131m; U.S.
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: Julia Roberts, Albert Finney, David Brisbin
Synopsis: Based on the true story of an unemployed single mother becomes a legal assistant and almost single-handedly brings down a California power company accused of polluting a city’s water supply.
91m; Switzerland
Director: Nino Jacusso
Synopsis: Turkish emigres in Switzerland.
Contact: Distributor: Insert Film Untere Steingrubenstrasse 19 Postfach 106 Solothum/Schweiz, CH-4504 Switzerland Phone: 41-32-625-700 http://www.insertfilm.ch
95m; France
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Cast: Yves Montand, Jane Fonda and Vittorio Caprioli
Synopsis (Wikipedia): The film centers on a strike at a sausage factory witnessed by an American reporter and her French husband, who is a film director. The film is Marxist in its political message, explaining the logic of the class struggle, and Brechtian in its formal qualities, which emphasize the motion of the camera. The factory set consists of a cross-section of the building and allows the camera to dolly back and forth from room to room, theoretically through the walls. This makes the factory look like an ant farm, and serves the overarching Marxist agenda. This staging is also an homage to Jerry Lewis‘s film The Ladies Man in which a similar set is used for a women’s boarding house.
145m; U.S.
Director: Norman Jewison
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Rod Steiger and Peter Boyle
Synopsis: Johnny Kovak joins the Teamsters trade-union in a local chapter in the 1930s and works his way up in the organization. As he climbs higher and higher his methods become more ruthless and finally senator Madison starts a campaign to find the truth about the alleged connections with the Mob
109m; Hungary
Director: Ágnes Kocsis, Andrea Roberti
Cast: Izabella Hegyi, Júlia Nyakó and Anita Turóczi
108m; U.S.
Director: Doug Liman
Cast: Naomi Watts, Sean Penn and Sonya Davison
Synopsis: Based on story of Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame, the married couple who were at the centerstorm of a Washington, D.C. scandal over Plame’s outing as an undercover CIA operative by Washington Post journalist Robert Novak. The scandal, known in the press as “Plamegate”, destroyed her career and rocked the White House as accusations were leveled against the Bush administration and its allies. Ambassador Wilson made the charge that the Bush administration had knowingly leaked his wife’s covert status as a direct response for his public statements that the administration played up or outright lied that Iraq had uranium in its possession to make nuclear bombs.
113m; U.S.
Director: Joel Schumacher
Cast: Michael Douglas, Robert Duvall and Barbara Hershey
Synopsis: An unemployed defense worker frustrated with the various flaws he sees in society, begins to psychotically and violently lash out against them.
116m; U.S.
Director: Richard Linklater
Cast: Greg Kinnear, Bruce Willis and Catalina Sandino Moreno
Synopsis: Fiction-film adaptation of Eric Schlosser’s bestselling book on the food system in the U.S. Health & safety risks involved in the fast food industry and its environmental and social consequences as well.
Contact: Linklater’s production company: Detour Filmproduction Phone: 512-322-0031 Linklater’s assistant: Sara Greene sara@detourfilm.com Eric Schlosser (author) c/o Houghton Mifflin Company Trade Division Adult Editorial, 8th Floor 222 Berkeley St Boston, MA 02116-3764 USA
107m; France
Director: Alain Corneau
Cast: Sylvie Testud, Kaori Tsuji and Tarô Suwa
Synopsis: A Belgian woman looks back on her year at a Japanese corporation in Tokyo in 1990. She is Amélie, born in Japan, living there until age 5. After college graduation, she returns with a one-year contract as an interpreter. The vice president and section leader, both men, are boors, but her immediate supervisor, Ms. Mori, is beautiful and trustworthy. Amélie’s downfall begins when she speaks perfect Japanese to clients. She compounds her failure by writing an excellent report for an enterprising colleague. The person she least expects to stab her in the back exposes her work. Thus begins her humiliations. What can become of her and of her relationship with Ms. Mori and with Japan?
