the guardian movie reviews 2018

Film Review: ‘The Guardians’

'Of Gods and Men' director Xavier Beauvois recounts a seldom-told chapter of WWI history concerning the role women played on the home front.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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How many films about World War I have omitted female characters, or else relegated them to the margins, reduced to a face in a worn photograph or the scrawl in a tattered love letter? An austere corrective to more than a century of under-representation, “The Guardians” tells the other side of the story, focusing on the home front and the women — characters so often defined in relation to male soldiers, as mothers, wives, girlfriends, and children — who shouldered the burden of keeping French farms running while the men were away.

Inspired by prize-winning French author Ernest Pérochon’s 1924 novel, director Xavier Beauvois ’ emotionally devastating adaptation — which some may find as arduous as the wartime chapter it depicts — dispenses with a fair amount of the suffering to be found in the book, forgoing the contemporary tendency toward gritty, handheld realism in favor of a more timeless, almost painterly aesthetic. Set in the Limousin region of France, the decidedly unmanipulative drama features virtually no score (despite a music credit to Michel Legrand) or invasive camera tricks, relying mainly on a fine cast and the work of DP Caroline Champetier, whose stately widescreen compositions supply historically accurate tableaux that have largely been missing from the canonical visual record of that era.

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The opening image, following an almost hallucinatory view of fallen soldiers in gas masks, is that of actress Nathalie Baye , guiding a horse-drawn plow through thick mud. It’s a startling sight, radically different from the liberated modern roles in which Baye previously appeared (in films like “Le petit lieutenant” and “Venus Beauty Institute”), but more important, a sharp contrast with the bucolic picture of French farm life most people hold in their heads — one in which stout men do such work seated atop tractors on sunny days.

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Beneath a wiry gray wig and wardrobe of coarse, handmade clothes, Baye projects a spirit of duty-bound diligence as Hortense, the hardy matriarch of a traditional country farm at a time before heavy machinery made such labor less physically demanding (later, in a scene straight out of a Jean-François Millet painting, women cut the wheat by hand). Because the farm is too much for Hortense and distressed daughter Solange (played by Baye’s real-life daughter, Laura Smet) to manage on their own, Hortense hires a 20-year-old orphan named Francine (Iris Bry) to pitch in.

Compared with Solange, a restless wildflower who doesn’t know what to do with the time spent apart from her husband (one moment she behaves like a woman in mourning, the next she is caught flirting with the G.I.s who’ve set up camp nearby), Francine keeps a low profile. She tends to the animals, mends clothes, and pulls her weight without complaint. She may as well be invisible, which makes her more surprised than anyone when Hortense’s son Clovis (Oliver Rabourdin) takes notice of her while home on leave — which only serves to complicate the dynamic between the women, since Francine is not of their class. It helps the film’s cause that Bry has never acted on-screen before, allowing audiences to discover the young woman in the role — and indeed, she seems to blossom before our eyes as tragedy lends dimension to her character.

Assuming a somewhat tedious yet period-appropriate sense of pace, “The Guardians” spans nearly five years from 1915-20 — a time when sentiments were expressed at length, and by letter, before television and mass media penetrated rural homes, when daylight hours were spent either in work or in worship (Beauvois depicts the church as a place of somber solidarity with the other townfolk). Presented with the slow-motion rhythm of life on a farm, Beauvois and editor-co-writer Marie-Julie Maille do a remarkable job of compression, depicting the demanding routine without insisting on re-creating it in real time, the way directors like Béla Tarr or Chantal Akerman might have.

Despite being helmed by a man, “The Guardians” should also be viewed as a female-driven achievement, representing the culmination of a long, personal journey for risk-taking French producer Sylvie Pialat (“Stranger by the Lake,” “Our Children”). Together with the actress-driven ensemble and woman cinematographer, Pialat has honored an entire category of war heroes whose stories are seldom told. Where America has Rosie the Riveter as its poster girl for the women who pitched in during WW2, France can now point to “The Guardians” with pride.

Reviewed at Toronto Film Festival (Special Presentations), Sept. 11, 2017. (Also in San Francisco, COLCOA film festivals.) MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 134 MIN.

• Production: (France-Switzerland) A Music Box Films (in U.S.), Pathé/Orange Studio (in France) release of a Les Films du Worso presentation of a Les films du Worso, Pathé, France 3 Cinema, Versus Prods., Rita Prods., Orange Studio, KNM, RTS Radio Télévision Suisse production, with the participation of Canal Plus, Ciné Plus, France Télévisions, in association with Cofinova 13, Soficinéma 13, Indéfilms 5, Cinéfeel 3. Producers: Sylvie Pialat, Benoît Quainon. Co-producers: Pauline Gygax, Max Karli.
• Crew: Director: Xavier Beauvois. Screenplay: Beauvois, Frédérique Moreau, Marie-Julie Maille, based on the novel by Ernest Pérochon. Camera (color, widescreen, HD): Caroline Champetier. Editor: Maille. Music: Michel Legrand.
• With: Nathalie Baye, Laura Smet, Iris Bry , Cyril Descours, Gilbert Bonneau, Olivier Rabourdin, Nicolas Giraud, Mathilde Viseux-Ely.

