Movie review - "Pierrot Le Fou" (1965) ***

Jean Luc Godard is reunited with Jean Paul Belmondo who plays a man who runs off with Ana Karina and they are chased by some gangster types.

Interesting credits, lush score, talk of Johnny Guitar, Sam Fuller makes a cameo to talk about cinema ("A film is like a battle ground - love, hate, action, violence, death. In one word - emotion"), satire of commercialism (ditzes talking about hair and Alfa Romeos), a beautiful love object to rejuvenate a married man, women singing randomly, dance numbers, splatterings of violence, kabuki theatre, yellow face, torture, death.

It is bright and colourful and Karina is charming - Godard clearly adores her. Belmondo is miscast to play a married office worker but he's always entertaining to see - Godard used stars well however Marxist he was. I enjoyed the playfulness of this time. It's a young man having fun.

Book review - "Crackpot: The Obssessions of John Waters" by John Waters

Bright collection of essays from one of the greatest director raconteurs (up there with Kevin Smith). It was originally published in 1986 but this edition updates it with some more recent articles, including the making of Hairpsray and several speeches from the Independent Film Awards which tend to over-rely on the one joke structure - Waters advising people in ways to be shocking ("have affairs", "when you accept an award say you deserve it"). This got repetitive and made me realise a lot of Waters' shtick is based on this. But when he writes from the heart - about Buddy Deaners, or teaching in prison, or his love for stuntmiesters like William Castle and actors like Pia Zadora, or review Hail Mary by Godard - he can't be beaten, and he's always funny.

Movie review - "Little Murders" (1971) ***1/2 (warning: spoilers)

A film made at the tail end of Gould's first big burst of stardom, which he helped produce. It was based on a play he appeared in on Broadway. It flopped but then had a successful Off-Broadway revival - something which I'm sure gave false hope to many a failed Broadway playwright.

Some of it is very funny. It does feel like a play - long monologues, most of the action takes place in apartments. The acting is superb. Loved Gould. Loved Donald Sutherland's cameo. Really liked Marcia Rodd, who isn't very well known, but has the most important role. Everyone is good - including Alan Arkin, who directed.

Maybe this isn't a movie, but it's worth watching. It's very bleak about New York. Has any city undergone a revearsal in how its depicted than New York in the 60s. Only a few years earlier you had these sunny films like Move Over Darling and Sunday in New York then by the end of the decade its Prisoner of Second Avenue, The Out of Towners and this.

The death of the lead girl is genuinely shocking and powers the last third.

Elliot Gould really had a fascinating 70s movie star career. Some zeitgeist hits, a bunch of flops and several films which should be better known, including this one.

NB Godard was going to direct this at one stage! That would have been interesting.

Movie review - "Contempt" (1963) ** (aka Le Mepris)

Jean Luc Godard is given CinemaScope, colour and big stars - Jack Palance wasn't on the A list at this stage but he was a name and Brigitte Bardot was one of the biggest stars in the world. Not so big was Michel Piccoli, who pops up in all sorts of French movies. He's a writer hired by producer Palance to work on an adaptation of The Odyssey.

He's married to Bardot and the film tells the story of strains in their marriage. Not hard to see why - she's one of the hottest women of the planet and Piccoli is seriously out of her league. Instead of being grateful and taking what he can get, he whinges and worries. She runs off with Palance and both die in a car crash - because the bitch deserved it presumably, proving once again the Godard isn't that radical.

The music score is spectacular - one of the greatest I've ever heard, lush and moving. That carries the film for a long way.

There's an opening shot of Bardot lounging naked in the dark as Piccoli talks to her arse and she collapses out of a few towels. The colour is gorgeous as are the island locations. And Godard is always worth watching for directors because he jazzes things up. But it got on my nerves and dragged.

Movie review - "Masculin Feminin" (1966) *** (warning: spoilers)

I mainly watched this because I felt I had to, it being from the classic Godard period and everything, and was prepared to be hostile but wound up enjoying it more than I thought. It's very arty but the art has integrity and there is energy and talent - you can feel it's influence on 90s art house cinema.

The star is Jean-Pierre Leaud, best known for being Francois Truffaut's alter ego in many different movies. He plays a guy just out of the army who fancies himself as a bit of a Marxis; his best mate (Michel Debord) is a union activist; he tries to get on to a pretty girl (Chantal Goya) he meets at a cafe, who has two friends, one of whom (Marlene Jobert) seems to fall for Leaud.

This isn't very story heavy, to put it mildly. It's more notable for the stylistic devices: chapter headings, long scenes consisting of only a few takes where a guy asks a girl questions (I really loved these scenes they reminded me of talks I used to do when younger, firing off questions to women), Leaud talking to himself in a laundromat, spotting Brigitte Bardot in a cafe (she has this random cameo), the film in jokes (references in dialogue to Pierre Le Fot), going to see a porn film where there is artistic stuff, the depiction of Leaud's death via reportage, the combination of culture references (a doll is guillotined listening to a radio report of De Gaulle going Mitterand, talk of Satre, anti-Vietnam protests), the sound track.

