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Movie Review – The 400 Blows

The 400 Blows (1959)
Written by François Truffaut and Marcel Moussy
Directed by François Truffaut

You’ll hear this annoying thing from hack directors who get justifiably reamed in the reviews for lousy work. They’ll say that people who are critics are just incapable of making their own art. It’s silly to say that because it tries to say that a thoughtful critique of a piece of art is invalid unless it praises that piece of art. François Truffaut loved movies since he was a child; as a young adult, he secured a job at Cahiers du Cinéma, becoming known as one of their most brutal writers. He earned the nickname “The Gravedigger of Cinema” and was the only Cahiers writer not invited to the 1958 Cannes Film Festival. After seeing Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, Truffaut doubled down on his dreams of making his own feature film. This led to The 400 Blows (alongside Goddard’s Breathless) and the birth of the French New Wave. It seems like critics can make great art, too.

Movie Review – Last Year at Marienbad

Last Year at Marienbad (1961)
Written by Alain Robbe-Grillet
Directed by Alain Resnais

Spoilers if you have not watched Twin Peaks: The Return. Like in the very next paragraph. You have been warned.

In the closing moments of David Lynch & Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks: The Return, Special Agent Dale Cooper stands with Laura Palmer outside her home in the titular town. They’ve just discovered the woman living there is not Sarah Palmer and has no clue who Laura is. Cooper does not know what to do next but is an investigator. He stands, staring into the distance, trying to grasp onto anything. He utters the final line of the show: “What year is it?” Laura screams. Darkness falls. Credits roll over the image of Cooper sitting in the red room, Laura whispering something in his ear. We are unmoored from time; past/present/future mean nothing. What do we have if we don’t have time to cling to?

Movie Review – Hiroshima, Mon Amour

Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1959)
Written by Marguerite Duras
Directed by Alain Resnais

Some historical events seem to be glossed over. We’re taught they happened, but then the textbook quickly moves on to other topics. One of these is the atomic bombing of Japan. I personally believe this sits beside the Holocaust as the two most monstrous acts ever performed by humans on each other. Because I came along decades after the act, I was fed the very manicured propaganda around it. Even worse, I was homeschooled and given Bob Jones University’s take. I think most of us couldn’t really articulate what happened directly following the dropping of those bombs or what the mood in Japan was in the following weeks or months. But such a thing could not happen without the people’s lives being devastated beyond anything we Americans have experienced.

Movie Review – Night and Fog

Night and Fog (1956)
Written by Jean Cayrol
Directed by Alain Resnais

It’s an image that your brain can’t quite comprehend at first. Then the camera pulls out. And continues to pull out. And just keeps going beyond anything you could have anticipated or expected. Literal mountains of human hair piled up into a range of which I could not see the boundary. It seemed to go on forever. This isn’t just violence inflicted on one person to another. This is something different. There is a scope & scale that could not have happened by accident. Each action, each cut, each kill was planned. Starvation was part of the plan. This was the same thought an exterminator puts into eliminating an infestation of rats because that is how the Nazis saw these human beings as something to be erased. And with cold, calculated action, they built an entire machine to kill them all.

Movie Review – The Rules of the Game

The Rules of the Game (1939)
Written by Jean Renoir and Carl Koch
Directed by Jean Renoir

Lately, I have spent much time wondering what it felt like for the average person in the West during the lead-up to World War II. Did people sense something in the air that the world was about to change? Was there a palpable unease as you started to see where allegiances lay among the people around you? BIPOC, LGBTQ, and disabled people were already keenly aware of how nasty the dominant class could be. But what about the average white person? The ones who get a few more crumbs when brushed off the table by the wealthy, could they feel the fangs of something dark & horrible sinking into this world? Or was it business as usual?

Movie Review – Grand Illusion

Grand Illusion (1937)
Written by Jean Renoir and Charles Spaak
Directed by Jean Renoir

The actor/filmmaker Warren Beatty tells how, near the start of his career after making Splendor in the Grass, he was at a party where he met playwright Clifford Odets. Odets mentioned in passing the films of Jean Renoir, who was also at the same party. Beatty had yet to learn who this was but knew the name. “Renoir? Like the painter?” In Beatty’s words, Odets was “too kind” and didn’t embarrass him. He told the young actor yes. Jean Renoir is the son of the French impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir. The playwright suggested Beatty track down Grand Illusion and The Rules of the Game to better acquaint himself with the work of Renoir. Beatty got copies of both and a 16mm projector. Afterward, he remarked: “These may be the best movies I have ever seen.”

Seth’s Favorite Film Discoveries of 2023

Every year, I watch a lot of movies. My total for 2023 is 270, most of which were released in previous years. In fact this year marked my 4,000th film viewed in my lifetime. Of all the older films I watched, these were the pictures and filmmakers who stood out to me the strongest. These are the pieces of art that I’ll carry with me into the new year and beyond. They are works of such beauty & humanity, movies that made me laugh & cry & most importantly think about my own life and the world we all inhabit. Here are my favorite film discoveries of 2023.

PopCult Podcast – Miracle on 34th Street/The Shop Around the Corner/Christmas Sitcoms

We went to court to learn if Santa was real. Then it was quick stop to pick up some things at a general store in Budapest, before heading home to watch some classic Christmas episodes.

PopCult Podcast – Passages/Cat Person

Two more 2023 releases are spotlighted in this episode. The first is a very modern love triangle centered on a filmmaker who is extremely difficult to like. The second may be one of the worst adaptations of a short story we’ve ever seen.

PopCult Podcast – The Beasts/Anatomy of a Fall

Two new European films make up our double feature this week. In one a French transplant to northern Spain comes into conflict with the locals. In the second, a German woman living in France is accused of murdering her husband and must go through a harrowing courtroom trial, the only witness her blind son.