Poor Things (2023)

I've wanted to see this since I caught a few clips at the Academy Awards. My desire decreased when I learned that Yorgos Lanthimos directed. Nonetheless, almost as soon as it came to Netflix, I obliged.

In 19th-century London, heavily pregnant Victoria Blessington (Emma Stone) commits suicide. Victor Frankenstein-like Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) could simply revive her, but seeing little sense in bringing back a suicidal mind, he transplants her baby's brain into her head first. When he asks med student Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef) to help document the behavior of this "Bella Baxter," she can barely talk or balance, but she's learning fast. Eventually, Godwin talks Max into proposing to Bella. She accepts, but since Godwin would still require her to stay on his property all the time, she first runs off on an adventure with Europe-traveling lothario Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo). Neither she nor Duncan knows what they're getting into.

Nouvelle Vague (2025)

When I saw this advertised on Netflix, I briefly thought it was quite old, perhaps belatedly released like The Other Side of the Wind. That's a deliberate nod to the subject. Once I understood, I was sold.

By 1959, film critic Jean-Luc Godard has directed a short but feels much less accomplished than his cinematic comrades. He finally agrees to direct a romantic crime story co-written by François Truffaut and Claude Chabrol, which would become Breathless. Godard's many unconventional techniques, including long periods without shooting, annoy pretty much everyone he works with, especially female lead Jean Seberg and producer Georges de Beauregard. Other famous figures who turn up include Jean Cocteau, Éric Rohmer, and Roberto Rosselini.

The Devil Wears Prada (2006)

For ages, I felt like I knew enough about this movie already. I even described an outside character as "a Devil Wears Prada type," by which I meant a harsh female boss. But when the title came up on a Disney+ list, I opted for a more informed opinion. Hey, a sequel's slated for next year.

Recent college grad Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) applies for a New York City job as second assistant to Miranda Priestley (Meryl Streep) before ever learning that the latter runs the Runway fashion magazine. Andy stands out with her relative disregard for fashion -- and that's why Miranda hires her: to try something new after a string of failures. It's a tough job, but Andy sticks with it and becomes more like others in the industry, which drives a wedge between her and her old friends, not least her boyfriend (Adrian Grenier).

Touchez pas au grisbi (1954)

I wondered why I found this DVD in the H section of my library. The answer came at the title screen when the British subtitles read, "Honor Among Thieves." (No relation to a recent movie.) To make matters more confusing, it was released in the U.S. as Grisbi but appears on IMDb by its literal translation, Don't Touch the Loot.

Big-time crook Max (Jean Gabin, long after his heyday) has recently stolen gold bars, planning to retire on them. Unfortunately for him, partner in crime Riton (René Dary) has an unfaithful girlfriend (Jeanne Moreau) who lets their secret slip to her other boyfriend, Angelo (Lino Ventura). Angelo's men abduct Riton for ransom, so Max enlists two more partners (Paul Frankeur and Michel Jourdan) to help confront them....

Divines (2016)

I selected this partly for being very different from anything I'd seen lately and partly for having a runtime of less than two hours, which has grown scarce on my Netflix list. The cover image of a girl with a bloodied face did not exactly draw me in, but it did warn me that this wouldn't be much fun.

In a Romani suburb of modern Paris, high school friends Dounia (Oulaya Amamra) and Maimouna (Déborah Lukumuena), unsatisfied with their likely career options, resort to crime. At first they merely shoplift and sell on a black market. Then they persuade irascible drug dealer Rebecca (Jisca Kalvanda) to hire them for various tasks. They enjoy the pay, but it's a dangerous business, and teens aren't known for their cautious decisionmaking....

Lucy (2014)

So much for my prediction that I wouldn't watch another action crime flick right away. A friend suggested we see this together. Since it runs only 89 minutes, I figured at least it wouldn't be a great loss.

Lucy (Scarlett Johansson), a college student in Taiwan, puts a little too much trust in a guy she's been seeing for a week (Pilou Asbæk). He pressures her to make a mysterious delivery where he's no longer welcome. This gets her the unwelcome attention of ruthless drug lord Jang (Choi Min-sik), who has her knocked out and surgically implanted with a pouch of a fictitious new synthetic drug to smuggle. When the pouch leaks, she acquires superpowers, escapes, and seeks to collect the drug from other known mules. Not all the effects are good, so she'll have to act fast before her body gives out.

