‘A Love Story’ (‘Un Amour’): Film Review

The Bottom Line: A poignant real-life tale of one couple's entente cordiale
Opens: Wednesday, Mar. 25th (in France)
Director: Richard Copans 



Producer-director Richard Copans tells the story of his Franco-American origins

Between Jerry Lewis, Maurice Chevalier, Bill O’Reilly and freedom fries, the United States and France have carried on a love-hate relationship that’s lasted for over two centuries now. One particularly inspiring case of the former is examined with beaucoup affection in A Love Story (Un Amour), producer-director Richard Copans’ documentary account of how his American father and French mother came together at a time when the world was coming apart, holding on through thick and thin as war engulfed Europe and they found themselves separated by an ocean. 

Composed of archive photos, letters, sound recordings and present-day interviews, with dueling voiceovers providing each character’s point of view, this non-fictional narrative offers up a moving and historically apt follow-up to Copans’ 2003 film, Racines, which examined the filmmaker’s roots in rural France and Eastern Europe. But its veritable tale of Franco-American passion makes it a stand-alone work that could find takers in fests and select art houses following a late March release in Gaul. 
 



 
Copans is more known at home as a producer than as a director, heading up the Paris-based company Les Films d’ici, whose doc-heavy catalogue includes works by Robert Kramer, Nicholas Philibert, Claire Simon and Luc Moullet. He first got behind the camera for the feature-length Racines, and is picking up the plot a decade later with a script – co-written with novelist-actress Marie Nimier – that jumps between the 1930s-40s and the present to faithfully recreate his parents’ story. 

His father, Simon “Sim” Copans, first came to Paris as an exchange student from Brown, studying at the Sorbonne and living nearby on the rue Soufflot, where he witnessed the funeral of the assassinated president Paul Doumer in 1931. Eight years later, Simon was back in France on a group visit to Chartres Cathedral when he crossed paths with Lucienne, a young woman from the eastern city of Soissons. 

The two soon hit it off with their shared love of literature and left-wing politics, both of them ardent Republican supporters during the Spanish Civil War. Simon, who was a member of the Youth Communist League along with activists like Harry Foner – shown in the film singing his witty ballad “Love in the YCL” – wanted to enlist, but instead he and Lucienne became godparents to children orphaned by the conflict. 

When Germany invaded Poland, Simon convinced his girlfriend to marry on the fly, allowing her to flee with him to the U.S. But there was one hitch: not only was he Jewish and she Catholic, but Lucienne was fervently opposed to the idea of marriage, which she saw as an archaic institution belonging to the generation of her parents. 

Simon nonetheless pleaded until Lucienne gave in, and after a shotgun wedding in Paris they moved to Manhattan, where the groom’s family set up a more traditional ceremony. These sequences allow for some amusing anecdotes about what it was like for a French country girl to find herself among a bunch of Yiddish-speaking New Yawkers, with Rabbi Marcia Rappaport commenting on how traditional Jewish customs have evolved over the last century, granting more autonomy to women. 

The lovebirds spent nearly two years apart when Simon was drafted into an army propaganda squad, driving around Normandy to give news about Allied victories and playing American jazz records for the recently liberated population. The letters he wrote to Lucienne at that time form the backbone of A Love Story’s narrative, while his wife’s earnest replies are read aloud by Gallic actress Dominique Blanc.  Other texts are recited by contemporary characters whom Copans encounters as he retraces his parents’ long journey, the future and the present blending into a single whole. 

 
Even if the film is more of a personal exercise than an anthropological one, the director manages to frame his origin story within the greater context of world history, revealing how individual trajectories are shaped by events beyond anyone’s control. At best one can try to cope with the bad times, which is what Copans’ parents did until they were reunited and eventually settled in Paris. There, Simon would continue broadcasting jazz on French public radio, and his American-accented voice would spark other memories – including that of writer Georges Perec, who immortalized the shows of “Sim” Copans in his famous text, Je me souviens. The affair continues. 

Production company: Les Films d’ici
Director: Richard Copans
Screenwriters: Marie Nimier, Richard Copans
Producers: Serge Lalou, Richard Copans
Executive producer: Anne Cohen-Solal
Director of photography: Richard Copans
Editor: Sylvain Copans
Composers: Michel Portal, Vincent Pelrani
International sales: Les Films d’ici 

Source: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/a-love-story-amour-film-786446

Hot movie review - ‘A Girl Like Her’

A conceptually sophisticated, emotionally manipulative drama about America's teen bullying epidemic.
 

