It’s the story of boy meets girl, but it’s all mixed up. He’s Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo), a married man with kids. She is Marianne (Anna Karina), the babysitter. But they are not strangers; they’ve known each other for years: Four … Continue reading PIERROT LE FOU
Tonight marks the conclusion of TCM’s 14-week series, Women Make Film. One of the best movies featured in the series is now available to watch in a beautiful 4K Blu-ray restoration. No home library is complete without it. From Boulder … Continue reading BEAU TRAVAIL
Movie theaters are closing back down, studios are rolling back release dates (or moving titles to streaming), and WarnerMedia is getting ready to cut thousands of jobs. Things do not look good. Thankfully, home viewing options remain robust, particularly this … Continue reading This week in Film — RAFIKI, THE GUNFIGHTER, and PIERROT LE FOU
One’s a masterpiece, the other, not so much. Let’s kick things off on the good foot: Released at the tail end of the last century, Beau travail was filmmaker Claire Denis’ fifth film: the one that launched her onto the world stage … Continue reading This week in Film — BEAU TRAVAIL and MULAN
One Godard deserves another. Yesterday, it was Le petit soldat, today it’s Adieu au langage. From Boulder Weekly Vol. 22, No. 30, “Goodbye to all of that.” In 1960, Jean-Luc Godard revolutionized cinema. Breathless wasn’t just a break from the old … Continue reading GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE
While theatrical moviegoing in 2020 might be defunct, home viewing has seemingly gotten all the better. And not just in the breadth of streaming selections, but in the sheer amount of quality physical discs released. The Criterion Collection remains the … Continue reading LE PETIT SOLDAT
Anna Karina was a model, a muse, an actor, a director, a novelist, and, most of all, she was a collaborator. The eight movies she made with husband Jean-Luc Godard are among the greatest in the annals of cinema, and … Continue reading This week in Film — LE PETIT SOLDAT and THE MEDICINE
When Anna Karina died on December 14, so did the spirit of the French New Wave. Born Hanne Karin Bayer in Denmark, Karina (Sept. 22, 1940-Dec. 14, 2019) modeled, acted, directed, wrote, and danced. Her career spans nearly five decades, … Continue reading Anna Karina
French critic cum filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard famously said that all you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun, but he could have done it with less. As an artist, Godard vacillated back and forth between incendiary agitator and devoted cineaste, often colliding within the same movie. For his seventh feature, Godard wanted to make something cheap, something fast, something commercial. As Richard Brody writes in his seminal study of Godard, Everything is Cinema, “Godard took no chances with the material: he declared that he wanted ‘to make a simple, legible film.’” That film was to be … Continue reading BAND OF OUTSIDERS
