Kevin's comments:
The excerpts I saw weren't convincing but I absolutely loved this brilliant movie, very close to the true story of world boxing champion Micky Ward and his crazy family. The four main actors are all amazing as well as the storytelling. WatchThis!
It's the OSS 117 of blaxploitation staring, instead of a pretentious French spy who fights Nazis, a funky Afro-American CIA agent who fights drug dealers.
The movie is a gold mine of hilarious clichés and quotes but… CAN YOU DIG IT?
I don't even know where to start.
Eyes-burning visual effects? Imagine HDR 3D CGI from the early 2000s.
Useless scenes? I felt asleep.
Incessant dramatic music? It feels like the soundtrack of The Dark Knight with additional choirs. For two hours.
Amazing-but-disappointing cast? Come on, Johnny Depp, Alan Rickman, Crispin "George McFly" Glover, and all you've got in the end are poorly animated animals that repeat the same sentence during the whole movie.
Adding really bad elements to Lewis Carroll's original universe, Alice in Wonderland is the sequel no one asked for.
As always with Woody Allen, the characters are well thought, and their relationships are what matters. The husband (Josh Brolin) and his psychic-seeing mother-in-law, the wife (Naomi Watts) and her sexy boss (Antonio Banderas), her father (Anthony Hopkins) and his 25 year-old new girlfriend are all great casting choices, it works… almost :
This movie is a romantic comedy, yet the jokes are too rare (they are good, though). The story begins before the movie, doesn't end, and feels like a compilation of other Allen movies.
I'm not saying I didn't like it, though: I spent a nice moment and London is absolutely beautiful in it.
Tron is one of those movies that once were modern and futuristic, and now look old and boring.
It's still a Sci-Fi classic and a pioneer in CGI but it became painful to watch now that even children know what electrons are.
I can't wait for Tron Legacy, though.
I don't know what I love the most about this movie: the fact that it's an incredible story, yet it's true? Or the fact that it's hilarious? Or the fact that Ewan McGregor is so sweet it makes you completely forget his scary character in Shallow Grave?
Anyway, it is an awesome biography of a con-man, a really beautiful love story and a very funny movie. WatchThis.
Keeping the Faith is not just another simple romantic comedy, it's way more than that. It's Edward Norton first movie as a director (Norton IS good at everything), and features Miloš Forman, Eli Wallach and even The Graduate's Anne Bancroft, as well as Ben Stiller in his most touching role.
The story starts like a big joke: it's a love triangle between Stiller (a rabbi), Norton (a priest) and their childhood girlfriend (played by Jenna Elfman), yet it's really subtle, smart and very funny. The trio works perfectly, they give a very fresh touch to religions and made me laugh a lot.
Keeping the Faith is one of these rare movies I love to watch over and over and, as always with the movies I like, the soundtrack is very good (Tom Waits, Santana, Elliot Smith) and made me discover the songwriter Peter Salett.
I've never heard about this movie until a few months ago, and what a shame! Written and directed by Scrubs' Zach Braff who also provides a great performance along with the always unexpected Natalie Portman, this movie is very strange but in a good way. The story is original and interesting, you don't always know if the situation is sad or fun, but it feels good. Excellent movie.
Bonus for the soundtrack: Coldplay, Zero 7, The Shins, Alexi Murdoch, Nick Drake, Postal Service…
I'm not saying I didn't like it, just that I didn't enjoy watching it. The trailer is a big lie and makes you expect a really funny horror comedy (like a good old gore zombie movie), but it's not. It is REALLY gore and not fun. Here in France you have to be at leat 12 to see it, but I would say 18 and mentally stable. I don't really understand how Tarantino manage to put even more horrible scenes in his movie without shocking everybody like this Aja. Also, 3D, really? Still, Eli Roth appearance, Party Down's Henry as one of the main characters and the two sentences Christopher Lloyd says are totally worth it.
Not bad, but not very good either. Some pretty good twists, but the movie feels more like a 24 season premiere (with a very sexy spy instead of Jack Bauer, who wouldn't love that?): too many underexploited elements make you end up in the closing credits, waiting for the following 23 episodes.
Hard to write about this movie. It is VIOLENT. Like, REALLY DIRTY. Unsurprisingly written by Quentin Tarantino, it stars Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis as a famous couple of mass-murderers deeply in love with each other. They are really good (and, uh, creepy). The movie is romantic in the same way True Romance is (also written by Tarantino), but it features jail horror in a way that Prison Break feels like Bambi. That means some scenes are pretty hard to go through, but Robert Downey Jr. and Tommy Lee Jones performances are so great it's totally worth it. Also, the early '90s ambiance, the crazy TV thing (you have to WatchThis to understand) and the Tarantinesque soundtrack make it a really good experience.