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The Guardians review: a cruel betrayal on the home front

In Xavier Beauvois’s beautiful new film, Nathalie Baye is magnificent as the matriarch overseeing home and harvest during the First World War, while her son falls for her new farmhand Francine.

Updated: 13 October 2020

Iris Bry as Francine in The Guardians

The opening images of Xavier Beauvois ’s The Guardians present two views of the cruelty of war. On either side of a card announcing the year as 1915 are two shots, presumably from two separate regions of France but by implication simultaneous. The first is a group of fallen soldiers, faceless behind their gas marks and immobile on the earth. The second is an elegant wide shot of farmland, with a grey-haired woman driving a horse-drawn plough. While the horrors of the battlefield will impinge on this home-front drama, through letters and dreams, Beauvois’s film will not veer so close to combat again. The guardians of the title are the women who tend the earth during the agonising absence of their menfolk. It’s a truism that the war changes a man, but in The Guardians it leaves deep mental scars on women, too.

France/Switzerland/Monaco/Belgium 2017 Certificate 15; 135m 11s

Director Xavier Beauvois

Cast Hortense Nathalie Baye Francine Iris Bry Solange Laura Smet Georges Cyril Descours Henri Xavier Maly

[2.35:1] Subtitles

Original French title Les Gardiennes UK release date 17 August 2018 Distributor Curzon Artificial Eye curzonartificialeye.com/the-guardians ►  Trailer

The grey-haired woman is Hortense ( Nathalie Baye ), running the family farm with her daughter Solange (Baye’s own daughter Laura Smet ) while her two sons Constant and Georges and son-in-law Clovis are fighting in the Great War. Her husband Henri, fidgeting with his gnarled arthritic hands and applying his technical know-how only to his still and the production of wine-soup, is a shadow of a patriarch, and takes no part in either the farm labour or management. Henri is played evocatively, and tersely, by Gilbert Bonneau, a 78-year-old former farmer who answered an open casting call. The story of The Guardians concerns the arrival of orphan Francine (the debut of another street-cast amateur, Iris Bry), a maid who will share the burden of the farm work. She’s a strong, capable worker and well liked by the family – especially Hortense’s son Georges (Cyril Descours) during his visits home on leave – even if she is underappreciated by them.

The film is based on the novel by Ernest Pérochon, a schoolteacher who himself served at the front during World War I. The novelist’s experience may influence an early, haunting scene in the film, in which Constant returns on leave to his old workplace, the classroom, and suddenly finds it impossible to speak to the expectant innocents sitting in front of him. Producer Sylvie Pialat gave the novel, which has never been translated into English and which was a favourite of her grandfather’s, to Beauvois to adapt. In the years since his last films, The Price of Fame (2014) and the award-winning Of Gods and Men (2010), The Guardians appears to have been a labour of love for both producer and director.

It’s a betrayal in the domestic realm, rather than the tragedies reported from the front line, that forms the crisis of the drama – an act of treachery that constitutes a war crime within the women’s world of work, grief and preparations for peace. Repeated images of women labouring, the changing of the seasons, the devastating appearance of an official bringing news from the trenches all prolong the film’s generous running time. While it covers five years, with each changing date marked diligently by intertitles, the scope of The Guardians may seem perversely intimate, given the backdrop of global events. However, the betrayal, when it comes, is driven by a desire to preserve land and status, to control a lineage – reasons that have caused many a state to enter into armed conflict or negotiate mercilessly in its aftermath.

Nathalie Baye as Hortense and Cyril Descours as Georges

The Guardians is also an unignorably beautiful film, bursting with Caroline Champetier ’s painterly and serene compositions of the fields and forests soaking in mist or illuminated by golden early evening sunlight. While these beguiling images risk accusations of prettification, of glossing over the deprivations of wartime with luscious photography of the Haute-Vienne landscape, they could also be taken as an invitation for further scrutiny. Look more closely at the scenes and it’s clear that what makes them so picturesque is also what makes them so pitiful. That there are young women working in the fields, with their long skirts brushing the grass, is a sign that the men are away at war, and the ‘guardians’ must perform a double labour, of raising both children and crops, often without the physical strength or tools they need.

Most powerfully, these women are shown hacking neatly at the haystalks with hand scythes in one extended and especially elegant tracking shot of the harvest. It’s a testament not to rustic charm but to the poverty of the farm-owners, who must cleave to 19th-century methods until they can afford modern mechanised solutions – such as the ones Constant reports seeing at the front, where the machine age is reaping its own crops. While Hortense and Solange may yet find the wherewithal to modernise the farm, they remain mired in an older way of life, awaiting the men to take up the reins again, and approve their improvements. Francine, forced into a corner by circumstances, is the only character who learns how to modernise herself, facing the 1920s with a new outlook, not to mention a chic appearance.

Even the attractive chalk-blue paint that brightens the woodwork of the cottages and farm buildings echoes the uniforms of the soldiers, who carry the injuries and horrors of battle with them. It’s a horror that is ever-present even miles away from the action. When the workers pause to eat in the middle of the day, the beauty drains from the screen as, without the distraction of their labours, they fall silent, glum, exhausted and lost in thought. Solange compares the agony of awaiting her husband’s return to living in a bad dream, a psychological torture.

