Critic's Notebook

Tessalit Productions

MOVIE REVIEW
The Empire (2025)

By SARAH MANVEL

Fun cinema fans will remember the sequence from “Notting Hill” where Hugh Grant crashes a junket held for Julia Roberts by pretending to be the film critic for Horse & Hound magazine. When he asks her about the horses in her new movie, she gently reminds him it is set in space. Clearly Bruno Dumont, director of “The Empire,” saw this movie at some point and said to himself, "Challenge accepted. Can I make a ridiculous space Europudding involving horses and, while I’m at it, spaceships shaped like a palace and a cathedral? I can, and I will." And by Jove he did, and the result is perfectly ridiculous. This is not a complaint.

Continue reading “War of the Worlds” »

MOVIE REVIEW
Paris (2008)

By MARTIN TSAI

Mars Distribution

Cédric Klapisch offered the definitive view of the City of Lights in 1996 with “When the Cat’s Away.” Starring mostly unprofessional actors from a deteriorating but ethnically diverse neighborhood, the film charmingly depicted a spirit of community enduring amid the changing times. It was infinitely more authentic than the obviously touristy treatments of the city such as that in “Amélie,” which went as far as digitally erasing graffiti on walls in a desperate attempt to create a romantic ideal that in fact does not exist.

Continue reading “Paris When It Fizzles” »