Showing posts with label france. Show all posts
Showing posts with label france. Show all posts

Friday, January 31, 2025

Legends of Paris aka L’Armée des Romantiques (2024) Animation First 2025


Animation First screened the first episode of the animated series LEGENDS OF PARIS. The series is a four part history of the romantics of the 19th century. We see the lives of Hugo, Dumas, Balzac, Sand and others. We watch as they create, and influence each other and the world.

Playing as a kind of animated Ken Burns film, it's a look at how some like minded men and a woman changed the world. It takes a couple of minutes to get going, but once it does you will be disappointed if you don't have another episode. 

The series works because the film perfectly mixes the subject and the art style. The film's art picks up the the story and drives it forward giving us a better understanding of the lives of the artists and their headspaces.

After the screening there was a Q&A with the minds behind the film. It was an interesting, if lightly dry, exploration of how the series came together and how they made the choices of what stories to highlight.

I enjoyed the show and I am looking forward to seeing the remaining episodes.


Thursday, January 30, 2025

The Twelve Tasks of Asterix (1976) Animation First 2025


The film was a screening of  the second film based on the Asterix The Gaul comic series by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo. It is the only film that they actually had anything to do with.

The film has the Romans pondering if the Gauls are actually gods and  making a deal that if they can complete 12 tasks they will not only be left alone but be put in charge of Rome.

The film is essentially a few minutes of set up and then a series of 12 blackout sketches as Asterix and Obelix attempt to complete the tasks. This results in a in an amusing film that's full of laughs and smiles.

While there are laughs there is a point where the film begins to feel long. Blame the constuction of the story which is simply a series of sketches.

That said I had a good time.

Recommended

Friday, January 24, 2025

Sort of thoughts on Harmony (2024) Animation First 2025


Jesus Perez, who is 33, travels through space in order to bring a greeting from earth. On the planet he encounters strange creatures that were formed because different species can into breed.

I have no idea. This is an alternately amusing and deeply disturbing surrealistic journey to another world where creatures can only say yes and no, and the main character is a rambling Christ clone with a frozen face and weird movements.  

It's both terrible and weirdly compelling. I couldn't look away despite wanting to stop watching. This is a head trip without taking drugs.

I honestly don't know what I think, but I do know that if you love off the beaten path films, this one is a must see.

The write up on the film for Animation first says that director Bertrand Dezoteux created a website: harmonie.center/en. that is a companion piece to this film "The platform engages audiences to delves into Jesus Perez’ larger mission and enterprise, “Harmonie Center.” I am frightened of going there.

Yuku and the Himalayan Flowers (2024) Animation First 2025

 


Yuku is a mouse from a large family. She lives with her family in a big house where there is a cat. She sings songs while playing the ukulele. As her grandmother's health fails she decides to try and find the Himalayan Flowers which always give light.

Oddly paced animated film is one part musical, one part adventure and one part meditation on death. (Grandma need the flowers so that when the mole comes to take her underground she has light and doesn't spend eternity in darkness.) Its a film that is frequently amusing, occasionally dark and completely unexpected.

I'm not sure what I think of this film, but I am amazed that it packs so much into it's mere 65 minutes.  To be honest I wish that the film ran a bit longer so that the film didn't seem rushed. There are a lot of musical numbers and set pieces which sometimes push the plot aside.

Still this film moves, has great characters and some solid songs.

Worth a look, if you can score one of the free tickets at Animation First.

Tuesday, January 21, 2025

The Most Precious of Cargoes (2024) Animation First 2025


In Poland during the Second World War  the wife of a woodcutter  takes in a baby that  was thrown from a train going to the concentration camps. She and her husband struggle to raise the child, while the man who threw the baby struggles to survive the camp.

Michel Hazanavicius shifts gears yet again with an animated film about the miracle of survival and the things we will do for the ones we love. It's an odd move for a man who is best known for his comedies and the results are extremely mixed.