Laura Smet as Solange

The film has such a nuanced relationship with cinematic beauty that what is seen and what is hidden within the image are equally important – as when Francine and Georges make love discreetly behind a boulder but are betrayed by an untouched picnic basket lying a few steps away. Prettiness itself is implicitly a trap, encouraging a dangerous intimacy and comfort. It’s when peaceably moulding butter pats with floral motifs that Hortense and Francine become close, and make plans for the future. It’s a moment of fleeting happiness and confidence that is crushed by two subsequent brutal blows from the front, and it exacerbates the agony of what lies ahead for Francine. Such rushes of emotion are to be feared. Michel Legrand ’s score appears on only a handful of occasions, bursts of music that underline a moment of expectation, as when Francine first arrives at the farm, or wash over a terrible sorrow, such as Hortense’s reaction to the death of her son. Francine provides much of the film’s music herself, singing sweetly old-fashioned songs around the farm.

Although newcomer Bry is a captivating presence, doing an impressive job of carrying much of the film and its emotional weight, and Smet broods powerfully as the tormented Solange, this is unmistakably Baye’s film. As the magnificent Hortense, she conveys the isolation of her position and her grief as a bereaved mother exquisitely, with a steady gaze and a trembling frame. And when the mood of the film turns, she turns with it – her role deepening to accommodate both Hortense’s pragmatic inflexibility and her terrible regret.

As the priest says, at one gloomy Mass where the names of the latest war dead are declaimed to a congregation of stricken women, we should “take pity on those who weep”. The Guardians is a rewarding and rich film, which offers a delicately considered and often troubling insight into the lives of those left behind by history: those who, in the priest’s words, “still drain the bitter cup of life” while others march to their death.

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Movie Review: The Guardians (2017)

• Howard Schumann
• Movie Reviews
• No responses
• --> June 25, 2018

“The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori (“It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country”)” — Wilfred Owen

In his film “Of Gods and Men,” director Xavier Beauvois tells the story of seven Roman Catholic French Trappist monks kidnapped from their monastery in a village in Algeria by radical Islamists during the Algerian Civil War, and the sacrifices that people of good will in both religions were willing to make. Sacrifice is also a theme of Beauvois’ latest film, The Guardians (Les Gardiennes), his first film shot in digital. It is a superbly realized and emotionally engaging film that depicts the strength and courage of the women left behind during World War I when all able-bodied men were fighting in the trenches. A quiet, contemplative film, it is beautifully photographed by Caroline Champetier (“ Holy Motors ”) who captures the bucolic loveliness of the Limousin area of south central France.

Now part of the new region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine, it is the least populated region of Metropolitan France and most likely has not changed much since the years in which the film takes place. Based on a 1924 novel by war veteran Ernest Pérochon, Beauvois and his co-writers Frédérique Moreau and Marie-Julie Maille gradually reveal the impact of the war on one family whose two sons and son-in-law have left for the front. Supported by a moving score by Michel Legrand (“The Price of Fame”), the film covers a period of five years from 1915 to 1920, the years during and following the Great War in Europe, one that would claim an estimated 45 million military dead and wounded and 7.7 million missing or imprisoned.

The Guardians opens in 1915 in a combat zone where we see the bodies of dead soldiers lying in the mud. The scene abruptly shifts to the Paridier farm in France, a place of quiet beauty that stands in sharp contrast to the heartbreak of the battlefield. It is a difficult time for the farm which is run by widowed matriarch Hortense Sandrail (Nathalie Baye, “ It’s Only the End of the World ”) with the help of her daughter Solange (Baye’s real-life daughter Laura Smet, “Yves Saint-Laurent”) and her elderly father Henri (Gilbert Bonneau). Beauvois shows the heroism of the women furrowing, seeding, harvesting, grinding wheat and taking it to market. It is backbreaking work and will be years before combines and tractors are introduced.

As the men periodically return home on leave, it becomes clear that each of them is damaged in some way. Hortense’s oldest son Constant (Nicolas Giraud, “ Taken ”), a former schoolteacher, tells his mother that he endured, “two years of hell, some people went mad,” and says (without any evidence) that “after the war, it will be different.” Clovis (Olivier Rabourdin, “ My Golden Days ”), Solange’s husband drinks heavily and stands up for the humanity of the Germans (“they are just like us”) in opposition to the feelings of the family and the community. Finally, it is Hortense’s son Georges (Cyril Descours, “Red Sky”) who carries himself with a certain pride and even arrogance.

Frustrated by the need for another person to help her run the farm during the harvest season, Hortense hires Francine, a twenty-year-old auburn-haired orphan, remarkably performed by newcomer Iris Bry. In addition to the chores, Hortense must contend with some rowdy American soldiers stationed in the village awaiting their orders, while looking after Marguerite (Mathilde Viseux), Clovis’s daughter from his first marriage. Complications arise when Francine and George fall in love, much to the chagrin of the much younger Marguerite, assumed to be the girl that George would marry. The friction between members of the family forms the centerpiece of the film and Beauvois weaves a complex and unpredictable story without resorting to melodrama.

Unfortunately, when the town’s rumor mill goes into high gear spreading all kinds of rumors, Francine’s future is left on shaky ground. Even more disturbing is the sad news from the front delivered by a local official who just appears at the door. As events unfold, we are drawn closer to each character, able to relate to their hopes and sorrows as if we have known them all of their lives. Though The Guardians is a film of subtlety and restraint, it is also a work of compelling emotional force and one of the year’s best films.

