, albeit ill intentioned in the beginning, falls for him in the end.
Sherlock Holmes is after Lord Blackwood, a very mean guy dressed and looking like Dracula (Mark Strong) that is about to depart on a killing spree, in a way that frighteningly reminds us of biochemical war. However, there are some differences between JB and SH: JB does not have a Watson (Jude Law, yes ladies!), in other words a private assistant and doctor, because he never falls ill, and SH does not have a boss (Mi), because no one would willingly hire him in the first place, given the poor hygiene he lives in. But in the end, who cares, as long as the world is saved from doom?

L' histoire d' une fille, Precious, sérieusement obèse qui essaie de survivre dans un milieu impossible urbain américain. Enceinte de son deuxième enfant, elle essaie de se réintégrer dans une école et ainsi recommencer une vie.
Certains films présentent la réalité de la vie de certains tellement bien que, étant la victime de leur propre succès, sont pour autant très difficiles à regarder. Ceci n' est probablement pas le film de votre samedi soir, sauf si voir des gens se jeter systématiquement des objets lourds sur leurs têtes (du style, mère jette un poste de télévision pour tuer fille), violer leurs enfants et s' exprimer avec un vocabulaire de trois insultes mal utilisés ne vous choque pas. Ca aurait bien pu être un documentaire sur l'enfer que certains individus vivent.

An unconvincing film about Nelson Mandela and his idea of uniting apartheid-torn South Africa by winning the 1995 Rugby World Cup. Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon, orchestrated by Clint Eastwood, the director, produce a mediocre result, with disappointing bad acting at times. Examples:
-Matt Damon, the leader of the team, comes home to his white , four-member family, with five tickets. “Why five?, asks his equally blank father. Matt Damon looks at the black cleaning lady and the five of them smile a Pepsodent smile, meaning: Racism is over and done in our home!
-The body guard of Nelson Mandela asks his boss how is his family. Nelson Mandela, slightly irritated, answers back: “My family is 65 million people”, meaning the whole South Africa. A useless lieu commun in a totally predictable, manichaistic scenario. Where the best thing by far is the poem by William Ernest Henley, Invictus.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

George Clooney has a strange job. It involves firing people whose bosses "don't have the balls to do the job themselves". To do this, he flies almost non-stop to all possible cities of America and considers airplanes and hotels his home, cumulating miles that seem to make him an extremely content, happy guy. Still, it would seem weird if the film not only started but also ended like that, wouldn't it? But let this not be a spoiler. I liked very much this film. Because Clooney is the main hero, and he seems to really be in the skin of Ryan Bingham and in general of the man that does not take himself all too seriously and CAN reconsider. Because it's full of clever dialogues. Because it is so actual. Because relations are seen by the eyes of the grown-ups George Clooney and Vera Farmiga (the mother of "The boy in the striped pyjamas") v. the unbelievably young professional Anna Kendrick (born in 1985, played in Twilight 1 and 2).

In the beginning I thought this film is like moussaka (I always like a culinary metaphor…): you never really know what’s inside, but you like it and it tastes better tomorrow. But now that tomorrow has come, I rather think it’s like the painting of a grand maître: you may not know what it’s really all about, but it creates a feeling in you and produces respect. Nemo Nobody, Mr Nobody (Jared Leto) is the last of the mortals living in 2092. Visited by a journalist that tries to understand how his life was when people still died, sex was not “irrelevant” and people still ate meat, Mr Nobody indulges in his past, remembering how his life was and how it could have been, had certain things not happened or had happened in another way. A deeply philosophical film where the Butterfly theory constantly surfaces. Or, as Tennessee Williams said (my free interpretation): Everything could have happened in another way, and it would still be fine. A pleasure to watch and at the same time didactical, this film is signed by the Belgian Jaco van Dormael (L’ huitième jour).

Was bekommt man, wenn man kühlen Norden, mediterranes Temperament, gute Musik, leckeres Essen und ein paar schräge Typen vermischt? Soul Kitchen – eine köstlich amüsante Komödie von Fatih Akih (Auf der anderen Seite, Gegen die Wand, Kebab Connection ua) in der auf den ersten Blick ein heruntergekommenes Restaurant in einer abgelegenen Industriezone Hamburgs im Mittelpunkt steht, das sich jedoch im Laufe der Geschichte von einer Kantine, wo der Höhepunkt Bier, Schnitzel und Pommes sind, zu einem Szene-Restaurant mit Live-Musik entwickelt wenn ein neuer, crazy Chef die Küche übernimmt (Birol Ünel als Shayn Weiss, einfach ausgezeichnet). Der Besitzer Zinos Kazantzakis (Adam Bousdoukos, Gegen die Wand), ein in Hamburg aufgewachsener Grieche der denselben Namen wie der berühmte griechische Schriftsteller trägt (!), arbeitet mit diesem Restaurant hart an seinem Lebenstraum und versucht nebenbei seine Freundin Nadine (Pheline Rogga)– eine typische nordische Schönheit aus betuchtem Hamburger Hause – glücklich zu machen. Sein Bruder Illias (Moritz Bleibtreu- Lola rennt, Adam resurrected, Der Baader Meinhof Komplex, Elementarteilchen, Munich ua) hingegen versucht im Leben Abkürzungen zu nehmen und sitzt deswegen im Gefängnis, erkennt aber letztlich, dass das auch nicht das Wahre ist. Als Zinos Freundin beruflich nach China zieht, beginnt für ihn der Teufelstanz. Hin- und hergerissen zwischen seiner anspruchsvollen Freundin und seinem Restaurant, das nicht besonders gut läuft und das von verruchten Immobillienmaklern (Wotan Wilke Möhring, Udo Kier) ins Visier genommen wird, nehmen die Ereignisse in seinem Leben ihren Lauf. Man könnte meinen, ein Lumbago (von Kemal den Knochenbrecher (!) behandelt), die Steuerbehörde und Sanitätspolizei im Nacken seien genug, der Höhepunkt wird aber erreicht, als ihn die Freundin wegen eines anderen verlässt, das Restaurant vom Bruder verspielt wird und die Wohnung abbrennt. Aber wie das oft so ist, die totale Zerstörung macht Platz für Neues.
Ein absolut fesselnder Film, der mit seinem Witz und Charme vom Anfang bis zum Ende überzeugt.

Complicated? This is the most predictable film of 2009! The story of a divorced couple where the divorced man (Alec Baldwin) starts flirting again his ex-wife (Meryl Streep), that cannot choose between him and her new, uncomplicated boyfriend (Steve Martin). As uncomplicated as that.

Not as good as the first one, but still amusing. Edward Cullen the vampire leaves Bella, arguing it is for her own good, given the difficult life a vampire nowadays has (can't find a job, can't live in a sunny climate, can't buy mainstream stuff to eat, want to suck the blood of their brother's girlfriend and has to move to another place when real people realise them vampires never get old). Bella gets so sad and tries as an antidote anything thrilling and extreme, such as motorcycle riding with types you'd never frequent, cliff diving in a sea not exactly as appealing as the Mediterranean and cross country motorcycling without a helmet. Then she starts slowly falling in love with Jacob, an Indian bodybuilder type of boy that becomes a werewolf and fights vampires when he gets angry. Problem for our Bella, torn between a vampire and a werewolf: the harsh reality for strange girls that seem to consequently be falling for weird non-humans. Although Jacob is infinitely more handsome than the pale Edward with an old man's body, Bella has eyes only for him and insists till the bitter end to be bitten and become a vampire. We'll have to wait until 2011 and Twilight 3 to see if she fulfils her near-death wish.
I'd like to reassure you, vampires and werewolves don't exist in real life. This advice is free.

Avec Aaron Eckhart (Thank you for smoking)et Jennifer Anniston. Une histoire d’ amour entre une belle fleuriste et un beau écrivain qui a perdu sa femme et a écrit un livre pour.

Stieg Larsson, l' écrivain de ces livres, n’ est pas un exemple à suivre. Après avoir atteint la gloire avec sa trilogie Millenium (Les hommes qui n’ aimaient pas les femmes (Män som hatar kvinnor, plus précisément : Les hommes qui haïssent les femmes), La fille qui rêvait d’ un bidon d’ essence et d’ une allumette (Flickan som lekte med elden, plus précisement : la fille qui jouait avec le feu), La reine dans le palais des courants d’ air (Luftslottet som sprängdes, plus précisement : Le palais des courants qui explosea)) il est mort jeune. Aussi bête que gagner le lotto et mourrir le lendemain. Comme dirait Kroll, ce sont des choses qui arrivent aux autres.
Des acteurs pas connus pour les non-Suédois, avec comme héroine principale une fille dont le vrai nom est Noomi Rapace! Des thrillers journalistiques effrayants et sombres à la suédoise, où s’ entremêlent racisme et rélations brisées, ainsi qu’ une rélation d’ amour timide entre Mikael Blömkvist, le journaliste du journal „Millenium“ et de Lisbeth Salander, la rapace et puissante hacker qui peut briser toute sécurité informatique.
Larsson avait l’ intention d’ écrire dix livres dans la même série. Dommage. Même si je commence d’ en avoir un peu marre de voir tout le monde lire ses livres partout, un peu comme Angels and demons il y a trois ans.

It’s rare that after a book we’ve liked the film keeps up to expectations. But this is definitely the case with the „Time traveller’s wife“. A moving story of a man that travels in time only to return to his loving wife from the future, or the past, each time more worn out but always as much in love as the first day they met, on a meadow, when she was only a child. Hard to hold the tears while watching this moving story, based on one of the most original books I have ever read.
Eric Bana („Black hawk down“, „Munich“) plays Henry, the main hero. Rachel McAdams, absolutely fabulous as the wife we all wished we had, is his friend, girlfriend, wife and more.

Definitely the best film for Christmas, both for kids and adults. The five minutes with the dumb rewind of the couple’s life has to be the sweetest five minutes of the movie year 2009. Excellent, the perfect two hours for a Christmas holiday.

Harrison Ford is an Attorney General that aspires to become a Governor and will not hesitate to use falsified evidence to prove how good he is. Until the day one young reporter becomes obsessed with him and decides to prove he is an imposter. A very clever film, indeed, featuring Amber Rose Tamblyn (“The sisterhood of the travelling pants ») and the beau Jesse Metcalfe (“Desperate housewives”, although he does not look like one)

With Johnny Depp, very credible in the role of John Dillinger in this violent movie based on the real life of the gangster that made his living by robbing banks. Marion Cotillard (La Môme) in the role of his girlfriend. Tons of shooting. Bring a helmet.

This is a film from a Japanese guy called Okuribito. The main hero works in an entreprise that assists Departures. But it’s not Neckermann. It is a funeral office, or rather a subsector: what they actually do is encoffinment, the preparation of corpses for cremation. This is all done in the most respectful manner, in a way I can only imagine Japanese doing it. Not an easy job, one must admit, especially when it comes to performing the ritual for people one loves... A film full of beauty, about death as we do not perceive it in our culture. The final scene is simply excellent.

