I saw this little flick tonight at the French film Festival. OK – It’s not the Charlotte Rampling documentary, nor is the final night screening of Francois Truffaut’s The Last Metro (how much do you think I can’t wait for THAT one!!) but it was a very pleasant way to spend a couple of hours. […]
Category Archives: Film Reviews
French Film Festival
posted by lisathatcher
Well, the French Film Festival started for me today and it looks like I have a series of joyful happy days ahead of me. This is my second favorite event on the Sydney calendar – my first being our world class writers festival. The mood is jumping here tonight … ripe with cliche(d) striped shirts and berets! […]
Ikiru – Akira Kurosawa and what it means to live
posted by lisathatcher
What an absolutely beautiful film. This was pure delight from start to finish. An established masterpiece, Ikiru was made in 1952, between Rashomon and Seven Samurai, and stars Takashi Shimura. He played the woodcutter in Rashomon, leader of the Seven Samurai and in Ikiru he’s a crabbed, middle-aged civil servant suddenly faced with his imminent […]
Marketa Lazarová – The greatest Czech film of all time
posted by lisathatcher
Marketa Lazarová is a 1967 Czechoslovak historical film directed by František Vláčil. It is an adaptation of a novel of the same name by Vladislav Vančura. Although, it is my understanding that it is not a particularly close representation of the book, but rather draws heavily on one small aspect and expands this into a film. I’ve leaned heavily on […]
Carnage: Roman Polanski in real time.
posted by lisathatcher
I’ve been looking forward to this film. For a while. Besides the fact that i am a (reluctant) Polanski fan – I must say it helped a great deal to see Jodi Foster was willing to be a part of this project – I also have a bit of a soft spot for these one-act […]
The Young One – Luis Buñuel does English / American
posted by lisathatcher
I just finished watching The Young One, after (I confess) putting it off for about two weeks. I’d never heard of this strange little flick, read it was difficult to get your hands on, a smattering of reviews claimed it was underrated. I’d seen quite a few Luis Buñuel films lately, and – well – I’ve […]
Szinbad – beauty in the profoundly ugly from Zoltan Huzarik
posted by lisathatcher
I watched an amazing film today. Amazing because it was a combination of the most beautiful cinematography I’ve ever seen – so exquisite it brough tears to my eyes with its beauty – and the dullest character I have ever seen. I swear, if this man had sat and stared at a wall for 2 hours, […]
Contempt – Enjoy a little Avant-Godard
posted by lisathatcher
“’The cinema,’ Andre Bazin said, ‘substitutes for our gaze a world that corresponds to our desires.’ Contempt is a story of this world.” I just cried my way through a third viewing of Contempt (Le Mépris) a film I never ever tire of. I know there are some vague problems with this film – it doesn’t have […]
The Ear – They’re watching you.
posted by lisathatcher
During the early 1960’s, director Karel Kachyna met Moravian writer, Jan Prochazka and their long collaboration produced many of the key films in Kachyna’s oeuvre. In 1968, under Soviet occupation and during the Normalisation period when the stranglehold was starting to decend over Czech film, Kachyna’s darin gpoliticalnoir-dramaUcho (The Ear, 1970) was withheld from circulation […]
The Party and the Guests: Jan Němec – the film they banned for years.
posted by lisathatcher
A Report on the Party and the Guests (Czech: O slavnosti a hostech, also known in English as The Party and the Guests) is a 1966 Czechoslovak drama film directed by Jan Němec. It was entered for the 1968 Cannes Film Festival, but the festival was aborted owing to the events of May 1968 in France. This film has the illustrious reputation of being […]
Lisa Thatcher 