Tagged: children , France , novel adaptation , relationship , WWI

I am a retired father of two living with my wife in Vancouver, B.C. who has had a lifelong interest in the arts.

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The guardian, common sense media reviewers.

Waterlogged rescue flick is too intense for kids.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

An arrogant young swimmer learns to support his te

Several violent storms at sea; flashbacks show the

A fairly young couple engages in sexual activity,

One "f--k" several other profanities (&q

Wild Turkey liquor bottle is visible.

Characters drink in bars to get drunk; some vomiti

Parents need to know that this action drama includes several harrowing scenes of storms and sinking boats at sea. Rescue swimmers valiantly try to save victims, but some deaths occur on screen (not bloody, but sad and -- in one case -- quite disturbing). Kids with fears about water should probably see something else…

Positive Messages

An arrogant young swimmer learns to support his team and make hard choices in rescue situations; a lonely veteran swimmer trains youngsters to take up his heroic legacy.

Violence & Scariness

Several violent storms at sea; flashbacks show the dangers of Coast Guard rescue-swimming; a rescuer has to punch a hysterical victim; a couple of rescuers die; a helicopter crashes and explodes; a trainer is punched in the nose and bleeds; a couple of barfights with Navy sailors leave Jake (and then Ben) bloodied and bruised; training is hard (in freezing water, holding breath, swimming to the point of exhaustion).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A fairly young couple engages in sexual activity, including passionate kisses and some playful rolling in bed, wearing underwear and mostly under the covers.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

One "f--k" several other profanities ("damn," "s--t," "a--hole," etc.).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Drinking, drugs & smoking.

Characters drink in bars to get drunk; some vomiting; Ben chews Vicodins to kill physical and emotional pain; some cigarette smoking.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that this action drama includes several harrowing scenes of storms and sinking boats at sea. Rescue swimmers valiantly try to save victims, but some deaths occur on screen (not bloody, but sad and -- in one case -- quite disturbing). Kids with fears about water should probably see something else. Sailors and swimmers argue and draw blood in fistfights. A couple falls in love and is shown kissing and in bed (no explicit sex, but tumbling under blankets and some underwear shots). Protagonists drink, take painkillers, and use occasional profanity. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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• Parents say (2)
• Kids say (7)

Based on 2 parent reviews

Its okay to let other people in

Another great movie, what's the story.

Kevin Costner stars as Ben Randall, a veteran Coast Guard rescue swimmer who turns to teaching after a traumatic event leaves him unable to carry on as usual. Ben needs to recover his nerve, while cocky student Jake ( Ashton Kutcher ) learn to play nicely with others, including his girlfriend, Emily (Melissa Sagemiller). Both teacher and student have suffered; the revelations of that suffering lead each to his own sort of manly re-commitment. At the rescue-swimming training facility, Ben's red-lit nightmares are compounded by the fact that his long-suffering wife, Helen (Sela Ward), has left him. He self-medicates and grumps at the recruits, and for 18 weeks, drills his trainees hard. Ben's methods occasionally alarm and annoy his fellow instructors, including resentful second-in-command Jack (Neal McDonough) and skeptical presiding officer Larson (John Heard). During his down time, Ben calls Helen to beg forgiveness and helps Jake avenge a beating he received from disdainful Navy sailors. Though the trainees' ranks do include a woman, the focus here is on boys learning to be men. Ben and Jake see themselves in each other, pretty much to the exclusion of anyone else. When Emily suggests to Jake that Ben may be "trying to push you to be better," Jake sets her straight: "He knows I'm better than he is!"

Is It Any Good?

With a retread plot, plenty of boy-bonding action, and a shirtless Ashton Kutcher, this is a by-the-numbers crowd pleaser that's about as dull as a heroic redemption story could be.

Per formula, parallel redemption stories grant "emotional" moments to both Ben and Kutcher's Jake. By the time Jake has his big breakdown scene (he cries, though he doesn't actually say, "I got nowhere else to go!"), it's clear that, for all their earnest, actorly efforts, neither man has a chance against Ron L. Brinkerhoff's hackneyed script.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about ways to deal with trauma. How does the movie make the case that focusing on the future (in the form of students to be taught and lives to be saved) helps Ben overcome his guilt, anger, and frustration? What are other ways -- both successful and unsuccessful -- that people deal with traumatic events? How do Ben and Jake's similarities (ambition, competitiveness, tragic pasts) make them ideal partners? What other movies have used a similar structure (tough veteran mentors young hot shot)? Families can also discuss the work of the Coast Guard, including the unit's heroic rescues on the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina.

Movie Details

• In theaters : September 28, 2006
• On DVD or streaming : January 23, 2007
• Cast : Ashton Kutcher , Kevin Costner , Melissa Sagemiller
• Director : Andrew Davis
• Studio : Buena Vista
• Genre : Action/Adventure
• Run time : 136 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : for intense sequences of action/peril, brief strong language and some sensuality.
• Last updated : November 16, 2023

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REVIEW: “The Guardians” (2018)

As Frenchmen fought on the blood-soaked battlefields of World War I women were often left to maintain their family’s farm and ultimately their livelihood. To do so required backbreaking work tending to cattle, plowing fields and harvesting crops. “The Guardians” is a female-driven French drama offering a fresh wartime story of one such family.

