Films showing in English at Cinema Vox

Note that each film only has a few screenings each! check www.cinemavox-chamonix.com for show times.

Classic film Some Like it Hot is a matinee screening on Sunday, November 28th only and is the last of the Cine Legende series brought to you by the Friends of the Cinemavox.

THE SOCIAL NETWORK

Harvard university student Mark Zuckerberg sets up a social networking site called ‘The Facebook', which basically becomes an overnight success and makes Zuckerberg the youngest billionaire in modern times. Meanwhile, a trio of well-off jocks who claim he stole their idea pursue Zuckerberg in court.

Zuckerberg is played by actor Jesse Eisenberg who is amazing as an emotionally isolated, social-climbing outsider who's also a genius. Justin Timberlake plays Napster founder Sean Parker with seductive style, taking Zuckerberg from amateur to pro.

Director David Fincher (Fight Club, Seven) helms with a restrained and controlled hand that keeps cohesive this tense story of five individuals ironically torn apart by the biggest social networking site the world has ever seen. Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (West Wing and A Few Good Men) writes dialogue that is fast and intelligent. And finally, the acting, particularly by Eisenberg and Timberlake, is great. A suspenseful, interesting and relevant film.

THE AMERICAN

An assassin (George Clooney) hides out in Italy for one last assignment. While there, he has an existential crisis and an affair with a local beauty who also happens to be a prostitute.

Acclaimed-photographer-turned-film director Anton Corbijn's second feature is ‘heavy' and existential. The questions the film asks are: is it safe to feel? Can love redeem a life full of regret? Has it been worth it? And, like Corbijn's debut film about Ian Curtis of Joy Division (Control) it's also about a lost soul. These themes, combined with Corbijn's shooting in a meditative, slow manner and very little dialogue, create moodiness. However, there are some terrific scenes and it's beautiful to look at.

A sexy thriller with a wonderful and brave performance from Clooney.

BURIED

A man, Ryan Reynolds (The Proposal, Definitely Maybe) wakes up to find himself trapped in a coffin six feet under the earth. With only a few power bars on his cell phone and his air supply running out, he goes from panic attack to hope to fury to despair in a blindingly claustrophobic film.

This is Director Jose Luis Garcia Perez's second feature film and it's a technical tour de force. There were seven coffins used in the shoot, one of which allowed the camera to spin 360 degrees around creating the perspective of being able to see the character inside the box from all angles. In addition to the director and crew's sleight-of-hand, the single on-screen character, played by Ryan Reynolds who normally does glib and easy films, is believable from beginning to end. The ‘reveal' at the end of the film as to why this everyday contractor has found himself in a box buried six-feet-under is a bit too obvious in its attempt to make a political point, but one forgets this in the face of the tension of this film.

As a devilish test of nerves, this brutally intense independent thriller is hard to beat.

FAIR GAME

Fair Game is based on Valerie Elise Plame's memoir in which Plame's status as a CIA agent was revealed by White House officials allegedly out to discredit her husband after he wrote a 2003 New York Times op-ed piece saying that the Bush administration had manipulated intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Plame's career was essentially ended when Washington Post journalist Robert Novak, with information obtained from Richard Armitage at the US State Department, revealed in his column her identity as a CIA operative. This story is terrifyingly relevant.

Starring Naomi Watts (Mulholland Drive, 21 Grams, Eastern Promises) as Valerie Plame, and Sean Penn (Harvey Milk, The Game) as her husband, the acting is good as is the action direction by Doug Liman, who also directed The Bourne Trilogy.

SOME LIKE IT HOT (as part of Ciné Légende)

Two struggling musicians witness a murder and try to find a way out of the city before they're found and killed by the mob. The only job going is one in an all-girl band, so they disguise themselves as women. In addition to the trouble of being men in hiding, further complications occur when one falls for another member of the band and the other has a rich suitor who won't take ‘no' for an answer.

This film is most noted for its director, the great Billy Wilder (The Apartment, One, Two, Three, Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard) and its cast, Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and the iconic Marilyn Monroe.

A good choice for a matinee, this film screens one time only as the last part of the Cine Legende series brought to you by the Friends of the Cinemavox, on November 28th at 3pm. Also, per the Chamonix Tourist Office there will be something of a “transvestite show” included as a “surprise attraction” as well as cake and coffee/tea opposite the cinema at Chez Yang.