FILM REVIEWS:
AD VITAM (France 2024) ***
Directed by Rudolph Lauga
The hero of the movie is a member of the elite force called GIGN. To those unfamiliar with the acronym, The GIGN (French: Groupe d'intervention de la Gendarmerie nationale pronunciation; translation "National Gendarmerie Intervention Group") is the elite police tactical unit of the French National Gendarmerie. Among its missions are counterterrorism, hostage rescue, surveillance of national threats, protection of government officials, critical site protection (such as French embassies in war-torn countries), and targeting organized crime. Established in 1973 and becoming operational in 1974, the GIGN was initially created as a relatively small tactical unit specialized in sensitive hostage situations but has since grown into a larger force with expanded responsibilities and capabilities. It is now composed of nearly 1,000 operators: around 400 operators based in Satory, near Versailles in the Paris area and approximately 600 operators in fourteen regional GIGN branches called AGIGNs (Antennes du GIGN), located in metropolitan France or in the French overseas territories.
The new French action flick is called AD VITAM. Ad Vitam is a Latin phrase meaning "for life”. The film is not to be confused with the 2018 French TV series (by Thomas Cailley) of the same name which premiered at TIFF in 2018.
A former member of the GIGN , Franck Lazareff (Guillaume Canet) now lives with his wife Leo and is about to become a father. That's when a criminal organization linked to his years in the GIGN bursts into their home and kidnaps the young woman. In exchange for his wife's life, Franck will have to obey the orders of the group. Helped by his friend Ben, he only has 4 hours to act.
` If the pilot sounds something like TAKEN, the film is sort of TAKEN, French style with paragliding and a few other high suspense additions added into the plot. The film can be described as the typical suspense thriller, French style, though it contains a few fillers to make the running time stretch to 90 monies, A nice take is that Leo, his wife is also trained as GIGN and is a fitting kick-ass female, rather than a damsel in distress. Overall, it was an ok watch!
AD VITAM opens for streaming on Netflix on Friday, January 10th.
Trailer:
DEN OF THIEVES 2: PANTERA (USA 2024)
Directed by Christian Gudegast
DEN OF THIEVES 2 OR PANTERA is the direct sequel of DEN OF THIEVES, a 2018 American heist film, written, directed, and produced by Christian Gudegast. It stars Gerard Butler, Pablo Schreiber, Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Evan Jones, Dawn Olivieri, Mo McRae, and Max Holloway. In the film, a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputy gang looks to stop a crew of thieves consisting of ex-MARSOC Marines that are planning to rob the Federal Reserve in Los Angeles. The film cost $30 million to make and made $80.5 million and was distributed by STXfilms. A huge success!
Lionsgate acquired the sequel and will distribute the film. The cost of the new film has not been disclosed and is anyone’s guess at present.
Immediately following the events of Den of Thieves, sheriff "Big Nick" O'Brien (Gerard Butler) is tracking down Donnie Wilson (O’Shea Jackson Jr.), who escaped to Europe and is planning another heist. Nick offers Donnie an offer he cannot refuse, an offer in which Donnie is forced to join forces with Nick in robbing the vaults in the highly secure diamond district in Nice. The heist is planned with other henchmen and led by Jovanna (Erin Ahmad) who has a fling with Nick. This is a rare action film in which Butler plays on the other side of the law. Unlike his clean-cut looks in the first film, he is all gruff and bearded in this one. However, his switch to his side of the law is not believable as there is no concrete reason given for him to do the switch, given how delicate he was in the film as a crime buster.
The script by Gudegast aims to emulate the heist films of the 70s and 60s. The film GAMBIT comes to mind in terms of the sophistication of the security surrounding the gem that is to be stolen. One difference is that DEN 2 is filled with too many coincidences from start to finish, so much so that it is totally laughable to the point of being ridiculous. The climax of the springing of a convict out of the blue or the rescue of Donnie and Nick by the mafia at the exact instant and place are examples. The film also runs over 2 hours and contains many too-stretched-out segments. There’s a lot of planning in the heist, a lot of which makes little sense, but enough to allow the audience to believe that they understand what is going on.