Writer/director Xavier Beauvois highlights the strength and fortitude of a group of women toiling over their family’s farmland from 1915 to 1920. Renowned French actress Nathalie Baye plays Hortense. She’s the matriarch, fearing for her two sons and son-in-law on the battlefront but suppressing her concerns through arduous farm work. By her side is her daughter Solange played by Baye’s real-life daughter Laura Smet.

With the harvest season approaching Hortense and Solange search their local village for a farmhand. The only person they manage to find is 20-year-old Francine (earnestly played by newcomer Iris Bry). She’s quiet and unassuming but a capable and hard-working young woman looking for a semblance of ‘home’. Francine settles in and quickly earns the trust of her employers.

Beauvois puts an emphasis on the labor and the quiet determination with which these women work. This is one of several places where the period detail shines. Every chore, every tool, every technique looks and feels of its time. The same could be said with the way Beauvois visualizes the rural French countryside. Resembling Impressionistic brushstrokes he captures one stunning image after another. Yet despite the portrait-like beauty, there is still no doubt that it is a rugged land.

At first their strenuous day-to-day routine is only interrupted when one of the boys return on furlough. While the brief reunions are joyous, the scars of war are evident and each man has been changed by it. The effects begin to linger even after the men head back to the front making things tougher for Hortense, Solange, and even Francine, with everyone embracing the idea that “everything will be better after the war” but slowing losing their faith in those words.

The slow observant rhythms of “The Guardians” may catch some viewers off guard but hats off to Beauvois for not cutting corners throughout his 140 minutes. Based on Ernest Pérochon’s 1924 novel, the film is a canvas rich with painterly beauty thanks to cinematographer Caroline Champetier. It’s also a stirring World War I era story bathed in humanity and told through great performances, emotive faces and quiet communication. And then there is the subtly tragic story of Francine – the beating heart of the film and proof of an emotional narrative punch that may not be noticeable at first glance.

VERDICT – 4.5 STARS

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4 thoughts on “ review: “the guardians” (2018) ”.

Sounds a great story, really well made.

Oh I so loved this movie. I’m not hearing anyone talk about it but it’s one of my favorites of the year. Hopefully more people will give it a look.

Adding to my watchlist. Merci!

Fantastic to hear! Would love more people to see this.

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The Guardians (2017)

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The Guardians

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Release date

17 th August 2018

The Guardians is what some might call a “slow burner”, but it is one that draws in viewers with beautiful imagery, character depictions and emotion. This French masterpiece from renowned filmmaker Xavier Beauvois is certainly one of 2018’s must-watch movies. 

The film follows Hortense Sandrail and her family in the midst of World War One. Whilst her sons and son-in-law leave home to fight on the frontline, Hortense and her daughter Solange (played by real-life mother and daughter Nathalie Baye and Laura Smet) take on the running of the Paridier Farm. With harvest on the horizon, the protagonist employs the help of a young woman, Francine, who fits straight into farm life and works hard with great respect for her job. When Georges – one of the Sandrail sons – comes home on leave and American soldiers set up camp on the farm, things start to become complicated and relationships are put to the test. 

This feature perfectly portrays the trials of home and work life whilst battles are being fought elsewhere. As WW1 rages on, those left at home try to focus on managing rural life. This becomes more difficult throughout the years and unwanted dramas inevitably hit the quiet farm. As the piece twists and turns, viewers experience a level of uncertainty and tension that the characters themselves are forced to live with for many years. 

The wonderful cast – which also includes Iris Bry, Cyril Descours and Olivier Rabourdin – bring each individual to life and captivate the audience with their grit, determination, doubts and emotion. Along with stunning rural scenery depicted in all seasons and simple yet poetic descriptions of wartime life, Beauvois’ latest release is a beautiful snapshot of families and friends trying to get by in desperate times. 

If you’re yet to watch one of 2018’s amazing selection of foreign language films, then be sure to start with  The Guardians.   

Laura Ewing

The Guardians is released in select cinemas on 17 th August 2018.

Watch the trailer for The Guardians here:

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Deadpool & Wolverine: Marvel Jesus, potty mouths and bloody cameos – discuss with spoilers

The satirical superhero match-up broke rules and box office records, but what kind of Marvel cinematic universe has it left us with?

Major spoilers ahead

Deadpool & Wolverine is such a strange beast of a movie that some critics have suggested it may not even be a film at all – which rather begs the question, what exactly is it? An extended satirical comedy skit, like something you’d see on Saturday Night Live, but running more than two hours? A meta-infused, sarcastic diatribe against the entire superhero genre? A buddy movie featuring two middle-aged men in tight costumes who really should know better?

The reality is that Shawn Levy’s film is all of these things, and possibly not a lot more. The Marvel films are by their nature a little throwaway and made-in-the-moment, but this one feels so gossamer-thin that if you remove all the superhero tomfoolery, drug and sex japes, manic fourth wall breaking and endless, often rather pointless cameos, there is really very little left. Audiences from the future looking back at this one in 2045 might wonder exactly how Ryan Reynolds and his team got away with delivering something so flimsy and slight to the door of Marvel’s president, Kevin Feige. And yet it’s an undeniably entertaining romp that will no doubt deliver gazillions in box office greenbacks, just when Disney really needs them.