Die Geburt des Übels: So hätte dieser Film von Michael Haneke auch heissen können. In einem schwarz-weißen Dorf, wo die Kinder rituell gestraft werden, hat der Arzt einen Unfall und der Teufel geht los. Mehr Menschen sterben auf eine komische, verdächtige Weise, Kinder und Frauen werden von der eigenen Familie und von Freunden vergewaltigt und gezüchtigt, während der Lehrer versucht zu verstehen,wer hinter diesen Gewalttaten steckt, was erst am Ende des Films aufgeklärt wird.
Und was will der Regisseur durch diese Geschichte uns erzählen? Wahrscheinlich, dass wie die Väter, so die Söhne, in dieser Welt von extremer Gewalt und Lust zum Strafen, auf preussischen Prinzipien basiert. Diese Kinder, eigentlich emotionale Krüppel, sind zur materia prima des zweiten Weltkrieges 20 Jahren später geworden.

In 2012 the world will come to an end. Hurry and get a one-billion-dollar seat in one of the 6 arches bearing the chosen (billionaires) that will survive. Embarking point will be, well, the Himalayas (!), since the rest of the planet will be badly flooded. This way you'll be able to start anew, as John Cusack does in this film, with his family reunited, in Africa. For reasons of historical justness, Africa will be the only continent to survive the flooding, faithful in its tradition of draught.

In der belgischen Szene gibt es nur selten deutsche Filme, aber wenn es sie dann gibt, sind sie oft Spitze. Rainer Wenger, Lehrer an einem deutschen Gymnasium, muss seine Schüler mit dem Thema Autokratie bekannt machen. Der Unterricht wird jedoch zunehmend zum Experiment. Während er sich selbst zum Führer transformiert, verteilt er Rollen an seine Schüler, die sie mit wenigen Ausnahmen (Outsiderin Schülerin Karo, die als einzige die Nachteile der Situation wahrnimmt und nicht mitmacht, wird völlig isoliert) gerne akzeptieren und sich als Untergebene anfangen zu benehmen. Bald hat dieses Experiment einen Namen ("die Welle"), eine Uniform (weisses Hemd + Jeans), ein Logo und einen Gruss, der an andere, nicht vergessene Zeiten erinnert. Und es hat auch Opfer. Ein erstaunlicher Film, der sich mit einem Thema auseinandersetzt, mit dem er versucht zu beweisen, dass auch in unseren "demokratischen" Zeiten falsche Schritte ganz möglich sind, wie in den Zeiten des Nationalsozialismus.

Matt Damon, probably my best male actor actually, the Bourne Identity amnesic superman that would easily bring the war at your threshold if he had to, is so transformed in this film (he had to put on many kilos to play the main hero) that you may not recognise him at all. Matt is Marc Whitacre, a CEO embezzler that cannot keep from convincingly lying just about to anyone (the FBI included) and about anything when he decides to expose the illegal practices of his corn-selling company hoping that somehow this would make him a vizier in the place of the vizier...
Although the person really existed, it is somehow hard to imagine that he was as goofy as Matt Damon in this film: when it comes to this scale of lies, one has to be clever as well. Being sick, although sometimes a prerequisite, is not a guarantee to successful lying …

Wow! Qui d' autre aurait pu faire un film pareil si ce n' était pas Lars von Trier?
Lars von Trier a admis que ce film l' a aidé à dépasser ses problèmes psychologiques, sortir ses démons. Ceci devrait bizarrement nous émouvoir et nous inciter à aller voir le film, apprendre, avoir du plaisir, passer deux heures sinon rien d' autre agréables (ha!). Hors, ce ne fût pas mon cas.
Willem Daffoe et Charlotte Gainsbourg, après avoir perdu leur enfant qui a sauté par la fenêtre, peut-être parce que il n' en pouvait plus avec eux (ma version bien sûr…) partent à Eden (une cabane humide in the middle of nowhere), pour se guérir (Willem Daffoe est thérapeute) et oublier. Et ça va de mal en pis, vu le titre du film.
Et quels sont les choix du cinéphile devant le dilemme, Lars von Trier ou pas?, Traitement psychiatrique ou pas?
Le cinéphile peut donc soit choisir de sortir ses propres démons ailleurs (le film/le bar à côté, son parténaire de badminton, ses employés, on lui fait confiance…) soit ignorer tout ceci et aller quand même se noyer dans une éclipse totale pendant deux heures. D' ailleurs, la critique du film en Belgique variait du Mauvais au Chef d' œuvre.

Exactly as I was growing FED UP with the almost uniquely french films playing in Brussels lately and the ceiling of UGC collapsing and making choice even shorter, this film felt like a fresh breeze. Excellent! Tom Hansen (Joseph-Gordon Levitt) is in love with Summer (Zooey Deschanel), but she is not: as simple as that. “Not a love story, but a story of boy meets girl”. And still, a film full of imagination and simultaneously so real that one cannot but relate. A film full of surprises, clins d’oeil, until the very last sentence of the film’s dialogues, so real that they hurt. Very nice soundtrack as well.
Don’t hesitate, Go. With a handkerchief!

Une fois la confusion linguistique du titre dépassée (traduction très libre: "Plein de confusions"), ce film est tout à fait recommandable. Il s' agit de Bazil, dont le père est mort d' une mine anti-personnel en Afrique (Algérie?) et qui a reçu une balle dans la tête durant son travail dans un vidéoclub (!) et se retrouve ensuite chômeur et sans abri, pour être finalement recueilli par une famille de gens très bizarres vivant dans (et de) un tas de ferraille qu' ils recyclent et revendent. Danny Boon, décrit comme le Charlie Chaplin contemporain, est très bon dans ce film de Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Delikatessen) très caractéristique de sa façon à tourner (couleurs sombres oranges, situations farfelues, souvent faisant un peu Tati).

Nia Vardalos , a name that's all Greek to me (comes from Antonia), a.k.a. Toula Portokalos (another idiotic, supposedly Greek name) in "My big Greek fat wedding", goes this time where all stereotypic female touristas go to look for a man and meets the most stereotyped Greek guy ever who, of course, falls for her. And all the other characters and fellow touristas (she is their guide, which comes only natural given the 2 words she manages to pronounce correctly in Greek during the film) are so stereotyped that this film can only be considered as a ruin. Greeks are rough and handsome, still frequently gay. Americans are dummies with a good heart. British are so stiff you'd think they've swallowed their umbrella. Australians are a naïve; sporty people that speak such a peculiar American and Spanish girls are hot. All this in a surrounding that frankly, by times does not look like Greece at all. Great! Don't miss it. If you have an evening to ruin..

If you don't happen to know it, Neuilly-sur-Seine is the home town of Nikolas Sarkozy, who was also its mayor before he became Nikolas-tout-court. Neuilly is Banlieue parisienne, mais pas n' importe laquelle. Sami, the 14 yo main actor, lives in Chalon-sur-Saône, another kind of banlieue (ghetto blasters, petty crime) and leads a happy life with his multiracial friends and his mother. But when she leaves to work on a transatlantic cruise ship, Sami is forced to move to Neuilly with his rich aunt and adapt to a new school, a new snob family, a new environment, new house and totally new rules. The result is hilarious, mostly enjoyable. Valérie Lemercier in the (small) role of the divorced mother, Josiane Balasko as the Director of the new elite school (power becomes her) of Sami, excellent as well. But mainly, Sami (Samy Seghir) is very good. A bit unnoticed in Belgium, this still totally recommendable.

This time, Tarantino reshuffles history. As he said in a recent interview, when he was working in a video shop before becoming what he is (mainly by watching ALL the films that ever existed), he always got bored watching WWII movies because the end was always known: all attempts against ze Führer failed, due to an unprecedented, repeating turn of luck. And this is why he decided to change things and give the film another tournure. Which he did once again in his usual crazy manner, creating tension unique in its kind. The Austrian Christoph Waltz as Col. Hans Landa is definitely the revelation of the film. A real pleasure to watch. Although in the business since 1977, I can't recognise any of his films on imdb.com (most german speaking, among them one called "Schöne Witwen küssen besser"*). Mélanie Laurent (aka Lilli, in the film "Je vais bien, ne t' en fais pas" with the excellent main theme) as Shosanna Dreyfus is also very good. And remains Brad Pitt, so persuasive in his role of the dumb Nazi killer that he becomes disturbing in the end. This may be a "mild spoiler", as serious cinema blogs like to put it, but in that film Hitler and his entire Kommandantur get burnt and massacred, and the war ends prematurely, sparing some million casualties. We would be much happier if it weren't just a film.
I keep reading mediocre critics on the film, but the theatre applauded in the end. Oh, I guess the critics always know better...

Ceci risque de fort diminuer ma crédibilité de cinéphile, mais soyons sincères : J’ai dormi pour la moitié du film, pour des raisons qui n’ ont rien à faire avec la qualité du film, mais , dirais-je, plutôt avec la profondeur du fauteuil. Néanmoins je peux confirmer que l’autre moitié du film était excellente ! Kad Murat, a.k.a. ‘Chti, est très bon comme le père du Petit Nicolas, et Valérie Lemercier toujours excellente dans des rôles d’ hystérique, est excellente dans le rôle de la maman de Petit Nicolas, hystérique terminale. Je confirme aussi, plein de rires dans la salle, Mais (il y un mais …): Comme d’ hab, comme avec les livres, ce sont plutôt les ados qui accrochent avec le Petit Nicolas, pas les gosses, les dialogues étant un ietske trop intelligents pour les enfants. Les vrais enfants je veux dire…

Dans un bâtiment bourgeois de Paris habite Josiane Balasko, concierge et mangeuse invétérée de chocolat, ainsi qu’une fille blonde comme un ange mais aux tendances suicidaires. Quand un Monsieur charmant Japonnais y déménage, il tombe aussitôt amoureux de Balasko. Ceci est peut-être aussi le grand mystère du film (elle est aussi belle que d’ habitude), qui pourtant se veut pas un thriller, mais un de ces films doux, drôles et tristounets en même temps. Malgré une bonne idée, les dialogues sont pauvres, et on reste un peu à notre faim. Mais le resto à côté du Cine Centre n' est pas mal...

The story of 4 guys that "can't handle Las Vegas". Trying to make the most out of the bachelor party of one of them, the strangest things happen, i.e. they kidnap Mike Tyson's (in person) tiger, without having the day after a clue when and how all this happened. The scenario is well known ("Very bad things"), but this is by far the funniest Las Vegas film I've seen, although it gets plainly vulgar and explicit at times (definitely not an All Audiences film: ask mydaughter…).

Extremely entertaining. The squirrel nests and adopts 3 dinosaur eggs this time and has a hard time separating from them when their mother comes for them… As usual, use the kids as a pretext, then hide behind the 3D spectacles…

In an extreme show of fuzziness while thinking I was buying a ticket to "Good bye solo", I ended up in the wrong theatre where the "September issue" was shown. I therefore cease the occasion to warn you, before you end up spending your money to see "the (real) devil wears Prada", but with infinitely less grace than Meryl Streep… Thus, instead of trying to figure out why do we in the middle of a global financial crisis need a film like that (the black, fat, gay guy whoever that was, is plainly disgusting), I….

