Mathieu Kassovitz
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Connections, in both directions
Ly’s chronicle of disenfranchised youth through the prism of the banlieu landscape will surely bring to mind La Haine .
Unlike the film’s natural cinematic predecessor, “La Haine,” whose rap theme song advocates a much harsher approach toward the authorities, “Les Misérables” seems inclined to blame the system, not the pawns.
Not that Ly is as successful as Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund were with City of God or, keeping things a bit more in the same region, as Mathieu Kassovitz was with his minimalistic 1995 marvel La Haine .
The touchstones for Les Misérables besides Victor Hugo‘s classic, are La Haine , Do the Right Thing , and Training Day .
Rialto Distribution Les Miserables has drawn comparisons to Training Day, The Wire and La Haine.
Ly isn’t afraid to wear his influences on his sleeve here, with elements of “Training Day” and “La Haine” bumping up against memories of “Clockers” and “The Wire.” “Do the Right Thing” also looms large over the proceedings, with racial tensions in the neighborhood on the verge of boiling over on a day when it’s too damn hot outside for any of this nonsense.
Children of Men (2006)
Directed by Alfonso Cuarón
influenced Babylon A.D. (2008)
Plot Themes Visuals
A disheveled and incoherent jumble, "Babylon A.D." sadly loses the few bits of intriguing groundwork it lays amidst a cacophony of mangled editing, lethargic performances, and an utterly unfocused and often contradictory narrative.One could easily dismiss it for using a dystopian story that's been done many a time before by films slightly worse ("Ultraviolet") and immensely better ("Children of Men").
While the basic Children of Men-ish thematics (people smuggling, the end of nations, the intersections of religion, biological warfare, and environmental devastation) might have been intriguing in the project’s early stages, such complexities have long since been reduced to PG-13 car chases, shoot-outs, and generally unconvincing special effects.
As it stands, watching it is like trying to take in a late-night double feature of The Fifth Element and Children of Men while nodding off every ten minutes.
Set in the Earth of 2019 - which is very much like the war-plagued, ecologically ravaged place audiences last saw in the far superior Children of Men - Babylon A.D. is the story of Toorop (Diesel), a mercenary hired to smuggle some human cargo from a Mongolian convent to New York.
“Babylon A.D.” also suffers from being a little too similar to other science fiction movies like “Children of Men,” “The Fifth Element” and “Blade Runner,” which are far superior in my book.
Maybe we could accept this premise, if we haven’t seen essentially the exact same plot done better in Alfonso Cuaron’s “Children of Men” and your mind tends to glaze over any of the attempted social commentary undertones by all of the stupid dialogue and action scenes.
“Do the Right Thing” is an obvious inspiration (Chon has also cited the hard-hitting French film “La Haine” and, on the opposite end of the spectrum, he throws in a blatant nod to “Clerks”), and as in Spike Lee’s landmark feature, the action revolves around a neighborhood store.
Playing out like some sort of imaginatively structured combination of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing , Kevin Smith’s Clerks , Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank , Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine and August Wilson’s Fences , Chon does a grand job of crafting a piece of spirited pop entertainment that also plays just as well as dynamically scripted social commentary in the exact same breath.
Marieme (Karidja Touré) lives the “banlieue life” amid the housing projects of Paris, cemented in the cinematic imagination by the grainy monochrome hues of Mathieu Kassovitz’s 1995 film La Haine .
An (American) football game is in progress, but the players beneath the pads are all female, mostly black, and speak a slangy colloquial French: they are, as the French title has it, a “Bande des Filles,” a gang of girls from the same notorious Parisian suburbs that spawned “La Haine.”
It's been almost 20 years since Mathieu Kassovitz's trenchant foray into a tough outer-Parisian banlieue in La Haine, and on many levels there are parallels with the ethnically mixed, economically disadvantaged underclass examined in Sciamma's film.
Newcomer Karidja Touré plays Marieme, an initially shy high-school student growing up in one of the high-rise tower blocks made so notorious in 1995's La Haine, a film to which Sciamma owes much.
That film, inspired by Spike Lee's “She's Gotta Have It,” was more of a comedy, but with “Hate,” also about characters who are not ethnically French, he has painted a much darker vision.
She’s also poor and living on a rundown housing estate, an environment beloved of a certain strata of French cinema (e.g. Two Of Three Things I Know About Her, Jean-Luc Godard, 1967, La Haine, Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995; District 13, Pierre Morel, 2004).
But both should have thought twice before agreeing to appear in this gutless " Se7en " rip-off.
When the film started to roll, I was struck by how similar it felt to David Fincher's psycho-thriller, "Se7en."
The year is 1996, with France still reeling from Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine and cresting in anticipation of Daft Punk’s Homework .
But the concrete suburbs where Kassovitz sets his film (the same sterile settings that were home to Eric Rohmer's cosmically different “ Boyfriends and Girlfriends ” in 1987) give back nothing.
Vinz, who fancies himself to be Robert De Niro's Travis Bickle character from "Taxi Driver," has found a gun (which was lost by a riot policeman) and is now looking to get revenge.
Adopting more snippets of American culture than French, the trio uses L.A. gangster slang, break-dance, or act out De Niro's classic "You talking to me" speech from Taxi Driver .
As Gerstein tries to escalate the horrific situation, to Swedish diplomats, his own Protestant Bishop (who informs him that he is tired of the whining of the Jews), his path crosses that of Riccardo Fontana (Mathiew Kassovitz, "La Haine"), a young, idealistic priest whose family has close ties to Pope Pius XII.
"You got a mouse in your pocket?" giggles pretty Bainsely (French actress Mélanie Thierry, of the bizarro 2008 Vin Diesel puzzler Babylon A.D. ), who seems oddly charmed by Qohen's peculiarities.
Think Nicole Kidman in "The Others," Halle Berry in "Gothika," and Naomi Watts in "The Ring."
PERFECT STRANGER As far as Halle Berry thrillers go, this one beats Gothika and The Rich Man's Wife hands down -- though it still isn't up to the challenge set forth by Catwoman, which had us on the edge of our collective seats wondering if it would ever get better.
But Amélie longs for a love of her own -- could it be with Nino (Mathieu Kassovitz, also known as the director of La Haine and The Crimson Rivers), a young man who collects discarded pictures from instant-photo booths?
What Came First: Audrey Tautou was also in Venus Beauty Institute and Mathieu Kassovitz is the director of Hate and The Crimson Rivers - Wonderful.