Breaking Away (1979)

In Les Misérables, directed by Bille August, it is the film itself which turns out to be misérable: thin and poor and wretched and in need of feeding up. The one thing you don’t want to skimp on when you are filming an epic is the epic proportions. August, a fine director of intense and…

Post Coitum Animal Triste, directed by Brigitte Roüen, stars Miss Roüen herself as Diane, a publisher married to the decent but boring lawyer, Philippe (Patrick Chesnais). She suddenly falls passionately in love with the much younger Emilio (Boris Terral) — a hydraulic engineer who goes about doing good, bringing water to the third world. What…

Kiss or Kill was written and directed by Bill Bennett — no, not that Bill Bennett but yet another example of the astonishing outpouring of Australian cinematic talent of the past few years. It takes as the basis of its dramatic scenario a theme that most Americans would have thought was not only thoroughly worn…

An engrossing French thriller that almost succeeds in reminding us of Hollywood’s great days — now, alas, long past

I was, as my long-time readers may remember, inclined to give Leaving Las Vegas the benefit of a very considerable doubt that it was not, as it seemed to be, about insane self-indulgence but, like Kiss or Kill, about the intersection of love and trust. One Night Stand, the latest from that film’s director, Mike…

American Psycho is as a movie as it was as a book, not a serious work of art but merely something designed to be talked about in the media and thus to confer money and celebrity upon its now plural authors. This is important, because not all books or movies that are talked about in…