…sneaked in the next dark theatre and saw "Le coach" (Richard Berry). I would not have gone for it otherwise, but compared to the silliness of the previous one, it seemed as marvellous as "Gone with the wind" in the non-digital years. I'd say, a pretty good film for a rainy Sunday afternoon, although customers are always welcome. And I feel relieved I ended up not paying for the September issue…

If this film is still playing somewhere near you, go for it. The story of Harvey Milk (Sean Penn) and the gay movement at its beginning. It all happens where else? in LA. Sean Penn won Best Actor Oscar for this role. Aussi l'oscar du meilleur scénario original (Dustin Lance Black) pour ce film de Gus Van Sant.

Le repas du 15 août d' un Italien accompagné de femmes d' un certain âge. Voire plus exactement séniles. Triste et vrai. Humanité et pauvreté. L' Italie de Berlusconi, où le seul point commun entre lui et les héros de ce film est la perruque de la nonagénaire blonde...
Dieu, je ne veux pas devenir comme ça!

Tom Hanks has probably had hair transplant and looks fine. Ewan Mac Gregor, in the role of James Bond in a soutane, does not need to (cosmetic surgery is a sin, if you hadn't noticed). A religious thriller on Vatican, a dead Pope (poisoned, with a pitch-black tongue), the Preferiti and the Illuminati, white smoke and Antimatter, the Swiss Guard and lots of roman sightseeing. Ewan Mac Gregor, the Pope's Camerlengo (fyi: his personal assisant, not a lollipop brand) saving the Vatican (at least) by vertically flying his helicopter and letting antimatter explode in the air, then falling back to stardom in a parachute, in the Vatican square, spared by his heroism.
Why, is there anything more you wished for summer 2009?
I don't want this to be a spoiler and will not tell you that Ewan Mac Gregor, despite a baby-face, IS BAD in the end (take that!) but all this story about antimatter stolen from the CERN and circulating in a glass bottle producing a "Dzzzzz" sound and then being brought up in the air to explode (the thing to avoid absolutely, if the rest was realistic!) is really unbelievable, in the litteral way. Thus, my advice:
Forget all you know from school, enjoy the film and concentrate on green energy because antimatter is nowhere near producing energy (a trillion more time energy is needed to produce antimatter than the energy it gives back), and the CERN had to make a statement on that after the film.
More details here, the official CERN site. Congratulations for an organization that actually allows some humour in its official pages (…).
The Webmaster

In an Alaskan village we have never heard of, where the local priest is also a
strip dancer (!) and a waiter, Sandra Bullock finds true love in the person of
the son of a local magnate, at least ten years younger and ten times handsomer
than herself, all proportions kept. Formerly his boss, Sandra Bullock decides
to marry le beau prince when she realises she must otherwise leave the country
and return to Canada and almost forces him to it with a gun, in her usual good
manners towards her inferiors. The fact that the groom has a father that does
not like her, or that his ex girlfriend is at least ten times handsomer and
less mean and younger than Sandra Bullock do not count either. Because, if you
had not noticed, true love prevails. Which of course turns this film
into a rather sad comedy...

Avec Michelle Pfeiffer dans le rôle de Léa de Lonval, courtisane aisée, et Rupert Friend dans le rôle de Chéri, l’amant de Léa. Entre les deux, tout se passe à merveille jusqu’ au jour que Chéri doit se marier à une jeune fille de son âge, une trentaine d’ années donc plus jeune que Léa… Vu que le mariage est arrangé par sa mère , Cathy Bates, dans un rôle un peu fade mais laquelle on connaît mieux de sa performance dans le film Misery, le jeune Chéri cède, pour revenir en pleurant à la porte de Michelle Pfeiffer, qui l’ aime aussi, bien entendu.
Pas de happy end pourtant, vu que film signé par Stephen Frears. Zut alors, quand on commençait à croire que les relations gigolo pouvaient marcher…

Excellent ! Alan Arkin’s not dead. The grandfather in Little Miss Sunshine is alive again in this film, as the father of Amy Adams (Doubt, with Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Emily Blunt ( the miserable secretary in The devil wears Prada), both excellent in their roles as the average loser of a modern society, exactly as their father . And when they can’t make ends meet anymore, they pick up a weird job: cleaning up crime scenes! In other words, cleaning blood and other “body fluids” people leave behind after a “difficult moment”(blowing their heads off). Although sad, a film that will mostly make you laugh. A nice 2 hours, outside the main Hollywood stream and a definite air of Little Miss Sunshine. Go for it!

Comme dans tous les films de Almodovar, impossible de raconter l' histoire: il faudrait des pages, chaque détail compte.

Zac Efron … Now, I’m confused. How can I best say that?
Anyhow, a guy (fortyish, we guess) becomes Zac Efron and seventeen again, as you may have already guessed. Subsequently, he falls in love again with his wife, who had just left him and who thinks he’s a gigolo. Then his own daughter falls in love with him, while at the same time he discovers that his son is the college punching ball and tries to protect him. Mildly amusing, if you don’t go for Zac. And it didn’t work for me. I mean, that thing about becoming 17 again.
I’m still 35.

In another film about Cuba, Havana (Sydney Pollack) Robert Redford, madly in love with Lena Olin, the revolutionary wife of the memorable Raul Julia , begged her to follow him to the USA and be together. “You want save the world? Save me!”, he begged her. And it’s true. If one cannot save the ones he loves, his self included, how can one possibly save the world? Ché neglected this simple principle. He did not manage to save himself and, after trying to propagate revolution with moderate success to Africa and Bolivia, was summarily executed in the Bolivian altiplano in a village we would never know that existed were it not for this sad fact. A soldier asked to be given the privilege of executing Ché because he had his birthday on that day (not shown in the film). He shot him point blank, and that was it.

This is what this otherwise not terrible film, slow Soderbergh film is all about. And, for the record, Lena Olin did not follow Robert Redford to Miami…

The story of a shopaholic (Isla Fisher) become spending council, while at the same time meeting the beau prince with a British accent (Hugh Dancy).

L’histoire des lycéens un peu perdus entre MSN, SMS, emoticons et vrais sentiments.
Après 25 ans et La Boum, Sophie Marceau joue aujourd’hui la mère d’une adolescente dans ce film que je caractériserais comme inquiétant. Si faire l’amour dans une toilette en cachette peut être irritant, ça l’est nettement moins quand on voit des filles de l’ âge de ses enfants le faire dans les toilettes de l'école.
Et pas seulement. Des scènes du style, on met du Rohypnol dans la Coca de la grand-mère ou de la prof pour qu’elle dorme pendant que les enfants font la fête (et comment !) se font passer pour comiques. Je n’en suis pas sûr, et je ne comprends pas la bonne critique que le film a reçu.

Despite the well known actors (Leonardo di Caprio, 2009 Oscar winning Kate Winslet for "The reader"), a bit of a deception for me.
An unrealistic film about people that should have no such problems, or, in another phrasing, not problems that give rise to a film. The story of a happy couple going unhappy without apparent reason, apart from the psychological imbalance of Kate Winslet as the spouse that somehow associates the solution to all her (not their) problems with … moving to Paris.
Some very weak points of the film:
1)The couple fights more or less non-stop for half the film, but the kids are never there. They are either asleep, or elsewhere, or with a babysitter elsewhere etc. Does this happen frequently to you?
2)Kate Winslet starts hating her husband from minute X of the film to minute X+1. One day she adores him and the next she declares openly that she hates him and wonders why she got married to the guy who made her laugh the evening they first met. How would we know?
3)One bright day, when there is a distant hope that things might be getting slightly better, Leonardo announces out of the blue and sheer honesty (or stupidity, they do look alike sometimes) to his wife that he has been banging his secretary, but she meant nothing to him and now it's over.
4)And she looks at him with her permafrost eyes and says: "It's OK, you can fuck who you want".
Don't try this at home…
Stay home. Watch the news, or another film.

What does somebody do the evening he gets back from Cuba?
The answer is, he rushes to see Che (Benicio del Toro), and how he managed to give to the planet this wonderful, unique country (soon to be seen at PHOTO on this site).

I should probably have waited a bit before watching the movie, which seemed more like a staccato of short historical episodes, a bit like Seinfeld but in a revolutionary context. If the viewer is not aware of the recent Cuban history, many things may remain unexplained. As for Fidel Castro, he has a secondary role he never really had in real life and is played by an actor I have never seen before and that makes him look like a caricature.
If you want to get a Cuban feeling in a dark room, try "Havana", with Robert Redford.

Ceux qui ne veulent pas devenir vieux doivent accepter de mourir jeunes. Simple, non?
Seulement que parfois, la topo est un peu plus compliquée que ça. Par ex. dans le cas de Benjamin Button qui naît vieux, très vieux, pour ensuite rajeunir toute sa vie et mourir très jeune. Que faire dans des cas pareils?
OK, pas de panique: ça ne risque pas vraiment de vous arriver, mais au cas où, voilà le mode d'emploi:
La vengeance est un plat qui se mange froid. Ainsi, ignorer les autres qui se moquent de vous pendant que vous êtes bébé mais avez mal aux articulations, le cataracte et l' air d' avoir 80 ans, parce que ils ignorent que dans 20, 40, 50 ans ils auront l' air d' une vieille patate, tandis que vous, en occurrence Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt), n' aurez que 17 ans et serez prêts à partir avec votre moto à n' importe quel moment pour aller faire de la voile pendant que eux seront en train de mourir vraiment vieux . Na!
Et que faire si vous tombez amoureux d' une femme, surtout si elle est tellement jolie que Kate Winslet, que vous connaissez depuis bébé, enfin, façon de parler, plutôt depuis qu' elle était une enfant et vous un vieil homme de 5 ans? Alors là, peut être feriez vous de même que Benjamin: Prendre sa moto et aller faire le tour du monde, à la hippie, flower-power, babacool etc, et lui écrire des cartes postales.
Et ensuite revenir à sa base, Home Sweet Home (New Orleans), pour se faire câliner, chouchouter par Kate Winslet, qui s' occupera de vous comme son petit enfant, et plus comme son mari de l' antan.
Enfin, quelque chose comme ceci… Un monde à l' envers, mais un monde où on vit et on meurt tout de même, où l' inéluctable est encore plus tragique que d' habitude. J' ai beaucoup aimé ce film.

