The Da Vinci Code (2006) - Howard's first Brown adaptation is a popcorn thriller hoot

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+ Best Paris Movie of the Year 

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Renowned Harvard professor of symbology and religious iconography Robert Langdon is flown in from the States to the Louvre in Paris, where an old man has been killed with mysterious signs engraved into his chest. - About a very old secret!

Rarely has a film been surrounded by more hysterical fuss than was the huge adaptation of Dan Brown's (The Lost Symbol (2009)) bestseller The Da Vinci Code (2003). It was greeted with scorn at its Cannes premiere and protested against and banned in nearly a dozen countries because of its supposedly blasphemous content. Akiva Goldsman (A New York Winter's Tale (2014)) wrote the screenplay, and Ron Howard (Frost/Nixon (2008)) directed.
Despite all the hullabaloo, mostly terrible reviews and controversy, Da Vinci Code is an exciting and entertaining, huge, broadly appealing picture, just as it should be. The international cast is impressive, counting Tom Hanks (Saving Private Ryan (1998)), Audrey Tautou (Dirty Pretty Things (2002)), Jean Reno (Léon (1994)), Paul Bettany (A Beautiful Mind (2001)) and more, but it is especially Ian McKellen (Mr. Holmes (2015)), who spreads joy in it, playing a mad atheist.
The flash-backs can seem endless, and the film is very long (running 146 minutes in the theatrical version, (a 174 minute extended cut also exists!)) But Brown's Jesus theory is well-spun and thrilling.

Related posts:

Ron Howard: Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel (2011) - Stapleton's Corman doc. is among the year's best films (interview subject)

2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]

2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II] 

2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

A Beautiful Mind (2001) - John Nash given the Epic Treatment  
Backdraft (1991) - Howard's giant, stupid Chicago-set firefighter movie 
American Graffiti (1973) or, Cruisin' Modesto '62 (actor)

Watch the hype-fueling trailer for the film here

Cost: 125 mil. $
Box office: 758.2 mil. $
= Blockbuster
[Despite the reviews and attacks from the Catholic church, or perhaps to some degree because of the controversy, audiences flocked to the film and made it the 2nd biggest hit of the year, only bested by Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. It had a 77 mil. $ opening weekend in North America, the best ever for both Hanks and Howard. It grossed 217.5 mil. $ (29 % of the total gross) in North America and was a massive hit worldwide. Leonard Maltin called it "a letdown in every respect", while Roger Ebert was in line with Film Excess and gave it 3 out of 4 stars, stating "it works." Its less successful sequel Angels & Demons (2009) is also a fact, and the two will soon be followed by Inferno (2016), the 4th Langdon novel, and the 3rd to be adapted by Howard, with Hanks.]

 
What do you think of The Da Vinci Code?

The Crimson Rivers/Les Rivières Pourpres (2000) - Se7en-type action crime flick in the French Alps

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Jean Reno and Vincent Cassel star in Mathieu Kassovitz's The Crimson Rivers

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4 small hearts for this easily forgotten but entertaining, stylized and pictorially heavy (cinematography by Thierry Arbogast (Léon (1994)) buddy cop-action-thriller from the French Alps, in which a bitter, beautiful, young woman and her twin sister abuse and murder with much ingenuity.
The film stands in great debt to David Fincher's Se7en (1995), but is no match to the modern serial killer classic.
The enthusiastic genre-play in Rivers, - for instance in the artistic fight scene with Vincent Cassel that seems to come out of the blue, - takes, - together with several other misrepresentations, - credibility from the mystery that otherwise sparkles with humor and an irreverent treatment of the university-world.
Director Mathieu Kassovitz went to Hollywood after the success of Rivers and made forgettable Gothika (2003) and Babylon A.D. (2008). His most recent film is the French Rebellion (2011) about hostages in a French colony, starring himself in the lead. His best film seems to be widely recognized as his small, early drama Le Haine (1995) that stars Cassel.
Rivers was followed by the sequel Crimson River 2: Angels of the Apocalypse (2004) by Olivier Dahan with  returning Jean Reno and Christopher Lee. 

Related reviews:

Vincent Cassel: Mesrine: Killer Instinct + Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1 (2008) - Epic Cassel gangster extravaganza
Jean Reno: The Big Blue (1988) - Dolphin mishap # uno

Jean Reno with a shotgun in Mathieu Kassovitz's The Crimson Rivers

Watch the trailer for the English dubbed (yes) version of the film here

Budget: 14 mil. $
Box office: 60 mil. $
= Big hit

What do you think of The Crimson Rivers?
Please contribute your opinion, if you've seen other Kassovitz-films

The Big Blue/Le Grand Bleu (1988) - Besson's ambitious, overlong diving drama

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An almost hypnotically pretty, original French poster for  Luc Besson's The Big Blue

The Big Blue is a nature-themed romantic drama that was great French director Luc Besson's (Léon: The Professional/Léon (1994)) third feature film, and, despite many people's high praises for it, I find it quite awful. Perhaps they feel so because of the oceanic serenity that it cultivates or the obviously lovely dolphins that are central in the semi-authentic story, but although I am fascinated with ocean life and adore dolphins, it just isn't my cup of tea.

