Cours après moi... que je t'attrape (1976)

 English title: Run After Me Until I Catch You

A middle-aged man and a middle-aged woman meet through a newspaper ad and start a relationship.

Films about relationships were very fashionable from the mid-seventies to the mid-eighties (Scenes from a Marriage; Modern Romance; Shoot the Moon; Best Friends; Heartburn). They are usually autobiographical to some extent and people generally like to watch them and compare them with their own experiences. This French movie is not among the most famous among them, and I think it's not among the better ones either. The situations are predictable and generally developed in a rather tame manner. The female protagonist is a bit of a neurotic, and the title seems to imply that there is an agenda behind her behavior. I'm not sure that her approach would be very effective in real life, but I confess to not having a sufficiently representative sample on which to base my assessment.

Rating: 31

The Man from Utah (1934)

 A newcomer in a small town is hired by the local marshal to pose as a rodeo contestant in order to investigate possible foul play which has occurred in previous rodeos.

Low budget Western with some interesting stock footage of rodeos. The plot is the usual comic-book nonsense one sees in such films, but is not wholly devoid of entertainment value.

Rating: 36

When the Clouds Roll By (1919)

 A man is undergoing treatment which is actually meant to drive him crazy. He meets a young woman and falls in love with her. She is already engaged and does not know that her fiancé is a crook.

Entertaining comedy which became famous on account of its dream sequences, especially the one where the protagonist walks on the ceiling. The flood sequence is also impressive. The plot is more complex than the average for films of its kind and era. The film as a whole is fairly entertaining.

Rating: 63

The Reivers (1969)

 Second viewing; first viewing with original audio; previously viewed on March 27, 1996

In 1905, an 11-year-old boy living in a small town accompanies two young men on a trip to a big city. They take the kid's grandfather's car without the latter's permission. Their first stop is at a whorehouse. Later on they take part in a horse race.

Agreeable coming-of-age story with nice cinematography and even nicer score. The acting is mostly good, and I wonder whether a good deal of the merit for that could be ascribed to able direction. I don't know exactly why I liked it a little less on my first viewing; possibly I found it bland. I can't deny that it is, but I guess not all films need to be shocking or polemical. Or maybe I was a little annoyed at what I perceived as a twisted moral message: instead of punishind a child for his wrongdoings, it's deemed better to let him live with the consequences. Well, that is tantamount to declaring family education useless. When that child grows up, the State will certainly adopt a sterner attitude should he move on to bigger infractions. I suppose that is the liberal way of thinking. There is some additional weirdness to part of the story, like the whore who continues in the profession so she can find a husband. Surely there must be a better way, but who am I to tell? Those minor annoyances aside, it made for a nice second viewing, especially because I previously watched it dubbed in Portuguese (and probably in pan-and-scan), and also because I remembered nothing of it.

Rating: 58 (up from 48)

Rocky IV (1985)

 An American boxer past his prime challenges a Soviet young boxer who killed his friend in a previous boxing match.

There is not much to say about this film. The script seems to have been written in half an hour. The more endurable scenes feature a funny robot (I wonder whether in addition to serving breakfast she writes films; it might be better than this one). The rest of the movie is mostly a series of montages scored by rock songs, and two boxing matches.

Rating: 11

Quelé do Pajeú (1970)

 English title (Australia): Fury of the Avenger

A rancher hunts down the man who raped his sister. He has only some of the culprit's physical traits to guide him. Along his vengeful journey, he meets two beautiful women, one of whom becomes attached to him. He also has an encounter with a notorious outlaw.

The plot is similar to that of Cangaceiros de Lampião (1967) and probably countless other movies, mainly in the Western genre. The budget here is above average for Brazilian films; that makes for a few visually interesting scenes or sequences, even though the script is not very good, with an overuse of pseudo-poetical dialogue, and a plot which often borders on the nonsensical.

Rating: 31

Attention: une femme peut en cacher une autre! (1983)

English title: My Other Husband 

Alice has two families in two different cities. She is married with Philippe, an airplane pilot with whom she has a boy. They live in Paris where she works as a nurse. She has another job as a physiotherapist at a seaside town where she lives with Vincent, a schoolteacher with whom she has a boy and a girl.

The 1978 Brazilian movie Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands seems to have sparked some worldwide interest in female bigamy (or biandry), having spawned an American remake and this similarly themed French movie. This one is probably the dullest of the three. Despite the unconventional central situation, what we have here is an extremely conventional script and characters which fail to generate much empathy from the viewer.

Rating: 30

On aura tout vu... (1976)

 English titles: Now We've Seen It All!; The Bottom Line

François agrees to have his script rewritten as a pornographic film without telling his co-writer about it. François's girlfriend is against it, and in an act of revolt gets herself hired as the main actress of the movie.

Comedy which tries to derive comicity from the rising industry of pornographic films. Despite the good cast of comedians, it is relentlessly unfunny.

