The temperature rises, the world breaks and the cinema echoes a humanity that is consumed. 2024 was a burning year, both in its own sense and in figurative form. Our team is compiling an inventory of 7th Art. From behind the scenes of his production to the big screen, what are the determinants of today's cinema? Despite under-representation in a still very masculine environment, the cinema in female roots and imposes. From the genre filmTitanium, Golden Palm of Julia Ducourneau in 2021, to Coralie Fargeat who flooded the hemoglobin crusette with her body-horrific comedyThe Substance, the female look gives to see other representations. Yes, the independent scene dominates an aging Hollywood and debilitating platforms. Back on a year out of standard.
From our perspective, 2024 also ends in beauty. For the past three years and our first articles, the road we have come seems immense. Three years and already 1300 papers, more than 150 videos including 7O interviews filmed, translated or doubled by actors and directors of cinema and video game from all over the world. A collective and volunteer work as hard as it is passionate, without any other support than our enthusiasm-driven determination. This year again, the team will have explored the Cannes festivals at the Mostra in Venice, including Neuchâtel, Gérardmer, Annecy, Geneva and Strasbourg. 2025 promises engaging with support from festivals that we travel against winds and tides. Some of our interviews should also have a second life for the release of the physical supports of the films viewed. MaG is growing and enriching with new contributors to a small international team between France, Switzerland, Belgium, Canada and the United States. More than ever, MaG will need your support over the next few years to carry out our project: to give thought in a world that is fast approaching and prevents you from understanding the present and thinking about the future. Happy New Year to our ever more faithful readers. Our only resolution for 2025: doing better!
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KillerS7ven balance sheet
YOUR WATCH ON THE CINEMA WORLD IN 2024
As the year ends with a government Christmas gift worthy of cons of dinner, it's an opportunity to revisit everything that revolves around 7th Art. Beyond film production, what are the markers of our time? Last year, a part of the old world of cinema was crying out in the dark, astounding as it was that Depardieu had as much appetite for pâté as for equestrian sports girls. Since the #MeToo revolution, it has become increasingly clear that the word is freed in all settings, from the most privileged to the remote provinces of Mazan, where life is no more tranquil. The case is now heard, the culture of rape is not a fantasy of a few angry leftists, nor is it confined to rich decadents or idle prolos. The Mazan trial will probably be adapted to the cinema one day and we're already wondering if we can do worse than the defendants and lawyers who pulled the bingo out of which will be the most heinous.
Represent horror, anticipate SF
Apart from the independent press, the media discourse declined little, reinforced by editorialist circonvolutions anxious to ridicule the attackers as victims of bloody feminist valkyria. They form the first lock of thought that must be blown up. Interchangeable media subject to the same commercial logic delimiting framework and subjects, confusing facts and affects and replacing analysis with the permanent commentary of the void. Real and fiction tangle, we will return.
Despite their respective qualities, the filmMaldoror, freely inspired by the Dutroux case, and the docu-fiction2073 on the coming collapse (films expected for 2025) seemed vain for similar reasons: their delay compared to the horror of the past and future real. Still, the movie dAsif Kapadiahad the merit of asking the question of the SF anticipation which would today be outdated as we mentioned with the daughter ofStanley KubrickThis fall. How can we warn something that is already in front of our eyes? As for the thriller ofDu Welzthat we hadInterviewed At FEFFS 2021, he unfortunately only flew over the legacy of Lautréamont which he artificially summoned. Like a «meeting [missed] on a dissection table of a sewing machine and an umbrella». Too bad because he had sincere qualities, however insufficient for the constant readers of the count to forgive him his protocolary filiation. There was a much more audacious way of developing the passage of evil. «Charleroi monster» the creation of a tentacular paedophile network that covered Belgian and French chronicles.
Sexual violence: anatomy of a fall
The behind-the-scenes cinema in 2025 also had a bad TV show; Every year, his lot of sordid business that has nothing to envy to the most black novels. 2025 ends with the director's trialChristophe Ruggia, tried for sexual assault on the young personAdèle Haenel12 years old. Experienced, the courageous actress removed from the profession but fiercely engaged in all social struggles split from a «Shut the fuck up! »Salvator. A cry to the air of deliverance after nearly nine hours of audience and a collective symbol for how many silent victims. The trial or anatomy of a fall. His attacker chose the most infamant defence: that of the censureable lightness tinted with filthy paternalism and whose real name is nothing but denial.
Ruggia has unraveled all possible inepties. Like a recital of the good and the bad rapist, where every speech was deeper into the tomb of indignity. The director explained having suggested to Adèle Haenel to change his name to protect her, stating that she «suggestedTruffaut » with reference toHistory ofAdele H, title of one of his films and story of a woman devoured by a devouring passion. A sleek and often revisited scenario that links his victim to his executioner, inverting roles and forgetting the inoperative logic of consent in children who are by nature... children. A truism that is not yet obvious to everyone would seem.
Produce without destroying
Hard to do more next to the plate as a defense. The men accused of sexual violence still seem to be inhabited by a form of romanticization to Don Juan which would excuse the criminal acts of their perpetrators. An old renegain that does not decline over time despite signs that still suggest a slow but perceptible rupture of society towards other less obtuse representations. This is what emerges from a part of contemporary artistic expression still at the margin, even though balance is for the time being staggering, if not uncertain for cultural products.
The question of production conditions is now on the table. How to preserve young actors and actresses on the plateaus? What balance to find between a king director and a filming marked with a presumption of aggressor to overthrow for the authors, which could constitute a barrier to creation? It was this unbalanced issue that some respondents answered on the question in theNo 806 of the Cahiers du Cinémawith answers far from being univocal in the middle, even feminine.
A first element of the answer is undoubtedly the search for works more focused on a less individual and more collective approach. Some of them have been trying successfully for a long time or on certain points of the film like the OST. Experimental musicDune, part two(read ourfolder) which is attributed a little too quickly toHans ZimmerFor example, only the team has designed it with a very horizontal management, each one able to offer his ideas to the composer on an equal footing. There is no indication that this type of logic is not allowed to be extended to other film professions, which is already partly the case according to the authors. Less verticality could limit the configurations specific to abuse of power, without resorting exclusively to professions dedicated to prevention, even if they can play a useful role. The key to the problem will always remain the question of patriarchy and education to be deconstructed over time.
Put the words: say
All my respect for those who carry these battles under the spotlight but also in the shadow of everyday life. I would like to see more actors.ices get involved and take part in political causes other than in front of the camera serving others. Collectives likeACID in each editorial, not hesitating to deviate to subjects related to production. Not out of pure altruism, but above all because it is an existential question in the face of a world that demonstrates every day its ability to retreat on itself and the little consistency of its supposed universal values.
Does hope also lie with the younger generation? In the USA, even stars likeJenna OrtegaSurprised by addressing an arm of honour to its producerNetflix. The actress supported the Palestinian cause by putting words as stone-like as explicit. Two words left on Twitter: «Decolonize Palestine». Basic. A rare fact and even more so in the USA, where freedom of expression has been hit hard by repression, which is reminiscent of the crackdown on peaceful movements against the impasse of the Vietnam war.
The documentaryNo Other Land, carried out by a Palestinian-Israeli collective gives reason to think of the shadow zones of a colonial war that does not say its name, although it does not advance more masked for ages. A forerunner film: in six months, the United Nations recorded more than 700 attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank. A chilling figure for crimes perpetrated with impunity and whose media silence is deafening. In parallel, for what other conflict, each dispatch systematically recalls that this is a response to the October 7 massacre? Out of the sideration and the ever-present injunction to condemn violence to reflect and take international law as the only compass. Common point of Western chancelleries: the instrumentalization and methodical bleeding of the accusation of anti-Semitism against all civil society, from comics to NGOs and journalists. It's like a witch hunt odor. A misguided accusation now sadly meaningless and whose first victims will be the Jews themselves, as can be seen from the figures on the real rise of racism and from the European brown wave.
Documenting the real, giving to see
In an article published inThe Worldmid-November, entitled« For you, we areAre monsters? »,Isabelle Mandraud, the special envoy of the reference newspaper, refers to the suicide of an Israeli soldier, father of four children and driver of a bulldozer deployed in Gaza. Eighty-six days on the ground that led him to suicide after having admitted to feeling« invisible blood »Squeeze out of his body. A week after his death, his co-pilot had stated to a parliamentary committee of the Knesset that the soldiers had, on numerous occasions, been obliged to« crush »Palestinians,« or living, by hundreds ».
And there is still a procrastination about the guilty intent of its sponsors at a time when «death zones» are practised and claimed by «The most moral army in the world» to the four corners of what remains of Gaza, that is to say nothing. Alternative reality is the new scourge of the century and blindness is a sign of the ruin of our common humanity. But let us continue to proscribe the word genocide. Many actors, artists, teachers, academics and intellectuals will have paid this year for simply denouncing what was obscenely displayed by the executioners themselves. The cinema, again, could have allowed us to see. As it rightly explainsJonathan Glazer, « We need genocide not to be a calcified moment in history.». His icy movie,The Area of Interest, blissfully questioned «Unconsciousness of genocide» which responds directly to the semantic logic of the legal term whose object is to erase the other. Here we go. It is also the very object of the film to reject the «the fetishization and spectacularization of genocide» that we highlight in our canine critic and that Glazer will confirm next winter in aInterview granted to the World.
Far from the continuous distance of the press, cinema therefore acts as a mirror. The brilliant reportHomegrown of theMichael PremoInterviewed in Venice portrays the fractures of America and perhaps foreshadowed Trump's victory. Same for the excellentApocalypse in the Tropicswhich erodes the tiring of a Brazilian society that is being hunted by evangelist fundamentalists. An acerbic critique with enlightening parallels in art history. Two brilliant documentaries that will hopefully soon be programmed in France.
Reappropriate critical space
The cinema must marry the real to delimit its margins. Derange and not simply entertain in the etymological sense of these terms. Get out of the ranks, push our beliefs and not divert our attention. As in an alternative reality, series that are not very fine likeThe Boys were even recovered by a whole section of the public convinced that the character of Homelander was a plea to masculinism and the series, a love letter to the far right. The climax was reached when videomakers, though sensible, were reduced to producing a video of an hour and thirty to explain to all coming thatThe Boysis a series on the left.
