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Fresh from a year and a half tour of international festivals, French sci-fi short The Edge ("La lisière") is now available online for a week from Monday, January 16, 2017. Don't miss out! Simon Sauliner's gorgeous film was shot in the Vosges forest region in France during the fall of 2013. Produced by Gravity Films, with cinematographer Thierry Pouget (The Assault) and Alex Cortès (Eden Log, Martyrs) composing the score, The Edge suggests good things to come for the new director. The Edge is Saulnier's second short and he is currently in pre-production on his first feature film Capture, produced by Logical Pictures with an eye towards a summer shoot. Synopsis: In a near future forest where anarchy reigns, we follow the journey of a...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Terrorism thrillers are the kinds of movies that have become very commonplace over the past few years. While some can be fantastic (Munich), others leave one with a sense that it works as neither an action movie or a commentary on today’s world (Green Zone). Sadly, The Assault falls firmly into that latter category.

The French film, which is directed by Julien Leclercq, tells the true story of the Algerian Armed Islamic Group’s hijacking of an airplane going from Algiers’ airport to France on Christmas Eve in 1994. All of the passengers were at a great danger, and the picture does an effective job of evoking that feeling. These aren’t terrorists who are all bark and no bite. We see them kill several hostages, and they aren’t willing to give in to any requests from negotiators.

On the other side of this conflict is our lead, Thierry...

Since August 2007, Todd has been faithfully tracking Franck Vestiel’s Eden Log, providing the first teaser (in French); the selfsame teaser translated into English; the second teaser (in French); the news that Magnet Releasing—the genre arm of Magnolia Pictures—picked up North American distribution rights; the launch of the film’s official website; the arrival of the film’s full trailer; and finally his review from the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival where Eden Log screened as part of the Midnight Madness program. Following suit, the San Francisco Film Society offered a midnight screening of Eden Log as part of their first annual French Cinema Now series.

A brooding, philosophical riff-in-reverse on the Biblical story of Eden, Todd presciently predicted that Eden Log will divide audiences between those willing to patiently experience the obfuscated nocturne of Vestiel’s dystopian mise en scène (atmospherically rendered by cinematographer Thierry Pouget), or impatiently dismiss it as sheer pretension.