Reviews

Corean cinema can be quite surprising for an occidental audience, because of the multiplicity of the tones and genres you can find in the same movie. In a Coreen drama such as this "Secret Sunshine", you'll also find some comical parts, thriller scenes and romantic times. "There's not only tragedy in life, there's also tragic-comedy" says at one point of the movie the character interpreted by Song Kang-ho, summing up the mixture of the picture. But don't get me wrong, this heterogeneity of the genres the movie deals with, adds veracity to the experience this rich movie offers to its spectators. That doesn't mean that it lacks unity : on the contrary, it's rare to see such a dense and profound portrait of a woman in pain.

Shin-ae, who's in quest for a quiet life with her son in the native town of her late husband, really gives, by all the different faces of suffering she's going through, unity to this movie. It's realistic part is erased by the psychological descriptions of all the phases the poor mother is going through. Denial, lost, anger, faith, pert of reality : the movie fallows all the steps the character crosses, and looks like a psychological catalog of all the suffering phases a woman can experience.

The only thing is to accept what may look like a conceptual experience (the woman wears the mask of tragedy, the man represents the comical interludes) and to let the artifices of the movie touch you. I must say that some parts of the movie really did move me (especialy in the beginning), particularly those concerning the unability of Chang Joan to truly help the one he loves, but also that the accumulation of suffering emotionally tired me towards the end. Nevertheless, some cinematographic ideas are really breathtaking and surprising (the scene where a body is discovered in a large shot is for instance amazing). This kind of scenes makes "Secret Sunshine" the melo equivalent of "The Host" for horror movies or "Memories of murder" for thrillers. These movies are indeed surprising, most original, aesthetically incredible, and manage to give another dimension to the genres they deal with. The only thing that "Secret Sunshine" forgets, as "The host" forgot to be scary, is to make its audience cry : bad point for a melodrama, but good point for a good film.

10/31/1978 (Halloween) : John Carpenter invents, after Hitchcock's Psycho, the modern slasher movie. An evil bogeyman terrorizes a little suburban town, and kills a few of its teenagers, especially baby sitters. Michael Myers has no face, no past, no personality : he's just a representation of the evil that haunts this anonymous town of Haddonfield, and can appear as the ghost of an untold sin whenever he wants to. The opening sequence is an admirable subjective one shot, that marked history of horror cinema and the ending with the immortal villain is also an anthologic part. The rest of the movie shows a magisterial use of cinemascope, that manage to give a frightening and creepy look to a very common town. Rob Zombie really signs here a remake and an interpretation of this first night of Halloween, developing the beginning, adding blood and gore, but staying faithful to the movie in its second half. He just cuts some tension and adds some action, but the situations, the characters (even in the way they talk), and the murders are pretty much the same.

10/31/1981 (Halloween II) : The second Halloween is the direct continuation of the first and happens in the very same night. It's a rather clever sequel, not as mastered as the original, but very fun to watch. The two movies could almost be seen as one. Rob Zombie took from this movie the relationship we discover between Laurie Strode and Michael Myers. It's now a well known fact and a part of the myth, and it was almost unimaginable for Zombie not to mention it in his remake.

10/31/1982 (Halloween III: Season of the Witch ) : The Halloween without Michael Myers (except for an apparition on a TV screen, when a character watches the Carpenter's movie !)is an involuntary funny B-movie, and didn't influence much Rob Zombie. There's maybe the fascination of his Myer's character for the masks, that you can find in both movies, but it's really certainly more a Zombie's personal touch than a reference to this film.

10/31/1988 (Halloween 4 : The Return of Michael Myers) : Certainly the best of Myers' movies after the two first ones. If this movie also marks the return of Donald Pleasence, Jamie Lee Curtis doesn't come back and Mychael Myers is now after her daughter Jamie. Rob Zombie kept the redneck attitude of the inhabitant of Haddonfield, that stupidly shot everything when they learn that Myer's back in town ! The relationship between Myers and Loomis is also well developed here, and it certainly inspired Zombie.

10/31/1989 (Halloween 5) : Producer Moustapha Akkad tried to make the same thing than in Halloween 2, by making here a direct continuation of the fourth, but he was obviously lacking time, and ruined all the good ideas of the previous movie (the ending !!!). There's nothing to keep in mind there and Zombie completely ignore this movie in his remake.

10/31/1995 (Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers) : This movie is also called "The Origin of Michael Myers", but it has absolutely nothing to do with the one Rob Zombie decided to develop. The worst episode of the franchise is only worth seeing because its one of the last movie with Donald Pleasence - but that's all.

10/31/1998 (Halloween H20: 20 Years Later) The last three episodes are forgot, and Halloween 7 is the sequel of Halloween 2. This funny and clean variation, that introduced Josh Hartnett on screen, apparently didn't satisfied Rob Zombie, that comes back with a more hardcore and rotten aesthetic.

