Jean-Pierre Castaldi Movies

In Housewarming (the original title of which translates as Remodeling: You Know When It Starts...), Carole Bouquet stars as Chantal Letellier, a wealthy, powerful, and happily divorced Paris attorney who devotes a lot of her time to helping the city's poorly treated immigrants. Chantal literally dances her way through the courtroom, winning over the judges with ease. Her busy life seems to be going swimmingly until she decides to remodel her massive apartment. She hires a brilliant but mercurial former client from Colombia, Eduardo (Marcial Di Fonzo Bo), as her architect. He and his illegal immigrant crew are highly qualified, just not in the jobs they've been hired to do, and they quickly begin to demolish her home. A few other problems arise. Poncin (Jean-Pierre Castaldi), an obnoxious wealthy former client, has fallen in love with Chantal and begun stalking her. Her young daughter, Pulchérie (Giulia Dussolier), apparently has a crush on a worker with a questionable background who speaks no French and calls himself Betamax (Geovanny Tituaña). Chantal's teenaged son, Martin (Ferdinand Chesnais), quickly grows irritated with the destruction, and the workers' devil-may-care attitude. As Eduardo's ambitions grow, and the project's costs mount, Chantal's immense reserve of patience begins to wane. Housewarming, directed by Brigitte Roüan, marks the last filmed appearance by legendary producer Humbert Balsan, who committed suicide in 2005. The film also stars Aldo Maccione, Didier Flamand, Sotigui Kouyaté, Bernard Menez, and Françoise Brion. Housewarming was shown by the Film Society of Lincoln Center as part of their Rendez-Vous with French Cinema in 2006. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide

A group of extreme winter athletes find themselves risking their neck for more than just thrills in this action drama. Jeffrey (Rupert Graves) is a director who has been hired to make a television commercial for a cellular phone company. For the spot, Jeffrey has come up with an exciting visual motif - a group of extreme skiers and snowboarders outrunning an avalanche on a remote mountain range. To get the needed footage, Jeffrey and his crew head to Austria, where they set up to film on a mountain near the former Yugoslavia; joining them is Olympic downhill champion Chloe (Bridgette Wilson-Sampras) and world-class snowboarders Ian (Rufus Sewell, Will (Devon Sawa), Silo (Joe Absolom), and Kittie (Jana Pallaske). While filming along an unchartered slope, Jeffrey's camera crew make an unexpected discovery - they find the secret compound of international terrorist Slobodan Pavlov (Klaus Lowitsch), and even capture the deadly man on videotape. Extremely unhappy that he's been found out, Pavlov turns his immediate attention to eliminating Jeffrey, his crew, and his skiers, and soon the snowboarders are forced to use their skills not just for kicks, but to save their friends - and possibly the world. Director Christian Duguay) is an old hand at filming in snow-covered mountains, having made the TV movie Snowbound: The Jim and Jennifer Stolpa Story in 1994. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Director Peter Hyams brings the modern choreography talents of famed Hong Kong fight sequence designer Xin Xin Xiong to this action adventure that departs widely from its classic novel source material, focusing exclusively on the D'Artagnan character and either excising other characters completely or relegating them to minor supporting roles. Justin Chambers stars as D'Artagnan, a country-bred lad whose skill with a sword has led to aspirations of becoming a Musketeer, one of the French king's elite guard. Upon arriving in Paris, however, he finds that the Musketeers have been disbanded by order of Cardinal Richelieu (Stephen Rea), who is usurping the king's authority with the help of a lethally gifted henchman, Febre (Tim Roth). Soon, D'Artagnan is embroiled in an effort to prevent a war between his native country and England, meeting up with a beautiful love interest (Mena Suvari) along the way. As he has often done before, director Hyams doubles as his own cinematographer. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

