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Chroniques sexuelles d'une famille d'aujourd'hui (2012)
Poignant, charming, and funny - with lots of explicit sex.
It begins with newly-turned 18 year old Romain getting caught filming himself masturbating in class at school. As embarrassing as it is to his parents, it makes his mother realize that they have served their children poorly. Sure, they taught them about condoms and pregnancy and AIDS, but what did they teach them about making love, and the role of sex in a relationship and in one's life?
So it goes, with mother talking with older son Pierre, and father trying to talk with Romain, while the movie goes about documenting the sex between the various characters.
The sex is unsimulated and explicit, with erect penises and all. However, while it is explicit, it is not exploitative. In other words, it doesn't feel like they intend for it to be arousing. The scenes are filmed in a manner that in no way resembles the way porn is filmed. At least, so I'm told by friends less virtuous than myself.
The whole point of the movie is to argue that people, even in France, are way too uptight about sex. It needs to be more normalized if our children are to grow up healthy of both body and mind. That I think is the reason why they felt compelled to have the sex be genuine. If they were to fake it, doesn't that run contrary to the idea of normalizing it?
I think it's a movie that is worth seeing, and worth talking about - if you aren't too embarrassed to.
Free State of Jones (2016)
The movie that kept going and going and going and going and....
I don't want to give away the plot here, mostly because there isn't that much of it. What I can say is that the first 45 minutes or so are simply outstanding. It's the kind of story that you hope is true, because if it isn't, it outta be. Matthew McC is in fine form for that part of the movie.
That part of the movie - the good part - comes to an end just after a scene where there is fighting between to sides in the town.
For the next God knows how many hours (was it really less than two?) Writer/director Gary Ross brings out every cliche in the book. It is predictable. It is preachy. The only storyline is "Knight good... Klan bad." Ross is so unable to move the story forward that on multiple occasions he uses titles to tell us what has happened. It is just painful.
Add to that some storyline that takes place 60 years later that adds nothing but additional sanctimony, to a movie that already is too long....
Give it a miss. If you must start it, then stop watching when the war ends and just assume that everyone lived happily, or miserably, ever after - your choice.
Voleuses (2023)
Flawed but very enjoyable
I came to this movie with no expectations. I knew I'd seen Melanie Laurent before, but couldn't remember where from. I didn't watch the trailer, all I had was the two sentence description on Netflix. Going in cold, I have to say, I really enjoyed this.
Movies depend on forgiveness. Plots are never perfect; there is always something that the audience has to agree to ignore. Characters, accents, real life details... the audience has to put those aside to enjoy the movie. In some ways, movies have an "enjoyment ATM card". If it stars your favourite actor, your card starts with a positive balance. Favourite director, same thing. Hopefully, we click "play" with some degree of goodwill built into the process, giving a starting positive balance of some amount.
Then the movie starts, and as you are watching, things either increase the balance on your card, or decreases it. Hopefully, you finish the film with a positive balance. But the slips in the movie will eat away at your balance to the point that, if there are too many of them, you finish the movie with negative enjoyment. Sometimes, a movie is so bad that you exceed your credit limit before it ends, and you stop watching. (I'm looking at you, Michael Bay.)
In this case, the storyline is a little bit lightweight, and they make a few wrong turns in telling the story. These mishaps will leave a definite negative entry on your enjoyment balance sheet. Depending on how much you have enjoyed the movie to that point, you may end up with a negative balance.
For me, there were enough positives in the movie that, when the plot holes showed up, I had enough on my card to forgive them for their screenwriting sins and keep the balance in black.
Among the positives, the acting was superb, and in particular the actress playing Alex was a real delight. Isabelle Adjani makes an impact in a small role, and if you don't know her age, you might be shocked to find out what it actually is.
Visually, it's a beautiful film to watch. The locations are spectacular, and the action scenes are very well choreographed. Throughout the film there is a frequent change of the colour palette as it moves from sequence to sequence, much in the way that Kill Bill vol. 1 did in a more exaggerated manner. The movement from a beige base to the blue of the ocean, back to beige, to the green of the forest, to the coldness of the forest at night, back to beige, then to the red in a private screening room.... It's another way that the movie continues to engage with the viewer and contribute positively to the experience.
There is a wonderful action sequence involving Alex that really has no business being in the movie from a storytelling perspective. But it was done so creatively that, for me, it added to the enjoyment rather than detracted from it. Later on, there's another sequence which begins with the majestic line (en anglais) "We're taking a ferry to Italy tonight. We're going to get revenge for my bunny." Again, from a storytelling perspective it could have been shorter. Given its place in the timing of the movie - at the 70% mark - one might hope that they would speed things up a bit to get to the end. But the scene is executed (ha ha) so beautifully that again, it's a positive not a negative for me. However, they did go to the style well a few too many times. There is a sequence in the last act where Caroline unexpectedly has a conversation with someone while she's doing something. It's cute, but that is one of several cuts that probably should have been made to the film. It takes far too much at that point of the movie that the overall pacing is hurt.
Lawyers have a saying: "When the facts are against you, argue the law. When the law is against you, argue the facts. When both are against you, just argue." That is kind of what we have here. Melanie Laurent had a script that was against her. What she did was to concentrate as much as she could on what we see on the screen to make it a positive experience. I think she succeeded, and I hope she gets the opportunity to direct many more movies for years to come. But with better scripts.
Pain Hustlers (2023)
A familiar formula executed perfectly.
I will start out with a warning: this movie will win you over or completely lose you in the first seven minutes. There are multiple character beats that you might find to be really funny, or you might find to be completely repugnant. If you find them repugnant, then just stop watching. Nothing that follows in the movie is going to bring you back. For me, I found them funny and greatly enjoyed the experience.
The movie is a typical rise-fall story, a core storytelling structure that is literally as old as the Bible. (Take THAT, guy who said it's a Wolf of Wall Street rip-off.) It is inspired by a true story arising from the pharmaceutical side of the opioid crisis. As with any movie based on real events, modifications are made as necessary to fit it into three acts that take less than two hours. It's a movie that, like most movies, does not try to be real-world accurate. The real people aren't that good looking, they aren't as articulate or funny, the real locations aren't that large or colourful, and the pieces of the real puzzle don't click together so neatly. It's a movie. It tells a story that is worthy of being told while aiming for emotional accuracy if not... well... being entirely true.
I found the performances to be very strong. Catherine O'Hara in particular was over-the-top in exactly the right measure. (Those not familiar with her body of work might be surprised to hear that this performance is pretty restrained compared to everything else she has done, most recently the TV series Schitt's Creek.) Emily Blunt was terrific, and Chris Evans was cast perfectly as the guy who made Blunt's rise possible, and was largely responsible for her fall. Overall, there wasn't a single bad note from any of the performances.
It isn't a movie that rises above the genre in the way that some of, say, Quentin Tarantino's movies do. But - if you are okay with the darkness of the humour - it's an enjoyable movie to watch, and one that can justify a second viewing.