10/31/2002 (Halloween: Resurrection) : Except for an opening scene with Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode for the last time, there's really nothing to save here. It's time for the franchise to invents something new. Rob Zombie tries to personalize the series, by making a remake that cross the Halloween's universe with his own grotesque preoccupations. But to me, if his efforts are praisable, the result isn't as satisfying as expected. By being too faithful to Carpenter, Zombie looses a little bit of his personality, and signs a bastard movie, half-Carpenter, half Zombie, not so well from both point of view. So, all we got in the end is a pretty good episode of the series, but yet, also another useless remake.

I praise the quality of today's English cinema, that manage to give us few of the best movies of this year : from the horrific "28 Weeks later" to the depressing biopic "Control" (and I'm not talking about the spaced "Sunshine", the hilarious "Hot Fuzz", or the documented "The Future is unwritten"). Once again, "This is England" comes to prove that Truffaut was wrong when he said that England and Cinema were two antinomy's terms. The movie is a little less good than its reputation(from the critics to its prize at Cannes), but gives an touching and realistic portrait of England in the 80's.

The all movie focuses on the point of view of a 12/13 years old boys, who's rejected by his fellow friends at school, but is attracted by an older group of Skinheads. Unfortunately, the leader of the group has some nationalist acquaintances from a friend that just comes out of jail, and the young boy will be tempted to fallow by this easy nationalist/racist paths. If this story doesn't always avoid some facilities, it's rather an achievement for the film not to focus so much on the thesis (England and Nationalism, the way people are dragged into that, etc.) but on its characters. To sum up, it's far to be a Ken Loach movie, and that's maybe for the best here.

And it's the portrayal of a few characters that is really moving in this movie, from the sympathetic young skinhead leader, that knows where to throw a line and to refuse nationalist, to the sad and lonely 'vilain' of the movie. And of course, the young Shaun character, although his young age, is also amazing and very credible. The set up, the music and make up are also very well done, and the all reconstitution is very pleasant. Even if it's not very original, you can feel the sincerity of the director, and the sympathy he have for its characters.

I like "Highlander" and I like Zombies, so I went to see this movie, even though I didn't saw the previous ones and ain't too aware of the video game (I've played once or twice to one of them, but I'm not fanatic about video-games). In my mind, the movie was a crossover between sword duels with living dead and cheap visual kitch effects. Well, I wasn't disappointed. I'm sure that the desperate high-tech visual touch of the movie will become kitch in no time (let's wait ten years and see how old this movie gets). But what I particularly enjoyed are the absurd fights robbed in a referential package, that pleased the B-movie lover in me.

"Extinction" is surely not an intellectual movie, not even a Tarantino-like post modern film, but the way the movie deals with cinephilic references is quite intriguing. Two examples (but the movie is full of scenes like that) : there's an obvious Hitchcock'homage when infected crows began to attack people as in "The Bird". And of course, I especially like the "Day of the dead" parody, that you can see through the all movie that confronts a mad scientist with stupid soldiers. Romero's parody culminates in a hilarious scene, where the crazy scientist believed he archived to domesticate one of the dead, but the finally doesn't seem so ready to be a human slave.

The visual aspect of the movie is most intriguing part of the film. I don't know about the first ones, but "Resident Evil" manage to be a gore movie (with blood and rotten living dead), but also tries to be clean, just like a numeric video game. I think I never saw blood looks so clean on a movie before, and for that, "Extinction" is quite unique. It's like a gore movie made for the all family to watch. To sum up, there's funny references, well done action and fight scenes, and a rather unusual visual style that makes "Resident Evil : Extenction" a rather funny and pleasant moment.

The first question that comes to mind when you ear about this project is : what the hell is Jan Kounen doing as a director of such a movie ? Jan Kounen was a french talented and trendy director of the 90's, just as his friend Matthieu Kassovitz. He released "Doberman" when Kasso brought "La Haine" on french screens. But after this violent/cartoon movie, Jan Kounen had discovered Shamanism while directing his experimental trip out of (the blues) "Blueberry" and then made a documentary about inner journey and other substantial trips. "99 Francs", on the other hand is an auto-fiction by the french intellectual bobo Beigbeider, that narrates his experience as a publicist in a satirical and fashionable style. So, my question was : what's the link between this director and this book and what the hell is Jan Kounen doing as a director of such a movie ?

First, from a factual point of view, Kounen and the main and incredibly credible actor of the movie, Jean Dujardin, have them-self been publicists, and decided to take the book as a starting point, and to go on completely different directions. Beigbeder, who appears several times in the movie, agreed to this betrayal. But this critic of the advertising world isn't the best part of the movie, and only seems to be a support for more experimental journey that only drugs can give.

The character of the movie inhales himself several time a gargantuesque quantity of cocaine, unknown pills and other drugs, that makes him have gigantic visions that the movie emphases. A large parts of the movie is just a description of absurd visions, that links the cartoon and trash violence of "Doberman" with the experimental form of "Bluebberry" in the funny and cool package of a critic of advertising and a large public comedy. The best part of "99 Francs" is to me an improbable escape to the tropical forest of "Bluebberry", with Jan 'Pydjhaman' Kounen like guide. If Yan Kounen defines is movie as the "Yogourt Fight Club", the film is also near from Gilliam's more experimental and crazy works.