 
The causes and consequences of teen bullying get a potent if not entirely persuasive airing in “A Girl Like Her,” a mix of found-footage thriller, mock-doc realism and public service announcement that rings true almost as often as it rings false. There is much to admire in writer-director Amy S. Weber’s well-acted, well-meaning cautionary tale about a high-school student who attempts suicide after being relentlessly targeted by a verbally abusive classmate. Yet the film’s agenda-driven approach, while sure to strike topical chords and generate exposure in American high schools far and wide, has the inevitable effect of compromising the drama, which seems less and less convincing the more blatantly it strives for authenticity. 

Weber’s film has a tough opening scene: Jessica Burns (Lexi Ainsworth), a sophomore at South Brookdale High School, opens her parents’ medicine cabinet, downs a bottle of pills and falls unconscious. All this is shot from Jessica’s p.o.v.: She’s wearing a pin concealing a tiny camera, which we later learn was given to her six months earlier by her friend Brian (Jimmy Bennett), for reasons that will be revealed shortly. As the girl lingers in a coma, watched over by her heartbroken parents (Stephanie Cotton, Mark Boyd), a documentary filmmaker, Amy (Weber herself), starts filming in and around the corridors of South Brookdale High, determined to capture a definitive snapshot of the average public-school experience. It’s not long before Amy has begun tracking the story of Jessica’s suicide attempt, the motive for which she soon traces to Avery Keller (Hunter King), one of the most popular girls in school — and, as we later observe in Jessica’s secretly recorded footage, the sort of mean girl who would give even Regina George pause. 
 

In short, every moment of “A Girl Like Her” is meant to be perceived as “real,” captured by cameras that are explicitly accounted for in the story — whether it’s Jessica’s pin, Avery’s own video diaries or the more heavy-duty equipment wielded by Amy’s crew. It’s a shrewd enough conceit, nicely reflecting the obsession with self-depiction and technology that afflicts the average modern teenager (and quite a few adults as well), while also heightening the verisimilitude of what we’re watching. Working with d.p. Samuel Brownfield and editor Todd Zelin, Weber capably simulates the look and texture of a documentary, observing with fly-on-the-wall detachment as students hang out in the hallways, capturing the heated discussions at an emergency PTA meeting, and using school administrators and teachers as calm, rational talking heads. 

At a certain point, however, Weber pushes her conceptual strategy well past the point of plausibility. If what we’re seeing here is supposed to pass for an actual documentary, the result feels clumsy enough at times as to suggest a textbook demonstration of how not to make one — starting with the crew’s habit of eavesdropping on students in their most private moments (the sound recording in these scenes is improbably first-rate). Elsewhere, there are instructive reminders that throwing a verite frame around a scene doesn’t automatically render it believable, just as the act of filming a parent’s grief doesn’t become less exploitative simply because the camera is shaking along with them. 

What makes “A Girl Like Her” intriguing in spite of these flaws is the fact that Weber’s interest clearly resides more with the villain than with the victim in this scenario, which may account for why Jessica, though well played by Ainsworth, never becomes more than an object of sympathy. Avery, by contrast, emerges as the true protagonist of a story that fully intends not only to expose her, but also to redeem her — to hold her up as a living, breathing embodiment of the old saying that “Hurt people hurt people.” Heading up a strong cast, the 21-year-old King (an Emmy winner for her work on “The Young and the Restless”) etches a fully rounded characterization here, doing full justice to Avery’s viciousness, but also to the defensiveness and vulnerability lurking beneath her stereotypical blonde-queen-bee surface. 

Humanizing a monster — and allowing her to tell her story in her own words — is an eminently worthy aim in a movie that is nothing if not eminently worthy. But at a certain point, Weber’s meddlesome alter ego doesn’t seem to be documenting the events in question so much as auditioning for the job of guidance counselor, all but enfolding her characters in a group hug. The teary-eyed, over-scored montage that closes “A Girl Like Her” would feel manipulative in the extreme even if it didn’t build to a final shot of altogether remarkable dishonesty: For a movie that’s trying to teach the teenagers of America that their actions can have tragic repercussions, there’s something borderline irresponsible about the idea that a simple show of remorse is all it takes to make everything OK.  

Source: http://variety.com/2015/film/reviews/a-girl-like-her-review-1201462415/

The most anticipated movie -'Furious 7' review for you

Any moviegoer who didn't know about the untimely death of Paul Walker would never guess it had occurred during production of Furious 7, a film that (whatever massive efforts were required to work around his absence) is as stupendously stupid and stupidly diverting as it could have hoped to be had everything gone as planned. 
  