Once upon a time, men ruled the world. And Ralph Fiennes (fyi: pronounced "Rey Feins") was among the rulers of Great Britain, in the person of the Duke of Devonshire, at a time when Great Britain was the equivalent of the USA nowadays…
But anyhow, what was the main concern of the duke of Devonshire back then?
-Was it achieving Love? No. His wig was far too ugly for that.
-Was it getting Rich? No. He was already ridiculously rich.
-Was it acquiring the latest Porsche Cayenne? No. Saudi Arabia was still desert, and fuel non-existent.
The obvious answer is, the Duke's main concern was having a heir. A son. A boy that, after killing more than enough foxes, would take over and reproduce exactly the same situation, which involved using women in all imaginable manners, raping them being the preferred one of the duke en question.
Now, Keira Knightley had one particular disadvantage. She only bore girls. 4 to be more precise in less than 2 hours, the duration of the film… Being married to this particular, heir-seeking Duke, that was close to being good for nothing. But Keira, the Duchess, apart from being extremely beautiful was also seriously intelligent and somehow managed to survive. Because this is a story as true as it gets. All the facts are real!
Ralph Fiennes is mean in this one (the last time he was mean was "In Bruges"). His wig is the same colour as his eyes: dead, morbid grey. But I don't know: I can't hate this guy. There must be some misunderstanding. I am sure he'll be good again next film. Somebody has to play the bad guys anyhow, isn't it? Because, can you imagine Schwarzenegger playing the Duke of Devonshire? NO. Brad Pitt? No. Jack Nicholson? Danny de Vito?
The case is closed. Enjoy the film!

It's getting harder every time to keep a reasonably updated and recent film register.
Anyhow, if you still have not seen this film, go for it. Excellent. Sometimes very hard to watch though. The story of a young boy in India that becomes a millionaire answering all the questions of the more or less international TV-game "Who wants to be a millionaire". During his brutal interrogation from the Indian police after he has won (they simply cannot believe how a slum boy could possibly know the answer to all the questions and suspect fraud) we get to know his previous life, and his desperate love story.
"Because I hoped she would be watching" is his answer when asked, what made him participate in the game. A phrase that speaks a lot, at least to me.
A five star film, but I don't have a five-star .gif...

While Hitler was once again lucky surviving his 30th assassination attempt, other people grew once again extremely unlucky and got hanged or summarily executed. Among them, Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, a count that decided that enough is enough and the time was ripe to mount a coup that would use, among other things (explosives mainly) the rescue plan Walküre, which had been beforehand manipulated in order to fit the putschists plan and neutralize the SS. Although the bomb did explode, no one was killed and it was the coup participants that got executed. Von Stauffenberg's family lost the titre de noblesse but survived, despite concentration camps. His wife died in 2006.
Tom Cruise was badly accused of very bad acting for this film. I cannot agree with that. He even looks German in this film, and plays reasonably well. Suspense is well maintained until the end of the film, although we all know that this one cannot possibly have a happy end…

How is it that Kidman became such a well known actor? Why then can't I be one?
Two possible questions that may occur after the film.
A bad film where 2nd World War, a love story, aboriginals, nice landscapes and bad virtual war scenes give a bad result that lasts more than 2 hours. Hugh Jackman goes in great depths to show us what a nice body and shining teeth he has, in scenes that are sometimes plainly vulgar. Kidman is tall. And you'll be bored.
Pas de rigueur. Bad acting (even worse than "Eyes wide shut"). Cinephile, be warned…

A big Turkish film that will probably never hit the Belgian theatres.
A Turkish man involved in small politics kills somebody in a car accident, no witnesses. He then asks his slave-handyman to go to prison instead while he will be paying him his salary, plus a lump sum he'll get when he gets out.
And he keeps his promises, while at the same time banging his handymans' wife when he is doing time. Just when she falls madly in love with him, and under the watchful eye of her worrying son, the handyman gets out of prison.
I won't make this a spoiler, and you'll have to pay an entrance to find out not just what the stunningly original end will bring, but also what modern Turkish cinema can offer. Excellent image

A lethal Greek comedy that will equally never hit the Belgian theatres…
Two brothers working in a funeral office to make ends meet decide to rob banks as a pastime to make ends meet better… While the less sentimental one is banging the boss's wife in coffins, the other falls in love with… a bank clerk, that in reality is an undercover police agent. A funny two hours, as modern Greek cinema has been offering for the last few years.

A very good film, as Robert Redford has already made in his director's chair.
Somewhere in the thirties Angelina Jolie comes back home to find that her young son is missing. After three months, the LA Police Office finds the boy. But when mother meets son, she realises it's not him…The LA Police insists though that it is her son, to show to the public that they are not paid for nothing and that despite rumours of corruption they still do go a good job.
But Angelina Jolie, in an excellent acting of a woman with dignity (her best I have seen) is tougher than they think, and with the help of John Malkovich, in the magnificently played role of a priest with his own radio station, manages to unfold a story so sad it will make you rush back and check that the kids are OK.

With Jim Carrey and Zooey Deschanel.
Jim Carrey is a grimacing (although less than at his earlier years) No-Man and a bank clerk,.
Then one day he decides to start saying Yes and become, what else? a Yes Man. At every occasion and even when his geriatric neighbour insists they make love...
When the Yes Man falls in love with Zooey whose job is teaching people to take pictures while they jog, his life changes.
And we're happy for him and spend two happy hours in a dark room, sadly without Zooey…
Incidentally, does this name come from Zoo or Zoe?

Excellent.
Although I am always biased in favour of Ralph Fiennes and although it is Kate Winslet that won yesterday (12/01/09) the Golden Globe for best supporting actress as Hanna Schmitz, a German frau that we realise cannot read and later on becomes a Nazi-camp guard. But before that, falls in love with Michael Berg, a 15 year well-off boy (she calls him "kid") that reads to her books and also falls madly in love with her… Then one day she simply disappears, leaving her Siemens job as a Tramschaffnerin for a better one, in a prisoners camp.
She then goes on using women prisoners to read to her, and the young boy's heart is forever broken.
Ensuite the young boy becomes Ralph Fiennes and a successful lawyer that one day (post 2nd WW) comes across his old mistress being judged and -partly- wrongly accused of crimes against Jews.
Ralph Fiennes, always excellent in the role of the lifelong victim of unsuccessful love (The Constant Gardener, The English Patient, to name but a few), will pierce your heart in the last minutes of the film. And Kate Winslet, infinitely less glamorous as the human prow in "The Titanic", plays the role of the stereotyped German stubbornness and incapacity to see wrong-from-right amazingly gut, albeit wiz a German accent and despite grey hair and ugly prison shoes.
It broke my heart. I am going now to amazon.com and order that book…
Oh, I forgot: A Philip Glass excellent OST.

PS.: Why is it that non german-speaking actors in films that happen in German speaking countries have to take a German accent when acting? Do you take an Italian accent when you order a pizza?

What happens when a vampire and a normal human being fall in love?
The answer is, many strange things happen. Because we are not talking here about your average ugly vampire with extra long canines living in a dungeon and wearing a batman cape. NO, we are talking about Edward Cullen, a handsome albeit slightly pale vampire college student with a strange in-the-air coiffure who -you can't help noticing- drives the latest Volvo coupé, listens to Debussy's "Claire de lune" before going to sleep (matter of speaking of course, because vampires mostly WORK at night) and lives in a posh villa you would kill to live, even if that meant having vampires for neighbours. Our vampire student is the son of a model vampire family that plays excellent baseball in the vampire way (you MUST see that) and will even cook Italian just for Bella, the vampire's non-vampire girl friend, since as you may be aware, vampires don't eat what we humans describe as "normal" food and prefer a rather liquid diet. Moreover, this specific family is an evolved, "vegetarian" (sic) vampire family, meaning mainly that they don't feed on human blood anymore, but on animal blood. In a certain sense, they are the New vampires, the Übervampires, a bit like Homo Sapiens' previous, beta-version used to be Neanderthal about a million years ago. And, a propos blood sucking, humans also ate humans before they became (real) humans, hence we are all vampire descendants in a sense...
This all happens in Washington state, the wettest place in the USA, for obvious reasons: among a plethora of qualities, one of the vampires ' weak points is that they can't stand sunlight (hence you will never come across them on a package holiday to the Canary islands, for example).
But don't misunderstand me, this IS a very sweet film. One that, if you cross the line and actually go and see among the other teenagers in the theatre will make you want to become one of them again. Even if becoming a vampire is what it takes for that…

What a great film! Human stupidity filmée à la Cohen!
A plethora of great actors, all of them playing their role greatly: Malkovich as the bitter ex low level CIA agent, Clooney as the überstud, Swinton as mean as usual, Brad Pitt as the complete idiot fitness freak, to name but a few.
It all starts when Linda Litzke (Frances Mc Dormand), a mediocre 40+ gym worker realises she does not have enough money for her plastic surgeries, an indispensable tool to get a man on the internet. Then falls upon a cd with top secret info –at least that’s what she thinks- belonging to Malkovich who has just been fired from the State Department. And then, when he refuses to pay to get it back, she tries to sell it to the Russians! And things get ridiculously moron, in an amazingly amusing way to watch, because watching morons take themselves so seriously IS amusing, unless you are in any way involved in their joke.
Don’t miss this film… It is a comedy, a real one this time. Where everybody is playing a moron, even Malkovich, so this must be serious…

Despite plenty of action and a Ridley Scott filming, a coherent scenario is missing.
Leonardo di Caprio is an American agent fighting terrorists in Irak, Afghanistan, Jordania and other exotic countries. He is responsible for the death of a lot of bad people (which he kills personally or sells to to their enemies) but we are supposed to like that, because his last film was Blood diamonds and he suffered so much, the one before (well, some years before anyway…) was The beach, and because it's just a film… But if for a second you realise what is happening, apart from the thrill and chill, it is atrocious.
As for Russell Crowe, with at least 15 kg more than in The Gladiator, we are supposed to understand that he is able to lead the war on terrorism by mobile phone while bringing his children at school. THEIR phones always have network coverage!
For the rest, the sentimental part of the story (LdC falls for the Iranian nurse giving him the rabies injections, which IS original by the way)is redundant and incoherent as the rest of the film. And the changing places of action (Iraq, Jordania, Syria, Washington etc etc) with the black screen and the name of each different country is quite frankly beginning to be not original at all. Now, can anyone tell me what is a body of lies?

What a film… The city, the actors, the director…Don’t hesitate for a moment.
A typical new-era Woody Allen, with the background voice narrating about the lives of Javier Bardem, the Spanish painter and ex husband of the totally nuts Penelope Cruz, as well as the latin lover of Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall (separately or all of them simultaneously), the two pretty Americans and totally different characters visiting a rich American family. Penelope Cruz gets it for me this time. Totally convincing in her role. Scarlett Johansson has a relatively small role this time, or is it that she is overshadowed by the other actors?

Bond is back. Although not as good as his first one, Daniel Craig is still a pleasure to watch.
It all starts with a car race, involving his Aston Martin and, proudly, black Alfa Romeos, in Siena.
And the killing goes further with more-than-the-usual violence. Sadly though, it would seem that the humor, the sarcasm in James Bond is gone forever and his muscles are nothing more than a Quantum of Solace (in mainstream english, a meager consolation) for the glorious days when some caracters actually survived until the end of the film . M, his boss that would like to be his mistress but is too old for that, fires him and blocks his cards, because in this film not only his girlfriend gets killed in another original manner (while in Goldfinger she turned into gold, in this one she turns into black gold, meaning that she is forced to down some gallons of petrol) but in a show of excessive zeal he kills another british agent as well. Will he one day kill M as well, played as usual bu Judi Dench, the frustrated lesbian in "Notes on a scandal"?...