I was really expecting more from this adaptation of Grimbert's novel by Claude Miller. The director showed us with his last movie, "La Petite Lili" that he was able to take an important literary text (that was "The Seagull" from Tchekhov)and to transform it into an interesting cinematographic experience. But with this secret, Miller only manages to give a boring and literal (even if he takes some liberty from the book) adaptation without any relief.

If the structure of the film, all in flash-back and time traveling, gives a modern aspect to the movie, it's merely an illusion, and a useless style effect, for the movie rapidly gives this artifice away and finally adopts a linear form. The story is the one of a young boy who learns in the 50's the secret story of his family during WWII. His family was Jew and it hasn't been easy for them during the french occupation by the German. This last sentence seems ridiculous, but it's the key to the secret of the movie ! That's how much you will learn while watching it.

The movie is also lame concerning the individual story of the child that learns the story of his family. If you have the feeling this could be the real subject of the movie during the first minutes of the film, that shows a a man (Mathieu Amalric) remembering his child wood where he learns this story, the consequences of such a discovery are eluded in the movie. And the scenes with Amalric, that seems to come from another french film d'auteur, with it's Garrel Balck and white look, are completely useless. You just get to see an old maked-up Patrick Bruel and Cecile De France in a "Once upon a time in America"'s style, but all I can say is that Claude Miller isn't Sergio Leone, and that this flash-forward effect is close to ridiculous.

The narrative structure, the mise en scene, the themes, the reconstitution, and the story of the movie are so predictable, academical and uninteresting, that the spectator attention, close to fall in beautifuler dreams, is merely kept alive by the presence of two good french actress : Ludivine Sagnier and especially Cecile De France. They're the only reason to watch this movie 'till the end and they're the one ones to bring some interest to this mediocre adaptation.

The intriguing subject of "The Brave one", added with the determination of Jodie Foster to produce and play in the movie, makes me hope of a sort of intelligent and feminine version of "The Punisher", a kind of violent reflexion on vigilantes and auto justice. Helas, this movie is just a ridiculous plagiary of Bronson's "Death Wish" series, that hides its emptiness and B-Movie style under a boring psychological study.

The victim of an aggression that kills her husband but not her dog, Erica (Jodie Foster) becomes a stranger to herself, buys a gun and rapidly transforms herself in a dark avenger at night. I generally enjoy the work of the director Neil Jordan ("Interview with the vampire" !), but I have to admit that his mise en scene here is quite lame, and except for one or two interesting effects (as the one where Erica tries to go out after her aggression, and fell the world with fear), there's nothing new there. But the wick point of the movie is its over-cliché script. When I was waiting for a credible variation on the vigilante genre, you get every passage obligé of this king of movie, that gives a frightful déjà vu feeling.

When Erica buys her gun, she goes in a grocery shop, and, yes ! an armed and dangerous man kills another one and there's a robbery. She then takes the subway, and yes again, two "gansta" try to rob here (in the center of Manhattan in 2007, come on !). Her black neighbor gives her some precious advices as "there's million ways to live" and is also some kind of a nurse ! You get all the same old ridiculous clichés of "Death Wish" there, but at least, the Bronson's movies were unpretentious and fun. The end of the movie is also a shame, and tries to deliver a pitiful and unacceptable message.

Of course, Jodie Foster plays her part very well, but her seriousness doesn't hide the fact that it's only a B-Movie, that tries to be intelligent, but only manage to be pretentious.

Black and White images of the life of Ian Curtis. David Bowie's songs in slow motions. Smoking cigarettes in depressive bars. Here are the young men, the weighs on their shoulders. "Control" is an esthetically portrait of the lead singer of Joy Division, from the day he meets Deborra, his future wife, to the day he dies. It's from her eyes that the story of his life is told, and this subjective and personal point of view gives coherence and strength to this touching movie.

Useless to say that the photography of the movie is beautiful, and carries a real artistic point of view on this biopic. The construction of each frames of the film reinforces the solitude and loneliness of the character, by isolating him in one part of the screen. Only when he's with Annik Honoré, he's paradoxically allowed to be completed. The music is also beautifully played and interpreted, and the actor Sam Rilley's made an impressive visual as vocal work as Ian Curtis. His version of "She's lost control" is for instance almost better than the original one.

The only reproach I can make to this very well done movie is maybe a little over-interpretative uses of Joy Division's music. Every songs has to means something in Ian Curtis's life. "She's lost control" is a direct reference to his epilepsy or "Love will tear us apart" is a statement about is the failure of his couple. This constant references to Curtis life trough his song gives a rather unoriginal and predictive use of them, that culminates in the last song of the movie, "Atmosphere", that is exactly use as in Witterbottom's movie "24 Hours Party People".

But besides this "Walk the line" aspect of the movie, that can be considered as the week point of every biopic about a singer, the movie is very touching, honest and beautiful. All in all, it's an excellent cinematographic translation of Joy Division's musical universe. One last transmission ? Listen to the silence, let it ring on Eyes dark, relentless, frightened of the sun, we would have a fine time living in the night Left a blind instruction, take away our sight !