There are some great sequences in this film as well as some head scratching moments. Feeling less like an organic tale and more like a very serious, very important novel, the film never quite comes together because the film never fully connects the two halves. The result is a film that feels a bit like sermon.  

I was intrigued for a while but the film began to lose me as the film started to tell us about the man who threw the baby from the train. It's not that these sequences,  having to do with surviving in the camps, are bad, indeed they include some of the most crushing sequences I've ever seen  about the Holocaust, but rather they never fully mesh with the sequences about the baby and the woodcutters wife. a big part of the problem is the style of the images are too dissimilar.  The woodcutter sequences are more lyric and realistic where the images of the man are closer to some of the surrealist art that sprang up around the war.

While a wasn't connected from start to finish the film still threw up some staggering pieces such as the post war sequence where the man stumbles on the woman and the child selling cheese on the street.  The whole sequence of recognition of finding the now grown child, while also seeing his horrific physical persona is one of the most crushing moments I've ever seen in any film.

Perhaps I would have liked the film more had the ending amounted to something but the film never ties up all the threats ans the 20 year jump ahead didn't amount to much.

Worth a look for those interested in stunning uses of animation or atypical Holocaust stories.

Tuesday, December 17, 2024

Count of Monte Cristo (2024) opens Friday


Edmund Dantes returns again in an epic retelling of the tale of betrayal and redemption.

For those who don't know the tale is the story of Dantes who is locked away in a prison by his so-called friends who want what he has and want him lost so that their misdeeds won't be found out. Told of a vast fortune by a fellow prisoner, Dantes escapes and then returns to France after years away as the Count of Monte Cristo and takes revenge on those who wronged him.

I love this story in all its forms. Sure, the movies have altered the massive tale, but in doing so it's created some truly great versions (Robert Donat, Jim Cavievzal, Richard Chamberlain all star in versions I love). No film has really come close to telling the tale as written because it's too damn big a tale.

This version makes a good go of it. Running a solid 3 hours, the film brings in a lot of elements and characters that other versions leave out (the daughter of the pasha for example) while also bringing in new twists, the masks the Dantes uses to impersonate a wide variety of people. The result is a film that plays like a novel and which stands firmly on its own feet. I enjoyed the hell out of it, and I can't wait to see it again. (And before you ask let me see it a few more times before I put it into the ranking of various versions.)

This is great cinema and highly recommended - especially if you can see it on a big screen and get lost in its world.

Monday, October 7, 2024

DIRECT ACTION (2024) NYFF 2024


The NYFF write up calls this film "...a work of striking, meaningful duration..." I have no idea what that is. How is a duration meaningful? You have to watch something for a certain length of time to get meaning? Is there an umeaningful duration? Can you imagine what George Carlin would have done with that phrase?

I'm calling bullshit. I say that because this three and a half hour sleeping pill is one of the most pretentious piece of cinema that I've run across in years. Its a film where we watch things play out for long periods for no reason  Its showing us things in real time but it's just a series of random bits, much like the opening of the film where we are watching random video files. I think the person who wrote the film up called it a film of meaningful duration because it couldn't say this film is dull and boring and we don't know why the programmers programmed it.

The film is supposed to be a look at the Notre-Dame-des-Landes commune France,  where they  try to to disrupt and discourage corporations and state entities from building on land. And some of it is in the film but so are long shots of the sky (there is a reason they are using the tower shot above as a selling point), people reading manifestos, people doing farm work in long takes and other not very interesting things.

To be fair this might have worked if the filmmakers had connected things up and not let them sit there but they didn't. It also might have worked if they shortened the pieces. With much of it  we get the idea rather quickly and we don't need an extended look.

Avoid this film unless you need sleep.

Sunday, October 6, 2024

TRANSAMAZONIA (2024) NYFF 2024


Rebecca is a small girl who survives a plane crash into the Amazon. Years later her father, an evangelist preaching in the jungle has positioned her as faith healer of great power. However life beyond the church is complicating things.