This film, which could be seen as the spanish version of "No country for old men", describes how one unrelated event can change the turn of events and lives of other persons. Very good acting from everybody, although the end lacks momentum. One could add of course, because it is very down to earth and realistic. The rape of a woman and the revenge sought by her boyfriend turn a tiny village upside down. You may want to visit Castilla Leon and these landscapes after this film, at least if you are not a woman…

What is the matter with Mike Leigh? Compared to his previous films, this comes out as a light soap episode. But I have nothing against it personally... I would say this is the story of a happy woman, very well played by Sally Hawkings, dealing with less happy people (to put it mildly) that cannot actually believe her happines or good intentions. The driving instructor, Eddie Marsan, is magnificient in his bitter role.

Vincent Cassel et Gérard Depardieu sont formidables dans ce film dur. Pour l’histoire, voir ici. Attention, ce n’est que la première partie du film ! Si vous voulez voir la scène finale, la mort du gangster aux 100 visages, il faudra voir la partie 2.Cela j’ai pas aimé…
Beaucoup a été écrit sur Mesrine. Ce "Robin des bois contemporain". En réalité, il s’agissait tout simplement d’un gangster sans scrupules ni froid aux yeux, d’un culot pas possible, qui s’est moqué de la justice pendant autant d’années que celle ci a voulu garder un nom digne de son étymologie. Mesrine a entre autres essayé de kidnapper le juge qui l' avait condamné, menacé le Ministre de la Justice Français et braqué deux banques l' une après l'autre, l'une en face de l'autre, le même jour.

Proclamé ennemi de l’état, titre bien mérité, il s’est fait assassiné en 1979 comme un vrai terroriste, en plein milieu de Paris. Le film se base sur son propre livre, écrit en prison entre deux évasions, un domaine dans lequel il s'est spécialisé comme aucun autre criminel.

Faut-il en parler ? En tout cas, titre étrange.
Un film sympa. Typique Jaoui/Bacri : Rien n’est comme on le croit être. Des gens fatigués, qui aiment quelqu’un d’autre, qui rêvent d’un autre, qui pensent quitter leur compagnon, qui sont des échecs personnels, professionnels. Du vrai cinéma français quoi… Ressemble trop à la vraie vie, son seul handicap.
Les deux acteurs/producteurs devraient un peu sortir de cette routine de films réalistes à la française. Ils commencent à ressembler un peu trop l’un à l’autre. Leur seul handicap…

Du Jacques Tati au présent, cette production belge, filmée en France. Un Tati contemporain, aussi burlesque que l' original, mais tristounet. Dans cette histoire, le soleil ne brille jamais. Et c’est pourtant l’histoire d’un espoir qui ne vieillit pas, l’histoire d’ une histoire d’ amour . Et, dans ce sens, beaucoup d’affinités avec le « Eternal sunshine of a spotless mind ».

Ca vaut la peine, ce film, ne fût-ce que pour se rendre compte ce que l’on peut faire pour un passeport, juste comme celui-ci qui se trouve oublié au fond de votre tiroir. Lorna (Arta Dobroshi, de nationalité albanaise) a un rêve : ouvrir un snack à Bruxelles avec son copain albanais. Pour ceci faire elle a besoin d’argent, qu’elle trouve en se mariant avec un jeune drogué qui essaie de s’en sortir. Mariage blanc, certes, mais lui tombe amoureux d’elle, et elle de lui, on croit. Mais je ne veux pas que cette rubrique soit un spoiler, et je vous dis que c’est en ce moment que commence le vrai film. Allez le voir. C’est un « Dardenne »…

Un dessin animé poignant. Pas assez prisé, à mon avis. L’histoire d’un ex soldat israélien qui a un cauchemar récurrent. A l’aide d’un ami psychologue il essaie de le déchiffrer et doit ainsi recourir son passé, un passé plein de moments difficiles, frustrations, spectacles horribles lors de l’invasion israélienne en Liban.
En 1982 j’avais 21 ans. Sur les îles grecques on passait le soir dans les bars et discos « Enola Gay ». A la même époque, en Liban le candidat à la présidence pro-israélien se faisait tuer par des palestiniens. Ceci n’allait pas rester impayé, bien évidemment… Et ainsi commença la tragédie de l’extermination des Palestiniens au camp de refugiés de Shatyla, entre autres, encore une raison pour laquelle Ariel Sharon ne sera jamais oublié... Et se passa l’histoire qui allait se reproduire à maintes reprises dans les années qui suivirent : les soldats israéliens furent forcés de ne pas intervenir et ainsi témoigner, quand les phalangistes entrèrent dans le(s) camp(s) pour soit-disons arrêter les « terroristes » qui avaient tué leur candidat, d’un génocide généralisé qui les marqua pour le reste de leur vie.
Bien sûr, cette version des faits est contestée, même s’il est certain que l’ordre venait de beaucoup plus haut.
On peut pas s’empêcher de se demander comment un peuple qui a subi tant d’atrocités des nazis peut se permettre de commettre les mêmes erreurs que leurs bourreaux, un demi-siècle plus tard. Mais on peut aussi imaginer comment ça doit être frustrant de témoigner des faits tellement cruels sans pouvoir réagir. Me viennent à l’esprit au moins deux exemples récents : le massacre de Srebrenica (commis après le départ des casques-bleus hollandais, qui en portent toujours les cicatrices), le génocide de Ruanda et la frustration des casques-bleus devant le manque de volonté politique de réellement protéger les habitants(au moins deux films récents tournés sur le sujet)…

Ceci paraît déjà un souvenir lointain, mais ce n’ était qu’ il y a à peine 2 mois :
4 grands films sous la belle étoile.

à Aigli, au centre d’Athènes. Etoiles timides et odeur de chèvrefeuille.
Un film très chouette, assorti aux couleurs estivales, malgré les critiques un peu moyennes de ceux qui y cherchaient le sens de leur vie.
En tout cas, la bonne nouvelle c’est, Meryl Streep peut dancer. La mauvaise étant, Pierce Brosnan ne peut pas chanter. Ha !

Avec Heath Ledger, Heath Ledger, Heath Ledger et Heath Ledger...
Quel dommage qu' il est mort. Ceux qui pensaient qu’il n’ était qu’ un cowboy doivent voir ça… Son talent dépasse même celui de Jack Nicholson, psychopathe avéré de la salle noire.

avec Uma Thurman, Colin Firth et Jeffrey Dean Morgan.
« Ραδιοφωνατζού με εκπομπή για ερωτικές σχέσεις, ανακαλύπτει ότι δεν ξέρει τί λέει », comme a écrit une revue grecque. « Présentatrice de radio se rend compte qu’elle ne sait pas ce qu’elle raconte ». Et dire que je pensais MES critiques étaient amères !
Un chouette petit film pour ceux qui peuvent faire la distinction entre la vraie vie et le cinéma (celle qui coûte de plus en plus cher et celle qui coûte environ 7€ les 2 heures).
Uma Thurman est effectivement présentatrice d’une émission de radio et donne des conseils amoureux de vieille fille aigrie. Jusqu’ au moment qu’elle rencontre l’amour avec un pompier charmant, dont le couple elle avait préalablement démoli avec ses conseils. Faut quand même comprendre… Quelle femme ne ferait la même chose pour Morgan ?

Pour ceci faire elle doit néanmoins quitter Colin Firth, lequel, malgré toute ma sympathie, part pour la deuxième fois cet été par l’arrière porte (dans Mamma Mia il est un des prétendants pour le cœur de Meryl Streep, laquelle préfère évidemment Bond. James Bond.)

Avec Colin Farrell et Brendan Gleeson. Un film assez surprenant dans son tournage. Ce qui m' a bien plu, c' est que ce côté pittoresque, rocambolesque et kitsch de Bruges a été completement évité. Pourtant, la réputation de Belgique a connu des meilleurs jours. La blague avec les pédophiles et les pralines faisant très coup-bas, à mon avis...

C’ est l’ été sur le calendrier, un été très, très timide.
On a plutôt envie de se cacher dans une salle de ciné, mais quel film voir ?
Rien de très intéressant en ce moment, comme souvent en été. Ah! les cinémas plein-air de ma jeunesse…
En tout cas, voici trois petits films pour passer deux heures protégés de la pluie :

Die Fälscher (The counterfeiters)
Ce sont pas tellement les acteurs, mais plutôt le fait peu connu qui se cache derrière ce film. Durant la 2ème guerre mondiale, les nazis voulurent faire souffrir les économies de leurs ennemis (principalement les USA et l’Angleterre) en imprimant une masse de fausses devises, faussées par des Juifs prisonniers des fameux camps de concentration. Film dur.

Du levande (You the living)
An amazing Swedish film, with all the bitter humour that goes with it.
All the sad people of the world acting in the saddest of places. But it IS a comedy. Don’t miss it! A great sample of Nordic cinema.

Ceci n’est pas un “petit” film. Un film très amusant, plein de clichés, mais très rigolo. Peut être votre remède contre ce temps quasi hivernal.

Et voila comment passer une soirée formidable à Flagey, avec un film qui date de 1995! C' est pas grave, ca vaut vraiment la peine de voir H. Keitel, Jim Jarmusch, Lou Reed, Madonna et autres acteurs connus dans des dialogues d' une simplicité et d' un humour accablants. La preuve ultime qu' un grand film peut être filmé en trois jours seulement. Les acteurs sont tous excellents. Faut y aller, rien que pour voir Madonna livrer un telegramme chantant, et boire une bière à Belga, au soleil, juste à côté...

On aurait pu penser qu' il s' agit de la crise des 50 de Stefano, tellement ce qu' il lui arrive est drôle et amère en même temps, mais il n' en a que 36, Stefano. Et parmi les choses qu' il n' a pas, ou plutôt plus, ce sont
a) une copine (elle vient de le tromper, et il la quitte, c' est bien pour elle, Stefano est en plus un très beau mec)
b) un boulot proprement dit
c) une voiture qui ne le lâche pas
d) une famille qui peut l' aider.
Mais, comme d' hab, c' est chez sa maman qu' il va chercher un refuge temporaire. Et qui s' avère extrêmement temporaire, vu que dès son arrivée, il est noyé dans les problèmes et les confessions bizarres du reste de sa famille.

Quels contraste et quel soulagement par rapport à Sex in the city, ce film italien! Une petite production, filmée à Rimini et passée dans un petit cinéma de notre capitale -au penchant pour les grosses productions- avec un grand coeur et des sentiments, des personnages vrais.

Sarah Jessica Parker is Carrie as you very well know and in this movie, Carried away by all that happiness, she decides to get married. A romantic comedy that will carry you away as well, in this typical NY glamour you only see in films. The four girlfriends that initially chose New York "to fall in love" are fortyish nowadays and are faced with harsh reality: wrinkles, ageing relationships, children (some of them), unfaithfulness, uncertainty and…
No, I can't do that. Click HERE for more.