I'm not super across what life was like for teens in 1965 Paris but a lot of it was recognisable: they talk pretentiously about politics, and also about sex; the guys want to get the girls into bed, the girls are curious. One of them (Goya) becomes a pop star, which is different (she becomes big in Japan which made me laugh).

The women are shown to be not that involved or interested in politics - dim pretty things. But the guys are pretentious idiots. Mind you they are more active and get more of the attention - this sort of misogyny is not un-familiar to French cinema from this period.

Jobert is very pretty - so too is Goya but Jobert has more life. I'm not sure what she sees in little Leaud, but I guess he is the director's surrogate. Jobert is Eva Green's mother in real life, which is pretty cool.

An energetic, lively movie. In an odd way I felt you could remake this for different generations and cultures.

Movie review - "New Wave" (1990) aka "Nouvelle Vague" *1/2

I'm not as across my Jean Luc Godard as a supposed film buff should be. This is from his later period - really, everything after 1969 counts as a "later period". It unites him with another 60s icon, Alain Delon.

For a while I went with this - the interesting use of sound, with overlapping dialogue, music, ambient sounds, etc and it's long tracking shots, eerie mood. The dialogue consists of quotations, often from other movies; names of characters and places are based on films, novels - eg To Have and Have Not, Perry Mason, Joseph Mankiewicz, Leave Her to Heaven, The Barefoot Contessa, The Long Goodbye, Dorothy Parker.

But there's no real story and after 15 minutes or so I started getting bored then I started struggling to stay awake. I say there's no real story but actually the germ of something interesting is in there - rich Domiziana Giordano picking up Alain Delon, then killing him, then Delon's doppleganger turning up... that makes this sound more interesting than it is.Hard core Godard fans should get something out of it.

Movie review - "The Oldest Profession" (1967) **

A 60s Europudding comic look at prostitution through the ages. It's the sort of movie that makes you apprehensive thinking about it then when you watch your heart sinks because you realise your worst fears are to be realised. But after a slow start this was okay.

The first two segments are weak. Part 1 is set in prehistoric times with Michele Mercier as a cave girl who discovers make up. Part 2 is in ancient Rome with Elsa Martinelli and a Roman Emperor visits a brothel. Lazy jokes, not particularly well done.

Part 3 gets better- its the French Revolution and a young man pretends to be wanting to watch his uncle executed so he can sleep with Jeanne Moreau. The fact Moreau is in it helps this a lot.

Part 4 is set in the 1890s and is lots of fun, with Raquel Welch in good form as a stripper who cons a man into marrying her. It's one of Welch's best performances - she's splendid looking as always in some lingerie but is genuinely high spirited as the clever girl.

Part 5 has plenty of energy from Nadia Gray and France Anglade as prostitutes who operate out of the car and wind up running an operation from an ambulance. The possibilities in this premise feel undercooked (it could hold a feature eg Night Shift) but the actresses really go for it.

Part 6 was done by none other than Jean Luc Godard and is set in the future. Anna Karina appears along with one time Mr Brigitte Bardot, Jacques Charrier. This is the best segment, imaginative and bold, a fascinating companion piece to Alphaville. Incidentally, it's the one segment with nudity.

So all in all this wasn't a bad movie, certainly not as much as I feared going in.

Movie review - "Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films" (2014) ****1/2

Joyous documentary from the man who made Not Quite Hollywood - and actually much better than that film, because it is more focused (centering on two principals), has a stronger narrative drive (being a rise and fall) and more critical. There are some excellent interviewees - not just the usual actors, actresses and directors, but also writers, editors and music supervisors... which means the comments are more varied, interesting and (to be blunt) smarter (editors especially always seem to have super insightful things to say about films and studios, but they get overlooked in favour of the more glamorous directors and stars).

Like all Mark Hartley movies it looks great and bangs along at a fair clip. His sense of story is improving too - he's not as distracted by anecdotes as in Not Quite Hollywood - helped by the fact Golan and Globas are such engaging protagonists, even if they didn't appear in the film: hucksters who adored movies and making deals, with a great flair for getting money out of banks and distributors but with nil taste.

Their passion and skills saw them explode in Hollywood in the early 80s, helped by the VHS revolution which saw a market for their movies and their general lack of shame. I don't think Cannon pioneered pre-selling off the poster - wasn't AIP doing that in the 50s? - but they perfected it to an artform.