A middle-aged, slightly pudgy and earthy waitress finds herself wooed by a handsome marine animal trainer from a local theme park. Arlette (comedienne Josiane Balasko, France's answer to Roseanne) has no idea that she is the long-lost heir to the vast fortune of a dying business tycoon. Her new suitor Franck (Christophe Lambert), who is dangerously indebted to Las Vegas gamblers, is well-aware of her status and is being forced by the gamblers to court and marry her so they can later kill her and collect her inheritance. As this is a comedy, the story takes several humorous twists and turns, especially when Franck really does fall in love with the feisty Arlette and comes clean about the scheme. This leads Arlette and Franck to hatch their own plan for turning the tables on the crooks. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

After one of his superiors tries unsuccessfully to frame him, the formerly by-the-book honest cop Julien Segal (Patrick Bruel) turns to crime as the way to fight them back. Along the way he wins the partnership and love of the lovely Claire (Sandra Speichert), and cleverly makes life very uncomfortable indeed for his nefarious police supervisor Carre (Didier Bezace) and the supervisor's dope-dealing buddy Roche (Jean-Louis Tribes). It seems that Carre can't prosecute Julien for his crimes without coming under suspicion himself. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Claude Sautet's A Few Days With Me (Quelque Jours avec Moi) stars Daniel Auteuil as the emotionally disturbed heir to a supermarket empire. Auteuil's mother Danielle Darrieux tries to give her son some purpose in life by assigning him the task of reinvigorating one of the supermarket chain's least profitable links. Every effort Auteuil makes to reach out and communicate with his employees is doomed to failure due to his conscious and unconscious insensitivities. He is humanized by a brief affair with maid Sandrine Bonnaire. The romance doesn't last, and Auteuil ends up back in a mental institution, but still there is a ray of hope for him in the final scenes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Alex (Kari Vaananen) is a Finnish cabbie working in Berlin with plenty of problems in this comedy with film noir touches. With two dead men and a suitcase filled with hundred dollar bills, he has difficulty disposing of the bodies. He is chased by the top crime boss (Samuel Fuller) and his crony (Eddie Constantine). Alex's wife is allergic to the money, so the cabbie endures more than he can handle trying to rid himself of the cash and the corpses. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

When a man decides to play the role of twins in order to romance another set of twins, life becomes much more complicated than he wants or needs in this interesting farce by Yves Robert, adapted from the much blacker comedy by Donald Westlake, Two Much. Matthias Duval (Pierre Richard) is a humble greeting-card vendor when he meets twin American heiresses and decides to seduce each of them since he cannot tell them apart anyway and is attracted to both sisters. His originally innocent ploy eventually makes a bigamist out of him and nearly does him in since he has to bed-hop between the two women, without remembering who is whom. The sisters' dirty-dealing lawyer finds Matthias out one day, and in the subsequent fight Matthias accidentally kills the man. Will this affect Matthias's relationship with both sisters? Will he be caught and go to jail? -- the answers are unexpected. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Having just seen a successful robbery, a man (Daniel Auteuil) and his roommate (Gerard Jugnot) are inspired to rob a bank themselves for some ready cash. When they burst in on the bank with their toy machine guns, most of the tellers and staff are frightened and wary, but in one case, a member of the bank staff has to show the robbers how to carry out their plan because they really do not know what they are doing. After getting to know the robbers better, the bank staff are struck by a serious conflict of interest -- should they remain loyal to the bank or not? ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

This French comedy is the sequel to the well-regarded Pardon Mon Affaire. This version centers on the sexual fantasies of a quartet of four married, middle-class men attempting to deal with the onset of middle-age. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This glossy Alistair MacLean action programmer concerns the machinations involved in smuggling an Eastern European scientist out of France and into the United States while being pursued by gang of international pirates, who want the scientist for themselves so that they can grab the secrets that the scientist holds and sell them to the highest bidder. The film deals with Neil Bowman (David Birney), a carefree American who is hired by French land baron the Duc de Croyter (Michel Lonsdale) to make sure that the scientist finds his way safely aboard a jet bound for America. Lila (Charlotte Rampling), a svelte British photographer, happens upon the scene and snuggles up to Neil, right before barriers are throw in their way by the pirate-kidnappers. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide