Rated: Suitable for 12 years and over
Staring: Audrey Tautou

Lovely, 2010-07-25
I agree with Andy Millward and Movie Buff. This is a beautifully shot film, with a gentle storyline.

I had actually expected less time being spent on Coco's personal life and more film time being spent on fashion and clothing. Then I re-thought the title and realised that the film focussed on her life before her fame. However, I still think that there could have been more attention to her inspirations and creativity.

Audrey Tatou is not my favourite actress and she played the part without displaying overt emotion. However, I have no idea whether "Coco" was emotionally demonstrative and, with particular regard to the era, she may well have been very reserved. Despite this, I enjoyed her performance and I loved the film as a whole. The whole feel of the film to me was quite British and I love British films.

As for those people complaining about sub-titles - get a grip. It's a French film!

Rated: Suitable for 15 years and over
Staring: Oshri Cohen
Director: Samuel Maoz

Cabin fever, 2010-08-05
Samuel Maoz's film, winner of a Golden Lion at the 2009 Venice Film Festival, is a powerful account of the start of the Lebanon war in 1982. Only 20 years old at the start of the war, the director was himself a gunner in one of the first Israeli tanks to go into the region, and filmed almost entirely from within the confines of an Israeli Defense Force tank, Lebanon consequently offers what feels like a disturbingly realistic first-hand experience.

The fact that the viewer remains locked in with the tank crew for the duration of the film doesn't mean that there's a lack of incident or spectacle in the film, rather it just becomes an even more intense experience. Be thankful also that you remain inside the tank, because it's slightly better than what can be seen of the horror that is taking place outside from the view of the gun sights - but only slightly. The crew are faced with a great deal of confusion over what exactly is going on, receiving conflicting orders and directions, wandering into dangerous territory with no clear objectives, not even sure who it is they are fighting. What are Syrians doing there, who are the Phalangists, and whose side are they even on?

It's a highly immersive experience and an effective one, just as in their own way both Waltz with Bashir and Beaufort were in their own deeply personal and stylised accounts of the same war. The fact that there are several recent films each with very personalised accounts of the same conflict testify to how just how traumatic and impressionable an experience the war was for a generation of young Israeli men, the consequences of which are still clearly very much relevant today.

Rated: Suitable for 15 years and over
Staring: Christian Friedel, Leonie Benesh, Burkhart Klaussner, Steffi Kühnert
Director: Michael Haneke

outstanding, 2010-09-03
Another example of a German artist attemting to come to terms with the the country's descent into barbarism. A very successful and illuminating film which I will watch again and probably again.

Rated: Suitable for 18 years and over
Director: Jacques Audiard

A very superior "French mafia" type film, 2010-08-26
First the ending: the three cars. From what I understand the three cars represent the three drug gangs that Malik has united: the Arabs, the Egyptians and the Corsicans. Their ominous presence also suggests that Malik will live the life of a drug lord and die the life of a drug lord., which of course is his fate and what he deserves. There is also the echo from Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather (1972) with Michael at the end.

Now to the idea that Malik is "a prophet." I can only guess that he is a prophet in the world of drug lords. There is the possibility that director Jacques Audiard, who has written twenty-some films and directed half a dozen including two very good ones that I've seen, Read My Lips (2001) and The Beat that My Heart Skipped (2005), meant to disparage (celebrate?) The Prophet by comparing his illiterate and up-by-his bootstraps hero Malik to Allah's Messenger--but I'll pass on that.

The real philosophic question to be answered in this most arresting film is does Malik represent what we might call "Existential Man" in his struggle to prevail in life after being dumped on this planet and told to sink or swim? Certainly to the drug gangs he is heroically triumphant, and to most of the audience as well. Malik represents a new kind of hero, a naturalistic creation who doesn't make judgments about good or bad, or question the way the world is run (or the way the prison is run), but makes the best of what life has thrown at him and learns not to be squeamish about what he has to do to prevail. French existential novelist Albert Camus famously said that the only important philosophic question is that of suicide. Malik chooses murder over suicide, but we cannot help but identify with him since his choices were indeed just those.

Malik's character combines underprivileged raw youth with something beyond street smarts, with the kind of courage war heroes can only envy. That is how he wows his home boys and others. This is what they respect. But, looking around at all the dead bodies, and especially at Cesar Luciani (Niels Arestrup), the once powerful war lord who bows out of the movie a beaten old man, one can see that Malik will die by today's equivalent of the sword as did the ancients who lived the life of the war lord. Tahar Rahim, who plays Malik, would seem to have a great future as a film star. He does an outstanding job here in a very demanding role.

What I found most arresting about this film is the way the French prison system is depicted. Apparently corruption is rampant with the inmates in significant control of the guards and the prison officials. Luciani runs his drug empire from within the prison. Prisoners favored by the drug lord powers that be get special privileges and are allowed to control the other prisoners. I understand that Audiard studied the French prison system before making this film. The film is an indictment of that system, which makes me wonder how they feel about this sensational film in France.

Also interesting is how the various ethnic gangs in French prisons relate to one another. Luciani's Corsicans were mostly in charge as the film begins with Malik just a low-level forced funky. By the end of the film the Muslim gang is mostly in charge it appears. I wonder if this reflects the reality in French prisons.

