Out of Sight by Steven Soderbergh, 1998 (R)

with George Clooney (The Descendants, Michael Clayton, Up in the Air), Jennifer Lopez, Ving Rhames, Don Cheadle (Traffic), Catherine Keener (Please Give, Peace Love and Misunderstanding, Simone), Dennis Farina, Steve Zahn, Albert Brooks (Drive), Luis Guzmán (Traffic), Isaiah Washington

Florida bank robber Jack Foley (George Clooney) plays a genteel game of cat and mouse with Karen Sisco (Jennifer Lopez), the stunning federal marshal he meets in the trunk of a getaway car, in this Steven Soderbergh-directed film that shows off his trademark nonlinear storytelling. Out of Sight received Oscar nominations for both its crack editing (Anne V. Coates) and its brilliant adaptation (Scott Frank) of Elmore Leonard's novel.

My favorite Soderbergh so far, although I really like his movies in general. George Clooney is sexy, Jennifer Lopez's performance in perfect as a US marshal, I think I prefer her in this kind of roles than the typical falling in love girl she is since (I recommend "The Cell" as well). Anyway, the soundtrack is really good, the actors are all well chosen, even Catherine Keener that I finally recognized (after perhaps seeing this movie about five times) in a role she never takes. The storyline is great, deconstructed, original, with a dark great sense of humor, and did I already mentioned I really like Elmore Leonard's writing, Jackie Brown, Get Shorty, Bandits...

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The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (Män som hatar kvinnor) by Niels Arden Oplev, 2009 (R)

with Michael Nyqvist (MI4: Ghost Protocol), Noomi Rapace (Prometheus), Sven-Bertil Taube, Peter Haber, Lena Endre, Peter Andersson, Marika Lagercrantz, Ingvar Hirdwall, Björn Granath, Ewa Fröling

"Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared from a family gathering on the island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger clan. Her body was never found, yet her uncle is convinced it was murder and that the killer is a member of his own tightly knit but dysfunctional family. He employs disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist and the tattooed, ruthless computer hacker Lisbeth Salander to investigate. When the pair link Harriet's disappearance to a number of grotesque murders from almost forty years ago, they begin to unravel a dark and appalling family history. But the Vanger's are a secretive clan, and Blomkvist and Salander are about to find out just how far they are prepared to go to protect themselves." IMDB

April 25, 2010: The characters are very good. At first, you feel very detached from them. There is this distance due probably to this rough aesthetic of the movie, with high contrast, very few colors around the blueish. And the ambient is as cold as the color, with a violence that goes beyond the acts of violence. The background of the story is dark, and stay dark until the end. With an inch of dark humor. Little by little the thriller takes over the characters and perhaps, the shortcuts that the movie had to make to fit in the length of the movie makes it a little bit surreal. This is where you get a chance to detach yourself a little bit from the story. Too bad. The ending makes it a perfect story and you realize that you may want to read the book. Instead.

Update August 2012: David Fincher made an American remake since that simplified the emotions to the essence, missing the point of the character of Lisbeth Salander. I really recommend you to watch the original Swedish version!

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Perfect Sense (The Last Word) by David Mackenzie, 2011 (R)

with Ewan McGregor (Amelia, Haywire, The Men Who Stare At Goats, I Love You Phillip Morris, The Ghost Writer, Salmon Fishing In Yemen), Eva Green (Dark Shadows, The Dreamers), Ewen Bremner, Stephen Dillane, Denis Lawson, Anamaria Marinca, Alastair Mackenzie, Connie Nielsen, Katy Engels, Richard Mack

People around the world are being infected. First the grief, then smell is gone. As loss of one sense leads to another, people are stripped of the lives that they once knew. Chaos ensues whilst a young couple try to begin a relationship.

The story is amazing. It is a sort of apocalyptic vision of humanity, going through stages, which define the human being, both from the point of view of our hormones and out nervous system. It is from the perspective of a relationship that was born from the apocalypse, and grows as their senses become more limited, and perhaps essential. The acting is good, although I always find difficult to like the tortured roles of Eva Green (reminds me of my Emo time as a teenager...). I always find narration difficult to integrate to movies, it always look like an artifice that is used to simplify the work of the director. I realized this time the narration was beautiful, poetic, suitable to the tone of the story, except perhaps for the last shot where I felt it was unnecessary, due to the context.

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The Game by David Fincher, 1997 (R)

with Michael Douglas (Solitary Man, Haywire), Sean Penn (Milk, Fair Game, The Tree of Life), Deborah Kara Unger (Crash), James Rebhorn, Peter Donat, Carroll Baker (Giant), Anna Katarina, Armin Mueller-Stahl
By the director of Seven, Fight Club, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Social Network and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Financial genius and coldhearted loner Nicholas receives an unusual birthday present from his younger brother, Conrad -- a gift certificate to play a unique kind of game formulated by "CRS".

This is one of my favorite movies. It is smart, well conducted, absolutely unpredictable, dark, the acting is perfect, the esthetic is still as today up-to-date, the rhythm interesting, finally, Michael Douglas holds the main character at the limit of the breakdown, at the limit of the believable, but never loosing the sense of the possible. It is brilliant. Sean Penn and Deborah Kara Unger are solidifying the disbelief completely. "A life-changing experience!"

