Spider-Man: Brand new day, I want your sex, Marvelous Mornings: new releases at the cinema this week
What to see in theaters
THE EVENT
SPIDER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY ★★★☆☆
By Destin Daniel Cretton
The essentials
After the fan service orgy of No Way Home, Peter Parker finds his DNA at the instigation of the director of Shang-Chi. The best Spider-Man of the Tom Holland era!
Five years after his last adventure, where he crossed paths with Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield in a crossover acclaimed by the public, the Tom Holland version of Spider-Man returns to the cinema for a fourth solo film. At the end of the previous part, the Weaver asked Doctor Strange to erase Peter Parker from the memories of the inhabitants of his universe to repair his stupidities. His girlfriend MJ (Zendaya) and his best friend Ned no longer know who he is. It is an isolated and depressed Spidey that we find in Brand New Day. His only pleasure: fighting crime in the streets of New York, twirling between skyscrapers like in the good old days of Sam Raimi films. Brand New Day is the best Spider-Man of the Tom Holland era. And this is greatly to the credit of Destin Daniel Cretton who knows how to film the action as well as the most intimate sequences, alternating them and taking advantage of the alchemy of his casting, while doing honorably with the rather light Marvel specifications. The themes addressed by Brand New Day are not revolutionary and the film is clearly too long but it is difficult to deny pleasure in the face of solid entertainment which does not take the viewer for a fool.
Edward Orozco
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FIRST TO LIKE
I WANT YOUR SEX ★★★☆☆
By Gregg Araki
Gregg Araki hadn’t made a feature film since White Bird, 12 years ago. But nothing has changed: I want your sex redeploys its desires for trashy and neon comedy. The colors may be a bit washed out but the desire to capture the spirit of the times is still there. In this case, via an erotic farce on art and predation, where a nymphomaniac contemporary artist transforms her young and kind assistant into a sex slave. His sometimes approximate social comments and his conventional caricature of the art world are constantly saved by the disconcerting and joyfully inconsistent mood that reigns there. And, above all, by the insane energy of its actors: Olivia Wilde is unleashed as Mrs Robinson SM and Cooper Hoffman, with an irresistible burlesque awkwardness, both funny and moving. Reasons enough to taste this tangy candy, and too bad if we forget it quickly after having savored it.
Frédéric Foubert
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WONDERFUL MORNINGS ★★★☆☆
By Avril Besson
A film like a balancing act whose assumed awkwardness only increases the charm. Nominated for a César with her short Queen size, Avril Besson moves on to the long story following the journey to the South undertaken, after the death of her grandmother, by a Parisian to find the owner of the old vinyl records she inherited. This journey will take her to a village where she will befriend people who are always a little outside of themselves, accepting their fragility instead of trying to cure it. The Marvelous Mornings marries their personalities, the burlesque humor of the situations rubs shoulders with a deep melancholy, without ever falling into the trap of the picturesque thanks to the deep sincerity of the director and the trio assembled in front of her camera: India Hair-Raya Martigny-Eric Cantona. Their play, rich in nuances, and their alchemy give substance to these seemingly small nothings that make a big whole. A declaration of love to beings dented by existence.
Thierry Cheze
THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE ★★★☆☆
By Hélène Rosselet-Ruiz
Malou Khebizi emerged in 2024 with Diamant brut but with a character so close in appearance to her that her ability not to remain the actress of a single role remained uncertain. This doubt is removed. She carries this Golden Triangle on her strong shoulders. In this first feature, she plays a young woman hired to serve a rich Saudi and his mistress in a private hotel which will transform into a golden prison able to close in on her and her “boss”, much more fragile than she appears. The film (surprisingly close to the recent Moon by Kurdwin Ayub) suffers from plot weaknesses but has the merit of not unnecessarily psychologizing things and of drawing a eulogy of a sorority that is anything but obvious from the outset. But his major asset lies in the way in which Malou Khebizi takes hold of his character to take him where he is least expected, through his breaks in rhythm, his ease in playing firmness and softness, explosiveness and interiority with the same accuracy.
Thierry Cheze
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FIRST TO MODERATELY LIKED
TOMMY GUNS ★★☆☆☆
By Carlos Conceição
Carlos Conceição takes us to Angola in 1974, in the very final stretch of 14 years of war of liberation which the following year put an end to four centuries of Portuguese colonization. In this film constructed by following several successive main characters (a young Angolan woman, a Portuguese soldier under the orders of a leader worthy of the drill sergeant Hartman from Full Metal Jacket, in a military compound surrounded by a wall which seems endless, a prostitute), the realism of the political and social situation regularly fades in favor of a cleverly orchestrated fantastic atmosphere. This gives depth to the subject, never locked into an academic demonstration, but also regularly creates – because of the length or a tendency towards a somewhat forced hyper-stylization of its production – distance with a story within which we regularly have the feeling of being lost a little too gratuitously.
Thierry Cheze
THE UGLY ★★☆☆☆
By Yeon Sang-ho
Yeon Sang-ho’s films come to us in scattered order. After Colony, his zombie film released here at the end of May, here is The Ugly, shot before, and which the director of Last Train to Busan adapted from his comic book Face, published in 2018. Far from the fantastical worlds with which we associate it, the film mixes the family chronicle with the thriller, through the investigation carried out by a young man into his mother, whom he never knew and whom he later discovers was renowned – and rejected – for her ugliness. With this fable about prejudices and intolerance, it is the dark side of seventies South Korea in the midst of an “economic miracle” that Yeon intends to reveal. The context is interesting, the setting intriguing, but the story loses its strength over scenes that are too talkative, until a final twist supposed to turn everything upside down and put it into perspective, but which seemed artificial and clumsy to us.
Frédéric Foubert
PREMIERE DID NOT LIKE
HOME STORIES ★☆☆☆☆
By Eva Trobisch
7 years ago, Eva Trobisch signed As if nothing was a strong and disturbing film about denial and resilience in the face of sexual assault. A first feature film rich in promise although tending to be a little too dispersed in subplots. This downside is unfortunately found at the heart of this Home stories where it is at the same time a question of a 16-year-old German teenager gifted in singing about to participate in the local The Voice, of her little brother, of her best friend, of her aunt who represents her role model, of her parents who have just divorced but are about to mend their ways, of her grandparents who manage a hotel on the verge of bankruptcy located in the former GDR. Don’t throw any more away, the cup is full! Even in two hours, the director struggles to make these characters exist and make us passionate. And, in turn, to give substance to this family portrait through which we perceive that she intends to recount the ever-present collateral damage of reunification without ever achieving it. A disappointment.
Thierry Cheze
And also
Lost in territories, by Nadav Shlomo Giladi
The covers
Lawrence of Arabia by David Lean
The Seagull and the Cat by Enzo D’Alo
RRR by SS Rajamouli