He now has a name, an identity, some memories and a a lost girlfriend. All he wanted was to disappear, but still, they traced him and destroyed the world he hardly built. Now he wants some explanation, and to get ride of the people how made him what he is. Yeah, Jason Bourne is back, and this time, he 's here with a vengeance.

OK, this movie doesn't have the most elaborated script in the world, but its thematics are very clever and ask some serious questions about our society. Of course, like every Hollywoodian movie since the end of the 90's, "The Bourne Suprematy" is a super-heroes story. Jason Bourne is a Captain-America project-like, who's gone completely wrong. In the first movie, the hero discovered his abilities and he accepted them in the second one. He now fights against what he considers like evil, after a person close to him has been killed (his girlfriend in "Suprematy") by them. That's all a part of the super-hero story, including a character with (realistic but still impressive : he almost invincible) super powers.

And the interesting point is that the evil he fights all across the world (there's no frontiers in the Bourne's movies, characters are going from one continent to another in the blink of an eye), is, as in the best seasons of "24", an American enemy, who's beliefs that he fight for the good of his country completely blinds him. Funny how "mad patriots" are now the N.1 enemies of paranoiac Hollywood's stories.

Beside all those interesting thematics, the movie isn't flawless : the feminine character of Nickie Parson is for now on completely useless and the direction is quite unoriginal when it comes to dialogs scenes. But all that doesn't really matter, for "The Bourne Ultimatum" is an action movie. And the action scenes are rather impressive.

Everyone here is talking about the "Waterloo scene" and the "Tanger pursuit" and everyone's right. I particularly enjoyed the fight in Tanger, that reminds my in its exaggeration and craziness the works of Tsui Hark. Visually inventive scenes, lots of intelligent action parts and a good reflection on American's contemporary thematics : "The Bourne Ultimatum" is definitely the best movie of the series and a very interesting and original action flick.

Since the 90's, Sidnet Lumet's filmography was quite sick, from his forgettable remake of Cassavettes's "Gloria" to his tentative to Rock the trial movie again with "Find me guilty". But no need to bury him so soon, Lumet's come back (at the age of 83, and he's already making a new movie) with a hard boiled "melo/thriler" (the director himself insists on the melodrama part) that certainly has the youth and the strength of his best movies, as "Serpico" or "A Dog Day Afternoon".

The movie looks a lot like "A dog day", with it's story of a stupid old-up, where everything goes wrong. But if the masterpiece with Al Paccino mostly deals with the old-up itself, "Before" shows us the premises and the psychological consequences of the crime on a average American family, and goes in logical but unexpected directions. The linear form of the huit-clot classic is now also replaced by a brilliant flash-Back/Forward structure that explore each situations from every point of view.

But don't get me wrong, beside the modernity aspect of the narration and the structure, everything in this movie reminds the classical Hollywood's polars of the 70's. The ones of Friedkin, for instance, or...Lumet's. The performances of the actors is admirable (from Ethan Hawke in a surprisingly credible loser part, to the desperate Albert Finney, who's hate is almost palpable on screen), the direction is a mix of fluidity and aridity, the script is rough and serious, and the sobriety of the all thing is really appreciable. I have to admit I haven't seen such an intelligent Hollywood's project since a long time.

Another Tagline for this movie could have been : "The best of the 70's cinema on today screens !".

"A Mighty heart" is a "realistic" movie, that tells a thru story, based on real events and including real people of real life. The movie is actually an adaption of Mariane Pearl's diary, where she tells the story of her husband, the journalist Daniel Pearl, kidnapped and killed by terrorists in Pakistan in 2002. The main question for the director Michael Witterbottom was to find the right representation of the reality he depicts. And the choices he made for the movie are both logical and disturbing.

Mariane Pearl, as her husband, is a journalist, and the first form the movie adopts in order to deal with the complex reality of the world is a journalistic style, with a camera always on the move. It really looks like a war reportage for television, that sticks to the events and to the characters in an "emergency"'s style. But surprisingly, this realistic aesthetic also reminds a famous fiction's show about terrorism : "24". And it's especially striking when it comes to action or interrogations (read torture...) scenes, with a Pakistan's Jack Bauer's style cop. If the goals of the directors are not the same ("24" only wants to be entertaining, "A Mighty Heart wants to be more...), and the depiction of terrorism differs ("24" is a show about fear, "A mighty heart" avoids a fear treatment), it's the same need to show every aspects of a situation that creates this similarities in the urge of the mise en scene.

And this depiction of reality, that gives an objectivity feeling to the movie, is a little bit strange when you come to consider that the movie is firstly an individually and personal point of view on a situation. An between the two opposite points of view (the subjective story of Mariane Pearl, and the objectivity of the "24" reality representation), Witterbottom seems to have some difficulty to choose. It really gives to the movie an annoying ambiguous point of view, where you're unable to really understand the nature of the images you're watching. And that's an important question in this kind of movie.

