RussyPelican

The Bad Sleep Well is one of the best revenge movies of all time. It stars the great Toshiro Mifune as a man seeking revenge against the people who forced his father into committing suicide. Unlike many revenge movies, The Bad Sleep Well doesn't glamorize its subject. Instead it shows how in trying to get retribution for a man who is now dead, Mifune ends up injuring himself and other people he loves who are still alive. There are a lot of beautiful and haunting images, like when we see a desperate man struggling to climb a volcano so he can throw himself in, or a number of scenes that are shot at the bombed out wreckage of an old WWII munitions plant. The bleak landscape mirrors the damaged lives of the movie's characters. Powerful and haunting, this is a movie that will follow you for days.

Before Sunrise is an exceptionally boring movie. It stars Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke as a couple people who meet on a train, spend the night wandering through Vienna, and then go their separate ways at sunrise. I have to admit that there are moments that feel very genuine, and it seems more realistic and heartfelt than most romance movies. The problem is that you have to hear these two people talk, and talk, and talk for an hour and forty-five minutes and neither of them has anything interesting to say. You get to hear Hawke's ideas about reincarnation and Delpy's story about going into therapy after breaking up from a boyfriend she didn't like that much anyway, and yadda, yadda, yadda, blah, blah, blah . . . I wanted to shoot myself in the head.

I really enjoyed The Valet. It's a sweet little film that had me grinning the whole way through. My smiles were only interrupted now and then by bursts of laughter.

Gad Elmaleh plays a valet who through pure chance is photographed with a billionaire (the always wonderful Daniel Auteuil) and his mistress, a famous supermodel. When the photo turns up in the tabloids the billionaire must convince his wife that the supermodel is really with the valet, so he gets them to live together while his wife has them shadowed by private investigators. The plan backfires on the billionaire when he finds himself consumed with jealousy at the thought of his mistress spending the night with another man, so he also sends private investigators to watch them. Meanwhile the Valet has romantic problems of his own that are complicated by the fact that all of a sudden he finds himself shacking up with the most beautiful woman in France. It's a cute and funny little romantic comedy.