Anatomy of a Fall (2023)

In the wake of the Academy Awards, I feel a little more motivated to watch the nominees. This was the only one playing at a nearby theater this week, apart from Oppenheimer. The showing included closed captioning, which suited me fine given the accents.

Novelist Sandra (Sandra Hüller) and her preteen son, Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner), find her husband, Samuel (Samuel Theis), dead of a head injury outside their French alpine lodge, evidently having fallen from a higher floor. No eyewitnesses to the event come forward. Investigators discover enough fishy details to cast doubt on the idea of an accident. Sandra's lawyer friend, Vincent (Swann Arlaud), advises a focus on the possibility of a suicide, while the prosecutor (Antoine Reinartz) at her trial leans heavily on the likelihood that she killed Samuel. Daniel testifies in her favor, but his word carries only so much weight. (Funny how almost all the characters have first names spelled the same in English.)

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)

Why have I waited so long between movies when not on vacation? Well, mainly, I've kinda painted myself into a corner by insisting on Halloween-type movies every October. Now that Netflix has ceased disc delivery, I find their streaming horror and pseudo-horror options lacking. Disney+ is no better for that. In desperation, I resorted to a faintly gothic offering.

In medieval Paris, Minister of Justice Claude Frollo (Tony Jay) regularly assumes the worst about the Roma, consistently called by the slur "Gypsies" in this picture. He kills one at the Notre Dame Cathedral, only to find that she was carrying not contraband but a deformed baby. The archdeacon (David Ogden Stiers) tells him to raise the child as penance. Frollo keeps the boy in the cathedral bell tower, dubbing him Quasimodo and self-identifying as his master. After 20 years, Quasimodo (now voiced by Tom Hulce) finally ventures below during the Feast of Fools, when lots of people try to look freaky anyway. There he meets Esmeralda (Demi Moore), a Roma dancer who's not nearly as bad as he was led to believe. Quasimodo isn't the only one to fall for her, but Frollo has a twisted way to show it....

Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962)

On a whim, I decided to watch something playing at the AFI Silver Theater today. This French oldie was playing at a convenient time for me. That's right: 5 p.m. Since it showed only once today, I can only assume someone chose the slot on purpose.

Cléo (Corinne Marchand) is a fairly successful singer, albeit not widely recognized on the street. Expecting to take an exam for a potential cancer diagnosis soon, she visits a tarot reader (Loye Payen), whose verdict is unpromising. Convinced of her own doom, Cléo spends most of the film trying to come to grips with it or take her mind off it while doing various things with other people in the city before seeing the doctor (Robert Postec).

All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)

The 1930 adaptation of the Erich Maria Remarque novel was my favorite Academy Best Picture of the decade. How could a remake live up to it? Well, for one thing, the visual quality hasn't aged well. Also, its "Germans" make no attempt not to sound like Americans, whereas this version was German-made.

In 1917, four teenage friends, the most focal being Paul (Felix Kammerer), are moved to join the German army. They soon find themselves in a northern French trench with the more seasoned "Kat" (Albrecht Schuch), who helps steal food for them. About a year passes in total. As for the rest, all I really need to tell you is that the source material is antiwar....

The Father (2020)

Continuing to catch up on recent Oscar nominees. If Nomadland had been as I feared, I'd make a point not to watch this one next, because it promised to be a bit drearier than most of the competition, in a year with only dramas up for Best Picture.

In what might be the present era, elderly Brit Anthony (Anthony Hopkins) feels sure he can take care of himself. He doesn't welcome any assistants hired by his daughter Anne (Olivia Colman). At his most hostile and paranoid, he accuses them of theft and her of looking for an excuse to move him into a nursing home so she can claim his property. I'm a little surprised he doesn't accuse Anne of gaslighting, because he becomes increasingly confused about the apartment, whom to expect there, and what people have and have not told him. Anne also grows in stress, almost to the point of insanity, and her husband (Rufus Sewell) is less patient still.

Les Demoiselles de Rochefort/The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967)

For foreign-language musicals on screen, mostly Indian movies come to mind. The only exceptions I could think of were Nosotros los pobres and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, both of them serious and the latter possibly qualifying as an opera with its nonstop singing. By contrast, TYGoR is more of a Gene Kelly-type vehicle; indeed, Kelly gets a supporting role as visiting composer Andy. And yes, most of his lines are in French.