This ambiguity is quite surprising, for Winterbottom seemed to have chosen his style in his previous movies. For a completely different subject (the musical English scene from the Punk to the Techno in Manchester) in "24 Hours Party People", he clearly made his the Ford's sentence about reality that you find in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence" : "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend". And this lack of a strong orientation in "A Mighty Heart" also gives the unpleasant feeling to watch the spectacle of a life more than a testimony about it, and to be an intruder in Mariane Pearl's intimacy, even if the movie claims the contrary.

"Kaidan" is a part of a ghost's stories anthology produces by the Japanese master of J-horror Takashige Ichise. Alongside with the great Shimizu's" Reincarnation" and the disappointing Kurosawa's "Retribution", "Kaidan" forms a trilogy that the producer wants as a reflection of the best that Japanese horror movies can offer. Unfortunately, "Kaidan" is the worst of the three movies, and Nataka doesn't manage to create fear as he successfully did in "Dark Water" or in his rightfully most famous movie : "Ring".

"Kaidan" is an homage to the classical romantic horror stories that Japanese studios produced in the fifties and sixties. It begins with an elaborated black and white narration, that tells an old samurai/ghost tale in a classical Japanese Kabuki style. But soon after this beautiful introduction, the actual story really starts, ans if almost as if all this introductory sequence had took all the talent of Nakata. It mostly deals with a young itinerant salesman, that convinces an older singing teacher to marry him, in the medieval Japan where such a socially disturbing weeding like this one wasn't easy. When she dies, women easily felt in love with the young boy, whereas his love is doomed by his previous wife...

The story is so classical that it becomes boring and predictable. The photography is just plain and gives a televisual look to the movie (whereas Shimizu gave an amazing visual touch to his one), and the direction is quite the same : unoriginal and even sometimes lazy (whereas Kurosawa used a very inventive use of space in in movie, and a very inventive direction).

But to me, the worst element of this movie might be the lead actor, Kikunosuke Onoe, who's supposedly a charismatic character in the movie. But he's really got a enormous lack of charisma and never manage to give any credibility or substance to to his character and the story he carries. He's supposedly a master of a old Kabuki technique, but he apparently failed to transpose it on the big screen. Or I may have lacked the culture the subtility of his play required. Anyway, I just found it quite boring, and nearly felt asleep while watching his Kabuki plays.

All in all, "J-Horror" isn't a really good introduction to the Japanese modern ghosts movies. If the directors are all good, their works here look a lot like a repetition of their previous movies, that were far better. So Shimizu's "Grudge", Kurosawa's "Kairo" and Nakata's "Ring" still stay the best of the Jap'Horror movie collection.

NICE : As Paul Thomas Anderson with "Magnolia", Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen chose with "Meduzot" to focus on a few characters that life randomly carries from one shore to another. Everything is tainted by a depressive but amusing tone that gives a pleasant melancholia feeling to the spectator. The fact that the story happens in Tel-Aviv does't seem to affect the lightness of this unpretentious movie, that only wants to underline the loneliness every human being faces in his life and give a little touch of hope to this sad fact.

EASY : As Agnès Jaoui in "Le Goût des autres", Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen don't avoid in "Meduzot" some very easy and predictable critics, especially when it comes to give a satirical look on the artistic world of theater of the city. They also can't avoid some "Shortcuts" in the portrayal of their characters, and especially in the depiction of the angry - but at the end nice and well... just lonely - old lady. This two elements spoil a little bit the pleasure you can get to the pleasant little scenes the film offer.

Michael Moore starts here another fight against the injustices and paradoxes of the American way of life, by filming the consequences of the disastrous US health system and compares it to other country's ones (Canadia, UK or France). And it seems that if you get sick in Cuba, you're luckier than if the same thing happens to you in New-York, especially if you're from the middle class. The all thing is really interesting, and what you learn about the US-health system is really like science-fiction for, let's say, an European citizen, and also very witty (Moore's always mixes its educational and documentary purposes with a fun package). His system is now very well prepared (and even becomes quite annoying in certain part, especially the last one). The personal American stories the movie tells are also very touching. But beside all those very interesting things, the movie isn't very ambitious from a cinematographic point of view (and it's a euphemism, believe me). If you let the argumentative goals of the movie beside, there's not really much left. A documentary has to be more than a argumentative document in order to be cinema. There's TV reportage's for that, and I think "Sicko" doesn't really fit for the big screen.

The new generation of Chinese cineasts (the sixth, have I been told) tries to develop more personal projects than the previous one, by making movies that carry a individual story more than a collective one. Wang Quanan, with "Tuya", represents this new generation of Chinese directors, and tells in this movie a personal and individual story (his mother comes from the Mongolian area the film depicts) without trying to link it to the Chinese history, but he also creates a bridge with the previous one (his character of a strong woman reminds the portrayals that Gong Li has done with Zhang Yimou). But, unfortunately, the movie doesn't have the same originality of, for instance, his friend Jia Zhan-Ke's, nor doesn't manage to carry the same strength than Zhang Yimou's.