This is a low key and rambling film that is just okay. We watch Rebecca as events transpire around her, her father tries to hook up with a nurse, the logging company clashes with the indigenous population and  she preaches and heals. While the film has some tense moments, and keeps hinting at why the nurse thinks Rebecca looks familiar, the film never generates a great deal of enthusiasm. To be certain it is better than many of the other films playing at NYFF this year, but at the same time it just sort of is there and doesn't do anything.

Part of the reason for this is Helena Zengel, who plays Rebecca with a stony expression that never changes. Buster Keaton has nothing on this girl. It doesn't work because we never know what she is feeling.

An interesting misfire

Thursday, October 3, 2024

Jimmy (2024) NYFF 2024


A meditation on James Baldwin's 1948 trip to Paris, where he found a home and began to write.

This is a black and white film told with a driving jazz score that is more about feelings than facts. Yes Baldwin wanders through the film, and there is some attempt at narrative sequences, however the truth is those are the weakest parts of the film. This is a film that work bests on mood. 

Running just over an hour the film is an interesting footnote.

Daaaaaalí (2024)

 


Quentin Dupieux's DAAAAAALÍ! Is probably my favorite film by the director. The often surreal director has found his match in a portrait of a surrealist painter.

The plot is, nominally, the story of a journalist trying to get an interview with the director, however things happen and go sideways. Actually things go surreally….

If you know Dupieux’s messing with reality  then you can begin to understand how bent this film about a man who bent reality is. Then again since we expect the film to be off kilter this film is strangely normal. In a weird way this is the director’s most normal film.

What I love is the film starts off normal and then slowly goes banana shaped. The first sense that things are off is the opening bit with Dali walking down a hotel corridor and seeming never to arrive. It’s a subtle bit that takes a moment to be realized.  It gets crazier from there.

I loved this. Not only is a biography, of sorts, of the artist but it is a trip into his mind and sensibility. It’s silly and nonsensical at times but it’s so friendly and alive you have to smile and just go along.

Yes I am not saying what happens. More than almost any other film this is a trip you need to take for yourself. I don’t want to take the multiple AH HA! Moments from you.

Perfectly paced the film never out stays it’s welcome, something that Dupieux's films sometimes do.

Actually the film is kind of perfect on every level.

Highly recommended- especially if you love fun films.

Tuesday, October 1, 2024

Scénarios + Exposé du Film annonce du film “Scénario” (2024) NYFF 2024


The final two works by Godard, a promo piece for a book he was doing and a documentary about the creation of the film, are playing at the NYFF and they aren't bad...

... though I can't see paying festival prices for less than an hour of material.

SCENARIOS is a good little film that would be right at home in a museum. It's a bunch of images and videos with a deliberate soundtrack. It has a few great moments.

EXPOSE... is the longer piece and it's Godard talking about how the film will be shot. It's an intriguing look at the man at work. Its good but it is essentially a DVD extra.

I liked the films but was left wanting much more.

Saturday, September 21, 2024

Else (2024) Fantastic Fest 2024 Toronto 2024


This is an utterly haunting horror science fiction film that will have you awestruck at its grim beauty while it makes you talk to the screen.

The film follows a couple who meet just before a new disease begins to spread. The disease makes people bond to inanimate objects. When the girl leaves her home to be with her new love everything is okay for a while...and then it isn't.

This film shouldn't work. There are plot lapses, things are left hanging, but in the best sort of dream logic it all comes together. Somehow, someway director Thibault Emin pulls it together in someway and the result is one of the most haunting films of 2024. 

Emin doesn't ape previous body horror films and instead essentially reinvents it as a think of lyric beauty. The images, of everything are so amazingly beautiful that you can't look away. Indeed they are such that you kind of want to press into the screen so that you can walk around and see the wonders he has created.

I am not going to say much more because the power of the film is not knowing so that it clubs you from behind.

One of the most amazing cinematic experiences of the year, it is a must see.

Sunday, September 8, 2024

Shepherds (2024) Toronto 2024

Shepherd should not work. Everything about the this film should make this just an okay film that is exactly the sort of thing we’ve seen before in other forms, and yet director Sophie Deraspe and her crew have made a film that you will fall in volve with and want to see over and over again, especially on a big screen.