"They took his daughter. He'll take their lives." The tagline sums it up pretty good: you don't mess with a badass' daughter. Kind of like when terrorists kidnapped Kim Bauer, and then realized she was Jack Bauer's daughter, but it's already too late and oh god there's blood everywhere. Taken is a cool movie for rainy and/or hangover days.
Wow. A perfect movie. Awesome and really complicated which leads to endless debates not only about The End but also about how you perceived and understood the whole story. The universe Nolan created is rich and thoughtful. Its rules are precisely established in the beginning. The specials effects are really cool (there is a *zero-gravity fight*, so you'd better be buying a ticket right now), the casting is really great (after Juno and Whip It, Ellen Page enters the big stage and deserves it). A little bit disappointed by Marion Cotillard performance and Hanz Zimmer's soundtrack (there is no theme you can clearly identify), but everything else is just perfect. I can't wait to watch it again, and again!
Ok, I am now officially a fan of director Jacques Audiard. This movie is great, the story is very unusual, the music selection is perfect, the actors are very good (especially Niels Arestrup and Aure Atika). And Romain Duris… let's say I always wanted another character of him (Xavier from L'Auberge Espagnole and Les Poupées Russes) to be a friend of mine. With this movie, I'm just scared of him. He proved he can play anything just like Kevin Spacey: from the good friend to the scary bad guy. Also, the title is beautiful ("The Beat That My Heart Skipped" is cool, but even better in French: "Beating My Heart Stopped"). Anyway, WatchThis.
An incredible graphic experience (exclusive use of black and white) that takes place in Paris in 2054. I loved it in theater, and I really should watch it again in HD!
A very traditional kung-fu movie where the good guys are members of a Chinese martial arts school and want revenge against Japanese and Russians. One of the very first Bruce Lee movies in which he is simply awesome. Plus, you'll understand a lot of references from Kill Bill and Tarantino movies in general!
Watermelons, Korean porn actors and musical. That movie is really weird, but I liked it.
Vincent Cassel and Monica Bellucci are great, but the movie is so dark, weird and violent with crimes, guns, grenades, mafia, prostitutes and drugs… Painful to watch.
After everybody told me "Oh, still haven't seen Requiem for a Dream? Man, the final scene is just… wow. No, you've really got to see this", I finally watched it.
Yep, a masterpiece. Excellent execution. Very dark atmosphere. It's about drugs, but more in a sense of addiction (pills, heroine, TV, weight loss…). Each of the four characters has a dream for which they'll slowly fall into drugs. And, the final scene is just… wow. No, you've really got to see this.
Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace are to James Bond universe what Batman Begins and The Dark Knight are to Batman movies: two great movies giving the dark truth about how the two heroes became what they are. Must see.
Six actors and six characters for the six lives of Bob Dylan. This movie is the best description of Dylan's life and music. The cast is incredible (Heath Ledger, Cate Blanchet, Christian Bale, Richard Gere, Charlotte Gainsbourg). It's a fascinating experiment and a masterpiece!
The thing is, you never hear the Z word. The title isn't "Shaun of the Zombies", they don't say "oh my god, zombies!" and half of the movie is a succession of jokes about zombies that aren't zombies, based on this typical English humor. Though, Shaun of the Dead is hilarious and my favorite zombie comedy (it's technically a RomZomCom: a Romantic Zombie Comedy, no kidding).
One of the greatest documentary I've seen. Featuring incredible, high definition, slow motion footage from BBC's complete Earth serie.
Perfectly realist story, very good actors (François Cluzet and Gilles Lellouche are really great), excellent thriller!
The music has been improvised by Matthieu Chedid in two hours and is surprisingly good.
Excellent mafia movie that takes place in Italy from the '70s to the '90s. Some real, historical scenes from original reporters are included, which makes this story shockingly true.
Sex, drugs and Rock'n'Roll.
Brilliant movie with Ewan McGregor (Shallow Grave) and Robert Carlyle (The Full Monty).
Plus, the soundtrack is incredible and depicts the '80s and '90s English music through iggy Pop, New Order, Lou Reed and Blur.
It's like The Office with new characters. Very funny!
This movie may have been cool in the '90s, today it looks like a fake Hugh Grant comedy…
Not a bad movie, though.
Classic.