The story is like the movie, simple and a little bit plain : in a lost farm in Inner Mongolia (but still in China) Tuya has to find a new husband since her present one is unable to work. But she asks one condition to accept the new pretendant : he has to supplies for her ex-husband needs. But the movie seems to film the quest of Tuya like a pretext to show the beautiful landscapes of the area, the traditions that seem to survive here (as the marriage scene nicely shows it), an also typical Mongolian clothes, rituals and music. It's sure pretty and interesting, but more like a travel guide documentary than like a modern Chinese cinema piece of art.

Beside one or two good cinematographic interesting ideas (especially located at the very beginning and at the end of the movie ; and a good scene that show a woman crying at her wedding), there's nothing really passionating nor new there. Of course, cinema can sometimes be considered like a traveling substitute, but it also needs to be something more if the spectator really wants to enjoy the traveling.

I was aware of Rohmer's admiration for the late works of the ones he considered like great cineasts, and that normal spectators generally considered as artistic failures (as Renoir's or Chaplin's very last movies ; yes, the "politique des auteurs" also has its dark side). But with "Les amours d'Astrée et de Céladon", it's as if Rohmer himself wanted, for what may be his last movie, to perpetuate this tradition of great directors, who made a last senile movie, by adapting Urfé's "L'astrée", with ridiculous aesthetic codes, witch just look like a parody of Rosselini's last movies (the ones he made for TV from Descartes or Marx's lives).

In his version of "Perceval", Rohmer refused to film real landscapes in order to give a re-transcription of what may have been a middle age classical representation of things. The director apparently changed his mind when the XVII century is involved, and films actors, dressed like 1600's peasants reciting their antic text surrounded by contemporary trees and landscapes. But the all thing looks even more ridiculous than Luchini and its fake trees. It's not that the story itself is stupid, but the way Rohmer mixes naturalism with artifices seems so childish and amateurism that it rapidly becomes involuntarily funny (and I'm not even talking about the irritating pronunciation of the actors, the annoying and sad humorist tries by Rodolphe Pauly, the ridiculous soft-erotic tone, the poor musical tentatives, or the strange fascination for trasvestisment!).

The radical aesthetic of the film ultimately makes it looks like a joke, which mixes a soft-erotic movie made for TV with theological scholastic discussions (sic !). At the beginning of the movie, Rohmer teaches us that the original french region of the story is now disfigured by modernity, and that's why he had to film "L'Astrée" in other parts of the country. However, I'm sure the movie would have look more modern and interesting, if Rohmer would have actually still filmed the same story in a modern area with same narrative codes and artistically decisions. This film may interest a few historians, but most of the cinephiles may laugh at this last and sad Rohmer's movie.

In one episode, Dexter erased some evidences that could link him to one of his victim. And we then discover that he also uses a pseudonym in order to commend certain products, that are necessary to his criminal actions : Dexter is also known as Patric Bateman ! And it's true that "Dexter" as a lot to share with the universe of Brett Easton Ellis, the author of "American Psycho". The character suffers from a total detachment from his emotions, that gives him the feeling to be an empty shell, to always have to pretend to be human, when his absence of humanity is hidden by a superficial social mask. That's maybe the greatest part of the show, to be the reflexion of such a monstrous characters' interiority. It's too bad that it too often takes the shape of a more conventional cop drama.

SEASON 1. Rules of Attractions.

The strange universe, all in perversion and detachment of Dexter is brilliantly introduced by the first episode. It began crudely by a violent murder, and the off-voice of the killer-narrator teaches us that he's also a blood expert, for the Miami Police department. Like a crazy vigilante, Dexter is a cop the day, and a murderer of serial-killer at night (sound stupid like that, but I assure it's a very mature show), and a monster (it's a metaphor, once again : it's an adult show) who tries to be a human the rest of the time (with his girlfriend or his sister). The character and the all bizarre atmosphere of Miami is really delectable in the first episodes, but those of the middle of the season become more and more conventional, by trying to develop the other cop's characters. Fortunatly, the last four episodes, more and more centered on "The ice-truck-killer" story, which defined the unity of the arc this first season tells, put dexter's personality and tortured past first again, and the all thing becomes passionating again. Let's hope that the second season stays as original and cynical as its main character.

(To be continued...)

"Now at midnight all the agents

And the superhuman crew

Come out and 'round up everyone

That knows more than they do"

Bob Dylan. Desolation Row.

SEASON 1 : Origins.

It all starts with an explosion, and few weeks to stop it. A cheerleader, and a need to save her. Two brothers who'll have to decide what's truly important for them. A super-human serial killers, who'll play the super-villain, until someone even eviler will rise. And a Hiro who wants to be a hero.

Season 1 is really a start, and mostly an introduction to events to come. That's certainly why you constantly have the feeling to watch a gigantic trailer, that kept presenting situations and characters, but never truly develops them. This first season stays all in all really conventional (the thematic is a very classical one of the first act of a super-hero show : the most important is for the characters to accept their destiny and their role in the cosmos, the big order of things) and quite unsurprising (it's a X-men like show, and if you're aware of the comic-book'codes, well, you're able to guess what's going to happened before it does). But if some episodes are already really great (as the 109, "Homecoming", with the actual "Save the cheerleader, save the world" thing, or the ones playing with past (Hiro in "Six Month ago" - 110) or with the future - Hiro in "Five years gone", a sort oh "Heroes" version of the X-men saga, "Days of future past" - in episode 120), you still have the feeling to see a preview of the wonder the show will offer. All in all, it's an excellent "mise en bouche".

