A personal journal of film and documentary reviews, and reviews of anything else that intrigues me.
French and French-language Films
Louis Feuillade, “Les Vampires (Part 5: L’évasion du Mort)” (1916) This time in the serial, the crooked businessman Juan José Moreno (Fernand Herrmann) plays the leading role…
French and French-language Films
Louis Feuillade, “Les Vampires (Part 2: La Bague qui tue)” (1915), “Les Vampires (Part 4: Le Spectre)” (1916) Here be two further episodes in which investigative…
French and French-language Films
Louis Feuillade, “Les Vampires (Part 1: La tête coupée)” (1915) First episode in a ten-part serial about a gang of criminals called Les Vampires and the…
French and French-language Films
Walerian Borowczyk, “L’Amour Monstre de tous les temps: Portrait de Ljuba” (1977) Borowczyk gave up directing animation films in the late 1960s and turned to live-action…
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…
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…
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…
French and French-language Films
Marie-Monique Robin, “The World According to Monsanto / Le Monde selon Monsanto” (2008) At issue in this informative documentary directed by the investigative journalist Marie-Monique Robin is…
French and French-language Films
Jean Cocteau, “Orpheus / Orphée” (1950) Intriguing re-telling of the famous ancient Greek legend set in post-WW2 Paris, this film combines surrealism, fantasy, situation comedy or…