For critics, bloggers, and all-around cineastes, the end of the calendar year marks a time to look back and reflect on the best offerings of the last three hundred and sixty five days (and sometimes even the worst). This is when we talk about the There Will Be Bloods and the Hurt Lockers, the Slumdog Millionaires and the Yi Yis; it’s when we decry the dreck that fills the spaces in between the better releases, the Battlefield Earths and the Giglis, the Pearl Harbors and the The Number 23s. (And I realize that this collection of titles represents only a microcosm of the cinema that makes its way to theaters…
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[IFFBoston Review]…Polisse
Think of Polisse as a towering and worthy successor to television shows like The Shield and, far more accurately, The Wire. Dedicated to portraying its events and characters by way of a realistic mien, the film revolves around the lives of the Paris CPU (Child Protection Unit) both on the job and at home; the focus isn’t on a single narrative through-line carrying the picture from start to finish but rather on the people behind the armbands and badges and what motivates them and what haunts them. Polisse‘s stylistic bent lends itself to a sense of disarray, but while the movie may read as somewhat helter-skelter as it leaps from…
