Jean Claude Van Damme in the NY Times!

Anyone who has talked to me at all about my favorite movies of the year so far will know that I fell truly, madly, deeply in love with the new Jean Claude Van Damme meta-actioner appropriately titled JCVD. A wickedly funny black comedy features the "Muscles from Brussels" as himself, an aging action star with little respect and no decent prospects in Hollywood. Returning to Belgium to get his life in order, he gets caught up in a crime and is confronted with his own sense of personal heroism.

The wild thing is that Jean Claude is incredibly poised, intelligent and brilliantly funny. Acting in his native French for the first time, his now signature hammy blunt delivery is striped away, revealing a confident actor with serious chops.

The New York Times recently interviewed the man himself. I highly recommend reading the whole article.

You can also check out the Fantastic Fest write-up for JCVD here, complete with user reviews from festival attendees.

When you are done, you can buy your ticket to the film here. It opens at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema on November 20 (that show features a special get-you-in-the-mood double bill of JCVD's old-school fave BLOOD SPORT). A full-run of shows opens on Friday, November 21.