 
The Bottom Line: A nuance-free franchise crafts an honorable exit for its departed star
Venue: South By Southwest Film Festival, Special Events
Opens: April 3 (Universal)
Cast: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, Lucas Black, Jason Statham
Director: James Wan

Walker, Diesel and their cohorts blow the doors off on one last adventure together.

The knowledge of his death in a November 2013 car accident colors our experience of this unintentional swan song in many ways, of course, but viewers trying to spot the scenes in which stand-ins and CGI played Walker's part for him will find it hard enough that they may do the right thing: Stop trying, and instead go along with a reworked screenplay that ushers him off the stage with as much grace as any other development in this muscle-car melodrama. 

Technical miracles aside, the nature of the story makes watching Furious 7 something of a morbid game: Over and over, the action puts Walker's Brian O'Conner in such jeopardy that we think, "Ah, this will be the scene where they give him a heroic death." But saying "over and over" acknowledges that Brian survives, at least, the bomb blast that nearly kills his family in one fell swoop, that he manages to get out of that big bus hanging precariously over a cliff, and that he, and for that matter all his pals, drive their cars out of a plane in midair and parachute to the ground without so much as denting a fender. But producer Neal H. Moritz, who introduced the super-last-minute screening at South by Southwest, begged the audience to keep mum about Brian's fate, so we won't provide an exhaustive list of the many certain-death situations he faces and survives.

We needn't say much about the plot, either. Bare bones: Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), brother of the crew's defeated enemy Owen Shaw, has vowed to kill them all in revenge; an all-seeing surveillance program called God's Eye has been stolen by terrorists; the creator of said program (Nathalie Emmanuel's Ramsey) needs to be rescued; and a mysterious lawman with his own private army (Kurt Russell, who any oddsmaker would say is bound to be hiding something) promises to help Vin Diesel's Dom get Deckard if Dom's crew will save Ramsey and recover the God's Eye. 

Tired yet? You will be after two hours of F7, which is as overinflated, if not as well formed, as the physique ofDwayne Johnson, who gave this ensemble a much-needed charisma boost when he signed on in episode five. Alas, Johnson is sidelined for much of this installment, laid up in a bodycast after saving a co-worker from an exploding building. Don't worry, kids, the Rock will be back for the climax, reentering the action with the words "Daddy's gotta go to work." 

That is Wildean wit compared to most of Chris Morgan's unrepentantly dumb pulp dialogue. But Fast & Furious fans don't come out to critique lines like "Let's do this," they come to see a red sports car (one so expensive only seven were made) be stolen from a billionaire's Abu Dhabi penthouse; to watch it bust through his windows, fly through the air, and crash into the skyscraper next door (landing safely, of course) only to learn that the brakes have gone out, and it will have to take to the skies again into a third building. 

Anyone who can buy that bit of computer-generated idiocy should have no trouble believing Paul Walker is in this film from start to finish. 
 

 
Production companies: Universal Pictures
Cast: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, Lucas Black, Jason Statham
Director: James Wan
Screenwriter: Chris Morgan
Producers: Vin Diesel, Michael Fottrell, Neal H. Moritz
Executive producers: Samantha Vincent
Directors of photography: Marc Spicer, Stephen F. Windon
Production designer: Bill Brzeski
Costume designer: Sanja Milkovic Hays
Editors: Leigh Folsom Boyd, Dylan Highsmith, Kirk M. Morri, Christian Wagner
Music: Brian Tyler
Casting directors: Anne McCarthy, Kellie Roy

Source: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movie/furious-7/review/781615

Jurassic Park 3D sets a new standard for post-production 3D

Jurassic Park was a great film and everyone around me seemed to agree; It ushered in a new era of cinema technology that melded the greatest aspects of stop-motion and animatronics with CGI breakthroughs in their infant stages. soon taking out the number one spot on Hollywood's highest grossing motion pictures. 20 years later, Jurassic Park returned to its rightful domain - the new Jurassic Park 3D Blu-ray disc is comming. 

Jurassic Park 3D cover

When considering what makes good or bad 3D movie subjects, we learned from Predator 3D, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, and Friday the 13th III in 3D that nothing beats Mother Nature when you’re watching 3D.  The context of setting a film in the natural world, highlighting the detail of trees and grass and, in the case of Jurassic Park a forest nestled among waterfalls in real-life Hawaii, is the best environment to judge 3D on your home 3D system. 

