Gladiator II, The Kingdom, Finally: what's new at the cinema this week

What to see in theaters

THE EVENT
GLADIATOR II ★★★★☆

By Ridley Scott

The essentials

Ridley Scott replicates his cult peplum: the result is an insane B series, a pinnacle of ultra-standard entertainment. And maybe a good lesson in blockbuster hacking.

Who wanted to see a sequel to Gladiator ? Person. Not you, not us. Not even Ridley Scott. This is precisely what makes the film very interesting: the fact that its director himself does not shoot it as if he were fulfilling a twenty-year-old fantasy, but as a job like any other. By reproducing quite banally the structure of Gladiator 1st story side (the hero, slave then gladiator, etc.), the sequel demonstrates that the first film was very sufficient in itself. But Scott also and above all knows that as long as he is remaking his own film, it should be as fun as possible. You might as well put baboons and sharks in the arena, you might as well stage Roman emperors as degenerate thugs, closer to Brighton Beach than the Palatine, you might as well let the mind-blowing slaughter of Denzel Washington, who plays his character as self-made man set out to conquer power as a replicant of Alonzo Harris rather than Frank Lucas. The whole thing gives birth to an ultimate B series, like the epics of the great era, without any meta or contemptuous desire. A form of piracy of the contemporary blockbuster, at the same time as a lesson to meditate on in terms of great spectacle.

Sylvestre Picard

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PREMIERE LIKED A LOT

THE KINGDOM ★★★★☆

By Julien Colonna

The Kingdom is nothing like a fairy tale. Its plot may take place in an idyllic setting (Corsica), open with a meeting that flirts with the mystical (the reunion between a teenager, Lesia and her father Pierre-Paul, clan leader), and follow the rules of tragedy (the fate of a bandit from which no bandit escapes), it is striking first and foremost by its realism. By adopting the point of view of the adolescent, witness to a story that constantly escapes her, The Kingdom stands out from the traditional gangster film. The maquis becomes the backdrop for a father-daughter relationship, and the violence of these lives finds itself deframed, as if put to the side to leave more room for the intimate family film. In the end, The Kingdom sculpts the portrait of this inscrutable and charismatic bandit, whose aura is reinforced by the way his daughter looks at him. A major success.

Nicholas Moreno

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NO OTHER LAND ★★★★☆

From Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor

For several years, under the cover of a military training site project, the Israelis have been razing the homes of the Palestinian community of Masafer Yatta located in a mountainous region in the south of the West Bank. Violent and expeditious expropriations that defy the laws of humanity. This activist documentary is made by two Palestinians and two Israelis. A claimed parity intended to avoid any trial of intent. And in fact, there is reason to wonder since the point of view of the film is only from the side of the victims. And the film takes on the appearance of a neo-Rio Bravowhere the attackers are almost ghostly presences that are perpetually threatening. In the center of the frame, Basel Adra, a young resident of Masafer Yatta, armed with only his telephone, documents this violence almost directly, at his side, Yuval Abraham, an Israeli investigative journalist scandalized by the actions of his country. And humanity is lodged precisely in this place, in this uninterrupted and wise dialogue between two friends that apartheid tries to separate.

Thomas Baura

FIRST TO LIKE

EVENTUALLY ★★★☆☆

By Claude Lelouch

This film will in no way reconcile the anti-Lelouch with his cinema. But for others, it marks a relief. The return to form of a director who one might have thought definitively lost after two complete failures (The Virtue of Imponderables And Love is better than life) . A work like a return to the sources. Because its hero is the son of the characters of Lino Ventura and Françoise Fabian in one of his classics, Happy New Year. And because his story dialogues with that ofItinerary of a spoiled child : a lawyer who drops everything to rebuild himself after a burnout and undertakes a walk across France to achieve this. Love, chance, coincidences and aphorisms about life and death as only he can invent them are on the program here. 100% Lelouch therefore but carried by Kad Merad, whose dexterity in slipping into the skin of this character throughout this journey populated with music and songs bursts through the screen. Not everything is perfect in Eventuallyfar from it. It regularly borders on the very involuntary grotesque. But Lelouch's boyish enthusiasm carries many things in its path.

Thierry Cheze

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IN FLIP-FLOPS IN THE HIMALAYAS ★★★☆☆

By John Wax

The title is definitely intriguing. But it nevertheless perfectly describes the situation experienced by its heroine: the mother of a child suffering from an autistic disorder, lost, helpless at the moment of passing her forties when, separating from her partner and without a fixed income, she will have to learn to live alone while teaching your child independence. At the helm of this feature film, John Wax, the co-director of Simply black with Jean-Pascal Zidi, puts a spin on the classic “film about a subject” with this bias of slipping humor into inevitably poignant situations without it ever seeming artificial. Thanks to the quality of the writing obviously but also to the relevance of the choice of its main performer. We have known her only on stage since Latest before Vegas the comic talent of Audrey Lamy. We had too few opportunities (Polish, The Invisibles, The Brigade…) to admire her ease in climbing more dramatic slopes as she does here with a fluidity, an accuracy, an amplitude which takes the film to new heights.