Based on a true story SHEPHERD is the story of a marketing writer who “goes on vacation” to France, never intending to go home. He falls into becoming a shepherd, falling in love with a beautiful civil servant he meets along the way.

As I said at the top this film hits so many of the  expected notes for a story like this and yet this so well done it is a perfect example of how important an artist is in creating a work of art. Deraspe takes a great script, a note perfect cast and some of the most beautiful images you’ve ever seen and mixes them together into a film that is like a siren song for your soul. When one character says late in the game “I don’t want to go back” you feel the exact same way, you don’t want to go back to reality, you want the film to go on forever. Barring that you want to jump on a plane and fly to France to herd animals.

You need to see this film as soon as you can, preferably on a he screen, not just because it’s a great film but because it will leave you feeling like me, with no words, only with emotions.

One of the truly great films of 2024.

Go see it.

Wednesday, September 4, 2024

MALDOROR (2024) Venice 2024


This 1990’s set thriller based in part of actual events when the police organizations in Belgium were all competing with each other and trying to catch a psycho who was kidnapping young women. The film focuses on a young cop assigned to a task force who ends up taking things into his own hands because his superiors let things get away from them.

MALODOROR is a frequently tense little thriller. A tale of frustration as the cops desperately try to get their man, the film is going to have you sitting on the edge of your seat during several sequence…including the opening credits which is highly surprising.

Unfortunately the film is going to frustrate you. It’s not that the film takes any bad turns, more that the film is trying to cover a lot of ground. We aren’t just following the cop, but his wife, her family, and other people as well. The result is a film that appears to be juggling a lot of balls and isn’t always focused. Instead of a laser focused film the film feels rambling as there is an effort to give the film a broader  background.

There is so much to love in this film that I wish the film cut tighter and more focused because by the time you get to the end of two and a half hours you feel the wrong sort of beaten up.

My reservations aside, there is enough here both narratively and thematically that the film is worth a look.

Tuesday, September 3, 2024

Ties That Bind (2024) Venice 2024


This film has unexpected become one of my favorites of  2024. The story of how a group of people come together to form a family is just heart warming and moving and wise beyond words.

The plot of the film begins when a young boy is left by the his parents with a neighbor. They have to rush to the hospital because the mom's water has broken. When the father returns the next day tragedy has struck. The baby is fine, but the mother has died. Over the course of the film two years pass, marked by the age of the baby, we watch as the father, the son and the neighbor come to terms with the situation.

Before I say anything else I have to say that this isn't a romance. This isn't a film that goes as you expect. It';s a film that is messy and real and very human.

What makes the film work are the performances. Everyone inhabits their characters. They are so perfect that you are with them from the very first frame until the very last.  And then the end credits rolled I groaned because I couldn't spend more time with everyone.

I love this film to death.

I'm not certain its technically one of the best films of 2024 but everyone on screen makes it one of my absolute favorites.

Highly recommended.


Monday, September 2, 2024

THE MOHICAN (2024) Venice 2024


Joseph a goat herder in Corsica refuses to sell his land to the mafia. They think he is just being cagey and will eventually sell. He doesn't plan to. When he kills one of them men who was supposed to intimidate him he has to flee.  While the mafia tries to hunt Joseph down so they can force him to get revenge and sign his land over to them, his daughter refuses to back down and spreads Joseph's story.

Not what you expect thriller, travels closer to reality than pretty much any other similar story. This is not a film full of big action sequences, but small tense encounters that have weight because we are dealing with real people.  Even the bad guys have a realness to them. It's a film that you feel in your gut.

Beautifully shot, with a score that drives things forward THE MOHICAN is a film that grabs you early and keeps you watching to the end. More importantly it's a film that is going to make you wonder where events go after the fade out. Yes,  there is an ending, but you still want to know what happens to the characters past that.

While this is a small gem of a film, I don't want to over sell it. As I said above this isn't full of big action sequences. Instead this is a film where the characters carry the tale. If you want to see a super little thriller  THE MOHICAN is recommended.