Watch Daniel Day-Lewis go berserk looking for Oil in this movie that has nothing but him and his great acting to sell.

Paul Dano as the priest of the "Third revelation church" (!) is also very good at his detestable role.

Nothing has changed that much: D.D.Lewis has nowadays been replaced by an oil-thirsty government that would definitely kill you if you got on its' way, as he does in the film, for more petrol.

With Ken Loach the thing is, you’re not really sure whether what you just saw was a documentary or a film. And this is no exception.
This is a film about the double nature of human feelings. How one can be good AND bad, a reality that makes us more humane but not necessarily better persons.
A woman that has been fired by her employee, a recruitment agency, sets up her own business and starts recruiting, exploiting and ruining clandestine immigrants, in this order.
What a job for a woman! But this one has, well, guts, to say the least!
The film received a very warm embrace in Brussels.
It’s a free world, thus feel free to make your opinion…

Michael Haneke, the director of this film, wants it to be didactical. Is it really? Maybe. Probably.

Two clean-cut, baby-face young American students wearing white gloves penetrate the home of a wealthy American family pretending they need four eggs (!) and hell breaks loose for the model family. During two hours you will wish to smash the faces of the two spoilt killer brats. But what makes the difference between this and a thousand other similar Hollywood horror movies?
1) The family will not outsmart the decided killers in the end, but mainly
2) The absolute horror in the unmeasured, out of any proportion violence. An example: the first one to go is the kid…
An extremely disturbing film, played disturbingly well by all, especially the young killers with the frightening, eerie look. The story of violence gone berserk (Columbine-wise in a way) and of how life can change or end when you open the door to help thy neighbour.
Think twice before opting for this movie. And four times before opening your door to strangers…

Some authors have this martial gift. Their ink becomes poignant steel and drills you through your heart. And when the film is over, you remain on your seat watching the cast and can’t quite move on.
Ian Mc Ewan (the author of "On Chesil Beach")is one of these writers. The film, based on his novel, maintains all its strength.

A young girl witnesses a rape and denounces consciously an innocent young man, the lover of her sister. As a consequence, lives are shattered. During the film you may think you understand the plot, but in the last 5 minutes you’ll understand you did not, and what a marvellous writer Ian Mc Ewan is.
The soundtrack is excellent as well.

En 1966, les États-Unis, en guerre avec le Vietnam, bombardent secrètement le Laos, pays voisin. L’avion de Dieter Dengler, un immigrant allemand devenu pilote de chasse dans l'armée américaine, s'y écrase dès sa première mission. Capturé par des guerrilleros, le jeune soldat est transporté jusqu'à un camp de prisonniers de guerre où se trouvent déjà deux autres Américains. Bientôt, Dengler envisage de s'évader, malgré que les autres captifs tentent de l’en dissuader. Après deux ans de mauvais traitements, les Américains parviennent enfin à échapper à leurs tortionnaires. Ils réalisent toutefois rapidement qu'ils ne sont pas au bout de leur peine, la traversée de la jungle laotienne s'avérant des plus périlleuses.
Film jugé des fois un peu long, à juste titre. Mais tout le casting joue bien la paranoïa de l'enfermement dans un camp. Et tout ceci sous le cachet de qualité de Werner Herzog.
Ce film -peu apprécié par les promoteurs belges?- passe dans une seule salle de la capitale.

Juno is 16 and pregnant. In Canada this is rather early. But Juno has charisma and a character, plus her parents support. And she finds a childless family to adopt her child at birth. But the adopting family disintegrates just before the birth. The father-to- be freaks out with his wife and mother-to-be when she starts “nesting”, meaning buying non-stop stuff for Juno’s child (to be), choosing colours for the baby’s bedroom and worrying that Juno might change her mind. But all works out well on screen. In real life things might have been less “cool”. A pleasant film with an original soundtrack that somehow keeps on playing in the Brussels theatres for endless weeks.

L’ année ou mes parents sont partis en vacances
(The year my parents went on vacation)

En 1970 Brésil atteint la finale de la coupe mondiale. Un événement énormément suivi au niveau national et plus, même à cette époque à la télé noir et blanc (et parasites), sans internet, aux téléphones noirs en baquelite et à la sonnerie qui actuellement s’appelle « old telephone » sur votre portable…. Sous cette apparence de pays invincible, du moins en terrain de football, le peuple brésilien même est vaincu. C’est la décennie effectivement ou le régime de dictature se porte en merveille dans le monde entier, Europe incluse. Sous un régime policier et répressif, les parents de Mauro, persécutés, décident de fuir en hâte dans leur VW Beetle made in Brasil en le confiant à son grand-père juif (profession : barbier, avec une de ces lames que l’on aiguille sur du cuir) à Belo Horizonte. Mais, hélas ! Le jour même de son arrivée, le grand-père meurt, avant même d’avoir le temps de fêter la victoire de l’équipe nationale de football, comme tout Brésilien digne de ce nom. Un peu comme aller à Paris et rater la Tour Eiffel… Et ainsi Mauro sera obligé de grandir en hâte, sans parents ni famille, et devenir un homunculus précoce pour survivre parmi ses voisins, enfants et adultes. On voit un Brésil sombre, aux bâtiments quasi soviétiques, aux gens effrayés, mais qui gardent toujours un certain plaisir de vivre, se retrouver et regarder Pélé, ainsi qu’à travers des trous qui donnent dans les vestiaires de femmes… Un sujet qui émeut (de ce film je veux dire…), une idée assez originale, mais je n’ai pas été convaincu du talent des acteurs. Un peu dommage. Un peu comme aller à Rio et rater Ipanema !

Un très bon dessin animé pour adultes, l'histoire vraie de Marjane Satrapi, une fille d'origine noble. L'histoire commence au début de la guerre entre Iraq et Iran. Iran est à l'époque le pays le plus fort militairement de la région, ce qui ne dérange pas tant qu'il reste sous une influence flagrante des grands pouvoirs occidentaux (son pétrole assuré et son armée entrainée d' abord par des allemands recyclés, ensuite par les britanniques qui installèrent sèchement le père du Shah contre le pétrole et vers la fin par les américains). Le Shah, par peur de perdre le pouvoir, installe avec le support des USA un régime encore plus répressif et en même temps l'Iraq déclare la guerre après provocation iranienne. Ainsi, les deux pays les plus dangereux de cette région de pétrole se neutralisent et s'épuisent financièrement et militairement, pour le plus grand plaisir des pays occidentaux (le régime religieux s'étant entretemps installé et ayant montré son vrai visage barbu). Tout ceci après avoir acheté plein d' armes fabriqués justement dans ces pays occidentaux . C'était l'époque où Saddam Hussein faisait la une du TIME magazine : il allait débarrasser la région de l'ennemi No 1 des USA.

Après l'épuisement de la guerre, il aura fallu un bon moment pour que Saddam Hussein réapparaisse à la une, pour une ultime fois. Quand à l'Iran, dont le passeport ouvrait toutes les portes dans les années du Shah junior, qui était néanmoins le Satrape (=gouverneur en perse et grec, de où le nom de l'auteur ?) vicieux par excellence, malgré le visage occidentalisé qu'il a voulu donner à son pays, on connaît tous la suite. On apprend les endurances de la famille de Marjane pendant cette période, son exil forcé en Autriche où elle fût envoyée par sa famille, pour vivre encore dans le racisme et la décadence et vouloir revenir dans un Iran qui n'allait plus être le même, avant de repartir en France pour du bien.

La conclusion politique serait peut être que c'est mieux de vivre dans un pays sans pétrole, malgré les prix d'essence qui augmentent. Après huit ans de guerre et 1.000.000 de martyrs qu'en Iran, Khomeini prit la relève, voir plus de pétrole assuré, des américains pris otages à l'ambassade des USA et rebelote. Ce n'est plus arrangé depuis.

Quant au film, c'est vraiment une surprise agréable, par son humour et son esthétique. A voir, et à lire le livre aussi! C'est tellement agréable de voir ce dessin animé, apprendre et se réveiller du monde occidental qui tourne parfois un peu trop autour de son nombril et ses problèmes finalement secondaires (voir deux films plus bas).

First of all, Bill Murray plays for about 30 seconds, so don't be fooled, this is not "Lost in translation" . And Anjelica Hewston appears for about 5 minutes, which is just as well: she is a zen nun in India with a bizarre coiffure and an argument for abandoning her three sons and becoming a nun, with a bizarre coiffure . And still, the film leaves you with not such a bad aftertaste: the colours of India , the trains, the buses and the scenery bring some light in the darkness, despite the badly played roles and the incoherent scenario. Interesting soundtrack.

I did not really understand what they lost in the fire (no fire happens in the film), but I wouldn't mind if the film got lost in the fire. Because it made me lose time that I could have used for a nap, watching out the window, reading the board menu or even eating the crap food offered by the airline, all of the above being better alternatives than Benicio del Toro, which I must say I like in general, who acts REALLY as a recovering drug addict with eyes half-closed during two hours, as if he'd just woken up. It gets on your nerves in the end. And Hall Berry is playing flatly badly. If you can't like this film in a long haul flight -and I can watch almost anything under flight conditions- then what is left there t say? If you've time to lose, go for it.

In a village called Melo lost somewhere at the brasilian frontier, Beto makes a meagre living trafficking on his old bicycle through hills and mean, corrupted custom officers merchandise as simple as batteries, flour or whisky from Brasil to Uruguay. Until the day Pope Jean Paul II (papa means Pope in spanish) decides to visit his village. A unique chance for him and the destitute inhabitants to make some badly needed money selling home-made chorizo, pasteles, talimanes and whatever they think the 50.000 expected brasilian visitors might buy. But they are so poor they have to borrow money from the bank for that. And Beto comes up with the bright idea to construct a paying toilet for the pilgrims and earn some money to buy himself a motorcycle. Of course, what else?

Inspired by a true story, this will give you a different version of the country called in the better old days the "Switzerland of Latin America". A sweet tragicomedy about the hardships some people have to endure to buy such simple stuff as a radio for their daughter...

It is a pure coincidence that things did not happen exactly as shown, you'll read on the screen before the beginning of the film, and this is excactly what many film directors should among other things strive to achieve. A lesson for producers that lack simplicity.

The film has already been globally praised, and I would say deserves at least three toilets out of five.

Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman are two quite different characters busy dying, sharing the same hospital room and illness: galloping cancer. Jack Nicholson is crazy, millionaire and -among other things- the owner of the hospital, while Morgan Freeman is his usual self: working, caring and fatherly.

Until craziness prevails and they sail off to live in their last months what they have not lived their whole life, including parachute jumping, car racing, Nepal trekking, flying over the North Pole, philosophizing on the Pyramids and other extravaganza that dying cancer patients usually don't do or simply cannot afford.

This is of course all about exorcizing death in another subtle way. In other words, even dying can be X-treme!Yes, you can! And, come to think of it, it IS the ultimate experience! This is about the way we'd all like to die if struck by cancer: jumping off airplanes and having candle light dinner in Côte d' Azur, or sipping cocktails in Hong Kong (in the "Lost in translation" hotel).

