Despicable Me 4, Longlegs, To the Moon: what’s new in theaters this week
What to see in theaters
THE EVENT
DESPICABLE ME 4 ★★★☆☆
By Chris Renaud and Patrick Delage
The essential
Cockroaches, a Junior and Minions everywhere… The fourth installment of the animated saga provides the minimum service for fans of all ages.
The Gru family is growing! We say hello to Junior, a cute little boy around whom the main plot is tied, since the new super-villain, Maxime Le Mal, the cockroach man, wants to kidnap him to get revenge for an old grudge with Gru. In the execution, Despicable Me 4 is nothing revolutionary. And yet, what a laugh! The film goes all in with a series of gags of formidable effectiveness. True to themselves, the Minions do what they do best: total chaos. Add to that a particularly mischievous baby and there you have it! The little ones have fun and the adults also get their money’s worth with jokes that are specially aimed at them with mockery and “vintage” references. No one can resist this fireworks display of pranks and “minion-eries”.
Anthea Claux
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FIRST LIKED
ONLY THE RIVER FLOWS ★★★☆☆
By Wei Shinjun
For his foray into crime fiction, Chinese Shujun Wei takes us to China in the 1990s, just before the economic boom. A series of violent murders bloodies a village in the heart of the country. Local authorities put pressure on the police to resolve this tangled web as quickly as possible. A young, cold-blooded inspector begins his investigation, which keeps hitting dead ends. Documents and evidence pile up to draw an increasingly tortuous scenario. Very quickly, the story leaves the shores of realism, as it seems clear that the murderer could remain unreachable, to become a mental dive into a damaged human psyche. Carried by solid staging, this Only the river flows carries within him a feverish tension that does not weaken.
Thomas Baurez
JULY RECREATION ★★★☆☆
By Pablo Cotten and Joseph Rozé
Selected at the Tribeca Festival, this first feature film features a young music teacher who, when the holidays have come, reunites in the deserted school of their childhood his five former best friends with whom the ties have been strained. A reunion placed under the sign of sadness since it is organized in homage to his twin sister who died suddenly. This starting point could lead one to believe in a purely programmatic story about mourning, like so many others. Wrongly. To say that it revolutionizes everything would be a lie, but there is a Cotten-Rozé touch. A way of situating oneself on the terrain of emotion without dodging anything. An ability to write characters who are not necessarily sympathetic but without ever breaking the thread of empathy for them. A pleasure to direct a band of accomplice actors carried by the sweet madness of Andranic Manet (My provincials). A perfect gesture? No, but the very type of film that we also love for its clumsiness.
Thierry Cheze
SOUNDS ★★★☆☆
By Gustav Möller
After his first feature film The Guilty released in 2018, which had its Americanized carbon copy on Netflix, Gustav Möller is back with the closed-door thriller. This time, the Danish filmmaker locks his character (and the viewer at the same time) within the walls of a prison. A respected prison guard, Eva’s daily life will be turned upside down by the transfer of a convict convicted of murder. From there, driven by a guilt whose reason will remain hidden, Eva submits to her darkest impulses… Then begins a perverse little game where she prowls, conspires, and ruins the life of the inmate “017” with complete impunity. With its tight, almost stifling frame, Sounds uncompromisingly depicts the violence of the prison system and blurs morality: how far is it acceptable to go to get rid of a monster? And above all, who is the real monster in this story?
Lucie Chiquer
CREATION OF THE GODS I: KINGDOM OF STORMS ★★★☆☆
From Wuershan
In a hallucinatory prologue, we vibrate to epic battles and abracadabra political-family intrigues draped in a cloud of SFX and morbid crashes (bodies fall, limbs dislocate). It’s barbaric, mythological, and totally delightful. All these pieces of bravery introduce a story that, inspired by a traditional legend and happily pumping Game of Thrones Or The Lord of the Ringstells of a fierce battle between Gods, men and Taoist sages interspersed with fratricidal duels. Wuershan, a crazy video director, mixes up a crowd of characters and themes to the point of seeming cramped in its one hundred and forty-eight minutes of noise and fury. The viewer (especially Western) gets a bit confused, but it must be recognized that as an alternative to American blockbusters, this Chinese superhero genesis has a hell of a face.