The film is shot in the U.K. and the Canary Islands, substituting several places the stores are set from Nice, Sardinia, and other exotic locations,
Being set primarily in Nice, there are a lot of French/American jokes that involve Americans making fun of French cuisine and the French looking down on Americans not being able to propane French words. Nick is supposed to be an American but Butler is in reality born in Scotland with parents of Irish decent and reared for a time in Quebec,
DEN OF THIEVES 2: PANTERA with its larger budget could have been a much better film given a better-written and credible script despite a few impressive action set pieces.
Trailer:
DISCO’S REVENGE (USA 2024) ***
Directed by Omar Majeed and Peter Mishara
Disco is a genre of dance music and a subculture that emerged in the late 1960s from the United States' urban nightlife scene. Its sound is typified by four-on-the-floor beats, syncopated basslines, string sections, brass and horns, electric piano, synthesizers, and electric rhythm guitars. The film DISCO’S REVENGE traces disco’s beginnings including going into the depth of the rhythm creation mentioned earlier, illustrating the fact with how one song is composed. Note that the word disco has nothing to do with discothèques which are venues mostly of a French invention, imported to the United States.
DISCO’S REVENGE shows that disco never died. In the early 70s, the beat child of New York’s Black and LGBTQ+ communities was born on the city’s underground dance floor. Disco emerged as an exuberant musical genre, a vital social movement and a vibrant culture before enduring a vicious backlash nearly a decade later. In our collective pop-culture imagination, Disco is merely a fad relegated to soft-focus memories of Saturday Night Fever and Studio 54.
The film is a pulsating deep dive into the very soul of disco music and its enduring impact across genres and history, told by the people who created it, nurtured it, and in turn, discovered themselves on the dance floor. The film asks: Why does disco matter and, in these divisive times, why does disco matter now more than ever?
The doc is a little one-sided in that it sidesteps the white part of disco. The Bee Gees is only mentioned slightly though their contribution through the soundtrack of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE was a great influence that was only slightly mentioned. The doc features interviews and performances by black folk like Nile Rodgers and Chic, Billy Porter, Nona Hendryx and LaBelle, Grandmaster Flash, Fab Five Freddy, Nicky Siano, Earl Young and The Trammps, Jellybean Benitez, Kevin Saunderson, Sylvester and Martha Wash and many others. Though most of the interviewees are coloured, the film succeeds in capturing the spirit of disco. There are many moments in the film, where one is reminded of those great disco days, and one would just get up right at the moment and dance. Thought centring on black performers, their songs did create much to spurt the disco moment with unforgettable soaring hits like “Fly Robin Fly”, “Everybody Dance” and “We Are Family”.
Also, as mentioned in the doc, Disco music as a genre started as a mixture of music from venues popular among African-Americans, Hispanic and Latino Americans, gay Americans, and Italian-Americans in New York City (especially Brooklyn) and Philadelphia during the late 1960s to the mid-to-late 1970s. There is great emphasis in the gay scene with the history of Stonewall again brought back into the picture. Several dance styles were developed during the period of 70s disco's popularity in the United States, including "the Bump", "the Hustle", "the Watergate", and "the Busstop” The most popular ‘hustle’ with the famous hustle tune heard on the soundtrack. The AIDS epidemic is again examined. At best, the doc captures the soaring spirit of the oneness and rhythm of the unforgettable sound of disco, bringing back fond memories of an era often clouded by prejudice and hate for things unknown.
DISCO’S REVENGE is available on all digital platforms on January 7th, Tuesday.
