Beauty and the Beast (France, 2014) – No, not the new Disney live-action musical but a lush French version of the classic fairy tale starring Léa Seydoux (Blue is the Warmest Color) as Belle and Vincent Cassel as the hirsute Beast. Belle is the youngest and sunniest child of a prosperous merchant (André Dussollier) . […]
Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos describes his English language debut The Lobster as his film about love (following Dogtooth, his film on life, and Alps, on death). Which is not necessarily to call it a love story. It is, in its own way, but it just as much about the social expectations of love and marriage […]
Who would have predicted that Midnight in Paris (2011) would become Woody Allen’s most financially successful film ever? On the one hand, the wish fulfillment fantasy of an American screenwriter (Owen Wilson) on a Paris vacation who is whisked back in time and welcomed into the company of the Lost Generation artists of the twenties, […]
Spectre (2015), the 24th James Bond film and the fourth starring Daniel Craig, continues to explore the origins of 007. The opening scene, set in Mexico City in the midst of the Day of the Dead celebrations, is one of the best in the series, and we get the fun of Bond once again going rogue, […]
Filmmaker Abdellatif Kechiche explores the lives of outsiders looking for their place in Blue is the Warmest Color, an intimate love story based on a graphic novel. Thanks to Academy rules for foreign films, it wasn’t eligible for an Oscar nomination due to the timing of its French theatrical release. But it took home the […]
Saint Laurent, Bertrand Bonello’s portrait of one of the most influential fashion designers of the 20th century, focuses on just a few years of the life of Yves Saint Laurent (Gaspard Ulliel): 1967 through 1975, the height of his success and influence in the fashion world. There’s no backstory, no rising through the ranks, no […]
