From Paris with Love [pullquote cite="" type="left, right"][amazon text=Amazon&template=carousel&chan=that film guy&asin=B002BD9DS4][/pullquote] Films that typify the urban realm and do justice to representing particular cities are few are far between. Cities in film are often shiny facades of nothingness, backgrounds on which the story can play out. Notable … [Read more...]
Review: Delicatessen (1991, France)
Jean-Pierre Jeunet is famous, above all, for Amélie. To an extent, the rest of his work has been overshadowed by this one film. And it's easy to see why “ it was after all, a huge popular and critical success, won a bunch of Césars (the French equivalent of the Oscars), launched Audrey Tautou's career, boosted Montmartre's tourist industry and has been endlessly copied, … [Read more...]
Review: Persepolis (2007, France)
Persepolis is an animated movie based on a graphic novel of the same name by Marjane Satrapi. Based on her own experiences, Satrapi herself co-wrote and co-directed the movie alongside Vincent Paronnaud, bringing her style of illustration to the big screen. The movie tells Satrapi's own story, that of a young girl growing up in Tehran, the capital of Iran. The film begins with … [Read more...]
Review: The Illusionist (2010, France)
The Illusionist is an animated movie released in 2010. It is based on a script by legendary entertainer and director Jacques Tati, in which he drew on his experience as a music hall performer. Tati wrote the script for the film in 1956, but never put it into production. The script was then given to director Sylvain Chomet (Belleville Rendevous) in the early years of the 21st … [Read more...]
Review: Mesrine: Killer Instinct (France, 2008)
It is a truth universally acknowledged that films with a colon their title are usually rubbish. From the made for TV films with names like Tough Love: The Jackie Donovan story, to blockbusters like The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 and Mission: Impossible, exceptions are few and far between. Fortunately, Mesrine: Killer Instinct is one of them. Killer Instinct is the … [Read more...]
Review: Joyeux Noёl (2005, France)
[pullquote cite="" type="left, right"][amazon text=Amazon&template=carousel&chan=that film guy&asin=B006GP30M8][/pullquote] Christmas Eve, 1914. A group of Scottish soldiers in a trench in Northern France strike up a song to cheer their spirits. A few hundred yards away across no man's land, a German singer picks up the tune, and steps out up out of his trench. A … [Read more...]
Review: The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005, France)
[pullquote cite="" type="left, right"][amazon text=Amazon&template=carousel&chan=that film guy&asin=B000C05YGI][/pullquote] The Beat That My Heart Skipped is a rarity, in that it's a ˜world cinema' remake of an American movie. The movie in question is Fingers, a 1978 thriller starring Harvey Keitel as Jimmy ˜Fingers' Angelelli, a young man torn between a career as a … [Read more...]