France-Belgium-Czech Republic
Director: Lionel Bailliu
“Variety” review by LISA NESSELSON (8/29/2006)
A TFM Distribution release of a Manuel Munz presentation of a Les Films Manuel Munz, Entre Chien et Loup, Araneo Belgium, Okko Production, M6 Films co-production with participation of TPS Star, M6, TF1 Intl. and with support from Eurimages. (International sales: TF1 Intl., Issy-les-Moulineaux, France.) Produced by Munz. Co-producers, Diana Elbaum, Sebastien Delloye, Olda Mach. Directed, written by Lionel Bailliu, based on his short film “Squash.”
With: Benoit Magimel, Marion Cotillard, Jeremie Renier, Eric Savin, Melanie Doutey, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Malcolm Conrath.
Sports-minded scripter-helmer Lionel Bailliu expands his brilliantly controlled award-winning short “Squash” (2000) into a far messier but occasionally gripping feature in “Fair Play.” Talky, cynical tale of ruthless office politics tested in the great outdoors is far more energetic than most mainstream French pics. A guilty pleasure for fans of anybody in the name cast, Sept. 6 release narrowly skirts self-parody while dishing out calculated thrills and chills. Script’s template could be adapted in any country with a term for “back-stabbing.”Bailliu’s Oscar-nommed short, in which a sadistic boss turns a squash match with a young employee into a merciless microcosm of the business world, was tightly scripted and edited. In this feature version, charismatic thesp Eric Savin reprises his role as the aggressively fit, short-fused boss who seems to think the guillotine would be too good for a sales rep who loses a contract.Pic starts with a list of the rules of sportsmanlike behavior for which the French use the English term “fair play.” All scenes include athletic activities: rowing, playing squash, jogging, playing golf, swimming. However, although not one scene transpires in an actual office, that is the sphere that conditions every action and conversation.Jean-Claude (Benoit Magimel, amusingly outfitted with a pot belly and dyed red hair) and Alex (Jeremie Renier) are co-workers at the firm run by soulless shark Charles (Savin). Jean-Claude is an ambitious bully who fishes for incriminating info on fellow workers under the guise of male camaraderie. Alex is a nice guy, feeling vulnerable about the affair he’s had with an ill-chosen married woman.Jean-Claude has some dirt on Charles’ secretary Nicole (Marion Cotillard). Meanwhile, on the golf course, Jean-Pierre Cassel steals a delectably cruel seg as Edouard, Charles’ patrician father-in-law and a powerful board member.Oddly enough, Edouard uses the same vicious tactics on Charles that Charles used on the squash court to intimidate Alex. There’s always somebody in a position to dish out humiliation all along the corporate food chain.With staff allegiances in tatters, allegations of sexual harassment on tap and jobs at risk, Charles plans a highly athletic group trip. Outing involves rock climbing, coasting down waterfalls, and swimming beneath stone underpasses in a deep canyon. Joining Charles, Jean-Claude, Alex and Nicole is can-do Beatrice (Melanie Doutey).Oozing with contempt for your fellow climbers is not the best way to set off on an expedition, especially when almost everybody in the group has at least one nemesis whose “accidental” death would be an expedient solution. Although the characters themselves aren’t particularly believable here, their underlying motivations are. Adrenalin and competitiveness fairly ooze off the screen.Ambitious pic’s physical antics aren’t always edited to make spatial sense, score is needlessly obvious and clunky dialogue mars the often-intriguing structure. But suspense builds to an unexpected finale and a sardonic coda.
Camera (color), Christophe Paturange; editors, Sylvain Dupuy, Bailliu; music, Laurent Juillet, Denis Penot; production designer, Jean-Jacques Gernolle; costume designer, Anne David; sound (Dolby), Dominique Warnier, Alek Goosse, Franco Piscopo; associate producers, Marc Jenny, Leon Perahia; assistant director, Thomas Trefouel; casting, Pierre-Jacques Benichou. Reviewed at Cercle Foch screening room, Paris, July 1, 2006. Running time: 98 MIN.
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