The French Dispatch

Year of Release:  2021

Director:  Wes Anderson

Screenplay:  Wes Anderson, from a story by Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola, Hugo Guinness and Jason Schwartzman

Starring:  Bill Murray, Benicio del Toro, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Léa Seydoux, Frances McDormand, Timothée Chalamet, Lyna Khoudri, Jeffrey Wright, Mathieu Amalric, Stephen Park, Owen Wilson

Running Time:  103 minutes

Genre:  Drama, comedy

The French Dispatch, the foreign bureau of a Kansas newspaper, is based in the quirky city of Ennui-sur-Blasé, and presided over by formidable editor Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Murray).  When Arthur dies suddenly of a heart attack, the staff of the magazine prepare one final issue, which will serve as a memorial to Arthur and a farewell to the magazine.  It consists of an obituary, a travelogue feature, and three stories:  A murderer (del Toro) serving a life sentence for double murder proves to be a talented artist, with the help of a prison guard (Seydoux), and attracts the attention of a sleazy art dealer (Brody).  In the second story, an American writer (McDormand) becomes involved in a protest movement lead by a chess-playing revolutionary (Chalamet).  In the third story, a food writer (Wright) becomes involved in a kidnapping scheme while trying to write an article about legendary police chef (Park).

The film is an anthology and what we see is the final issue of The French Dispatch, which is clever and, to my knowledge, unique way of presenting a film.  It has a huge ensemble cast, which also includes Edward Norton, Willem Dafoe, Saoirse Ronan, Elisabeth Moss, Christoph Waltz and Anjelica Huston in small roles.  Set in a fictional city, in an undefined mid 20th Century setting, this is a delightful film, everything is intricately designed, and every frame is carefully composed.  The film moves from colour to black and white, there are spilt screen images, quirky captions,  and even a couple of animated sequences.  It feels like a delicately constructed piece of elaborate machinery, where any flaw in the thing and the whole would collapse.  Often when comedy is too carefully constructed and designed, it can work against the humour and feel airless, however this is a very funny film, although, as with most Anderson films, it is more whimsical and witty than hysterical.  The music by Alexandre Desplat helps invoke the Sixties French glamour, and the soundtrack features Charles Aznavour, Ennio Morricone, Grace Jones, Chantal Goya and Jarvis Cocker.  This is very much a Wes Anderson film and if you don't like his work, then this will likely not win you over, I do like his work and I enjoyed this film a lot. The cast is all good, and there is so much charm in this film that it is almost impossible not to be won over.  It's a love letter to journalism, sixties France and French cinema, and I was left wishing that The French Dispatch might put out some more issues.

The staff of The French Dispatch

Midnight in Paris

Year:  2011
Director:  Woody Allen
Screenplay:  Woody Allen
Starring:  Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard, Kathy Bates, Carla Bruni, Adrien Brody, Michael Sheen
Running Time:  100 minutes
Genre:  Comedy, fantasy, romance, time-travel

Have you ever wished that you could escape from the present day and live in an earlier time?  This is the question dealt with in writer/director Woody Allen's 41st film.  Hollywood screenwriter and aspiring novelist Gil Pender (Wilson) takes a holiday to Paris with his fiancee Inez (McAdams).  Gil falls in love with Paris while Inez is much more resistant to it's charms.  In particular Gil imagines what the city would have been like in the Golden Age of the 1920s.  While Inez is distracted by her friend Paul (Sheen), a pedantic pseudo-intellectual who she idolizes, Gil takes to wandering the city streets at night, until one night, at the stroke of midnight, he is picked up by a vintage car and finds himself whisked back to the Paris of the 1920s.  Soon Gil is spending every night partying with F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston and Allison Pill), Gertrude Stein (Bates), Salvador Dali (Brody), Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll), Cole Porter (Yves Heck), Luis Bunuel (Adrien de Van) and Pablo Picasso (Marcial Di Fonzo Bo).  He quickly finds himself becoming increasingly disenchanted with both the 21st Century and Inez, especially when he meets the alluring Adriana (Cotillard).  However Adriana herself is in love with the idea of her own Golden Age:  Paris in the 19th century Belle Epoque.

This is Woody Allen's best movie in recent years and probably one of the best movies that he is made.  An engaging and effortlessly charming film, which is genuinely funny and directed with a light touch.  The performances are uniformly brilliant and there is a genuine sense of magic .  Despite a brief, half-hearted discussion of contemporary politics (Inez's father (Kurt Fuller) is a fervent Republican and not a fan of the French) this is timeless.  It both celebrates and critiques the yearning for some nostalgic, long departed Golden Age.  Woody Allen's earlier films are often seen as being love letters to his native New York, and this is an unashamed love letter to Paris and is more affecting and beautiful than any of his earlier New York celebrations.  There is a sense here also of Woody Allen rediscovering the magic of cinema itself.  

Entertaining and funny, this is a perfect romantic movie and will appeal to more than just Woody Allen fans.  This film is going to do wonders for the Parisian tourist industry.

Marion Cotillard and Owen Wilson spend Midnight in Paris 

Predators

Year: 2010
Director: Nimrod Antal
Screenplay: Michael Finch and Alex Litvak, based on characters created by Jim Thomas and John Thomas
Starring: Adrien Brody, Topher Grace, Alice Braga, Laurence Fishburne, Danny Trejo and Derek Mears
Running Time: 107 minutes
Genre: Science-fiction, action, adventure


Summary: Ex-US Army Special Forces soldier turned mercenary, Royce (Brody), wakes up to find himself in freefall above a mysterious jungle with no memory of how he got there. When he lands in the jungle he encounters others including a Mexican drug cartel enforcer (Trejo), a black ops sniper (Braga) and a US Death Row inmate (Walton Goggins). All of them are highly trained soliders or murderous criminals. The one exception appears to be an ordinary doctor (Grace). Deciding to join forces, the group soon discover that they are on an alien planet, which is being used as a giant game preserve. They have been brought there by a technologically-advanced race of alien "Predators", who bring the most dangerous specimens from various worlds to their planet in order to hunt and kill them for sport.

Opinions: This Robert Rodriguez produced movie is the fourth film to feature the Predator aliens, following Predator (1987), Predator 2 (1991), Aliens vs. Predator (2004) and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007). However, while the events of the first film are referenced in the movie, the other sequels are completely ignored, which is understandable in the case of the Aliens vs. Predator films. This film is very close in spirit to the original, returning to the first film's jungle setting and it's survival-action storyline. The title of this movie, which is an intentional reference to Aliens (1986), also has something of a double meaning referring both to the alien Predators themselves as well as to the human characters, who are referred to by one character as "the monsters of our world". It's safe to say that not many of them are particularly likeable or sympathetic, with the exception of Alice Braga's sniper. The performances are uniformly good with Adrien Brody, who put on 25 pounds of muscle to play the part, particularly effective in the lead role. The movie hearkens back to the spirit of the all-out action movies of the 1980s with the pace rarely letting up once the movie kicks into gear. The action scenes are well-handled and manage not to degenerate into a confusing mess and the special effects are all very impressive with the Predators particularly impressive, with each creature given individual design touches, with the basic design thankfully largely unchanged. There are also some new creatures added to the mix. The main problem with the movie is that there are not really many surprises, basically it's just the original Predator but on a much larger scale. Also the movie doesn't really have a proper ending it just kind of stops, presumably to leave room for the inevitable sequel.
However, it is a fun back to basics action movie which manages to be consistently entertaining and containing enough action and monsters to keep both fans of the series and general movie-goers happy.