Bastien Bouillon and Bouli Lanners in The Night of the 12th.
Photo: Fanny de Gouville
Dominik Moll’s thriller The Night of the 12th won six awards at this year’s César Awards, including Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay, but there seems to be very little buzz around its U.S. release. Maybe because many critics who follow international cinema like to turn up their noses at such mainstream award winners. (Something similar happened with last year’s excellent Lost Illusions, which received a very limited U.S. release and did little business over here.) That’s a shame, because Moll’s film feels major, with an unsettling mood that recalls such previous policier masterpieces as David Fincher’s Zodiac and Bong Joon-ho’s Memories of Murder. Its real-world mysteries eventually become existential ones, but the film never stops sending chills up your spine.
Like those aforementioned titles, The Night of the 12th is based on a real-life case. It follows the lengthy investigation into the grisly burning death of a young woman, Clara (Lula Cotton Frapier), in a small town near Grenoble. An opening title informs us that this was but one of many unsolved murders in France, a disquieting bit of information with which to kick off a mystery, as it tells us that there won’t be a final solution to the case. In a way, it also subtly draws our attention to other aspects of the story: to the interactions among the cops investigating the case, the humdrum bureaucracy of police work, and to a general feeling of haunted desolation in this provincial area nestled next to the French Alps. (Moll has taken some liberties with the real-life case, which occurred outside Paris.) Knowing that the actual whodunit part of the whodunit might go nowhere subconsciously opens up our field of vision.
But while Moll might be interested in more than a solution to this mystery, he does know how to keep things suspenseful. The buttoned-down and diligent chief inspector, Yohan Vivès (Bastien Bouillon), spends a lot of time interviewing various men that Clara had (or was alleged to have) dalliances with. Nobody seems particularly trustworthy. One guy admits that he once wrote a song about setting her on fire. A young gym rat can’t stop himself from giggling when he hears about the girl being burnt alive. Another man, with a history of domestic abuse, remains so unnaturally calm when confronted that he seems like the guiltiest of them all.
But the cops themselves display many of the same attitudes. They crack jokes in the face of grisly crimes. They judge this young woman for her casual relationships. They claim the moral high ground even as they demonstrate their own moral baseness, over and over again. The hypocrisy seeps through. As does the loss of perspective: We might notice, as the film proceeds, that the cops spend a lot of time looking at their suspects but almost never look at the victim. They have no real sense of Clara as a person. Late in the film, when we see her parents break down on the anniversary of her murder, we’re suddenly reminded that at the heart of this story is a girl who is no more.
The quiet, kindly Yohan, who seems to have no private life of his own, notes at one point that the case reveals something fundamentally broken between men and women. That’s one reason why he becomes so obsessed with the case. It might also be the reason why he can’t move forward in his own life. This is a man who spends his free time riding his bicycle around a track; he goes around in circles to take a break from going around in circles.
Movies like Zodiac use their tales of serial killers on the loose — decades of unsolved murders, presumably by the same person — to suggest an inchoate, growing sense of evil that corrupts institutions and human relationships. The Night of the 12th is more modest. It’s only about one murder. What makes it so chilling, however, is the way it connects that crime, and its lack of a solution, to a profoundly diseased social dynamic. If other movies of this type end on the troubling idea that the killer could be anybody, The Night of the 12th dares to suggest that the killer, in some ways, is all of us.
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The Fall Guy Movie Review: Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt’s Action Romance Is A Fun Ode To Filmmaking
The hero of The Fall Guy is a stuntman, Colt Seavers, played by Ryan Gosling. The action romance is a madcap adventure that kicks off summer blockbuster season and reminds you one of the reasons you got to the movies – to see stuff get blown up. Director David Leitch‘s film highlights the nameless men and women behind your favourite action scenes. Using Gosling and Oppenheimer’s Emily Blunt as the amiable leads, The Fall Guy is a delightful love story with wonderful beats of comedy.
Inspired by the 1980s American TV series, The Fall Guy is a behind-the-scenes romance between camera operator-turned director Jody (Blunt) and Colt (Gosling), stunt double to one of the top stars in Hollywood. After a stunt goes horribly wrong, Colt disappears to lick his wounds. But he is summoned back to work on Jody’s directorial debut, Metalstorm, a sci-fi cosmic love story, where the exes have an awkward reunion. But Colt finds himself involved in much more dangerous plot as a situation threatens to derail Jody’s first film as director. With the film and his career on the line, Colt does what he knows best, he gets into action mode.
