Change Your Image
cinemazit
Reviews
Le journal du séducteur (1996)
she looks like her father
I thought Chiara Mastroianni looked like her mother on the vhs cover. On film, she looks just like dad. There is no other reason to see this film. Her character, Claire, spends too much time ringing doorbells that don't get answered by half-baked passive characters stuck in a less than half-baked movie.
Chutney Popcorn (1999)
kick myself
I rented this film after hearing Roger Ebert mention it on "At the Movies." I really enjoyed seeing it. Weeks later I was still saying aloud, out of the blue, my favorite line: "big, old dyke" and be grinning from ear to ear. It was the first time I saw Jill Hennessy in anything, so, now, whenever I see her on tv, I say: There's Lisa. Oh yeah, Blockbuster had a previously viewed copy for sale one week my personal funds were too low to buy it. It was gone the next week.
Kikujirô no natsu (1999)
a painfully long ride to nowhere
Overall a boring on the road movie sprinkled with a few found objects on the way. The idea of the unwanted misfits giving the boy a happy camping trip was okay. But my favorite characters were the two women with speaking parts - the juggler met enroute and Kikujiro's wife. If one travels his whole life on a quest to find answers to his all important WHY?, how can he just give up, literally, at that last possible second?
Xi zao (1999)
community
My favorite part of this film was the old man's attempt to cure his neighbor's ills by putting the strong medicine in his bath. There is more than a sense of family, there is a sense of community.
La femme de mon pote (1983)
hot beauty at the slopes
I was bowled over by the performance of Isabelle Huppert in Coup de Foudre (1983). So I rented this film for 99-cents from my local vid shop to get the chance to see her again. I got my dollar's worth from my Isabelle Huppert fix, the movie could have been better. I'm sure the filmmaker thought he had plenty of interesting elements to work with here: two best friends (Pascal works all day, Mickey is a DJ at night) fall for the same girl, Viviane, and the setting - the action takes place at a ski resort (the play of warm sunshine despite the cold snow, the interplay of skiers ascending the mountain via tow ropes right in front of Pascal's house, etc.) Pascal is the cave man, an ex-jock whose interests include food, shelter (preferably sharing his bed with a warm woman), and nice clothes. Mickey is more evolved but is beset with self doubts and has trouble with his conscience. Viviane is a free spirit whose sexual experiences started at an early age. Sex is not a moral issue for her and it is something she is good at. The characters are drawn so thinly that you can watch the action, but not really believe or accept it. White subtitles are nasty superimposed on the snow. And I still don't know what Mickey was supposed to do with Pascal's present from Paris.