Take a look at the cast: Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Michael Rapaport (remember Phoebe's Gary?), Dennis Hopper, James Gandolfini (a.k.a. Tony Soprano), Gary Oldman, Christopher Walken, Chris Penn (Reservoir Dogs' Nice Guy Eddie), Brad Pitt, Val Kilmer, Samuel L. Jackson…
And it's written by Tarantino.
Mind-opening.
One of the best Jim Carrey performance. Hilarious!
Classic "Good guy in the middle of hundreds of bad guys" movie. AWESOME.
Plus, greatest Steve Buscemi's performance ever.
I saw it, very interesting but not as good as Eternal Sunshine.
Absolutely beautiful!
Talented snowboarders who travel around the word to ride the most beautiful mountains. Amazing pictures. Incredible documentary. WatchThis on a big screen.
Five years after GoodFellas, Martin Scorsese reunites the same actors (Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Frank Vincent…) for a three-hour long self-person narrative movie picturing the gambling mafia from the '70s to the '90s. It seems he's begging us to compare Casino to his previous masterpiece which I enjoyed a lot more.
This movie is not bad at all, though: the characters are brilliants, and the story fascinating. I also absolutely loved the way Scorsese played with the spectator through De Niro's suits, but you'll have to WatchThis to understand.
Not at all what I expected: it looks like a badass action movie, but it's more than that. You could say it's a CIA drama/thriller with an amnesic badass action spy who looks for memories in Europe while being hunted.
Anyway, the whole trilogy is brilliant. I've seen it several times now and it still awesome.
Beautiful music. Scary characters. Strange story. Scary music. Strange characters. Beautiful story. Strange music. Beautiful characters. Scary story.
A masterpiece.
As much as I like Ryan Phillippe, computers and mocking Microsoft, I found this movie really bad. Not even so-bad-it's-fun, really, just bad. And I was 14 or something.
Nikita
Excellent movie. Despite what I thought, it's not an action movie at all, but the story of a lost teenage girl who is recruited and trained to become a killer for the French government.
What I liked the most was to find out how inspiring Nikita has been for Oliver Stone and Quentin Tarantino: Jean Reno plays Viktor, a "cleaner" (just like Pulp Fiction's Winston Wolfe), and the first scene (a pharmacy robbery) feels really similar to Natural Born Killers' same scene, with the very aggressive neons and the fluorescent colors.
The three main actors are also really great, especially Tchéky Karyo who I only knew as a Roman general in French TV show Kaamelott.
I think this is the most underrated Disney movie. It is not as beautiful as The Lion King or Aladdin for sure, but I found it hilarious!
L'Auberge Espagnole (The Spanish Apartment) is a story about a very friendly French student, Xavier, who moves to Barcelona for his final year of study.
Klapisch wrote most of the scenes on the set and let the actors improvise freely. That's why the characters feel so real, so fun, so great, they make the whole movie alive. Every single scene is full of details, I just love watching it over and over. The soundtrack is amazing, too: Radiohead, Daft Punk, Ali Farka Touré, Chopin… Even better: you can watch the sequel, Russian Dolls, that takes place a few years after, in Paris, London and Saint Petersburg.
This movie is amazing, it made me study abroad too and changed my life forever.
So moving, absolutely beautiful!
Very, very good movie. It's ranked #1 on IMDB (though I wouldn't put it that high) and Morgan Freeman's performance is just perfect. Excellent and a very moving story (written by Stephen King) that sounds realistic (but isn't). Another good surprise was 24's Ethan playing the warden. If you liked The Green Mile, WatchThis, it's even better!
Cool badasses-versus-bad-guys-and-the-traitor story, awesome cast, heavy-metal soundtrack: a great movie for action fans. A little disappointed that the characters are not introduced in an Ocean's Eleven way (you know, "the butcher", "the explosives guy" etc.), and that both Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal turned down the offer. But that doesn't matter, because there's THE SOUND. OH MY GOD THE SOUND. That's the main thing I remember: the sound is incredible. Motorbikes, planes, cars, explosions, gunfires: you live in the movie, they're shooting at you. So, yeah, go watch it in a good theater or do NOT watch it. Ever.
Everybody knows the soundtrack, but the whole movie is actually awesome too! John Belushi is really funny and there are great guests: Ray Charles, James Brown, John Lee Hooker, Aretha Franklin... A classic I finally watched.
I loved the main theme. Unfortunately, that was the only thing bearable. Ten minutes in, the woman loses the willingness to do anything with her life. And wanders. For two hours.