Not a bad film, with some funny scenes and two very good actors supporting a mediocre and very, very predictable scenario. Nicholson is quite moving, while Freeman remains the best actor by far for a background, narrating voice, despite freckles.

This seems to be the phrase around which "The kite runner" evolves in Afghanistan , in the seventies. Meaning well before 9/11, even before the Soviets. As Iran in the pro-Khomeini years (under Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi, the husband of Soraya), Afghanistan is a pro-western, rather tolerant state, where modern and wealthier women dress and dance as in London, where women tourists -on their way to Goa and Inner peace- can walk in mini skirts without being spat upon and where Amir can (afford to) wear Lacoste T-shirts. Because Amir is the son of a wealthy Baba that drives his red Ford Mustang as he feels in red-lights-free Kabul (as Elvis would say, "Ah do what ah feel!"). Amir also has a dedicated servant, Hassan, who, apart from being an excellent kite runner, happens to be also his best friend. One day, Hassan suffers a harsh treatment from Assef (and his gang), another wealthy but mean half-afghan kid, which Amir witnesses without the courage to intervene. This tortures him for the rest of his life, enough to make him buy an artificial beard and return to Kabul 22 years later, after the Soviets, the fratricide and during the Taliban (who still hold strong, despite the their beards being pulled by the USA), trying "to be good again".

A story about the power of remorse, the power of love un-given, the desire to be good again against the odds. Rather late but better than never.

The film, although faithful to the book, is summary and abridged and could have easily lasted 30 mn longer: many interesting parts of the book are omitted and one somehow feels like having to solve a crosswords without a dictionary.

Rather unknown actors. Actually, the kids acting are not actors at all and had to be moved to Dubai because of the assault scene in the film, shocking to some audiences, including the afghan one.

No country for old men

"If I don't come back, tell my mum I love her", says Llewelyn to his wife
before leaving home (actually motor-home, aka a caravan) for a Near Death
Experience with lethal, huge-jawed dogs and blood-thirsty Mexicans in the
midst of decayed corpses and the desert. "Llewelyn, your 'ma is dead!", answers his wife in a southern accent that kills. "I'll tell her myself then", answers Llewelyn. And this is as clever as dialogues get in this highly overrated film. Not to mention the rest: The constant gaps in the film, the enigmatic half-phrases and smiles of Tommy Lee Jones, the out-of-nowhere persons that sneak in and talk about things irrelevant, the incoherence (in-Cohen-rence) of the plot and the fact that the film finishes almost at the middle of the (half) last sentence of TLJ. Posh indeed…Nevertheless, apart from all this, of course! this IS a great film! Great scenery (as great as the barren landscape of the Tijuana border can get), famous actors, great pop-corn as well! I realise it is very chic to express admiration for things we vaguely understand ( think of Buñuel or Greenaway, to name but two cinemawise), but I totally missed the point of this film. Last but not least, once again, the violence. Of course, this is not the first time that the Cohen brothers produce a species of the kind, but am I the only one that needs a break? For one thing, one cannot but admire Javier Bardem in his Dracula disguise (latino version) with his custom gun -a cow-killing, gas propulsion weapon that looks more like a scuba diving oxygen bottle and which he carries all around, being a paranoid killer who kills all people that "see" him (!)- and his eye-catching, pharaonic coiffure. "Oh no, now I won't get laid for the next two months", said he when he saw how he'd have to look like during filming. Although he shouldn't complain: not everybody gets PAID for not getting laid...

This may be trivial, but is more sad than anything else: Heath Ledger
(Brokeback Mountain) was asked to play Llewelyn, but he refused because he
wanted some time for himself. And time he took (lots of it...), and a pill too many as well.
He died last week at the age of 29.

Another hard film about a family affair that turns to family tragedy. The robbing of a jewellery shop orchestrated by the children of the owners. Greed and stupidity, the usual safe recipe to screw things up. And make an interesting film (I am thinking of Fargo , Dog day afternoon , Pulp Fiction and many more...) And everything will go wrong, of course. Seymour Hoffmann excellent, always and again. This may be just a personal opinion, but one would think films must nowadays be hard before being good. When was the last decent comedy on screen?

Have you ever wondered why watching the sunset alone can make you feel more lonesome than usual? Alex Supertramp, as the hero of this film liked to call himself, wondered the same, just days before he died in an abandoned bus, unable to leave Alaska and poisoned slowly to death by eating the wrong kind of plants. The real story of Christopher MacCandleness who left his family and a bright future to pursue his life according to his ideals in pure nature. Based on the book of Jon Krakauer (click here for more) with the same title, this is a moving 2 hours in a film much more profound than a road movie, Kerouac style (he always preferred easier, warmer environments either way). As Krakauer -who tracked and interviewed all the people that Alex had contact with during his odyssey- writes in his book, Alex Supertramp really marked positively all of them. Such a pity that he went so soon. And one can very well imagine that things happened exactly as we see them. His life being extremely simple, no extravaganza was needed to film this movie that may be as close to reality as possible. Emile Hirsch had to undergo daily training and severe diet for this film and is very convincing in this role. Sean Penn did a remarkable job directing him (his fourth time behind the camera, if I am not wrong).

"Because happiness real only when shared", wrote Alex between the lines of his book hours before he died, out of strength and paper. Such a clever lad and it took him 2 years of solitude -and his life- to grasp. Be wiser. Take this into account for your next sunset.

Nous sommes à 1988, l' ère de Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev. L' Union Soviétique (elle existait toujours) envahit Afghanistan quasiment sans prétexte (la proximité du pétrole y était bien sûr pour quelque chose) et y installe son régime (Najibullah) . Un sénateur américain, Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks) , menant la vie occupée et agréable d' un don juan politisé (alcool, cocaïne, femmes et résolution de problèmes locaux franchement secondaires) est persuadé par le Consul Honoraire de Pakistan (Julia Roberts) de visiter son pays et témoigner, à la frontière avec Afghanistan, de l' atrocité qui est en train de se produire: des hélicoptères russes qui tirent avec "overwhelming power" (la doctrine militaire américaine utilisée à maintes reprises récemment) sans discrimination sur tout ce qui bouge: femmes, enfants, mudjahideen (combattants, du "jihad", "la bataille")et même animaux, qui n' ont aucun moyen de se défendre à part des vieux fusils. Ce film est plein de noms familiers: Giuliani, l' ex-maire de New York et actuel candidat à la Présidence américaine (2008), est le procureur qui s' occupe des débauches du sénateur. Le Premier Ministre de Pakistan est Zia Ul Haq (à l' apparence beaucoup trop bénigne par rapport a son vrai personnage), celui qui, après avoir renversé le père Bhutto du pouvoir par putsch, a jugé bon de le pendre devant les yeux de sa famille (la feu Benazir Bhutto incluse). Begin est le premier ministre d' Israël. Charlie Wilson, aidé par Gust Avrakotos (agent d' origine grecque de la CIA , désabusé mais connaisseur de la région) parvient d' augmenter le budget consacré à la défense de l' Afghanistan de 5 mil. de dollars à 1 milliard de $, achetant des armements qui ont sérieusement contribué au débâcle de l' USSR, partie en déshonneur de l' Afghanistan en 1989. Gust Avrakotos, joué par Philip Seymour Hoffmann, accapare de suite dans ce film. Il appartient à cette petite élite d' acteurs qui, tout simplement, ne peuvent pas rater leur rôle (d' autres exemples de ce genre: Harvey Keitel, Kevin Spacey, to name a few). Aura-t-il un prix de second rôle pour cette prestation?

Pourtant, malgré un film très agréable et parfois tout simplement comique,un manque de contenu assez flagrant. J' ai attendu jusqu' au générique pour voir si mention serait faite que ces fameuses armes, achetées avec l' argent du contribuable américain pour combattre (sans perte de vie américaine et par distance) les communistes, quand les mudjahedin se sont rebaptisés en Taliban ( "etudiants", "chercheurs" ) , se sont tournés de nouveau contre le malheureux peuple Afghan, et après 9/11 l' Ouest en général. Afghanistan est devenu ce qu' il est aujourd' hui grâce aussi (mais pas seulement) à ces armes, et la suite de cette histoire est connue. Aucune mention n' est faite à cette tournure de situation devenue un vrai casse-tête politique mondial et des USA qui voyaient en Afghanistan le Vietnam de l' Union Soviétique.Parce-que quand la haine explose, il est mieux de ne pas avoir trop de couteaux qui trainent autour....

Comme quoi Hollywood ne diffuse jamais un message trop déviant de l' officielle politique américaine .

Film dur aux questions poignantes. La disparition d' une petite fille nommée Amanda et tout ce qui se cache derrière: la crasse humaine. Le prénom de la petite fille vous fait-il penser à une autre histoire récente d' enlèvement? .Avec Casey Affleck au rôle principal (et son frère derrière la caméra), pas mal de charme, mais sans nerf: serait-il mieux dans une comédie romantique? Je le vois très bien en tant qu' amoureux déçu ou pareil. Comme Amy Ryan d' ailleurs, sa compagne zen dans le film. Et Morgan Freeman dans encore un rôle paternel. Peut-être la chose la plus intéressante se trouve vers la fin du film, le dilemme concernant le destin que mérite la petite fille. Je parie que les avis seront partagés.

A very pleasant surprise indeed, despite the mediocre belgian critics (2*). So let ME tell you the truth (zi one and only...)

Jude Law, voted by a major women's magazine as the sexiest man on the planet in 2006, is the charming owner of a small night bar in NY called ???? ("keys", in russian, if you get 4 ???? on your screen). Something to do with all those keys people leave at his bar when they split. Still, Jude is lonesome and has also been abandonned by the russian Katia, indefinitely uglier and older than him (those things only happen in films ). Until the day Norah Jones, an excellent actor as well I must tell you, asks him to keep the keys of her unfaithful ex she just left. Despite a pleasant evening with J and many a blueberry pies (not everybody eats chocolate when they get sad), Norah has to flee, to find herself -and make the movie last. And we do not care the less because we get a pleasant road movie around America, Las Vegas and more in a convertible Jag among others, Route66wise. Rachel Weisz, the Gardener's wife, is alive and kicking as the ex wife of a cop in this film. Not bad, but always better in classy roles.

If you have not guessed it already, Norah comes back to NY and her preferred barman, after having exchanged 1.000 romantic postcards with him . The final scene is quite moving. Nannies, beware (click here to see why).

OK, I admit. I went for Scarlet, as some of you go to the movies for George. And I can understand why some men fall for their nanny. But as I only had eyes for her, I have not much to say about the film itself. I must admit that my life has not changed significantly thereafter. She still hasn't called.

Et, pour finir 2007 en beauté , une surprise très agréable que de ce film. Ratatouille est absolument doudou(x), et voir ce film dans un avion fut non seulement un passe-temps bienvenu, mais aussi un plaisir et une bonne excuse. Bref, je n' ai pas du me cacher dans mon fauteuil comme d' hab ! En d' autres mots, amenez-y vos enfants et l' adulte que vous êtes pour un plaisir garanti (et plus si affinités !).

