A personal journal of film and documentary reviews, and reviews of anything else that intrigues me.
French and French-language Films
Walerian Borowczyk, “Les Jeux des Anges” (1964) So far the strangest film I have seen from Borowczyk, “Les Jeux …” at first doesn’t appear to have…
Piotr Dumala, “Crime and Punishment / Zbrodnia i Kara” (2000) The style of animation associated with Piotr Dumala is unusual and often emotionally intense: using plasterboard…
French and French-language Films
Walerian Borowczyk, Chris Marker, “Les Astronautes” (1959) An entertaining little film short, “Les Astronautes” is a stop-motion animation collage of photographs copied, cut and pasted onto…
French and French-language Films
Alain Resnais, “Hiroshima Mon Amour” (1959) This famous film tells a very deceptively simple story: a French actress whom we’ll call She (Emmanuelle Riva) is in…
Walerian Borowczyk and Jan Lenica, “The House / Dom” (1958) Rather odd film in which a woman (Ligia Branice), seemingly trapped and bored in an apartment…
Jan Lenica, “The Labyrinth / Labirynt” (1963) Superficially this looks like a Terry Gilliam / Monty Python animated cartoon and it is indeed very funny and…
Andrew S Allen, “The Thomas Beale Cipher” (2010) Unusual collage-type animated film that’s based on the legend about the three cypher-texts that supposedly reveal the location…
French and French-language Films
Philippe Grammaticopoulos, “The Bellies / Les Ventres” (2009) Delightful short film inspired in part by Rene Laloux’s animated work, “The Bellies” features a simple story about…
Piotr Dumala, “Franz Kafka” (1992) A 15-minute film of various episodes in the life of early 20th century Czech writer Franz Kafka, this is remarkable mainly…
Jan Svankmajer, “A Quiet Week in the House / Tichy tyden v dome” (1969) A strange little film even by my standards of strangeness, this combines live…