The best is yet to come. Well, at least it's what I hope. Future will tell...

(To be continued...)

"Ratatouille" is really clever, entertaining and, of course, very "well done" (from a technical aspect, beside Squaresoft, no animation studio can reach Pixar's level). But, is it enough to make a good movie ? I'm not sure, and Pixar itself seems to have lowed down its standards here, in order to be more in a classical Disney's tradition.

Don't get me wrong, some ideas are brilliant : especially when the rat "pupetmastered" the human, or the touching ending with the critic's critic, or the Head Cheaf's characters, who is very funny, etc. But somehow, the story - and especially the human's parts, who seems paradoxically less human than the fishes, the monsters or the toys of other's movies - lack of the deep you normally supposed to find in a Pixar movie. The mousse tries to hides inside a rat's figure, but you still can see the disneyen's hears of the animal. The all moral aspect is for instance very shallow (and furthermore, it's almost Shrek one : no matter what you are, if you try hard enough, you can become what you truly are).

Of course, it's far better than the last other's American animation's studio's recent works, but its far more childish than, say, "The Incredibles", witch was directed by the same Brad Bird. I also was quite disappointed by "Cars", and I have the feeling that Pixar's singularity and originality is a little lost, replaced by the dominant classical Disney's moral.

Well, at least, this years, 2-D animation brings me "The Simpsons : The movie", and I'm gonna watch it one more time, waiting for the sequel more than the next Pixar's movie.

PS : For Animation's fans and movies'lovers, "Persepolis" is also a must-see of the year : there's more than American's 3D in the cartoon's life...

Kyoshi Kurosawa is a talented but maybe too prolific director. Since the early 90's, he had almost directed 30 movies. No wonder that, when Takashige Ichise, the master producer of J-Horror ("Ring", "The Grudge") asks him to direct one of the Jap-Horror trilogy movie along with Hideo Nakata and Shimizu, you get a little feeling of "Déjà-vu" in front of his new movie : "Sakebi" (Retribution).

Of course, there's still lots of excellent ideas in the movie, and some parts are majestically directed : all the ghosts apparitions are really beautiful, and the movie take there and then an experimental approach in their representation. It almost looks like a modern art installation. Some shots are also really well thought, as the one of the interrogation of a suspect, filmed in continuation, with the help of a mirror in the back in order to create a double space. But the most original aspect of the movie is the depiction of the modern Tokyo, witch doesn't look modern at all. In the movie, the city looks like a post-war town, everything is rotten and lugubre, there's nobody in the dark streets. You don't often see such a representation of Japan, far from the clichés of the ultra-modern society it's supposed to be.

But the problem is that all this was ultimately in others Kurosawa's movies, as if he wanted to offer a sort of best-of his previous works here. His style haven't change, and the story isn't really surprising for any "Kaïro"'s spectator. This lack of surprise leads to a feeling of boringness, and I couldn't get out of my mind, after the movie, the idea that it was clearly unoriginal (for a Kurosawa's movie, of course) and a little bit too long (maybe cutting 20 minutes of the movie would have been a good thing).

But all in all, this movie is a good introduction to his tormented universe, and for those who already know it, well, a new Kyoshi Kurosawa's movie certainly comes out in 3 months.

Accordind to the IMDb's listing, "La Fille coupée en deux" is the 69th Claude Chabrol's movie since 1958 and his first movie "Le beau Serge". 69 : with that number, Chabrol has managed to outnumber his old master : Alfred Hitchckock. And if all of his movies are not as good as Hitchcock's ones (none of them actually), I'm sure his last one would have amused Sir Alfred, for it's certainly one of his richest and intriguing movie since many years. I thing I've not been such intrigued by a Chabrol's since "L'enfer" in 1994 and its "No end" ending.

"La Fille coupée en deux" apparently deals with the same subject as "L'enfer" : love, and it's tragic consequences. But if "L'enfer" mostly dealt with madness and jealousy, "La fille..." approaches tragedy (but always in a cynical and almost funny way : Chabrol's universe is alway game-full) with the thematic of desire. It's the girl cut in half of the tittle that crystallizes this desire : Gabrielle Aurore Deneige (Ludivine Sagnier), a young TV-host, desires an older and decadent writer Charles Saint Denis (the great François Berléand) and is desired by a young and crazy aristocrat (Benoît Magimel, it's the first time to me that he's quite acceptable in a movie). Chabrol plays for a time with his characters ans his spectators, who don't exactly know where he wants to bring us. But the game is interesting enough to be played.

