Change Your Image
johnemb
Reviews
Entre les murs (2008)
Not for everyone
This film starts out in the teacher's lounge in an (secondary) school in Paris. It is the start of a new school year, and the teachers are planning the coming year.
We follow a male, relatively young, French teacher (he teaches the French language) and his class, consisting of a good mix of native French and immigrants, males and females.
Watching this film in the cinema I felt interested for about half the length of the film. The dialogs between the teacher and his students were at times fun and interesting to see. The teacher, as well as the film audience, wants to get to know the students better, what their personalities are like.
However, as the film progresses, I lost interest - it became almost monotonous. I expected something more... a real plot, a story. Then again, the feeling of the film is very much as a documentary. This is a good indication of the quality of the acting, which was very good indeed.
For me, this film was too long and in the end not very interesting nor satisfying (I won't say more, to avoid having to give a spoiler alert).
I will recommend this film for certain groups of people only. Consider seeing this film if you are:
- Learning or otherwise interested in the French language.
- Above average interested in the French school system.
- A school teacher.
- A pupil/student in Junior High or equivalent.
- A parent of one or more kids in the age of 13 to 16.
If you do not fit well into one of these descriptions, you are probably better off spending your time and money on something else.
Metallica: Some Kind of Monster (2004)
A solid, deep down, honest kind of monster
I watched this film at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival at its second screening, in a nearly full theater. This is a documentary far from any of the others out there about Metallica (A year and a half... etc), and it was about a different Metallica than what we are used to see.
The filming started just about when the process of recording the album St. Anger started. It shows the drastic change in the band from that point and until St. Anger was released in June 2003. In the beginning of the movie, Jason Newsted has recently left the band, and the ban hires a therapist to figure out what the h*** is going on. It looks kind of corny, the greatest metal band of all time, sitting there and discussing their feelings with a therapist... it was actually a funny thing to see, I could hear people in the audience laughing out loud from certain scenes and words that are spoken (can "macho" guys actually say these things, you wonder). The turning point is when James Hetfield goes to rehab, and the rest of the band (Lars and Kirk, plus producer Bob Rock) are starting to doubt if they are aver going to get together as a band again. As we all know today - they did. The whole process seems to be documented, and it is very interesting to see - not just for Metallica fans, but for others too, I think.
The contrast is big - from James getting a speeding ticket for driving (what seemed like) a custom built vehicle too fast and going bear hunting in Russia, to the same, yet a different James going to his young daughter's ballet practice.
Also, being a Norwegian student in California, it was cool to see a lot of stuff from the San Francisco area in the film, stuff that I saw with my own eyes just weeks ago... ;)
I highly recommend this film, but do expect to see a lot of other stuff than music. Just seeing Lars' father is worth the ticket! ;)
-- John
Blast from the Past (1999)
A great laugh until the romance begins
I didn't really plan to watch this movie, but it was on TV, and I decided to give it a try. After a while, I couldn't remember the last time I had laughed this much from watching a movie! The first part of the "above ground" part of the movie was simply hilarious... it's just that after a while, the romance took over completely, and the movie degraded from excellent to - well, something far less. Too bad, but it's worth watching though...