Thierry Cheze

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GOOD ONE ★★★☆☆

By India Donaldson

Good onehere is a title which at the start of this first feature, Grand Prix du Champs Elysées Film festival, suits its heroine perfectly, a 17-year-old teenager, sweet, discreet, accommodating. And Indiana Donaldson's great success lies in his way of telling a moment of change. This drop of water that breaks a camel's back that no one had seen fill, during the weekend that Sam spends with his father and his best friend. Two self-centered divorcees in the middle of a mid-life crisis whose confidante she becomes with great patience. Until an inappropriate sentence from her father's friend sounds like a brutal decision, which her father will refuse to hear when she goes to confide in him. Good one tells of the ordinary sexism behind the good nature of male characters on which the filmmaker changes the perspective in small touches, with a minimalism which reinforces the power of her subject whose violence, initially invisible, jumps into your throat.

Thierry Cheze

REMEMBERING A CITY ★★★☆☆

By Jean-Gabriel Périot

Winner of the César for best documentary for his previous film Return to Reims (Fragments), Jean-Gabriel Périot this time focuses on the siege of Sarajevo which between 1992 and 1996 plunged the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina under bombs and incessant assaults. The great originality here is to first bring together images of the siege filmed at the time by young filmmakers subjected to urgency and astonishment… then to show in a second part these same filmmakers commenting on their own images with thirty years hindsight. The result is a fascinating and temporally dizzying work, where memories of the war give way to a now peaceful city whose inhabitants appear not only as survivors but as beings who have proudly reappropriated their history. Périot, present in certain wide shots, thus brings hope out of an ancient chaos.

Damien Leblanc

DESERT OF NAMIBIA ★★★☆☆

By Yôko Yamanaka

She has a short bob and a surly look fixed on her face. Kana, a young Japanese girl just out of adolescence, seems to be perpetually wandering in her own existence. Between the moments shared with her two lovers — who both manage the feat of boring her — and the comical situations that her job as a beautician offers her on a daily basis, Desert of Namibia focuses throughout on capturing these little in-between moments, neither entirely amusing nor truly melancholy. Everything happens as if the director of this film with careful photography, Yoko Yamanaka, was less interested in her characters than in these moments of hesitation to better portray the portrait of a young generation who lives between two worlds – that of childhood and that, more austere, of adults. A beautiful exercise in style far from the clichés of today's Japan, despite some lengths.

Emma Poesy

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FIRST TO MODERATELY LIKED

THE VALLEY OF FOOLS ★★☆☆☆

By Xavier Beauvois

While bankruptcy threatens his restaurant and his alcoholism gradually takes him away from his family, a sailing enthusiast decides, to regain control of himself, to take on a unique challenge. Register for the virtual Vendée Globe race, but in the conditions of a real skipper by isolating yourself for 3 months on your boat in your garden… In the varied film of Beauvois, between successes as major as The Little Lieutenant And Of men and godsthis Valley of Fools occupies a special place. Never has he cracked the armor so much and dared to use such an openly melodramatic register. And if he regularly touches just accompanied by a very invested Jean-Paul Rouve, he also gets lost in scenes that are too fabricated (the failed nod to the delirium tremens scene from Red circle) and in the dosage of emotion over the two far too long hours of his story which pushes towards tearful overbidding. The very type of film that we would have liked… loved more.

Thierry Cheze

A MISSING PART ★★☆☆☆

By Guillaume Senez

In Japan, due to legal custom, many children find themselves, after a divorce, raised by a single parent, without any possibility of alternating custody. It is this subject that Guillaume Senez takes up for his third feature after the excellent Keeper And Our battles. Romain Duris plays Jay, a French taxi driver who, after his separation from his Japanese partner, decided to stay in Tokyo, hoping one day to meet his daughter again, of whom he was unable to have custody. Chance will one day make it possible when she climbs into her taxi one day without suspecting her identity… A missing part then tells the story of how Jay does everything possible to find her every day without his ex-in-laws finding out. There is in Senez's gesture a mixture of roughness and delicacy which nip any tearful ease in the bud, before everything disintegrates in a clumsy final straight line in total contradiction with what precedes.

Nicholas Moreno

And also

E. 1027, Eileen Gray and the house by the sea, by Béatrice Minger

We should have gone to Greece, by Nicolas Benamou

The gluttonous bears at the North Pole, by Alexandra Majova and Katerina Karhankova

The Covers

Return to reason, by Man Ray