Pierre Lunn
HERE ★★★☆☆
From Bas Devos
A construction worker who gets lost in the infinitely large, wandering between the concrete buildings of Brussels. A biology researcher who explores the infinitely small, observing varieties of plant moss under a microscope. They don’t know each other, they are going to meet, but not right away, not now. Bas Devos prefers to first film these small moments of life that are usually hidden: sitting on the cold floor of his kitchen to empty his fridge, making soup, walking around, looking out the window, and above all, waiting… Devoid of a narrative framework, Here is an exploration of the boredom of his characters as much as our own. At once captivating and soporific, silent and sensory, this film is that of a filmmaker who allows himself simplicity. One might think it insignificant, and yet, its melancholy leaves a mark. Almost imperceptible, yes, but very real.
Lucie Chiquer
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FIRST TO MEDIUM LIKED
LONGLEGS ★★☆☆☆
From Oz Perkins
Designed as a variation on THE Silence of the Lambs, Longlegs depicts the hunt by an FBI investigator (Maika Monroe), in the 90s, for a super creepy and crazy serial killer played by a transfigured Nicolas Cage. Perkins’ angle of attack is to seize the codes, themes and imagery of Demme’s classic to take them to the lands of the occult, spiritualism and Grand-Guignol thrills. There is a side of a small, cinched chemist in his approach that seduces for the time of a few scenes of exposition but Longlegs unfortunately quickly reveals that it has more style than substance. This film, at its core, resembles performance art over the top by Nicolas Cage: entertaining but very banal in its claimed eccentricity.
Frederic Foubert
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THE MEDIUM ★★☆☆☆
By Emmanuel Laskar
Behind and in front of the camera in the title role, Emmanuel Laskar did not choose the easy way out for his first feature film as a director. He tries his hand at a parable about death, boosted by absurd comedy through a medium character who is able to talk to the deceased but is lost in his personal life, weighed down by the death of his mother and a painful breakup. The anti-hero par excellence who, when he falls in love again with a recently widowed artist, has to put up with the regular appearances of her deceased husband who takes a dim view of this relationship! Laskar assumes the odds and ends side of the whole thing and his flirtation with the ridiculous on the directorial side in his very first-degree depictions of ghostly apparitions. His Medium evolves on a tightrope from which he falls as often as he climbs back up. Where, as an admirer of Blake Edwards, he also tries to combine disheveled burlesque and slowness in his creation of gags. The step is too high but a crazy charm operates.
Thierry Cheze
FIRST DIDN’T LIKE
TO THE MOON ★☆☆☆☆
By Greg Berlanti
To the Moon intends to be many things at once: a sweet romantic comedy with a mood screwballcarried by Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum, a neo-Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy duo, adorably bickering before falling into each other’s arms; a pure space conquest film (but seen from the ground up), with all the serious moments that entails (the evocation of the Apollo 1 drama, already recently brought back to light in First Man), “countdown” suspense and epic tone meant to make the hairs on your arms stand on end; and finally, last but not leasta sixties uchronia in the style of “ Once upon a time at NASA”, inspired by one of the most famous conspiracy theories – the idea that the 1969 moon landing was faked. It’s a lot for a single film, which suddenly seems jam-packed, overflowing everywhere (2h11 on the clock!), and doesn’t really work from any angle, neither the romance (laborious, Tatum seems strangely out of sync with his partner), nor the space epic (already seen a hundred times), and even less the wacky fable.
Frederic Foubert
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PEOPLE NEARBY ★☆☆☆☆
By André Téchiné
Lucie (Isabelle Huppert in suburban mode) is a police officer close to retirement and especially haunted by the suicide of her husband, also a police officer. We feel Téchiné’s desire to take us into the heart of an institution suffering from its human side. The first sequences play the realism card. A look soon thwarted by Lucie’s budding friendship with a couple of neighbors whose man is a cop breaker (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart). Moral dilemma and possible reversal of values. Lucie initially hides her profession and thus seems to be playing with fire. Problem, this “fire” never catches and the dramatic stakes end flatly before they even really get going. Hafsia Herzi, who alone constitutes a good reason to stay, unfortunately disappears without warning halfway through. Sad. We can find the actress next to Isabelle Huppert in The Prisoner of Bordeaux by Patricia Mazuy, August 28
Thomas Baurez
Eyou too
The Story Tree, short film program
Napoleon seen by Abel Gance, by Abel Gance
Reprises
Arizona dream, by Emir Kusturica
Dead or alive, by Takashi Miike
Dead or alive 2, by Takashi Miike
Dead or alive 3, by Takashi Miike
Country party, by Jean Renoir
Saravah, by Pierre Barouh
Val Abraham, by Manoel de Oliveira