Do you think I'm acidic? The reality is the same. It seems increasingly obvious that the universalist discourse slips our hands. Silicon Valley's interference is not only reflected in a virtual digital space, but in real life. This year, the independent press has been able to detect the acceleration of the phenomenon and the latest US, Moldovan and Georgian elections are expected to sound the alarm. The hypercentralization of continuous communication precipitates this shift towards a world in loss of benchmarks. And the need to reintroduce intermediaries is all the more pressing.
Out of voluntary servitude to AI
Will it soon be necessary to ask what is left or right at ChatGPT, the new Hollywood marotte that announced to use tens of thousands of film and series scenarios to train AI? Never before did the precipice seem so close, and society as a whole jumps on foot together under the cover of technophilia, ready to sacrifice its last choices, the body and voice of the actors being about to be an assignment of copyright like another. Even festivals like Annecy and Strasbourg are beginning to program films made in AI in selections of author films, which seems to me to indicate a fundamental mistake neglecting the stakes of human production.
All trades are and will be impacted. In aArticle of theReleaseentitled «In the audiovisual sector, with AI, translations are lost», the author explains, numbers to the key, the first repercussions on the profession of translator. He notes many examples of the aberrations of the AI unable to distinguish vousvoyement and tutoement, alternating to head-kill during the same serial episode. Recent unanimous studies demonstrate the substitution effect of AI on authors' works. There will be no sufficient creative destruction because of the exponential nature of these technologies that are constantly fuelling themselves by theft of authors identified as anonymous.
The rates are already drawn down and the spectators get used to a lowering of the level of language which is even seen in media likeThe Worldwho welcomed the establishment of acharter on the AIwhile their articles are increasingly full of mistakes. Finally, it was obvious that at no time was the question of progress directly raised. What benefit will human society derive from freeing itself from intellectual and creative stains? The pressure of libertarians at the door of the white house and the resignation of European policies indecent to Capital do not prefigure a happy future for artists, who have already suffered from predatory behaviour. How long can the French copyright exception, more protective of creators than copyright, stop this background blade?
Murdered female body, 2025 red thread
Cinema in 2025 remains a refuge; France, in spite of its ever more reactionary policy, is acting as the head of a new wave ofDucournau toFargeat going through all the sensitivities of the female word spectrum. This year again, many filmmakers from around the world have signed bold films from a formal point of view such asMi Bestia, Body Odyssey, Love Lies Bleeding orThe Substance. Often raw works or radical artistic approaches that could disturb a whole section of the public, distraught by the absence of an explanation of text or unable to grasp the critical discourse behind an image society that devoured its icons and was complacent in the consumption of Sunday evening film.
Changing bodies, changing society
Fortunately, directors at the margin likeSean Bakerhave been able to produce films offering a plural image of the woman with the remarkableAnora. As long as we adhere to the genre,Audiardhas also been daring with his musicalEmilia Pérez(even if I didn't feel emotional) andMohammad Rasoulofplayed the Golden Palm with the excellentSeeds of the wild fig treerevealing the revolution in revolution by the prism of a family home hit by the movementFemale, Life, Freedom. If we ignore the big Hollywood productions where the inclusion of forceps gives me nausea, the cinema gropes, evolves and is so much better. The success of the body-horrific comedyThe SubstanceLets foreshadow beautiful days for genre films, Trojan horse and mirror of the anxieties and hopes of our time.
Hat also low to Aaron Schimberg, film directorA Different Man which reverses – other than by the prism of pity – all the representations specific to the handicap of actor Adam Pearson with neurofibromatosis. We're holding ourElephant Manmodern. This year again, there was something to see for as long as we wanted to get off the beaten track of an algorithmNetflixdemeaning. Without any further delay, here are the seven films that were the most marked in 2024 and which each in their own way participate in opening the cinema (and the spirit) to other performances. A very subjective selection that could very well have included some of the above films already seen in 2023 asThe Area of Interest.
THE FILMS THAT MARKED YOU THIS YEAR
The Brutalist
SourceUnited States |Director: Brady Corbet |Release date: 12 February 2025 | Discovered at the Venice Mostra | Critique to come
There are a bit of easy wordplays that are thrown into the spectator's face in the trailers to attract the barge. And yet I could not do anything other than tilt and resort to the same process before themonumentthe last film ofBrady Corbet. Discovered in Venice during a nearly 3h30 session with intermission, I gradually slipped on the margins of time, suspended from the life of a man, László Toth, Hungarian Jewish architect and rescued from the death camps. Incarnate byAdrien Brody, at the top of his art, László emigrates to the United States with his wife Erzsébet, remained for a time blocked at the border and physically diminished due to his passage in the camps.
Just writing these few lines revives in me the feeling of a breathtaking session. What an accurate interpretation and a sense of measurement that takes the viewer without artifice or spectacle. The issue of the Shoah's trauma is treated in the background with as much precision and modesty asThe Area of Interest, film otherwise more subtle than the big hoofsHazanavicius,including his animated film,Most precious of goods, is as crushed by his own inheritance, unable to rise up against what has already been said.The BrutalistHe is diametrically opposed on the background as on the form to the very academic exercise of Hazanavisius who recites the Bescherelle of the Shoah.
carried by several chapters that respond,The Brutalistsystematically destroys what he undertook in the previous act. First of all, from a formal point of view, whether it is his photograph captured in 70 mm, which will evolve during the film or its narrative which continues to take unexpected trajectories. A suffocating atmosphere emerges from the work and the feeling of a real symphony where no image is free. Then,The Brutalistis a success thanks to his writing and his story that lives close to his characters. The intimacy of the couple makes palpable the traces of the Holocaust under the flesh and souls. Beautiful interpretation ofFelicity Joneswho gradually reappropriates his body, as a second encounter of two beings separated by war. No modesty or passion. A simple report that paradoxically separates as much as it unites.
Brady Corbet, little known to the French public as these two previous films were not distributed in theatre in France, offers a masterly choral work that recalls Coppola's grandiose films. Some festivalgoers have rightly been able to compare it withThere Will Be BloodPaul Thomas Anderson. Sequenced into chapters that begin with the same orchestral theme that floods the image,The Brutalistsucceeds in bringing us to the height of this titanium construction site in which László Toth participates... until the last act to the Mostra of Venice itself.The Brutalistis a crazy construction site and the film is just as much, as if Corbet had set no limits.
Made all the more overwhelming,The Brutalistis not a biopic per se. It's a «virtual history», an exercise in cinematographic memory which, although it is a fiction, has a dazzling resonance with reality. The film, the fruit of seven years of work, is dedicated to «artists who could not accomplish their vision», says Corbet. Without a shadow of doubt,The Brutalistis my greatest movie experience. I came out of the cinema, the staggering step like a sailor who would return to the ground after crossing the ocean. Like that, there are still many things to say about the upside down of the American dream and the ravages of the Second World War. Do not be deceived,The BrutalistNothing about a classic film and especially don't miss its release on February 12, 2025.
Love Lies Bleeding
Source: England |Director: Rose Glass |Release date: 12 June 2024 | Discovered at NIFFF | Critique to readHere
He murmured that a two-man festivalist heard the praises of Rose Glass's last film. Lou, an employee of a gym club, falls in love with Jackie, an ambitious bodybuilder who prepares the competition of her dreams in Las Vegas. This passionate encounter goes from thread to needle precipitate them into a spiral of violence where intertwined desires, revenge and steroids.Rose Glassmultiplies the references of our collective imagination by bringing its own signature. Jackie's curly hair blooms in the 70s and 80s. Our unconscious reminds us of the archetype of the strong heroin of the time as Ellen Ripley was. And his name may be secretly referring toJackie Brown, an air hostess who was acting in parallel as a gun dealer in Tarantino's eponymous film.
CertainlyLove Lies Bleedingis a contemporary echo ofThelma and Louise where two women on the run responded with arms to male violence. Ridley Scott's film, also at the crossroads of genres, had aroused controversy for its subversive character, its irreverent fiber and intimately to the bottler vis-à-vis the defied patriarchate. The absolute fusion towards and against the violence of men is equally valid forThelma and LouiseforLove Lies Bleeding. Film punch and liberating, touching and incisive,Love Lies Bleedingquestions our relationship to genres and manages to tell a story of love between two women without falling into carabinated representations on a supposed female essence. Hasard of calendars, magneticBody Odysseyoffered another angle on female bodybuilding, this time on the side of senior athletes.
Anora
SourceUnited States |Director: Sean Baker|Release date: 30 October 2024 | Discovered at the first in Cannes | Critique to readHere
Anoranarrates the fulcruming ascent of a young stripper in Brooklyn who sees her life change after dancing for a client son of an oligarch. Anora redraws the maps of human relations in the form of an emotional Russian mountain. While she agrees to marry this young son to Dad who leads a life of lust, the Russian family sees their union with another eye. The latter is determined to make the marriage go wrong. Whatever it takes... The film has nothing of a blue flower romance and that's what makes it so relevant.
Anora has an explosive temperament and seizes opportunities without any back thought. Of course, she sees this marriage proposal as a window to another life. Yet, unlike Cinderella,AnoraThere is nothing of a miserabilistic story. And the film ofSean Bakera everything from a modern negative to Pretty Woman. Even though Anora does not miss the answer, as a stripper and night bird of the Brooklyn clubs, it is above all through her body that she expresses herself. A facade that we know only too well and that finds all its symbolism during its magnificent epilogue. By marrying records with intelligence,Anorais a pleasure of every moment and a pomegranate that we expect to explode at any time. One more reason to discover the filmography against the current Sean Baker.
The Sweet East
SourceUnited States |Director: Sean Price Williams |Release date: 13 March 2024 | Critique to readHere
Written with four hands inSean Price Williamsand American CriticismNick PinkertonThe Sweet East is a journey to postmodern wonderland. Weared by magneticTalia Ryderwho encamps the role of Lilian, a young girl ready to pursue the first white rabbit come,The Sweet EastMonkey a modern, phased America, where every corner of the street is a heterotopia in its own right. Here they are anarchists of the salon, there are frustrated neo-Nazis and Islamists. This passage written by Lewis Caroll very well reflects Lilian's permanent forward flight: «A moment later, Alice was chasing the Rabbit in the burrow, without thinking how she'd get out of it.».
Because that's the charm of Sean Price Williams' film. Throughout this punk escape, there is never really a question of returning to the boredom of everyday life. Lilian left the bus from this signposted school trip to recover her «freedom». An eternal runaway in a Russian doll where the beautiful use and abuse of her lascif air and apparent candour to lead her boat into a deeply ill society but where a remnant of humanity remains perceptible in each of her destitute. Lilian's smile is also that of Sue inThe Substance, that of a society that seeks to control our most natural emotions. A real wind of freshness that gives breath in our world where people are increasinglyalgorithms.
