----- ENGLISH VERSION -----
A drama as elegant as it feels trivial, EMPIRE OF LIGHT checks all the boxes of the typical 'movie for seniors' with British sauce.
A sorrowful seaside background, a 50-year-old woman alone and feeling bad about herself, a cozy atmosphere, a tiny bit of political commitment but not too much (in order to avoid frightening the older viewers), a little bit of social awareness but not too much (because the director-writers don't fully master the subject),…
----- ENGLISH VERSION -----
Proudly sold on the basis of its enticing, deliciously regressive high-concept, COCAINE BEAR surprisingly proves itself to be hopelessly boring.
Openly playing the card of "hey, it's a totally crazy idea so let's do some totally crazy things', Elizabeth Banks's new movie however doesn't seem to believe for a single second in its wacky idea.
Worse, it seems almost stilted, frightened at the idea of being too radical, too vulgar, too outrageous.
Consequently, if we except…
----- ENGLISH VERSION -----
The annual film festival sensation overbought by film critics and ecstatic moviegoers as the umpteenth gold-standard of independent american cinema and the absolute-and-absolutely-unquestionable rise of an awesome new artistic voice.
The kind of art work that is actually modest (which is a quality!) but still erected as a film-monument phenomenon during its release date, only to be supported by the very small portion of its audience who wouldn't have forgotten it a few weeks after its…
----- ENGLISH VERSION -----
Despite the ascetic nature of its aesthetic and its pace, Todd Field's new movie appears to be a very vivid and lucid photography of the moral contradictions that are shaking our society.
Worn at arm's length by actress Cate Blanchett thanks to a spectacular performance, who delivers a powerful interpretation for a disturbing character that is as unlovable as she remains fascinating until the very end, TAR shows a cold, dehumanized artistic universe in which everyone…
----- ENGLISH VERSION -----
We wanted to believe in it. We really did, promise.
But despite its desire for a silly, old-fashioned, 'pulp' adventure and a very commendable note of intent from its directors-writers, the absolute lack of any marketing campaign was an involuntary confession and finally sealed its fatal fate.
Yes, we can grant 65 to only last ninety minutes, to never drag, to avoid getting bogged down in any superfluous of overlong explanatory first act, to never apologize…
----- ENGLISH VERSION -----
Bringing director M. Night Shyamalan back to better known tracks after OLD, a quite disappointing and wrongly-advised adaptation of the fascinating comicbook 'Château de sable' by Frederik Peeters and Pierre Oscar Lévy, KNOCK AT THE CABIN reuses several worned tricks from his cinema, sometimes with a relative efficiency, often with a demonstrative tendency to laziness and heaviness.
Focused around a homosexual couple depicted with a surprisingly accuracy and a humble modesty (it also feels natural and…
----- ENGLISH VERSION -----
Adapted from a play written by Samuel D. Hunter, THE WHALE marks the comeback of director Darren Aronofsky (REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, BLACK SWAN) six years after the highly execrable and stupid MOTHER !, clumsily pursuing (again!) in a new depiction of another painful, misplaced and hyper-symbolic Way of the Cross, still heavily sprinkled with some voyeuristic misanthropy and miserable social-pornography.
As such, THE WHALE is his masterpiece, the pinnacle of his (mere) ambition as a…
----- ENGLISH VERSION -----
The strength of this very modest and simple first feature film lies in its modesty and in its unshakeable faith into the power of imagination and optimism, a belief that inevitably clashes with a contemporary French cinema that is more defined by its obsession for resolutely realistic depictions of a restrictive, pessimistic reality that has necessarily to be disappointing by its own nature, no matter what.
Despite the undeniably flawed direction (though it is far from…
----- ENGLISH VERSION -----
A remarkably well-crafted first feature film that succeed to recreate a quite faithful portrait of the little-known gang wars that shook France shortly after the 1973 oil crisis that ended of the post-war boom known as "The Glorious Thirty".
Reusing in a deflecting way the codes of both the antic tragedy and the Broadway musicals (the filiation with WEST SIDE STORY is kind of unmissable...), RASCALS is a poignant sociological study through the observation of the…
----- ENGLISH VERSION -----
An exceptional documentary whose tremendous emotional strength is due as much to its fascinating subject as to its insanely spectacular images.
Retalling the symbolicly tragic journey of Maurice and Katia Krafft, a couple of famous French volcanologists, the movie is first and foremost a playful and very informative open window on a profession that is still little known but quite fascinating in its uniqueness.
It is secondly and above all the portrait of a deeply moving…
----- ENGLISH VERSION -----
Imagined from a series of photographies from the end of the 19th century, the story of GODLAND is an evocation of the Danish colonization in Iceland through the thwarted, mystical journey of a priest whose faith is undermined by the harshness of the nature on this island and the rudeness of its local inhabitants.
Epic adventure at the end of the world in order to strengthen - thanks to religion - a thin substrate of civilization…
----- ENGLISH VERSION -----
Fourteen years after IN BRUGES, his first melancholic motion picture, director Martin McDonagh reunites once again Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson for a cruel and depressing irish fable.
A (barely disguised) metaphor for the Irish Civil War, THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN demonstrates a sense of irony and a taste for tragicomic absurdity that perfectly contrast with the stoicism and solemnity of what is played on screen.
This is a folk tale in which the triviality of…