The official English title is misleading in that the leads, sisters Delphine (Catherine Deneuve, also in TUoC) and Solange (Françoise Dorléac), are old enough to work as teachers. Delphine is on the verge of dumping her obnoxious gallery-owning boyfriend (Jacques Riberolles), and both sisters hope to find romance and move from Rochefort to Paris to pursue musical success. As it happens, showmen Étienne (George Chakiris) and Bill (Grover Dale) could use help with a town fair stage act. But they're not the true love interests. Solange will literally bump into hers (Kelly), and Delphine will keep missing Maxence (Jacques Perrin), the sailor and artist who already has a crush on her. Meanwhile, their café-owning mother (Danielle Darrieux) is thinking she broke up with the unfortunately named music shop owner Simon Dame (Michel Piccoli) too rashly.

For intro paragraph brevity, I have skimped on the credits. Most of the above characters have alternate actors for singing voices: Anne Germain as Delphine, Claude Parent as Solange, Romuald Figuier as Étienne, José Bartel as Bill, Donald Burke as Andy, Jacques Revaux as Maxence, and Georges Blaness as Simon. Some of the less prominent characters do too, leaving me to wonder whether Darrieux was the only on-screen actress to sing.

About half the musical sequences focus on dance over singing. No, we don't get to see a lot of that from Kelly, who was in his mid-50s by then. But it's no La La Land either; the choreography is pretty good.

As for the songs, the melodies are fine, and I've grown fonder of the sound of French. Sometimes the subtitles try for rhymes, tho not consistently. One odd scene has characters talking in rhyme, in both languages, without music. Maybe more than one did and I was too caught up in other elements to notice.

What could distract me so? Well, the plot, which I also skimped on above. It may look conceptually basic, and the loves are certainly shallow, but events get pretty intricate, and the dialog isn't slow. Some of its humor may get lost in translation, though I perked up at an explicit reference to Jules and Jim. The rest of the humor is largely in situational improbabilities, along with the cute brattiness of the sisters' much younger brother (Patrick Jeantet on screen, Olivier Bonnet for singing).

Apart from Kelly's age, you could almost believe that this musical came out a great deal earlier. There are just a couple lines too risque for the Hays Code era, not that that ever applied in France.

Overall, I just kinda like it. I feel I would've gotten more out of it if I were better versed in French. And maybe more alert at the time.

The Earrings of Madame de... (1953)

So much for my earlier decision not to see this. Eh, I have changed some in seven years. Anyway, yes, that is the entire title, tho it's just Madam de... in the original French. Whenever her surname would be given, it is completely drowned out, interrupted, or visually blocked. I still don't know the purpose -- maybe trying to convey that all sorts of women are like her? At least we know her first name, and the significance of her jewelry becomes apparent almost immediately.

In what I take to be the 19th century, Louise (Danielle Darieux) has been so profligate in her Parisian decadence that she sees fit to sell the earrings her husband, André (Charles Boyer), gave her for their wedding. To save face, she claims to have lost them, but the jeweler (Jean Debucourt) sells them back to André, who gives them to his mistress (Lia Di Leo), who sells them to pay off her own debts. Their next buyer, Fabrizio (Vittorio De Sica), just happens to run into Louise and fall for her....

Last Year at Marienbad (1961)

An old French classic is already iffy for me; one that gets reviled in some circles is iffier still. I had planned to skip this one, until I got invited to a Meetup group to discuss it. Hey, if it was bad, at least we could harp on it together.

None of the characters have given names, and the setting is ambiguous apart from a fancy resort. What's important to know is that a man (Giorgio Albertazzi) insists that a woman (Delphine Seyrig) had had a romantic liaison with him at a Czech spa and agreed to meet him again around this time, but she denies ever meeting him before. The other man of note (Sacha Pitoëff) evidently disapproves of the first man's actions and challenges him to games of Nim.

The Mouse That Roared (1959)

This is one of those eye-catching titles that I'd seen many times before bothering to find out what they meant. The combination of Peter Sellers and a middling IMDb rating didn't seem promising for my laughs, but at least it was sure to be lighthearted.