Drew Pearce’s screenplay is warm, heartfelt and makes you laugh out loud more than once, even though the main plot gets a bit silly at times. This is clearly a film made by those who love the movies and what it represents. There are several inside jokes about filmmaking and the movie business that manage to translate over.
Deadpool 2 and Bullet Train filmmaker Leitch, who himself was a stunt professional before, seems to be having a blast dropping his characters in outlandish situations. The action sequences that Colt finds himself in repeatedly are situations in which he has been preparing himself all his career. The title of the film has a nice nod to the predicament Colt finds himself in for the second half of the movie.
Over the last few years, there’s been a lot writeups about how there are no more movie stars anymore. With The Fall Guy, I’d like to present exhibits A and B. Both A-listers Gosling and Blunt are coming off two massive hits from 2023 with Barbie and Oppenheimer respectively. In this film, they combine their star power for fantastic chemistry as reunited exes. Whether they are bantering about listening to Taylor Swift or arguing about motivation in scene, their chemistry is always entertaining. A charismatic and self-deprecating Gosling especially nails the comedic portions.
Gosling and Blunt are backed by a great supporting cast, with Hannah Waddington as the harried film producer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the spoilt movie star Tom Ryder and Winston Duke as Metalstorm stunt’s coordinator. There’s also a scene-stealing cute dog named Jean Claude who only responds to commands in French.
The Screen Actors Guild is one of the few mainstream awards organisations that honours stunt performers. The Oscars recently announced that they would be adding a new category for casting from 2025. The Fall Guy makes a great argument as to why stunt professionals should be next on that list. From acting, comedy, romance to meta quips about the movie business, The Fall Guy checks all the boxes for a good time at the movies this summer.
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A compelling romantic film, bathed in nostalgia, that will please immensely the fans of this genre.
A real viral travelogue blog by Jimmy Lai is the inspiration behind “18×2 Beyond Youthful Days”, a Japan-Taiwan co-production, directed and co-written by Michihito Fujii of “The Journalist” fame.
36-year-old Jimmy (Hsu Kuang-han) is back at home in Tainan, after leaving it 18 years prior. He is going through a difficult and delicate stage of his life, having been excluded by the successful game developing company he founded and developed. It is certainly time for a break and a reassessment of life priorities and Jimmy starts from his ancestral home, where it all started. Rummaging into his bits and pieces in his teenager bedroom, he finds a postcard from an old crush, a Japanese traveler called Ami he had met the summer before starting University. Remembering how she liked travelling and how important it was for her; Jimmy decides to use this moment between jobs/decisions to explore Japan and maybe head towards Ami’s hometown in the North of the country.
From this point on, the film alternates flashbacks from that summer of 18 years ago and the slow trip that Jimmy is making by train across North Japan. Radiant backpacker Ami (Kiyohara Kami) had showed up one summer day at the karaoke parlor where Jimmy was working his summer job, waiting to know the results of the university admission exams. She had lost her wallet and just needed to work for a short while in order to save enough money to carry on her journey. It had been love at first sight for clumsy and shy Jimmy and Amy had always been friendly with him but somehow distant. Memories of that bright summer until the moment they had parted, and Amy had left Taiwan, resurface while today-Jimmy travels and meets some friendly strangers on his way; It was a summer that had shaped heavily his life choices and his future.
Michihito Fujii attempts an interesting experiment with an unusual mix of romantic teen drama, coming-of-age, travelogue, past and present, set in Taiwan and Japan, alternating both languages. The episodic structure of the film utilizes a series of flashbacks that gradually reveal the past events, some generated by conversations that Jimmy has with his occasional travel companions in his soul-searching itinerary that unfold at the same time. The two lines will eventually collide during the final act. It is an ambitious project as the fragmented nature of the narrative in these kind of flashback-rich films is often confusing and tedious too at times. However, in “18×2”, the pieces of the jigsaw fall in place rather effectively, completing nicely an elliptic arch of narrative.
