Sunday, January 5, 2014

Quickies: January 2014


Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (2011) ✭✭✭

Lasse Hallström is quite good at adult fairy tales and this one is entertaining if never quite enthralling. Ewan McGregor stars as a bookish hydrologist who agrees to the daunting task of building a salmon run in the desert for a visionary fly-fishing sheik (Amr Waked). All in good, light fun, with romance, tragedy and a wonderfully conniving Kristen Scott Thomas on the docket. 





Seventh Heaven (1997) ✭✭✭




If your a big fan of the Lindons (Vincent and Sandrine Kiberlain) you’ll probably like this not-terribly-thrilling thriller about kleptomania, hypnosis and some other stuff I don’t remember. If not, skip it.






Our Children (2012) ✭✭





I hate to give this such a low star rating. I love Emilie Dequenne and director Joachim Lafosse’s previous film Private Property (2005) was excellent. Even though it deals with a horrific subject - Prolicide - Our Children never generates much in the way of empathy, condemnation or really any emotion at all. It’s cold, clinical and a jumble.


2 comments:

Marcheline said...

Salmon fishing was a good movie, but sort of tepid. I wish they would have gone ahead and made the love story really good and juicy. I adored Amr Waked as the Sheik - he was lovely.

That last one, the french movie - the title on the photo you posted says "To Lose All Reason". I've always wondered why they can't just pick a name for a movie (or a country, for that matter) and have everyone call it the same thing.

If people call their own country Deutschland, why do we call it Germany and Spaniards call it Alemania, etc. etc? Why doesn't each country get to pick their own name? It's irritating.

Bunched Undies said...

Those wacky French…they have a different word for everything!

Roma (2018) ✭✭✭✭✭

Alfonso Cuarón’s directorial career has dealt with everything from updated Dickens ( Great Expectations ) to twisted coming of age ( Y Tu Ma...