Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Into a Bright Future, The Mermaid: New in theaters this week
What to see in theaters
THE EVENT
INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY ★★★☆☆
By James Mangold
The essential
Harrison Ford returns for one last trip as the adventurer. Perfectible in terms of action, this film finds its meaning in its questioning of the value of heroism.
The adventurer’s final lap, The Dial of Destiny takes place in 1969 and features an aging Indy, who lives alone in his small New York apartment and is about to retire as an archeology professor. It is this moment that his goddaughter, Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge, radiant), chooses to (re) land in his life and put him on the trail of Archimedes’ dial. An artifact coveted by the Nazi Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen, like a fish in water)… Strangely uncomfortable in the field of action, James Mangold has the good idea to question the importance of Indiana Jones as a hero, confronting the myth and its values with ambient materialism. Obsessed with time, regrets and decay, the film holds its common thread until a third act that is bloody puzzling on paper, but which works miraculously. A real moment of wonder, almost childish, like the franchise had never known before.
Francois Leger
Read the full review
FIRST TO MANY LOVED
RUBY, THE TEEN KRAKEN ★★★★☆
By Kirk de Micco
Adolescence can also be a period-sponge, where we absorb everything without distinction, without knowing what it will give later. Ruby the teen kraken looks just like a big animated sponge in which all the influences of the history of DreamWorks Animation squirm, from the crushing father Disney to the British cousins Aardman – and it works. The talk about the mother-daughter relationship is never silly, the animation hot, the rhythm impeccable… And Ruby is never crushed by a second-degree pop obligation, beyond which there is no salvation (according to the US studios), and prefers to assume its charming history of coming of age ultra-epic version (in two words: Ruby is a giant sea monster disguised as an ado rican). What a foot! Wouldn’t this also be one of the best animated films from a large American studio that we have seen recently?
Sylvester Picard
HOW TO SAVE A DEAD FRIEND ★★★★☆
By Marusya Syroechkovaskaya
What to do when, at 16, you want to end your life? Take a camera, promise to live until the end of the year and in the meantime, film yourself. Begin to capture everything, from trivial and everyday moments to more uncertain tomorrows. This is what Marusya, 16, a dented Russian, is gradually undertaking. But that year, she meets Kimi, a tall, blond, kidney-shaped bean with shoulder-length hair, and falls in love. The vow of suicide no longer holds (hallelujah, glory to love!) and for twelve years, she films her couple, stuck in pills, drugs, disillusions. separations and reconciliations. The documentary tells the story of today’s Russian youth, muzzled, idle, and inserts archive footage of the power of the despot Putin. Denounces by the intimate the political depression. Loose. So masterful.
Estelle Aubin
FIRST LOVED
TOWARDS A BRIGHT FUTURE ★★★☆☆
By Nanni Moretti
At 69, Nanni Moretti reigns over almost half a century of an uninterrupted career with maddening consistency. His new opus invites us to take stock or even come full circle. Giovanni, the hero (whom he portrays himself) is a nostalgic filmmaker who still believes in his past ideals (communism, etc.) and in his art, although increasingly disconnected with a present that promises nothing good: his producer wife wants to leave and his Frenchy producer organizes an ubiquitous meeting at Netflix. Towards a bright future can be read as the counterpart of his Mia Madre. The roles are reversed, the muse Margherita Buy at the center of Mia Madre as a director faced with the loss of her mother, she could more or less count on her brother (Moretti). She is now the most loving woman living in the shadow of her invading filmmaker husband. A certain cynicism tinged with irony has replaced the seriousness of feelings. If the truth of reality is implacable, fiction can re-enchant everything. Moretti, like his anti-hero – mutt, reactionary but whose grating irony saves appearances – knows, however, that time is running out.
Thomas Bauras
Read the full review
RHEINGOLD ★★★☆☆
By Fatih Akin
Here, few are those who know Xatar. In Germany, it is the equivalent of an Orelsan or a JoeyStarr. Fatih Akin decided to portray himself by adapting his autobiography. Nevertheless, Rheingold is not a rap biopic like the others. Nothing to see with 8 miles For example. We are more in the field of popular social comedies or Guy Ritchie-style urban thrillers. Akin recounts the trajectory of this young rapper embroiled in schemes more delirious than each other. The filmmaker mixes genres, styles, and we go from coming of age story to heist film, from romance to fable. But Rheingold holds especially thanks to its overpowered actor. The superhuman beauty and staggering presence of Emilio Sakraya is the real treasure of this Rhinegold.