Film moyen. Ewan McGregor est de retour de son périple africain (The long way down) pour jouer dans ce film sans nerf. L'histoire de deux frères (Ewan McGregor et Colin Farrell) qui, contre rémunération, acceptent de commettre un meurtre instigué par leur oncle . L'un des deux frères arrive de continuer à vivre avec. Par contre, le deuxième (Colin Farell) en devient progressivement parano, et la fin du film tragique et prévisible. Ewan McGregor reste charmant, mais, useless information of the day, Colin Farell ressemble fort à André Agassi (quand il avait encore des cheveux). Et, en parlant de tennis, Ce film de Woody Allen a plein de points communs avec le « Match point » de celui-ci (à l' exception près de Scarlet Johansson, ses lèvres et son charme) : la torture fatale, l'enfer de la mauvaise conscience. En avez-vous une ? ;-)

Que ce soit clair, je n'apprécie pas vraiment ni l'esthétique ni le contenu de ce cartoon (qui voudrait ressembler à Homer ?). Mais le film est délirant. Homer se dépasse et redevient tellement con qu' on ne peut qu' en rire.

Have human relations nose-dived or is this just the norwegian no-way
of life? Scandinavian humour is uniquely black, pitch black, and I dare say
this norwegian sample is even more hurtful than the finnish ones (Kaurismäki and his finnish haircuts, as far as most of us are concerned). « Andreas (...) den brysomme mannen » (the broken, breakbar man in norwegian) is trying to escape this (e)motionless nordic, grayscale IKEA world he has arrived to in the strangest of ways, in vain. Some scenes will make you laugh, others will sting you right in the heart, some will do both. The final scene is simply magnificient. Original and totally unexpected.

.est le fils d'un père chiant. Il vit a Paris, dans l'agressivité et le chômage. Jusqu' au jour où il décide de filer avec la fille qu'il veut conquérir pour reprendre l'épicerie de son père, au sud de la France. Parmi les vieux séniles de son patelin il apprend l'humanité et l'abandon. La fille qu'il aime le quitte mais lui reste.

Un film simple, sans violence, plein de soleil. Les gens avaient ce sourire béat en sortant de la salle. Dehors, le froid et la pluie fine qui vous suce les dernières gouttes d'optimisme.

Viggo Mortensen is just a russian driver, the "Only drive, never ask" kind. The type of guy you would strongly be advised not to mess with under any circumstances, among other things because in his spare time he disposes of dead bodies with a bored look in his own unique, professional way. And cutting their deep frozen fingers with a plier (no more fingerprints :-( ) is just one of the excruciating scenes you'll witness in this film. Thus be prepared, because you'll get your aperitif from the very beginning, in the horrendous opening scene at the barber shop, one that would make Tarantino reconsider recycling to wildlife documentaries. Because there is something definitely Mortuary in Mortensen's dead-serious look. His cut, his sunglasses (no matter the weather), his heavy russian accent but also the way he endures being spat upon, only to come back "medieval" (see the Etymology ) upon those who even dare to think of killing him in a turkish bath.

It would be hard after that to convince you he is full of feelings as well, which is quite normal after all, because if I could I would be called Viggo and, worse, you would not have to go to the cinema and see what an admirable actor this man is. Just never be quick to judge to a person, no matter how lethal this person may seem in the beginning. At least in films.

Everybody plays well in this film, including the orphan baby that I would not think twice before adopting as well, as the childless Naomi Watts does on screen. But Viggo Mortensen deserves a prize for this role.

« Comment vous m' avez reconnu ? », demande Hannah Chygulla (qui vient de perdre sa fille) Nejat dans le bar de son hôtel (à propos, c' est le Pera Palace), lors de leur toute première rencontre.

« Sie sind der traurigste Mensch hier », répond Najat, « Vous êtes la personne la plus triste ici ».

Et vous le serez aussi ou presque, en sortant de la salle. Cad, quand les français font un film triste, il y a toujours une lueur d'espoir, la probabilité d'un happy end, un kitsch humain. Quand les allemands font un film triste, ça décape votre âme. A vous de voir pourtant si ce film peut être qualifié comme allemand.

Encore une histoire tissée majestueusement, comme Fatih Akin (Gegen die Wand (Head on)) seulement sait le faire. Entre la Turquie et Bremen (loin de Alexanderplatz.) Hanna Schygulla est la mère de toutes les mères allemandes, ou la mère de toutes les mères tout court, dans son rôle le plus humain, vieillie mais pour autant devenue l'archétype, la déesse de la maternité . Une histoire qui ira de mal en pis et pas le contraire. Pourtant, toute l'humanité possible racontée en deux heures, après lesquelles vous resterez cloué dans votre chaise avant de pouvoir vous lever et re-entamer votre vie finalement pas si mal que ça..

Préparez vos mouchoirs, préparez-vous à retenir des larmes. Probablement le meilleur film de 2007, qui a pourtant perdu le prix de Cannes au « 4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days » (voir plus bas) .

Faudra attendre vraiment jusqu' à la fin pour vérifier, quand Najat attend son père à Trabzon ( Trapezounta , la ville de mon propre grand-père), lors d' une scène étonnament immobile et néanmoins hyper-belle.

No, Denzel Washington is not always the good guy . In this film he is the church-going, innovating American Gangster competing with and bringing out of business the well established italian mafia, aka the traditionally mean guys with the heavy accent selling second-quality cut heroine , while he imports his uncut premium stuff directly from his vietnamese counterparts during the Vietnam war in the most creapy of places: dead soldiers' coffins...

Until the day that Russell Crowe decides that the forces of evil have to be silenced. And you know how resolute he can be, don' t you?

A true story, a very dense and explicit film with sturdy dialogues, the scene in which Denzel shoots in plain daylight a rival black dealer in the head and returns serenely to finish his donut being somehow particularly unappetizing.

Not totally conveincing. 3 intertwining stories on the same subject: How can one be more useful to the american society. By doing exactly what. By sending more troops to fight abroad (Senator Cruise), by staying home and trying to change things from within (Professor Redford) or by enlisting (the latter's students)?

The kind of film that, when the end comes and the curtains close, one remains with the feeling that one has not had enough food for thought. Especially when one has had high expectations in the first place. A bit like a meal in a nouvelle cuisine restaurant when one arrives -and leaves- hungry.

...is Shiva, the god of death, as well as a Mercedes-driving corporate lawyer specialized in cleaning up messy legal affairs that turns good. A bit like Harvey Keitel in "Pulp fiction" ("I solve problems") cleaning the mess of Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson, only he never repented.

Quite predictable as a film, if you went for the film überhaupt and not for George.

The bad lawyer in this film (Tilda Swinton), not to be confused with Ally Mc beal, was the sect leader in the film "The beach" (starring Leonardo di Caprio) and she's as bad in a lawyer's tailleur in downtown America as she is vicious in a bikini on a thai beach. This time though she can't swim to redemption and goes down with the rest of the bad pesticide producers.

PS: George Clooney as Clark Gable in the Martini spot just before the film is equally Magnifico!

Tuya a très peu de possessions matérielles. Par contre, elle a un troupeau de moutons, deux enfants, un mari handicapé (s'est blessé en creusant le puits d'eau) et un ami maltraité de sa propre femme qui la veut bien, voire même un peu plus. Mais elle n'a pas le temps pour une vraie histoire d'amour le jour qu' elle, ou plutôt la sour de son mari, décide qu'elle doit se remarier, tout en gardant avec elle son mari handicapé. Farfelu ? En tout cas acceptable dans la latitude de Tuya et ainsi commence une histoire pas possible de maris potentiels qui se présentent, qui vont et qui viennent dans cette ambiance très désertique et pauvrissime. Pendant 2 heures je poussais psychologiquement pour que ce film puisse avoir une sorte de happy end, hélas sans trop y réussir...

L'histoire d' une femme qui ne peut pas changer ses propres histoire et destin. Un très bon film, surtout pour ceux qui éprouvent souvent des désirs d' ailleurs.

The british NHS is great, the french health service even better, as for the cuban one, not only is it free and will heal for nothing american citizens that dare to cross, but one gets treated by medics as handsome and caring as dr Kildare, for those who remember him. True or false?

But still, by far the worse thing that can happen to you is get SICKO in the USA. Get a good insurance before your next trip...

But don't shoot Clive Owen who is excellent in the role of the cruel pistolero for a good reason: saving the life of a baby that will definitely become a traumatized adult and/or a pistolero.

The true gruesome story of an abortion during the (nightm)era of Ceausescu, when one could only distinguish Dacias (romanian imitations of real Renaults) through their different colour.

4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days is also the time you' ll need to get over this film.

Great thriller-like filming, the kind that will make you happy to be exactly where you are, deep in your theatre seat.

Propably the most beautiful brunette in the greater mediterranean area falls in love with the local traffic policeman, but only after shaving his moustache and having him go through a painful hair removal (halawa) procedure, which in Libanon is done using almost liquid Caramel. With lemon in it. Remember this next time you buy your kids lemon lollipops.

This and more short stories intertwining around a salon de coiffure, the one with the old senile lady being particularly frustrating (and real).

A very nice film in a shattered city we' ll have to wait once again before visiting...

Do you think Paris is all about light and arts, bohemian painters and Eiffel tower, china-made miniatures? You might reconsider after this film. A realistic print of the city, filmed in rather short sequences, a bit like in the (cult-) movie "Clerks": the most bizarre situations become true, and it all looks so possible. The finale comes as a bit of a disappointment, as life also does sometimes. Girl decides, despite differences and events that would kill Your couple in minutes, to stay with the guy that "60%" (female fuzzy mathematics...) of the time she finds unfit, arguing she's used at fighting with him... Convinced? Well, the guy seemingly is, and it all ends well, giving you full satisfaction for your money.

Jason Bourne is alive and kicking. Charming and dangerous, looking for the one and only truth about his past, like the average guy would on a psy's sofa, but with a gun. Travels around the world to find it and gate-breaks his way to it, jumping through buildings and unstable tile roofs and smashing through windows, driving vespas and using his cell phone while at it, among other places in Tangier. It always works by the way, network is never down, battery never low and, especially, they always answer.

The BBBs (Bad Big Brothers) follow him, of course, in a race against time, using unbelievably mean killers and hopefully non-existing (yet...) spying technology (the 1001 cameras at Waterloo Station being the most benign ones) to get his -remarkably unscathed, JamesBondwise- skin at any price. But the ex-bad and always beautiful blonde from the last two films becomes his ally and even cuts her hair like his ex-girlfriend, remember? zi german girl that opens up a motorbike rental shop at Mykonos in the first film, but gets killed in a lost thirld world country during package holidays in the second one. Love affair with the ex-bad, totally caucasian blondin to be followed in Bourne 4? YES, please!

Jason Bourne survives once again, because he's Bourne to be alive . But I suggest you Don' t try this at home, ever.