The Substance
SourceFrance |Director: Coralie Fargeat |Release date: 6 November 2024 | Discovered at the first in Cannes | Critique to readHere
Except for considering that you've been trapped in an antinuclear bunker this year, you've probably heard about the latest punch movie ofCoralie Fargeat. The Substancecrossed a course in genre cinema by marrying the horror body with satire for a result whose words overflow with each image. Certainly the big hooves are out, but no one had dared to denounce with such a cranial our representations by literally daring everything to the image. It is an integral part of the scenographic system.
Coralie Fargeat invents a new genre, the body-horrific comedy and manages to impose herself as a punk author likely to open the public to new critical considerations: those of a society paradoxically more surface-oriented than on beings, while our gaze dictated by the market strove to scrupulously destroy both. Regressive, outrageous but jubilatory,The Substanceis a feminist black comedy tailored toHalf Moore. A titanic honour arm addressed to our society of spectacle and its kleenex ageries according to the good old capitalist recipe applied to beings.
Nosferatu
SourceUnited States |Director: Robert Eggers |Release date: 25 December 2024 | Critique to come
Special mention from last minute toRobert Eggers (The Witch, The Lighthouse, The Northman) which offers a very contemporary reading ofNosferatuthat I found out the day after Christmas. The director pays tribute to German expressionist films while bringing his stone to the vampire building. He took over Murnau's 1922 version, which he associated with the somnambule of theOffice of Dr. Caligari(1920) with one sidePossession(1981) where Isabelle Adjani would have given her place toLily-Rose Depp. A very (too?) Shakespearean film that plays on the permanent phase and its lyrical side assumed to excess even choke its sequences, a common pitfall in Eggers. Anyway, I slipped into this twilight dream, like a strangely familiar sleep paralysis where asphyxiation ends up getting us out of sleep.Nosferatudoes not scare (and this is in no way what I was looking for), but it snakes bodies like the figure ofMaldoror.
The absence of fear leaves room for the strange and dreadful romanticism that operate as if by black magic. The fantastic echoes the melancholy of this young woman, caught in a line between her morbid anxieties and a religious society that burys her repressed desires. A woman who broods the secret of those who feel defiled before consummating marriage. A film as cold as his photograph where the heat will only come in the last minutes of the film... Christmas night, pagan symbol recovered by Christians. The pagans celebrated winter solstice, the longest night of the year before the return of light and the rebirth of nature. The movie from Eggers ends with a last memorable plan that recalls the genre of still life. Was there better framework than Christmas for the return ofNosferatuin the dark rooms?
Megalopolis
SourceUnited States |Director: Francis Ford Coppola |Release date: 25 September 2024
This year was also revealing the decline of American producers, increasingly cautious in financing projects, even directors who no longer have anything to disassemble. This was the case with Ridley Scott and hisNapoleon The previous year, Kevin Costner and his filmHorizon which, in my view, has been unjustly disassembled by critics decontained by the slow form of a Fordian work thought as a saga and not as a bottled series to the cliffhangers. Same forMegalopolis of theCoppola which deals with a rare subject outside the SF: that of our relationship to Utopia, this other inaccessible place that the director constantly questions with the image up to the transitional plane that turn off as from the look of the one who would hold a view.
Kitsch and freedom are, however, an integral part of the system which is intended to question our perceptions of modernity. If this baroque object collapses under its own weight, it is to better highlight the collapse of our civilization and the discursive dissonance between acts and facts. A film that deliberately exhausts, like Samuel Beckett's Trilogy which exhausts the language, Coppola exhausts the image. The figure of Coppola passes through the demiurge character ofAdam Driverduring a guignolesque scene where the young Nobel-winning prodigy launches in a verbal joute against the city's mayor and his pharaonic Casino project. An obvious nosefoot addressed to the Hollywood today whose advanced rot heralds an inevitable fall. As withFuriosa (read our fileMad Max) where each SFX pixel suffered criticism, artistic bias ofMegalopolisslice and it's so much better. This is the dream of one man. A solar project that should win its letters of nobility over time as Brice le loupe celeste predicted at the first Cannois.
THE FILM THAT YOU AS RATTRAPÉ AND THAT YOU LIKE TO CINEMA
Terrifiing
SourceUnited States |Director: Damien Leone |Release date: 9 December 2021
This year, I finally caught up with the trainTerrifiing. If each of these horror movies brings its own angle, I was captivated by the first. A horrificly agonizing film that questions the logic of the show by systematically making us complicit in the clown's abuses. In the first seconds of the film where Art prepares its attraction, Damien Leone announces the color. The first victim exhibited without any falter and already the spectator integrity that nothing will be spared him. The horror in its most crude form and which adopts the same process as pornography: do not hide anything from the flesh to the marrow. Besides his sense of sadistic staging,Damien Leonerenews the logic of the croquemitaine as no one had achieved it for years, if not decades. Until the last minute,TerrifiingPlay with the slasher codes. An unexpected popular phenomenon whose stakes have not always been seized for the right reasons by a young public not necessarily customary of the genre. Art is an ununderstood comic artist who addresses the spectator directly to every failed crime. What if he was the real joker?
THE ANIMATION FILM OF THE YEAR
Arcane
Source: United States / France |Implementation: Riot Games / Fortiche Production |Release date: 2021 / 2024 |Technical test to readHere
Again this year, there have been very beautiful productions:Memories of a snailand his acerbic humour,Totto-chan, the little girl in the window, adaptationtouching the eponymous manga that will soon be discussed on MaG with his director,Anzu, ghost cat and its superb rotoscopy (or even ourInterview of Yōko Kuno and Nobuhiro Yamashita) orBlue Giant, true musical prowess worthy of a live jazz concert. The last Miyazaki,The Boy and the Heron, is probably one of his blackest and most human films at a time. Splendid legacy to those who follow the master and to the eternal imaginations that he will leave behind.
I also laughed at the next movieLooney Tunes: The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Moviewhich will finally be entitled to an exit in 2025. Prepare yourself, it's an ancient animation jewel entirely hand-drawn. A popular surprise, the film is clearly intended for an adult audience with many grivot jokes that fly. The stop motion was also given a new gem discovered in Venice. Directed by the young studio Chroma and supported by the production houseAround Midnightno longer present, the short filmPlaying Godis amazing.
As usual, it is difficult to decide this year given the quality of the above-mentioned productions. So I decided to reward a series and a movie ex-aequo for similar reasons: their filiation assumed with the video game that makes the animation move to a higher stage. You may have guessed, I'm referring to the series.Arcanewhich technically pushes the limits of animation in the same way asSpider-man: Into The Spiderverseand its aftermath. A series with an astounding destination but which has been able to seduce me by the strength of its artistic direction. We talked about it this year at our school conference.E-Art Supon the story of animation and video game. Riot Games and the studio Fortiche perfectly assimilated the grammar of the media.Arcane freed from a unique graphic frame to symbolize, in the image, the entire spectrum of emotions that pass through his tormented characters.
How? Using a variety of techniques ranging from charcoal and Chinese ink to represent mourning, or watercolour for carelessness for example. Why limit yourself to 3D or 2D when you can take advantage of both approaches? This is what we have long seen in video games likeIndika which marries 2D and 3D to denounce the emptiness of religion. Fortiche also assimilated the techniques of filming to the shoulder to show Jinx's impetuousness, his prolo-schizophrenic anti-heroin as opposed to the fixed plans of the high city trusted by the bourgeoisie and the nobility.
If animation is a liveliness never seen,Arcanealso knows how to offer panoramas that take back the process of artworks in the video game. Besides the symbolism of its fantastic artistic direction,Arcanehas serious writing qualities to defend regarding his characters and knows how to represent a relationship between women without falling into the pitfall. This is probably the first time an anime has transcribed a female passional relationship as well. Congratulations to the French artists of Fortiche who worked hard to overcome the patterns of the genre. Great show!
Flow
SourceLatvia |Director: Gints Zilbalodis |Release date: 30 October 2024 | Critique to readHere
It is also impossible not to talk aboutFlow, multi prize-winning at many festivals this year. Where many animated films seek to anthropomorphize animals,Flowchooses a radically opposite approach as the game already didStrayBefore him. The animals are systematically recognized and their movements and mimics are always firmly rooted in the animal world. Out of the dialogues, again the communication is systematically non-verbal. Like a silent film, only the expressions of the beasts can convey emotion. And that's whereFlowmanages to pull his pin from the game because it is up to the spectator to guess between the lines the intentions of the animals, while an embryonic interspecies communication develops between these different beasts that everything opposes... unless it is so little... Even without layering the animals on humanized models and without any lines of text, we can read different sensibilities within this unique pack.
New milestone for animation,FlowThere too has to be a lot of video games. For the first time, the film was made by creating a complete environment like a map of a video game in which the camera would be moved freely by means of a single sequence plane that keeps the spectator with this fortune arch. Brilliant and poetic,FlowIt also deserves its title as the best animated film of the year. Ode to otherness,Flowis a successful allegory about adversity and living together. A breath of fresh air at a time when fear of the other is instrumentalized to feed division until annihilating the very conditions of community life.
THE DECEPTION OF THE YEAR
SourceUnited States |Director: Fede Álvarez |Release date: 14 August 2024 | Critique to readHere
I'd like to tell you all the evil I thought ofAlien RomulusAnd how much his audience forgot what made the salt of the first films. But to really talk about disappointment, it would have taken me to really wait for something from a superproduction falling under the gronDisney. His release was paradoxically a non-event and it is almost backwards that I went to discover it in the room. Permanent self-reference and the game of «Who will recognize the little phrase» have become the favorite recipe forDisneysince the mastodon ruinedStar Wars. The same applies here with smooth characters for smooth environments and smooth aliens. The explanation of the image is systematic.Fede Álvarezonly denatures the xenomorph to make it a monster all that is more generic, no smarter than a hamster. It's not entirely his fault, because I doubt that his contract gave him carte blanche.
I wouldn't stretch here because I've already written a very long one.background which compares the film with the essence of Giger's work by means of a comparative study of paintings and other materials that claim paternity with the sex beast we know (read ouranalysis). I am currently reading Morena Fais's thesisHR GigerLautréamont reader?that I recommend you and I can't stop thinking that monster licenses likeAlienThe first film was therefore so disturbing. The Serbian Poles of Ebb Software and the British of Creative Assembly have done a thousand times better with respectivelyScorn (read ourfolder) andAlien Isolation. It's up to the independent video game to turn if you want to plunge back into the world of the great Hans Ruedi Giger without having to swallow his acid in front of a bleached film product.