Finally, this is a brutally realistic film in which humans are seen primarily as animals. Even Malik's love for his teacher's child can be seen as unconsciously acting out a communal role that will result in his having many reproductive tries--indeed how sweet is the mother already on him as they walk together to the bus stop and presumably to her bed. The only law that seems to exist is that of the jungle, that of the stronger, with the laws of the state as kind of fact of nature that must be overcome or subverted, never respected. And the values of the larger society are irrelevant, immaterial, nonexistent and mute. This is a naturalistic film for the twenty-first century.

Rated: Suitable for 15 years and over
Staring: Juliette Binoche, Romain Duris, Fabrice Luchini, Albert Dupontel, Mélanie Laurent
Director: Cédric Klapisch

A great soundtrack to a thought provoking film ..., 2010-03-30
The ageless Juliette Binoche is brilliant yet again in this unique and captivating film which goes beyond just people-watching as you get to see what goes on behind the closed doors! Relationships, infatuations, sensuality, and life - this film has it all.

Rated: Suitable for 12 years and over
Staring: Khalid Abdalla, Atossa Leoni, Shaun Toub
Director: Marc Forster

Like the bestselling book upon which it's based, The Kite Runner will haunt the viewer long after the film is over. A tale of childhood betrayal, innocence, harsh reality, and dreamy memory, The Kite Runner faces good and evil--and the path between them, though often blurry and sorrowfully relative. Director Marc Forster (Monster's Ball, Finding Neverland) presents a painterly vision of Afghanistan before the Soviet tanks, before the Taliban--lush, verdant, fertile--in its landscape and in its people and their history and hopes. The story follows two young boys' friendship, tested beyond endurance, and the haunting of their adult selves by what happened in their youth--and what horrors befall their country in the meantime. The performances of the two boys--Zekeria Ebrahimi (Amir) and Ahmad Khan Mahmidzada (Hassan)--are the film's strongest, unforced and gently evocative. The penance paid by their adult selves is foreshadowed, but never predictable--and the metaphor of innocence lost, a common theme in Forster's work, keeps the film, like the title kites, truly aloft. --A.T. Hurley
10 out of 10, 2010-08-27
it would be a shame for anybody to miss this film. they dont come any better

Rated: Suitable for 15 years and over
Staring: Vincent Cassel, Hubert Kounde, Said Taghmaoui
Director: Mathieu Kassovitz

La Haine is an angry, anti-authoritarian French film that concerns three young guys (a Jew, an Arab, a black) who decide to take on the police after a friend is brutally beaten. There isn't much going on in this black and white drama beyond its violence (which can be pretty hard to watch, such as an interrogation scene that incorporates torture) and gritty observations of wayward youths hanging out on the fringes of Paris. Certainly, there isn't much in the way of insight, and director Mathieu Kassovitz seems to have absorbed more of the excesses of America's independent film scene, especially Spike Lee at his most indulgent, than its blessings. But if it's edge and rawness you want, this has it--with subtitles. --Tom Keogh
One of my favourite films., 2010-03-05
This review is slightly biased due to the fact that I studied film and media, and this is how I found this film from Vincent Cassel. The storyline is one of social unrest, political confrontation and hatred towards the authority that are trying to regain control of this slum that the three main characters live in. At the time of creating this film, Paris was having many many riots and saw a lot of destruction from the hands of the youths, so this film is evidently a clear link to what was really going on in France at the time.
The three main characters, Vinz (a young person fighting for the rights to his freedom, but comes across a gun and the power that comes from that ruins his friendships and massages his ego to the point of stupidity), Sayid (a confident arab, whos main interests seem to be going to collect money he's owed from various deals. he's wonderfully annoying but also quite moral) and Hubert (a black boxer, wanting to leave all of the unrest behind him and start somewhere new after his new gym gets burnt down within the chaos.He is kind, clever and with high morals trying to keep Vinz' ego to a minimum as to not have them all end in trouble).
The characters all bring something different to the film, and its brilliantly written with humour at times, and moments of reflection.
The main attraction to this film to me is the way in which its filmed. For any student of film and media, its a must see, due to the complex technicality in which the cameras used to portray different meanings and feeling to the viewers.

All in all, a brilliant, but gritty account of a french slum trying to regain control from the authorities shown through the eyes of 3 very quirky and interesting characters.
A must see.

Rated: Parental Guidance
Staring: Yves Montand, Daniel Auteuil, Emmanuelle Beart, Hippolyte Girardot, Gerard Depardieu
Director: Claude Berri

Jean de Florette/ Manon Des Sources, 2010-08-31
Classic French film and sequel of a comedy with pathos.The calbre of acting from all the cast is superb,especially Gerard Depardieu,in his comedy element.
Quality of DVD is superb, and the short delivery time was excellent.
I would thoroughly recommend this DVD,just to show what real acting can do !

Rated: Suitable for 18 years and over
Staring: Noomi Rapace, Michael Nyqvist
Director: Niels Arden Oplev

wow, 2010-09-03
when i saw this i was not expecting anything special.. this had my interest gripped right until the end... i loved this movie and the other 2 are just as great!

Rated: Suitable for 12 years and over
Staring: Dany Boon

micMacs is amazing, 2010-08-26
If you like anything by Jean-Pierre you will ove this. It has the same funny/originality you have seen from his other films, also has some inside jokes and that come his other films (see if you can spot them). Micmacs stands alone as an outstanding piece of material and an amazing film.