In a weird way, Cannon's taste was ahead of the curve of some issues - they made films out of toys (eg Masters of the Universe) and were big on super heroes and comic book franchises (eg King Solomon's Mines, Superman IV, they had the rights to Spiderman and Captain America) but could never crack a big hit because the films were made ineptly. They made a mistake reaching for the big leagues and overreaching themselves in terms of budget and stars (eg Over the Top), like many a feisty independent, and went bust. Golan and Globas broke up, competed with lambada films, then retreated to Israel. (Both are still wheeling and dealing but are no longer the international players they were; neither wanted to participate in this film)

What to make of Cannon's legacy? A lot of violence, sex, and misogyny, and awful lot of crud. But they were no orphans on that score during that decade: Frank Yablans is bitter about the junk they foisted on MGM in the 80s, but Metro was hardly kicking goals around this time; Bo Derek's recollections on how they ruined Bolero is laughable (in an enjoyable way).

And the fact is Cannon did make a bunch of good films - 52 Pick Up, Barfly, Otello, Runaway Train - as well as some first rate exploitation flicks - Breakin', Missing in Action, Delta Force - plus others which were engagingly bad - Lifeforce, King Solomon's Mines, The Wicked Lady. They made a stars of Chuck Norris, Michael Dudikoff and Jean Claude Van Damme, gave regular employment to Charles Bronson, perhaps unwisely extended the career of Michael Winner, financed works by Cassevetes and Goddard.

What they seemed to lack was an ability to make solid, mainstream, commercial movies - they knew there was a market for a new Superman movie, or a film based on a popular toy line, but couldn't satisfy it due to their lack of talent. Roger Corman managed to keep going all this time by keeping his costs super low and not getting into areas he couldn't control.

It makes for highly entertaining viewing and a fun film. Not sure if the Australian tax payer should have funded it, but it is better than most recent Aussie films.

Movie review - "Breathless" (1959) ***1/2

I have heard so much about how this revolutionized filmmaking to be honest it's a bit annoying. Did it, really, or is that just something people say? Maybe I have to go back to 1959 to appreciate it. It does retain an energy thanks to the location shooting (not revolutionary at the time, surely?) but also two electric star performances. Jean-Paul Belmondo is one of the great anti heroes of all time: punched-face handsome, lean, borderline sociopathic, horny, Bogart obsessed. 

He's beautifully matched by Jean Seberg, with her oh-so-iconic short hair and stripey top and no bra.

I've seen this movie a bunch of times and forget most of it - the opening gangster sequence, pretty much all the action, the dreadful press conference with the pretentious fat man in sun glasses, all the scenes of people having meals in cafes.

The memories I have are associated around the stars: Seberg calling out "New York Herald Tribune"; Belmondo wiping his hand across the lips; Belmondo's death; the long scene of the two of them in bed.

It's sexy and exciting but surely film critics have been over-impressed by the pop culture references: the Cahiers du Cinema in jokes, Godard's own past as a critic, the references to Monogram and Bogart. I liked it - I just hate having it shoved down my throat.

Movie review - "Alphaville" (1965) **1/2

Godard does science fiction and this view of the future has a bit of everything except logic and special effects: nods to Orwell, Brave New World and James Bond, Orson Welles-esque lighting, a private eye hero (played by expat American star-in-France-only Eddie Constantine), a femme fetale (Anna Karina), some evil scientists, a high body count (the star shoots a lot of people dead).

There was a lot of imagination but to be honest I found this hard going and during the second half wished it would end. There's a creep Big Brother type voice which appears throughout the film and got on my nerves as did the ping sound.

I wasn't familiar with Constantine's work as an actor but got what he was supposed to be very quickly - the French love their craggy action stars. Karina is beautiful, there are some decent character actors. But this is an acquired taste.

Movie review – “Two for the Wave” (2010) ***1/2

Fascinating documentary about the relationship of the two biggest stars of the French New Wave – Francois Truffaut and Jean Luc Godard. Both film critics turned directors, they were friends who helped each other at various stages of their career – actually, it seems Truffaut helped Godard more than the other way around, providing a story and guarantee for Breathless, discovering Jean-Pierre Leaud who Godard used in several films, providing constant public support. Godard repaid this by becoming more militant, angry and eventually slagging Truffaut off so much that Truffaut cut off contact. 

That mightn’t have been how it happened but I believed it from the footage here – Godard was a doctor’s son and banker’s grandson, well off and sulky, given to radicalism and Marxism, seemingly humorless (he reminded me of Che Guevera) while Truffaut was a genuine working class battler, a humanist. Spoilt middle class brats always became the most hard core militants.

Some of the footage is terrific – interviews from the 60s, press conference from the 1968 Cannes Film Festival, Leaud’s audition tape for The 400 Blows. A little more context wouldn’t have gone astray – and I didn’t get that chick flicking through the old newspaper cuttings. I’m surprise Truffaut and Goddard battled so much over Leaud – he wasn’t that good an actor, at least not as an adult, but then I guess it was more symbolism than anything else.