Saturday, August 31, 2024

My Everything (Mon Inséparable) (2024) Venice 2024


Mother of a mentally changed young man has her world and her relationship turned on it’s head when she discovers her son not only has a girlfriend, another challenged young woman he works with, but he has gotten her pregnant.

Solid drama about a family in flux and how “normal” people see those who are challenged. It’s a film that makes clear that people are people regardless of how we see them.

Kudos to the cast who sell this film. What could have been a by the number or hackneyed affair is instead something wonderful and moving.  To be perfectly honest I wasn’t sure what I thought of the film or how much I liked it until we got to the final scene and the last shot and found myself getting misty. It’s a stunner and worth the ride.

Highly recommended.

Friday, August 30, 2024

Planet B (2024) Venice 2024


Ten years in the future a bunch of activists disappear and are transported  to a far off wold called Planet B

Feeling a film made by people who really don't understand either science fiction or political films PLANET B is full of over used science fiction and dystopian world political views. It's a film that is operating in a world that raises more questions than it answers. It is a film that feels like any number of other better films.

I'm not really going to talk about this film much owing to the fact that when we got to the denouncement, which, I kind of suspected early I simply screamed at the screen. It was a scream that was repeated when one character stated out loud what what was going on well after we knew.

While not a bad film, the truth is this should have been a B scifi film without pretensions and running a half an hour shorter.

A miss.

Tuesday, August 20, 2024

Other Laurens (2024) opens Friday


The niece of a private detective asks him to investigate the death of her father, his estranged and rich twin brother. He supposedly died in a drunken car crash but the girl insists that her father had given up drinking. Getting to the house he finds things are odd with his American wife, bikers and assorted unsavory people wandering around.

Good looking off kilter thriller is a cinematic ride that is going to keep you guessing about what is going on to the very end. That last statement I mean in both a good way and a bad way. I mean it in a good way because this multilayer thriller has a lot going on. There is so much going on regarding the mystery and the themes the film is exploring beyond that that it takes a good chunk of the film before things begin to come together. The problem is that by the time the end credits roll I’m not sure they’ve explained everything. When I got to the end I wanted to watch the film again because I felt like I had missed something.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure there is enough there to make it worth a second viewing. While I enjoyed the ride, I didn’t care about the destination.  I don’t think I was really satisfied at the end.  Part of it was some of the digressions along the way specifically the speeches, and thematic explorations of who we are/rich vs poor really never lead anywhere. I also don’t like the way the film works overtime making things obscure for our hero only to give us a just okay resolution. Much of my dislike is how people speak in ways that people really don’t. It might just be the subtitles but at the same time some of the English dialog feels artificial as if it was written by someone who can speak American English but not in a way that Americans actually speak.

Forgive me if this review seems more negative that it should. There is so much in OTHER LAUREN I like, say what you will it has style to burn, and it made me really lean in and want to see where it was going, but I am really disappointed it didn’t stick the landing.

Reservation aside if you want to take a really good cinematic ride whose parts are better than the whole give this is a shot.

Tuesday, August 13, 2024

RED ISLAND (2023) opens Friday


Robin Campillo follows his previous 120 BPM  with this nostalgic look  back to the early 1970’s when his family was stationed in Madagascar. Following a ten year old boy who is obsessed with comics, makes a new friend and tries to sort out what is going on with the adults.  We see the world and the events surrounding his family through his eyes.

This is a nice memory play of a film. While there is a through line on some level this is more a series of set pieces connected together over time. It’s a film that plays better in a way when you see it a second time as you catch little bits from early in the film that you didn’t know were important later. I discovered this when I went back to  check something I thought I missed and saw a couple of things early on that enriched later events.

You will forgive me if I don’t say a great deal, I am still pondering the film after seeing the film a while ago. I find my reaction is not so much wanting to discuss the film, but press it into people’s hands and just have people see it for themselves.

It’s really nice film that’s worth your time.