The movie is sweet, but I clearly preferred the book it is based on. In the book, the story takes place around the grunge movement and Curt Cobain's death while in the movie, grunge rock has been replaced with modern hip-hop. Definitely a different ambiance. Still: the soundtrack is written by Badly Drawn Boy and is beautiful.
Wow. Just... Wow. Hilarious (much more than the previous ones), the movie speaks directly to the children we were ten years ago, and to the adults we've become. It's a perfect ending to the Toy Story saga.
This movie is pure awesomeness! The story goes through 5 or 6 missions, and I laughed during the entire film. You have to watch it because 1) a flying tank, 2) The A-Team, 3) Alan Silvestri, 4) Ridley & Tony Scott, 5) A FLYING TANK!
Great movie, a fake documentary about the life of twelve French actresses. It's hard to get what is real and what isn't, that makes it very strange and funny. The best character is French rapper Joey Starr, he's just awesome.
The movie is based on a true story, which is awesome, but you should watch this movie if only for the incredible cast: Matt Fuckin' Damon, Scott Adsit (Pete from 30 Rock), Thomas F. Wilson (Biff from Back To The Future), Scott Bakula (Sam from Quantum Leap), Joel McHale (Jeff from Community), Tony Hale (Buster from Arrested Development), Eddie Jemison (Ronnie from Hung)…
Wow. Excellent actors, very real. I mean, they really are stunning! The soundtrack is full of Gainsbourg covers, very cool. The story is very poetic and funny, it's a lot more than just a biography. Director Joann Sfarr proves to be a lot more than just a great illustrator. And Gainsbourg life is incredible!
Brian de Palma's first movie: a thriller, horror, fantasy, rock opera about The Phantom of the Opera and Faust. You'll find parodies of the Beach Boys, Doors, Bowie and Janis Joplin, as well as a Hitchcock scene. It's crazy and awesome.
Shallow Grave is a thriller about "friendship" when a LOT of money is involved. Almost every scene takes place in a flat where three friends would discuss what to do with that corpse and that bag full of money. Ewan McGregor is great in his debut film and first collaboration with Danny Boyle, so great they eventually made Trainspotting. Be careful though, after watching this movie you may see your friends differently…
This movie is a realistic picture of London's Russian mafia. It features French actor Vincent Cassel who plays a Russian speaking English with a Russian accent (seriously, how does he do that?), and Viggo Mortensen who makes you forget he played in Lord of the Rings (and we all thought that would be impossible). This is the most violent movie I've ever seen because of one scene where you just stand as a spectator and can't do anything but watch a fight. Shocking. But worth it. Excellent movie.
I loved the book (I mean, it scared me so much it took me a year to read the 100 or less pages), but since the movie is directed by the writer, it's still an interesting complement to the book. Kafka-crazy, but interesting.
Cool scenes, explosions, Sandra Bullocks as the nice innocent lady, Keanu Reeves as the good cop, Dennis Hopper as the bad guy. No surprises. The perfect '90s action movie.
Finally took the time to watch it: it's a great movie on how changing the past alters the future. How awesome is that?
Ashton Kutcher was hilarious as Michael Kelso in That '70s Show, and I was afraid his past characters would stick, but no, he's really good in this thriller.
Incredibly funny and beautiful as always with Wes Anderson. I keep laughing every time I think about it!
The casting helps: George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray and Owen Wilson!
Cult characters. Cult quotes. Cult soundtrack. Cult movie.
Every single scene is a masterpiece, every detail will make you laugh.
Very interesting story, probably the best French movie I've seen in a long time.
It totally deserves its 9 César awards!
Awesome cast but weird story.
This documentary is not just about Helvetica, it's about how typography changed graphic design in the last 50 years. Fascinating and beautiful.
My favorite mafia movie. It covers the post-Godfather, post-Scarface period, right before The Sopranos.
Looks like it's the very first Woody Allen movie without a shrink-seeing multi-divorced Jewish from Manhattan. And it's brilliant!
Great pictures, colors, movie, story, actors, excellent soundtrack. One of my favorites movies, ever.
Excellent! Very funny! It reminds me of my middle school years.
Waited for two hours for a cool thing to happen… and nothing happened.
The Shining
It took me a while to start watching this movie, and a while to finish it. While I don't particularly enjoy horror movies, I found The Shining absolutely brilliant.
It isn't really gore: what is scary is the state of mind Jack Nicholson falls into and how you can't distinguish what is real and what he thinks is real. It's the story of how isolation can make a man scarily crazy.
If you can handle the tension, you should WatchThis for the characters and the incredible scenes that made The Shining a classic.