YOUR ATTENTS FOR 2025
When you navigate festivals in festivals, you're less worn by the release calendar. Nevertheless, except to consider that I subscribe to the annihilation of all social life, I miss many films in theaters and it is normal. As a result, expectations are all relative. Discovered by a simple movie trailer in a small cinema in Cherbourg that borders the ocean, I am very curious to seeThe Source, in competition at the Berlinale, festival that I intend to explore this year. The film already seduces with its splendid photograph and steel look of this mysterious veiled and mute woman who recalled the portrait of the Afghan girl. The promise of an investigation in a remote village in Tunisia where Aichah and Brahim are devastated by the unexplained departure of their sons, set out for an unspeakable war until their return with this mutic fiancee. Verdict very soon on MaG since the movie is coming out tomorrow!
I am also very intrigued by The House next door, next movieAlmodóvarthat I missed in Venice. Why? Because the tone looks very different from his previous films which are not inherently part of my cinemaphile DNA. Drama between an imperfect mother and a grudge girl,The House next doorThere again very soon, on 8 January. And the few shots and sequences seen in the trailer suggest the best. Already, we savor these surgical images and the colorimetry of a photograph that looks magnificent.
If last year,Nosferatuthat I expected this year, it will beFrankenstein by Guillermo del Toro, decidedly launched on a beautiful and fantastic series of popular myths. I'm also curious to see what I'll give28 years later, the post-apo film ofDanny Boylewho had made two unrivalled punch movies while renewing the grammar of the zombie Romero sauce. From zombie to infected,28 days later foreshadowed masterpieces asThe Last Of Us. I promised myself not to look at anything, not even a trailer, in order to preserve surprise, good or bad. As lovers of stop motion, I crumble over the projectJunk World, continuation ofJunk Head. We were one of the first to talk to you about this crazy movie of one man at the very beginning of MaG. Will Takahide Hori be able to overcome himself? My resolution for 2025, go interviewTakahide Horiin Japan if he doesn't show his film elsewhere!
Review of Mr. Wilkes
YOUR WATCH ON THE CINEMA WORLD IN 2024
It is rather fun to see how the alternative offer (smaller budgets, more independent, more autonomous) explodes in creativity, still inventing new ways of designing cinema, while on the other hand the mainstream offer collapses in an ever more stinking miasm. Without delaying, however, we note the capacity of the recycling industry.Netflix(and its terrifying – but not in the right sense –Salary of fear, which passes afterClouzot andFriedkin...), the failed return of the old woman's old people (we are thinking in particular of the crashing in good order ofRebel Moonof theSnyder on the same platform) or the catastrophic Marvelleries that manage at least not to be profitable anymore, this is already...
Along with this smoking corpse and unfortunately still very lucrative, the world of cinema in 2024 is also and above all a plethora of films that dialogue with the vicissitudes of our time. Below, the top 6 of the films that have scored this year will be the opportunity to come back to these works. But before talking about them, it was impossible not to notice a particularly notable theme in cuvée 2024: that of journalism. In particular, it is the war report that seems to catalyse interest, with no less than three great films on the subject of fairly diverse quality but always combined with the feminine. Biopic, the theme returns tirelessly. No doubt about this thematic trionarrate the story of this reporter during the Second World War, the very disappointingCivil WardAlex Garlandwhich may be my big disappointment of the year and finally the grandioseIn his image of theis certainly part of it. He's not at his test, but.
And you don't mindMarek Zydowicz, 2024 was a year of female cinema (and devilish good !). If we turn away the dull hopes that theEmmanuelledAudrey Diwan, the year was an opportunity to (re)discover talented filmmakers. I think of Rose Glass, Coralie Fargeat and her horrific consecration, the incredible documentary by Christine Angot.A Family, Emma Benestan or Noémie Merlant to name but... All (and each in their genre) have offered us a rich cinema, quite exciting, more hybrid than ever (Women in the Balconyand his joyous mix of genres,Eat The Nightand the mix of his medium...). A cinema often acerbic and critical that explains perhaps the political reactions to the 7th art in 2024...
If this picture is rather praiseworthy, we should also not forget the repeated attacks of liberal policies on cinema. Between multiple attacks on the deviceFilm Collegeand the budget cuts that stubborn the cultural subsidies (no less than 73% decrease in the region Pays de la Loire thanks to the ring of the Legion of Honor Christelle Morançais), we understand that the culture disturbs. And that France Macron-Hanouna-Lepen is very tempted to make a mockery of him... But to cheer up, you can always count on the rightfulSouth radioand their fine analysis of the situation in an article as lunar as finally quite funny (Grant Massacre: the truths to be told about French cinema). Editorialist Philippe David manages to spread such a quantity of imbecility to the line that he is already whispering that he is envisaged as a successor to François Bayrou. Case to follow...
THE FILMS THAT MARKED YOU THIS YEAR
In his image
SourceFrance |Director: Thierry de Peretti |Release date: 4 September 2024 | Critique to readHere
Discovered at GIFF, Tohis imagewas my big crush of the past year. Narrating the story of a group of friends in Corsica of independent movements, the film focuses on the character of Antonia, a young photographer.
Manipulating with the same dexterity as his last films the art of the sequence plan, by Peretti offers both theoretical and aesthetic diving in Corsica of those years. Conceptually exciting turn, visually splendid and finally quite upsetting,In his imageis part of the winning doublet of the Island of Beauty withThe Kingdomreleased a little later this year.
The Area of Interest
Source: USA, Great Britain, Poland |Director: Jonathan Glazer |Release date31 January 2024 | Critique to readHere
If you risk forgetting a little since he came out at the beginning of the year (a little likeThe Beastof Bonello),The Area of Interestis indeed the mastodon of this year filmed 2024. Glazer manages to create a whole new cinema grammar to deal with a theme seen and reviewed in cinema, that of concentration camps. Monster movie, real roller compressor,The Area of Interestusing out-of-the-field, allows the experimental and meta, all in favor of an ultra-sensory film that makes the effect of a real blow of the club. By sculpting at a rather calm pace a filmography aligning the masterpieces, the British director Glazer is one of the most singular directors of his generation.
The Red Chambers
Source: Canada |Director: Pascal Plante |Release date: 17 January 2024
There's a lot to bet you didn't know Pascal Plante before.The Red ChambersIt was my case anyway. However, in 2024 he delivered one of the great punched movies of the year, according to the consecrated expression. A work that transcends the simple fact of various (a woman who simmers for a serial killer) to rise to an icy reflection on morbid obsession and contemporary voyeurism. With a rather astounding mastery, Plante drowns his spectator in a closed mental and emotional space of rare intensity while exploring the black areas of this fascination for evil.
Powered by a masterful performance ofJuliette Gariépy, whose skin-flowering game captures as much as it disturbs, the film plays on the thread of the razor between psychological suspense and moral drama. The staging, surgical and claustrophobic, scrutinizes every detail and every silence, creating an almost unbearable tension from which one emerges groggy. Disturbing, striking,The Red Chambersenrolled Pascal Plante in the pantheon of directors to follow.
Eat the Night
SourceFrance |Director: Caroline Poggi & Jonathan Vinel |Release date: 17 July 2024 | Critique to readHere
If there's a movie this year that must appear in MaG's top, that's good.Eat The Night. By mixing the video game and the seventh art in its narrative, Caroline Poggi's and Jonathan Vinel's film type exactly what DNA is on the site! And it must be said that his story of sibling torn apart by the upcoming closure of a MMORPG that represented their entire life, manages not only to create a real emotional bomb, but also to tint the feature film of a catchy and peaty melancholy.
The Successor
Source: France, Canada, Belgium |Director: Xavier Legrand |Release date: 21 February 2024 | Critique to readHere
We've already talked about Quebec movies withThe Red Chambers, but this year 2024 cannot miss another Canadian feature:The Successor. Xavier Legrand, after the remarkUntil custodyfrom which one still remembers to come forth the short breath, persists and signs in the kind of thriller. With its history of succession going wrong, it offers an icy (and icy) drama but also and especially one of the most terrifying reversals of 2024. Notice to amateurs...
The Kingdom
SourceFrance |Director: Julien Colonna |Release date: 13 November 2024 | Critique to readHere
AfterIn his image, it is the turn of another Corsican film to appear in this year-end top:The Kingdom, by Julien Colonna. Like Peretti's feature film, he combines with the feminine and explores the tentacular mafia networks of the Island of Beauty. But under the guise of making an umpteenth gangster film, Colonna instead proposes an upsetting story of filiation in this father-daughter relationship bathed in violence. Written with Jeanne Herry and with a rather ridiculous non-professional casting,The Kingdomimpose as an unforgettable film of this year of cinema.
THE ANIMATION FILM OF THE YEAR
OtherFlow, it's probablyMemories of a snailAdam Elliot who scored the most in animation this year. Mary and Max's dad come back with a tricky movie, always as black, always as sad, melancholy and funny at the same time. It follows the life of Grace Pudel, a valuable collector of snails, whose life starts to shine after his father's death. We had the chance to see him at the FEFFS, but the feature film will be released in theatres on January 15, 2025!
YOUR ATTENTS FOR 2025
I don't have many films in the viewfinder for 2025, even if the next A24 productionBabygirl scheduled for January 15 sss is really promising. A little later (February 12th), it wasThe BrutalistI will not fail to go to the cinema, of which you have probably already read some rather praiseworthy returns, including that of KillerSeven in Venice. In early March, it will be the return of Bong Joon-ho that will not be missed. He comes back withMickey 17, an intriguing science fiction film with Robert Pattinson. And finally, by the end of the year, this is the third part of theAvatar: Fire and Ash, which will keep my attention.
Celeste Wolf Review
YOUR WATCH ON THE CINEMA WORLD IN 2024
2024 was an Olympic year for France, both in sport and in cinema. Because with the presence of three French films among the top five of the national box office, French cinema has made an "ouf" year... Especially since for the first time in 10 years, two French films reappear at the top of the podium: the gold for the irresistible comedyOne more thing.with its 10.8 million admissions and money for the cavalcadeThe Count of Monte Cristowith its 9.3 million entries. As for the Romance rockingLoveand its 4.7 million entries, it is in fifth place that it is proudly positioned. And as a reminder, the year had begun with the triumph of the judicial dramaAnatomy of a fallin America (two Golden Globes and two Oscars). Cocorico, 2024 was a beautiful year for our tricolor productions, both in France and internationally. After that, who dares to say that French cinema is shit?