Trailer:
THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG (Iran/France/Germany 2024) ***½
Directed by Mohammad Rasoulof
THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG is yet another film about women’s rights in Iran, a country that still forces women to wear face coverings. A very strict husband and father, Iman (Misagh Zare) is an ambitious middle-class lawyer working for the Iranian government. He has just been promoted to state investigator — the stepping stone to becoming a revolutionary court judge — and, alongside an increase in income and social cachet, his family has received clear instructions on what is required of them as Iman’s star rises in the eyes of the state. His wife (Soheila Golestani) and adolescent daughters (the scene-stealing Setareh Maleki and Mahsa Rostami) must fall in line and never let anyone know of the father’s work lest the family get persecuted by activists. When the father finds his gun missing, all hell breaks loose in the family tearing it apart. The stakes get higher when social media learns of the father’s work and there is a post on the internet causing the family to leave the city. The social and family drama works well in a gripping dramatic account but when it turns to a cat-and-mouse thriller at the end, the transition does not really work. Still - the Special Jury Prize winner at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.
Opens next week:
LA PIETA (also known as PIETY) (Argentian/Spain 2022) ***
Directed by Eduardo Casanova
A mother and son relationship taken to the extreme is the premise of this new disturbing surreal and horrifying drama entitled LA PIETA (The Pity) an Argentinian film that opens this Friday on Digital including Film Movement.
A mother-son relationship has always attracted attention, though mostly in a negative way. The cause of homosexuality was initially believed to be due to the strong bond between the male and son of his mother. In classical psychoanalytic theory, the Oedipus complex (also spelled Œdipus complex) refers to a son's sexual attitude towards his mother and concomitant hostility toward his father (Shown in the film with a torn photograph of the father) first formed during the phallic stage of psychosexual development.
Mateo and his mother Lili (Ángela Molina) have been inseparable for years. The two share an apartment, answer questions for each other and spend practically all their moments together. But this bond becomes fraught when Lili is diagnosed with a fatal illness. This is where the film starts when the words: “You have cancer” are heard on the soundtrack with the clock showing 6 sharp in the year 2011. The film then flashes back to three weeks earlier of the diagnosis. With the limited time Lili has left, the pair take their toxic mother-son relationship to extreme ends.
The pair do everything together for eating. sleeping and even vomiting together. There is no escape. In one scene in the hospital where the son is taken, the mother insists on being in the same room with him, and when the response is a ‘no, she insists that the door of the room remain open. But even when the son, attempts to leave the hospital through the exit, he finds himself unable to do so. Then, the mother appears to stop the boy.
In Spain, teenager Mateo and his mother Libertad live together in a lavish, pink apartment. Mateo is increasingly aware of his mother's overbearing behavior, such as refusing to ever get separated in public, always sleeping together, and answering for him when asked questions. After Mateo tries to flee during Libertad's hospital checkup, she purposely injures Mateo's toenail when trimming him back at home. When she is sleeping, Mateo tries to run away, but experiences a severe headache and collapses on the street. There is news on TV about North Korea and the events there eventually play a part in the lives of the two.
Director Casanova loves to film in pink. From the wardrobe of the two at the dinner table to the pajamas and bedroom into the bedroom to even the floor and walls of the residence, pink is the preferred colour of choice. The colour gives the boy the look of being gay, though the sexual orientation is never addressed in the film. The pink look also gives the film a surreal and futuristic look.
It should be noted that this film is produced by Spanish horror master Alex de la Iglesia, famous for films like MUTANT ACTION, DAY OF THE BEAST, THE LAST CIRCUS, and WITCHING AND BITCHING. LA PIETA is a “gorgeously vulgar and shocking” work unlike any other. Winner of the Special Jury Award at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, Casanova’s latest film is a “strange, yet surprisingly heart-breaking film” that encapsulates “bizarre art horror at its finest" (as described by Dread Central).
Intriguing, disturbing but ultimately wickedly entertaining, LA PIETA feels like a cross between Alex de la Iglesia who produced the film, and Pedro Almodovar.
LA PIETA primers on VOD, Digital and Film Movement January the 17th, Friday,Trailer:
