Offbeat, roundabout love story. It starts out as a kinky light comedy about a Russian mail-order bride in provincial England who proves to speak only one word of English ("Are you a giraffe?" "Yes"), and who uncovers an instructional stash of S&M porn in the bedroom closet. Then, near the …
Ballet hokum becomes a head trip of pop-goth stylization as director Darren Aronofsky falls off his raw, real form of The Wrestler. Natalie Portman worked hard as the traumatized ballerina but spins around in a blur of bad dancing, one-note acting, and demented plot. Helping to creep it up are …
There might be a presumption of seriousness about a ravaging-monster movie in which the monster stays off screen for the first hour, and comes freighted with political symbolism. (To say nothing of the English subtitles! Or of the venerable presences of Jacques Perrin and Edith Scob!) But there is plenty …
A Chicago family man with a diabetic daughter strikes up a risky flirtation with a woman on the commuter train, ultimately takes her to an out-of-the-way fleabag, but before any passion can be consummated they are beset by a sneering robber, beaten and raped respectively, and subsequently blackmailed. Nasty, twisty, …
A Christmas baby, orphaned in the delivery room and provisionally named Christine ("Sounds like Christmas"), leads a London midwife (Naomi Watts) on a quest for the infant's nearest relative, and straight into the dark heart of the Russian mafia: a deceptively avuncular restaurateur (Armin Mueller-Stahl), his loose-cannon son (Vincent Cassel), …
Sponsored, if that's the word, or endorsed, by Jodie Foster, this French film introduces American audiences to Mathieu Kassovitz, one of the many spawn of Martin Scorsese, farther-flung than most, documenting twenty-four volatile hours in the lives of three angry young men in the housing projects outside Paris. In significant …
Set in the aftermath of a riot, three friends trapped by their economic, ethnic and community circumstances navigate the escalating urban discontent. But, with tensions still high and the threat of violence ever-present, the trio drift towards an increasingly dangerous destiny. Starring Vincent Cassell, Hubert Koundè, and Saïd Taghmaoui.
Rough stuff from the French misanthrope, Gaspar Noé. An exceedingly brutal rape sets in motion an errant vendetta by the victim's former and current boyfriends: "Fucking B-movie revenge crap," as the former and more reluctant one puts it. (Noé's vision of humanity at large: the shadowy figure who appears at …
Long chronology of very violent criminal activity, reaching back (for possible extenuating circumstances) to Algeria in 1959, a half appalling, half gloating, four-fifths unconvincing biography of France’s Most Wanted. Directed by Jean-François Richet (of the Assault on Precinct 13 remake), it starts badly, with an unchronological credits sequence of pointlessly …
Jean-François Richet finishes out, in a shade under two and a quarter hours, his rubbishy mythologizing of the French gangster Jacques Mesrine, with plenty of frenetic and messy and mostly incredible action, and with Vincent Cassel, going through a Mr. Potato Head assortment of disguises, flirting constantly with caricature. The …
While on their first date, Georgio (Vincent Cassel), clearly a well-heeled heel, pauses awkwardly for a moment before answering Tony’s (Emmanuelle Bercot) inquiry as to his status as a jerk. Writer-director Maïwenn could have stopped just short of tattooing the words “Caution: Asshole Enclosed” across Georgio’s forehead and doormat Tony …
The gang of eleven, the ersatz Rat Pack, reconvenes (Clooney, Pitt, Damon, et al.); the newcomer, the apparent twelfth, is not a member of the gang at all, but a member of law enforcement (Catherine Zeta-Jones). Even the victim of the previous heist returns (Andy Garcia), rounding up each of …
Out there at the edge of the city, amid the crumbling concrete and untended landscape, the charismatic Gregori (Vincent Cassel) has assembled a big, happy family from mistreated, grateful women and their innocent children. Or mostly innocent: the kids help pay the bills by conducting assassinations out there in The …
French filmmaker Jacques Audiard (son of the prolific scriptwriter Michel Audiard) sets himself the interesting task of how to make use of the faculty of lip-reading for the purposes of a thriller. The result is not all that interesting. The personalities and the relationship of an introverted secretary (Emmanuelle Devos, …
Medieval detective yarn about an innovative troupe of travelling players, including an incognito fallen priest, who deviate from Bible stories and (pioneers of the modern docudrama) tackle a local serial-murder case: "We'll perform this afternoon, and use the morning to find out more of what happened." Excitable, not to say …