Mon Colonel:  I'd never heard of director Laurent Herbiet (Mon Colonel is his feature debut), but the pedigree of this film was enough to pique my interest.  The screenplay was penned by Costa-Gavras, who also produces alongside the Dardenne brothers, who have won a couple of Golden Palm's over the last eight Cannes festivals (Rosetta and Le Infant).

After seeing Mon Colonel, I remembered Costa-Gavras hasn't made a good film in my lifetime, and that the Dardenne brothers are totally overrated.

The movie begins with the murder of the titular colonel.  As the police and the military begin their respective investigations, they're both sent mysterious packages containing snippets of a mysterious diary from a mysterious French lieutenant who served until Colonel Duplan during the post-World War II rebel uprising in Algeria.  The bulk of the film is shown in black-and-white flashbacks (with annoying white subtitles) as the baby-faced Lt. Rossi (Robinson Stévenin), fresh from Paris, is given the painful task of finding ways to get around certain laws in an attempt to allow Col. Duplan (Olivier Gourmet) to do whatever the hell he wants as he tries to track down rebels in St. Arnaud.  You know, in a kind of nudge-nudge wink-wink sort of "they'll bomb us if we don't use torture during interrogation, right?" sort of way.  Hey, that sounds sort of familiar...

What follows is like an expanded version of Sayid's flashback episode of Lost.  Only, like, not nearly as interesting.

darkbluealmostblack:  Daniel Sánchez Arévalo, director of several award-winning shorts, makes his feature film debut with this flick, a love rectangle between a janitor, two convicts, and a posh girl with braces.  Initially, the two main story threads are about a young man named Jorge (Quim Gutiérrez) forced to both care for his father and take over his job as a doorman at a large building of condominiums after dad strokes out; and Paula (Marta Etura), a woman in the pokey who dreams of being knocked up so she can live in the jail's fancy maternity ward.  Their paths cross when Jorge's brother Antonio (Antonio de la Torre), who is also locked up in the same joint as Paula, agrees to impregnate her.  Trouble is, he's unable.  At the same time, Jorge's eternal crush-slash-neighbor (Eva Pallarés) comes back into the picture.

If you've seen one movie about disenchanted young adults (especially one from a foreign land), you can probably figure out where this movie is headed, even with the odd subplot involving Jorge's friend's attempts to blackmail his own father.  A nice first effort, but still in the middle of the pack, at best.