In 2024, in addition to having managed to seduce the masses, French films saved the dark rooms from the disaster announced by the hollow programming of Hollywood blockbusters (a drop of nearly a quarter in the number of large productions) caused by the double strike of the actors and screenwriters of 2023. In the spring, this shortage had a negative impact on attendance, with a staggering drop of 36% over one year in April. Fortunately, the surpriseOne more thing.reversed the trend...
But did this year of transition for the big film hits of the Hollywood industry manage to organize around strong licenses? Not really, because except for the great epic showDune, part twoand the entertainment tornadoTwisters, nor the maxi best of menuAlien: Romulusor the initiatory journeyThe Planet of the Apes: The New Kingdom, however pleasant moreover (as well as the enlivened romantic comedyThe Fall Guyand barbecue between old buddiesBad Boys: Ride or Die), have managed to score me. Worse still, the cynical commercial maneuverDeadpool & Wolverinehave managed to disgust Comic-Book Movie (for my mental health, I spared myselfMrs WebandKraven The Hunter). And what aboutGladiator II, the self-satisfied repetition of deep emptiness? Or repeated disappointments from laundryNetflix? In short, 2024 will not remain a great year for American cinema... Even if the triumphWicked, that I didn't have the chance to see (as well asBeetlejuice BeetlejuiceandJoker: Two-sidedI will catch up very soon in 4K Ultra HD), allowed him to finish the year better than he started it. A big thought nevertheless for the misfireFuriosa: Mad Max saga, which unfortunately did not cause its engine to crash to the box office even though it is a slam like there are too few. And yes, the ways of the public are impenetrable!
Finally, I wanted to mention that in 2024, the spotlight was on women. Because if since the #MeToo movement, the cinema sees its directors (still too few) and actresses gradually take the place they deserve, this year will have been able to give birth to films with very real feminist demands (likeLove Lies Bleeding , Mi bestiaor even the remake ofEmmanuelle) recalling that women continue to pay for broken pots of patriarchy... In fact, everything accelerated during thethe 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, with the Golden PalmAnorawhere her sex-working heroine isn't afraid of fighting to manage in modest America, the Grand PrixAll We Imagine as Lightwith her three female characters in search of emancipation while the carcans imprison women in India, the Prize of the scriptThe Substancein which the obsession of white cis men for youth is reflected on women over 50 years of age (invisibility of the star-system) forced to play the game of seduction, the award-winning doubling (Judge Award and Collective Female Performance Award)Emilia PérezWatching women rise from social determinism, and the Special PrizeSeeds of the wild fig treewhich sow those of the Iranian movement « Female, Life, Freedom » denouncing the regime's oppression.
THE FILMS THAT MARKED YOU THIS YEAR
IfThe Substance, the black feminist fable that fully assumes its comical part in its quest for eternal beauty leading to body horror,Civil War, the dystopic road trip on the cover of conflicts which sends a warning to a humanity mined by divisions,City of Darkness, the energy bomb adapted from a manhua that pays tribute to the HK movie of the golden age,Morse(see ourInterviewof Romain de Saint-Blanquat), the ten-movie who is searching with intelligence by convoking a whole section of the vampiric cinema, andGodzilla Minus One, the great human scale monster movie that returns to the sources ofthe sagaby humiliatingthe MonsterVerseHollywoodian, could very well have advocated here, I decided to highlight five other works proving that the year 2024 shone in its diversity...
Who says the year cinema women, says necessarilyFuriosa: Mad Max sagaAnd her female anger all the motors screaming. Continuing to decline his obsessions while reinventing himself a fifth time, the mythical sagaMad MaxStarted in the 1980s, it's back on its way to WastelandFury Road, building a superbly vast world and other deeper emotional stakes. And if he does not renew the motorized trip to the crazy velocity of his eldest, due to the opening of his horizons, this post-nuke mythological peplum cut into several chapters is just as generous in everything he proposes, even if he leaves some narrative tracks on the bottom side. Plastically superb despite a digital strangeness more marked than in the past, it must also be said that the staging favors furious flights to the previous metronomy of the montage, it follows a magneticAnya Taylor-Joyin his visceral vengeance against a magnificently patheticChris Hemsworth... Not without encountering virtuoso motorized action scenes that once again managed to stand out from its predecessors. WhenBen-Hurvisit the garage ofMad Max 2, Australian Homecontinues to write his legend where the Garden of Eden burns before the Revelation ends in silence. At 79, he's obviously not ready to stand up!
Presented in Cannes in 2023 but distributed in our territory at the very beginning of the year, the obscene tranquility ofThe Area of Interestwas a huge shock. On the edge of the unbearable, this sensory work on the unspeakable of the Holocaust in whichJonathan Glazerwe make contact with the banality of evil, probes our own relationship to history so that the increasing indifference due to the years ceases. From a power confusing with its taunting geometric staging (which shows almost nothing), its characters with a truly dreadful serenity and its evocative narrative (freely adapted from a novel byMartin Amis), this real film lesson on the mechanics of dehumanization imposes itself as an uncomfortable enclosed causing deep discomfort. Genocides (follow my eyes) must stop!
Mentioned above, the tale of the left-for-accountAnoraDidn't steal his Golden Palm (it was also mine). Because with a heart like this, this deconstruction of the American dream (with its degenerate ugly) where the spirit of the Coen brothers moves in with the Safdie, is an anti-Pretty Womanfuribar who starts as a trivial fairy tale before turning to the drolatic road-trip. Sensitive, enjoyable and intoxicating, this surprisingly touching portrait of a real bad ass (interpreted by the tremendously energeticMikey Madison) imposes as the best film ofits independent director.
By far the most vicious film of the year,When Evil Lurks(see ourInterviewde Demián Rugna) is a small tour de force from Argentina that made a sensation during the31st Gérardmer Festivalbefore working on the French screens. While churches have long died, this demonic possession that spreads like an infectious disease celebrates the advent of the "end of the world" by making a great carnage on a growing scale. Traumatic and up to the endist (she saves no one), this horrific work, which is deceitful with falcian macabre hints and inevitable fatality, plays on an unpredictable fear... At a thousand places therefore facilities revived from a genre rinsed sinceExorcist. When evil is born, nature dies!
Plebiscite by critics and widely rewarded in the audiovisual world (already 32 awards and 40 nominations through various festivals and international ceremonies), the great musical thrillerEmilia Pérezimposed itself as a major work of the year 2024. Whereas on a crumbling subject,Audiardmade his coming out movie with this transgender musical on the background of Mexican cartels dazzled by the trio's fervourSaldana–Gascón–Gomez. And when it deals with the tragedies of Mexico (disappearances and femicides), not without allowing the female to live in exciting numbers with the great musical diversity, it is to better speak of the feminine through three portraits of women as poignant as they are bursting. "Change of body is changing the world."
THE INJUSTICE OF THE YEAR
I allow myself a small out-of-subject (though!?) to deliver my feeling on the wave of prejudice, hate speech and "negative review-bombing" that received in the face of the seriesStar Wars The Acolyte(Neither the best nor the worst browsing the universe of George Lucas onDisney+). Attacks on the background of racism and misogyny carried out by hyperconservative fanatics (or for some, let's say nostalgic of a necessarily fantasized era) having judged Leslye Headland's project too "woke". An online malice perfectly symptomatic of the anti-fans doctrine ( fans prefer to talk about what they hate rather than what they like) frustrated with reasoning as futile as superficial. The problem today, in addition to hiding behind a critical judgment of "specialist" to pour out their hatred of women (in the case of overrepresented masculinists) and to delight in dancing on the graves of all those whose works have flopped, is that they seem to control the decisions of producers. For proof, the coming setting up by Hollywood studios of groups gathering "super fans" of franchises likeStar WarsorHarry Potter, to try to avoid controversial choices on new projects. Undoubtedly, a catastrophic decision for creativity.
THE ANIMATION FILM OF THE YEAR
While American animation did not demerit too much this year with its teenage crisisVice-versa 2and its ecological conscienceThe Wild Robot, it is indeed Japanese animation that came out victorious withThe Boy and the Heron. Indeed, much more than just an animated, this testamentary work signedHayao Miyazaki(its 12th long) is a deep metaphysical gathering on the nature of existence, interconnection and the quest for meaning. An introspective journey guided by mourning which,Alice in Wonderlandspread its wings (not without melancholy) in a dream world to contemplate the mysteries of life, death and the whole universe. A visually majestic and philosophically vertiginous opus.
THE DECEPTION OF THE YEAR
To avoid making jealous at the end of 2024, two big disappointments... One French, the other American. To my left, the huge messThe Soul Eater. Based on the novel byAlexis Lapsker, this peasy polar against the background of murders and disappearance of children is as untied as anarchy. Television staging, laughable actor's game, inconsistencies with shovel, grotesque situations, dialogues without any credibility and procedural implausibility have actually pollute the crime scene (glauque à vai). Turn on your TV instead to find the hit police show «Murders to... ».
To my right,SOS Ghosts: The Ice Threat. WhilePhantom SOS: Heritagehad managed to bring a wind of freshness to the saga, thisIce threatInspiration failure (to a screenplay detail nearby) serves us to warm up in a overflow of nostalgia that stifles the (re)born flame. Remains a small and timely green update, friendly young protagonists, a good child humor that makes you smile, pleasant visuals even if all-round and a cute interdimensional relationship (the only novelty of this opus).
YOUR ATTENTS FOR 2025
While the big machines are going to crash in 2025 (following the numerous postponements due to the strike SAG-AFTRA of 2023), I want to give my confidence to the film on theF1for racing in IMAX, later28 years laterby Danny Boyle Himself, atSupermanJames Gunn (headed bynew DCU), at Tom Cruise's ultimate mission inMission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, at soft rebootTRON: Areswith Jared Leto, to the new adaptation of the novelRunning Manthat Edgar Wright promises more faithful tothe previous version, the development of the Universal Monsters franchise withWolf Man(by Leigh Whannell, already behindInvisible Man) andAvatar: Fire and Ash, the third film in James Cameron's SF series. In terms ofJurassic World: Renaissance, I will take a curious look at it for its director Gareth Edwards (theGodzillaof 2014,Rogue One, The Creator), the saga being lost in the Cretaceous of nullity with fraudJurassic World: The World After. Other highlights expected, SF comedyMickey 17of Bong Joon-ho (The Host, Okja), the spy thrillerThe Insidersigned Steven Soderbergh, the musical biopicBetter Manon the pop icon Robbie Williams (represented by a chimpanzee in CGI) and especiallyThe Brutalist, American epic in two parts (separated by an intermission) shot in film VistaVision 70 mm.