The story concerns two very different boys in Sicily, who become friends due to their common passion for diving. As adults, they compete in the Diving World Championship as well as for a girl.

It starts out really well with B/W-scenes from the boys' childhood. After that, we are asked to stomach an excessive amount of very smug and self-satisfied Jean Reno (The Pink Panther (2006)), and literally hours of extremely good-looking Jean-Marc Barr (Baby Blues (2008)), an at the time 28 year-old man who must have been able to sleep with just about anyone he wanted, playing a man here who doesn't know A THING about women, and seemingly hasn't ever been with one. His acting goes beyond the annoying, as he seems to flirt bizarrely with Reno in countless scenes, and doesn't so much act as differentiate the cuteness with his Bambi-eyes for most of the film, (which gets old with me after about 10 minutes, wherein I fully admit that he's adorable), - whenever he isn't crying, which he also does on more than one occasion in The Big Blue. On top of this, his character, who needs to carry the movie, is morally reprehensible; addicted to extreme diving, the man truly has a very unhealthy preference for fish over people: SPOILER To underline this, at the movie's end he chooses to dive with dolphins in the dead of night instead of taking care of his pregnant, desperate girlfriend...!
The diving scenes seem endless, and they don't come close to balancing with the cliché sex scenes that seem to have found their way into the story for commercial purposes, or in order to justify even more dolphin appearances perhaps.
The awfully overlong film is the result of a script by Besson, Robert Garland (Tootsie (1982)), Marilyn Goldin (Sweet Revenge (1976)), Jacques Mayol - who is the real life basis for the lead Mayol character, - and Marc Perrier (Subway (1985)). It feels a bit as if the 5 writers came up with a huge list of scenes and simply decided never to get rid of a single one.
Rosanna Arquette (Growing Up (2008)) and Barr have the film's main romance, and they are both extremely photogenic here. Arquette in general lights up the picture tremendously, SPOILER although her character's moving from the US to Europe based on an unconsummated fling is another hard-to-believe element in The Big Blue.
 The best thing about the film is probably its photography (by Carlo Varini (The Chorus/Les Choristes (2004))) and the often very beautiful locations. There is also a well-done floating-in-bed-effect towards the end (see a still of it below), and it seems clear that real personal feeling and heart is pumping behind the film. It causes a few laughs, which also helps it from being a complete fluke. 
Finally, though, there's the film's music... Two scores exist for the movie; the original's Éric Serra (The Lady (2011)) European version score and Bill Conti's (Rocky Balboa (2006)) US version. I saw and heard the European version with Serra's score, and I thought it absolutely the worst-sounding 1980s keyboard-dominated, languid aberration that I have ever heard accompany a movie. I find the film an overly self-indulgent, mishandled, tedious, super-sentimental splash.
The Big Blue is included in the French 'Cinéma du look' movement of its time: A more visually striking, referential French wave, which was less reliant on narrative and substance than look and style, which certainly seems true for The Big Blue. The wave was made up of the early films of Besson, Leos Carax (Boy Meets Girl (1984)) and Jean-Jacques Beineix (Diva (1981)).

Related posts:

Luc Besson: Taken 2 (2012) - Neeson's in trouble in Istanbul in dull sequel (co-writer)
Bandidas (2006) - Cruz, Hayek take the West in Besson's loose grip
District 13/Banlieue 13/B-13 (2004) - Parkour action in Paris

How long can you stare at this photo of Jean-Marc Barr's face? 1 minute? 2 minutes? If you answer 168 minutes, then you might enjoy The Big Blue

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 80 mil. FRF, equaling approximately 14.2 mil. $
Box office: 3.5 mil. $ - North America only
= Uncertainty - but likely a box office success
[The Big Blue premiered 11 May (France) and runs 168 minutes (there also exists in 132 and 118 minute versions.) Filming took place in Peru, Greece, Tennessee, the Virgin Islands and New York, Italy and France, including Paris from June 1987 - ?. The story differs widely from the real lives of Mayol and Enzo Maiorca, who are the inspirations for it. Maiorca considered the film a poor caricature and did not see it publicly in his native Italy until 2001, when Mayol had died from suicide after a bout of depression. The film was a huge hit in France, where 9.1 mil. paid admission and it played for a year; if the ticket prize was 3 $, this would amount to 27.3 mil. $. It was also successful in other European markets, where it has also been re-released several times, but unfortunately the grosses are not made public. It opened #12 to a 1.6 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where its release was considered unsuccessful. The film was nominated for 8 César Awards (France's Oscar) and won 2. Without a world gross, I can't ascertain the film's theatrical hit/flop status. Besson returned with Nikita/La Femme Nikita (1990). Barr returned in Le Brasier (1991); Reno in La Femme Nikita, and Arquette in a TV movie, a video short and an anthology before she returned to the big screen in Black Rain (1989). The Big Blue is fresh at 62 % with a 5.51/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Big Blue?