The next best context for 3D to appear is probably the genre of horror.  Monsters, like Jurassic Park’s T-Rex and raptors, and “jumps” and startling sequences are the stuff of classic 3D movies.  There must be a reason why so many of the best 3D films are horror films.  We forget about Jurassic Park when we think of films to insert into the Blu-ray player during Halloween season.  Yet, Jurassic Park is perfect for those wary of slasher flicks and excessive gore, and those that want something with real suspense and amusement park style fun.



Jurassic Park helicopter landing 

Key scenes in Jurassic Park 3D that appear created for 3D include the helicopter ride and descent in front of the waterfall at the beginning of the film, the first appearance of the T-Rex including the Rex pressing its nose down on the window as its busts into the SUV, the falling of the SUV with the boy in the tree, Ian Malcolm and Ellie’s escape from the T-Rex with the game warden (objects in mirror are closer than they appear, indeed), and, as you’d expect, the famous raptor kitchen attack.



Even if you’ve seen Jurassic Park dozens of times, you will experience it differently and in a fresh way with this new 3D Blu-ray release.  The characters, Michael Crichton’s innovative story, and the technology are hardly dated.  The film quality has lost nothing to time.  And Spielberg’s artistry as a visionary painter on film shines through like never before.



This 3D conversion, I think, actually is a well-deserved 3D presentation that makes some very impressible but for the most part subtle use of the 3D. There are some moments though where I never imagined being so frightening such as just 4 minutes in when a raptor attacks some of the staff members trying to transport it into a cage. You can only imagine how intense the scenes involving the T-Rex and raptors are later in the film. Let’s just say it’s impressive and a very solid 3D presentation that is worthy of a “4 Star Rating” for overall 3D quality. 

Now, trying to get this new 3D Blu-ray disc and transcode the fantastic 3D Blu-ray on Android Tablet/Smartphone. Have fun! 

More guides about 3D:

Rip 3D Blu-rays to 2D MP4/MOV/M4V for playing on Android
Watch 3D Blu-ray media with BenQ W710ST projector
Top 5 3D Video Players for PC - The easiest way to watch 3D movies

The 30 Best Films of the Decade

We’re all in that humanistic mode of evaluating our lives – coming up on the end of the year and the last time a zero will be the third digit on our calendars. We’re all (from Variety to Cat Fancy) also waxing expert on what films were the best of the best of the best of the past ten years.

Which is why there is an unnavigable sea of opinion polluting the internet right now. Neil and I thought, ‘If everyone else is doing it, why can’t we? And why not do it better?”

You may ask (since I’m forcing you to rhetorically), “How can giving your opinion be better than everyone else’s tepid version of an almost-arbitrary-seeming list?”

I’m glad you asked.

Neil and I anticipated this task back in October and began planning what would become far too much work for two people who essentially sit around watching Animal House all day. Still, despite the cyclopean nature of the beast, we dug our feet in and compiled just over 3,000 films that were released from January 1, 2000 to December 31, 2009 (the future!).

We then forcefully shoved that list into an algorithm that neither of us understood (which is why I got my Masters Candidate in Applied Mathematics Friend to construct it for us (and why we didn’t scoff when he charged us $20 and our Powder Blue DVD for it)).

The algorithm, which we’ve nicknamed Simon, spat out just over 300 films, reducing our master list by 90%. Then, the brutal stages of cutting came where Neil and I would agonize over which movie’s locker to leave a red flag in and which ones would continue on to the next round.

After 6 cutting sessions and over 4 hours of arguing, we’d chopped the list down to 60. From there, the real heartache began as we saw films we loved scratched off the list. Also from there, we employed a new tactic which will, like the secret herbs and spices, remain veiled in mystery. A hint: the process involved paprika.

Drooling and exhausted, Neil and I emerged from the fray with the 30 Best Films of the Decade. 4 documentaries. 12 comedies. 13 dramas. 5 in-betweens. 9 foreign. 6 fuck-the-establishment choices. 3 sci-fi. 1. horror. 3 from 2000. 1 from 2001. 2 from 2002. 4 from 2003. 4 from 2004. 2 from 2005. 5 from 2006. 4 from 2007. 3 from 2008. 2 from 2009. A sprawling list, and most likely, the most balanced of all decade examinations.

We can’t wait to do it all again next year when the decade is actually over.

But for now, debate, discuss, curse at, fawn over, and let the warm glow of great film wash over you like a much-needed cinematic baptism.

