Mesrine: Public Enemy #1 (Day 96)
My Opinion: 8.1 || Exciting gangster biopic dominated by Vincent Cassel as the title character. Thrilling performance. Vibrant writing and direction. Engrossing from start to finish.
Category Archive: French
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Lorna’s Silence (Day 95)
My Opinion: 8.5 || Intimate realism and a very mature look at moral compromise. After a nearly perfect first half, it makes an audacious narrative turn and loses some tightness but remains absorbing to the end.
Certified Copy (Day 92)
My Opinion: 8.4 || An enthralling intellectual treat that also manages to be emotionally vital. Very few movies achieve this level of stimulation, and Juliette Binoche is an enthralling, trilingual knockout. Unfortunately, although the… Continue reading
Le Doulos (Day 90)
My Opinion: 7.9 || Dark, tight crime thriller that plays cat-and-mouse with our loyalties and assumptions. Not a roller-coaster so much as a slow-track ride with trick mirrors and surprising turns. Once we get… Continue reading
La Jetée (Day 80)
My Opinion: 7.3 || High marks for the number of stimulating ideas packed into 28 minutes and for the uniqueness of the vision. But the experimental structure is just as limiting as it is… Continue reading
The Girl on the Bridge (Day 76)
My Opinion: 8.2 || Charming romantic comedy — a delight through and through. The characters are well drawn, the dialogue is witty, and the touches of magic arrive in perfect measure.
La Femme Nikita (Day 73)
My Opinion: 6.5 || Stylish action film that’s spawned myriad spin-offs and imitations. The last act is badly muddled, but the foundation is excellent, the thriller elements are well filmed, and it’s a mostly… Continue reading
War Witch (Day 71)
My Opinion: 7.9 || Powerful subject matter that’s handled well, even if the whole doesn’t quite equal the sum of the parts. The film uses naturalism to excellent effect and never stoops to emotional… Continue reading
Mesrine: Killer Instinct (Day 67)
My Opinion: 6.8 || Good gangster biopic, but the direction and acting are more interesting than the subject matter. It’s the first part of a two-film set, and has a to-be-continued ending that (unavoidably)… Continue reading
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Day 65)
My Opinion: 9.5 || I don’t think I can provide a commentary that will do the movie justice (though I’ll try). It’s perfect.