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To Rome With Love by Woody Allen, 2012 (R)

with Woody Allen (Midnight in Paris, Deconstructing Harry), Alec Baldwin (The Cooler), Roberto Benigni (Life is Beautiful), Penélope Cruz (Sin Noticias de Dios, Non Ti Muovere), Judy Davis (Deconstructing Harry), Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network, Solitary Man), Greta Gerwig, Ellen Page (Juno), Fabio Armiliata, Alessandra Mastronardi, Alison Pill (Milk), Carol Alt, Flavio Parenti (I Am Love), Fabio Armiliato (amazing tenor, fascinating!)

Woody Allen plays a father meeting his daughter's Italian in-laws to-be in this ensemble comedy that interweaves four tales set in Rome. Other cast members include Roberto Benigni as a man mistaken for a film star.

Every year, there is the Allen season, a season where the new Woody Allen movie comes out. It never misses. Last year was Midnight in Paris, very good, well written, the script was intelligent, the dialogues witty, with a touch of nostalgia and romanticism, almost French.
This time, Woody Allen brought us to another capital of romanticism, Roma. What was so successful about his previous movie failed in that one. The sense of humor is still there, but feels forced, the storyline is very confusing, with a feeling that these bits and pieces have been imagined separately and forced together. Some scenes are inventive and absolutely hilarious, (this is the good thing about Woody Allen, you end up laughing out loud, very healthy). Then you have all the other moments, where you wait until something happens that reconnects you to the story. It is overacted, Comedia Del Arte style, with some twists and turns of the story, more or less surreal, and I guess it is impossible to direct Roberto Benigni, he is himself a character, and honestly, you like him or not, I found him exuberant and exhausting. Also another thing, the ending, too long. He could just have had a finish with the ending of the opera, but no, he kept on going...

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Barney's Version by Richard J. Lewis, 2010 (R)

for once I am putting two posters, because one pays homage to the traditional movie poster of the beginning of the century, and I really like it :) The other one is just the other one, the official.





with Paul Giamatti (Duplicity), Rosamund Pike (Pride and Prejudice, Surrogates, An Education), Paul Gross, Minnie Driver (Sleepers), Scott Speedman (The Vow, Adoration), Dustin Hoffman (Kramer Vs. Kramer, Tootsie), Jake Hoffman, Mark Addy, Saul Rubinek, Rachelle Lefevre (Twilight Series), Bruce Greenwood (Deja Vu)

Golden Globe winner Paul Giamatti stars as Barney Panofsky, a Jewish Canadian television producer who reflects in flashbacks on three strange decades -- and three wives -- in this adaptation of Mordecai Richler's acclaimed novel. There's Clara (Rachelle Lefevre), a free-spirited proponent of free love; "Mrs. P" (Minnie Driver), a self-centered princess; and Miriam (Rosamund Pike), the right woman who comes along at the wrong time.

It is an unexpected movie. First you believe it is about a murder, of his best friend. Then you believe this is about finding no evidence of the murder, thinking at some point of his life, it will come back to him. And then, it evolves into a love story, then the story of humans, imperfect, living a life that had mistakes, trying to fix them, to go one. And finally it is about aging, looking at life again, remembering, forgetting, remembering still, the essential. Paul Giamatti made me cry. And it was not an easy thing to achieve, since he is so far from the romantic guy, so uncharming, so not likable. It leaves you perplex the fact that the story shows him at the center of an amazing life. Perhaps to show you how much he had to loose. Or perhaps how much the other had to loose by not looking beyond the appearance. Perhaps this is why it takes such a long time to understand why a woman like Miriam (amazing Rosamund Pike) falls for him. The movie is dynamic, with dark humor and loud, with a humanity that reminds me I know nothing about Canadian humor, but I am ready to learn!

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We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lynne Ramsay, 2011 (R)

with Tilda Swinton (Michael Clayton, I am Love, Constantine), John C. Reilly (Chicago, The Hours), Ezra Miller (Californication), Jasper Newell, Rocky Duer, Ashley Gerasimovich, Siobhan Fallon, Alex Manette, Joseph Melendez

Eva's relationship with her son, Kevin, has been difficult from the beginning. When the 15-year-old boy's cruel streak erupts into violence, Eva wonders how much blame she deserves for his actions.

This movie is very original, probably one of the darkest I've seen since actually "Julia" again with Tilda Swinton. I watched it thinking I would see an alternate version of the same story of "Beautiful Boy", but not at all. The tone is radically different, the perception of the family, the behavior of the kid, the focus of the story and finally the story itself are radically opposite. We have here a mother who felt estranged by her pregnancy, and then manipulated by her son to the point where her husband in oblivion doesn't even believe her. It is build in a back and forth with the present and the time of the tragedy, from the birth on to the moment of the murders. The story is misleading in many way, so you never know really what is to expect of the characters, of the next possible event, which in a way doesn't really explain why she fell so low. The interactions of the kid (played by 4 formidable actors) with the mum is oppressing, to the limit of the horror gender, definitely suspense. The beautiful moments always have something disturbing to them, and the esthetic of the movie is truly fascinating. Red is definitely built of so many symbols, from the alarm clock to the Tomatina of Spain, to the paint on the walls, to the soup cans, to the red lights of the firemen trucks.
Now, there are common points, the guilt of the parent, the relationship of the parent with the outside world, the open rejection, the incomprehension of the act... But in a way, it would have much more to compare to with "Rosemary's Baby". I recommend strongly, but not to a mother who just gave birth!

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