Tag Archives: France

Review: Red Sun (France/Italy/Spain 1971)

Bronson-mania!  Is this Toshiro Mifune-Charles Bronson “fish out of water Eastern warrior trying to recover a lost national treasure teams up with roguish Western outlaw cowboy” the first instance of the same plot used again by The Stranger and the … Continue reading

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Review: Benedetta (France 2021)

Paul Verhoeven’s new nuns gone wild true story is a fascinating study in wrong-footing an audience. Just when you think you have the movie, and the titular character figured out, Verhoeven shifts the narrative and point of view. Sometimes a … Continue reading

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Review: Judex (France 1963)

Georges Franju’s tribute to the silent serials of Louis Feuillade. Franju takes a different path than Olivier Assayas, whose tribute to Les Vampires, Irma Vep, recontextualized the action into a meta-tribute to Feuillade and Maggie Cheung. Rather Franju does something … Continue reading

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Review: That Man from Rio (France 1964)

Jean-Paul Belmondo stars in a light-hearted action-comedy romp through Brazil, in what mostly amounts to a continuous pursuit of his abducted girlfriend (the tragic Francoise Dorleac) and some archaeological McGuffins. If you know Belmondo’s more populist films, you know that … Continue reading

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Review: Magnet of Doom (France 1963)

Moody crime film from Jean Pierre Melville? Sign me up. This is definitely one of his weaker efforts – the story about a unemployed boxer (Jean Paul Belmondo) bodyguarding a disgraced French baker on the run (Clouzot regular Charles Vanel … Continue reading

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Review: Lost in Paris aka Paris pieds nus (France/Belgium 2016)

God, I love when a movie really knows how to use color.  Most films nowadays experiment with monochrome or tints, but Lost in Paris is full of old school technicolor, Jacques Demy-flavor colors – luminescent greens, candy reds, blues and … Continue reading

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