Discovered this year at the Cannes Film Festival, I cannot advise the upsettingBlack Dogwhose release is scheduled for 05 March 2025. Since in a ruined China, while a young man adopts a stray dog, the charge against the regime led byhis realshows the realities of a delicacy where, (very) far from its image sold internationally, everything is just apocalypse... Almost. And that's there, within singular sets (sublimated by an incredible sandy photograph) that sometimes seem to come out of aMad Max, that the incongruous rise of rubble will animate a history of survival populated by magnificent marginals. For more than anything, like these two bruised creatures who rebuild themselves on the same path, we must never give up and believe in a better (perhaps) future. Will he find his place in my film review 2025? Answer in a year!
Review by Guillaume Lopez
YOUR WATCH ON THE CINEMA WORLD IN 2024
I love the film proposals of the year 2024, the nuggets appear to anyone who wants to look for them. A little movie can hide great movies, even in the province: what a joy to have seenCity of Darkness(read ourcritical) in Grenoble. This positive note distinguished with the lack of success of blockbusters who nevertheless deserved all honours by trying new things. No need to hide my frustration, the shock of a big ass like Furiosa on the contraryGodzilla X KongMakes me lose all hope when good taste comes back. But maybe you'd say the same thing when you saw my year selection?
THE FILMS THAT MARKED YOU THIS YEAR
The Substance
SourceFrance |Director: Coralie Fargeat |Release date: 6 November 2024 | Critique to readHere
The struggle of old age against youth, a subject on which I go further in another film of this selection. But if this theme is of great interest, here it is emphasized, highlighted, and surrounded by its very organic visual, which suppurates from pain to make a Cenobite pass out. Everyone quotesDavid Cronenbergfor the body horror side, right, even if I see in this pile of flesh something veryAkira : go against the rules and suffer the punishment of the body. Of course I loved it! Tribute toCarrie, Shining, I also thought about the movie bis with Basket Case and Frankenhooker, the film is as far to the botist as grotesque, it's like laughing with a desire to gerber.
Elisabeth performed by Demi Moore is a star of the small screen, but time passes and represents only an image of beauty in disuse that the star-system wants to get rid of. In order to escape his retirement, Elisabeth wants to find her plastic at all costs even to sell her soul to the devil. Impossible to stalemate on the meta of the film, so to the actress and her career, we then rememberGhost, Striptease, Equal weaponsorCharlies Angels, it was high time that she confirmed her place as an indispensable actress, and in this film with the appearance of an episode ofTales of the crypt, Demi Moore dies the screen thanks to his magnificent performance. Ah! And I'm just as impressed by Sue, incarnated by Margaret Qualley! What a game and what a charm, nothing worse than to see a female ideal run out of the worst way it is; Even Dorian Gray would have hurt her.
City of Darkness
Source: Hong Kong |Director: Self Cheang |Release date: 14 August 2024 | Critique to readHere
I'm thinking about the show.Like a Dragon: Yakuza (2024), the catastrophic adaptation of the video game of the same name produced by Amazon. And I think thatCity of Darknessis undoubtedly the best hidden adaptation of Sega license games.City of Darknessis a twilight film: thanks to Kowloon's citadel, I thought I was lost in the mega structure of Tsutomu Nihei's cyberpunk manga. A maze that seems infinite, with pipes and cables everywhere. If anyone asks me what my favorite character in the movie is, I answer « the city », without hesitation. The lascars of the film are fighters with a specific combat style. We have this manga side of the 90's, which vacillates between surreal martial arts and furyo or everyone respects a code of honor. At crossing Yū Yū HakushoandBlues Rattleis locatedCity of Darkness.
J'evoque la ville, but the characters are written with a hand of master Soi Cheang whose showRaging Fire Clubcan better explain the magic of this crazy director as the values of transmission as a theme. The film is worn by explosive and uncomplexed batons to maintain a frantic rhythm. No more is needed to qualify him as a masterpiece of action cinema. A staging lesson where each confrontation sequence highlights the dacrobate talents of the very most baffled actors. Tribute to HK films before retrocession,City of Darknessrepresents adage «between tradition and deserved teeth» (Yes, I invented it).
MaXXXine
Source: United States |Director: Ti West |Release date31 July 2024 | File on the trilogy to readHere
Before discussing the film in question, I would like to go back chronologically to this trilogy of one and the same director whom I greatly appreciate: Ti West.Xreleased in 2022 is a pearl of exploitation cinema, a tribute hardly hidden fromTronsaw Massacre, veritable bullshit erected against the hypocritical puritanism of the great America (also the porn movie in which Maxine is going to play )Puritan 2).
Xshows us the decadence of the late 1970s, the seed of vice that grows in the spirit of youth, creating a world of frustration, of which an elderly couple will be heirs. Retired lovers are the villains of the film, symbol of the American dream broken, cloistered in their farm: the prison of their disillusionment. As an Airbnb, they welcomed a group of young people to their second residence, who had come to shoot a bolt, a film of which pensioners had not been informed. In this group of actresses and actors, we find Maxine, a young cocainoman who sells her body to her boyfriend, an adult film director. Ready to exist, Maxine wants to shine in the star-system whatever the conservative morality of American religious, but the owners won't see that in the right eye. Transforming adventure into a fun slasher. Why?Xis an extraordinary movie? Because we are witnessing confrontations of opposite and generational morals. Old people want to eradicate youth as the only acceptable answer to fill their frustration with the goal of killing the ass movie director and eliminating decadence. Would old lovers be the purest? The wise ones?
Except...Pearl is a prequel released the same year asX(2022) claiming otherwise. One might go back to the performance of Mia Goth, an amazing actress who plays perfectly Pearl's youth, the old woman of the previous film, and who also performed Maxine. Having an actress who embodies both the heroine of a slasher, and her Nemesis in her prequel is a wise choice as the characters represent the same obsessive tares of the race to fame. And indeed, Pearl is a young woman whose artistic abilities are delusional, until the day she confronts the ruthless test of casting.
Pearlshows us that pornography already existed in 1918 with films for adults unveiled by the cinemaphile projectionist, whose Pearl s'amourache out of curiosity and perhaps even out of interest. So be famous, «want the life we deserve» is not a contemporary problem, the degeneration of youth is only a burden that goes through all generations.
It is his conception of the fictitious world, the alternative to reality, which makesPearlthe spectacular masterpiece of disillusionment. Heroin has to give up her status as a housewife, a boring farmwoman, to become an artist. But gaining the status of actress is a privilege reserved to very few elected. To climb the steps of fame, we have to get into trouble and confront the head hunters. To claim to be the rare pearl of cinema, professionals must recognize us as such. Pearl has only his conviction as an argument, and the erroneous measure of his talent could bring her down from high. The young woman finds the exutory of her frustrations with sex and murder, and if the illusion of her character exceeds her, the final monologue transcends the subject of the film. Pearl may not push the doors of fame, but Mia Goth, the real thing, is on the other side.
Can efforts and perseverance lead to success? That's the question at lastMaXXXinethe direct follow-up ofXor the film of the last answer. From a purely technical point of view, it is the most accomplished film in terms of scenery, plans and camera play, each sequence tells and emphasizes its reference: firstPsychosis and this eternal bathroom, but alsoBreaking BadwithGiancarlo Espositoalias « Gus »but alsoShowgirls orAve, Caesarwith this Hollywood review.
MaXXXineis a cynical smack that comes close to indecency. Maxine (always performed by Mia Goth) is a porn star who tracks castings until she gets a role for a horror movie that would make her become the star she thinks she is. Meanwhile, a killer is raging in the city and waking up his traumas. Maxine is a touching heroine and up to the botist, in perfect opposition to the character of Torres, a cop present to highlight the caricature of an acerbic and outdated virilism that only fails in each of his interventions, the least of his actions makes Maxine flee. A criticism of the ignorant man about the woman in distress, so the cop is never shown as a hero.
When the film gives itself to the moralizing discourse of redemption, we see a surreal scene: a gunfight between law enforcement and priests of a sect linked to our heroine. As if the film turned into a video game how to shoot arcade room. Maxine, on the other hand, has to break ties with her alleged killer to finally shine. But nothing happens as planned and illusion does not work. Everything's nothing but chimera. A kind of Mulloland Drive with more blood to summarize.
MaXXXineproposes to the spectator to choose the version he wants. On one side, Maxine is a star, after all, becoming famous after going through porn is common. On the other hand, the choice of disillusionment: Maxine failed, everything is about luck, even with talent, even with work. I laughed, I shuddered, it was fun as not allowed. No doubt, one of my favorite trilogy of cinema. «I will not accept a life I do not reserve. »
Nosferatu
SourceUnited States |Director: Robert Eggers |Release date: 25 December 2024 | Critique to come
How to experience the thrill with a fictional character present in my mind since my first years of life. The vampiric figure is everywhere, from carnival to Halloween, from cinema to television, any work in motion refers to the emblematic creature of cinema. There are for all ages, I think about my childhood in front of the cartoonDraculito, my bleedingI'm thinking about you too.The Monster Squadfilm ofFred Dekker, a kind ofSuper Smash Brosmonster movies. Beyond my memories of my youngest age, come to mind the films ofMr. Vampire, the Ghost Kung-fu Comedy that illustrates jiangshi that's always funnier, and what's easier than making fun of this creature caricatured along in broad and jugular? We have seen works where the bloodsucker was only a way to laugh, making him almost harmless, no vampire could scare Buffy who could classily eliminate his night monsters as mere mob video games. Speaking of style, I make the connection withBlade, the precursor of the leather superhero before it was fashion withMatrixExcept again, he was a nice vampire.
To tremble in front of a canine film that is cold in the neck, you have to return to the final film that I swear only by him since my first viewing:Bram Stokers Draculaof this old manCoppola, love story that still fascinates me today. But 1992 is far away. We did have attempts to resurrect the creature in its most attractive form with the seriesDraculaon Netflix in 2020, realized with more or less mastery with sometimes even good ideas. But it's hard to keep up with the remains of a Vlad Tepes so unoriginal. Still the troubleshooting option, some would say the best: viewing classics asDracula's Nightmare, But if I can applaud the technical and writing qualities of this feature film, I can't pretend to be afraid for a 1958 vampire.