Whether it’s a movie, art, or anything substantial at all probably isn’t the point. The question here is whether Deadpool & Wolverine can save Marvel by dragging the studio out of its critical slump – is our hero really “Marvel Jesus”? – and whether we really want it to if this is what the next 10 years is going to look like.

What is this (very weird) fresh hell that Marvel has delivered?

Perhaps another way to describe Levy’s film is that it feels like an endless series of mostly impressive set pieces connected only loosely by anything approaching an actual plot. From the opening scenes in which Deadpool stunningly takes down a crew of Time Variance Authority agents using only bits of dead Fox-verse Wolverine’s adamantium-clad skeleton as the opening credits splatter across the screen, this is a film that is big on visuals and shock tactics – there have been suggestions that all the jokes about gay sex amount to little more than cynical queerbaiting – and rather lacking in traditional Marvel aesthetics such as universe-building and making logical sense.

Even Wolverine’s story arc is pretty much the same as the one we saw in 2017’s Logan, with the emotionally ravaged mutant left looking back in sorrow at a wasted life after all his X-buddies somehow copped it. The approach – sending up everything and taking nothing seriously – is exactly what Deadpool did in his previous 20th Century Fox movies, so should we really be shocked that the tone is exactly the same in the MCU?

The cameos, the sudden deaths, the multiversal switcheroos

I’ve read some critics suggesting that Deadpool & Wolverine’s cameos were delivered with greater guile than for example, those in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness – would you agree? I found myself unable to work out whether Channing Tatum’s turn as Gambit was intended to be terrible for deliberate comic effect, or if he really did need (as Reynolds suggests in-movie) to get a better dialect coach. Perhaps it was the huge, booming Imax cinema where the screening took place, but I found it impossible to understand what the card-wielding mutant was supposed to be saying.

Fair enough, I suppose, if the aim is just to take the piss. But I rather like Gambit as a character (especially after AJ LoCascio’s bravura turn in the excellent X-Men ‘97) and felt a little bit cheated. The impressive film-making sleight-of-hand as we were introduced to a hero who appeared to be Chris Evans’s Captain America in the Void, only for the person in question to turn out to be Chris Evans’s Johnny Storm, aka The Human Torch, was a palpably clever, brilliant moment. But then they killed him straight off in hyper-gruesome fashion. Oh well.

Why did they bother to bring back Jennifer Garner’s Elektra for all of five minutes? I’m not sure I was too fussed over Wesley Snipes’s brief appearance as Blade either, though at least the arrival of Dafne Keen’s X-23 in the MCU seems to be permanent. What did you think? Are we still supposed to get our fangirl and fanboy knickers in a twist over all this inter-universal shenanigans when it’s apparently all just one big joke?

Cassandra Nova and lots of little Loki-isms

It’s hard to escape the sense that Levy and Reynolds took one look at Loki seasons one and two and decided this was exactly the right kind of material to help them heavily satirise Marvel’s multiversal phase. Emma Corrin does a fine job as Professor X’s evil twin, though quite why they had to introduce herself as such, when Charles Xavier hasn’t even been properly debuted into the main Marvel reality, rather beats me. Those multiple Deadpool variants were briefly amusing, and who couldn’t love Dogpool? Yes, it’s Blake Lively as Lady Deadpool, who else?

A last hurrah for Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine?

While you might have thought you saw the last of him in 2017’s Logan, this was another chance to remind ourselves that Hugh Jackman’s curmudgeonly mutant has been one of the finest comic book creations of our times, even while the movies he has starred in have been more up and down than Hulk’s blood pressure at an anger management class. At least Deadpool & Wolverine didn’t take the easy option and kill him off again to pull on our tired and jaded heartstrings one last time.

And yet the existence of this version of Wolverine in the main MCU could end up making it harder rather than easy to bring the rest of the X-Men back. Will Professor X, Cyclops, Beast, Storm, Rogue, Mystique et al all now also have to be ported in from other universes? And what happens if another version of Logan ends up coming with them? This could get confusing.

Is the Marvel Cinematic Universe now forever changed, or just a bit more sweary?

Evans’s cameo was a smartly knowing snicker at the challenges Feige and co will face if they really want Deadpool to one day meet Thor, Hulk and Doctor Strange. Captain America could never appear in an R-rated movie packed with gags about anal sex and Colombian marching powder – this is a guy for whom “son of a bitch” is taking it about as far as he’s prepared to go. So will Deadpool himself have to tone it down when he inevitably turns up in an Avengers movie?

Levy’s film hints heavily that this will probably never happen, so far apart are those films tonally from the world of the Merc with a Mouth. “Deadpool & Wolverine isn’t a commercial for another movie,” said Reynolds recently . “It’s just not part of the DNA.” Having seen the film for yourself, do you have a sneaking suspicion that might just be for the best?

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Marvel’s ‘deadpool & wolverine’: what the critics are saying.

Shawn Levy's R-rated film, starring Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman, hits theaters July 26.

By Abid Rahman

Abid Rahman

International Editor, Digital

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Marvel Studios’ Deadpool & Wolverine hits theaters July 26, but the review embargo for the film broke on Tuesday, and the early reaction from critics has been largely positive.

The third Deadpool movie, and first to be included in the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe, stars Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman as the titular characters and is directed by Shawn Levy. The cast also includes The Crown ‘s Emma Corrin as Cassandra Nova and Succession ‘s Matthew Macfadyen as TVA (Time Variance Authority) agent Mr. Paradox.

