What are we watching this weekend? The return of Paradise, Robert Duvall at Kevin Costner, Wong Kar-wai’s masterpiece…

Cinema, streaming, VOD, TV… Find the Première selection every Friday.

The film in theaters: Is this thing on? by Bradley Cooper

While he is on the verge of divorcing his long-time wife (Laura Dern), a desperate fifty-something (Will Arnett) storms onto the stage of a New York comedy club and improvises a sketch to exorcise his heartache. And here he is suddenly launched into a totally unexpected career as a stand-up comedian… The pitch for Is this thing on? evokes that of the fabulous series The Fabulous Mrs. Maisel, but the film is nevertheless pure Bradley Cooper: after A Star Is Born and Maestro, the actor-director (here a simple supporting role) continues a fascinating work, which questions, film after film, about what we bring from our private life when we go on stage – whether we are a pop star like Lady Gaga, the great conductor Leonard Bernstein or, as here, a simple Sunday comedian. Is this thing on? takes the form of a very endearing rom-com, with a slightly bourgeois and Woody-Allenian trappings, but above all which manifests at every moment the filmmaker’s mad love for his characters. Definitely a super real, this Bradley Cooper.

The series: Paradise season 2 on Disney+

After an entire season located in a gigantic bunker at the end of the world (which looks exactly like an American suburban suburb!), Paradise allows itself to go out into the open air. We therefore discover the surface – not as desolate as one might have thought – and its survivors, among whom Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) will try to find his wife. The exploration of the apocalypse is obviously less surprising in this form, but Dan Fogelman, the creator of This is Us, infuses it with enough mystery, melodrama and quality writing to keep us in suspense.

Watch Paradise on Disney+

The streaming film: The Piano Accident by Quentin Dupieux

Of the four films that Quentin Dupieux devoted to the question of celebrity after Yannick, Daaaaaali! and The Second Act, this Piano Accident is perhaps the best Firstly thanks to Adèle Exarchopoulos and her crazy and high-pitched composition of the central character of the film: an Internet star insensitive to pain whose spectacular videos generate millions of views and who finds himself the target of blackmail after an accident on set. Then because by saving almost none of his characters – your choice: selfish, spineless, stupid… – he signs his most openly misanthropic film and takes full responsibility for it. A cruel comedy in the style of Ruben Östlund which gives a thumbs up to its era but without ever seeming reactive.

Watch The Piano Accident streaming on MyCanal

The movie on TV: Open Range by Kevin Costner

Open Range continues to age like fine wine. Released in 2003, this third film by actor-turned-director Kevin Costner had less impact at the time than Dances with Wolves (his big hit of the 90s), but that didn’t stop fans from noticing that it very solidly and lovingly replayed the classic Western theme of the clash between large landowners and itinerant ranchers in the 19th century West. Romanticism, laconicism, violence, the taste for stepping aside and contemplation… Everything works superbly here. To (re)see, therefore, if only because we can admire one of the best late compositions of the great Robert Duvall, who died on February 15, and to whom we owe our hats.

Watch Open Range Friday evening on France 3

The film on VOD: La Vie de château (my childhood in Versailles)

The fight was too unequal against Arco to win the César for animated feature film yesterday. But we highly recommend discovering this first feature film (which was first a multi-award-winning short then a series) featuring an 8-year-old girl who becomes an orphan – after the death of her parents in the Bataclan attacks – who is sent to live with her guardian, her uncle, a maintenance worker at the Palace of Versailles whom she does not like. The result turns out to be a pure marvel. By its form: the beauty of its sober and refined animation. And by its inventive scenario with perfectly orchestrated twists and turns and never succumbing to the ease of pathos. A great and beautiful film about mourning.

Watch La Vie de château (my childhood in Versailles) on VOD on Première Max

The classic: The Grandmaster by Wong Kar-wai

Thirteen years after its release, The Grandmaster, Wong Kar-wai’s sumptuous kung-fu fresco, returns to French cinemas. In a form that we didn’t quite know: this Grandmaster is the Chinese version of the film, about ten minutes longer, and new in our latitudes. This is the favorite montage of fans from the director of Chungking Express, which deepens certain historical or political considerations of the film, draws a little more finely the portraits of some of the secondary characters and, above all, accentuates the crazy romanticism, by telling in an even more moving way the love story between Ip Man (Tony Leung) and Gong Er (Zhang Ziyi), two masters of wing chun for whom martial rituals also serve as a romantic display. An absolute splendor, which is accompanied this week, for the filmmaker’s completists, by the posting online on Mubi of his series Blossoms Shanghai – his latest production to date, an odyssey of thirty episodes (yes, yes) in the Shanghai of the 90s.

The Grandmaster extended version was released in theaters on February 25