Review: Punch, Shoot, Brood — French Action Star Alban Lenoir Does It All In Gritty ‘AKA
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Anyone who regularly searches for action movies on Netflix probably knows the name of Alban Lenoir, the writer and star of the popular 'Lost Bullet' film franchise. But it's a flashy, unassuming team shot, well-acted by "Lost Bullet" cinematographer Morgan S. Dalibert, who recently helmed Lenoir in the Netflix thriller "AKA." Streaming service.
Lenoir plays Franco, a brave man who overcomes a tragic childhood to find a home in law enforcement as a secret agent. At the beginning of the film, Adam is asked to infiltrate a mob boss's organization as a bodyguard as part of a larger operation to capture suspected terrorists. In order to win the trust of the handsome Victor Pastoret (Eric Cantona), Adam must befriend his family, including his brainy daughter Helen (Lucille Guillaume) and charming stepson Jonathan (No Chabat).
"AKA" doesn't add any new wrinkles to the undercover cop genre; But Florent Astolfi's cinematography sets the right mood, Étienne Forget's score adds texture and drive, and Lenoir and Dalibert (who wrote the screenplay) create clear conflict. There's a real dilemma here for the hero, who feels called to protect Victor's children, even though he's at odds with his superiors in the French government: if the mission fails, he'll almost certainly quit. It's an ideal role for Lenoir, who handles punchy parts of action movies well, but excels at thinking. His name suits Adam; He is a biblical hero, sin and suffering.
'AKA.'" Subtitled (or dubbed) in French. TV-MA About language, nudity, sex, smoking and violence. 2 hours 4 minutes. Available on Netflix .
"Artificial Girl"
Writer-director Franklin Rich's sci-fi drama The Artifice Girl is divided into three parts, with the first part setting the tone for the film. Gareth (played by Rich), a brilliant artist and special effects engineer, is interrogated in a large windowless basement by two government agents, Dinah (Cinda Nichols) and Amos (David Girard), who are on a special assignment to arrest a sex. . Strength. . The hunters find disturbing photos and videos of a teenager named Cheri (Tatum Matthews) in Gareth's files. weave? Cherries are not real; Gareth is an AI simulation created to frame the pederast. Is it a tour? What Gareth and Cheri do is still bad.
"Artist Girl" was conceived and performed as three plays. Each part, roughly the same length, is performed in a room with a small cast. Each story takes more into the future. (He is played by Gareth Lance Henriksen in the third episode.) The action, for good reason, is set in a heated conversation about the moral limits of creating and using intelligent software.
The film's dialectical quality can feel a little forced and wooden, though Rich does lighten it up a bit by having the actors deliver their lines in clips so quickly that the audience doesn't have time to linger on the lines. It's also what makes the conversation so provocative, raising questions about what makes us human and whether we're transferring those traits to our machines.
"Artist Girl". Not rated. 1 hour 33 minutes. Available on VOD; It plays on May 2nd at the Los Feliz 3 theater at the American Cinematheque
"Man beyond nature"
In 1992, a man named Tom Monfils was found drowned in a paper mill in Green Bay, WI, in a pulp bin with weights attached to his body, a suspected murder. Six members of Monfil were convicted of murder; Even during the trial, the close-knit community around the factory was divided between those demanding justice, and the suspects were removed by train.
Michael Nielsen's documentary Beyond Human Nature takes no position on anyone's guilt or innocence. Instead, Nielsen painstakingly gathered all available facts about the case, using television news, recent interviews, dramatic performances and animation, to explain first why the "Monfils Six" were convicted, and then why some still believe they were not. guilty . Unlike other true crime documentaries, "Out of Human Nature" doesn't uncover a grand conspiracy or solve a complicated mystery. But it's an interesting story that says something about what's right that the legal system can't always provide definitive answers.
"Beyond Human Nature". "Not rated. 1 hour 49 minutes. Available on VOD.
Now available on DVD and Blu-ray
Wings of Desire is writer-director Wim Wenders' poetic ode to Berlin and its people, seen through the eyes of a literal angel who sympathizes with the downtrodden and secretly tries to point them in the right direction. The Criterion Blu-ray adds a collection of past interviews and commentaries with Wender and some of the cast, including the film's unforgettable Peter Falk. Collect the criteria
This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