When I discovered Nosferatu's trailer, I saw the hope of a vertigo: I like the picture, the actors like me, I want to see this film. Finally on the poster, I rush to the hall to unpack what is without a doubt, my most beautiful Christmas gift. On the defensive, I liveNosferatuas aDracula of greyish Coppola. I am outraged to see again and again a story that never moves away from this damn journey to the castle of the dehydrated Count. Then came the moment of the gypsies and their rites, and especially this carrosse nightmare that takes Thomas Hutter to the land of the devil himself, a succession of horrific events and living paintings ofCaseby David FriedrichBreathtaking. Finally the encounter, the creature appears or almost, its presence in the shadow stifles, the camera never reveals the face of the Lord of Evil leaving the spectator alone with the play of actor of Orlock, its diction confers the darkest darkness.
A few cold sweats later, nothing can stop being fascinated by the monster and its unique design. Metaphor of vice, vision of sexual appetite where the malignant simmers in the dreams of a young woman, Ellen, letting evil enter his dreams when invited, providing pleasure and night terror. The result is an insatiable love for her husband Thomas, a lack that gnaws her, attracting her evil, convulsions close to a possession where her entourage sees only her illness and psychological weakness. The disease, the ubiquitous subject of the film, serves the investigation of a duo of doctors with divergent practices, where science and the occult confront each other delivering aWillem Dafoewonderful. The film embraces his point during the final sequence, an art of framing and symbolism petris of melancholy. I came out of the film in love with his poetry, I can believe again the myth of the vampire that makes the rooms dark. A masterpiece was born.
Furiosa
Am I predictable? Definitely. A video podcast has already been dedicated to the film you can find on the site. Returning to it seems quite useless and you know my enthusiasm for the saga. However, I would like to share with you my logbook of my reactions to every cinema viewing with the exact dates of the emotional shock that I experienced: 25/04/2024:Seen last night... And I'm still wondering if this isn't the best movie I've ever seen in my life. 01/06/2024 : The second tour was even better. How is it only possible to make such a masterpiece? 10/06/2024 : Third time in the hall for Furiosa, I bow, again, admiration. I was accompanied by a friend to see the film, it was blown by the feature film. When the credits appeared, these first words were: « Masterpiece ». I smiled, like Jack watching Furiosa.17/06/2024 : Fourth time in the theater for Furiosa, I cannot get tired of this lesson in Cinema. My fascination is total. Note that the room is almost empty every time. It smells bad in terms of success, but I enjoy a total immersion in the silence of the projection. 03/07/2024 : I said goodbye to him as he should, with this last viewing in the room. It's the movie-tub party right now, the room was full, I've been chatting with people in the line « I hear the movie is excellent. ». That's little to say. Sayonara Furiosa. 02/10/24 : I have the blueray steelbook Furiosa, I can rest in peace!
THE ANIMATION FILM OF THE YEAR
Transformers: The Beginning
SourceUnited States |Director: Josh Cooley |Release date: 23 October 2024
It was totally impossible to design any interest in the license.TransformersIf I hadn't been whistled to the ear that this new movie was excellent I would never have gone to see it. With no basis in the machine world, if this is the fuzzy memories of a Michael Bay film seen far too long ago on TF1, I must admit that everything was only discovered. Virgin of all aprioris, I launch what I consider to be my animated slam of the year. On a planet of robots rich in mythology, we follow the adventures of two working friends who pick up in the mines. The young people's passion pushes them to discover a world of freedom beyond the scope of possible, with its set of revelations and reversals that will make this pair of cybernetic heroes, rivals and perhaps even more.
I didn't see anything coming, Optimus Prime and Megatron are just unknown names for my oblivious brain, and I can't understand this feature film as the first-hour Transformer fans could do. It was then impossible to put into perspective the respect of the lore or the relations between protagonists established for several decades in this license which, at first glance, seemed to me to be a huge advertising for toys. My remarks are therefore about writing and technique, and for the latter I can only applaud such a quality in its 3D animations always fluid, beautiful and readable, the choices of plans make the burlesque action clean and always understandable, it is pleasant as the adventure goes to 200 at an hour, even during the short flashback the movement remains the word of order, perhaps that a little introspection would have allowed to blow in this great amusement park that isTransformers: The Beginning.
The artistic direction offers an original breath, sweeping the Disney productions that all look a bit alike. To this is added a writing of just protagonists who never point to any situation, personalities remain consistent with the different adventures that accompany our duo of heroic robots. Later they are joined by other equally interesting companions and an alchemy sápere without forcing, the different friendships are naturally built through adventure. It's beautiful, well written with a dynamic staging and the film finds the way to be moving while having a talk about the freedom of a nation, live Cybertronian resistance!
DECEPTION OF THE YEAR
SourceUnited States |Director: Fede Álvarez |Release date: 14 August 2024 | Dossier to readHere
What I like most about the use of licenses is when an author takes over a universe to do it his, Hideaki Anno with theShin, Keita Amemiya withKamen Riderand Hakaider, Momoru Hosoda with hisOne Piece, Mamaru Oshii and hisUrusei Yatsura, GITS... The list is long. Conversely, I hate licensing in the hands of « Fanboy directors » who want to show that they know their favorite work by heart and who will drink references that are useless: «Hey, did you see the ref?». So Romulus is a film I've been through asJurassic World, or seriesDragon Ball Super. It is a film without personality, where it never gets bored despite the cruel lack of substance. A melting-pot of the previous 6 feature films, a fanfiction that will delight people who have more than memory echoes of the original films. I don't like to vomit about works, so I won't write more about Alien Romulus, however I'm referring you to the superfolderwritten by KillerS7ven.
YOUR ATTENTS FOR 2025
The nextHideaki Annoaccompanied byShinji Higuchi (never one without the other), that it would be nice to find this duo on a filmGamera(read ourfolder)! But maybe everything has already been said about this giant turtle?
Arix balance sheet
YOUR WATCH ON THE CINEMA WORLD IN 2024
Against the syllabus and the scene of the current cinema
At the end of the year, I am delighted to discover Manny Farber's critical texts. This name of American criticism, already forgotten and mostly ignored by the contemporary, arose in my mind at the beginning of 2024 thanks to another criticism to which I give credit (we are all annuitants of aesthetics to speak like Céline) for having written on a unique film and for reminding me of my ignorance. When I discovered Farber's feather, it came to my mind to use his concept of « Drain » to try to solve the riddle of a balance sheet to state. Farber was already tied with strength, « Virility », and cynicism in order to criticize the praises of a criticism-cinema capitone of all kinds of bourres and fanfreluches, eager for solemn goiters in which the discourse merely covers a terrain of its topographic banality. Farber perceived in his time the collapse of a discourse that permanently buried the « underground films » the public was no longer able to watch.
It is not a question here of resuming such a speech which would have little meaning, except to imagine Farber facing the current cinema. On the other hand, his concepts and attacks allow me to read again the year that has just passed and to look again at images that marked a lost memory, mine, in a continuous flow of information. In a sense, it is a matter of finding here a technique of disorder worthy of this discordance that the contemporary landscape imposes on us. Farber gave him the name of «Drain».
The mushroom reminds Farber is «a confused mass, a disorderly whole, a crowd characterized by a mass of unordered elements, a scrap». When I look in the mirror at what was seen in the cinema, I easily understand that we, as spectators, spent our time sitting and watching images concocted by a thousand-headed hydra called Pre-Advertisement. TheGladiator IIthe spoiled Ridley Scott exhausts the representation of history. Hollywood history stifles like old Scott in a naumachi as useless as Marineland Water Park. Todd Philipps, sick of his moral success, tries to think of Arthur Fleck's sequel withJoker: Two-sided. The choice of its opening in animation shows that the director tries to finally think about the problem of his icon.
Unfortunately, the audience today needs so much costly illusions and constant overbidding in the play of actors, music, light, morals. The public wanted the Joker, Todd Philipps wanted to show Arthur Fleck.Rebel Moonpublicist Zack Snyder chews an image like gum and dares to sell us the cover of his film as the real product to consume.MegalopolisFrancis Ford Coppola was already preparing the gloss of his cinematic craze by imagining the hollow formulas of a critic who suffocates in his intergloss. The fearful Gilles Lellouche preferred to remove the musical from his filmLoveso as not to scare the spectator against his crazyly insipid story. As if taking into account « The requirement » of the spectator would be an aesthetic choice. Rather, it appears to be a commercial imperative or advertising necessity.
Finally, the French international Jacques Audiard has dared to play on this register so risky by risking to make morals and politics fuzzy in hisEmilia Pérez. The boredom – not to say irritation – caused by these scenes of singing and dancing that dare not say anything to finally show that this paratrooper is trying to do something. Audiard uses a method to empty dehydrated scenes like instant coffee from all life. Audiard tried to create an icon, only the music clip remains. In the end, the song has disappeared and all that remains is slogans. If I took all these icons that have the authority of the commentary to say morality and not think it, I would formulate a syllabus.
Syllabus is the object that is being imposed on us as the only concrete image by which and on which we must discuss. I refuse it because this syllabus that takes the contours of abstraction is only a barrier to us. In this game of eternal struggle against syllabus, I choose to follow the spirit and experience of those for whom the life of thought has no limits. My desire can only be expressed by means of conversation, the one that tends to turn the image towards the other, the one that affirms the experience of a feeling by turning to those who feel that we are active molecules in a world in gestation. Like Farber, everything I've loved in the movies belongs to the « Kingdom of Termites », not the advertising landscape.
The Kingdom of Termites
« The art style termite, solitary worm, mousse or mushroom, has the peculiarity of progress by tackling its own constraints, to leave on its passage only signs of devouring, industrious and disorderly activity. [...] Termite art is a punctual immersion, without end or goal, comparable to that of an insect, and above all an absolute concentration on the effort to isolate for a moment without pretending to embellish it, to forget even this prowess when it is accomplished, with the feeling that everything is replaceable, and that everything can be, without damage, dismantled, and reassembled in another order. »
Exercise requires focusing on one hand. If he had had a second one, he would have spoken with joy and detour of Alain Guiraudie, Payal Kapadia, Rodrigo Moreno, Miguel Gomes, Mati Diop, Jonas Trueba, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Pedro Costa, Joanna Arnow, Bruno Dumont, Todd Haynes, Philippe Lesage and Ryusuke Hamaguchi. When time is no longer in the penguin era, we must say and write that these people belong to the kingdom of termites. Without them, the image would only account for one way of seeing, a captive knowledge because at the discount.