Related Stories

Box office: 'deadpool & wolverine' reaps record $38.5m in previews, best ever for an r-rated film, and more, 'deadpool & wolverine' review: ryan reynolds and hugh jackman rely on smirks and sentiment in overstuffed team-up.

Below are key excerpts from some of the most prominent early reviews.

In a m i x e d review for The Hollywood Reporter , David Rooney writes that dedicated Deadpool fans will love the in-jokes, which are cranked up for the third installment. “As bountiful as the action scenes are here, the jokes are the sturdiest part of Deadpool & Wolverine ,” Rooney writes, adding, “That’s because the plot is a lumpy stew of familiar elements, given minimal narrative clarity despite the reams of expository technobabble spouted by Matthew Macfadyen’s Mr. Paradox.”

“This is not an unmotivated crossover event,” writes Alissa Wilkinson, in her largely positive review for The New York Times. Wilkinson feels the endless jokes and goofiness works as Deadpool 3 is “self-reflective” of the corporate nature of comic book movies nowadays, but that approach has limits. “Now that this is an M.C.U. film, there are mandates. The stakes have to be absurdly high, having to do with the destruction or salvation of whole universes. More important, there must be corporate synergy,” Wilkinson writes.

Vulture critic Bilge Ebiri confesses he laughed during Deadpool 3 , if somewhat begrudgingly. “ Deadpool & Wolverine isn’t a particularly good movie — I’m not even sure it is a movie — but it’s so determined to beat you down with its incessant irreverence that you might find yourself submitting to it,” writes a seemingly exhausted Ebiri.

In a middling review, Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian felt Deadpool 3 delivered everything a fan of the franchise would want, and the film makes it clear that it shouldn’t be taken too seriously. “This is a movie which more or less orders the audience to stop taking any of the proceedings seriously, shattering the fourth wall into a million pieces with material about nerds saving their ‘special sock’ for particular fight scenes,” writes Bradshaw. “It’s amusing and exhausting.”

Vanity Fair ‘s Richard Lawson felt Deadpool 3 stuck the landing, despite being “a movie about acquisition and IP, housed in a mostly nonsensical dimension-skipping tale of regret and legacy (but in a funny way). … The film’s gaze is narrow and insider-y, but it somehow kind of works,” writes Lawson, adding, “ Deadpool & Wolverine is an amusing reflection on the recent cultural past, and a half-cynical, half-hopeful musing on what its future might be.”

In a rave, The Daily Beast ‘s Nick Schager felt Deadpool 3 “does give the MCU the shot in the arm — and kick to the nuts — that’s urgently needed.” Schager writes that the film “is more amusing and electric — more alive — than any MCU installment in years, and it impressively integrates Deadpool’s distinctive R-rated personality into the decidedly PG-13 franchise.”

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Chris evans on why he declined ryan reynolds’ cue cards for his surprise monologue in ‘deadpool & wolverine’, oscars: inside the search for a host, box office: ‘deadpool & wolverine’ enjoying marvel-ous second weekend with record-making $94m-plus, leonard engelman, makeup artist on ‘rocky iv,’ ‘moonstruck’ and much more, dies at 83, hugh jackman details reuniting with ke huy quan 24 years after working together on ‘x-men’, zack snyder breaks down ‘rebel moon’ director’s cuts and the implication of that ‘300’ prequel series.

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Tv/streaming, collections, chaz's journal, great movies, contributors, harold and the purple crayon.

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As someone who venerates Harold and the Purple Crayon , Crockett Johnson ’s 1955 hymn to the power of imagination (I gift every love one's new baby with a copy of the book with a purple crayon taped inside),  the idea of a film adaptation has always filled me with a certain sense of trepidation. This is due to the somewhat uneven track record of past attempts to bring the great works of children’s literature to the screen. Sure, a film like Spike Jonze ’s take on Maurice Sendak’s beloved “ Where the Wild Things Are ” captured the delicate charms of its source material in ways that enchanted viewers both young and old. But for every one of those, there's something like that monstrous live-action version of “The Cat in the Hat,” a movie just as bad as the original Dr. Seuss book was good.

Now “Harold and the Purple Crayon” has arrived in theaters in all its live-action glory. It starts on a surprisingly engaging note: a 2-D animated sequence that recaps Harold’s adventures in the book. The sequence finds a decent approximation of the book’s famous visual style and features narration by Alfred Molina . Unfortunately, that sequence lasts about 90-odd seconds, and the real story kicks in after that. Everything goes straight to ultra-garish Hell via a narrative that feels more like a failed “ Jumanji ” knockoff than anything that the late Johnson’s work could have possibly inspired. Here is a film that pays lip service to the importance of creativity without ever displaying a demonstrable shred of it during its seemingly interminable run time.

