Posts tagged Marion Cotillard
“Rust and Bone” Is French Murkiness
Jan 29th
“French Murkiness”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Rust and Bone is a French film, and sometimes that is all that needs to be said, but in this case that describes only half of it.
It stars Marion Cotillard, who won the Academy Award for Best Actress for the 2007 La Vie en Rose, in which she portrayed French songstress Edith Piaf.
In this film, she plays an orca trainer at a Marineland in the south of France who has a tragic accident.
When the film opens, we see a man named Ali traveling with his five-year-old son, Sam, on a train to southern France.
Once they arrive, they go to his sister’s house, whom he hasn’t seen in five years, where she is living with another man, Richard.
When Anna gets home from work as a store clerk, Richard says to her, “Some reunion. Not kissing your brother?”
We don’t know the reason that Ali and Sam have moved to stay with Anna and Richard, but it could very well be that Ali has fallen on hard times.
Ali gets a job as a bouncer at a nightclub, and one night he meets Stephanie, rescuing her from a fight and afterwards taking her back to her home, where he treats his bloodied hands by putting them in ice.
Then Stephanie has an accident where she works at Marineland, and she loses both her legs below the knees.
About four months later, she calls Ali, and he comes to visit her. She now gets around by a wheelchair, and Ali takes her out to the beach, where he goes swimming and convinces her to go swimming, too.
So, the rest of the film is about the growing relationship between these two people. She is physically crippled, and he is emotionally crippled.
Ali changes jobs, and eventually he makes extra money by fighting in underground kickboxing fights, which he is successful at and which fascinates Stephanie.
Stephanie gets some artificial legs and is able to get around more easily, but Ali gets into trouble where he is working as a security guard, and he has to leave town.
However, even though Cotillard has received praise for this film, you might ask what the point is, especially with the phony ending.
Rust and Bone might be to your liking, or you might think it is just French murkiness.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Rust and Bone – Movie Trailer
Jan 21st
A struggling single father helps a beautiful whale trainer recover her will to live following a terrible accident that leaves her confined to a wheelchair. Lonely and destitute, Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts) leaves the north of France for his sister’s house in Antibes after becoming the sole guardian of his estranged five-year-old son Sam. When Ali lands a job as a bouncer in a nearby nightclub, things quickly start to look up for the itinerant father and son. Then one night, after breaking up a fight in the club, Ali meets the radiant Stephanie (Marion Cotillard), and slips her his number after dropping her off safely at home. Though Stephanie’s position on the high end of the social spectrum makes romance an unlikely prospect for the pair, a tragic accident at Marineland robs her of her legs, and finds her reaching out in desperation to Ali. Her spirit broken by the same tragedy that took her legs, Stephanie gradually finds the courage to go on living trough transcendent moments spent with Ali — a man with precious little pity, but an enormous love of life.
“Contagion” Deadly Entertainment
Sep 19th
“Deadly Entertainment”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Contagion is a terrific movie that will probably scare the pants off you and make you wash your hands more often.
Directed by Steven Soderbergh, it stars a number of famous actors, some who have won Academy Awards and a few who will surprise you when they get sick and die.
Yes, the movie is about a virus that mutates, transfers from animals to humans, and then is spread around the world by casual contact, causing people to cough and then to die within days.
And it can happen all too easily today.
The movie tracks the progress of the spread starting from Day 2, which will be explained at the end of the movie, and when someone asks Gwyneth Paltrow’s character, “You okay?” when she starts coughing, and she answers, “Yeah, I’m just jet lagged,” you know that isn’t the reason and that she will infect more people, which will spread to more cities and more continents.
We watch the spread from day to day, see people who are affected as well as who are infected, and see how various organizations react and try to stop the spread and find a cure for the virus.
Matt Damon plays Gwyneth’s husband, and luckily he is immune from the virus.
Laurence Fishburne plays the doctor in charge of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia.
Jude Law plays an investigative blogger in San Francisco who realizes that there is a pandemic before the other media do and is very suspicious of what the government is doing or not doing.
Marion Cotillard plays a doctor for the World Health Organization who is sent to Hong Kong to try to find where and how it all started.
Kate Winslet plays a doctor working at the CDC who is sent to Minneapolis to investigate the sudden death of Gwyneth Paltrow’s character.
And Elliott Gould plays a scientist in San Francisco who breaks government protocol while trying to isolate the virus.
So, if you are germaphobic to begin with, you might want to wait to see this movie in the comfort, safety, and cleanliness of your own home, but do see it, because we all might need to use the information contained in it.
And stay to the end to see what happened on Day 1.
Contagion is deadly entertainment.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”