Rating: 21

Blue Steel (1934)

 In a small Western town, a distinguished citizen is actually a bandit. He plans to defraud everyone in town out of their houses with the help of a gang of outlaws. The sheriff and a newcomer happen to witness the killing of the the local hardware store's owner and the kidnapping of his daughter.

Very cheap comic-bookish Western. It's strictly cliché, but there is a certain juvenile charm to it. The most curious scene is when the newlywed husband asks for help because "he couldn't find it".

Rating: 33

La 7ème cible (1984)

Informal English title: The Seventh Target

A retired journalist suffers a series of automotive attacks and anonymous phone calls. He investigates the affair with the help of the police and discovers that he is apparently not the first victim of those criminals.

I guess one could define paranoia as a disease of the mind which renders it incapable of assessing probabilities as applied to one's own life. This film is not the only one to exploit the film viewer's tendency to that kind of disease, but it is certainly an extreme example of such. Here, unlike in Kafka's The Trial, it's not a State institution but a private organization who is causing all the trouble. Also unlike the Kafka novel, here all the details are worked out in the way of an explanation, implausible though it turns out to be. The end result is less than thrilling, but maybe I am being unfair to it. 

Rating: 30

Les grands ducs (1996)

Informal U.S. title: The Grand Dukes

 Three decadent stage actors land a job in a comedy touring the province. The producer just wants to botch the performances in order to collect the insurance.

Not especially attractive comedy which seems to be just a vehicle for its actors. The main idea here was previously used in the 1960 Brazilian comedy Eu Sou o Tal!, which I reviewed here, and consists in that the accidents during a performance make it better than it would normally be. Here it is better -- but still unsatisfactorily -- developed than in that earlier film.

Rating: 30

Viva Knievel! (1977)

 A motorcycle daredevil is doing a stunt in Mexico. His promoter intends to use the event for committing a crime.

Mildly entertaining mix of drama and thriller. The dramatic bits are corny and have little interest; the sequences involving stunts and the final chase are well done.

Rating: 38

Carnaval Barra Limpa (1967)

 A young starlet is visiting Brazil during Carnival. She wears a necklace with a huge diamond which is coveted by several robbers.

Worthless comedy which is shoddily scripted and fuzzily directed; the film's main box office appeal derived from the musical numbers featuring some very popular singers of that era. The cinematography is vey competent, and the film has some very beautiful shots of Rio de Janeiro and at a luxury hotel where the action is set.

Rating: 12

L'amour en douce (1985)

 English title: Love on the Quiet

Womanizing lawyer is caught by his wife with another woman; his wife leaves him and starts a relationship with an older man. He meets a prostitute and starts a relationship with her.

Drama which examines marriage, its exigencies and pitfalls. A man who cannot remain faithful finds in a prostitute his mirror image and only suitable partner; a woman who demands fidelity finds in a man past his prime the only partner who could comply with her demand. It's all very sensible, but also very unexciting.

Rating: 31

Le crime de Monsieur Lange (1936)

Second viewing; previously viewed on November 11, 1993

 English title: The Crime of Monsieur Lange

The titular character is an employer at the printing department of a small publishing house, and a writer of pulp Westerns in his spare time. His employer has embezzled the funds he loaned for the company, and gets himself in unsurmountable debt; he works out a deal with sponsors which would make use of Lange's stories. Concurrently to those affairs, there are multiple love and sex stories involving men at the publishing house and at a boarding house and women at a nearby laundry.

I do not know for sure what exactly rubbed me the wrong way in this movie upon my previous viewing. There are aspects of it which are flawed, as I see them today, but I am not sure they are the same ones that I objected to earlier. The main merit of the movie is the dialogue and interplay of characters, which stem no doubt primordially from the screenwriter's work. As for the movie's alleged political reverberations, they are mostly based on very simplistic notions, some of which fail to make sense even on a very basic level. For example, the notion that you can bribe a debt collector seems absurd on the face of it; the original creditor does not care about these proceedings, and will not be moved by them; furthermore, a collector would hardly be willing to risk his job for a few hundred francs. This doesn't reach the point of ruining the movie, to be sure, but is one among several signs of political and economic naivete which permeate the movie. The film seems to be part of a leftist project which aims to denigrate capitalism and praise cooperative organizing, but it is simply foolish to imagine that this particular capitalist is representative of his entire class; no businessman would thrive by being so reckless and dishonest; as for cooperatives, I have nothing in principle against them, but it is to be noted that, after having devoted all its time to depict the flaws of a capitalist enterprise, no time at all is left to focus on the operation of its socialist follow-up. If one lets go of the more radical political notions, and also of the more naive plot details, though, the film is quite satisfactory as a melodrama and a simplified social and moral study.