The two 18-year-apart lines of narrative are kept well separated until the last act, by a series of stylistic choices. First of all, an almost opposite palette of colors, a bright, yellowish light imbues young Jimmy’s memories, giving it a luminous feeling of youth and cheerfulness. On the contrary, adult Jimmy is set against a muted gray/blue snowy landscape, a sobriety that reflects his moment in life. Camerawork follows this stylistic line too with a net distinction between a dynamic past and a more static present. Moreover, the acting complements these technicalities, with a virtuoso performance from Hsu Kuang-han, acting restless, messy and fidgety as a clumsy teenager and beautifully restrained as a 36-year-old man.
However, despite the clever storytelling, the film suffers a bit of a lack of “pizazz” in a plot the eventually feels slightly predictable and doesn’t add much to the plethora of similar stories. A good job at overcoming this lack is carried on by the good protagonists’ chemistry and the amiable characters that populate Jimmy’s youth, Ami, of course, and the whole gang of his co-workers at the Karaoke joint, run by a charming boss.
All in all, “18×2 Beyond Youthful Days” is a compelling romantic film, bathed in nostalgia, that will please immensely the fans of this genre.
1 of 5 | Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt star in “The Fall Guy.” Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures
LOS ANGELES, April 30 (UPI) — The chemistry between Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt powers The Fall Guy, in theaters Friday, despite a shaky script. Whenever they’re not on screen it becomes apparent the film is nothing without them, but they are in it enough to keep it fun.
Colt Seavers (Gosling) is stuntman to Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). When Tom insists on a second take of a stunt, Colt sustains a back injury and quits the stunt business.
18 months later, producer Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham) asks Colt to come back for the directorial debut of Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt). Colt hasn’t called Jody since the accident, so their reunion is not smooth.
The ’80s TV series was about a stuntman turned bounty hunter, which makes sense for weekly adventures. The movie is more determined to showcase the profession of stunt coordinators and performers.
Director David Leitch was a stuntman and his production company, 87 North Productions, is the elite in the industry. So it’s okay if the plot of The Fall Guy movie is a little thin to justify having fun with its homage, but then it should get to the fun more quickly.
Gail actually called Colt to find Tom, who has disappeared, without the studio finding out. The more charming story is the tale of a stuntman and director falling back in love.
The scenes between Colt and Jody are the strongest of the film, whether Jody is using a sci-fi movie’s plot to blatantly address their relationship or whether they are fighting in a case of mistaken identity. The film spends too much time on the Tom plot when it should be about Colt and Jody.
Since The Fall Guy is a comedy, the action outside the movie set leads to more jokes than danger. The film plays Colt as a goofball, not a cool action hero, for which Gosling is totally game.
Colt does use his stunt powers while investigating Tom’s disappearance. Since he knows how to get hit by a car and survive, Colt will literally stand in the way of an escaping suspect.
Colt can use a staircase as a ramp to launch a vehicle during a car chase. The film’s climax on the movie set incorporates the stunt and pyrotechnic departments too.
It was a mistake to Intercut a good chase with a scene of Gail and Jody in a bar, thus ruining the energy of the action scene. But other moments, like Colt and Jody discussing the use of split screen while actually performing on split screens, are impressive.
Colt has almost as much chemistry with stunt coordinator Dan Tucker (Winston Duke) as he has with Jody. Dan helps Colt investigate the Tom mystery while they quote action movies to each other.
The fake titles of Tom’s movies sound believable, except they are apparently all originals and not based on pre-existing intellectual property such as The Fall Guy itself. The script rightfully calls out the fact that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences still refuses to add a category for a stunt Oscar.
The Fall Guy shows audiences how productions now scan actors and their stunt people so they can put the actors’ faces on footage of their stuntmen performing dangerous feats. So it’s a little disingenuous when the film purports to show closeups of Gosling in action when it explicitly showed how modern movies can fake that.
A behind-the-scenes montage during the end credits does show Gosling’s double doing some of the major stunts from the film, and a few where it was actually Gosling being pulled on wires.
So, given that the mystery of Tom’s disappearance is slight and, without spoiling, only becomes more convoluted, it really should have been relegated to a background subplot. But, The Fall Guy doesn’t take itself as seriously as other movies with even more convoluted plots, so it amounts to more fun than not.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
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