After that recap of the original story, we see a now-grown Harold ( Zachary Levi ) still cavorting through his cartoon world along with friends Moose ( Lil Rel Howery ) and Porcupine ( Tanya Reynolds ) and the ever-present voice of the narrator. Then, one day, the narrator’s voice disappears, and Harold decides to use his all-powerful crayon to draw a portal to our world so that the three of them can try to track him down. Alas, the real world proves to be odd and confusing for them, so luckily, Harold and Moose (now in human form, though he occasionally switches back for no apparent reason) end up running into Terri ( Zooey Deschanel ) and Melvin ( Benjamin Bottani ), a mother and middle school-aged son who are still in the dumps since the death of Mel’s dad. For reasons that defy explanation, she allows them to stay the night at her house, where Harold finds Mel to be a kindred spirit — he has an unseen imaginary pet that is equal parts eagle, lion, and alligator — and lets him in on the magical crayon. (Porcupine, for the record, has gotten separated from the others and is off wreaking benign havoc on her own.)

While Terri is off at her job at Ollie’s — an institution shown far more reverence here than Johnson’s book — Mel ends up helping Harold and Moose to find the narrator, leading to any number of wacky slapstick scenes in which they fly through the air in a plane or cause mayhem at the store. They also enlist the aid of Gary (Jermaine Clement), a creepy librarian with the hots for Terri, who is also the author of an unpublishable fantasy novel called “The Glaive of Gagaroh” (allowing the film also to alienate fans of “Krull” to boot). Eventually, Gary reveals to Harold that he is, in fact, a character from a book, which sends Harold, Moose, and Mel off on a trip to Crockett Johnson’s house to finally see him. Although Google helpfully reveals the address, it inexplicably fails to mention the key reason why they could have skipped that trip. Meanwhile, Gary, having seen the crayon’s power first-hand, schemes to acquire it for himself and bring the universe of his book to life. 

Trying to transform Crockett’s 64-page book into a feature-length film would always be a dubious proposition. But even the most pessimistic of minds could have imagined something as dire as this. For starters, Harold himself has been transformed into one of the most annoying screen characters in recent memory thanks to the appallingly clumsy screenplay by David Guion and Michael Handelman that tries to make him into an irrepressible free spirit along the lines of Buddy in “ Elf .” Still, he only manages to make him obnoxious beyond belief. Things aren’t helped much by Levi’s awful performance, which tries for winsome adorableness throughout but which comes across as if a.) Levi had been struck in the head with a board before every take, and b.) that director Carlos Saldanha did enough takes to rival Kubrick before he (and presumably only he) was satisfied. Beyond that, the storyline is choppy, the visuals are utterly blah, the big set-pieces are the usual CGI-happy dreck, the sentimental moments are woefully unearned, and the notion of a film ostensibly celebrating children’s literature utilizing a librarian as the bad guy is infuriating.

Before you send me comments scolding me for not looking at this film through the eyes of a child, based on the available evidence, no one involved with “Harold and the Purple Crayon” had any real interest in engaging younger viewers on any level. Sadly, exploiting the good name of a familiar piece of IP in the hope of scoring a few bucks from families that have already seen “ Inside Out 2 ” and “ Despicable Me 4 ” and are looking for something else to watch seems to have been of more importance to actually living up to the legacy of said IP.

Ultimately, “Harold and the Purple Crayon” is the product of people working under the cynical belief that kids will just accept anything foisted upon them in the name of “family entertainment” as long as it is noisy and colorful. If you genuinely care for your kids, you will give this movie a wide berth and use the ticket money to buy and read Crockett’s original book and its follow-ups. Trust me, they'll thank you for it one day.

Peter Sobczynski

A moderately insightful critic, full-on Swiftie and all-around  bon vivant , Peter Sobczynski, in addition to his work at this site, is also a contributor to The Spool and can be heard weekly discussing new Blu-Ray releases on the Movie Madness podcast on the Now Playing network.

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Italian Boxer Quits Bout, Sparking Furor Over Gender at Olympics

The Italian, Angela Carini, stopped fighting only 46 seconds into her matchup against Imane Khelif of Algeria, who had been barred from a women’s event last year.

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By Tariq Panja and Jeré Longman

Reporting from Paris

An Italian boxer abandoned her bout at the Paris Olympics after only 46 seconds on Thursday, refusing to continue after taking a heavy punch from an Algerian opponent who had been disqualified from last year’s world championships over questions about her eligibility to compete in women’s sports.

The Italian boxer, Angela Carini, withdrew after her Algerian opponent, Imane Khelif, landed a powerful blow that struck Carini square in the face. Carini paused for a moment, then turned her back to Khelif and walked to her corner. Her coaches quickly signaled that she would not continue, and the referee stopped the fight.

Khelif, 25, was permitted to compete at the Olympics even though she had been barred last year after boxing officials said she did not meet eligibility requirements to compete in a women’s event. Another athlete also barred from last year’s world championships under similar circumstances, Lin Yu-ting, has also been cleared to fight in Paris.

The International Boxing Association, which ran those championships and ordered the disqualifications, offered little insight into the reasons for the boxers’ removal, saying in a statement that the disqualifications came after “the athletes did not undergo a testosterone examination but were subject to a separate and recognized test .”

The association said that test, the specifics of which it said were confidential, “conclusively indicated that both athletes did not meet the required necessary eligibility criteria and were found to have competitive advantages over other female competitors.”

Those rules, which the boxing association adopted for the 2016 Rio Games, are the same ones the International Olympic Committee is operating under as the authority running the boxing tournament at the Paris Games. But the rules, the I.O.C. confirmed, do not include language about testosterone or restrictions on gender eligibility beyond a single line saying “gender tests may be conducted.”

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