Film Reviews by CSF

Very difficult to write a review without spoilers. Some people succeeded remarkably! It is about a sheep farm in the middle of nowhere in a very cold country. After losting one, the happy couple of farmers manage to have a child eventually. Very slowly and very artistically, we are led through an incredible revelation. The first revelation is quick and one has to be attentive; you even wonder if you really saw it. Then comes the next revelation and you try to recover from the soft blow. When a member of the family visits them, he goes through the same soft blows as the spectator and reacts as the spectator (which is a relief). The film could also have been called The Silence of the Lamb, even if it has nothing to do with this story. I would say that the meaning or the lesson in the film is that one can be happy even when one is very different from the norm. But for how long..... My criticism is that I found the film too sober!

The film is well done, well performed, informative and entertaining but, too sober. Sometimes repetitive whereas there would have been a lot more to say. Not enough importance is given about the people who just show inertia, indiferrence or cowardice.

I must say I wanted to see Roberts and Clooney and a light comedy. Very disappointing. I'm glad I didn't pay the cinema to see that. The British comedy, Love Actually' is hundred times better. I am probably prejudiced but I can't remember an American film that makes me laugh (in the old days perhaps). What's more one can see that everybody is walking on eggs. It is most unlikely that a woman highly educated with a potential interesting career, would leave her friends, family and job for ever to live with a fisherman at the other end of the world. But we have to be soooo politically correct! The slightest gaffe and the film is done!!

I loved that film. The actors are incredibly natural. It is almost a remake of the Belgian film, The Eighth Day, directed by Jaco Van Dormael, 1996. Both are moving and funny and, at last, show the world that the Down Syndrome people are far from being retarded. In fact they are just innocent. The story is about the dream of a boy with the D S. He wants to be a fighter and his dream will change people around him for the better and that is rare.

Some directors think that black and white would make their film more intelligent or more artistic. This one is neither. Sheer boredom. I could not see a trace of jealousy anywhere in this story but people trying to survive their own boredom. There are thousands French films that are very exciting, original, interesting but these seem to stay in France. England is not very good at importing good foreign films; not only French one but Italy too is making great films that never come here.

I have never been so bored! It has nothing to do even with the poster or the title. To such an extend that one of the character has to explain why things happened on this beach. If the main point was to live a whole life in 24h, it doesn't show at all. Some events happen out of the blue like a foreign mending piece added when the action is streching for too long. So many questions prop up during the story that it is not credible anymore. For me, 'The Sixth Sense' was the only great film he made. All the others are a vacuum and based mainly on faces looking scared.

One of the worst films I have ever seen. I prefer to read a book by Nietzsche. You have to be a real genious to express Philosophy or Psychololy in raw images. Maybe Fellini or Buñuel.

The film topic has vast potential. The actors are nearly all stars. The director has a great name. You expect an exciting and passionate film. But. The story is not developping clearly, the action is confusing. The actors are under used and the director is a 'debutant'. You expect an exciting and passionate film but It is a film that was very nearly successfully made. At least the end is soothing. I would advise to watch Ettore Scola's "Une Journee Particulière" with Sophia Loren (divine) and Mastroaini (divine), a feminist and LGBT film of 1977! The film is far more poignant than Between Strangers. STill, it is worth watching.

Marco Bellocchio's films are never bad. What's more the film is very true. I remember the newspapers talking about the judge Falcone. Actors are simply great.The film is so authentic than I feel more like discussing the real event than the film himself.

It is a fantastic topic for tension but strangely enough the suspence is not very strong. What makes the success of the Godfather is a permanent state of tension, but the Godfather is a fiction even if based on reality. The Traitor is not a fiction at all and is not glamourised like the Godfather. I wish Judge Falcone was given a more important role in the film, he is a hero in the shade.

However I recommend the film and the review by PV further down.

I made a real effort to go to the end. Grunts and violence all along. It makes me cry to see films like that can find a producer and a director. I read a couple of scripts which would make an outstanding film but the writers are not known and don't have connections. It is so unfair. What a waste of art!

'Operation Mince Meat' is a remake of 'The Man Who Never Was', 1956. I got confused because I thought the old version was to convince Hitler that the D Day was not in Normandy but in Calais. However I prefer the old version. It is more dramatic, more emotional. I found 'Operation MM', a bit cold, somehow mechanical.

In the same type of story, there is a 1994 film called 'Fortitude', telling how British Intelligence sacrificed the life of one of their female spies by giving her a fake secret, arranging her arrestation in France by the Germans, thinking and hoping that she would talk under torture. She didn't. This film by Waris Hussein has vanished! It was a great film. I recommend the book by Larry Collins

I have always loved and admired Joseph Losey but certainly not for that film. The characters are not credible anymore after 20 minutes. The story is not sophisticated enough for the 21st Century. At the end, I felt that the story was pointless.

If I didn't know it was directed by Angelina Jolie, I would have thought it was Oliver Stone or a man anyway. I am amazed how Jolie got realistic about war with, on top of it, the women's point of view. There is no illusion about the love story, it is a cruel, harsh and destructive romance. The man is not the hero/prince one would expect usually; the woman is the eternal and typical victim of any war, crushed by men. Angelina Jolie manages so well to emphasize how the savage side of any human being can emerge even today, not far from us. Scary.

PS Angelina, I am sorry to have underestimated you.

A fantastic film that nobody would dare to show in schools, in England, today. They should. A woman, with everything against her, manages to become a doctor in a country where most men think of them as inferior. What's more, she wants to move things to achieve very useful little things. A lesson of courage and intelligence. It makes us think how many women's intelligence are wasted. She has great ambition with modesty and looks for the welfare of her society.

A husband (Bill Nighy) leaves his wife (Annette Benning) and son for another woman. However during the film you are less and less sure he is the bady. Another kitchen sink drama but enlighted by two famous actors. What is smart about this drama is that you hesitate before taking the side of one of the two main opposed characters. I wanted to be on the side of the wife but I could not. Also the story doesn't give enough 'information' about the characters. Emotion is missing in a situation where emotion occupies a large space ususally. I love this phrase of the other woman, "Before there were 3 unhappy persons, now there are one".