Gael Golhen
MERMAID ★★★☆☆
By Sepideh Farsi
We are in Iran, in 1980, during the Iraqi invasion, in the city of Abadan: while it is about to fall under the battering of the invaders, the young Omid tries to convince a handful of inhabitants to leave Abadan by boat. Unit of time, place, action: Mermaid draws the circle of a somewhat absurd quest, that of persuading a gallery of more or less mystical characters to escape certain death in order (perhaps) to confront another. It’s a pretty cinematographic process – if one can qualify as pretty a film which, as Waltz with Bashir And Josep, intends to confront the most violent memories of a somewhat forgotten war. The cinema of the director Sepideh Farsi, until now mixing documentary and fiction finds in animation a new and ideal form.
Sylvester Picard
Read the full review
FARANG ★★★☆☆
By Xavier Gens
five years later Budapest, Xavier Gens returns to his favorite field: gender. The assumed shadow ofngo Bak hangs over this story where an exemplary ex-con, forced to start a new life in Thailand after a fatal accident during his reintegration, sees a local godfather murder his family and lead him on a quest for revenge. The result is proving to be extremely effective, particularly in the way Gens tackles the issue of violence head-on, without complacency.
Thierry Cheze
THE HOUSE OF THE LOST ★★★☆☆
By Shinya Kawatsura
Film from the David studio, which took part in the Tale of Princess Kaguya (2013) but has mostly created series adapted from manga for Japanese TV (JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure) and adapted from a novel by Sachiko Kashiwaba (the author behind Wonderland: The Kingdom Without Rain), The House of the Lost could be just another small animated object lost in our beautiful country / But it’s much more than that. The intro, where three women (an old woman, a teenager and a kid) slowly cross a devastated city in silence to reach the title place, is absolutely fabulous. And probably even sets the bar a little too high for the sequel, which remains very pretty (the story of female emancipation away from men), skillfully manages to mix different styles of animation… And then there you go that the fantastic arises in the film, which can divide. But the artistic gesture remains fascinating.
Sylvester Picard
CHONCHON, THE CUTEST PIG ★★★☆☆
By Mascha Halberstad
The extra thing with stop-motion animation, it’s not the tinkering, it’s the carnal – and this little pig, from the Netherlands, is precisely a matter of (sausage) meat . Babs, a vegetarian girl, receives an adorable little pig as a gift from her grandpa returning from exile in the USA, except that the grandpa secretly fattens it for a meat competition, and that Chonchon is a real pink tornado that passes its time to frolic… and to shit everywhere, in astronomical proportions! Here’s something to do for sure Chonchon a superstar with children, and even more so if parents frown at such a display of flesh, in a film that ultimately sees itself as a trashy comedy for the little ones. Great, right?
Sylvester Picard
Find these films near you thanks to Première Go
FIRST TO MODERATELY LOVED
HER NAME IS BARBARA ★★☆☆☆
By Sérgio Tréfaut
The Barbara who gives her title to this feature film is a young Portuguese woman who has decided to cast off to follow her French husband to Iraq and join Daesh together. When the film begins, three years have passed, her husband dies under the bullets of a firing squad and Barbara, mother of two children and pregnant with a third, awaits her trial in a jihadist prison camp. Sérgio Tréfaut approaches this complex subject by evolving with great fluidity on a thin line between fiction and documentary. He recounts the daily life of this young woman and the relatives allowed to visit her (the mother of her husband who came to collect the remains of her son, her own father, etc.) with a desire never to push open doors, to never seem never really seek to unravel the mystery of this young woman, of whom we never know if she was the victim of this enlistment or willing to join. And, little by little, the qualities of the film also become its faults. Because by dint of tracking down any emotion to nip it in the bud, Tréfaut ends up devitalizing his words, creating an overly artificial distance, as if he was kicking into touch for fear of confronting it. Do not miss, in a week, on the same subject and this same tenuous border between documentary and fiction, Kaouther Ben Hania who, by following the opposite logic, succeeds in hitting the mark with Olfa’s Daughterswithout ever falling into the tearfulness so dreaded by Tréfaut.
Thierry Cheze
PREMIERE DIDN’T LIKE
PASSAGES ★☆☆☆☆
By Ira Sachs
After Frankiefilmed in Portugal with Isabelle Huppert, Ira Sachs continues his tour of Europe with this Crossings Parisian, around an eminently French subject: the threesome (to be pronounced with a Yankee accent). Tomas (Franz Rogowski), a capricious director who goes out with Martin (Ben Wishaw), begins an affair with Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos) and can no longer choose between the two… The “New Wave-style marivaudage directed by an American in Paris ” is one of the most formidable genres there is (a bit like westerns made by French people) and Ira Sachs, with the exception of a few beautiful sex scenes, accumulates tourist clichés (Adèle Exarchopoulos singing out of tune “Le Temps des Cherries” in a close-up à la Godard/Karina), which may be exotic seen from New York, but totally disqualifying here.
Frederic Foubert
And also
Last session in Bucharest, by Ludi Boeken
Master Poutifard’s Revenge, by Pierre-Francois Martin-Laval
The covers
House, by Nobuhiko Obayashi
The Samurai, by Jean-Pierre Melville
