La règle du jeu (1939)

 Second viewing (at least); previouly viewed on December 15, 1988.

English title: The Rules of the Game

A man is throwing a hunting party and a costume party at his country estate. He invites his friends, amongst whom his own mistress and his wife's suitor; amid the servants there is also a case of infidelity.

Superior farce with a cleverly devised script and very good mise-en-scène. Perhaps not as brilliant or profound as I took it to be upon my previous viewing, but still a remarkable film.

Rating: 83 (down from 100)

Bonequinha de seda (1936)

 Woman pretends to be from a higher social class than she is in order to help her father who risks being evicted.

The first twenty minutes or so of this film are passable; there are two well-written sequences, viz. the one with Madame Gouveia in João's office and the conversation between Madame Valle and her granddaughter in their car. The rest of the movie, however, is very dull and often atrocious.

I'm not sure anyone will be interested (or should be, for that matter), but this film can be watched on the internet:

Rating: 22

Hung fan kui (Rumble in the Bronx) (1995)

First viewing of the Hong Kong version; U.S. version viewed, dubbed in Portuguese, on January 16, 2002.

IMDB short synopsis: "A young man visiting and helping his uncle in New York City finds himself forced to fight a street gang and the mob with his martial art skills."

Quite entertaining and imaginative action movie; perhaps certain parts of the narrative could be better presented, e.g., there is no scene depicting the actual "diamond deal gone wrong", which we must surmise based on what came before and after that event. But overall it's a satisfying film. I don't remember much about the other version I saw more than two decades ago, so I can't compare the two.

Rating: 58 (up from 57)

La noire de... (1966)

 English title: Black Girl

A Senegalese woman travels to France to work for a French couple for whom she had already worked while they were living in Senegal.

This is one of the most absurd movies I have ever seen, and, while its short duration might be partly responsible for a poor development of the filmmaker's ideas, I suspect that the thing was doomed from its inception. The initial reception seemed to reflect that reality, but later reappraisal differed considerably, to nobody's surprise. All that being said, I will give it a somewhat higher rating than its mere dramatic merits justify, because of its stunning cinematography.

Rating: 30

Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo (1966)

 Second viewing; previously viewed on July 2, 1998.

English title: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The narrative, set during the American Civil War, follows three characters -- a paid assassin, a Mexican bandit, and a dishonest bounty hunter -- whose paths cross in their search of some hidden money in coins stolen from the Confederacy. They go through several adventures during that quest.

Entertaining albeit somewhat overlong picaresque Western. The plot is somewhat repetitive, but has some clever ideas, like the location of the gold being next to a bridge of military importance. It's very well filmed, featuring a wealth of great shots.

I've watched the 2h41 version, dubbed in English.

Rating: 63 (down from 78)

Les amants de Brasmort (1951)

 English title: The Lovers of Bras-Mort

Jean is a bargeman whose wooden barge is impounded due to safety risks. He suspects that the inspectors are in cahoots with a greedy bargeman who owns a metal barge. The latter's daughter falls in love with Jean, but her father wants her to marry a rich guy.

Mildly entertaining drama about coal transportation. The narrative is framed as bad rich guys versus good poor ones. It' a clearly artificial construction, since in reality what's at play here is simply the laws of capitalism. The poor guys, though made to appear more sympathetic, do not represent a political alternative or imply social progress. Their side is indeed characterized by unsafe navigation and archaic technology.

Rating: 51

Carnival of Souls (1962)

 Second viewing; previously viewed on December 14, 2005.

After being in a car accident in which everybody else in the car died, a young woman moves to another town and starts having what appears to be strange hallucinations.

This interesting film is said to be based on An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. Wikipedia lists several fantastic works with a similar premise, but not all of them share what I see as the main aspect common to both Bierce's story and this film, and which is also present in a non-fantastic story whose title makes that aspect explicit: La torture par l'espérance, by Villiers de l'Isle-Adam. In Carnival of Souls there is interference from "reality" all through the "dream". It's as if a disturbance in the universal mechanism caused two timelines to briefly interact. To use a quantum physics parallel, it's as if a fly (cf. The Fly) had entered Schrödinger's box and caused his cat to be both dead and alive after it is retrieved.

Rating: 57 (down from 63)