Archive for 'French' Category

Banlieue 13 – Ultimatum written and produced by Luc Besson, Directed by Patrick Allesandrin (2009)

30 July 2010

The sequel to the incredible action film Banlieue 13 starring the parkour master David Belle and the martial artist Cyril Raffaelli. This is a serious action film that looks incredible, and has some of the best action in the world. Raffaelli’s scenes are like serious Jackie Chan fight scenes (no comedy here) and Belle is [...]

Tokyo! by Michel Gondry, Leos Carax & Bong Joon-ho (2008)

8 January 2010

An anthology film with director’s looks at the city of Tokyo! The trailer was amazing, and I was so looking foward to this, and was a bit let down. I loved Gondry’s surreal short, though it is incredibly strange, and Bong Joon-ho’s is at least interesting, but I did not at like the film of [...]

King of Hearts by Philipe de Broca (1966)

19 December 2009

A classic film that I watched with mom as a kid. I passed this on by showing it to my wife, who was charmed by this film. This is really a slightly slapstick anti-war film with the warmest of all hearts, and a message about just how crazy the world can be. If you have [...]

Happenstance by Laurent Firode (2000)

19 January 2009

I have to admit I picked up this film because of Audrey Tautou, as she is lovely and quirky, almost inhuman actually, and I a huge fan. And while I did enjoy this film, I was disappointed to see that she was in fact only in a small part of the film, in the open, [...]

Silk by Francious Girard (2007)

6 December 2008

There is trouble in Japan, but Hervé returns again, and is still obsessed with the mistress, and she gives him another woman to have sex with, and she gives him a note in Japanese, which he cannot read. While there Hervé also meets another Geijin, a man who sells guns Schuyler (Callum Keith Rennie from so much of late, including Battlestar Galactica and Californication), and tells him the woman may not even be Japanese, and when Hervé leaves he sees the man’s crushed glasses, proving he has died.

Hervé returns home with the eggs, and the town is still prosperous, but he still looks at his letter, and goes to Balbadou to see where he can get it translated, so heads to a high priced whore named Madame Blanche (Miki Nakatani) who is a Japanese woman. She translated the letter as saying “Return to me or I will die” and Hervé becomes obsessed with returning to China, even though the situation there is very bad, and there are new methods to separate out the diseased eggs, but he convinces Baldabiou to let him go.

On his return to Japan Hervé finds the village burned, but finds the mistresses young servant (Kanata Hongo) who leads him to Jubei and a covered cart that could contain the woman, but they don’t want him, and murder the boy. Hervé gets eggs in China, but it is too late, and they hatch on the way, wasting the whole trip and all the money.

The town is in dire straights, having used all it’s money for the trip, so Hervé hires the town to build Hélene’s garden, but he is still distant.

Hervé then gets another letter from the concubine in Japanese, and he takes it to Madam Blanche, now in Paris and has it translated, and it is very erotic, but says they can never be together again.

Hélene then gets very sick, and ends up dyeing, and being buried in her garden. Hervé then returns to the Japanese Whore, and gets her to admit that she wrote the letter, but gets informed that she just wrote it down, and in fact his wife Hélene told her what to say, and she wrote it, and wished she was that woman the whole time, and Hervé says she was.

It ends with Hervé sitting in his garden with his young gardener Ludovic (Mark Rendall) who grew up around there, and they knew his whole life, and who Hervé tells his whole story.

••••

Gorgeous, but so flat, nothing to hold it together.

2 Days in Paris written and directed by Julie Delpy (2007)

28 May 2008

I was really hoping for more of the magic of Before Sunrise and After Sunset, but honestly the characters in Julie Delpy’s freshman directorial effort were so off putting in comparison that this film suffers a bit. Honestly I never saw what these two saw in each other, though they both give great performances, there [...]

Priceless (Hors De Prix) by Perre Salvadori (2006)

30 March 2008

I have dyeing to see a movie for quite some time, but there has been absolutely nothing out since last year, so when I heard a new Audrey Tautou movie, I knew I had to rush out and see it, and was not disappointed (and yes I have watched many movies in between this and [...]

2 Days in Paris written and directed by Julie Delpy (2007)

25 March 2008

I really had high hopes for this film, and wanted to watch it with my lovely fiancee Kelly because we are both such big fans of BEFORE SUNRISE and BEFORE SUNSET, which this seemed to be a spiritual sequel too, but she couldn’t watch it because it is all handheld and too shaky for her, [...]

Renaissance by Christian Volkman (2006)

7 August 2007

A computer generated French science fiction film, and a top notch one at that (you can tell by the voice talent, I mean Daniel Craig, Jonathan Pryce and Ian Holm, damn!). This is really a must see for all those who like the utopian/dark futuristic visions. And the artwork is beyond belief. The whole film [...]

Joyeux Noël by Christian Carion (2005)

25 November 2006

This is a film that my father’s wife rented on NetFlix because it was a Christmas film, and this was not what I was expecting at all. This is an incredibly powerful and moving film about the futlity of war, that is based on a true even that occured on Christmas Eve in 1914 during [...]

Clean by Olivier Assayas (2004)

23 April 2006

Now I have to admit that I am a huge Maggie Cheung Man Yuk fan, thinking she is one of the best actresses in the world, and I did not think that my opinion of her could approve, and after seeing this my opinion of her has improved. No wonder that she won best actress [...]

The Dreamers by Bernardo Bertolucci (2003)

3 October 2005

Hmm not sure what exactly happened to my review of this film, which I know I did, but it disappeared, so I will write a new one here. Of course I know of the films of Bertolucci, especially last Tango in Paris, but for some reason didn’t have any desire to see this film, but [...]

Banlieue 13 by Pierre Morel (2004)

12 August 2005

I had read about this film and seen clips of David Belle in action thanks to Kung Fu Cinema and had showed it to my friend Ashanti, really wanting to see it. Well Ashanti picked it up, and we checked it out, and it is totally bad ass. And Cyril Raffaelli who was also in [...]