THE FILMS THAT MARKED YOU THIS YEAR
The Substance
SourceFrance |Director: Coralie Fargeat |Release date: 6 November 2024 | Discovered at the first in Cannes | Critique to readHere
TheSubstancede Coralie Fargeat sets out a definition of teratology. Only advertising images, moral injunctions, radio-television, catechistic or pornographic texts are dangerous, because they are used to being unrealistic. But these slogans themselves, better read them than not read them, look at them with disinterest rather than with indifference. Coralie Fargeat does not protect children and especially the innocent, because innocence is meant to be lost. Do we believe that the big industry needs an ideal image? The image that interests her is the one that buys her own products. The spectator dreams of becoming the great actor. He makes a thaumaturistic idea, naively bourgeois. He realizes that he is in front of poor figures who hardly differ from one another except by a sinister grimace, a clumsy, worldly smile, or an expression of distressed delight.
In Water
SourceSouth Korea |Director: Hong Sang-soo |Release date26 June 2024
In Waterof theHong Sang-soois a blurred film. How can I talk about a film that's wrong? The evil seen is an evil said. You'd have to write wrong to say that view so badly seen. The impression of the evil seen is made patent because the director makes the image blurred. This blur has varying degrees of visibility. Sometimes white appears as a spot. Then the camera approaches the spot to make it more visible or rather readable. By reading the spot white becomes a woman. The gesture is primitive because the camera follows or rather continues the appearance. Hong Sang-soo raises the cinema in a clean gesture. In this fog the filmmaker seeks his film. In an observed landscape, the director grants the right to reconstruct it. First the sea, always the sea. A director finds conques. Then wandering and spending around a project: making a film that doesn't yet have a script. The scenario is to be looked for in the distances travelled and in the gaps that blur makes visible. The characters of Hong Sang-soo drink, eat, walk and survey a landscape. They are looking for a scripture in the eye. Nothing will ever be written in the end. It's more about a misunderstood. This evil seen seeks the right distance from writing. Writing has become a gesture of observation. Then comes the film and the day of shooting. The evidence of a misconceived landscape because travelled is constituted. A man follows a woman. He talks to him because he's surprised at his gesture. She picks up conques on the beach. Then he looks at the sea and moves towards it.
Eureka
SourceSouth Korea |Director: Lisandro Alonso |Release date: 19 May 2023
Eurekaof theLisandro Alonso. What about a film that bears the absolute affirmation? « I found »The formula is used as an exhibition and especially as a space. What can be found when the search has already done its job? The office here shows its research. It would be the order of the sacred. Like the sacred, there is only the inexhaustible search for his manifestation. There is his find and not his object.Eurekabegins with the solar image of an Indian struggling with the elements of mystery. Quickly, the film puts this strangeness in what is lacking. Alonso plays the Western game. This genre then takes precedence over this origin of the representation and blocks all mysteries. We are witnessing the already known history of a vigilante in a decadent and lawless world. What made the mystery is relegated to tapestry and decor. The drama seems to play its traditional game: the father in search of his daughter, the revenge of one against the violence of the world... The drama runs out and looks like a bad pastiche.
Of this exhaustion Lisandro Alonso proposes a deviation. What has been seen, especially already seen, is no longer to look at. It's just a sound fill, a TV background. What's the point of watching what happens on TV? You just have to pass the time... And then what do we have to do with a drama that has already found the formula and resounds it in a satisfactory way? Alonso decides to turn off the TV and moves the game from the representation to another space. The protagonist then becomes a woman, a lonely Indian policeman who spends his time responding to the radio and a voice that tells him what to do, where to go... What the protagonist does is survey a reserve in which a lost, alcoholic and condemned population is concentrated to live a tragedy that does not correspond to it. The police do not need to do justice, they cross the reserve and report on the reality of a community cloistered in its concentration space.
Even the national weather paper has a good game to specify that the weather it is here will never be the time it is there: United States of America. The protagonist refuses to play this game that the time of contemporary mythology has imposed on him. The police don't answer the radio anymore and a girl decides to leave. The latter becomes a heron and the game of representation unfolds again. Alonso shows us that it was men who invented time. He claims that there is only space. Alonso refuses the time for an already satisfied drama, a performance already played, and moves his story and characters where they can be.
Youth
SourceChina |Director: Wang Bing |Release date: 18 May 2023
Youth (Spring)of theWang Bingis a documentary that captures the working hand in contemporary Chinese textile factories. This is the first film I saw in the year 2024. And yet it persists in my memory. I remember the feeling of distance travelled. The one between me and this young man at work, between me and this young man who makes love gestures.Youthmakes heterogeneous relatives visible by simmering everywhere like a termite camera. It inserts into a space and captures seams in the shadow of factory lights. Hands manipulate clothes in an infernal pace and at times they give themselves gestures of friendship, and gestures of love. Wang Bing's images give the impression that this world is more available than it really is. But the strength of his images is to dwell on this world.
Wang Bing filmed patiently and at a good distance. He is interested in things as they are, in the permanence of the status quo. This is where interest in the subject makes the director complicit. There is no dialogue between the one who films and the one who plays to be what he is. On the other hand, the camera is always turned to this subject and allows the director to participate with him in the capture of what is. The image is unable to create a moral position but it can strengthen it, and help it to settle when it begins to draw what things are. Wang Bing recalls that clothing is first a textile layer that adheres to the skin. Its usefulness has nothing to do with need, it is on the side of social classification. But it was the need that invented the garment. By recalling this, Wang Bing proposes to look at these textile layers that constitute an image of contemporary China.
It's not me.
SourceFrance |Director: Leos Carax |Release date: 18 May 2024
It's not me.of theLeos Caraxis an aborted exhibition project for the P... The P... respectful isn't it. The fuck again. Who or what abortion? It is writing that guides the thought in a toothed path of saw. Leos Carax says: «It's not me.». What must be understood in this denial that sounds like an affirmation? Apophatic gesture? Leos Carax doesn't like pompous words. Because they pump life and dehydrate it. Yet it is he who speaks, like a god, and indicates by voice and image that he is there, not there, here and especially there. But sometimes he lies, the image shows it's not him and yet he says it's him. He goes far the young man but he coughs like an old man « Hem! Hem! ».
How beautiful is this lantern that recites its light of drama and comedy. This lantern is beautiful because it advances on a journey with its torch rails. On the train station dock, Alex still has a lot of wrong words. On the railway, Leos tells his life backwards and at the place as the timetable that can be read. This lantern is beautiful but there is this terrible risk of bladders for lanterns. So what's Carax looking for? Sometimes the resemblance and especially the difference. «Hem! Hem!». The old man's cough begins again as the bad story already heard.
Then he goes back. «Croa! Croa! Croa!». Go back and forth. Back to work. Work of a return that goes back and forth like a train. Then the cinema looks at itself again. King Vidor and the crowd. Dziga Vertov and the camera. Leos Carax and his bad blood. What does he see? A plan. Subjective. The only one. Why? Because. What is he looking for? The eyes of the gods. God will recognize his own. The look of the already seen. That of beauty polarized like a light, beauty of second generation, girl, but girl born before term, that we loved with our naked eyes, and girl a little monster. To reread the journey it was necessary, to account for the experience ofIt's not me,follow that a writing that guides thought.
THE ANIMATION FILM OF THE YEAR
The tale of tales
Source: Russia|Director: Yuri Norstein |Release date: 4 December 2024
No animated films were particularly marked this year. I simply note the great disappointmentVice-versa 2. The rest is right when she says something else. Here it occupies a vain place in which depression plays the central role. Why? There were good surprises this year, especially withFlowandThe Wild Robot. If these two films come out of the box, they fail to raise the animation in a movement that upsets the direction of a direction. On the other hand, I wanted to say a few words about my late discovery of Russian director's animated cinemaYuri Norstein.
En cette fin d’année, le cinéma de la ville a eu la merveilleuse idée de sortir la version restaurée de quatre films d’animations du réalisateur russe. L’ensemble a pour nomLe Conte des contes. L’animation traduit le sens du merveilleux. Le surnaturel se manifeste naturellement. L’image est surtout bidimensionnelle, comme une peinture médiévale, mais la perspective apparaît quand l’image a besoin de hauteur et de largeur. DansLe Conte des contes, un jeune homme mange une pomme à côté de ses parents dont la conjugalité détruit l’innocence. Alors l’image trouve sa hauteur à défaut de trouver sa profondeur et le voici, ce jeune homme, perché sur une branche à côté des corbeaux qui veulent goûter la part de bonheur et de rêve de cet angelot : «Croa! Croa! Croa!». À entendre résonner le bruit des corbeaux, on a presque l’impression d’entendre le mot «croire».
YOUR ATTENTS FOR 2025
Comment finir un bilan ? En énonçant la suite. Ce discours n’a déjà plus lieu d’être car il a déjà été écrit et c’est du déjà vu. J’aimerais que le cinéma des bourreaux arrête de détruire le cinéma des victimes. Mais ces deux cinémas coexistent. Il faut les regarder avec désintérêt non avec indifférence. Quand ils cesseront d’exister, ils seront juste de la mémoire. Peut-être est-ce la seule chose à espérer ?
Au cinéma, j’attendrai évidemment le retour de ceux qui appartiennent au royaume des termites et je regarderai avec attention le cinéma de « l’éléphant blanc » pour parler comme Farber. J’attends avec impatience le film d’Andrea ArnoldBird. La dernière image de son dernier documentaireCowme laisse penser que son cinéma touche enfin la grâce. Elle a finalement trouvé son bestiaire. Le festival de Venise de 2024 n’a pas encore pu atteindre totalement les salles en France. Je redoute le nouveau film de Pedro Almodovar bien qu’il soit enfin auréolé d’une récompense qui le consacre. J’appréhende énormément le monument du film américain avec le film de Brady Corbet et sonThe Brutalist. Ensuite, il y a la suite du documentaire de Wang Bing qui sortira coup sur coup pendant l’année. Pour le reste, je verrai ce que les yeux me diront de voir et je les fermerai quand il n’y aura plus rien à regarder. Quand je ferme les yeux, je vois encore les filles du feu.
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