Est. 1998
1995 Liste noire45 [ Reviewed on Extra Beurre ] 1997 Los Locos85 [ Reviewed on Extra Beurre ] 1999 Loser Love12 [ Reviewed on Extra Beurre ] 2005 C.R.A.Z.Y.89 [ review ] 2009 The Young Victoria62 [ Reviewed on Extra Beurre ] 2011 Café de Flore59 [ I find that movies like this are the hardest to review. Not because they ultimately fail in my…
2006 Brick67 [ This high school film noir might be too clever by half, it’s stylish but not that stylish, and the cast is not quite as turned on as it should be, though Joseph Gordon-Levitt makes a damn fine melancholy/cynical (self-proclaimed) detective. The story of a misanthropic teenage loner who investigates the mysterious death of his ex-girlfriend, who’d gotten involved with a clique of…
2002 Cabin Fever 50 [ Why is it that Eli Roth can be such a cool and funny geek of a guy when you hear him talking or read interviews with him, but his movies are just not all that great? Maybe it’s because the line is so thin between having fun with B-movie tropes and merely making another B-movie. Set in and around a…
2007 Le cèdre penché74 [ A looser “Once” with a touch of “Morvern Callar”, this impressionistic, semi-improvised, $5000 story of two sisters rekindling about the death of their country singer mother is elevated by the beauty of Viviane Audet, the very present and diverse music and a lot of interesting visual ideas. A small gem of a movie. ] 2008 Derrière moi66 [ When a…
2000 La moitié gauche du frigo67 [ This faux-vérité film about an unemployed engineer’s struggles to find work is both a character study/showcase for actor Paul Ahmarani and a Michael Moore-style leftist treatise about the failings of the capitalist system. Good stuff. ] 2006 Congorama89 “Ich Bin Ein Quebecer!” When a misunderstood Belgian inventor (Olivier Gourmet) learns from his sick old father (Jean-Pierre Cassel) that…
1998 Un 32 août sur terre37 [ Back in 1998, I was in film school and I had just started writing movie reviews online, yet I barely bothered checking out what current Quebec cinema had to offer. Fairly or not, I had the impression that most of our local filmmakers were self-indulgent, pretentious bores and the few late 90s/early 00s Québécois pictures I did watch…
Photo: © Thomas Laisne / Corbis 1998 Seul contre tous 48 [ It opens with a man giving his definition of morality and justice (it involves a gun), followed by a thick slab of exposition summing up what happened in “Carne”, Gaspar Noé’s short film in which he introduced the nameless butcher played by Philippe Nahon. He is now out of prison, living with another…
2010 Les Sept jours du talion77 [ review ] 2010 10 1/2 (2010, Daniel Grou – Podz)56 [ Podz’ first feature, “Les Sept jours du talion”, was not perfect, but its qualities strongly outweighed its flaws. Now, in “10 1/2”, there is still quite a bit to admire, but I feel like this time the negatives slightly overcome the positives. The big problem is Claude…
1987 Bad Taste 51 [ Cheap-ass sci-fi comedy about “extra-terrestrial psychopaths” with a (bad) taste for human flesh fast-food who target a small New Zealand village for invasion. The acting is wretched and the production values are almost non-existent, but Jackson already displays intoxicating visual energy and the gore scenes are good for a few laughs. ] 1989 Meet the Feebles 23 [ Ever wonder…
2009 J’ai tué ma mère58 [ review ] 2010 Les amours imaginaires41 [ review ] 2012 Laurence Anyways50 [ review ] 2013 Tom à la ferme39 [ I’m a sucker for old-school film scores. Seriously, right when the ominous, Bernard Herrmannesque Gabriel Yared score kicked in, some 5 minutes into the film, it had me hooked, even though at that point, we know next to…