Paris Je T'aime.

My Rating

(out of 5 envelopes):

MPAA Rating: R

Runtime: 110 minutes

Genre: Foreign, Comedy, Drama

Paris Je T’aime isn’t your typical film. The movie is divided into 18 vignettes about five minutes in length, each with a different director, set in a different part of Paris. Every vignette is about love. And you feel it through the entire movie.

That said, some of these stories are amazing, some of them mediocre, and some...well, bad. However, there are considerably more good than bad.

My Top 3 Vignettes (in order they appear in the film):

Le Marais

Director: Gus Van Sant

This vignette is about a teenage French boy who walks enters a print shop. He has a gut feeling that one of the workers is his soul mate and he tries to explain how he feels.

You know that feeling when you meet someone you’ve never met before, but you feel like you’re inexplicably connected? Well, this vignette totally captures that feeling, which is why I love it so much.

Faubourg Saint-Denis

Director: Tom Tykwer

A blind college student receives a call from his girlfriend who breaks up with him. He reminisces about their relationship from the moment they met to the present.

This is a lot better than it sounds. This is probably my favorite story in the movie. Natalie Portman plays the girlfriend and is absolutely wonderful in the role. This story ends up being an incredibly touching 5 minutes.

14e arrondissement

Director: Alexander Payne

In this vignette, a mail carrier from the US recounts her long awaited trip to Paris. She comes to the city alone and remains alone through the entire trip. But in the end she ends up falling in love with Paris.

This was the perfect story to place at the end of the movie. This story is funny and meaningful. I felt like I, too, had fallen in love with Paris by the end of this film.

My Least Favorite Vignette:

Porte de Choisy

Director: Christopher Doyle

A beauty product salesman makes a visit to Chinatown to try to sell his goods in this story. I honestly didn’t fully understand what was happening in this one. I didn’t get where the whole love part was supposed to come into play. I think that this was the only vignette I didn’t like.

Overall, I thought the film was beautiful. The mishmash of directors and writers shows just how multifaceted love really is and what it means to other people.

Netflix Page for Paris Je T'aime
This film is also available on Watch Instantly.

If you enjoyed this movie, they’re coming out with another movie like this called New York, I Love You. See the trailer here .

Son of Rambow.

My Rating

(out of 5 envelopes):

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Runtime: 96 minutes

Genre: Indie, Comedy

I wasn’t quite sure what to think about this movie when I put it in my queue. Well, I’m glad I did because this turned out to be one of the most heartwarming movies I’ve seen in a long time. And it’s hilarious to boot!

Will, a highly imaginative young boy, is the center of the film. He belongs to a strict religion that does not allow him to watch TV. Instead, he thinks up wild stories and draws them. Will, despite his religion, attends a public school, but is not supposed to make friends with any of the other children. One day, while in the hall while his classmates watch a film, he meets fellow student and troublemaker Lee. Lee tricks Will into being a stuntman in a film he is making for a contest. When Will is at Lee’s house, he accidentally sees Rambo: First Blood. The movie takes over his imagination, and while filming Lee’s movie, acts out his idea and he becomes the son of Rambo.

So I thought this would be one of those films about two boys “from different sides of the tracks” who become unlikely friends. However, that’s not what it is at all; it’s so much more than that. Sure, it’s a story about friendship, but it makes you feel like a kid again. As I watched this film, it brought me back to the games I played then and how fun I thought they were. The comedy in this movie might be a little juvenile for some, but if you can connect back with your childhood, you will understand the comedy in the film. One of my favorite funny moments was when the French boy Didier stepped off of the bus.

This movie just isn’t comedy, though. It’s a truly touching film. And yeah, my eyes got a little watery. So?

I was surprised to hear that Son of Rambow received a PG-13 rating for “some violence and reckless behavior.” However, ignore the PG-13 rating and watch it with your kids; this would be a great film for a family movie night.

Netflix Page for Son of Rambow

The Counterfeiters.

My Rating

(out of 5 envelopes):

MPAA Rating: R
Runtime: 98 minutes

Genre: Foreign, Drama

Set in World War II, The Counterfeiters is very closely based on the true story of the seldom mentioned German plan Operation Bernhard. The film follows Salomon Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics), a counterfeiting genius, and a group of other Jewish prisoners with skills in art, banking, or printing. They are all brought from various concentration camps to a special section of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. The German’s plan to utilize the talents of this group to counterfeit the British Pound and the American dollar in order to weaken the economies of those countries and help to finance the war. For the prisoners, a moral dilemma haunts them in every action they take. Should they comply with the Nazis to save their own lives or should they silently fight? Watch the trailer at the end of this post.

The story is captivating. The fact that they showed so much of the counterfeiting process without distracting from the other elements of plot left me thoroughly mesmerized. Every detail seems so well thought-out, making the film seem unbelievably realistic, creating a feeling of being there with them. The movie does not attempt to hinder the severity of the atrocities that occurred in concentration camps. Each character was different in his reaction to what was happening in the concentration camp, and it was easy to connect with the way each individual character felt throughout the film. Each actor brings something different to his character. With Sorowitsch, a character with limited dialogue, Karl Markovics’s facial expressions and body language help to express what’s going on inside his mind.

At first I was unsure why they chose to shoot the movie as a flashback of Sorowitsch. By the end of the film it was clear that they chose this style of filming to show the difference in Sorowitsch before and after being at the concentration camp. The utilization of this technique helped to make the film feel whole.

I recommend hitting the “Move To Top Of Queue” on this one, and I would also recommend watching some of the special features on the DVD for a look at Adolf Burger’s role in real story and in making the movie. The film definitely deserved its win for Best Foreign Film in 2008.

Netflix Page for The Counterfeiters