These are The 30 Best Films of the Decade:

30. The Bourne Ultimatum



No super-spy has touched the world of cinema quite like Jason Bourne in this decade. He made James Bond (until the onset of Daniel Craig in the role, at least) look like a relic. He also made Matt Damon a bona fide star, and sadly, Paul Greengrass’s shakey-cam technique a norm. Either way, his third adventure was his most brutal and captivating, a fast-paced race toward an identity found. In this third frame, Bourne’s journey was finely tuned, kinetic and propulsive experience – certainly the peak of action seen in this decade. -NM

29. The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters



There are geek films, there are films about geeks, and then there are both. Yet the existence of King of Kong works in a way that transcends all of these geek themes, rising above to be a documentary about something geeky, made for geeky people, that also plays like an epic battle of good and evil, fit for an audience of everyone. Instead of making a doc about playing video games, director Seth Gordon gave us the essential modern-day David and Goliath story, filled with laughs and tears and every emotion in-between. -NM

28. Son of Rambow



Charming isn’t even an apt starting point for describing the second film from director Garth Jennings. Through the story of two unlikely friends and their quest to make the perfect Little Tikes version of First Blood, he captured the essence of childhood friendship, bonds that transcended class or religious background. He captured a story on film that felt natural while being fantastical, was honest while being impressively creative, and was at its core, truly heartwarming in every way. This is what great movies do, they move you. -NM

27. 28 Days Later…



Through all of the zombie and vampire-crazed filmmaking that occurred in this past decade, the finest example is in the gritty, realistic, virus-ridden world created by director Danny Boyle. He went on to win a Best Picture prize with Slumdog Millionaire, but with 28 Weeks Boyle delivered an intensely scary experience that rivals any slasher, any vampire flick or any bit of torture porn that this decade could produce. -NM

26. The Five Obstructions



Pretend for a moment that you met your artistic idol. You’d torture him, right? If you were really his friend you would. Which is exactly why Lars Von Trier forces Jorgen Leth to remake his first film repeatedly, under stricter and stricter circumstances. At one level, an exhausting insight into the hand-wringing of moviemaking, and on the other, a philosophical look at why we create at all. Both elements are blended perfectly with two insane Danish directors that left us confused and hungry for lobster. -CA

25. The Devil and Daniel Johnston



As far as documentaries go, it’s difficult to create a better portrait of a troubled mind than the one made by this film. Not only an indie music lover’s siren song, the flick is a revealing character study of a simple man whose complicated brain keeps him isolated from the rest of the crowd. This rare glimpse inside that world is taken to the pinnacle of intimate documentary-making and also manages to question if great music is really worth the personal torture. -CA

24. Thank You For Smoking



Before Jason Reitman was telling of impregnated teens and the ultimate corporate road warrior, he was honing his skills with this sharp, satirical look at one of our nations great domestic wars – sense vs. the tobacco industry. At its heart, this film delivers the breakout performance of Aaron Eckhart, who would later go on to throw weight around in another movie found later on this list. Here though, he’s a wry, despicable fella who is oh-so-delightful, just like his director’s debut. -NM

23. District 9



Science fiction never saw it coming. At Comic-Con in 2007, the halls of the San Diego Convention Center warned us with ‘Humans Only’ signs from a mysterious district. And in 2009, as the world awaited James Cameron’s game-changer Avatar, a first time director from South Africa named Neill Blomkamp shocked and awed the world with his inventive, guerrilla masterpiece District 9. Made for $30 million under the tutelage of Peter Jackson, District 9 was perhaps the most inventive work of science fiction – one that smashed together cultural relevance and groundbreaking alien effects – a perfect storm of vision, character and intense action. It was a geek’s wet dream, and one of those rare sci-fi films that will be relevant well past this decade and the next. -NM

22. Hustle and Flow



This film about the depression of failure and emptiness of dreams is probably the truest portrait of blues and hip hop music making ever burned into celluloid. Director Craig Brewer dropped us right into the dilapidated shanty house of a pimp in a world where nothing came easy. The greasy sweat of Memphis all but poured out of the screen while Terrance Howard made the role and the audience his bitch. And then, he somehow managed to get Three Six Mafia a fucking Oscar. -CA

21. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban



At a certain point this decade, a director pushed aside family film sensibilities, said, “I got this one, guys,” and man-handled the world’s largest cultural phenomenon into his own brand of beast. Making a great film is one thing, but elevating something beyond its children’s book roots (not to mention doing so in line with the tone of the source material) is a juggling act lesser directors have lost bowel function at the sight of. No wonder Alfonso Cuaron appears on this list twice. -CA-

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