This movie looks a lot like Woody Allen's "Scoop", with Ludivide Sagner as a french Scarlet Johanson. Chabrol even quotes Woody Allen in the movie, and shares with him the same tragic but insouciant thriller tone. But it's really the similarity with another director that stroke me with this movie. It's the first time that a Chabrol's movie strangely sometimes looks like a Brisseau's. Chabrol uses here, as in Brisseau's "Choses Secrètes", symbolic feminine mythological figures in order to develop his thematics ( it's particularly striking in the dichotomously representation of Charles Saint Denis' two woman : his white and angel-like wife, and his dark and mysterious Capucine). But it's mostly in the desire's representation in the strange club where Saint Denis likes to go that the two directors share some common points. Of course, whereas Brisseau is more than explicit, Chabrol doesn't show anything, but the moral fable aspect of the movie, with a Hitchcock's influence in the way Chabrol "suspenses" the desire representation, makes this movie quiet near to Brisseau's universe.

Anyway, it's been a very long time since a Chabrol's movie didn't appear to me as rich, original and surprising as this one.

No doubt about it : for a scary movie, it's really scary. Some scenes are really frightful, especially when some characters come to see impossible presences, that make their rational universe slowly collapses into madness, and that transforms their fake fear into a more than real one.

There's lot of things in that movie, maybe to much. "Rinne" tells the story of the filming of an horror movie, but also of of the murders that occurred in a Shinning-like hostel thirty years ago, or of an actress who's too involved in her part. There's maybe way too much to tell to find coherency in all that, and what the movie wins in abstract fear, it loses in unity.

But if Takashi Shimisu fails to tell us a linear story, he archives to make us fell the deep fear of his characters : some scenes are incredibly frightened and beautifully directed (especially the ones with the ghost-father and his creepy camera-eyes). He really uses noises and visual codes to creates a (Jap')horror atmosphere. It's really too bad that the movie ultimately looks like a catalog of style effects : of course, it works, but is it enough to make a movie ?

Life is quiet boring sometimes. And that's not onLy true for humans, but also for Shinigamis (japoneses gods of Death). But when a shinigami gets bored, the consequences couLd be dramatic for the world. And that's the story this anime chooses to tell.

Ryuku, one of those Shinegami, decides to drop one of his Death note to earth, in order to watch the interesting consequences of his act. This death note has the power to kiLL everyone as soon a the name of a person is written in it. And the young boy who found it has decided to kill plenty : he wants earth to be a paradise, where every criminaLs are erase from its surface thanks to the power of the death note, and to become the god of this new utopia. But things won't be so easy for Yagami Light aka Kira : if he wants to kill someone, he has to have his exact name and to visuaLize his face, and InterpoL, aware of this experience, send a genius detective to stop him, mysteriously named "L".

The most interesting part of this complex and inventive anime Lies in the confrontation between Kira (the owner of the Death Note) and L, that takes the appearance of a deadly chess game, where a single mistake Leeds to failure and death. The first 18 episodes are a mentaL masterpiece, scenaristicaLy very impressive and visually extremeLy convincing. If the rest of the anime is a LittLe less good, the conclusion is also quite surprising and really beautiful.

As Ryuku, that symboLizes the spectator point of view in the show finally said : "It was very pleasant to kill time with this game for so Long. That was really amusing".

Surprinsingly, Nostalgia already wasn't what it was in 1962, when John Ford filmed what is generally considered as his last masterpiece : "The Man who shot Liberty Valence". The west is won, but its spirit is gone and the film shows us that it's not necessarily a bad thing.

Cinema appeared at the end of the West that is generally described : cinema has the same age that the railways, that in many movies, symbolize the end of an area (from this one to Leone's "Once upon a time in the west"). "Liberty Vallence" is the movie that tells this transition from a brutal period, where strength is everything, to a civilized period, where the law primes on force. Lee Marvin is Liberty Valence, the symbol of this brutal force of the West, and James Stewart, the "Pilgrim", is the other side of the time : the law. But the transition from one to another needs a mediation, that will bring the biggest Western star, John Wayne, how embodies Tom Doniphon, the man who'll make the changes possible, by using force in order to civilized the West.

Ford gives a strong an wise look to this period, in a melancholic movie, that paradoxically explains that there is nothing to regret from the changes and the disappearance of a certain idea of the world. But the characters can't help thinking that they probably missed something, that their lives could have been very different.

The movie is very modern, the biggest part of it is a long flashback. James Stewart, who's now a important senator, comes back with his wife to a small village apparently full of memories. They're here to assist to the funerals of an old friend : Tom Doniphon. But their presence here surprises the local journalist, that asked James Stewarts for explanations. It's only after this melancholic introduction that the movie really begins with a flashback : Randson Stodard will tell the story of a man from another time : Tom Donniphon. But, as the journalist finally said in a very famous sentence : " This is the west, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

The last half hour of the movie is definitely the best, all the contradictory feelings are present, and the final duel is most impressive, beautifully filmed in Black and White photography. The twist at the end is unseen in Ford other's movies, and proves that he was still able in 1962 to direct a personal and original movie, even with the old star John Wayne, even in Black and White, even with the same narrative codes he uses since more than 30 years. This movie is still surprisingly interesting and complex, if you can see through its classicism.