1965: Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution

Godard's take on the Lemmy Caution character is a science fiction film in which the agent comes to Alphaville, the place where logic rules. Lemmy meets a woman, and you can guess the rest. Though a lot is made of the fact that Godard didn't build any sets but rather filmed the most modern-looking parts of Paris he could find, but given that the film is set in the mid-1970s (if I interpret the dialogue correctly), this seems fair enough. The film's not a masterpiece by any stretch, but charmingly quaint. Recommended for fans of b/w shadow-/lightplay. (7)

1954: Thursday's Children

Not only is Lindsay Anderson's documentary about a school for deaf children boring, it also has voice-over narration that alternates between the usual third-person view and taking the (inauthentic) voice of the children ("We are deaf."). Bonus: Contains the remarkable assertion that if you don't have words, you cannot think. (4)

1935: Mutiny on the Bounty

Solid but unexceptional narration of the well-known story. I've previously seen the 1962 version with Marlon Brando, and filming the South Seas in black and white somehow seems wrong. (6)

1960: Charlotte et son Jules

Upon the return of his ex-girlfriend into his flat, a young man starts a ten-minute monologue until the film comes to a predictable "surprise" ending. Pointless twelve-minute early Godard. (4)

1962: Vivre sa vie: Film en douze tableaux (My Life to Live)

Nana, who can't make it in film despite having featured in an Eddie Constantine picture (injoke!), is short of money, and we witness her quick descent into prostitution and worse, driven by Michel Legrand's memorable theme music. Godard's unusual use of the camera both in terms of movement and framing, remindful of La passion de Jeanne d'Arc (which we see Nana watching), is the main feature that sets this film apart, although for my taste in one scene it is woefully overdone. (7.5)

1959: Charlotte et Véronique, ou Tous les garçons s'appellent Patrick (All the Boys Are Called Patrick)

Godard shot this short a in the year before he did À bout de souffle, but, working from a script by Eric Rohmer, he naturally couldn't produce anything resembling a masterpiece. The story features a couple of female flatmates who go out one day to be chatted up seperately by the same guy, tell about it each other in the evenings, and guess what happens at the end. Exactly the same story, with genders reversed, was made into the excrutiating rap song "Die da" by Die Fantastischen Vier about forty years later, the lyrics having the decisive advantage that it's unclear until the end that the two friends are talking about the same person. Well. (5)

2009: Surrogates

The Bruce Willis flick about a future in which people mind-control human-looking robots that they send out into the streets so they (the humans) can safely stay at home is professionally done all around, but no Blade Runner (6.5).

1954: Viaggio in Italia

Strange: Throughout the film I kept thinking that the mediterranean light had been captured better in the films of Antonioni's ennui trilogy. Apart from that, competent film about a couple bitching at each other during a trip to Italy. Has Ingrid Bergman in it. (6.5)

1919: Broken Blossoms or, The Yellow Man and the Girl

Girl suffers under the thumb of her adoptive father who suffers from bad English ("I'll teach yer!") and anger management issues ("I'll teach yer!"). Girl falls in love with gentle Chinaman (played by a pretty Caucasian-looking Richard Barthelmess). Violence. - There's not a lot to say about D.W. Griffith's acclaimed silent melodrama except that it's not very good. (5.5)

1948: Germania anno zero (Germany, Year Zero)

Rosselini's neorealist classic about a boy in bombed-to-pieces postwar Berlin features lay performances from lay actors and more technical ineptness than you should expect from a 1948 picture. Historically important it may be, particularly good it's not. (5.5) Better films in the same mould are Ladri di biciclette and Rosselini's own Roma, città aperta.

1957: Kumonosu-jô (Throne of Blood)

Kurosawa's idea behind his version of Macbeth, the overriding aesthetic principle of which is scarceness, seems to be to make Ozu look like Busby Berkeley. (7) Just the right thing to watch after Sex and the City 2, and I've also got four Rosselinis lined up.

The Best of May 2010

1. The Kid (1921) - 8
2. Chelovek s kino-apparatom (1929) - 7.5
   
3. Le Trou (1960) - 7.5
4. La battaglia di Algeri (1966) - 7.5
   
5. Le Doulos (1962) - 7
   

Films Not Finished May 2010

Carlito's Way, Coeurs, Girlfriend Experience