Young Girls of Rochefort (1967, Jacques Demy)
Not a total musical like “Umbrellas” was, and no connecting characters between the two, just a brief mention of the town of Cherbourg. This one has the same longing tone as the previous film in parts,...
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La Belle Noiseuse (1991, Jacques Rivette)
Won the grand jury prize at Cannes, but didn’t have quite enough of that barton fink feeling to take the golden palm. Did not take the nation’s award shops by storm – lost the Cesar to some Gérard...
View ArticleDon’t Touch The Axe (2007, Jacques Rivette)
What to say? Despite my recent Rivette obsession and how I was looking forward to this, I didn’t love it. But I didn’t expect to love it, since it’s a period piece about upper-class people unable to...
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Belle toujours (2006, Manoel de Oliveira)
“It’s in my style as homage to Bunuel’s style which is very different.” Very spare, a couple talky dialogue scenes but mostly quiet, with pillow shots of Paris at night between scenes. Opening titles...
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The War Is Over (1966, Alain Resnais)
Resnais’s fourth feature, coming out the same year as Rivette’s The Nun. Watched this once before and have practically no memory of it, so this time I read the screenplay then watched again. By doing...
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The Milky Way (1969, Luis Buñuel)
This is one of Buñuel’s anarchic sketch films (see also: Simon of the Desert, Phantom of Liberty) which he made in between his relatively more normal, subversive upper-class films (in this case between...
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French Cancan (1954, Jean Renoir)
It took me two or three years to finally watch The Golden Coach and then I loved it to pieces, so anticipation was unreasonably high for this one. At first it’s just another Renoir movie, light and...
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101 Nights of Simon Cinema (1995, Agnès Varda)
Camille: “Can I come during the day, from 5 to 7?” Marcello: “The magic hour for lovers.” Simon Cinema (Michel Piccoli) isn’t doing too well, confined to his mansion-museum with his butler...
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Les créatures (1966, Agnès Varda)
I think these might be time-lapse shots of the tide going out, but the picture quality is too poor to be sure. This is gonna be a rough one… Opens with a closeup of Catherine Deneuve smiling, a good...
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Le Doulos (1962, Jean-Pierre Melville)
I actually kept up with all the plot confusion, so better write this down while I still remember it. Thief Maurice (Serge Reggiani, would-be star of Clouzot’s Inferno) kills and robs his fence/friend...
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You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet (2012, Alain Resnais)
A slow-unfolding (but always formally exciting) Resnais movie gathering most of his favorite actors in a room for a contrived reason (a just-deceased writer/director wants his favorite actors to...
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Genealogies of a Crime (1997, Raoul Ruiz)
I was about to start reading my Ruiz book, so I watched this first to feel more current. But it’s near-impossible to feel current with the prolific Ruiz, especially when the book opens in Chile two...
View ArticleBad Blood (1986, Leos Carax)
Pure cinema! Young, wired Denis Lavant flees girlfriend Julie Delpy to help Hans and Marc (Michel Piccoli) on a heist in place of Lavant’s murdered father, and falls for Piccoli’s girl Juliette...
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I’m Going Home (2001, Manoel de Oliveira)
“Deliberately paced, lacking narrative momentum” reads a positive review. I found it very strange (even having seen some of Oliveira’s other films) in an exciting way. It would be easy to write an...
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The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972, Luis Bunuel)
Seen this a few times before, and a year or two after watching, I can never remember what I loved about it. The story’s not exciting (similar plot description to The Exterminating Angel) and I recall...
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Young Girls of Rochefort (1967, Jacques Demy)
Sept. 2016: Watched this again in the beautiful blu-ray restoration, along with Agnes Varda’s documentary. Of course, I take back the comment below that the music is unmemorable – I find no showtunes...
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A Room in Town (1982, Jacques Demy)
Starts and ends with a labor strike, but I guess 1982 was too little/late for Demy to be considered political enough to hang with the New Wave gang again. This is a tragedy version of The Young Girls...
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