Lucybespro It is a performances centric movie

Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Scotty Burke It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Lela The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

petra_ste Hugo Pratt was a master narrator. His comic book adventures of Corto Maltese were elegant and unique, with charismatic dreamer Corto, his ruthless companion Rasputin (a creature of pure Id and malevolence who still miraculously came across as sympathetic), exotic settings and memorable secondary characters.La Cour Secrète des Arcanes is a worthy adaptation of Corto's best adventure. With stylish art direction, a pleasant soundtrack and an effective atmosphere, this cartoon is intriguing and features characters of remarkable depth like Ungern Khan and the exceptional Shangai Lil.End of WWI: adventurer Corto Maltese is recruited by a secret society to recover the treasure of the Tsars; his companions are friendly rival Rasputin and enigmatic Shangai Lil. To say more would be a pity - don't be deceived by the outrageously low IMDb rating.I believe Pratt would have loved this, and there can be no greater compliment.8/10

lkemilai The story and the characters in this movie are guaranteed Pratt, and art is nicely adapted to animation. Sceneries are stunning and the atmosphere is definitely right. The animation is french standard quality, which means it's quite good, but not very fluid. You don't forget that you're watching animated pictures.This could have been an excellent movie, had the director demanded a little more of the voice actors and sound engineers. Now there is very little drama in this movie. You see dramatic events taking place in exotic surroundings and hear people reading out script in a dry-sounding studio setup.So: 3 points for the original comic, 1 for the idea of adapting it to silver screen, and points for animation, art direction and a beautiful musical soundtrack as well.

fbossert I think this is the king of all animation films. Pratt's "economic" drawing and his particular use of time are fully followed here. The action scenes are outstanding. The choice of the voices was accurate –even if one could think that Corto's voice should have a mix of different accents instead of speaking perfect french. It is, indeed, difficult to get into Corto's world at the first try; but I think the film –slowly starting, as in the original comic, with some kind of remembrance or reverie, an outside-of-time dialog with Bouche Dorée– does a great work in that way. Anyway, if at the end Corto's personality remains a mystery it must be said that it is the same for those who have read the whole series: Corto is an enigma, and the films succeeds in respecting that –instead of turning him into a simple adventure hero. Thus, the question "what is he really looking for?" remains unanswered. From my point of view, the difficulty of the film is not to get into Corto's universe for the those which are not familiar with it, but that it requires a minimum of historical knowledge. Indeed, some notions about the Russian revolution and the political situation of China at the beginnings of XX century are really helpful for the fully understanding of the film. In fact, the comic book includes some pages outlining this historical context; also, a map is as useful here as in The Lord of the Rings. In a word, watching this Corto Maltese film is as delightful as reading the comic book –and that is saying enough.

Andorion Granted, I don't speak French, so I won't be able to comment on the plot, but I got a fair idea of what it's about. The visuals range from fairly impressive to mundane - some of the film is obviously rendered (hand drawn over the rendering) but overall, "it looks good." It has its own style, very reminiscent of the comic book, which is pretty cool. The French voice acting is well done, as is the cinematography - the movie is very moody, but never dull. The various scenes have a lot of atmosphere, especially sequences with infrequent or no dialogue - just very well done and spooky sound effects. I'll have to see it again with English subs to decide how worthwhile it is, but for the visuals alone, I'd suggest seeing it.