A Very Long Engagement
Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet
By Peter Knegt

Adapted from the beloved novel, A Very Long Engagement tells the story of a war-torn romance in which it’s presumed that the man has died in battle and all that is keeping the woman going is unrealistic hope. Cold Mountain, you say? Could very well be, but A Very Long Engagement is Jean-Pierre Jeunet's much anticipated follow-up to 2001's Amélie. However, A Very Long Engagement does bear an uncanny resemblance to last year's Nicole Kidman epic, which is certainly distracting. Engagement tells the story of Mathilde (the adorable Audrey Tatou), a young woman whose entire life has grown to revolve around her search for her supposedly deceased fiancé, Manech (Gaspard Ulliel). Mathilde uses every resource at her disposal to try and uncover the truth, which leads her to a wide array of colourful and incredibly quirky characters, including a tiny but heartbreaking performance by Jodie Foster entirely in French.

By far the most admirable aspect of this film is its technical achievement. The cinematography is absolutely stunning, with some of the shots worthy of being framed on a gallery wall. The sets and costumes are almost equally impressive, as are some of the battle sequences. But what gives Engagement its heart is Jeunet's absurdist style, which he sprinkles throughout the characters and plot. This contrasts the fairly horrific content and gives the film a generally light feeling. But as the film wears on, Jeunet's quirkiness is not enough to sustain the repetitive and predictable story, and A Very Long Engagement ends up feeling like just a very long movie. Opens Dec. 17. (Warner Independent)

Primer - Dir. by Shane Carruth
Though it’s by now tedious to report on the low budgets of debut indies, there’s no denying the gulf between what $7,000 ought to buy you and what it’s bought Shane Carruth’s Primer. A student of ’70s paranoia film, as well as a refugee from the engineering field, Carruth’s taken his passion and his milieu and made something surprisingly accomplished: an industrial horror film that’s stylish and to the point in rendering white-collar ambition and the lengths to which it drives us. ...Read More
The Aviator - Dir. by Martin Scorsese
Howard Hughes may have been crazy, but, as we learn through Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator, he was also fascinating. Though Hughes was eccentric, his nuttiness came in differing degrees: the director/producer/aviator is most famous for being obsessive-compulsive and germ phobic, illnesses that led him to lock himself in a room, naked, collecting his urine in milk bottles. But what Scorsese shows us through Leonardo DiCaprio’s portrayal of Hughes is that he was also a risk-taking engineering genius who created some significant developments in airplane design history. ...Read More
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Bayonetta [PS3 / Xbox 360]
"I've got a fever and the only cure is dead angels."
-Bayonetta

Ever since the Christmastime gaming deluge ended, I've been killing a lot of angels. Though God's messengers have been bad guys in other pop-cultural products ― His Dark Materials book trilogy, the pas... Full Review
Leif Vollebekk - Inland
Although he's a Montreal native, this debut album sparkles with many of the magical elements associated with Vollebekk's Scandinavian heritage. At times recalling Nick Drake's Bryter Layter in its fragility and subtle deployment of strings, but also the playfulness of fellow Montrealer Patric... Full Review
Lindstrøm Explores
Don't count on Norway's premier disco revivalist Hans-Peter Lindstrøm to ever turn in the same record twice. "All the artists and bands that I really like do surprising stuff every time, and I guess I just copy their way," he says from his Oslo home studio. "But it's also about not getting bored myself."... Read More
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