Rating: 65 (up from 50)

Péril en la demeure (1985)

US title: Peril; UK title: Death in a French Garden

A young man is hired to give guitar lessons to the teenage daughter of a rich couple. The girl's mother begins an affair with him; he befriends a mysterious woman who lives next door to them. He also befriends a professional killer.

Postmodernist noir with stylized dialogue and mise-en-scène, and a great emphasis on eroticism. The end result is, well, stylish, but not much more than that.

Rating: 39

Where Are the Children? (1986)

 Two children are kidnapped by a stranger when they are playing in the front yard. Some apparently compromising information comes to light regarding the children's mother. Another person is seen prowling around the house for unknown reasons.

Atrocious suspense story with abundant absurdities both in plot and in character behavior. The cinematography if fine.

Rating: 11

Dis-moi que tu m'aimes (1974)

 English title: Tell Me You Love Me

Three friends -- two working partners and a client of theirs -- separate from their wives at more or less the same time. They initially enjoy their newfound freedom, and so do their wives. Two of those couples do not view their separation as definitive; the third one has an incompatibility problem of a higher order.

The seventies witnessed a change in the relationship between the sexes. Of course it began earlier than that, but in the seventies things were pretty much consolidated, and there was no turning back. This movie tries to explore those changes through farce. It features three couples, each exemplifying one issue: wives as sex objects; wives as household servants; and wives as a means of concealing male homosexuality. The film tackles its subject superficially and is extremely predictable in all its details. 

Film length was 85 minutes, which is much less than the different figures provided by IMDB and Wikipedia, respectively.

Rating: 31

Candinho (1954)

 Loosely based on the novella Candide, ou l'optimisme by Voltaire, first published in 1759.

The titular character is found as a newborn by a family of farmers who take him in and raise him. When he grows up he is still living with them as an unpaid servant of the household. The farmer's daughter falls in love with him. After they are caught kissing each other by her father, Candinho is expelled from the farm, and roams the towns in search of his biological mother. He goes through assorted adventures in the process.

Comedy in the picaresque style. Its comicity is very light and unpretentious, with some rather tame satirical bits here and there. It is not without interest, though, and may even be viewed with a modicum of pleasure.

Rating: 51

La valise (1973)

 U.S. title: Man in the Trunk

This film's basic situation is probably inspired by a real story which happened in 1964 with a man named Mordechai Louk. There is an earlier movie -- Trunk to Cairo (1965) -- which reportedly also drew inspiration from that event.

A spy has his cover blown and takes refuge at a friendly embassy. He is put inside a trunk and smuggled out of the country under the supervision of an agent from that friendly country. He runs into several mishaps and into a beautiful woman with whom he had fallen in love just before he was exposed.

Mostly uninspired comedy which merges two main ideas: the titular one, regarding an unusual confinement and transportation, and the tale of a supposedly irresistible woman, who uses that feature to her advantage at every occasion, and thus becomes everyone's woman in the process. One plot point remains loose (or I didn't pay enough attention): was the woman really the one responsible for blowing the spy's cover? If so, how did it happen and how could they remain friends afterwards? But inquiring about such details in such a lightweight comedy is perhaps not reasonable.

Rating: 37

Au coeur du mensonge (1999)

 U.S. Title: The Color of Lies

Literal English Title: At the Heart of the Lie

A painter who gives drawing lessons becomes a suspect in the rape and murder of one of his students. A talk show host tries to seduce his wife. The action is set at a small seaside town where, in addition to those aforementioned events, a string of thefts of art objects is going on. As commenter dbdumonteil points out on IMDB, this film's plot is remarkably similar to 1951 Georges Simenon's novel La mort de Belle, which got a film version released in 1961.

The title gives away the theme of the movie: Truth and Lies, and how they come to rule our lives. A man who lives by the Truth is pitted against a man who lives by Lies. But are those self-descriptions accurate? A man who boasts of living truthfully could be just deceiving himself, while a man who acknowledges that Lying is an integral part of existence is perhaps fundamentally honest. Those paradoxes come to their apex when it is shown that Truth always tries to kill Falsehood, but, because it must conceal its act, what really happens turns out to be the reverse: Lies always kill the Truth and rule the world. One can enjoy the film on a more down-to-earth level, of course: as a whodunit and study of customs. As such, it is quite passable and well done, with a remarkable leading performance and serviceable supporting ones.

Rating: 60

Les démons de l'aube (1946)

 English title: Dawn Devils

World War 2. A French commando fighting in Tunisia does some small attacks and trains for a bigger operation. A new member happens to know the leader and hold a grudge against him on account of a message which failed to be delivered. Eventually they are scheduled to take part in Operation Dragoon, in which the allies will land in the Southern Coast of France. A pretty accurate and detailed summary may be found in this page.

Passable war drama which nevertheless gets a little hard to understand at some points on account of the somewhat cryptic dialogue. Anyway the action sequences are more interesting than the contrived drama.

Rating: 40