A fictitious, tiny, backward European nation, the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, has put all its eggs in one basket by selling pinot to the U.S. When sales drop calamitously and no one takes protest letters seriously, the prime minister (Sellers) advises the duchess (Sellers in drag) to "go to war" and "lose," because the U.S. is uniquely generous to former enemies. They send 20 "troops" led by game warden Tully (Sellers still) to New York City with instructions to surrender at the first opportunity. But they arrive at an unusual scenario: Most New Yorkers are underground for an air raid drill, and the few who aren't include General Snippet (MacDonald Parke), eccentric physicist Dr. Kokintz (David Kossoff), his beautiful daughter Helen (Jean Seberg)...and Dr. Kokintz's way-too-insecure prototype of the world's most powerful bomb. Tully decides to pursue victory after all, to the dismay of superiors....

One Hour with You (1932)

So much for my prediction that if I ever saw another Maurice Chevalier movie, it would be from late in his career. I seem to have a poor memory for such resolutions. Regardless, I had wanted a '30s picture on the unserious side, and that's just what I got.

In Paris, Andre (Chevalier) and Colette (Jeanette MacDonald) are such passionate spouses that everyone assumes they're unwed or at most newlywed. Enter Colette's friend Mitzi (Genevieve Tobin), whose husband Adolph (Charles Ruggles) rightly suspects her of infidelity. She falls for Andre right away and doesn't even care that he's married to her alleged best friend. As Andre's resolve weakens in the face of Mitzi's aggressive advances, Adolph turns his attention to Colette.

Eyes Without a Face (1960)

If your first thought was the Billy Idol song, yup, this is where the title came from. It's also thought to have influenced the appearance of Michael Myers in Halloween. But contemporary critics hated it, and one of the few positive reviews nearly got the writer fired (not even in France). That might be why it was marketed deceptively as The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus in the U.S. I was pretty reluctant to watch it myself, not for lack of reputed quality but for disturbing premises. Still, I mustered the courage.

Christiane (Edith Scob) has been facially unpresentable since a car accident. Dr. Génessier (Pierre Brasseur), being her father, a reconstructive surgeon, and the cause of the accident, takes it upon himself to give her skin grafts. Of course, it's hard to find a willing donor for a face transplant, so with the help of assistant Louise (Alida Valli)...well, you can guess. And no, once isn't enough.

Design for Living (1933)

This disc came with Peter Ibbetson, which I skipped because I hadn't allotted enough time, it isn't the more popular of the two, and chasing a comedy immediately with a drama didn't feel right. Having a "double feature" on one DVD seems unpromising for the quality of both movies, but DfL is pretty highly rated and has several famous names attached, including director-producer Ernst Lubitsch.

George (Gary Cooper) and Tom (Fredric March) are friends and struggling artists -- a painter and playwright, respectively -- who nevertheless take a trip to Paris, where they happen to make the acquaintance of fellow American Gilda (Miriam Hopkins), an advertising artist with ideas to improve both men's works. Before long from the perspective of a 91-minute runtime, each man finds out that the other has been seeing Gilda on the sly. Neither wants to let her go, and she doesn't want to let either go, so the trio makes a "gentleman's agreement" to be a circle of platonic friends. This agreement becomes harder to keep when Tom finds enough success to take him out of the city....

Au Hasard Balthazar (1966)

Oh boy, direction by Robert Bresson again. This time I felt an obligation to watch because it's his most popular work. In fact, it was the highest among the British Film Institute's faves that I hadn't already seen. But that's not very promising to me. Well, at worst, it would be only 95 minutes I wasn't getting back.

Three child siblings adopt a donkey and name him Balthazar. When their family runs into trouble years later, they have to sell him. He has several owners after that, none of them kind. Meanwhile, one of the kids he knew, Marie (played in young adulthood by Anne Wiazemsky), against the advice of others, enters an abusive relationship with delinquent Gérard (François Lafarge), one of his owners. The film focuses about half the time on Balthazar and half on Marie, tho they do share a number of scenes.

The Two of Us (1967)

I finally got another disc delivery for the first time since last year. It's rather hard to coordinate the timing with streaming, so this meant yet another foreign-language flick about a Jewish guy. Oh well, still not all that similar.

In occupied Paris, the Langmann family is laying low, tho not quite to an Anne Frank extent. Eight-year-old Claude (Alain Cohen) keeps calling unwelcome attention to himself, so his parents send him to live in the countryside with the parents of a friend of theirs, who will gladly take care of a pseudo-grandchild for however many months. (The French title translates to "The Old Man and the Boy.) That arrangement is safer overall, but Claude has to maintain a charade of being Catholic like them. They -- perhaps especially the outspoken old man (Michel Simon), who asks Claude to call him Pépé -- believe the propaganda about Jews.